Diana Glass
The Help
Every part of the young man seems to be in a state of perpetual motion.
He scratches at the side of his neck where a livid red rash has formed.
He keeps running a hand through his sandy hair, knocking his glasses askew as he does.
Several times he takes them off and wipes them with a grubby-looking handkerchief, but it seems more nervous habit than for any practical purpose because they appear just as smeared as before.
Little beads of sweat stand out at his temples.
His knee jitters up and down until eventually he puts a hand on it, fingers splayed, as though to force it into submission.
‘Could we have your name?’ asks Inspector Moreau. ‘For the record?’
‘Charlie Levitt,’ the young man mutters. Then: ‘what do you want with me?’ he says, raising his chin defiantly.
‘We know that you had a number of interactions with Monsieur Narracott here,’ Inspector Moreau says. ‘According to Madame Narracott, you were … bothering her husband a great deal.’
‘I didn’t kill him,’ he mutters, ‘if that’s what you’re asking me. I’m a doctor! I’m in the business of saving lives, not taking them. Have you ever heard of the Hippocratic oath?’
‘I’m afraid your profession doesn’t exonerate you,’ Inspector Moreau says. ‘Too many doctors, over the years, have been in the business of killing. They seem to be quite good at it, in fact. Do you agree, Madame Marple?’
‘Oh,’ Miss Marple says gravely, nodding, ‘I’m afraid so. I have very little experience of such matters but I know that sometimes medical people have a god complex. That can be very helpful, in its way. But there can be more sinister implications.
‘There was a nurse in Much Benham who looked after a number of elderly residents. It transpired that she was making them ill on purpose, slipping things into their water and food, in order that she could then “cure” them. One has heard about this happening with mothers – a kind of corruption of the maternal instinct in which the mother is so desperate to provide care that she makes her children ill on purpose in order to make them better. But this nurse, the evil creature, went too far in a couple of cases and actually killed her charges. For some – a very few, of course – the power over life and death goes to their head. That and a ready supply of potentially lethal chemicals. It seems to me that it is two sides of the same coin. Giving life, on the one hand. Being able to take it away, on the other.’
The young man, to his credit, looks genuinely appalled. ‘Well, that’s not me! I became a doctor because I want to help people.’
‘There’s something else,’ I say. The others look at me in surprise. ‘When you opened your bag, I saw a journal: the Modern Quarterly. It’s a communist publication, I think?’
There’s a longish pause and then the young man erupts. ‘Well, what of it? Trust me, if you saw some of the things I have witnessed in our green and pleasant land – the inequality, the desperate ill-health of children from lower-income families – then you might start looking for another way, too.’
Inspector Moreau speaks: ‘Catherine Narracott tells us that her husband was lately a target for Red activists.’
‘Oh,’ the young man says, mockingly, ‘so which am I then? Demon Doctor with a god complex, or Red Terror? I think you’ll have to choose one!’
Miss Marple clears her throat delicately. ‘I think, if I may, I have another suggestion. Long-lost son.’
A stunned silence follows.
‘What?’ the young man splutters.
‘It’s only a guess,’ Miss Marple says. ‘But you have a cleft chin, as Mr Narracott did, and I believe that is often hereditary. There is a general physical resemblance between you besides. And a heightened allergic response—’ she indicates the rash on his neck.
‘That is, I’m afraid, often something passed down from parent to child. ’
‘How do you know all of this?’ Inspector Moreau asks Miss Marple.
‘Oh, long conversations with our village doctor, Haydock. But also simple observation of such things across a long life.’ She turns back to Charlie Levitt. ‘The question is: am I correct?’
He seems to jut his distinctive chin defiantly at us.
Now Miss Marple has pointed out the resemblance it seems almost uncanny: the build, the general face shape, the similar colouring.
All masked by the stark differences in manner: Narracott’s smooth charm versus Levitt’s nervous agitation.
‘What do you want me to say?’ he mutters, with a shrug.
‘Yes, fine: I’m his son. His bastard son.
I happened to be at the Gare de Lyon terminal.
I was meant to be travelling through Europe, on the trains.
And then I saw him. It felt predestined, somehow.
Like it was the perfect opportunity. So I followed them here, him and his wife.
It felt like my chance to know who my father really was, once and for all. And now I never will.’
He takes off his glasses yet again but this time to rub furiously at his eyes.
Miss Marple makes a noise of sympathy, but her gaze on him, I notice, has lost none of its scrutiny.
Now he stands up, giving up any pretence of trying to sit still, and begins to stalk up and down the room.
‘Wish I’d never come,’ he says. ‘It would have been better never to know. When I think how as a boy I’d ask and ask: who was my father?
Why did he abandon us? And finally, finally, when I was old enough, my mother pointed to a photograph of him in a newspaper.
“There,” she said. “Now you know where all your cleverness comes from!” Because that’s just like her, never giving herself credit for any of it.
She was his Scout, at Oxford. You know – one of the chars, that clean the rooms?
She explained it all like it was her silly fault to get herself in trouble.
That he had given her the money to … well.
’ He grimaces. ‘Do you know, she actually seemed to think it was all rather decent of him? That it was all her own stupid folly keeping the baby … keeping me? What a piece of work he must have done on her. If you can believe it, she was actually proud of him. She would point to pictures of him in the news, say, “Look what a great man your father is!” What a dupe.’
‘Pride in one’s parents can be a very powerful thing,’ Miss Marple says.
‘It can be character forming. Your mother knows this, I am sure. It was the case in my village St Mary Mead. When so many men went away to both wars – and when so many did not come back – the mothers were very careful to keep the idea of them alive for their sons and daughters. You are the image of him. I’m sure you will follow in his footsteps to be a great man like him.
He worked so hard. He loved you very much. That sort of thing.’
The young man looks suddenly astounded.
Miss Marple continues, gently, ‘Mothers are often very clever, when it comes to their children. A kind of instinct, knowing what it is they need to hear, whether that be criticism or praise, or the odd instructive fairy tale. I suspect your mother might not have been quite the dupe you have thought her to be.’
‘You mean … all of that might have been for me? That she wasn’t really proud of him?
She was telling me a kind of … fiction? What was it you said …
a— a fairy tale?’ Now Charlie Levitt sits, digesting this.
His eyes, I notice, have the glitter of unshed tears.
He looks suddenly more like a little boy than a twenty-year-old medical student.
He says, ‘When I saw him that day at the train station … I couldn’t believe it.
Can you imagine? My father, who I had only ever seen in the pages of the newspapers.
I had to follow him. I can’t afford this place, any of it.
I’ve been using money that was meant to last me the whole year.
But it all seemed worth it, to get to know him.
That was all I wanted. To get to know him. ’
He passes a hand over his face and when it drops, I realise that he is weeping, silently.
‘Oh, how I wish I’d never learned what kind of man he really was.
I tried to follow him, the other day on the mountain.
I thought it would be a chance, to speak to him away from the crowds.
He fled from me! So first, I learned that he was a coward.
Second, do you know … I actually think he might have tried to kill me. ’
‘How do you mean?’ Inspector Moreau asks.
‘I think he made some effort to ski me off a cliff. It’s the only explanation for how he behaved that day.
That pretty much gave me the measure of the man.
But try to kill him? I just wanted to know him!
I never even managed to have a proper conversation with him.
And now he’s gone and that chance has disappeared forever.
You think I’m capable of killing my own father? ’
‘Monsieur Levitt,’ says Inspector Moreau, ‘I really know nothing about you at all. I can’t make a judgement like that in one direction or the other.’
The young man looks stunned. ‘But—’
‘And that is why we must look toward the facts. Nothing more, and nothing less.’
Charlie Levitt blinks, once, twice, as though to clear his vision. He looks genuinely outraged. He sits up in his seat, practically spluttering with indignation. ‘How can you say such …’
‘Monsieur, I’m not saying that it was you. I’m simply saying that your being his son does not discount you.’
Miss Marple clears her throat again and both men turn to look at her. ‘You say that it was coincidence that brought you out here, Mr Levitt, rather than design.’
‘Yes, that’s true.’
‘And you seem to have been under no illusions about your father’s character. I mean – even before you came out here. And you don’t mention any attempt to get in touch with him before? Did you ever try to get in touch with him?’
‘No …’
‘That is the part – forgive me if I am being very foolish – that does not quite make sense to me. After all, you knew who he was. He has a public role. It would have been easy enough to seek him out. But you didn’t. So why here, now?’
The young man gives a short, humourless laugh. ‘I don’t understand. You’re trying to make it out like I had some great master plan? To come out here and … and kill him?’
‘Oh no,’ says Miss Marple soothingly. ‘I believe that it really was a coincidence when you saw him at the station. I do not believe there was any great plan. But there lies the issue. In my experience, if a long-lost child has any desire to establish a relationship with a parent – or indeed the other way around – it happens rather differently. It is something planned and fretted over. It carries much emotional weight. It is not something done on a whim, because of a mere coincidence. You do see the problem?’
The young man gives a laugh and casts a look around the room that says: Are we really going to humour this mad old cat?
Miss Marple continues. ‘You see, it doesn’t sound to me as though you really wanted anything to do with your father.
And yet you saw him at the Gare de Lyon and it seemed like the perfect opportunity: those were your words.
An opportunity for what? Not, I think, to get to know him.
You seem, Mr Levitt, like a man of strong judgement and principle’ – I see Levitt give a tiny, rather pleased-looking nod of approval at this assessment of his character – ‘meaning that once you have decided on a thing, it is settled. Is that a correct assessment?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘That seems about right.’
‘You are twenty years old. You have never tried to contact your father before. Well then why would you suddenly throw away all those principles on a whim? It does not fit. No. You did not want to know him. I think ideally you would have had nothing to do with the man. But you needed something from him.’
Charlie Levitt folds his arms.
‘You have a disease, Mr Levitt.’
‘What?’ Levitt stands up quickly from his seat, as though to better display his youth, health and vigour. ‘You can’t mean this stupid rash? It’s just from the soap here … I’m perfectly—’
‘Not a disease of the body. A disease of the mind, the spirit, and it has affected many clever men.
You have been seen, often, playing cards for money.
Often losing badly. But that does not seem to put you off: the mark of an inveterate gambler.
You have an addiction and you need money to fund that addiction …
or to cover your debts. Of course, the price of a hotel room here is no small trifle but it would become a trifle if you could get your father to really pay out.
Imagine the scandal! The upstanding future star of the Conservative Party a philanderer with an illegitimate child …
‘That day, when you saw him at the Gare de Lyon and followed him here: that was itself a gamble. I think you came here to ask him for money. And I think he said no.’
Charlie Levitt has listened to all this in a kind of malevolent silence.
Now, a change comes over him. His boyish features sharpen into something hard and other.
He looks like a demented pixie, almost diabolical: his eyes too bright behind his glasses, his teeth bared.
There’s something horribly fascinating about the transformation.
I can absolutely imagine him, suddenly, committing a murder, though probably more in a fit of pique than premeditation.
A little spittle leaves his mouth as he leans forward and says, in a low hiss: ‘His own flesh and blood and he flat out refused to give me a penny. Worse than refused, I really think he was trying to get rid of me that day on the mountain, just as he tried to get rid of me twenty years ago. Well … I’m glad he’s dead. Good riddance to bad rubbish.’