Double-Barrel by Nicolas Freeling

Besançon slowly, ‘of things in the world – often tragic, even terrible. One does not understand, and one never will. The human being stands there helpless, at a loss, often terrified.’
    â€˜That is true.’ I found myself thinking of the children with leukaemia, the clinic in Corsica; I had read about it a week or so ago in
Paris Match
. The professor in Paris said, ‘Sir, your cure is worthless.’ The Corsican peasants said, ‘Give every child a chance.’ Who was right? Both, obviously.
    â€˜Is this affair really so important?’
    â€˜Not a bit, relatively. The prevalence of road accidents is much more important. To me it is, first because it’s my job to stop this kind of thing, second because I got sent here specially, told point-blank that the others had been flummoxed but that I’d better not be. I need to win this one, otherwise I’ll stay a post-office counter-clerk my entire life … It does have a certain importance all the same. Not so much in the death of two women – but an attitude of mind that is all wrong, and which I think isthe underlying cause. A certain parallel with persecuting Jews.’
    â€˜This I don’t follow,’ said Besançon politely. I realized that I was gibbering.
    â€˜I mean that this is perhaps a small unimportant example of something we see everywhere. A mass hysteria that grows out of a mass self-deception, a mass neurosis. There is something wrong with life – blame it on a handy scapegoat. Jews, communists, negroes, Cubans – you name it, we’ve got it in stock. Here, so my feeling is running, there’s a tendency to hate strangers. As though they were saying, “We were poor perhaps, but everything was all right till you came along.” I am afraid I’m probably exaggerating this. Very likely I am. But so far, it’s all I’ve got.’
    Besançon asked, suddenly, the same question as Arlette.
    â€˜And these people who have received letters – were they strangers?’
    â€˜No idea. Don’t think so, particularly. But I’ve no real idea, because I’m never likely to find out just who has had letters. But don’t misunderstand me. It’s not a real physical parallel. The letters haven’t any nigger-go-home angle. Just that I get a sense of a community that is tight and closed against outsiders, and a little unimportant internal upset like this has a destructive effect that may become serious. What causes the disruption?’
    â€˜Your interest in Jews – you simply think that whatever was wrong with the Germans, they tried to make a scapegoat of the Jews?’
    â€˜I suppose that seems obvious enough; it’s very broad. I couldn’t narrow it much; I know nothing about Jews and precious little about Germans.’
    â€˜So you’re not drawing a parallel; you’re taking a vague idea as an illustration.’
    â€˜Yes.’ I wondered why the point seemed so important to him. I had only brought it up, as he said, as a vaguely illustrative notion.
    â€˜Perhaps I’m making a mistake. You have only to correct me if that is so. You come to me – and you are very welcome – and you give me confidences, almost.’
    â€˜That’s true. It’s a way I have.’
    â€˜It wouldn’t be a scheme, would it – quite a carefully arranged scheme?’
    â€˜To pretend to confide in you, as though spontaneously? With what object? To incriminate you?’
    â€˜It has been known.’
    â€˜I see that you know quite a lot about policemen.’
    He smiled.
    â€˜I wouldn’t be above it if I thought it necessary. Should I suspect you of something?’
    â€˜I am no judge of that. I have been suspected of so many things.’
    â€˜You are sensitive.’
    â€˜I have been interrogated by many, many policemen in my day. Perhaps now I put myself as it were automatically in the position of