Destination Unknown - Agatha Christie [3]
‘Now please, Mrs Betterton, please–there’s no need to entertain that supposition yet. If he’s dead, his body would have been discovered by now.’
‘It might not. Awful things happen. He might have been drowned or pushed down a sewer. I’m sure anything could happen in Paris.’
‘Paris, I can assure you, Mrs Betterton, is a very well-policed city.’
She took the handkerchief away from her eyes and stared at him with sharp anger.
‘I know what you think, but it isn’t so! Tom wouldn’t sell secrets or betray secrets. He wasn’t a communist. His whole life is an open book.’
‘What were his political beliefs, Mrs Betterton?’
‘In America he was a Democrat, I believe. Here he voted Labour. He wasn’t interested in politics. He was a scientist, first and last.’ She added defiantly, ‘He was a brilliant scientist.’
‘Yes,’ said Jessop, ‘he was a brilliant scientist. That’s really the crux of the whole matter. He might have been offered, you know, very considerable inducements to leave this country and go elsewhere.’
‘It’s not true.’ Anger leaped out again. ‘That’s what the papers try to make out. That’s what you all think when you come questioning me. It’s not true. He’d never go without telling me, without giving me some idea.’
‘And he told you–nothing?’
Again he was watching her keenly.
‘Nothing. I don’t know where he is. I think he was kidnapped, or else, as I say, dead. But if he’s dead, I must know. I must know soon. I can’t go on like this, waiting and wondering. I can’t eat or sleep. I’m sick and ill with worry. Can’t you help me? Can’t you help me at all?’
He got up then and moved round his desk. He murmured:
‘I’m so very sorry, Mrs Betterton, so very sorry. Let me assure you that we are trying our very best to find out what has happened to your husband. We get reports in every day from various places.’
‘Reports from where?’ she asked sharply. ‘What do they say?’
He shook his head.
‘They all have to be followed up, sifted and tested. But as a rule, I am afraid, they’re vague in the extreme.’
‘I must know,’ she murmured brokenly again. ‘I can’t go on like this.’
‘Do you care for your husband very much, Mrs Betterton?’
‘Of course I care for him. Why, we’ve only been married six months. Only six months.’
‘Yes, I know. There was–forgive me for asking–no quarrel of any kind between you?’
‘Oh, no!’
‘No trouble over any other woman?’
‘Of course not. I’ve told you. We were only married last April.’
‘Please believe that I’m not suggesting such a thing is likely, but one has to take every possibility into account that might allow for his going off in this way. You say he had not been upset lately, or worried–not on edge–not nervy in any way?’
‘No, no, no!’
‘People do get nervy, you know, Mrs Betterton, in such a job as your husband had. Living under exacting security conditions. In fact’–he smiled–‘it’s almost normal to be nervy.’
She did not smile back.
‘He was just as usual,’ she said stolidly.
‘Happy about his work? Did he discuss it at all with you?’
‘No, it was all so technical.’
‘You don’t think he had any qualms over its–destructive possibilities, shall I say? Scientists do feel that sometimes.’
‘He never said anything of the kind.’
‘You see, Mrs Betterton,’ he leaned forward over the desk, dropping some of his impassiveness, ‘what I am trying to do is to get a picture of your husband. The sort of man he was. And somehow you’re not helping me.’
‘But what more can I say or do? I’ve answered all your questions.’
‘Yes, you’ve answered my questions, mostly in the negative. I want something positive, something constructive. Do you see what I mean? You can look for a man so much better when you know what kind of a man he is.’
She reflected for a moment. ‘I see. At least, I suppose I see. Well, Tom was cheerful and good-tempered. And clever, of course.’
Jessop smiled. ‘That’s a list of qualities.