The Only Problem

‘I don’t know. Find out; it’s your job.’ ‘Is it?’ said Stewart.

‘If it isn’t, what are you doing here?’

‘I suppose I’m just a comforter,’ Stewart said. ‘I suppose you are.

EIGHT

‘Is it possible,’ said Harvey, ‘for anyone to do something perfectly innocent but altogether unusual, without giving rise to suspicion?’

Stewart said, ‘Not if his wife is a terrorist.’

‘Assume that she is not.’

‘All right, I assume. But here you were in a small hamlet in France, a rich man living in primitive conditions. Well, nobody bothered you until the police began to suspect a link between you and the FLE a certain time ago, and even then they only had you under surveillance, from a distance; they didn’t haul you in immediately or harass you so that your life was uncomfortable. You weren’t even aware of their presence till lately. And now you’ve been questioned, grilled; it’s only natural. It might have been worse. Much worse. You don’t know the police.’

‘My papers have been scrutinised, all my work, my private things —’

‘I can’t sympathise too much, Harvey. I can’t say you’ve really suffered. These police obviously are going carefully with you. They’re protecting you from the mob, the phone calls. They probably believe you; they know by now, I should think, that you have no contact with Effie. I think they’re right to watch out in case she has any contact with you.’

‘You are wrong,’ said Harvey, ‘to say that I haven’t suffered. Did you hear the press round-up on the radio this morning? — My name’s worse than Effie’s in the eyes of the press.’

The local newspaper, the only one so far to arrive in his hands, was on the coffee-table in front of them, with the front page uppermost. The headline, ‘The Guru of the Vosges’ stretched above a picture of Harvey, distraught, in his sitting room of final disorder at the press conference. Under the picture was the title-paragraph of the subsequent article:

Harvey Gotham, the American ‘prophet’, inveighing against God, who he claims has unjustly condemned the world to suffering. God is a Shit was one of the blasphemies preached at an international press conference held yesterday in his 40-roomed chateau recently acquired by this multimillionaire husband of the gangster-terrorist Effie Gotham, leading activist of FLE.

In the article, the writer of it reflected on the influence of Harvey on a girl like Effie ‘from the poorer classes of London’, and on her sister and an infant, Clara, still under his control at the chateau.

Harvey said to Stewart, ‘I never once said “Dieu est merde.”‘

‘Maybe you implied it.’

‘Perhaps I did. But I did not speak as a prophet; I discussed some aspects of Job in an academic sense.’

‘For a man of your intelligence, you are remarkably stupid,’ said Stewart. ‘It’s Effie they wanted news of. Failing that, they made the best of what they got. You should have let Effie divorce you with a huge settlement a long time ago. She can get a divorce any time; it’s the money she wanted.’

‘To finance FLE?’

‘You asked me to assume she isn’t involved.’

‘I don’t want to divorce Effie. I don’t want a divorce.’

‘Are you still in love with Effie?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you’re an unhappy man. Why did you leave her?’

‘I couldn’t stand her sociological clap-trap. If she wanted to do some good in the world she had plenty of opportunity. There was nothing to stop her taking up charities and causes; she could have had money for them, and she always had plenty of time. But she has to rob supermarkets and banks and sleep with people like that.’ He pointed to a row of photographs in the paper. Three young men and Effie. The photograph of Effie was that which the police had found among his papers. Harvey told Stewart this, and said, ‘They don’t seem to have any other picture of Effie. I wonder how they got photos of her friends.’

‘In the same way that they got Effie’s, I expect. Through rummaging in the homes of their families, their girl- friends.’

‘What can she see in them?’ Harvey said. Stewart turned the paper round to see it better. One of the men was dressed in a very padded-shouldered coat, a spotted bow tie and hair falling down past the point where the picture ended, which was just above his elbow; the second man was a blond, blank-faced boy with thick lips; the third seemed to be positively posing as the criminal he was alleged to be, being sneery, narrow-eyed and double-chinned, and bearing a two-day stubble beard. There was Effie amongst them, looking like Effie. The men were identified by French names, Effie by the name of Effie Gotham, wife of the millionaire guru.

‘What does she see in them?’ demanded Harvey. ‘It’s not so much that I’m jealous as that I’m intellectually insulted by the whole thing. I always have been by Effie’s attitude to life. I thought she’d grow out of it.’

‘I am to assume that Effie is not involved,’ said Stewart.

‘Well, there’s her picture along with the others. It’s difficult for me to keep up the fiction,’ Harvey said.

‘Do you mean that the photograph convinces you?’ Stewart said. ‘You know where the police got the photograph. Out of a drawer in your desk.’

‘It wasn’t exactly out of a drawer in a desk,’ Harvey said. ‘It was out of a box. I keep things in boxes down there in my working cottage. I’ll take you to see it. I haven’t been back to the cottage since I was arrested in Epinal three days ago.’

‘Were you really arrested?’