Account Rendered & Other Stories

by Marjorie Eccles

  There was no getting away from the circumstances, unfortunately. He had been discovered one evening outside the Rampling bungalow, kneeling over the man’s body, blood on his hands. It was popularly supposed that Rampling had come home unexpectedly, and discovered his wife and Carradine in flagrante delicto, and a furtherance of their quarrel had ensued, though why the shooting had occurred in the street remained a mystery. Nor had the gun ever been found.

  Carradine denied he had been with Mrs Rampling. His story, not necessarily believed, was that he had been walking homewards along the street when a shot had rung out and the man walking in front of him had collapsed. He had run forward, discovered the injured man to be Rampling and had supported him in his arms, only to find him already dead. It was thus that the next man on the scene, the mayor, who had been working late and was bumping homewards on his bicycle, awkwardly carrying a Gladstone bag full of papers, came round the corner and found. him.

  His arrival was followed in but a few moments by others, including the ever-present police. Everyone was shocked; no one had liked Rampling and no one wanted to believe in young Carradine’s guilt, and it was at once suggested that Rampling had been killed by some sniper’s bullet, regardless of the fact that the shooting had occurred almost in the centre of the town. Other equally baseless suggestions followed: that one of Rampling’s creditors had come after him, or, with more support, that due to the inadvisability of arming the natives, one of them had run amok. Or that maybe drunken soldiers had been involved: the troops were not all disciplined regulars, and unruly incidents were not uncommon. However, Carradine’s presence outside the Rampling bungalow, the gossip about his association with Kitty Rampling, together with that recent angry clash in the racecourse bar between himself and her husband, witnessed by many, made him a prime suspect.

  The mayor, sitting in his empty house, could find no answer to his own pressing problem of what was to be done about the matter.

  * * *

  The siege continued, Mafeking still miraculously holding out after more than six months. But the fortified trenches encircling the town were not proof against Cronje’s onslaughts, and casualties grew, despite the warning horn blown from the lookout whenever the Boer’s twelve-pounders were being loaded. Small acts of courage and heroism were reported daily among the loyalist civilians, the women and children, the native servants. The townspeople buried their dead and began to eat the horses.

  However, with the letters and dispatches which still got through came news to stiffen the sinews—that Ladysmith, another beleaguered town, an important railway junction in Natal, had been relieved after a hundred and twenty days. It was reported that the Boers were losing heart. It was also reported, once again, that relief troops were within five miles of Mafeking, and B-P promptly earmarked several more horses for a celebration dinner for the whole town, cheerfully urging everyone to bolster their courage, reminding them that their sacrifices for Queen and country would not be in vain. The relief forces were, unfortunately, driven back with heavy losses.

  Mrs Rampling, recovered from her prostration at the death of her husband, had refused to move out of her house and into the women’s laager, and stayed where she was, retrimming her pretty hats and entertaining off-duty officers at afternoon soirees. She had grown noticeably thinner, her skin was transparent, but it only enhanced her looks and increased the lustre of her big brown eyes.

  Carradine was still imprisoned, half-forgotten in the troubles of the moment, and allowed no visitors, and the mayor was looking, and feeling, ever more anxious. Problems, other than the exigencies of the moment, weighed heavily on his mind. Carradine had once accused him of burying his head in the sand, but he knew he could not do so for ever.

  He thought of his last letter from Sarah, and felt worse. ‘If Colonel Baden-Powell is the most popular man in England—as there is no doubt he is,’ she had written, ‘then the most popular man in all Yorkshire is the mayor of Mafeking. News of his courage and the tireless work he is doing there has travelled across the continents, and has made his wife and children very proud.’

  What would she think of him now, if she knew?

  The Bechuanaland dusks were short, the nights cold, and, after cycling briskly home one evening, shaken by what he had heard that morning, the mayor was promising himself a tot of carefully hoarded brandy before the scanty meal—dried biltong again, no doubt, which was all his servant would be able to provide—as he walked into his sitting-room.

  There he found Edward Carradine, sitting in his own favourite chair in an attitude of great melancholy, twisting round and round in his hands an object which had previously been standing on one of the small tables in the room—an ostrich egg, mounted upon ebony, and painted with a charming, delicate depiction of flowers of the veld. He was regarding it intently. Perhaps his time in prison had taught him to abandon his scruples with regard to ostriches.

  Frank’s greeting could not have been more heartfelt. ‘Carradine, how extremely glad I am to see you!’

  Carradine was very pale from his incarceration, his ruddy good looks diminished, with lines drawn about his mouth. Frank looked at him with pity and saw that he had lost his youth. ‘They have let me go, Frank,’ he said. ‘I had become nothing more than an embarrassment to them; they had to release me.’

  ‘I have never doubted they would do so, my dear fellow—in fact, I have expected it daily! I have spared nothing in arguing with the officer in charge for your release, given him every assurance that a man of your character could have done no such thing!’

  Carradine maintained silence at this, until finally he said, ‘There is still no trace of the weapon, and they inform me they have better things to do at the moment than to search for it. So there is nothing to prove my guilt, and she—Mrs Rampling—supports my story that I was not with her that night.’ An inscrutable expression crossed his face. ‘She even submitted to her house being searched, but of course no gun was found there. No doubt some unknown native with a grudge against Rampling will be the convenient scapegoat,’ he finished bitterly.

  ‘The scapegoat?’

  Carradine did not answer the question, looking down at the ostrich egg once more. ‘She painted this, did she not?’ he remarked at last.

  Frank regarded him gravely ‘Mrs Rampling did indeed, and gave it to my wife on the occasion of her birthday. She is not untalented in that direction.’

  ‘In other directions, too.’

  The pretty trifle in Carradine’s hands trembled. Frank reached out and removed it from him.

  Suddenly, the young man sprang up, almost knocking over the lamp on the table beside him. ‘We must talk—but outside! I have for some reason developed a strange aversion to being inside four walls!’ He laughed harshly and strode to the door.

  Frank followed him into the cold dusk. The light was fading fast and the sky was the colour of the brandy Frank had been denied, shot with rose and gold, the garden smelling of the jasmine Sarah had planted around the door. He sank on to a seat that still held the warmth of the day, under the jacaranda tree, while Carradine paced about. Suddenly, he turned and faced the mayor.

  ‘I did not fire that shot, Frank.’

  Frank moved the toe of his boot about in the red earth, deflecting a column of ants. He moved his toe away and the ants regrouped themselves and went on. He busied himself with his pipe. In the light of the match, a column of fireflies whirled. The rich aroma of tobacco overpowered the scent of the jasmine.

  ‘I know that for an indisputable fact, Edward.’

  Carradine stood very still and upright, his hands clasped behind his back, looking down at the mayor. ‘Do you, Frank?’ he said at last. ‘Do you, indeed?’

  Frank saw the young man struggling to come to terms with something which he now recognized, and perhaps had subconsciously known all along. ‘It was not I who shot him either, my young friend.’

  ‘Then who?’

  The sound of the lookout horn suddenly rang out from th
e redoubts, echoing through the town, signalling that the Boers were mustering for another bombardment, a warning to take cover while there was still time. A distant noise and confusion broke out as the townspeople ran for shelter, obeying the edict that civilians were to stay indoors as far as possible during an attack so as not to hamper the trained volunteers, competent to deal with such a situation. Hoofs clattered down the street, wagon wheels rumbled, a few shouts were heard, but presently came the ominous waiting silence to which they had all become accustomed, the lull before the shelling, and retaliatory mortar fire, began. The interruption might have been a mere rumble of thunder for all the attention the two men paid to it.

  ‘If I did not shoot him, and you did not, then who did?’ Carradine repeated tensely. ‘If—’ He could not go on.

  Frank decided to help him. ‘It was the blue diamond that started it, was it not?’

  Carradine started. ‘How in the world did you know of that?’

  ‘My wife had the story of it from Mrs Rampling herself. I fear,’ he said carefully, looking directly at the young man, ‘that the lady is of some—acquisitiveness. Sarah told me how you had procured the diamond for her.’

  ‘How I did so in hopes that it would buy her love, though I knew I could never marry her?’ Carradine was suddenly in a passion. ‘How I beggared myself to procure it? No, I wager she would not have told Mrs Whiteley that! I was—infatuated, there is no other word for it. I have had time to come to my senses and see that, at least. Infatuation that I thought was love. Through my brother’s good offices, I was able to obtain the diamond at a fair price, though its value was still staggering and it cost me all I possessed in the world, and though my expectations for the future are not nearly as high as many suppose.’ Carradine came to a wretched halt, and then said, ‘I see I must tell you everything . . . Between us, we may arrive at the truth.’

  Frank, who already knew the truth, said nothing, looking at the brilliant stars pricking the darkening sky. Every sound was exaggerated in the expectant stillness, the shrill of the cicadas, the croo-crooing of sleepy doves, a shouted command from the defences.

  Carradine sank on to the seat beside Frank. ‘She knew I had bought the diamond. I had had it set into a ring for her, but it took me some months to pluck up enough courage to put it on her finger, with all that such an extravagant gesture implied. Though there could have been no marriage between us, our friendship had not yet reached . . .’ He faltered, a deep and painful flush mantling his pale cheek. ‘However, she had given me to understand that, on that very evening, she would accept the ring from me, and thereafter our relations would be somewhat different. She allowed me to put it on her finger before we dined. Rampling came home unexpectedly, just as we had finished our meal. He was drunk, but not so drunk that he did not immediately see how it was between us. He burst into a vile stream of abuse and Kitty became very—excited, I think, is the only word that will serve.’ Carradine passed a hand across his brow. ‘How can I explain this? Her husband’s abuse did not appear to distress her—indeed, those big eyes of hers softened and sparkled, colour came to her cheeks when he actually raised his hand to her—it was almost as though she was enjoying it! As if there was some strange complicity between them . . . Maybe, even, a kind of love. I think I began to see my folly, how I had been deceived, even then.’

  The desperate young man buried his face in his hands. When he raised his head, his face was wet with tears. ‘Nevertheless, I squared up to Rampling. I could scarcely tell him to get out of his own house, but I warned him that he must not lay a finger on his wife. Whereupon, he laughed insolently and swaggered outside. ‘Are you going to leave it at that, Edward?’ she asked. ‘No, by God, I am not,’ said I, and rushed out after him, intending to knock the fellow down. But, stumbling in the darkness, I had not reached him before . . . before the shot rang out and he fell down dead. And that, I swear, is the truth of what happened.’

  Into the silence erupted the loud crump of the first mortar shell, followed by another. A horse whickered in fright, and the night became hideous with noise and flames. Within the little garden, Edward Carradine sat as though turned to stone.

  ‘How could I have been such a fool? Seen with hindsight, it is so obvious—Rampling coming home, apparently unexpectedly, finding me in intimate circumstances with his wife, strutting out like that . . . Either she had arranged matters so, or she seized her chance. In any case, she had estimated my nature well. She knew I would go after him, prompted by her.’ He said, his voice hard and dry as pebbles, ‘She would have shot me, like a dog.’

  ‘Had you not stumbled. By the merest chance, or divine intervention, just as the fatal shot was being fired. So that the wrong man received the bullet.’

  ‘She would have shot me,’ Carradine repeated bleakly. ‘In God’s name, why?’

  ‘For love of money, Edward, for this.’ From his pocket, Frank pulled forth a small, soft leather pouch and from that withdrew the costly blue diamond ring, its radiance undimmed in the starlit darkness. ‘For greed, the life of one young man less important than the glitter of a diamond she could not resist.’ He had no need to add that, having obtained the diamond, she had no more use for Carradine. ‘An ugly thought, is it not?’

  ‘Supposing I had indeed been the victim? Rampling would have been the first to have been suspected.’

  ‘I believe he had prudently bought himself an alibi’.

  ‘And what of the revolver—what did she do with it?’

  ‘There is a well, not six yards away.’

  ‘But beyond where Rampling fell. She did not pass me, Frank.’

  Frank saw again the moonlit street as he had come upon it—Carradine kneeling over the dead man, the revolver lying between the young man and the Ramplings’ door, heard again the sound of running feet which heralded the arrival of others on the scene in moments. What else could he have done, but conceal the weapon in his Gladstone bag? A pity he could not have swallowed it, he had thought afterwards, as the ostrich swallows large stones, bricks or even chunks of metal to aid the process of digestion in its gizzard. It had lain on his conscience just as heavily ever since.

  ‘She threw the gun towards me, purposely to incriminate me. And you picked it up, did you not? Frank, I owe you my life.’

  Frank did not say that it was Sarah to whom Carradine owed his life, prompting him as if she had been beside him, telling him that this man could not be capable of murder. ‘I could not let an innocent man hang,’ he said, and added words he had used once before: ‘It was to be done, and I did it.’

  Yet he had paid for his action with the sleepless nights that had followed. For the first time in his life, he had trifled with the law, and the burden of it had been heavy.

  Until he had remembered the story Sarah had told him, of the blue diamond.

  He held the sparkling jewel out once more to Carradine, but Carradine shrank from it as though it had been a snake. ‘She may keep it, for all I care!’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Edward. It is yours by right.’

  ‘How did you come by it?’

  ‘She asked me to return it to you.’

  Carradine laughed bitterly. ‘Once I might have believed that!’

  ‘It is true. When I saw that gun lying there on the ground, I picked it up with scarcely a thought, but when I took it out of the bag, at home, I recognized it as one I myself had sold to Rampling twelve months ago. It was one of several I wished to dispose of and he insisted on taking it on trial. If he was satisfied with its performance, he would pay me—which, I might add, he never did! When I recognized what was once mine, I took it to Mrs Rampling and confronted her with it. Our conversation was—interesting. She subsequently asked me to return the diamond to you.’

  ‘In exchange for your silence? Am I expected to believe that?’

  Frank said gravely, ‘There was no need to ask for it.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why did you not take the gun to the police when you knew to whom it
belonged? I would have been released immediately—instead a guilty woman has gone free! You call that justice?’

  Justice was a slippery notion, as Frank had discovered since coming to this land, not as clear-cut and unequivocal as it seemed in Britain. Sometimes, the Africans did it better. ‘Free? I think not.’

  He had known native tribesmen who had decided to die, and did so. Through shame or dishonour, loss of face. Had the knowledge that she had accidentally shot the husband she had, in some curious way, loved, worked upon Kitty Rampling so that she had lost the will to live? Maybe that was too fanciful, but he could not forget his meeting with her three months ago—that hectic flush on her cheekbones, the cough, the feverish brightness of her eyes. The loss of spirit, the fun of playing dangerous games at last over for her. ‘She was ill, very ill, Edward. She knew that she had not long to live.’

  ‘What? Kitty?’ Carradine sat in stunned disbelief. his complexion becoming, if possible, even paler than before. Then he leaped up, all that he had suffered on her account instantly forgiven. ‘I must go to her!’

  Frank placed a hand on his arm. ‘Too late, my friend, too late. She died this morning.’

  With a groan, Carradine sank back, covering his eyes with his hand.

  Frank had obtained her written confession, on his promise that he would wait until after her death before handing it over. He had immediately done so that morning, after hearing the news that she had died. His action in retaining the gun had not been viewed very gravely by the Chief of Police—who had, after all, himself known and been entranced by Mrs Rampling—it had been humanely prompted, he thought, and in any case, without her admission, her guilt or otherwise would have been difficult to establish. The authorities would have been bound to release Carradine after a time, and it was his opinion that the spell in gaol cooling his heels had done the hotheaded young fellow no harm at all, rubbed a few corners off, in fact.

  The shelling had stopped. There would be no more that night. People were emerging from shelter, and a growing noise and confusion travelled across the night, from perhaps a mile away. Carradine raised himself, and the two men walked out of the garden and stood looking out across the darkness, lit by flames soaring skywards. Not a house remained standing in the street where Kitty Rampling had lived. A pall of smoke rose like a funeral pyre over the area of flattened buildings. A Red Cross ambulance could be distinguished standing by.