I must say she does her stuff very convincingly. Never slips up for a moment.’
‘You got nothing further from her, I suppose?’
‘One faint lead. The Speeder woman with whom Betterton lunched at the Dorset.’
‘Yes?’
‘He didn’t tell his wife about the lunch.’
‘Oh.’ Wharton considered. ‘You think that’s relevant?’
‘It might be. Carol Speeder was had up before the Committee of Investigation of un-American Activities. She cleared herself, but all the same … yes, all the same she was, or they thought she was, tarred with that brush. It may be a possible contact. The only one we’ve found for Betterton so far.’
‘What about Mrs Betterton’s contacts—any possible contact lately who could have instigated the going abroad business?’
‘No personal contact. She had a letter yesterday from a Pole. A cousin of Betterton’s first wife. I had him here just now asking for details, etc.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘Not real,’ said Jessop. ‘All very foreign and correct, got all the “gen”, curiously unreal as a personality.’
‘Think he’s been the contact to tip her off?’
‘It could be. I don’t know. He puzzles me.’
‘Going to keep tabs on him?’
Jessop smiled.
‘Yes. I pressed the buzzer twice.’
‘You old spider—with your tricks.’ Wharton became businesslike again. ‘Well, what’s the form?’
‘Janet, I think, and the usual. Spain, or Morocco.’
‘Not Switzerland?’
‘Not this time.’
‘I should have thought Spain or Morocco would have been difficult for them.’
‘We mustn’t underestimate our adversaries.’
Wharton flipped the security files disgustedly with his nail.
‘About the only two countries where Betterton hasn’t been seen,’ he said with chagrin. ‘Well, we’ll lay it all on. My God, if we fall down on the job this time—’
Jessop leaned back in his chair.
‘It’s a long time since I’ve had a holiday,’ he said. ‘I’m rather sick of this office. I might take a little trip abroad …’
‘Flight 108 to Paris. Air France. This way please.’
The persons in the lounge at Heathrow Airport rose to their feet. Hilary Craven picked up her small, lizard-skin travelling case and moved in the wake of the others, out on to the tarmac. The wind blew sharply cold after the heated air of the lounge.
Hilary shivered and drew her furs a little closer round her. She followed the other passengers across to where the aircraft was waiting. This was it! She was off, escaping! Out of the greyness, the coldness, the dead numb misery. Escaping to sunshine and blue skies and a new life. She would leave all this weight behind, this dead weight of misery and frustration. She went up the gangway of her plane, bending her head as she passed inside and was shown by the steward to her seat. For the first time in months she savoured relief from a pain that had been so sharply acute as almost to be physical. ‘I shall get away,’ she said to herself, hopefully. ‘I shall get away.’
The roaring and the revolutions of the plane excited her. There seemed a kind of elemental savagery in it. Civilized misery, she thought, is the worst misery. Grey and hopeless. ‘But now,’ she thought, ‘I shall escape.’
The plane taxied gently along the runway. The air hostess said:
‘Fasten your belts, please.’
The plane made a half-turn and stood waiting its signal to depart. Hilary thought, ‘Perhaps the plane will crash … Perhaps it will never rise off the ground. Then that will be the end, that will be the solution to everything.’ They seemed to wait for ages out on the airfield. Waiting for the signal to start off to freedom, Hilary thought, absurdly: ‘I shall never get away, never. I shall be kept here—a prisoner …’
Ah, at last.
A final roar of engines, then the plane started forward. Quicker, quicker, racing along. Hilary thought: ‘It won’t rise. It can’t … this is the end.’ Ah, they were above the ground now, it seemed. Not so much that the plane rose as that the earth was falling away, dropping down, thrusting its problems and its disappointments and its frustrations beneath the soaring creature rising up so proudly into the clouds. Up they went, circling round, the aerodrome looking like a ridiculous child’s toy beneath. Funny little roads, strange little railways with toy trains on them. A ridiculous childish world where people loved and hated and broke their hearts. None of it mattered because they were all so ridiculous and so prettily small and unimportant. Now there were clouds below them, a dense, greyish-white mass. They must be over the Channel now. Hilary leaned back, closing her eyes. Escape. Escape. She had left England, left Nigel, left the sad little mound that was Brenda’s grave. All left behind. She opened her eyes, closed them again with a long sigh. She slept …
When Hilary awoke, the plane was coming down. ‘Paris,’ thought Hilary, as she sat up in her seat and reached for her handbag. But it was not Paris. The air hostess came down the car saying, with that nursery governess brightness that some travellers found so annoying:
‘We are landing you at Beauvais as the fog is very thick in Paris.’
The suggestion in her manner was: ‘Won’t that be nice, children?’ Hilary peered down through the small space of window at her side. She could see little. Beauvais also appeared to be wreathed in fog. The plane was circling round slowly. It was some time before it finally made its landing. Then the passengers were marshalled through cold, damp mist into a rough wooden building with a few chairs and a long wooden counter.
Depression settled down on Hilary but she tried to fight it off. A man near her murmured:
‘An old war aerodrome. No heating or comforts here. Still, fortunately, being the French, they’ll serve us out some drinks.’
True enough, almost immediately a man came along with some keys and presently passengers were being served with various forms of alcoholic refreshments to boost their morale. It helped to buoy the passengers up for the long and irritating wait.
Some hours passed before anything happened. Other planes appeared out of the fog and landed, also diverted from Paris. Soon the small room was crowded with cold, irritable people grumbling about the delay.
To Hilary it all had an unreal quality. It was as though she was still in a dream, mercifully protected from
