No Truce with Time

by Alec Waugh

“To make enquiries : find out the kind of man that Gerald was; who his friends were; how he was circumstanced; whether he was happy; whether there was any reason why he should want to take his life.”

  “And he’ll find of course there wasn’t.”

  “As you say, of course.”

  “And how long do you think he’ll take over it? “

  “As long as he can.”

  “What? “

  “It’ll be a holiday for him. His firm will be paying his expenses. He won’t be in any hurry to get back.”

  “You mean …”

  She paused, helplessly. It was so plain : so very plain.

  “He arrives this afternoon? “

  “He caught a plane to St. Lucia last night.”

  “I see.”

  She stared at the sheet of embossed notepaper. Then shrugged. Pull yourself together, she told herself.

  She rose to her feet.

  “I’ll be down to meet him.”

  It would be with a brave face, top, that she’d be meeting him. There was no need for her to summon bravery. There was no need for her to be afraid. What was there to be afraid about? What had she got to fear? Mr. Hutchins could stay here as long as he could persuade his firm that his presence here was necessary. He could ask all the questions that he wanted. He would receive the same answer all the time. Everyone would tell him the same thing, that Gerald Montague was the happiest man they’d known. They had not heard, none of them had ever heard those long tirades, those choked grumblings—how intolerable life was, what was the point of living, those fools in England… No one had heard those outbursts but herself.

  “You’d say, wouldn’t you?” she asked Jeanette on her return, “that your master was a happy man? “

  Jeanette laughed at that: flinging back her head in a high-pitched West Indian cackle.

  “Happy! Master Gerald was the happiest man that ever Ah did see anywhere. Ah couldn’t imagine anyone not being happy when they’re with Master Gerald. Ah can’t see why anyone could want anything more than to be with him. Just that, and Ah’d be happy.”

  And that was what Jeanette thought. That was what everyone had thought at the club. They hadn’t realized what it was really like to live with him. Everyone thought she had an easy life. Once it had annoyed her. They didn’t credit her with the fight that she put up : they did not even know that she put up a fight at all. All the time, she had resented that. But she was grateful now. No one would think of putting into the mind of this Mr. Hutchins the suggestion that Gerald was a man who would be glad to die. It would be a straight-forward business. Hutchins would make his enquiries. He would find that Gerald was happy and respected, that his finances were as solvent as any man’s could hope to be in an island like El Santo. Hutchins wouldn’t be like a man from London. He would have a West Indian standard for prosperity. He would realize that Gerald was quite well-to-do, that Gerald had every reason to be hopeful about the future. Gerald’s health had been an island joke. He’d ask if Gerald was happily married, and he’d hear the same story there. By all accounts Gerald hadn’t played the town when he was young. She really was almost the first woman that he had looked at seriously. Since his marriage, she was very certain that there had not been even a flirtation. He had lost interest in that side of life. While as for herself …

  Not a word of gossip had been breathed against her, she was sure of that, not by the white people anyhow. If he chose to listen to gossip in the coloured cafés, he would hear so much gossip anyhow that he would find it impossible to disentangle fact from fiction.

  While as for actual evidence. There was no evidence. She had destroyed, she had been very careful to destroy every single letter, every single note that she had ever had from Barclay. She knew what coloured maids were like. And even if he were to feel suspicious—in that unlikeliest of chances—what possible proof was there that Gerald knew? Had anyone seen the slightest alteration in his manner. Could they have been friendlier together that last evening at the Osbertons’. No one could imagine, no one could possibly imagine that Gerald had killed himself on that account.

  Of course it would be all right.

  With a high heart, she drove into Rodney to meet in Carrington’s office a medium-sized, stocky, middle-aged man, with a slightly bald head and the look of a prosperous family man with a home fifteen miles out of London. He was a reassuringly familiar type.

  She held her hand out to him, and his handshake was of the hearty man-to-man type she had expected. She felt completely at her ease. She smiled. She wanted to put him in his turn at ease. It was best to make a joke of it.

  “So you’ve come down to investigate my husband’s suicide? “she said.

  “Suicide? “

  He paused. He was smiling, but there was an unexpectedly withdrawn expression on his face.

  “Suicide. I don’t think I ever mentioned the word suicide,” he said.

  29

  The smell of himrod hung about the house. For two days now she had been conscious of it, faint, intermittent, but persistent. It was a smell of which she had been scarcely conscious even in the early morning in the days when Gerald had burnt himrod every night. By ten o’clock its thickly-sweet smell had been dissipated by the sun and wind. She had been conscious of it, but never noticed it. It was only now that she noticed it: noticed the ghost of it, faint, sickly sweet, persistent. She had told Jeanette to scour Gerald’s room. For a whole morning the far end of the verandah had run with water, yet the smell remained : remained so that she could think of nothing else, could not concentrate on her book, as she sat in her long chair three evenings later in the starlit dusk.

  Half-way down the verandah Jeanette was laying out the supper. Impatiently Mary turned to her.

  “Surely you can smell it now,” she said.

  “No, Mistress Mary. Ah can’t smell nothing.”

  It was the answer she always gave. Because she didn’t want to smell it. Because she wouldn’t admit that she hadn’t cleaned that room out properly. Because she didn’t want the bother of cleaning out the room again. But natives had an infinitely more powerful sense of smell than white people had. There it was again. Faint, but unmistakable. Of course Jeanette must notice it. Of course she must. Unless …

  Unless she were herself imagining it, as she had imagined so much else during these last three days, as it was so easy to imagine things on this long balcony, in this encircling silence. How impatiently seven months ago she had waited for silence to fall on it; for respite from the shuffle of Gerald’s feet, his heavy breathing, his lumbering movements, his groanings when he stooped or stretched, his fits of coughing. The bungalow had never been really silent. Even when Gerald was asleep, she could hear his breathing. But now … It was so silent that the rattle of a plate as Jeanette laid the table made her jump. Would it be surprising if she began to imagine things, here in this unusual silence : with her memory, her imagination haunted, with the picture rising before her eyes of that obvious suburban face, its flat voice echoing in her ears, “Suicide. I don’t think I ever mentioned suicide”? With the word suicide underlined; meaningly; unmistakably Was it surprising that her nerves were jumping?

  She rose to her feet. She began to pace the length of the verandah. She was imagining things. Just as she had imagined that smell of himrod. There couldn’t really be a smell. If there had been, Jeanette would have noticed it. Hutchins hadn’t underlined that word, there was no meaning behind that remark. Just as there was no smell of himrod.

  Yet there was a smell. She had caught it now. Faint, sickly sweet. There was a smell. And Hutchins. If he had not come down here to investigate a suicide, why had he come? What in heaven’s name was he doing here?

  At her side came the shuffle of bare feet.

  “Your supper’s ready, Mistress Mary.”

  It was the kind of supper that she had never been able to order in Gerald’s time: soup; an egg salad; a coconut cream sweet. Within ten minutes she was back again in her long ch
air, and yes, there it was again: faint, almost imperceptible but unmistakable, that thick, heavy, sickly sweet scent. There was a smell. Hutchins had underlined that word.

  She put aside her book. She could not read. She rose to her feet. Once again she began that long pacing of the verandah. If only she could escape. If only she could get away. It was not half-past seven. There would still be a number of people at the club. She had only to walk some fifty paces to the garage: a five minutes’ drive, and she’d be in a friendly atmosphere, a familiar atmosphere where she could forget these diseased imaginings.

  Yes, but at the club there would be waiting for her that flat voice, that withdrawn stare. There would be the unasked question in those heavily pouched eyes: “So, you seem to be enjoying yourself pretty well. Your husband’s death doesn’t seem to have abated your capacity for enjoyment.”

  Wearily, she pressed her hands against her head.

  Come along, she adjured herself, pull yourself together. What are you afraid of? What is there to be afraid of? This man’s not a detective: he’s an ordinary insurance agent who’s been sent down here to examine a claim under a life policy: a claim for two thousand pounds. Two thousand pounds. What’s that to a company with a capital of half a million?

  They’re paying out sums like that every other day. They’ve already made a substantial profit out of Gerald. They can’t be worried. They wouldn’t bother to send a detective down over a case like this.

  This wasn’t one of those obviously fraudulent cases where thousands were involved: which had to be examined if only for the principle of the thing, to frighten others. This wasn’t a case like that. The sending down of “their Mr. Hutchins ‘ was merely a routine matter. They had nothing for “their Mr. Hutchins” to do in Trinidad. “Their Mr. Hutchins” wanted a change of air. Yes, that was all there was to it. Even if their Mr. Hutchins decided to take the responsibility into his own hands, to play at being the detective, what could he find out?

  What was there he could find out? Any suspicion that the actual conduct of the evidence might have caused must have been allayed by the answers he had received about Gerald and Gerald’s life. Was there anything in the evidence that could rouse suspicion? The lock? It was a crucial point. But had he spotted it? It had been brought out at the inquest, that a new lock had been put on that door, but no attention had been paid to it. Why should it have? It wasn’t In anyone’s interest to pay attention to it. But it was important, clearly, that a new lock had been put on only a few days before. It was the lock after all, that was the direct cause of Gerald’s death. Had Hutchins felt curious about that lock? Had he wondered if there were any special reason for its having been put on: whether there could be any connection between that lock and the accident he was investigating? Had he spotted that? Had the new lock made him feel suspicious? Had he taken any steps to confirm those suspicions?

  He had been on the island now three days. During those three days, she had only seen him once. She had only been into town three times, twice during the morning, once to the club in the afternoon. She had kept to herself as had seemed appropriate to her position. She had no idea what Mr. Hutchins had been doing. Had he been holiday-making, enjoying himself; bathing and drinking at the Rodney club, dancing in the coloured café? Or had he really been playing the detective? Had it occurred to him to make enquiries about that lock? If it had not, then clearly he was no detective. If he had made no enquiries, then there was no need for her to worry. If she could get that point clear…

  She dreamt about Gerald that night: or rather he was in her dream, part of its background.

  It was a trivial, inconsequential dream in which she was a married woman, with Gerald a part of her married life, with Barclay a part of that life, too; though undramatically. A pleasant trivial dream; the kind of dream she might have had any time during the last six months.

  When she woke, she found it difficult to remember that she had not woken to the familiar world that had been its back ground. She listened for the sound of Gerald’s movements, asked herself whether or not she would be going out on the launch that afternoon: wondered, then suddenly remembered … remembered that it was not to that familiar world but to a new, strange and terrifying world that she was waking; remembered with a shock, with a sense of loss, of homesickness for that other world. If only it was to that other world that she was waking …

  It was wearily, with a heavy heart, that she flung back the sheet, pushed aside the mosquito net; faced the long slow day that waited her: a day identical in every detail with the day before, identical in every detail with the days ahead. She had thought her life dull ten days ago. It had been a melodrama compared with what it had become. She was a prisoner upon her balcony. She could drive into the town : for shopping, to change library books, for a cup of coffee at the Lido. She could go to the club in the afternoon and watch the tennis. But if she gave any sign that she was happy, that she was enjoying life, at once she would give rise to comment. She would excite suspicion. That flat voice would start underlining words. As long as “their Mr. Hutchins “was on the island, she must be circumspect. And as for seeing Barclay …

  She laughed ironically, remembering how, leaning on the railing of the verandah, looking over Rodney, she had thought impatiently, if only I were free.

  Free indeed. If only she had known then, how free she was: free to go where she liked, when she liked, free to see Barclay any time she chose, to walk into the Lido with him, to sail with him in his yacht. Whereas now… The mere fact of being seen together would put suspicion into the mind of “their Mr. Hutchins.” Free! She had thought that bv the closing of a door she had won through to freedom. How little she had guessed how heavy a door she was shutting on herself, what a prisoner she had made herself.

  At the garage, she could see Dufort at work upon her car. His presence reminded her of that which she had to do. She called across to him.

  “Who was it fixed that lock for us? ”

  “Winn, Mistress Mary.”

  “Winn? I thought you would have gone to Seton.”

  “Oh no, Mistress Mary. Seton’s old. He’s lazy too. He can’t do a job the way that Winn can. That’s what Ah was saying only the other morning to that Mister Hutchins.”

  “What! ”

  “That gentleman that’s come from Trinidad, that’s staying at the hotel. He came up to see you, but found that you were out. He was telling me that he’d broke the lock on his suit-case, asked me who was the best man to get it mended. Ah told him Winn.”

  “You mean …”

  She paused. She had had no idea that Hutchins had been up here.

  “When was he here? ” she asked.

  “Yesterday. No not yesterday, the day before.”

  “What time? ”

  “The morning.”

  Two mornings ago. And two mornings ago, they had met, she and Hutchins, as she was going into the library. He must have come straight up. He had come because he had known that she would not be here, because he had enquiries to make. What else had he asked? who else had he seen?

  Had he seen Jeanette? Yes, he had apparently. He had; asked her when her mistress was expected back.

  “You never told me he had called.”

  “Ah didn’t think it mattered, Mistress Mary. When Ah said that Ah didn’t expect you back till noon, he said he knew where he could find you.”

  “Was that all he said? ”

  “Most all, Mistress Mary. He just said how sad it was about Master Gerald, said what a shock it must have been to you, how brave you had been coming into the kitchen like that, not breaking down, as Lucille told him.”

  “So he saw Lucille too? ”

  “Yes, Mistress Mary. He said he wanted to see her range. He’d heard she could make the best pigeon pie in the island, he wanted her to show him how, he said.”

  So he’d seen all the staff, asked them all questions. At a time, too, when he had known she would not be there; had made his enquiries insidiously,
as a real detective would.

  I wonder what he asked Winn, she thought.

  He hands were dry on the wheel as she drove down to Rodney. It was a dry, hot morning. Flags were flying from the coloured cafés. It was mid-February. Mardi Gras was only a few days distant. Already the natives were practising their calypsos. Would there be any reference to her in them? It would not be the first time that a scandal to which the Rodney club had resolutely shut its eyes had been blazoned through the streets by hooded figures.

  Everyone knew, of course. There had been a time when it pleased her to think that everyone did know. She had had the feeling of people being on her side, helping her, encouraging her, but now …

  She had to make an effort, a real effort to keep her voice light and casual as she walked into Winn’s shop.

  “I was wondering,” she said, “if you could find time to put a lock on our greenhouse door. I feel that it’s unsafe leaving it open the way we do.”

  “That’s exactly what I was wondering when I put that lock on your garage door.”

  “Oh yes, you did that, didn’t you?”

  “Last month. I remember clearly. It was my birthday. I remember Mr. Montague coming in and saying, ‘My wife wants a lock upon the garage door. I think it’s nonsense myself, but she thinks we need it.’ ”

  “So he said that, did he? “

  “Those were his very words. I was repeating them to Mr. Hutchins.”

  “You were! ”

  “And only yesterday. He wanted the lock of his trunk repaired. He was mentioning that very job of mine. Your man recommended me. Very grateful I am too for it. He’d been asking your man where he could get the lock repaired, and Dufort was telling him that I’d done that job for you. ‘ Well, I’m very glad they’re pleased with it,’ I said, and then I repeated what Mr. Montague had said. I chuckled when I told him Mr. Montague couldn’t see no sense in putting in that lock, but I took good care to put a good one on. And when shall I be putting on that lock upon your greenhouse? ”

  “Oh, any time, any time. As soon as you can manage.”