No Truce with Time

by Alec Waugh

  He knows, she thought, he knows. He’s on my track.

  It had cost her an effort to walk into the shack. It cost her al) the strength that she possessed to hold her head high as she walked out into the street.

  He knew. But she knew too, knew what she was up against. The knowledge braced her. Hutchins was suspicious. But how far could his suspicions lead him? Suspicions alone would not take him far. If she kept her head. That was all that: was needed: she must keep her head.

  In swift retrospect there passed before her the essential lessons of all those detective stories and memoirs that she had read during the preceding weeks. What was it she had thought during the inquest? That she was living through the third chapter of a novel: the preliminary chapter where the evidence was first set out; where the wary reader would recognize the clue that would lead to the final unravelling of the mystery. She had laughed at herself for thinking that. If it was a third chapter, it was the third chapter of a novel that would not be written. That’s what she had thought. But she had been wrong to laugh. It was like a novel. The succeeding chapters were being written: were conforming rigidly to plan. There had been an inquest with its verdict of death by accident; with no suspicion raised; with the criminal convinced that he had escaped; with the days passing and the sense of his security growing, not realizing that suspicion was already at work, that whispers were passing, that a net was being spread; that the law was waiting for the first mistake; the mistake that sooner or later was always made. That was the invariable formula. And she was realizing it. That was what was happening here. Suspicion was at work. What did Hutchins know ? More, considerably more, than the average detective knew by the two-hundredth page. He had the first clue, hadn’t he? He knew that the lock had been put upon the garage door at her wish against her husband’s. It was the lock, wasn’t it, that had caused the death? Wasn’t that ground enough for suspicion?

  Yes, but only for suspicion. Where was the proof? She had read a hundred times that the first clue once found, the rest fell into place, became an easy matter. But she had also read the angry outbursts of a hundred puzzled detectives. “What’s the use of certainty in one’s own mind, if one hasn’t the certainty that would convince a jury? ”

  Mr. Hutchins might have no doubt. But what proof had he? How far had he gone in his investigations? Had he found a motive? Why should she want to be free of Gerald? Money? There was not so much money that it would be worth while to take a life for it. Love? Had he any suspicion there? Had anyone connected her name with Barclay’s? The girls in the coloured cafés, doubtless. But what was their testimony worth? They would have gossiped about everyone. As likely as not in their love of the latest gossip, they would have coupled her name with J. B. instead of with Barclay. They forgot about everything that was three months old. Besides, she had been such obvious friends with Barclay. Everyone knew about their friendship. The only thing that might make him suspicious was the fact that since Gerald’s death, she had not seen Barclay once. Might not the avoidance of Barclay be the very mistake that sooner or later was made by everyone? Her attempt to avoid suspicion creating it? I’ll go round to him straightaway, she thought.

  It was not the first time that she had seen him since Gerald’s death. He had been at the funeral. He had been at the inquest. He had written her a note of sympathy. But it was the first time that she had seen him alone: the first time she had spoken to him.

  He showed no signs of surprise, however, at seeing her in his office doorway. His behaviour, his welcome of her did not suggest that in the ten days since they had met, a change not only in her life, but in their joint lives, had taken place: that now, through Gerald’s death, they were meeting on a different basis.

  He rose to his feet in his easy way. There was the same welcoming casual smile upon his lips, his voice took the same easy intonation.

  “Mary. But what a surprise, what a nice surprise.”

  But there was nothing in his bearing to suggest he was surprised. Just as there had been nothing in his bearing on his return from New York to suggest that his treatment of her was unexpected. It was extraordinary. Had he any idea of what was going on around him, of the effect that he had upon other people? Was he so self-absorbed that he had no conception of what was happening outside the narrow circle of his own immediate interests ?

  He had believed that she had taken quite calmly his defection of her on that first return. It had probably never occurred to him that she would have counted with agonized foreboding the minutes to the docking of the Lady Grenville. What would he say if he were to be told how, through those long mornings, those long afternoons, she had seen seven words stare back at her from a sheet of mauve-grey notepaper; too restless, too impatient for his return to write? What would he say were he to be told that he was responsible for Gerald’s death: that he had brought a woman to such a state of hysteria that she had taken life? How shocked, how astonished he would be to learn that she had even contemplated such an act.

  Her eyes took a long, slow inventory of his features. No, she thought, no, you’ve no idea what I’ve been living through. We’ve seemed so close, we’ve been so close. Yet at heart we’ve been strangers, complete strangers to one another.

  Was that always the way it was, she wondered : that human beings always were strangers to one another, that there was no real interpenetration of thought and feeling, that it was only at exceptional times like this, that one realized how alone in life one was. Was it? She did not know. It was no good thinking about that now.

  “I’d come in for an interview with Carrington,” she said. “I’m a little early. I wondered if you’d take me to the Lido.”

  As they came into the café, the large proprietress lifted he-head and fixed on them her habitual incurious stare. Mary was acutely conscious of that stare following her across the room. Yes, she knew. Just as Hutchins knew. Just as everyone knew except the two or three people who really were concerned : Barclay, J. B., and Kitty.

  She could imagine their astonishment if they ever learnt. How they would stare at one another, unable to speak, afraid to speak: each in their own heart self-accusing, and because of that self-accusation ready to accuse the others. She could hear the lift in Barclay’s voice as he told the story, as he would so often retell the story: would have to retell the story in the years ahead.

  A scandal like that never died. The world at large forgot in a week or so, but the scandal clung for ever round the one or two people who had been concerned. For the rest of his life, Barclay would be aware that the moment he left a room, someone would be sure to whisper, “Do you know who that is? that’s the man for whom a woman in a West Indian island killed her husband.”

  Wherever he went, Barclay would be conscious of that scandal. He would meet it in advance, anticipating it, getting in his explanation first. She could hear his voice rising as he told the story: “But I can assure you I had no idea that she wasn’t taking the whole thing as casually as I was myself.”

  As casually as he had himself. Yes, that was how he’d put it. Casually indeed. He’d had no idea, he’d say. Of course he had no idea. There he was now, discussing his plans for the hotel as though there had never been anything between them, as though they were complete strangers to one another. As they were: the utterest strangers. Yet, even now—and that was the strangest thing about it all—they would only have to be alone together for five minutes for that old need for each other, that intoxication of heart and senses to bind them to one response, one rhythm, so that they would feel themselves so utterly one person that nothing could ever come between them.

  Yet now, here he was, discussing J. B.’s plans as though there were no link between them.

  “I’m rather worried about the old boy,” he was saying. “He does not seem half as keen on the hotel as I had expected. It almost looks as though he were trying to get out of it. I can’t think why.”

  She smiled to herself. No, he wouldn’t see why. He had not understood J. B. any mor
e than he had understood her. He had never realized that J. B.’s interest in the island was in the main dictated by his interest in her. How right she had been in her guess that J. B. would fight shy of the potential complications with which she as a widow presented him. Poor Barclay, How little he realized on how precarious a basis his plans were laid. Did business men ever appreciate to what extent their balance-sheets and their sales charts were at the mercy of a bright glance across a room ?

  “And what about Kitty? How are things going there? “she asked.

  He smiled.

  “Things are going rather better there,” he said.

  There was a twinkle in his smile as he said that: a twinkle that sent a sudden contraction along her nerves, a contraction not so much of jealousy as of sheer foiled helplessness.

  Why had she shut that door? So that she might be free to get Barclay away from Kitty. Yet here she was, standing idly by, while “things went rather better there.” If that was all she could find to do, why had she bothered to shut the door at all? And yet, what else could she do, with suspicion roused, with Hutchins on his guard?

  And there was Barclay asking her what her own immediate plans were. She’d be going back to England, he supposed, as soon as she got her affairs settled here. And she was explaining how there were complications about the life assurance. There’d been this man Hutchins down from Trinidad.

  “Hutchins! That man,” he cried, “the biggest bore I’ve ever met. I’d a solid hour of him at the club last night.”

  “You! An hour, what about?”

  “Barbados mostly. There’s a big jealousy between Barbados and Trinidad. He wanted to know all I’d done there. Whom I’d seen. I never knew anyone so inquisitive. And the trouble was, of course, that I’d hardly seen anyone at all. He must have thought it: extraordinary that I should have spent ten days there and done so little.”

  Extraordinary! She could have laughed out loud at that. Extraordinary! But it was the very thing that Hutchins had expected to be told. It would have been extraordinary to Hutchins if Barclay had been able to show that he had done solid work there. Yes, he was on the track all right.

  It was really unnecessary for her to drive over to Anne Kennerley’s, to make the arrival of a mail from England the excuse for a conversation that she brought round to their Barbadian trip. It was quite unnecessary. She knew what Anne’s answer would be. In her imagination she could hear Anne saying minutes before the subject had been introduced. Fancy your thinking of Barbados. I don’t suppose I’ve thought of it for weeks. Yet only yesterday I was talking about it to that strange man Hutchins.”

  That was what Anne would say.

  That was what Anne did say. That was the start of what Anne had to say.

  And sooner or later there would come, of course, the corroborating, damning piece of evidence : the added chain in the link that was being forged so carefully.

  She took an interest that was almost impersonal in seeing what particular piece of evidence Hutchins had got from Anne. “Come on,” she felt like saying. “Tell me. You’re bound to have given away something. You’ll have been garrulous, I know. You’ve never forgiven me for cutting that last evening short. You’ll have talked freely. You’ll have gone babbling on, till finally you gave him the thing he wanted. Come on now, what was it you said? Try and remember everything.”

  That was what she felt like saying. But there was no need to say it The facts came out all right.

  “It’s funny what a jealousy there is between Barbados and Trinidad,” Anne was saying. “Mr. Hutchins couldn’t understand why we went there. We’d have had much more fun in Trinidad, he said, two young women on our own. The Barbadians were so dull, so respectable, he said. And I, well of course I quite agreed with him. You remember, don’t you, that I was all against going there. ‘ I know,’ I said, ‘ I agree completely. But Mary Montague insisted that we’d enjoy ourselves more in Bridgetown.’ He was surprised at that. ‘ What, an attractive young woman like Mrs. Montague’! You’ve clearly made an impression on him. ‘ I should have thought she would have wanted light and colour.’ ‘ Oh no,’ I said, ‘ she’s not that sort at all. She’s one of the quiet ones. She always insisted on getting back early; no matter how much we were enjoying ourselves…’ ”

  No, there was no need for her to listen further. Here was one of the mistakes that she had made—taking Anne with her at all: and then having taken Anne, not having seen to it that Anne had the kind of good time she wanted. A mistake, a bad mistake. Yet how at the time could she have known. What was there to warn her that it was against an attack such as this that she would have to guard herself?

  What other mistakes might she not have made? Innumerable mistakes, no doubt. When the time came for her to stand in the witness-box, she’d be astonished to discover at what different points she had given herself away.

  She tried to think back, to live over stage by stage the course that had led her here. There was probably not a person in the island who would not be able to make some contribution to the general store of evidence: careless conversations, gestures not noticed at the time, remembered afterwards in the light of new events, remembered and reinterpreted, things long forgotten by herself, remembered by other people.

  In the library she found young Stewart in conversation with Miss Hardwick. Miss Hardwick bustled forward with her habitual voluble affability.

  “Now, I’ve got the very book for you; serious, but not too solid : not exactly historical; it’s America before the Civil War. I know you’ll like it. The moment it came back I thought of you. I put it aside. So that no one else should have it. I felt quite sure that you wouldn’t want to read the kind of book you were reading a couple of months ago. Do you remember that very grim book you liked so much? Oddly enough, I lent it only yesterday to that Mr. Hutchins. We’d just been talking about you.”

  “Oh, and how did you come to be talking about me? “

  “Indirectly. The talk came round that way. He was asking me about the books that people read. Didn’t I find it discouraging only the bad books being read and the good ignored? I told him that yes, of course it was. But that I did try and do something in the way of educating the people here, the natives, I mean, to like better things. I told him what enormous strides some of the younger ones were making. It’s too late to expect anything of the older ones. He was most interested. A charming, man, I thought. Then he began to talk about what the white people read. ‘ Now, Mrs. Montague/ he said. ‘ There’s an intelligent woman; what kind of books would she be reading now? ‘ I showed him your card. He was most interested. ‘ Now really/ he said ‘ that’s most, most interesting.’ And at the end he took awav that book you thought so highly of, Appointment in Samara. He staved a whole hour here. A most interesting man, I found.”

  Yes, but of course she would. And there was young Stewart corroborating that opinion.

  “I had a long talk with him too. He was asking me about the kind of crime I had to deal with here. It was that very book that started us. I remember telling him about your theory …”

  But she could not listen. She would not listen. She did not know, did not care to know what particular piece of evidence had been collected from young Stewart. There was so much evidence that could have been collected. There was the testimony of the library card that for weeks previously her mind had run on murders. What had she said to Stewart? What might she not have said? They said, didn’t they, that criminals returned to the scene of their crime? That was how they gave themselves away. She had not done that. But hadn’t she, by making a preliminary reconnaissance of the ground, given herself away just as much?

  “Indirectly the talk went that way.”

  All these conversations, all of them leading sooner or later to the same focal point. Hutchins had no doubt: of course lie had no doubt. Would any jury doubt him? Could he convince a jury? She did not know. She did not care. She was past knowing, past caring.

  Panic seized her. She must escape. Get
away. Cut clear from all of this. She did not listen, she could not listen to Stewart’s dissertation, his explanation of how, when and why he had disagreed with Hutchins.

  She picked up the book.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll love it.”

  Carrington, she thought. He’s my one chance now.

  “Now listen, Mr. Carrington, I’d like to waive this claim.”

  She spoke calmly, quietly, though her nerves were quivering. She mustn’t be the hysterical woman. She must keep her control. He mustn’t think of her as the unbalanced woman who needed to be protected against herself.

  “I’ve thought it all out,” she said, “and I’ve decided that I’ll waive the claim. Two thousand pounds isn’t worth the indignity to which I, to which Gerald’s memory is being put. That man interrogating half the island, asking questions about Gerald and Gerald’s life, trying to ferret out things about him, reminding people of things that they’ve forgotten, or that they’ve wanted to forget. It isn’t fair. And I won’t have it. Will you please tell this Mr. Hutchins that I’m not going to press my claim? Will you tell him that as far as we’re concerned, he can leave the island instantly: that he’s no right any longer to make enquiries, to insult Gerald’s memory? ”

  “Insult Gerald’s memory? “

  Carrington echoed the phrase, then paused. He pursed his lips. Heavens, she thought, he’s going to be sententious. He’s going to be pompous. He’s going to tell me that two thousand pounds is a lot of money, that the estates are less valuable than I imagine, that the standard of living I’ve got used to here will will require a five times larger capital in England. He’s going to tell me that no woman understands finance. Hell go on and on, and I’ll have to be patient, I’ll have to listen. I’ll have …

  She hadn’t, though. It was on quite another basis that he founded his objections.

  “Gerald’s memory,” he repeated. “But have you realized quite what will be the effect on public opinion of your doing this? Don’t imagine that I don’t see your point. I do see it. And I respect it. But I don’t think, I’m quite sure that you have not considered what the effect of your waiving this claim would be. What would people say after all? You have a clear claim to two thousand pounds. You decide to waive it. Why? Because an insurance agent makes enquiries. What conclusion will be drawn from that? Only one conclusion could be drawn from it: that there were things you did not want to have brought to light. And to that conclusion there would be a secondary conclusion that Gerald committed suicide for reasons that you did not want brought to light. What effect would that have on his memory?