‘She had a two weeks’ sentence. That is a different thing from imprisonment. It was not her first offence, but she was no more than three days in prison. She agreed to treatment. She was supposed to register with the police every day, but of course —’Look,’ said Harvey. ‘My wife is suffering from an illness, kleptomania. She needs treatment. You are hounding her down as a terrorist, which she isn’t. Effie couldn’t kill anyone.’
‘Why did you leave her on the motorway in Italy?’ said Pomfret. ‘Was it because she stole a bar of chocolate? If so, why didn’t you stand by her and see that she had treatment?’
‘She has probably told Ernie Howe that story, and he has told you.’
‘Correct,’ said Chatelain.
‘Well, if I’d given weight to a bar of chocolate, I would have stood by her. I didn’t leave her over a bar of chocolate. To be precise, it was two bars.’
‘Why did you leave her?’
‘Private reasons. Incompatibility, mounting up. A bar of chocolate isn’t a dead policeman.’
‘We know,’ said Chatelain. ‘We know that only too well. We are not such fools as to confuse a shop-lifter with a dangerous assassin.
‘But why,’ said Pomfret, ‘did you leave her? We think we know the answer. She isn’t a kleptomaniac at all. Not at all. She stole, made the easy gesture, on ideological grounds. They call it proletarian reappropriation. You must already have perceived the incipient terrorist in your wife; and on this silly occasion, suddenly, you couldn’t take it. Things often happen that way.’
‘Let me tell you something,’ said Harvey. ‘If I’d thought she was a terrorist in the making, I would not have left her. I would have tried to reason her out of it. I know Effie well. She isn’t a terrorist. She’s a simple shop-lifter. Many rich girls are.’
‘Is she rich?’
‘She was when she was with me.’
‘But afterwards?’
‘Look, if she needed money, she could have sold her jewellery. But she hasn’t. It’s still in the bank. My lawyer told me.’
‘Didn’t you say — I think you said —’ said Pomfret, ‘that you only discussed the recent English translations of the Bible with your lawyer?’
‘I said that was what we were discussing on Saturday morning, instead of listening to the news on the radio. I haven’t said that I discussed nothing else with him. You see, I, too, am anxious to trace the whereabouts of my wife. She isn’t your killer in Paris. She’s somewhere else.’
‘‘Now, let us consider,’ said Chatelain, ‘her relations with Ernest Howe. He has stated that he knows her character. She is the very person, according to him, who would take up with a terrorist group. The Irish terrorists had her sympathy. She was writing a treatise on child-labour in England in the nineteenth century. She often —’
‘Oh, I know all that,’ Harvey said. ‘The only difficulty is that none of her sympathies makes her a terrorist. She shares these sympathies with thousands of people, especially young people. The young are very generous. Effie is generous in spirit, I can say that.’
‘But she has been trying to get money out of you, a divorce settlement.’
‘That’s understandable. I’m rich. But quite honestly, I hoped she’d come back. That’s why I refused the money. She could have got it through the courts, but I thought she’d get tired of fighting for it.’
‘What do you mean, “come back”?’ said Pomfret. ‘It was you who left her.’
‘In cases of desertion in marriage, it is always difficult to say who is the deserter. There is a kind of constructional desertion, you know. Technically, yes, I left her. She also had left me. These things have to be understood.’
‘I understand,’ said Chatelain. ‘Yes, I understand your point.’
Pomfret said, ‘But where is she getting the money from?’
‘I suppose that the girl who calls herself Marion has funds from the terrorist supporters,’ said Harvey. ‘They are never short of funds. It has nothing whatsoever to do with my wife, Effie.’
‘Well, let us get back to your visitors, M. Gotham.’ said Chatelain. ‘Has there been anyone else besides those we have mentioned?’
‘The police, and Anne-Marie. ‘‘No-one else?’
‘Clara,’ said Harvey. ‘Don’t you want to hear about Clara?’
‘Clara?’
‘Clara is the niece of my wife’s sister.’
Chatelain was getting tired. He took a long moment to work out Harvey’s representation, and was still puzzling while Pomfret was smiling. ‘The niece?’ said Chatelain. ‘Whose daughter is she?’
‘My wife’s.’
‘You mean the infant?’
‘That’s right. Don’t you have a dossier on Clara?’ Harvey asked the security men.
‘M. Gotham, this is serious. A man has been fatally shot. More deaths may follow. We are looking for a political fanatic, not a bar of chocolate. Can you not give us an idea, a single clue, as to where your wife can be hiding? It might help us to eliminate her from the enquiry.
