Jessop put his rather owlish head on one side, and blinked.
‘Interesting,’ he remarked.
‘Not really. Not interesting at all. I’m not a very interesting woman. My husband, whom I loved, left me, my only child died very painfully of meningitis. I’ve no near friends or relations. I’ve no vocation, no art or craft or work that I love doing.’
‘Tough,’ said Jessop appreciatively. He added, rather hesitantly: ‘You don’t think of it as—wrong?’
Hilary said heatedly: ‘Why should it be wrong? It’s my life.’
‘Oh yes, yes,’ Jessop repeated hastily. ‘I’m not taking a high moral line myself, but there are people, you know, who think it’s wrong.’
Hilary said:
‘I’m not one of them.’
Mr Jessop said, rather inadequately:
‘Quite.’
He sat there looking at her, blinking his eyes thoughtfully.
Hilary said:
‘So perhaps now, Mr—er—’
‘Jessop,’ said the young man.
‘So perhaps now, Mr Jessop, you will leave me alone.’
But Jessop shook his head.
‘Not just yet,’ he said. ‘I wanted to know, you see, just what was behind it all. I’ve got it clear now, have I? You’re not interested in life, you don’t want to live any longer, you more or less welcome the idea of death?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ said Jessop, cheerfully. ‘So now we know where we are. Let’s go on to the next step. Has it got to be sleeping pills?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I’ve already told you that they’re not as romantic as they sound. Throwing yourself off a building isn’t too nice, either. You don’t always die at once. And the same applies to falling under a train. What I’m getting at is that there are other ways.’
‘I don’t understand what you mean.’
‘I’m suggesting another method. Rather a sporting method, really. There’s some excitement in it, too. I’ll be fair with you. There’s just a hundred to one chance that you mightn’t die. But I don’t believe under the circumstances, that you’d really object by that time.’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Of course you haven’t,’ said Jessop. ‘I’ve not begun to tell you about it yet. I’m afraid I’ll have to make rather a thing about it—tell you a story, I mean. Shall I go ahead?’
‘I suppose so.’
Jessop paid no attention to the grudgingness of the assent. He started off in his most owl-like manner.
‘You’re the sort of woman who reads the papers and keeps up with things generally, I expect,’ he said. ‘You’ll have read about the disappearance of various scientists from time to time. There was that Italian chap about a year ago, and about two months ago a young scientist called Thomas Betterton disappeared.’
Hilary nodded. ‘Yes, I read about that in the papers.’
‘Well, there’s been a good deal more than has appeared in the papers. More people, I mean, have disappeared. They haven’t always been scientists. Some of them have been young men who were engaged in important medical research. Some of them have been research chemists, some of them have been physicists, there was one barrister. Oh, quite a lot here and there and everywhere. Well, ours is a so-called free country. You can leave it if you like. But in these peculiar circumstances we’ve got to know why these people left it and where they went, and, also important, how they went. Did they go of their own free will? Were they kidnapped? Were they blackmailed into going? What route did they take—what kind of organization is it that sets this in motion and what is its ultimate aim? Lots of questions. We want the answer to them. You might be able to help get us that answer.’
Hilary stared at him.
‘Me? How? Why?’
‘I’m coming down to the particular case of Thomas Betterton. He disappeared from Paris just over two months ago. He left a wife in England. She was distracted—or said she was distracted. She swore that she had no idea why he’d gone or where or how. That may be true, or it may not. Some people—and I’m one of them—think it wasn’t true.’
Hilary leaned forward in her chair. In spite of herself she was becoming interested. Jessop went on.
‘We prepared to keep a nice, unobtrusive eye on Mrs Betterton. About a fortnight ago she came to me and told me she had been ordered by her doctor to go abroad, take a thorough rest and get some distraction. She was doing no good in England, and people were continually bothering her—newspaper reporters, relations, kind friends.’
Hilary said dryly: ‘I can imagine it.’
‘Yes, tough. Quite natural she would want to get away for a bit.’
‘Quite natural, I should think.’
‘But we’ve got nasty, suspicious minds in our department, you know. We arranged to keep tabs on Mrs Betterton. Yesterday she left England as arranged, for Casablanca.’
‘Casablanca?’
‘Yes—en route to other places in Morocco, of course. All quite open and above board, plans made, bookings ahead. But it may be that this trip to Morocco is where Mrs Betterton steps off into the unknown.’
Hilary shrugged her shoulders.
‘I don’t see where I come into all this.’
Jessop smiled.
‘You come into it because you’ve got a very magnificent head of red hair, Mrs Craven.’
‘Hair?’
‘Yes. It’s the most noticeable thing about Mrs Betterton—her hair. You’ve heard, perhaps, that the plane before yours today crashed on landing.’
‘I know. I should have been on that plane. I actually had reservations for it.’
‘Interesting,’ said Jessop. ‘Well, Mrs Betterton was on that plane. She wasn’t killed. She was taken out of the wreckage still alive, and she is in hospital now. But according to the doctor, she won’t be alive tomorrow morning.’
A faint glimmer of light came to Hilary. She looked at him inquiringly.
‘Yes,’ said Jessop, ‘perhaps now you see the form of suicide I’m offering you. I’m suggesting that you should become Mrs Betterton.’
‘But surely,’ said Hilary, ‘that would be quite impossible. I mean, they’d know at once she wasn’t me.’
Jessop put his head on one side.
‘That, of course, depends entirely on who you mean by “they”. It’s a very vague term. Who is or are “they”? Is there such a thing, are there such persons as “they”? We don’t know. But I can tell you this. If the most popular explanation of “they” is accepted, then these people work in very close, self-contained cells. They do that for their own security. If Mrs Betterton’s journey had a purpose and is planned, then the people who were in charge of it here will know nothing about the English side of it. At the appointed moment they will contact a certain woman at a certain place, and carry on from there. Mrs Betterton’s passport description is 5ft. 7, red hair, blue-green eyes, mouth medium, no distinguishing marks. Good enough.’