The Deadly Affair Page #6

I've never played it before

because I was certain

that she didn't love any other.

- She just wanted to go to bed with them.

- She told me that.

Did she tell you that she loved you?

Yes.

- Do you love her?

- Oh, Charles.

I'm not a child.

I know that real love doesn't just explode.

If it grows at all, it will grow slowly.

That's why I thought we could,

perhaps in Zurich, take some time and...

How long? Her last longest was 11 days.

I don't want you to be hurt.

She can hurt, you know?

Thank you. I can look after myself!

Then there's only one thing

that really troubles me.

Can you look after Ann?

Thank you.

Do you wish to order, sir?

No.

The other occupant of the stalls

was Blondie.

- It fits.

- They always arrived separately.

They carried identical music cases,

left them in the cloakroom

and picked them up after the show.

- Switching cloakroom tickets is an old trick.

- But it worked.

Everything that Blondie's done

seems to work,

except that he didn't turn up

on the night that Fennan died.

So, Blondie might have murdered Fennan

while Elsa was at the theatre.

Well, that's purely hypothetical.

Mention of a photograph here, eh?

That's him.

Don't wave it about like a bloody flag.

- I snitched it from files.

- Who is he?

Well, his name's Harek, Karl Harek.

He's Hungarian.

Came here as a grateful refugee

after the revolution.

His record's as clean as a vestal virgin's.

So is the East European Steel Mission's.

All clear.

If anything has to be touched,

will you do the touching?

We haven't the remotest right to be here.

One extension telephone on a table desk

with no drawers.

Not even a bloody filing cabinet,

let alone a safe.

However, an Olivetti portable.

Something odd here.

One, two, three, four,

five typewriters all uncovered.

Now it's conceivable that one secretary

could have left the cover off hers, but five?

So someone's been examining them.

Mendel.

We're thinking that somebody saw

the newspaper reproduction

of the anonymous letter

that denounced Fennan.

And that somebody suspects

that that letter could have been typed

by a traitor inside their own organisation.

- Eh, Mendel?

- You make me tired.

All we know is five typewriters

have been left uncovered!

- Yes, but what do you think?

- I think we ought to leave.

The caretaker.

That's Harek.

One of us has got to report that.

Then we're in trouble.

We could tip them off anonymously.

- That seems to be the fashion nowadays.

- Will you do that, Bill?

"Hello? This is a friend here.

"I've just seen a corpse

on top of an elevator,

"so I thought I'd give Scotland Yard

a ring, see."

Brilliant. Are you sure you know

the number?

Mendel, I think it's time I broke Elsa Fennan.

You could have let me know

you were coming.

- I thought it safer not to let you know.

- Safer?

Can I come in? We haven't much time.

You hurt your hand?

Harek hurt it.

- Who?

- Karl Harek.

He was carrying a cosh

instead of a music case.

What are you trying to say?

Night after I left you, Harek tried to kill me.

Night after that,

he killed the owner of the car he hired

for coming down to meet you at the theatre.

Seems he was trying to kill anybody

who could connect him

with Samuel Fennan.

Or with the wife who helped Fennan

to pass documents to the other side.

Now somebody's killed him.

Somebody who thinks

that Harek betrayed your organisation

by denouncing your husband to

the Foreign Office in an anonymous letter.

No.

You told me, Mrs Fennan,

that spying was a game.

Well, what kind of games did you

and your husband think you were playing

when you started to feed the bosses?

They get their strength

from daydreamers like you.

Do you really believe that you can control

the strength that you give them?

That you can stop the dance?

What kind of daydreams did you dream,

Mrs Fennan,

that had so little of the world in them?

Look at me.

Look at me.

What dreams did they leave me?

I dreamt of children.

I had none.

I dreamt of a beautiful body.

They marked it.

That's when Samuel found me.

He pitied me, he loved me

and he took me away.

He had dreams.

I had none but him.

One year ago in Mrren, on a skiing holiday,

Samuel met that Sonntag.

Sonntag? Sunday?

- Did you ever meet this man?

- No, never.

- Then how did you know his cover name?

- 'Cause Samuel told me.

What else did your husband tell you?

Well, he told me that Sonntag was his...

- His control?

- Yeah, controller.

That he provided the money

that came in Harek's musical case.

But Samuel used to send the money

anonymously to charities,

to the oppressed.

To the poor.

That's the kind of daydreamer he was,

Mr Dobbs.

In fact, he never quite grew up after Oxford.

And Sonntag could lead him like a child.

Did your husband ever meet him again

after that first time in Switzerland?

Well, if he did, he never told me.

- Did Sonntag ever come to England?

- I don't know.

- Could he be in England now?

- How would I know?

Could he have seen your husband

and me in the park

and thought

that your husband was betraying him?

- Samuel was not a traitor.

- He was a traitor to his own country.

Samuel never thought in terms of countries.

- Could Sonntag have told Harek to kill me?

- It's possible.

- Did your husband ever describe him?

- Oh, you're a fool, Mr Dobbs.

Why would Samuel give me

unnecessary information?

You don't even know

the rules of your own job.

And your job was to help your husband

further a cause in which you didn't believe.

He had helped me. He needed help,

I gave it to him. He was my life.

- Mrs Fennan, I understand, but please...

- Take your hands off me.

Now go and kill Sonntag.

Keep the game alive.

Don't think I'm on your side.

I'm on nobody's side.

I'm a battlefield for you, toy soldier.

You can march over me,

you can bomb me full of holes

you can burn me, you can make me barren,

but never pity me, Mr Dobbs, never.

Never tell me you understand my feelings.

Now, go away and kill.

- Any news?

- Yes, two things.

You were right about one of them.

Fennan's suicide note

and the letter that denounced him

were both typed on his own Olivetti,

probably by different people.

- Key pressures aren't the same.

- And the other?

Well, I've seen the autopsy on Harek.

He wasn't thrown down that lift shaft alive,

he was strangled first rather delicately

by what's called a single degree

of finger pressure on the thyroid cartilage.

Where do you want to go?

Well, will you chaperone me to my home?

- Letters and things like that.

- Of course.

Did Elsa Fennan break?

I don't know.

Bill!

Sorry to barge in, love, but I've been

chasing you on the phone since noon.

Finally I rang here just after you spoke

to Mrs Bird from Mendel's.

She's gone now, but she said I could wait.

Something damned odd's come up.

I'll be with you in a second.

Help yourself to a drink.

- I have. What can I get you two?

- Sherry. Mendel?

Not before sundown. Might drop off.

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