Destination Unknown

Somehow that amused her. Toothpaste. It seemed so ridiculous, so normal, so everyday. Then a sharp pang pierced her, for the toothpaste he had asked for was the brand that Nigel had always preferred. She crossed the street and went into a shop opposite. She had been to four chemists’ shops by the time she returned to the hotel. It had amused her a little that in the third shop the owlish young man had again appeared, once more asking obstinately for his particular brand of toothpaste which evidently was not one commonly stocked by French chemists in Casablanca.

Hilary felt almost lighthearted as she changed her frock and made up her face before going down for dinner. She purposely went down as late as possible since she was anxious not to encounter any of her fellow-travellers or the personnel of the aeroplane. That was hardly likely in any case, since the plane had gone on to Dakar, and she thought that she had been the only person put off at Casablanca.

The restaurant was almost empty by the time she came into it, though she noticed that the young Englishman with the owl-like face was just finishing his meal at the table by the wall. He was reading a French newspaper and seemed quite absorbed in it.

Hilary ordered herself a good meal with a half-bottle of wine. She was feeling a heady kind of excitement. She thought to herself, ‘What is this after all, but the last adventure?’ Then she ordered a bottle of Vichy water to be sent up to her room and went straight up after leaving the dining-room.

The waiter brought the Vichy, uncapped it, placed it on the table, and wishing her good night, left the room. Hilary drew a sigh of relief. As he closed the door after him, she went to it and turned the key in the lock. She took from the drawer of the dressing-table the four little packets she had obtained from the chemists’, and unwrapped them. She laid the tablets out on the table and poured herself out a glass of Vichy water. Since the drug was in tablet form, she had only to swallow the tablets, and wash them down with the Vichy water.

She undressed, wrapped her dressing-gown round her and came back to sit by the table. Her heart beat faster. She felt something like fear now, but the fear was half fascination and not the kind of flinching that would have tempted her to abandon her plan. She was quite calm and clear about that. This was escape at last—real escape. She looked at the writing-table, debating whether she would leave a note. She decided against it. She had no relations, no close or dear friends, there was nobody to whom she wished to say goodbye. As for Nigel, she had no wish to burden him with useless remorse even if a note from her would have achieved that object. Nigel would read presumably in the paper that a Mrs Hilary Craven had died of an overdose of sleeping-tablets in Casablanca. It would probably be quite a small paragraph. He would accept it at its face value. ‘Poor old Hilary,’ he would say, ‘bad luck’—and it might be that, secretly, he would be rather relieved. Because she guessed that she was, slightly, on Nigel’s conscience, and he was a man who wished to feel comfortable with himself.

Already Nigel seemed very far away and curiously unimportant. There was nothing more to be done. She would swallow the pills and lie down on her bed and sleep. From that sleep she would not wake. She had not, or thought she had not, any religious feeling. Brenda’s death had shut down on all that. So there was nothing more to consider. She was once again a traveller as she had been at Heathrow Airport, a traveller waiting to depart for an unknown destination, unencumbered by baggage, unaffected by farewells. For the first time in her life she was free, entirely free, to act as she wished to act. Already the past was cut away from her. The long aching misery that had dragged her down in her waking hours was gone. Yes. Light, free, unencumbered! Ready to start on her journey.

She stretched out her hand towards the first tablet. As she did so there came a soft, discreet tap on the door. Hilary frowned. She sat there, her hand arrested in mid-air. Who was it—a chambermaid? No, the bed had already been turned down. Somebody, perhaps, about papers or passport? She shrugged her shoulders. She would not answer the door. Why should she bother? Presently whoever it was would go away and come back at some further opportunity.

The knock came again, a little louder this time. But Hilary did not move. There could be no real urgency, and whoever it was would soon go away.

Her eyes were on the door, and suddenly they widened with astonishment. The key was slowly turning backwards round the lock. It jerked forward and fell on the floor with a metallic clang. Then the handle turned, the door opened and a man came in. She recognized him as the solemn, owlish young man who had been buying toothpaste. Hilary stared at him. She was too startled for the moment to say or do anything. The young man turned round, shut the door, picked the key up from the floor, put it into the lock and turned it. Then he came across towards her and sat down in a chair the other side of the table. He said, and it seemed to her a most incongruous remark:

‘My name’s Jessop.’

The colour rose sharply in Hilary’s face. She leaned forward. She said with cold anger:

‘What do you think you’re doing here, may I ask?’

He looked at her solemnly—and blinked.

‘Funny,’ he said. ‘I came to ask you that.’ He gave a quick sideways nod towards the preparations on the table. Hilary said sharply:

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Oh yes, you do.’

Hilary paused, struggling for words. There were so many things she wanted to say. To express indignation. To order him out of the room. But strangely enough, it was curiosity that won the day. The question rose to her lips so naturally that she was almost unaware of asking it.

‘That key,’ she said, ‘it turned, of itself, in the lock?’

‘Oh, that!’ The young man gave a sudden boyish grin that transformed his face. He put his hand into his pocket and, taking out a metal instrument, he handed it to her to examine.

‘There you are,’ he said, ‘very handy little tool. Insert it into the lock the other side, it grips the key and turns it.’ He took it back from her and put it in his pocket. ‘Burglars use them,’ he said.

‘So you’re a burglar?’

‘No, no, Mrs Craven, do me justice. I did knock, you know. Burglars don’t knock. Then, when it seemed you weren’t going to let me in, I used this.’

‘But why?’

Again her visitor’s eyes strayed to the preparations on the table.

‘I shouldn’t do it if I were you,’ he said. ‘It isn’t a bit what you think, you know. You think you just go to sleep and you don’t wake up. But it’s not quite like that. All sorts of unpleasant effects. Convulsions sometimes, gangrene of the skin. If you’re resistant to the drug, it takes a long time to work, and someone gets to you in time and then all sorts of unpleasant things happen. Stomach pump. Castor oil, hot coffee, slapping and pushing. All very undignified, I assure you.’

Hilary leaned back in her chair, her eyelids narrowed. She clenched her hands slightly. She forced herself to smile.

‘What a ridiculous person you are,’ she said. ‘Do you imagine that I was committing suicide, or something like that?’

‘Not only imagine it,’ said the young man called Jessop, ‘I’m quite sure of it. I was in that chemist’s, you know, when you came in. Buying toothpaste, as a matter of fact. Well, they hadn’t got the sort I like, so I went to another shop. And there you were, asking for sleeping-pills again. Well, I thought that was a bit odd, you know, so I followed you. All those sleeping-pills at different places. It could only add up to one thing.’

His tone was friendly, off-hand, but quite assured. Looking at him Hilary Craven abandoned pretence.

‘Then don’t you think it is unwarrantable impertinence on your part to try and stop me?’

He considered the point for a moment or two. Then he shook his head.

‘No. It’s one of those things that you can’t not do—if you understand.’

Hilary spoke with energy. ‘You can stop me for the moment. I mean you can take the pills away—throw them out of the window or something like that—but you can’t stop me from buying more another day or throwing myself down from the top floor of the building, or jumping in front of a train.’

The young man considered this.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I agree I can’t stop you doing any of those things. But it’s a question, you know, whether you will do them. Tomorrow, that is.’

‘You think I shall feel differently tomorrow?’ asked Hilary, faint bitterness in her tone.

‘People do,’ said Jessop, almost apologetically.

‘Yes, perhaps,’ she considered. ‘If you’re doing things in a mood of hot despair. But when it’s cold despair, it’s different. I’ve nothing to live for, you see.’

Jessop put his rather owlish head on one side, and blinked.

‘Interesting,’ he remarked.

‘Not really. Not interesting at all. I’m not a very interesting woman. My husband, whom I loved, left me, my only child died very painfully of meningitis. I’ve no near friends or relations. I’ve no vocation, no art or craft or work that I love doing.’

‘Tough,’ said Jessop appreciatively. He added, rather hesitantly: ‘You don’t think of it as—wrong?’

Hilary said heatedly: ‘Why should it be wrong? It’s my life.’

‘Oh yes, yes,’ Jessop repeated hastily. ‘I’m not taking a high moral line myself, but there are people, you know, who think it’s wrong.’

Hilary said:

‘I’m not one of them.’

Mr Jessop said, rather inadequately:

‘Quite.’

He sat there looking at her, blinking his eyes thoughtfully.

Hilary said:

‘So perhaps now, Mr—er—’

‘Jessop,’ said the young man.

‘So perhaps now, Mr Jessop, you will leave me alone.’

But Jessop shook his head.

‘Not just yet,’ he said. ‘I wanted to know, you see, just what was behind it all. I’ve got it clear now, have I? You’re not interested in life, you don’t want to live any longer, you more or less welcome the idea of death?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good,’ said Jessop, cheerfully. ‘So now we know where we are. Let’s go on to the next step. Has it got to be sleeping pills?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I’ve already told you that they’re not as romantic as they sound. Throwing yourself off a building isn’t too nice, either. You don’t always die at once. And the same applies to falling under a train. What I’m getting at is that there are other ways.’

‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘I’m suggesting another method. Rather a sporting method, really. There’s some excitement in it, too. I’ll be fair with you. There’s just a hundred to one chance that you mightn’t die. But I don’t believe under the circumstances, that you’d really object by that time.’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Of course you haven’t,’ said Jessop. ‘I’ve not begun to tell you about it yet. I’m afraid I’ll have to make rather a thing about it—tell you a story, I mean. Shall I go ahead?’

‘I suppose so.’

Jessop paid no attention to the grudgingness of the assent. He started off in his most owl-like manner.

‘You’re the sort of woman who reads the papers and keeps up with things generally, I expect,’ he said. ‘You’ll have read about the disappearance of various scientists from time to time. There was that Italian chap about a year ago, and about two months ago a young scientist called Thomas Betterton disappeared.’

Hilary nodded. ‘Yes, I read about that in the papers.’

‘Well, there’s been a good deal more than has appeared in the papers. More people, I mean, have disappeared. They haven’t always been scientists. Some of them have been young men who were engaged in important medical research. Some of them have been research chemists, some of them have been physicists, there was one barrister. Oh, quite a lot here and there and everywhere. Well, ours is a so-called free country. You can leave it if you like. But in these peculiar circumstances we’ve got to know why these people left it and where they went, and, also important, how they went. Did they go of their own free will? Were they kidnapped? Were they blackmailed into going? What route did they take—what kind of organization is it that sets this in motion and what is its ultimate aim? Lots of questions. We want the answer to them. You might be able to help get us that answer.’

Hilary stared at him.

‘Me? How? Why?’

‘I’m coming down to the particular case of Thomas Betterton. He disappeared from Paris just over two months ago. He left a wife in England. She was distracted—or said she was distracted. She swore that she had no idea why he’d gone or where or how. That may be true, or it may not. Some people—and I’m one of them—think it wasn’t true.’

Hilary leaned forward in her chair. In spite of herself she was becoming interested. Jessop went on.

‘We prepared to keep a nice, unobtrusive eye on Mrs Betterton. About a fortnight ago she came to me and told me she had been ordered by her doctor to go abroad, take a thorough rest and get some distraction. She was doing no good in England, and people were continually bothering her—newspaper reporters, relations, kind friends.’

Hilary said dryly: ‘I can imagine it.’

‘Yes, tough. Quite natural she would want to get away for a bit.’

‘Quite natural, I should think.’

‘But we’ve got nasty, suspicious minds in our department, you know. We arranged to keep tabs on Mrs Betterton. Yesterday she left England as arranged, for Casablanca.’

‘Casablanca?’

‘Yes—en route to other places in Morocco, of course. All quite open and above board, plans made, bookings ahead. But it may be that this trip to Morocco is where Mrs Betterton steps off into the unknown.’

Hilary shrugged her shoulders.

‘I don’t see where I come into all this.’

Jessop smiled.

‘You come into it because you’ve got a very magnificent head of red hair, Mrs Craven.’

‘Hair?’

‘Yes. It’s the most noticeable thing about Mrs Betterton—her hair. You’ve heard, perhaps, that the plane before yours today crashed on landing.’

‘I know. I should have been on that plane. I actually had reservations for it.’

‘Interesting,’ said Jessop. ‘Well, Mrs Betterton was on that plane. She wasn’t killed. She was taken out of the wreckage still alive, and she is in hospital now. But according to the doctor, she won’t be alive tomorrow morning.’

A faint glimmer of light came to Hilary. She looked at him inquiringly.

‘Yes,’ said Jessop, ‘perhaps now you see the form of suicide I’m offering you. I’m suggesting that you should become Mrs Betterton.’

‘But surely,’ said Hilary, ‘that would be quite impossible. I mean, they’d know at once she wasn’t me.’

Jessop put his head on one side.

‘That, of course, depends entirely on who you mean by “they”. It’s a very vague term. Who is or are “they”? Is there such a thing, are there such persons as “they”? We don’t know. But I can tell you this. If the most popular explanation of “they” is accepted, then these people work in very close, self-contained cells. They do that for their own security. If Mrs Betterton’s journey had a purpose and is planned, then the people who were in charge of it here will know nothing about the English side of it. At the appointed moment they will contact a certain woman at a certain place, and carry on from there. Mrs Betterton’s passport description is 5ft. 7, red hair, blue-green eyes, mouth medium, no distinguishing marks. Good enough.’

‘But the authorities here. Surely they—’

Jessop smiled. ‘That part of it will be quite all right. The French have lost a few valuable young scientists and chemists of their own. They’ll co-operate. The facts will be as follows. Mrs Betterton, suffering from concussion, is taken to hospital. Mrs Craven, another passenger in the crashed plane, will also be admitted to hospital. Within a day or two Mrs Craven will die in hospital, and Mrs Betterton will be discharged, suffering slightly from concussion, but able to proceed on her tour. The crash was genuine, the concussion is genuine, and concussion makes a very good cover for you. It excuses a lot of things like lapses of memory, and various unpredictable behaviour.’

Hilary said:

‘It would be madness!’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Jessop, ‘it’s madness, all right. It’s a very tough assignment and if our suspicions are realized, you’ll probably cop it. You see, I’m being quite frank, but according to you, you’re prepared and anxious to cop it. As an alternative to throwing yourself in front of a train or something like that, I should think you’d find it far more amusing.’

Suddenly and unexpectedly Hilary laughed.

‘I do believe,’ she said, ‘that you’re quite right.’

‘You’ll do it?’

‘Yes. Why not?’

‘In that case,’ said Jessop, rising in his seat with sudden energy, ‘there’s absolutely no time to be lost.’

CHAPTER 4

It was not really cold in the hospital but it felt cold. There was a smell of antiseptics in the air. Occasionally in the corridor outside could be heard the rattle of glasses and instruments as a trolley was pushed by. Hilary Craven sat in a hard iron chair by a bedside.

In the bed, lying flat under a shaded light with her head bandaged, Olive Betterton lay unconscious. There was a nurse standing on one side of the bed and the doctor on the other. Jessop sat in a chair in the far corner of the room. The doctor turned to him and spoke in French.

‘It will not be very long now,’ he said. ‘The pulse is very much weaker.’

‘And she will not recover consciousness?’

The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.

‘That I cannot say. It may be, yes, at the very end.’

‘There is nothing you can do—no stimulant?’

The doctor shook his head. He went out. The nurse followed him. She was replaced by a nun who moved to the head of the bed, and stood there, her fingers fingering her rosary. Hilary looked at Jessop and in obedience to a glance from him came to join him.

‘You heard what the doctor said?’ he asked in a low voice.

‘Yes. What is it you want to say to her?’

‘If she regains consciousness I want any information you can possibly get, any password, any sign, any message, anything. Do you understand? She is more likely to speak to you than to me.’

Hilary said with sudden emotion:

‘You want me to betray someone who is dying?’

Jessop put his head on one side in the bird-like manner which he sometimes adopted.

‘So it seems like that to you, does it?’ he said, considering.

‘Yes, it does.’

He looked at her thoughtfully.

‘Very well then, you shall say and do what you please. For myself I can have no scruples! You understand that?’

‘Of course. It’s your duty. You’ll do whatever questioning you please, but don’t ask me to do it.’

‘You’re a free agent.’

‘There is one question we shall have to decide. Are we to tell her that she is dying?’

‘I don’t know. I shall have to think it out.’

She nodded and went back to her place by the bed. She was filled now with a deep compassion for the woman who lay there dying. The woman who was on her way to join the man she loved. Or were they all wrong? Had she come to Morocco simply to seek solace, to pass the time until perhaps some definite news could come to her as to whether her husband were alive or dead? Hilary wondered.

Time went on. It was nearly two hours later when the click of the nun’s beads stopped. She spoke in a soft impersonal voice.

‘There is a change,’ she said. ‘I think, Madame, it is the end that comes. I will fetch the doctor.’

She left the room. Jessop moved to the opposite side of the bed, standing back against the wall so that he was out of the woman’s range of vision. The eyelids flickered and opened. Pale incurious blue-green eyes looked into Hilary’s. They closed, then opened again. A faint air of perplexity seemed to come into them.

‘Where …?’

The word fluttered between the almost breathless lips, just as the doctor entered the room. He took her hand in his, his finger on the pulse, standing by the bed looking down on her.

‘You are in hospital, Madame,’ he said. ‘There was an accident to the plane.’

‘To the plane?’

The words were repeated dreamily in that faint breathless voice.

‘Is there anyone you want to see in Casablanca, Madame? Any message we can take?’

Her eyes were raised painfully to the doctor’s face. She said: ‘No.’

She looked back again at Hilary.

‘Who—who—’

Hilary bent forward and spoke clearly and distinctly.

‘I came out from England on a plane, too—if there is anything I can do to help you, please tell me.’

‘No—nothing—nothing—unless—’

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing.’

The eyes flickered again and half closed—Hilary raised her head and looked across to meet Jessop’s imperious commanding glance. Firmly, she shook her head.

Jessop moved forward. He stood close beside the doctor. The dying woman’s eyes opened again. Sudden recognition came into them. She said:

‘I know you.’

‘Yes, Mrs Betterton, you know me. Will you tell me anything you can about your husband?’

‘No.’

Her eyelids fell again. Jessop turned quietly and left the room. The doctor looked across at Hilary. He said very softly:

‘C’est la fin!’

The dying woman’s eyes opened again. They travelled painfully round the room, then they remained fixed on Hilary. Olive Betterton made a very faint motion with her hand, and Hilary instinctively took the white cold hand between her own. The doctor, with a shrug of his shoulders and a little bow, left the room. The two women were alone together. Olive Betterton was trying to speak:

‘Tell me—tell me—’

Hilary knew what she was asking, and suddenly her own course of action opened clearly before her. She leaned down over the recumbent form.

‘Yes,’ she said, her words clear and emphatic. ‘You are dying. That’s what you want to know, isn’t it? Now listen to me. I am going to try and reach your husband. Is there any message you want me to give him if I succeed?’

‘Tell him—tell him—to be careful. Boris—Boris—dangerous …’

The breath fluttered off again with a sigh. Hilary bent closer.

‘Is there anything you can tell me to help me—help me in my journey, I mean? Help me to get in contact with your husband?’

‘Snow.’

The word came so faintly that Hilary was puzzled. Snow? Snow? She repeated it uncomprehendingly. A faint, ghost-like little giggle came from Olive Betterton. Faint words came tumbling out.

Snow, snow, beautiful snow!

You slip on a lump, and over you go!

She repeated the last word. ‘Go … Go? Go and tell him about Boris. I didn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it. But perhaps it’s true … If so, if so …’ a kind of agonized question came into her eyes which stared up into Hilary’s ‘… take care …’

A queer rattle came to her throat. Her lips jerked.

Olive Betterton died.

The next five days were strenuous mentally, though inactive physically. Immured in a private room in the hospital, Hilary was set to work. Every evening she had to pass an examination on what she had studied that day. All the details of Olive Betterton’s life, as far as they could be ascertained, were set down on paper and she had to memorize and learn them by heart. The house she had lived in, the daily woman she had employed, her relations, the names of her pet dog and her canary, every detail of the six months of her married life with Thomas Betterton. Her wedding, the names of her bridesmaids, their dresses. The patterns of curtains, carpets and chintzes. Olive Betterton’s tastes, predilections, and day by day activities. Her preferences in food and drink. Hilary was forced to marvel at the amount of seemingly meaningless information that had been massed together. Once she said to Jessop: