No Truce with Time

by Alec Waugh

  The fifth commandmant. How very much more terrifying that had sounded. You could never imagine anyone you knew incurring the wrath of that commandment: murder: a murderess : someone who could plot and scheme: who would be cruel, criminal; devoid of human feeling. A murderess belonged to a race apart. Yet when it came to the point, to what did it amount: the shutting of a door : the switching of an engine tap. No, even that of itself, the switching of a tap, was not enough. It was the shutting of the door that mattered. The mere shutting of a door, and one became a murderess. To be arraigned as a murderess before a judge for the mere shutting of a door.

  Not that she would ever be arraigned.

  Young Stewart had been right. It was a question of doing a job efficiently, of being an organised person. One didn’t need to be found out, if one were practical; if one bided one’s time, saw one’s chance, and took it; behaved sensibly afterwards, and, more important still, behaved sensibly before, did nothing that would arouse suspicion, did not make enemies. That was how people got found out. They sowed suspicions. Enemies began to gossip. Questions were asked because you seemed to have welcomed a certain death, by a too hasty marriage, by a sudden spending of money, a sudden launching out in unexpected ways; as though you had only been waiting for a certain death. Questions were asked. Heads were nodded. Gossip grew. Anonymous letters were written. Evidence was re-examined. A body was exhumed. Just when you thought you were completely safe. That was what happened in novels. That was what happened in real life, when unorganized people took independent actions, as often as not for the first time in their lives. That could not happen here. That could not happen now. How could it? There was no one to gossip. She had no enemies. There was no one to write anonymous letters. Even if anyone were to write them, what was there that could be discovered? What proof was there, what could there be? Stewart was right. It was a question of being organised, of behaving sensibly.

  Keep calm, she adjured herself. Don’t lose your head. Wait. The worst’s soon over. The ordeal of the inquest. You’ve lived through that, you can live through anything. Don’t lose your head.

  27

  From the drive came the sound of voices, a familiar voice, an unexpectedly familiar voice. She glanced at her watch. Had she really been reading for two hours? J. B., so soon?

  He had come alone. There was a strained expression on his face; an uncertain look as though he were uncertain what expression under these circumstances he should assume.

  “My dear lady,” he said, “my dear, dear lady.”

  He hesitated, then put out his hands, taking her hands in his.

  “I’ve only just learnt.. I’d no idea. It was the first thing I heard when the ship docked. I was looking for you, naturally. I’d expected to see you on the quay. I asked for you. First thing. When they told me, why of course I drove right up.”

  “That was kind of you.”

  “Kind. Why, that’s the least thing. A trouble, after all, like yours … When you are the reason, the chief reason, one of the main reasons, that’s to say, for my coming back here.”

  He was flushed. He was speaking nervously, in a manner quite unlike his own.

  “You’ll have a punch?” she asked.

  “No, no, no thank you. Not as early as this. At least, perhaps, well, yes I will. A whisky. Yes, I could manage that.”

  He took a sudden gulp at it. She watched him with a smile. She had never seen him like this before, nervous and uncertain of himself. His nervousness accentuated the schoolboy side of him, making him seem more than ever a grown-up school-boy.

  “I was planning a party for tonight,” he said. “I’d arranged for it by cable. I’d like to cancel it, now that you can’t come. There doesn’t seem any point to it without you. But I can’t, can I, very well? People have made their plans. Then all the catering … I couldn’t very well get out of it.”

  His face wore a pained expression. What a child he was. How transparent. She knew exactly what he was feeling, what he was thinking. He was taken off his guard. That was why he was nervous. He had had his plans upset. That was why he was peeved. He was worried at finding her a widow instead of a married woman. He had laid his plans round the fact of her being a married woman. A widow might make a complication in his life. There was no room in his life for complications. He was faced unexpectedly with a how-to-break-it-off-successfully situation. He was fussed, and he was peeved; peeved because his plans had been interfered with. He was half the disappointed schoolboy, half the indignant financier who is unused to having his plans miscarry. He had arranged his party with such care. He had pictured his return in terms of this party. And now the whole point of his party had been taken away. Poor J. B., she thought. It was too bad, this robbing him of his toys.

  “What are your plans now?” he asked her.

  She shrugged. She had not begun to plan. There would be a number of things to settle up. He knew what lawyers were like, when they got their hands on things. She would go back to England, he supposed. There were so many places to be seen : Italy, Greece; she might try America. There was nothing she might not do.

  “See as much of the world as you can while you’ve the spirit to enjoy it,” he adjured her.

  It was almost as though he were ordering her away: as though he were anxious to have her as far away as possible, to be rid of the responsibility of her. Poor J. B., she thought.

  Poor, poor J. B., she was to echo later, seven hours later, as she sat on her balcony in the warm swift fallen dusk of the Antilles. The party had been in progress now an hour. But she was not alone. Mrs. Trevor was at her side. She had driven up from the party half an hour before.

  “I couldn’t bear to think of you alone,” she had explained, “with all those people there, all your friends. Under the circumstances I don’t think they should have had the party. When you think of what Gerald meant to us. But I suppose you couldn’t expect a man like Mr. Bruce to realize that. Some Americans aren’t very sensitive, now are they? But when I saw them all together, all your friends, all Gerald’s friends, when I thought that only five days ago at the Cartwrights’, in that same room, how Gerald had been the centre of just such a party, how he should have been the centre of this party: and when I saw the way Miss Bruce … I’m quite sure that she’s a charming girl, charming, absolutely charming, and I’m sure that she means well, I’ve no doubt of that—no doubt at all, and I’m sure that if she gets the right kind of husband she’ll make him a splendid wife, I’m sure of that— quite sure. I wouldn’t like you to think that I didn’t like Miss Bruce, or that I had anything to say against her, there’s no harm in her—no harm at all. At the same time I do say—I’ve said it before and I stick to it—the Americans have an unfortunate way of bringing up their children, particularly their girls. Compare her now with a girl like Mavis …

  It was a long comparison. Mary smiled to herself. She knew exactly what Mrs. Trevor meant. She could picture Kitty now, talking at the top of her voice, throwing back swizzle after swizzle, taking men by the arm as she spoke to them, calling across the room, assuming herself with every gesture, every intonation of her voice, to be the one important person in the room. How often had she not watched Kitty with angry, envious eyes. How miserable she would have been watching her this evening had she been there, at Gerald’s side, with the sound of Gerald’s laughter in her ears, with her own voice, her heart’s voice miserably repeating its “never again ” refrain.

  “I couldn’t bear the thought of you all alone up here,” Mrs. Trevor was hurrying on. “I had to come up and see you. It must be terrible for you, terrible. Not of course that you will be alone for long. You’ll be going away almost at once. As soon as you’ve cleared up your affairs. And really, when you’ve got a lawyer like Mr. Carrington, so reliable, so honest, really you could leave everything in his hands now. What will you be doing? Mr. Bruce said that you would be travelling, a world cruise, perhaps? I do think that would be so wise. New places and new faces. You want to get away from
things.”

  Volubly the voice ran on. With half her attention, Mary listened. It was the same line that she had had from Mr. Carrington, that she had had from J. B. : that in the immediate future she would be having from one after another of the island’s residents.

  At the start, nothing but kindness had been offered her. The Administrator had insisted on her staying at his house. Everybody had been anxious to take off her shoulders the hundred and one responsibilities in connection with the funeral and the inquest.

  She could not have been shown more kindness. It was only with the greatest difficulty that she had convinced the Administrator’s wife that she would prefer to return to her own house after the inquest. There had been callers. There had been messages of condolence, gifts of sympathy.

  But that had been in the first, early days that corresponded with the first weeks in hospital of a long and crippling illness. Everyone was attentive during those first weeks. There were visits, there were flowers. There were friends. But after those weeks, the visits grew few, the flow of gifts subsided. No one could be bothered over a permanent invalid. In a few days more, she would have reached the position of a permanent invalid. She would become a responsibility of which everyone would be anxious to be rid. It would not be flowers and sympathy but advice that she would be receiving.

  “Of course you will be leaving, won’t you?” Mrs. Trevor was continuing. “There’d be no point, would there, in your staying here? A woman by herself. It’s no kind of life. If you had actually been born here, if you were one of us, that would be another matter. But you aren’t. Your roots are in England. All your friends are there. You’d be miserable here. I expect that even with Gerald here, you must have felt lonely and homesick sometimes. Yes, of course you must. Think how much lonelier you would feel without him. Rodney’s not such a bad place for a bachelor. But for a widow. No, no, it would be quite impossible. What would there be for you to do? One’s so lost as a woman by oneself. One can’t entertain. One doesn’t fit into other people’s parties. And there’d be the feeling all the time of how much more gay it used to be. It must have been such fun going about with Gerald. You were such a team, as the Americans say. Parties never really started till you’d arrived. You could not tell that of course; you couldn’t tell what parties were like when you weren’t at them. You and Gerald, one always thought of you together. It would be an impossible kind of life for you here, without him.”

  Impossible? As though life would be any more possible for her in London. Where would she go? What would there be for her to do, with her parents dead, her sisters married, all her friends scattered? She hadn’t been home since her illness, after her child had died. Six years ago. What would she find of her old world? Nothing. She would be even more of a stranger there than she was here. She had read enough descriptions of the loneliness of the colonial returned to the country that had grown foreign in his absence. She would be comfortably off, but not more than comfortably. She would not be able to entertain. Money went less far in England than out here. There would be income tax. She would only be able to afford a minute flat in an unfashionable part of London And what alternative was there? A drifting about third-rate hotels?

  She shuddered. What a life. Not that Mrs. Trevor would see that. Not that anyone in El Santo would see that. They would not want to see it; they would not want her to see it. They had only one concern as far as she was concerned : to be rid of a responsibility. They might not recognize it as that, not yet. But that was what they were doing. Already, in imagination, she could hear their bored resigned voices saying, “And there’s Mary Montague. We’ve got to ask her for the old boy’s sake.” That was how it would be. She did not blame them. She would be a responsibility all right. A bore and a responsibility.

  “And then there’s the question of re-marrying,” Mrs. Trevor was continuing. “Of course that’s the last thing you’d want to think of now. But it’s what Gerald would have wanted for you. And you haven’t really more than started to be middle-aged. It’s surprising what a high percentage of widows do re-marry. A lot of men seem to prefer widows. Only, you’ve got to go places where you’d meet them. What chance have you of meeting men in a place like this : the right kind of man, I mean? Think how hard even the prettiest of our girls are finding it to find the right kind of husband.”

  And naturally, thought Mary, you don’t want a designing widow about the place, who’d be ready to snatch away such eligible young men as come here. No, no, of course you don’t. I’d not only be a bore here, and a responsibility, I’d be a menace too. You want to be rid of me. And you’re right too, in the half of what you say. There’s no place here for a woman of thirty on her own : a widow, with no children, no work to do; a stranger too, with no links with the island, no family ties.

  Yes, Mrs. Trevor was right enough. There would be only-one thing to do—were it not for that one thing which Mrs. Trevor did not know, could not know, could not even guess at, that she had her own plans, her own solution. Herself she knew so well what she had to do. She had only to wait: and to be careful. Everything must come right now. Of course it would. It must.

  28

  “So you see now,” Mr. Carrington was saying, “why I was not quite happy about Camberley’s conduct of the inquest.”

  Incredulously, Mary stared at him: then stared at the letter he had handed her : a letter with the embossed heading, “The General Life Assurance Company, Trinidad.” She read i re-read it, then shook her head.

  “But it doesn’t say that. I don’t see how you make out it says that. And it says …”

  “All it says,” he interrupted her, “is that in connection with the death of your husband, and in respect to the claim of life insurance made against them for two thousand pounds, they are sending their Mr. Hutchins to expedite the matter. That’s all they say. But do you think they would say that at all if they were quite certain as to the validity of the claim? Would they go to the trouble and expense of sending across their Mr. Hutchins simply to expedite a matter? You don’t expect them to say in writing ‘ We are not going to make any payment under this claim until we are quite satisfied that the death was natural.’ ”

  “But…”

  “This is an old-fashioned policy,” Mr. Carrington explained. “It was not drawn up in this office. It contains a suicide clause. We would never have allowed it to pass.”

  “But who could imagine Gerald committed suicide? “

  “No one who knew him. But these people in Trinidad don’t know him. And because they don’t know him, they have considered on reading the evidence at the inquest that there was something not altogether satisfactory in the way that the evidence was taken.”

  “In what way unsatisfactory? “

  “I’ve the evidence here. Shall we go over it? “

  Clause by clause, question by question, he went over it.

  “Look at his questions to you, for instance. The coroner puts the answers into your mouth. He tells you what you did. Your husband drove. You were very tired. You left him to put away the car. You went straight to your room. You didn’t wait for your husband. Look how he goes on. ‘ You don’t read yourself to sleep.’ Telling you what you did. Not of course that it matters in your case. It’s not your evidence that’s important:. You can’t really give any evidence as to how your husband met his death. But the evidence is taken in such an unusual way that any experienced person reading it would feel puzzled, would be put on his guard, would feel suspicious of the coroner : would say ‘ What’s this fellow up to: why is he making everything so easy for her? ‘ Then when he came on to the doctor’s evidence…”

  Mr. Carrington paused, tapping his finger against the sheet.

  “I ask you. Look at it. He never lets the doctor tell his story. He gives the doctor your explanation. When the doctor tells him how your husband was lying, he asks immediately was the position a natural one. When he learns that it is, he proceeds to prompt him. ‘ Was it the position/ he asks, ‘ of a man w
ho had fallen asleep and been suffocated in his sleep? ‘ A most improper question. Then his next questions. ‘Would it be easy for him to fall asleep the moment a fit subsided, would fits come without warning? ‘ Question after question. Would he forget to turn off the engine, would he have noticed the banging of a door? It’s as though every question were designed to set the mind of the jury at rest.

  “Then look at the questions that he doesn’t ask. He never asked if there were any signs of Gerald having had a fit, a collar loosened, a tie deranged, a stain upon his coat. Not a single question. Nothing that could possibly produce an answer that might upset a jury. And then that summing up. He is actually instructing the jury as to what it is to say. He is assuming that a verdict of accidental death has been brought in, before the jury has retired. He’s resolved, you feel, to banish every thought of suicide from the jury’s mind. And yet you can see that he had the thought of suicide in his mind. You can sense it. It’s never stated. But you can almost feel that he’s arguing against a verdict of suicide. I’m not at all surprised that the insurance people in Trinidad were puzzled. Two thousand pounds is a lot of money. As I said at the time, I wish Camberley had been a little less chivalrous, a little more professionally conscientious.”

  He paused. He shook his head impatiently. He handed the sheets across to her.

  ‘ You see my point. I know, you know, everyone in El Santo knows, that Gerald Montague was the last person in the world to kill himself. And because he knew that, because we all knew it, Camberley handled the case in the way he did. But although we know that, the people in Trinidad do not. They’ve been worried by the evidence, by the whole way it was handled. That final summing up. It was such a forcing of the jury’s hands. It looks, it can’t help looking, as though the attempt to conceal something were being made.”

  “But why send this Mr. Hutchins? “