Mrs Midnight and Other Stories

by Oliver, Reggie

  III

  The following morning was an exact copy of the previous one. Jumbo was, as usual, seated at the head of the breakfast table devouring devilled kidneys.

  ‘Morning, young feller-me-lad! Sleep well?’

  I said yes, but avoided his penetrating glance. Jumbo told me he would drive me back to Nairobi later that morning and, just as we were about to leave, Freda appeared. She was immaculately dressed as usual but looked haggard. When the time came to say goodbye she kissed me full on the lips. I was conscious once again of the powerful sexual being that she was, but it still surprised me. When one is twenty-one assumes, like Hamlet, that for the over sixties ‘the heyday in the blood is tame’.

  On the drive back Jumbo asked me if I had enjoyed myself which I said I had.

  ‘Good show,’ he said. ‘We hope you’ll come again. Freda enjoyed having you. She likes the cut of your jib.’ I had no idea what this meant and was far too shy to ask.

  On my return to Nairobi I wrote two letters, one to thank Freda Daventry for her hospitality, the other to my father. I gave few details of my trip to Cloud’s Hill, and naturally excluded any mention of my more improbable experiences, which would only have provoked incredulity and distrust. I told my father how much I liked Jumbo and added, with what I thought at the time was a great show of maturity, that I did not think his wife Freda was ‘ghastly’, as he had described, ‘just very sad, and probably very lonely too.’

  My father wrote back, as he always did, punctiliously with a letter full of rather dull news about the fox he had seen in his back garden, a Rotary Club dinner and his latest golf scores. Towards the end he wrote: ‘You appear in your letter by implication to rebuke me for calling Freda “ghastly” when I had not met her.’ It used to strike me as strange that my father, the most conventional of men, could nevertheless read my mind unerringly when he wanted to. ‘But I did not make the comment ill-advisedly. I suggest you go to the offices of a local newspaper—say the Nairobi Messenger—and look up the Hartland case in their archives. The relevant date to start from is, I believe, January 24th 1947.’

  My father added a P.S. which read: ‘Jumbo has written to me and told me about your visit. I gather you made a very favourable impression and that you behaved well.’ Praise from my father was so rarely bestowed that even this scrap of oblique approval made me glow inside.

  For the next week or so I had very little time. Samantha had given me what she called in her old-fashioned way ‘the juvenile lead’ in the next play and I was very busily occupied in rehearsing and learning lines. I was very conscientious. I wanted to make a success of my first major rôle, even in Nairobi where nobody of importance to my career would see me. However, as soon as I felt safe in my part and had a free moment, I paid a visit one afternoon to the offices of the Nairobi Messenger. When I asked to see the back numbers from January 1947 nobody seemed very surprised by my request. One of their office boys fetched the relevant bound volumes and left me in a little room to study them.

  The reports began on the 25th of January with a front page headline:

  HARTLAND SHOT DEAD ON CLOUD’S HILL ESTATE

  A brief few paragraphs in heavy type told me that in the early hours of the morning of the 24th of January Mr Henry (‘Harry’) Hartland, the millionaire business man and property owner, was found shot dead at his home Cloud’s Hill in the Aberdare Mountains; that police suspected foul play and were actively pursuing enquiries. Accompanying this was a studio portrait photograph of the victim, a balding, middle-aged man with heavy features. The eyes looked out somewhat aggressively.

  Reports on subsequent days yielded further details. Hartland had been shot several times in the head and body on the veranda of Cloud’s Hill. No-one had witnessed the murder itself, but two figures had been spotted running away from the scene. Hartland’s wife, a Mrs Freda Hartland ‘who is well-known as a leading figure in Kenyan society’, had not been at Cloud’s Hill at the time but had been staying with a friend in Nairobi. The photograph of Freda Hartland showed a strikingly beautiful, blonde woman with chiselled, sensual features. That picture gave me a double shock. I recognised at one and the same time the face of Freda Daventry and the look that I had seen on the Cloud’s Hill veranda.

  Two days after this came the announcement that an arrest had been made. Police searching the hut of Ibrahim, one of Hartland’s Somali servants, discovered a .32 Colt revolver hidden under a mattress. This gun was shown to have been fired recently and its ammunition corresponded with some of the bullets which had been found in Hartland’s body. It added, for the first time, that Police believed that Hartland had been shot eight times, five times by a Colt .32, and three times by another revolver of unknown type. The report concluded that a few days before the murder, Ibrahim had had a violent disagreement with his master after being beaten for an offence connected with some missing silver forks.

  There was some sort of paragraph on the Hartland murder each day in the Messenger after that, but little was added to the stock of hard facts until about a week later when the police stated that the ownership of the Colt revolver had been traced to one Lord Glenross, ‘the popular socialite and white hunter’. Lord ‘Jock’ Glenross told the police that he had noticed that his Colt was missing several weeks before the murder when he had been visiting Cloud’s Hill. He had not reported the gun’s absence at the time because he just thought he had ‘mislaid’ it. A picture of Lord Glenross showed a man in an African bush setting with one foot planted on the head of the lion he has just shot, a rifle carelessly slung across his back. The face, partly shadowed by a solar topee, is grinning broadly.

  Another week passed before there was another front page headline:

  LORD GLENROSS ARRESTED

  FOR HARTLAND KILLING

  Again, the paragraphs below supplied very meagre additional information, beyond the fact that Ibrahim had been cleared of all charges because it had been shown that he was ‘elsewhere’ on the night of the crime, and it was now believed that he had been ‘deliberately and falsely implicated’. It was also stated that: ‘Lord Glenross had been a close and intimate friend of Mr Harry Hartland and, more particularly, of his wife Freda Hartland’. Inside the paper the editorial section contained a rather windy piece of comment on ‘the low standard of morals prevailing among the wealthy élite of Kenyan society where adultery is looked on as a casual pastime, to be indulged in without thought, like gambling or excessive drinking’.

  At this point I looked at my watch. It was getting late and I must go to the theatre. I would have to wait another day for the trial reports—if there had been a trial.

  Mrs King was in the Green Room that night during the interval. She smiled at me with more than her usual complacency.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘I hear you spent a weekend at Cloud’s Hill.’ I nodded. ‘I often used to stay there myself, you know. In the old days. I know a great deal about gardens. Freda never failed to take my advice. She was born under Aquarius, always a changeable sign. Are the gardens still exquisite?’

  ‘Superb.’

  Mrs King seemed disappointed. ‘People can be so ungrateful,’ she said. ‘Don’t you agree?’

  I smiled, muttered something about checking a prop and left the room. The following afternoon I was back at the Messenger offices.

  The trial was preceded by the dramatic discovery of love letters from Freda Hartland to Lord Glenross. Though they did not directly incriminate her they provided incontrovertible evidence that the two had been conducting a passionate affair. She was interviewed on a number of occasions by the police, but stuck to her story that she had no part in the murder and that she was in Nairobi at the time. ‘This alibi,’ wrote the Messenger, ‘has been confirmed by the person with whom she was staying, Mrs Sabrina King, widow of the late Dr Conrad King, the distinguished Nairobi osteopath.’

  A partial palm print corresponding to that of Glenross had been found on the Colt .32 which ballistics confirmed to have been one of the weapons u
sed in the killing. Witnesses came forward to testify that they had seen Glenross at Cloud’s Hill on the night of the murder. There was talk of a second killer with a second gun, but neither could be identified or found.

  In May of that year Jock Glenross went on trial for the murder of Harry Hartland at Nairobi’s Central Court. I did not pore over every detail of the judicial process, as recorded by the Messenger, but it would seem in retrospect that Glenross was doomed from the start, despite the best efforts of a flamboyant K.C. hired from Johannesburg to defend him. Glenross probably delivered the fatal blow to his own case when, half way through the trial, and against his counsel’s advice, he decided to change the entire basis of his presumed innocence by claiming that he had killed Hartland in self-defence. Glenross alleged that he had quarrelled with Hartland over his affair with Freda and Hartland had threatened him with a revolver. There was a struggle and both guns had gone off accidentally. But why had there been eight bullets in Hartland’s body, and where was the second gun?

  Freda Hartland had gone into the witness box as a grieving widow ‘dressed’, according to the Messenger, ‘immaculately in black with a spotted veil and a diamond Cartier pin on her lapel’. Opinions differed as to her performance. Some said it was courageous, stoically grief-stricken; others claimed it was a heartless and calculated charade. She had admitted to her passion for ‘Jock’, but denied all knowledge of the murder either before or after the fact.

  Despite the pressure of evidence many had apparently believed that the all white jury would acquit Glenross, or that he could be found guilty of some lesser offence. It would appear that for most of the trial Glenross too shared this sanguine point of view, though, towards the end he was overheard ‘by our reporter’ to say to his defence counsel: ‘They don’t hang whites in this country, do they?’

  The verdict was guilty and, despite many petitions for reprieve and appeals for mercy, Lord Glenross was hanged, almost a year to the day after he had committed his crime.

  I emerged from the Messenger offices that afternoon in a daze. My mind was so immersed in the events of the trial that I was nearly run over as I crossed the road to get to the theatre. The vehicle in question was a Land Rover being driven at high speed. I recovered my senses sufficiently to notice that the driver had been Freda Daventry and that in the passenger seat beside her sat Mrs King.

  IV

  A few days later something happened which I had been dreading: Jumbo rang me up at the theatre asking me to spend another Saturday to Monday at Cloud’s Hill. When I hesitated, he said: ‘Freda and I so much enjoyed your previous stay.’ A note of pleading was detectable, and I felt under an obligation. When I agreed Jumbo’s normal clipped tones were resumed.

  ‘Good show! Pick you up from the theatre on Saturday night as usual.’

  On the Saturday night, in the wings before the show, Samantha said to me: ‘So we’re off again to the flesh pots of Cloud’s Hill to be waited on hand and foot, are we? You lucky boy!’

  Ignoring this, I said: ‘What happened to Freda after Glenross was hanged?’

  ‘Oh, so you’ve found out about that, have you? I wondered what you’d been up to in the Messenger offices. Well, you know, after the execution there was a great wave of sympathy for Jock Glenross in spite of everything. Someone told me that he didn’t behave terribly well at the end: kept snivelling and shouting out Freda’s name, you know. Which was rather a shock because everyone thought he’d go like the officer and gentleman he supposedly was. I remember him only vaguely, but though what he did was pretty foul obviously, he had been an attractive sort of scamp. All the charm in the world; and plenty of people beside Freda had been in love with him. Naturally they started to blame her for the whole thing, saying she had been at the bottom of it all, led him on, that sort of thing. She’d been a big cheese in Kenyan society, queen of the Muthaiga Club. All that. Suddenly she was persona non grata. Practically everyone was giving her the cold shoulder, except Sabrina of course, but then she didn’t count. People began to notice the colour of her skin, so she was out too. Well, Freda couldn’t stand this, so she went off to South Africa. She didn’t sell up as I would have done: Freda always had a bloody minded streak. Well, in Durban she met Jumbo and by the time she came back to Kenya she was married to him. Of course, at first everyone thought Jumbo had just married her for the Hartland millions she had inherited, but very soon they realised he was as straight as they come and they began to make overtures to them both. But Freda wasn’t having any of it. I told you she was bloody minded. She thought they had betrayed her in her hour of need and she didn’t want anything to do with the swine. So she’s remained pretty isolated ever since. And now, if you will excuse me, I am about to play Judith Bliss and you are supposed to be my young admirer Sandy Tyrrell. Shall we now address ourselves to Mr Coward’s Hay Fever?’

  When Jumbo came round to collect me after the show, he was unusually taciturn. Freda was not waiting for us in the Land Rover. Jumbo remained somewhat brusque as we drove out of Nairobi, and I was beginning to wonder if I had offended in some way. Then, just as we were passing the junction of the Karen and Ngong roads, he spoke.

  ‘I think I ought to warn you, young feller. Sabrina King is currently staying with us.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Yes. You may well say “Ah”!’

  My laconic answer for some reason put him in a better frame of mind, and for the rest of the journey he was almost his usual self.

  On our arrival at Cloud’s Hill we found Freda and Mrs King in the sitting room with the Ridgebacks. Freda was nursing a drink and seemed withdrawn; but Mrs King, in a gold-edged purple sari, her coffee-coloured arms ringed with bangles, burned very bright.

  ‘Welcome back to Cloud’s Hill!’ she said, then to me: ‘Hello again, young man. And how was the Hay Fever tonight? Not too severe, I hope?’ She accompanied this dreary little joke with a tinkling laugh, like Samantha whenever she delivered a witty line. She was behaving as if she and not Freda were the hostess of Cloud’s Hill. Jumbo snorted and went for the whisky decanter.

  ‘Care for a snifter?’ he said to me.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Now, we don’t want you two boys to drink yourselves silly,’ said Mrs King, wagging her finger and smiling roguishly at us, ‘because Freda and I have a plan. We’re going to play Bridge, Freda and I against you two. Girls against boys.’

  ‘Now hold your horses, madam,’ said Jumbo. ‘In the first place this young man has not had his sandwiches, and is probably done in after all that acting. In the second place, how do you know he plays the wretched game?’

  ‘Oh we know that. Last time he was here he played Honeymoon Bridge with Freda and beat her hollow. Isn’t that right, Freda?’

  Freda merely nodded. Her eyes were following Mrs King as she darted and glittered about the room like a dragonfly. Jumbo looked at me enquiringly. I smiled and shrugged in acquiescence. Just then Abdullah entered with a tray of sandwiches.

  ‘We can eat our sandwiches at the Bridge table,’ said Mrs King. ‘See, we’ve got it all laid out for you.’ She pointed to a corner of the room where, under a standard lamp, the card table and four chairs had been set up, complete with two packs of cards, score sheets and pencils. ‘Shall we say one Kenyan shilling a point?’

  Jumbo looked at me with a concerned expression. I was young and I felt that my nerve was being tested. I nodded soberly; he winked and gave me the thumbs up sign. Inside I felt very hollow.

  In those days I was a fairly competent Bridge player, and I had a feeling that Jumbo might be a good one too. Freda and Mrs King were unknown quantities, but I was reasonably confident that we could match them. All the same, I could barely afford to be even a few hundred points down by the end of the session. Besides, I have always had a deep aversion to gambling for high stakes. In that respect, if in no other, I seem to have inherited my father’s genes of cautious respectability.

  When we began playing it soon became evident that the two
partnerships were quite evenly matched, with the advantage perhaps slightly on our side. Jumbo’s and my play was solid and we rarely overbid a hand; on the other hand Freda and Mrs King had flair and pulled off a number of spectacular slam bids. Freda continued to drink steadily. She was a naturally sharp player but, as the evening went on, she made one or two careless and costly mistakes. Mrs King was perhaps the most keyed up of all of us. She counted every point and tried to keep her partner’s drinking under control. Mrs King herself did not drink and only ate one sandwich, but on the table she kept a little silver case which contained a supply of strange lavender coloured sweets that she would occasionally take out and suck but never offer to anyone else.

  Her gamesmanship was masterly and subtle. If Jumbo or I played or bid a hand less well than we might have done, she would always explain, with a great show of kindliness and patience, precisely how we had gone wrong. Though I don’t think these attempts to demoralise or irritate us were particularly successful, I noticed, as the evening went on, that ‘the girls’, as Jumbo called them, were beginning to go uncomfortably ahead on points. It was not that Jumbo and I were playing any worse than them, but the run of the cards did seem to be decisively in their favour. I noticed that this was especially the case when Mrs King was dealing. I don’t think I suspected foul play at that point—the idea was too preposterous—but I did dislike the exultant glitter in her eyes as she pulled off yet another spectacular slam. When I looked across at Jumbo I saw an unfamiliarly dark expression on his face. He was controlling himself by concentrating furiously on the game.