The Tiger in the Smoke

IGHOSTS “It may be only blackmail,” said the man in the taxi hopefully. The fog was like a saffron blanket soaked in ice-water. It had hung over London all day and at last was beginning to descend. The sky was yellow as a duster and the rest was a granular black, overprinted in grey and lightened by occasional slivers of bright fish colour as a policeman turned in his wet cape. Already the traffic was at an irritable crawl. By dusk it would be stationary. To the west the Park dripped wretchedly and to the north the great railway terminus slammed and banged and exploded hollowly about its affairs. Between lay winding miles of butter-coloured stucco in every conceivable state of repair. The fog had crept into the taxi where it crouched panting in a traffic jam. It oozed in ungenially, to smear sooty fingers over the two elegant young people who sat inside. They were keeping apart self-consciously, each stealing occasional glances in the same kind of fear at their clasped hands resting between them on the shabby leather seat. Geoffrey Levett was in his early thirties. He had a strong-featured uncommunicative face and a solid, powerful body. His brown eyes were intelligent and determined but not expressive, and both his light hair and his sober clothes were well and conventionally cut. There was nothing in the look of him to show the courage of the man, or the passion, or the remarkable if untimely gift he had for making money. Now, when he was undergoing the most gruelling emotional experience of his life, he appeared merely gloomy and embarrassed. Meg Elginbrodde sat beside him. He was much more in love with her than he had ever believed possible and every social column in the country had announced that she was about to marry him. She was twenty-five years and three weeks old, and for the five years since her twentieth birthday she had believed herself a war widow, but during the last three weeks, ever since her engagement had been announced, she had been receiving through the post a series of photographs taken in the city streets. They were all recent snapshots, as various landmarks proved, and in each of them there had appeared among the crowd a figure who either was her late husband, Major Martin Elginbrodde, or a man so like him that he must be called a double. On the back of the latest picture to arrive there had been a roughly printed message. “It may be only blackmail,” Geoffrey repeated, his deep voice carefully casual. “That’s what Campion thinks, isn’t it?” She did not reply at once and he glanced at her sharply, accepting the pain it gave him. She was so lovely. Queen Nefertiti in a Dior ensemble. Her clothes seemed a part of her. Her plum-coloured redingote with its absurd collar arched like a sail emphasised her slenderness. Since it was fashionable to do so, she looked bendable, bone and muscle fluid like a cat’s. A swathe of flax-white hair protruded from a twist of felt and underneath was something not quite true. Exquisite bone hid under delicate faintly painted flesh, each tone subtly emphasising and leading up to the wide eyes, lighter than Scandinavian blue and deeper than Saxon grey. She had a short fine nose and a wide softly painted mouth, quite unreal, one might have thought, until she spoke. She had a husky voice, also fashionable, but her intonation was alive and ingenuous. Even before one heard the words one realised, albeit with surprise, that she was both honest and not very old. “That’s what the police think. I don’t know about Albert. No one ever knows quite what he thinks. Val certainly doesn’t and she’s his sister. Amanda may, but then she’s married to him.” “Didn’t Amanda talk of it at all?” He was trying very hard not to be irritable. One of those solid men whose feet seemed to keep by very nature firmly on the ground, he was finding the inexplicable and unconventional unnerving. Meg moved her head slowly to look at him and he was aware of her new perfume. “I’m afraid neither of us did,” she said. “It was rather a beastly meal. Daddy kept trying not to say what was in his mind and she and I behaved like nicely brought-up little boys and didn’t notice. It’s all a bit unbearable, darling.” “I know.” He spoke too quickly. “The Canon genuinely thinks it’s Martin, does he?” and he added, “Your husband,” with a formality which had not existed between them for a year. She began to speak, hesitated, and laughed uncertainly. “Oh dear, that was terrible! I nearly said, ‘Daddy always thinks the worst,’ and that isn’t at all what I meant—either about Daddy or about Martin.” He made no comment and there was a long and unhappy pause during which the cab leapt forward a foot or so, only to pause and pant again, frustrated. Geoffrey glanced at his watch. “There’s plenty of time, anyway. Now, you’re sure it is three-thirty that you’re meeting Campion and this Inspector?” “Yes. Albert said we’d meet in that yard place at the top of the station, the one that used to smell of horses. The message just said, ‘Bath train, three forty-five, November eight,’ nothing else.” “And that was on the back of the photograph?” “Yes.” “It wasn’t in Martin’s handwriting? Just block capitals?” “I told you.” “You didn’t show it to me.” “No, darling.” “Why?” She met his glance calmly with her wide stare. “Because I didn’t want to very much. I showed it to Val because I work for her and she called up her brother. Albert brought the police into it and they took the photograph, so I couldn’t show it to anyone.” Geoffrey’s face was not designed to show exasperation or any other of the more helpless emotions. His eyes were hard as he watched her. “Couldn’t you tell if it was like him?” “Oh, it was like him.” She sounded helpless herself. “They’ve all been like him, even that first one which we all saw. They’ve all been like him but they’ve all been bad photographs. Besides——” “What?” “I was going to say I’ve never seen Martin out of uniform. That’s not true, of course, but I did only see him for a short time on his two leaves. We were only married five months before he was killed—I mean, if he was killed.” The man looked away from her out into the fog and the scurrying shadows in it. “And dear old Canon Avril seriously believes that he’s come back to stop you marrying me five years after the War Box cited him ‘Missing believed killed’?” “No,” she protested, “Daddy fears it. Daddy always fears that people may turn out unexpectedly to be horrible, or mental, or desperately ill. It’s the only negative thing in his whole make-up. It’s his bad bit. People only tell Daddy when it really is something frightful. I know how he feels now. He’s afraid Martin may be alive and mad.” Geoffrey swung round slowly and spoke with deliberate cruelty aimed mainly at himself. “And how about you, pretty? What are you hoping?” She sighed and leaned back, stretching her long slender legs to dig one very high heel into the jute mat. Her eyes were watching his face and they were entirely candid. “I knew I’d have to tell you all this, Geoff, so I thought it out.” The drawl was not unsuited to frankness. Each word had its full value. “I love you. I really do. As I am now, with these last five years behind me, I am a person who is quite terribly in love with you and will always be—or so I think now, today, in this taxi. But I did love Martin when I was nineteen, and when I knew—I mean when I thought—he was dead I thought I’d die myself.” She paused. “Somehow I think I did. Your Meg is a new girl.” Geoffrey Levett discovered with horror that he was in tears. At any rate his eyes were smarting and he felt sick. His hand closed more tightly over the slender gloved one and he banged it gently up and down on the cushion. “I’m a damned fool,” he said. “I ought not to have asked you that, my dear, dear girl. Look, we’ll get out of this somehow and we’ll go through with the whole programme. We’ll have everything we planned, the kids and the house and the happiness, even the damned great wedding. It’ll be all right, I swear it, Meg, somehow it’ll be all right.” “No.” She had the gentle obstinacy of her kind of woman. “I want to tell you, Geoffrey, because I’ve thought it all out, and I want you to know so that whatever I do—well, at least you’ll understand. You see, this message may mean just what it looks it means, and in an hour I may find I’m talking to Martin. I’ve been thinking how horrible that’ll be for him. You see, I’ve forgotten him. The only thing I keep remembering and dreading is that I must tell him about the dog.” “The dog?” he repeated blankly. “Yes. Old Ainsworth. He died soon after Martin was—was presumed killed. Martin will hate that. He loved Ainsworth. They used to sit and look at each other for hours and hours. It’s horrible, but it really is the clearest thing I remember about either of them. Martin in pyjamas and Ainsworth in his tight brown skin just sitting and looking at each other and being quite happy.” She made a small gesture with her free hand. Its arc took in a lost world of air raids and hurried meals in crowded restaurants, hotels, railway stations, khaki, sunlight, stolen pools of peace in chaos. “When he was in the Desert he wrote a poem to Ainsworth—never to me, you know—but he did write one to Ainsworth.” Her husky voice filled the rain-drenched world. “I’ve never forgotten it. He sent it home, probably for Ainsworth. You’d never imagine Martin writing verse. It went: “I had a dog, a liver-coloured mongrel With mild brown eyes and an engaging manner. He had a studious mind and thought Deeply about himself And food and s*x. He was also a liar. He wasn’t proud: He’d shake hands very gravely With almost anybody not in uniform . . . I’d like to talk to him again: Now I’m a soldier we’ve a lot in common.” She was silent and Levett did not move. It was as though the fog had brought coldly a third person into the cab. At length, since something had to be said, he made the effort. “A queer chap,” he murmured briefly. “I don’t think so.” It was evident that she was trying to remember. “He was being a soldier then, you see. He was doing that all the time I knew him.” “Oh God, yes!” He recognised the haunt at last from his own days in that strange hinterland of war which was receding faster and faster with every day of the fleeting years. “Oh God, yes! Poor little chap. Poor silly little chap.” Meg bowed her head. She never nodded, he noticed suddenly. All her movements were sweeping and gracious, like an Edwardian woman’s, only less studied. “I never saw him out of war,” she said in much the same way as she might have said, “I never saw him sober.” “I didn’t know him, I suppose. I mean I don’t really know him at all.” The last word faded and ceased uncertainly. The taxi started again and, seizing an opportunity, swung sharply into the station approach. “Are you coming with me, Geoff?” “No.” The disclaimer was altogether too violent, and he hastened to soften it. “I don’t think so, do you? I’ll telephone you about five. You’ll be all right with Campion and his bloodhound, won’t you? I think you’ll be happier without me. Won’t you?” The final question was genuine. The flicker of hope appeared in it unbidden. She heard and recognised it but hesitated too long. “I just don’t know.” “You go along.” He kissed her lightly and had the door open just before the taxi stopped. As he helped her out she clung to his sleeve. The crowd on the pavement was large and hurried as usual and they were crushed together by it. Once again he saw her as he had been seeing her at intervals all the afternoon, afresh, as if for the first time. Her voice, reaching him through the bustle, sounded nervous and uncertain. The thing she had to tell him was altogether too difficult.