Douglas had said none of the things that Pawley implied—but it didn’t matter now. He was hardly listening. He was only longing for Pawley to stop speechifying so that they could get the inquest over. It had already been dragging on for an hour and a half in the hot, congested library. The term was ending today, two days before schedule, and most of the parents had come to the inquest before taking their children home. There were also half a dozen newspaper reporters there, five of them coloured.
He looked across the room at Mrs. Pawley. She caught his eye and smiled at him faintly. Before he had given his evidence her face had been a sickly mask, but now the colour was tinting her cheeks again. Her eyes had softened with gratitude and utter relief. It was amusing to think of her passionate protestations in his bungalow a bare three days ago—her indifference to discovery. There had been no indifference about her this morning. She had come to him an hour before the inquest, shuddering with nerves as once she had shuddered with passion, begging him not to reveal why Silvia had gone off with Joe. Her husband still didn’t know—there had been enough to distress him without that. She wanted to spare him the public exposure of her shame, which would bring inevitable ruin to the school. No one else knew the truth—if Silvia had dropped any hints, Mrs. Morgan had been too scared by the storm, or too drunk, to pay any attention. Everything hung on Douglas . . . He had sent her away, promising nothing. He couldn’t invent lies for the inquest. But he had too much on his conscience already without delivering the death-blow to the school. He could leave his evidence incomplete . . .
He had been up at the witness table for half an hour. It had seemed ironical to him, while he was standing there, that the inquest should have been in the library—that the coroner should have addressed him from behind his own desk. It was poetical justice: like the trial of a king in his own throne-room or a judge in his own court. Yet it had not been his trial, after all. He had come out of it with his character untarnished, with something like honour. He had listened to his own voice as though to the voice of a stranger—listened to himself spinning words, turning the coroner’s questions away from the danger point. He had been doing this to save the school, and the saving of his own skin had only been incidental; but nevertheless, as he looked round the packed library at the faces of the parents, watching him without reproach, he had felt a guilty relief that there had been an excuse to withhold the truth—to get everything over in the quickest, easiest way . . .
It had all been shamefully easy; and when he had finished giving his evidence the coroner had said, “Thank you, Mr. Lockwood, you seem to have had a remarkable understanding of Silvia’s mentality . . . I’m sure you have the sympathy of us all that your efforts were in vain.” And he had half expected, after that, to hear clapping break out in the room. He had turned away from the witness table; and as he made his way through the congested room a pathetic little figure had risen nervously and clasped his hand . . . Silvia’s father. Silvia’s father who had once told him, “I’ve a great deal of confidence in you, Mr. Lockwood. I know I can count on you. . . .” He had freed his hand and taken his seat again, wiping the perspiration from his face. Well, he had saved his own skin—but only his skin, nothing else. The memory hadn’t been effaced. It didn’t matter what words were poured out into the library, what verdict was given—when he closed his eyes the horrible image would still be there waiting for him, nailed into his mind . . .
Pawley was still making speeches at the witness table. He was trying to prove now that it had all been for the best.
“In one respect—and I hope I shan’t be misunderstood—we should feel glad that this occurred sooner rather than later. I’m afraid it would have been beyond the power of any institution to turn her into a responsible citizen. Frankly, we only admitted her here as an act of charity . . .”
The coroner listened with patient interest, no longer writing. He was a small man with thin grey hair and the worried, earnest look of a bank clerk superannuated after fifty years of faultless calc-ulations. A young Jamaican called Bennett sat behind him and sometimes whispered into his ear. Bennett looked capable and college-educated, and he seemed to know more than the coroner about inquest procedure.
When Pawley had finished talking, Bennett said something to the corner, and the coroner said:
“Thank you very much, Mr. Pawley. There’s only one other thing. About Wilson’s previous behaviour . . .” Wilson was Joe’s surname.
“As far as I know he’s always been quite well behaved,” Pawley said, without bothering to sound very sure about it. He had lost interest now that he had said his piece about the school.
“You’ve never suspected him of any other relationships of that sort . . .?”
“It’s never come to my notice” Pawley said.
“Thank you then, Mr. Pawley . . .”
Pawley went back to his seat and it was all practically over. The coroner read in a worried way through his notes, and. consulted with Bennett, and then began to speak haltingly. He said that obviously Silvia had been an unusual and troublesome child, but there was no reason to suppose that she would have taken her own life without great provocation . . . The provocation in this case, since all evidence pointed to suicide, was her belief that she was pregnant. Her suicide showed that she didn’t want to have a baby, and it was therefore not very probable that she had proposed the act which had given rise to her belief. Unfortunately there was only Wilson’s evidence about what had actually happened in the jungle.
“Wilson has told us that Silvia wanted him to pick a flower for her, and that after he had followed her into the jungle she told him to kiss her. In other words, she was telling him to do the very thing that sent her running back to the school in such a terrible state a short while later. I must say”—he looked round as though searching faces for agreement—“I must say, this doesn’t strike me as being very likely . . .”
Douglas heard this with dismay: he had thought that his own evidence about Silvia’s nature had removed all suspicion from Joe. He looked across the room and saw
Joe straining forward, uncertain whether he had understood, his mouth half open in bewilderment. Pawley was sitting just in front of him, looking satisfied and nodding his beard. He was probably hoping to please the coroner by showing his agreement—and Joe’s shoulders were broad enough, after all, to carry the blame.
“Of course, we have the doctor’s evidence that actual rape was not committed,” the coroner went on. “But we know that Silvia was quite well informed on these matters—and if she believed she was going to have a baby, something quite violent must have taken place . . .”
That damned, blasted fool, Douglas thought, and he stood up.
“May I say another word?” he said.
The coroner broke off, and said pleasantly, “I think we’ve found out all we need, Mr. Lockwood . . .”
“This may effect your findings.”
The coroner turned to Bennett for advice, and then said discouragingly:
“Very well, if you really feel it’s necessary . . . but I’m sure there’s nothing you need add to the extraordinarily interesting evidence you’ve already given us.”
“I didn’t realize this was relevant before.” He made his way over to the table.
“Well?” the coroner said.
“I don’t think there’s any reason to doubt Wilson’s story,” Douglas said. “Silvia was perfectly capable of behaving like that. I’ve already explained how she used to go off and meet a man who only existed in her imagination, and how she smashed up my bungalow.”
“Yes, you explained that very clearly,” the coroner said, and waited expectantly.
“I’m positive that Silvia made Wilson take her into the jungle because she wanted to commit some sort of outrage. It would be unfair to Joe to suggest he was lying.”
Bennett spoke in the coroner’s ear, and the coroner said, “Yes, Mr. Lockwood,
but I’m afraid that unless you’ve actually got some new evidence . . .”
“I have,” Douglas said. “She’d threatened to do something like that. She’d threatened to cause trouble.”
“For any particular reason?”
He hesitated for a moment, and then said, “I believe she did it for my benefit. During the term she’d grown rather attached to me. She expected me to return her affection. She was hurt and angry because I didn’t.”
There was silence in the library for a moment, and he saw the movement of the reporters’ hands as they scribbled away at their pads, and then amongst the blurred faces he saw Pawley quite clearly, goggling at him in surprise and dismay. That idiot Lockwood! Why on earth hadn’t he left well alone?
The coroner had become rather agitated. Bennett spoke to him.
“Yes, I rather agree,” the coroner said, nodding. He looked at Douglas. “I don’t quite understand why you shouldn’t have thought this relevant before . . . However will you go on?”
“That’s all,” Douglas said. “I believe Silvia went off with Joe because she wanted to hurt me. Afterwards she took fright at what she’d done.”
“I think you’d better tell us more about this attachment, if you don’t mind,” the coroner said. “How did it come to your notice?”
“She told me. She’d got hold of the idea that she was in love with me. I didn’t take it at all seriously because I knew it wouldn’t last.”
“You’d told the headmaster, of course?” the coroner asked.
“No, Mr. Pawley knew nothing about it.”
“Wouldn’t it have been wiser . . . ?”
“I thought I was quite capable of handling Silvia myself.”
The coroner tapped his pencil on the desk for a minute and then cast an anxious glance about the room, as if wondering what was expected of him. Then he said diffidently: “I hope you don’t mind me asking you, Mr. Lockwood . . . It may sound an unnecessary question . . . but what were your own feelings for Silvia?”
“I took more interest in her than in most of the children because she was more in need of help. But I certainly wasn’t in love with her.”
“And you gave her no reason . . . ?”
“I’d always made it perfectly clear that I wasn’t.” Bennett prompted the coroner again. While he was speaking in the coroner’s ear he kept his eyes on Douglas. He had hard, penetrating eyes and a hard, ambitious face. He looked as though he was confident that despite the colour of his skin and his crinkled hair, he would finish his career as a High Court Judge. He was now about twenty-five.
The coroner said, “You’re married, are you, Mr. Lockwood?”
“I have been married.”
“You’re a widower?”
“No, I’m divorced.”
There was another silence, and the heat of the library seemed to grow more intense. He felt the perspiration trickling from his face on to his chin and down his neck, and it was in the corners of his eyes. He took out his handkerchief to wipe them. Presently the coroner said rather uncomfortably:
“Well, we can’t necessarily blame you for that . . . I expect you’ve had a good deal of experience with children?”
“Not very much.”
“But you’ve been teaching for some time?” He was genuinely trying to be helpful.
“Not before I came to Blue Mountain School this term.”
“But you felt quite confident—that is to say, with a young girl who told you . . . ?”
“Yes, I felt fairly confident.”
“I suppose you’d realized there might be some dangers?”
“It had never occurred to me there was a danger of suicide.”
The coroner looked anxiously at his notes, and then asked diffidently, “But you’re prepared to say now that she committed suicide because of you?”
“Not directly,” Douglas said. “She committed suicide because she believed she was going to have a baby. She went off with Joe—with Wilson—because of me.”
It was impossible to hear what Bennett was saying, but it was something forthright. He was emphasizing it by slapping two fingers of one hand on the palm of the other. The coroner shuffled with his papers, and said presently:
“Yes, I think we must try to get this a little clearer. In what particular circumstances did Silvia threaten to do something desperate, Mr. Lockwood?”
“If she found I wasn’t in love with her.”
“Didn’t you tell us just now that you’d always made it quite clear to her?”
“I’d tried to, but she didn’t believe it.”
“But evidently on Saturday afternoon?”
“She evidently did believe it then. I suppose she’d been thinking about it, and realized it was true.”
Bennett spoke to the coroner with his eyes still fixed on Douglas, and Douglas waited, feeling the heat pricking him on his shoulder-blades and round his belt. Then the coroner said, trying to make it sound like a question he had thought of himself:
“You didn’t see Silvia at all on Saturday afternoon, did you, Mr. Lockwood? I mean before all this happened?”
He hesitated. For a moment he thought he might say he had seen her, and invent an interview that had taken place; but he could think of nothing on the spur of the moment that would stand up to the test.
“No,” he said.
He heard the false ring of his voice in the silence of the library. The silence went on for a great length of time, emphasizing the lie, and through the silence Bennett’s eyes still came at him. The coroner turned vaguely in the direction of Pawley, and said in his worried way:
“I must say, it seems awfully strange to put an abnormal girl in the care of an inexperienced master . . . though Mr. Lockwood certainly gave me the impression before of considerable competence . . . However, I’m not here to—” He leant back to catch what Bennett was saying. It was one of those questions of Bennett’s that he felt awkward about asking, and he thought about it for a minute, and then discussed it with Bennett again. Then he said:
“I’m wondering if you can help me, Mr. Lockwood . . . You’ve no idea if anything could have happened on Saturday afternoon—anything particular, you know—that could have made her suddenly behave like that? I asked you just now if you’d seen her yourself at all. I suppose you’re quite sure . . . ?”
He turned his eyes away from Bennett’s; but he knew he couldn’t tell the lie again. He saw the blurred faces of the parents and the reporters waiting with hovering pencils.
“I did see her,” he said. “She came down to my bungalow.”
“She didn’t seem to be upset . . . ?”
“Yes,” he said. “I hadn’t been expecting her, and I wasn’t alone. She was upset because of that.”
The coroner said earnestly, “I don’t quite understand . . .”
He caught a fleeting impression of the ghastly paleness of Mrs. Pawley’s face. She seemed to have shrunk, as people do in death.
“There was a coloured woman with me,” he said.
There was only the scratching of pencils to break the silence. He thought they would probably suspect Ivy now, so he added:
“A woman from down the hill.”
The coroner was looking sorry he had ever asked. He waited for Bennett’s advice. Bennett gave it—he was going to be a judge before he was forty.
“Yes, I rather agree,” the coroner said presently, nodding. “It would have saved us a great deal of time if Mr. Lockwood had told us this before.”
It didn’t take him long to pack. He had only the one suitcase that he’d flown out with. The labels on it still looked quite fresh. He closed it up, and then had another look round for anything he’d missed. There were a few stamps in a jar that he had collected for John and forgotten to give him. He dropped them amongst the torn-up letters and paper in the wastepaper
-basket. Then he carried the case over to Pawley’s.
Pawley was at his desk. He got up, smiling in an embarrassed way.
“I suppose you’re off now?” He picked up the piece of paper on which he had just been writing, and said awkwardly, “I’d been hoping to finish this before you left. I felt it was only fair to let you see it.”
He held it out apologetically. It was a letter. The niceties of expression had evidently given him some trouble, and it was full of crossings-out. It began:
Dear Parents,
Although the recent unhappy occurrence at this school was held at the inquest to be the individual responsibility of a member of the staff, who has now resigned, you may be glad of the reassurance that it has been decided in future to modify our policy and maintain a closer supervision of the children. This does not mean that we no longer have confidence in modern progressive methods, and we shall continue to apply them as and when we think desirable . . .
Douglas didn’t bother to read any more. He put the draft down on the desk.
“I like the as and when,” he said.
Pawley took this in good part. Then his smile faded and he began to shake his head with infinite regret and puzzlement.
“I can’t think why you never came down and told me how Silvia was behaving, Lockwood. You knew I was always ready to talk things over with you. If only we’d put our heads together, this could all have been avoided.”
“I’m sorry,” Douglas said. “I ought to have told you about the native woman too.”
The Shadow and the Peak Page 29