The House of Rumour A Novel

7 / VITRIOL

It was still dark at the all-clear and they were lucky to find a taxi in the gloom of Park Lane. Fleming ordered the driver to take them to his house in Ebury Street first. There was something that he had to pick up, he told her.

She waited in the cab as he went inside. In his bedroom he took off his jacket, opened a drawer of his dresser and removed a light chamois-leather holster. He pulled its straps over his left shoulder so that it rested a hand’s width below his armpit. He then reached into the drawer once more and carefully took hold of the small, flat Baby Browning .25 automatic that had been given to him when he had joined Naval Intelligence. This weapon had not been issued so much for his own use but rather for the protection of his boss, Admiral Godfrey, on such occasions that might be deemed necessary.

He slid out the clip, removed the single round in the chamber and then worked the action a couple of times. He squeezed the trigger and it made an empty click. As he began to reload the deadly little machine, he caught sight of his reflection in the looking-glass. A saturnine smile curled on the lips of his other psyche, the hollow man of his imagination. This was the persona of a dream, not one of slumber but of half-sleep, the other self that he would dwell upon at night as he waited for oblivion. He slipped the pistol into the slim purse of the shoulder-holster, giving it a gentle, reassuring pat. He put his jacket back on and went downstairs to the waiting taxi.

As he got in the car he wondered for a moment if Miller would detect any change in his demeanour. With a glance he noticed that she too wore the dull mask of those who anticipate danger or action. They made the taxi stop a street away from her flat. Fleming let Miller lead the way and show him exactly how she had gone home that evening. He followed closely, noting every detail of the route. There was a red glow in the sky from fires far to the east of the city. They stalked along the street to where she lived but there was no one about, nor could they find a clear vantage point from which her premises could be kept under surveillance.

‘We’d better go in,’ he said.

Her flat was on the first floor of a Georgian terrace. Fleming took the key from her and turned it slowly in the lock. He let the door swing open and took out his gun. They crept through into the living room. Miller switched on the light to reveal the figure of a man slumped in an armchair who rose swiftly to his feet, grabbing at something in his jacket pocket. Fleming raised the pistol and clicked off its safety catch.

‘Now look here,’ Fleming snapped in a patrician tone. ‘Don’t . . . Just don’t do anything clever. I’m licensed to use this thing, you know.’

He winced inwardly. Not only was his statement incorrect, it was an appallingly crass line. The man faced him in a simian squat, one hand still holding something hidden in his jacket. Fleming had to stop himself from laughing at this absurd tableau. He should shoot, he mused, and the other self would have done so. The other self would have killed by now. But he hesitated, realising that the prospect of actual violence repelled him. It was not so much that he lacked courage, but that he just had far too much imagination. He made a clumsy show of pointing the gun once more.

‘Come on,’ he went on, struggling to find something to say that didn’t sound like an awful cliché. ‘Put your hands . . . um, let me see what you’ve got there.’

His opponent’s face was contorted in a peculiar smile. A rictus of hate or fear, maybe both. The man remained still but for the hand he slowly drew from his jacket pocket. It was holding a little bottle.

‘Drop it on the floor,’ Fleming ordered.

As the man did so, Miller went to pick it up. It was ridged on one side and on the other was a white label. OIL OF VITRIOL, it read. She gasped and nearly dropped the thing.

‘What is it?’ asked Fleming.

‘Acid,’ she replied.

‘You bastard,’ Fleming spat.

‘I was only going to scare her, mister. That was the plan. Just scare her.’

‘Dirty little Nazi. I ought to shoot you.’

‘I ain’t a Nazi,’ the man protested.

Fleming told him to sit down and watched him as Joan went to the bedroom to phone Special Branch. Luckily the duty officer was someone she knew and he agreed to send a couple of officers straight away. As she put the phone down she noticed a tremor in her right hand. Fleming was attempting to interrogate the intruder as she came back into the living room.

‘Our little friend here actually denies he’s a fascist,’ Fleming told her. ‘But then he would, wouldn’t he?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ replied Joan. ‘They’re usually terribly proud of it, you know, triumphant. Calling out that the invasion’s coming and we’ll all be on the list the Gestapo’s drawn up.’

‘So,’ Fleming turned to the seated man. ‘If you’re not a quisling, what were you doing at the meeting yesterday?’

‘Meeting?’ The man scowled. ‘What meeting?’

‘Oh well,’ Fleming sighed. ‘Better let Special Branch give him the third degree.’

Miller frowned, trying to remember if she had actually seen the man in the basement the day before.

It was dawn by the time two plainclothes policemen came to take him away. With just the two of them in Joan’s flat, all at once the mood became strangely formal. While they had kept vigil over the intruder or dealt with the official rituals of Special Branch, the atmosphere of external tension had somehow allowed for a covert intimacy. A shared smile or a reassuring glance, a fleeting moment of intense eye contact that needed no explanation. But now they were alone together, they were possessed by a peculiar awkwardness, a kind of static charge.

‘I really should stay for a bit, you know,’ Fleming offered hesitantly. ‘You’ve had quite a shock.’

‘Oh, I’ll be all right.’

‘I’d like to,’ he said softly.

‘What?’

‘Stay.’

An attempt at a nonchalant grin smarted on his face. As she held his gaze he noted that her eyes were deep blue. Cool, direct, quizzical.

‘Stay then,’ she said with a shrug.

He frowned. Women are such difficult characters, he reasoned. His inner text demanded that they should be an illusion, nothing more than a thorough but simple physical description. Miller’s appearance certainly fitted his ideal. She was undeniably attractive. Wide-set eyes and high cheekbones; an elegant curve to the jaw framed by a mane of raven hair cut square to the nape of her neck; a bow-lipped mouth, full and sensual. Fleming found it easy to draw up an account with the banal symmetries of detail. But now there was too much depth to his impression of her, and he felt that he already knew her far too well. And it annoyed him that she seemed more at ease than he was.

Miller laughed.

‘What is it?’ he demanded.

‘You look like a lost little boy.’

He suddenly felt horribly inert. He tried to empty his mind, to assume a seductive charm, but it eluded him. He was full of desire but knew that if he was unable to focus on the possibility of simple animal pleasure this urge would quickly vanish.

‘Come here,’ she said.

He went to her but the moment was already lost. Now she had the initiative, and this would never do. She kissed him lightly on the mouth. His lips were cold and he couldn’t help but flinch slightly as she gently stroked his face with her fingers. They pulled away from each other.

‘Look,’ he began, not knowing what to say.

‘I suppose we’re both a bit on edge,’ she offered. ‘Aren’t we?’

‘Yes. I suppose.’

He offered her a cigarette and for a while they stood smoking in her living room. All at once they reverted to the casual tone of procedure, going over their report of the night’s events and their implications.

‘Marius Trevelyan’s cover is now blown too, of course,’ Fleming remarked. ‘Though maybe this incident could be used to provide what Political wants. You know, a demonstration that the Link is still active.’

‘Yes, but—’ Miller stubbed out her cigarette, grinding it into the ashtray as an odd thought throbbed. ‘What if—’ She shook her head, at once unsure where her thoughts were leading, and broke into a yawn.

‘I’d better let you get some sleep,’ said Fleming.

‘There’s hardly much time for that,’ Miller murmured.

For a moment there was something strikingly vague in her expression, a marvellous vacancy in her eyes. But no, Fleming realised bitterly, she was thinking about something. He suddenly felt the strong urge to be on his own.

‘I’d better be off,’ he told her.

‘Very well then.’

She walked with him to the door.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘What for?’

‘For tonight. For dealing with that awful man.’

Fleming walked home through streets strewn with rubble and debris. Piles of bricks here and there, heaps of broken glass swept into the gutters. Scraps of paper fluttered through the smoke-scented air; the morning birdsong trilled harsh and neurotic. He passed a ruined house that was not much more than a scorched shell, yet it revealed part of one wall still intact, with wallpaper, fireplace and a framed print still tacked above the mantelpiece. The city turned upside down, all of its secrets rudely shaken out.

Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem. The rhythm of his stride tapped out its maddening aubade. His mind was hungry for dreams. Reality was always far too complicated. He felt a quiet fury at how action had once more been frustrated by doubts of conscience and official procedure. The hesitation when he’d pointed the gun, all the bother of waiting for the Special Branch to turn up, the banal chatter with Miller. Why couldn’t he have just killed the man and made love to the woman? Already he was returning to his mental refuge, the simple narrative of fantasy. Soon he would be trapped in the martial bureaucracy of Room 39, or sulking in his study where his rare books would taunt him from their shelves. But for now he had a storehouse of ideas, of characters and settings, and he would save them up. For the day when he came to write it all down.



Miller washed her face and walked into the bedroom. As she pulled back the heavy blackout curtain, a column of light slowly stretched across the floor. Her eyes watered slightly as she blinked against the brightness. She looked at herself in the mirror, a trace of a smile on her pale lips. Fleming’s diffidence had made her bold. She had enjoyed playing with him. She might even have slept with him if he’d been brave enough to stay. She picked up a lipstick and held it to her mouth. Her hand trembled. What had she been thinking earlier? About the Political Warfare Executive, that was it, the strange notion she had had that maybe they had set up the whole incident. An outlandish idea but there were some things that just didn’t seem to make sense. She finished applying the deep red to her lips and then pouted at her image in the looking-glass. As she put the lipstick down she noticed a trace of white on the dresser. At first she thought that she must have spilt some powder there. As she looked again she saw that it was the letter M lightly chalked on the polished woodwork.