The High Commissioner

Corliss disappeared. Reappeared as John Quentin May 12, 1942, date of voluntary enlistment in Royal Australian Navy at Perth, Western Australia.

Married Sheila Redmond, daughter of Leslie Redmond and Elizabeth Cousins Redmond, both deceased, Perth, July 10, 1942. No children of marriage . . .

“Would you please fasten your seat belts? We shall be landing at London Airport—”

Malone closed the file and put it back in his brief-case. It was a comprehensive file, sixty pages thick, a monument to the diligence of the researcher. On the trip over Malone had read it three times, reading it at night when the passenger beside him, a talkative grandmother, had been asleep. She had got off at Zürich (“Then I’m going down to Rome. To see the Pope. I’m a Presbyterian myself, but we can’t all be bigots, can we?”), and the seat beside Malone had since been empty. In this last half-hour, free from interruptions and the grandmother’s inquisitive eye, he had been trying to memorise the summary that was attached to the file. The more he read, the more he could taste the relish with which the researcher had worked: he really had enjoyed the change from dry political statistics and trying to guess the voters’ intentions. John Quentin (or Corliss) had been pinned to these pages like a dead butterfly.

But the researcher had, in the final analysis, failed. He had pinned a specimen to a board, described its history, illustrated some of its characteristics; but John Quentin was still no more than a name (or two names) and a collection of facts; the researcher had not discovered what made him tick. And Malone had begun to feel the first stirring of an unease that had not troubled him since he had been sent out, years ago, to make his first arrest. Over the years he had come to appreciate that the less you knew about a man, the less you were involved emotionally when it came time to bring him in. Now, however, a personality, like a faint watermark, was hidden behind the typed facts; and, despite himself, Malone was intrigued by it. And for a policeman that way could lead to headaches. Subjectivity, he had heard Leeds say, was as corrupting as money.

Twenty minutes later the immigration officer was looking at his passport. “Police officer? On duty, sir?”

Malone shook his head. “Holiday.”

“Enjoy yourself.”

“Thanks,” said Malone, and wondered when he had last enjoyed an arrest. He could for a while hate a murderer who had committed a particularly horrible crime, the callous bashing of an old woman or the rape and killing of a young child; but later there would come the moments of doubt, the wonder at what had caused the flaw in the murderer. He didn’t believe all of the psychiatrists’ theories that the flaw in any man could be found in his childhood; he was old-fashioned enough to believe that some men were born bad. But why? He often asked himself, and left himself open to further questions that bothered him more than his colleagues suspected. He had often thought that he would like to have worked on the case of Cain. After that all other murder cases might have been simple.

The flight had been delayed for hours by storms in Zürich, and now it was late afternoon as he rode in in the airport bus to London. He looked out at England, catching glimpses of it from the motorway. He had never dreamed of travelling the wide world; well aware of his insularity and able to smile at himself, he had always been content with Australia and what it offered him. He was no explorer. Columbus, Magellan, Cook were men who probably would never have been happy while there was a horizon to draw them. Up till now, at thirty-one, horizons had meant little to him.

But England now was not something beyond the horizon; it was here around him. He could feel his excitement and interest growing; it was a pity that he was going to have no more than a day or two here. Perversely he began to hope that Quentin might fight the warrant, might ask for extradition procedure. It would play hell with Australia’s good name, but it would at least give Malone time to look at London. Then he cursed himself for his lack of patriotism. He was as hypocritical as Flannery.

He checked in at a hotel in Cromwell Road in Kensington. The affable Irish porter showed him to his room, talking a torrent all the way. “Ah, we get a lot of Aussies here at the hotel, sir. It must be a grand country, the numbers of you that are always coming over here.” Malone looked at the porter, but the latter wasn’t being sarcastic, only Irish. “Would you be on business, sir?”

“No, holiday.” Malone took out his note-book and looked at an address. “Is Belgrave Square far from here?”

The porter put down the bags. “Not far, sir. Was it an embassy you were wanting?” He had an Irishman’s frank curiosity: no one in Multinahone had had any secrets.

“No. Just friends.”

The porter’s eyebrows went up. “It’s a posh area, that it is, sir.”

“I have posh friends.”

The Irishman recognised the rebuff: some Aussies were just like the bloody English, keeping everything to themselves. He gave Malone directions on how to get to Belgrave Square and went out of the room, wondering why a man who stayed in a thirty-bob bed-and-breakfast room and who gave only a shilling tip should have posh friends in Belgravia.

Malone, a relaxed man who could sleep anywhere, even in an economy class airplane seat, was not tired by the long flight from Australia. He showered, changed into the light grey suit he had brought as a concession to the English summer, looked at his watch and decided to go and see Quentin at once. He had already made up his mind that he would confront Quentin with the arrest warrant at his home and not at his office at Australia House. He had never arrested a public official before and he did not want to be too public about it. Seven o’clock. The High Commissioner would probably be home now, doing whatever ambassadors did in their off-duty moments, having a bath, having a drink, wondering why they hadn’t taken up something easy like mountaineering or gun-running. It must be a bastard of a life, Malone thought: even the small diplomacies of a policeman’s life were difficult enough. But soon it would be over for Quentin.

Riding in the taxi towards Belgravia Malone tried to rehearse what he would say to Quentin; and after a while gave up. How did you face a man, secure in a new life and a new identity, almost impregnable behind the importance of his office, with a crime that was distant in time and place, ten thousand miles and twenty-three years from here and now? “Your Excellency, in regard to an ancient murder . . .” Malone gazed out of the window of the taxi, trying to make his mind a blank, trusting that the right words would come by instinct when the moment arrived. Habit, sometimes, was a comfort.

The taxi pulled in before the big four-storied house. Malone got out and conditioned by another habit paid the driver the exact amount on the meter.

“You Aussies,” said the driver, an economist from Bethnal Green. “I bet you don’t have any balance of payments deficit.”

Malone, who had never tipped a taxi-driver in his life, looked at the man blankly. “Belt up,” said the latter, and drove off, gnashing his gears instead of his teeth.

Malone shrugged, beginning to appreciate why someone had once written that the English were incomprehensible, and turned towards the house. He was surprised at its size; he was a long way from the five-roomed house in Erskineville where he had grown up. Then he looked at the other houses in the square and saw that some of them were even bigger; this square was a manifestation of living that he had only read about. This was diplomatic territory; above almost every entrance there jutted a white flagpole, like a single blunt-tipped mammoth’s tusk; the huge front doors had the magnificent discouragement of a butler’s façade. The heavily elegant cliff-faces of the houses hid secrets that exercised the British Government; but none of them held such a secret as this house behind him. He turned, hesitated, then pressed the bell firmly.

II

The door was opened by a butler, something Malone had never experienced in his life before. He had all the appearance of the butlers Malone had seen in films: tall, portly, his aristocratic nose pushed back by a smell not apparent to men with less sensitive olfactory organs. But when he spoke his rich purple voice had a foreign tinge to it, and at once Malone thought he had come to the wrong address.

“Is this the home of the Australian High Commissioner?”

“It is, sir. May we ask whom you wish to see?” Monarchs and butlers, Malone thought: who else has the right to speak in the royal plural?

“The High Commissioner. My name is Malone and I have a special message for him from the Premier of New South Wales.”

The butler looked suspiciously at him, then he stood aside, opening the door wider. Malone stepped into an entrance hall and waited while the butler, like a bishop on his way to the altar, did a slow march towards the rear of the house. Though the hall was only sparsely furnished, Malone was at once aware that he was on the close outskirts of luxury. Through a half-open door he caught a glimpse of a room that reminded him of illustrations he had seen in Vogue, a periodical that had once been delivered by mistake to the Murder Squad and reduced the officers there to a state of depressed inferiority. He turned his head and saw himself in a huge gilt-framed mirror: he looked at the stranger there who seemed so out of place. He shifted his feet nervously in the thick carpet of the hall, feeling as awkward as a three-legged colt. Suddenly he wanted this business of Quentin over and done with quickly. He would come back in his old age and look at London.

The butler came back down the hall with a girl. He stood aside, watchful as an old sea-lion; images kept flashing through Malone’s mind, but he could not see the butler as just a man like himself. The girl came forward.

“I am the High Commissioner’s secretary.” She, too, had a slight accent. Stone the bloody crows, Malone thought, whatever happened to the Australian accent? “What was it you wanted?”

“I have a personal message from the Premier of New South Wales.” He had no such thing; but he had not expected it to be so difficult to get in to see Quentin.

“A letter?”

“No, it’s verbal.”

“I’m sorry, but the High Commissioner is busy. Could you not come to Australia House tomorrow?”

Malone shook his head, trying not to appear too stubborn. He liked the look of the girl: tall, good-looking, blonde, and with a poise about her that he had looked for in the girls he had known and had so rarely found. But he sensed her impatience with him and he was aware of the cold disapproving eye of the butler. “The message is urgent and important.”

The girl looked at the butler, and Malone read the message that passed between them. They think I’m some crank! He was appalled at the idea, remembering his own impatience as a policeman with cranks. His hand moved towards his pocket to take out his identification badge. Then his hand dropped back to his side and he smiled to himself at the situation and his own reaction to it.

“Perhaps if you told the High Commissioner that the message concerns Tumbarumba, he might see me.”

“Tumbarumba?” The girl was now convinced she was dealing with a crank.

“It’s a town, not a disease.” This comes of employing foreigners, Malone thought; and began to feel more xenophobic by the minute. He had always been tolerant of the foreign migrants who had come to Australia, even those he had had to arrest; but now these two foreigners, the girl and the butler, were beginning to annoy him with their attitude towards him. Deep inside him he knew that regardless of their accents, they were only doing their job of trying to protect the High Commissioner from uninvited and unwanted guests. But they were also trying to prevent him from doing his job, one that he wanted finished as soon as possible. He was out of his depth here, in alien territory no matter that his country’s ambassador lived here, and he wanted to be on the plane at once for Sydney, home and an atmosphere where he didn’t have to be so secretive. He said sharply, “Just tell the High Commissioner that I’ve come from Tumbarumba.”

The girl raised an eyebrow, as if recognising for the first time that Malone was accustomed to some authority. Without a word, but with a nod of warning to the butler, she turned and went back along the hall. Malone and the butler stood watching each other in the huge mirror: they were posed in the gilt frame like a tableau titled Suspicion. Then the girl came back.

“This way, Mr.—”

“Malone.”

“Mr. Malone. The High Commissioner will see you.” Her poise had been cracked a little; there was no mistaking the surprise she felt that the ambassador had agreed to see this crank.

She led Malone down the hall, pushed open a door and stood aside. “Mr. Malone, sir, from Tumbarumba.”

“We are not to be disturbed, Lisa,” said the man standing in front of the marble-fronted fireplace. “By anyone.”

The girl closed the door. Malone, feeling more awkward than he had ever felt in his life before, stood watching the man across the room from him. He had checked on newspaper photographs of Quentin; but they had not done the man justice. He was taller than Malone had expected, and slimmer. His thick wavy hair, brushed close to his head, and his military moustache were grey, but somehow they did not add age to his lean high-cheeked face; Malone would have guessed him to be at least five to six years younger than the age that showed against him in the file. The wide sensitive mouth looked as if it knew the exercises of humour, and the dark blue eyes looked as if they, too, could smile with enjoyment. But not now: eyes and mouth were both stiff with suspicion.

“What is it, Mr. Malone?” Quentin’s voice, Malone guessed, would normally have been deep and pleasant. Now it was strained, a little high: the Australian accent was evident, the vowels flattened. “My secretary said you were from Tumbarumba.”

“I’m from Sydney, sir. Detective-Sergeant Malone.” He produced his badge, glad of the opportunity to do so; for the time being there was no longer any need for secrecy. “I’m sorry, Mr. Quentin, but I have a warrant for your arrest for the murder of your wife Freda.”