The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [302]
I know I am wanting in a sense of duty, but I have let Nessim know obliquely that his game has been spotted and the information passed on. Of course, in this vague form you could also be right in suppressing it altogether, forgetting it. I don’t envy you your temptations. Mine, however, not to reason why. I’m tired, my dear chap; sick unto death, as the living say.
And so …
Will you give my sister my love and say that my thoughts were with her? Thank you.
Affectionately yours,
L. P.
Mountolive was aghast. He felt himself turning pale as he read. Then he sat for a long time staring at the expression on the face of the death-mask — the characteristic air of solitary impertinence
which Pursewarden’s profile always wore in repose; and still obstinately struggling with the absurd sense of diplomatic outrage which played about his mind, flickering like stabs of sheet-lightning.
‘It is folly!’ he cried aloud with vexation, as he banged the desk with the flat of his hand. ‘Utter folly! Nobody kills himself for an official reason!’ He cursed the stupidity of the words as he uttered them. For the first time complete confusion overtook his mind. In order to calm it he forced himself to read Telford’s typed report slowly and carefully, spelling out the words to himself with moving lips, as if it were an exercise. It was an account of Pursewarden’s movements during the twenty-four hours before his death with depositions by the various people who had seen him. Some of the reports were interesting, notably that of Balthazar who had seen him during the morning in the Café Al Aktar where Pursewarden was drinking arak and eating a croissant. He had apparently received a letter from his sister that morning and was reading it with an air of grave preoccupation. He put it in his pocket abruptly when Balthazar arrived. He was extremely unshaven and haggard. There seemed little enough of interest in the conversation which ensued save for one remark (probably a jest?) which stayed in Balthazar’s memory. Pursewarden had been dancing with Melissa the evening before and said something about her being a desirable person to marry. (‘This must have been a joke’ added Balthazar.) He also said that he had started another book ‘all about Love’. Mountolive sighed as he slowly ran his eye down the typed page. Love! Then came an odd thing. He had bought a printed Will form and filled it in, making his sister his literary executor, and bequeathing five hundred pounds to the schoolteacher Darley and his mistress. This, for some reason, he had antedated by a couple of months — perhaps he forgot the date? He had asked two cipher clerks to witness it.
The letter from his sister was there also, but Telford had tact-fully put it into a separate envelope and sealed it. Mountolive read it, shaking his bewildered head, and then thrust it into his pocket shamefacedly. He licked his lips and frowned heavily at the wall. Liza!
Errol put his head timidly round the door and was shocked to surprise tears upon the cheek of his Chief. He ducked back
tactfully and retreated hastily to his office, deeply shaken by a sense of diplomatic inappropriateness somewhat similar to the feelings which Mountolive himself had encountered when Telford tele-phoned him. Errol sat at his desk with attentive nervousness thinking: ‘A good diplomat should never show feeling.’ Then he lit a cigarette with sombre deliberation. For the first time he realized that his Ambassador had feet of clay. This increased his sense of self-respect somewhat. Mountolive was, after all, only a man…. Nevertheless, the experience had been disorienting. Upstairs Mountolive too had lighted a cigarette in order to calm his nerves. The accent of his apprehension was slowly transferring itself from the bare act of Pursewarden (this incon-venient plunge into anonymity) — was transferring