by Seán Haldane
‘What did they say?’
‘They weren’t havin’ nothin’ to do with it. I dunno exactly why. Maybe it wasn’t that they were so fussy about the work. Some o’ them gave me the eye. Nice tall girls they were too. But they were afraid of gettin’ the clap, so they said. “Piah sick”. The men weren’t too keen on lettin’ any o’ that harem outa their sight, I guess. So after lookin’ at the view for a while, Bernie and I rolled on back home. So what’s goin’ on? I done nothin’.’
‘You didn’t see McCrory out there?’
‘Nah! First I heared he’d been out there was when I heared he’d been cut to ribbons. That made Bernie and me glad we’d had nothin’ to do with ’em. We could of ended up the same way.’
‘You mean you think McCrory proposed to the Indians the same thing as you tried?’
‘I dunno. Was he a real doctor or a fake?’
‘Supposed to have been real.’
‘Then what was he doin’ hangin’ around easy girls?’
‘You tell me.’ I was trying not to reveal my ignorance of where Sam, who was now in a musing sort of humour, was tending.
‘Waal, I seen him a lot at the Windsor Rooms.’
‘You bring your, er, clients there?’ I had thought the Windsor Rooms might be at a level above Sam’s.
‘Sure. I got some classy customers. With lotsa dols. Officers – Lootenants, midshipmen. Not all of ’em just want smoked meat.’
‘What was McCrory doing there?’
‘Hey, why should I tell you all this?’
‘Because he’s dead, and you and he may have been in the same line of business. What if the Indian didn’t do it? What if somebody has it in for people like you? Anyway, where were you last Wednesday afternoon?’
‘I was with a friend.’
‘Who?’
‘A lady. I don’t need to say.’
‘So you can’t prove it? Maybe you were a partner of McCrory’s and you had a falling out.’ I was calculating on a certain stupidity in Sam. I was not wrong.
‘Awright! I’ll tell you all I seen. If it’s not the Injun who killed McCrory you’d better find who it is, I don’t want no one gettin’ the wrong idea … Awright. The way I seen McCrory he was a sort of a high-class crimp. Like me, only with the people in town – the Nobs. Not that I seen him with his customers. No more than I’d see me, if you know what I mean, with mine. I don’t follow my customers into bed with girls, I just make the arrangements. I won’t say nothin’ about financial arrangements, or you’ll use it against me. But you won’t often see me with my mark. Anyway it’s dangerous. The longest time a man like me can be thrown in jail for in this town is for “enticin’ sailors to desert”. They can allus accuse me of that. So, you’ll just see me with a girl or a liquorman, because I’m doin’ my investigation – and sometimes it’s a very pleasurable task, I must say,’ Sam leered – ‘of the services I provide. Likewise, I’d see McCrory at the Windsor Rooms now and then and I could tell he was like me. Not their customer. He was talkin’ to ’em, workin’ things out with ’em – arrangin’.
‘With any girls in particular?’
‘No. He musta talked to ’em all.’
‘Did he come in there alone?’
‘Yeah. Now and then he’d see someone he knew and tip ’em a nod or a wink, or pass the time o’ day. But no further than that. You know how it is.’
I did already know, from hearsay, that a place like the Windsor Rooms had its own code. Since well known men of the town might be found there, it was not acceptable for them ever to intimate even to each other, outside the place, that they had seen each other there. I had also heard that in such places only nicknames were used. Thus, in a town of 7,000 whites, the proprieties were observed. A professional man or business man could be walking down Government Street with his wife and encounter a pair of the Windsor Room ladies out shopping for clothes, and not a sign of recognition would be shown. Nor would a man whom he had met in the Rooms and nowhere else recognise him or greet him.
‘Is that all?’ said Sam, turning to look anxiously up the smoke-filled room to the table at the other end where his friends had been keeping up a steady level of boisterous conversation as if to make it known they were not listening.
‘I’ll let you go now. But if I find out you’ve kept anything from me about any transaction with the Indians, or McCrory keeping company with any particular person in your sight, I’ll be back.’
‘Awright, there was one fella I seen him with in the Windsor Rooms. I dunno who it was. Strong lookin’ dark fella, well dressed. Could have been English, didn’t look like an American. Too fussy-lookin’.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Kinda stiff lookin’. Embarrassed like.’
‘Describe him more. Tall? Short?’
‘I only seen ‘im sittin’ down at the other side o’ the room. He didn’t get up to dance, leastways not when I was there. I didn’t get too close to ‘im.’
‘Dark eyes? Light?’
‘I couldn’t see.’
‘And you didn’t know who he was?’
‘Nope. Never seen ‘im around town. But I don’t hang out in the best circles. You won’t find me at the Governor’s levees or whatever you call ’em.’
‘But this other man struck you as the kind of person who might be found at a levee?’
‘Yeah. Looked like an official of some sort.’
‘Why?’
‘Just an impression. I hardly seen the fella. But since you’re so worked up about me tellin’ everythin’, I thought I’d better not leave ‘im out.’
‘Anything else you’ve left out?’
‘Nope.’
‘That’s enough for now then. But I may be back.’ I got up, called out a polite ‘Good morning’ in the direction of the bar, and left. The fog was thinning and wispy, with streaks of blue shining through.
16
When Frederick had first told me about the Sunday afternoons at Orchard Farm, he had mentioned John Hadley the schoolmaster and his ‘equally mousy wife’ as having been ‘fairly thick’ with McCrory. Since the Hadleys were the only remaining association of McCrory’s I knew of, I decided to interview them, late in the afternoon when Hadley would have finished teaching school. Then in the evening – a prospect which filled me with apprehension and some excitement – I would pay a visit to the Windsor Rooms.
I arrived at Hadley’s at half past four. The house was a tiny one, near the wooden cathedral, not much more than a shack although neatly painted and with a kitchen garden and white picket fence. Hadley, a middle-sized man running to fat and with an air of shyness and plain looks, which indeed made him seem mousy, was sitting on the edge of the narrow plank deck which functioned as a ‘porch’, smoking a pipe, and sipping from a large glass of what looked like spirits. He seemed miserable, standing up to greet me in a weary, clumsy way.
‘I’m Hobbes. Police. I’m investigating the murder of Dr McCrory.’
Hadley’s face became tight, his eyes screwed up. ‘That bounder,’ he said. ‘I’m glad somebody got him.’
‘Really? Why?’
Hadley took his time in replying. He lifted his glass and gulped down some spirits, which made his eyes visibly water and his face grow red. He sat down with a bump on the edge of the porch. ‘Because he was a bounder,’ he said.
Not wanting to tower over Hadley, I sat down next to him on the edge of the porch. ‘Where are you from?’ I said. I had already found out that Hadley was a Cambridge man, but was better disposed towards Cambridge since my interview with my fellow Oxonian, Firbanks.
‘Buckinghamshire. St John’s, Cambridge. Got a poor degree. Too busy versifying. Came out here in ’65 in response to advertisement. Took job at a school. Married Scotch girl I met here, daughter of HBC clerk. Separated. In process of becoming a drunk.’ He took another swig of his spirits, and looked at me with an air of defiance in his eyes, which were pale and quite strong, but with a pouting expression of self-pity ar
ound the mouth.
‘Where’s your wife now?’
‘With Daddy and Mummy. Name of Stevenson. Junction of Cook and View Streets.’
‘When did you separate?’
‘February.’
‘Why was McCrory a bounder?’
Hadley reached down under the porch beside him and pulled out a bottle of cheap rum. He filled his glass and put the bottle back. He took a gulp and puffed at his pipe.
‘It’s not relevant to your investigation,’ he said.
‘Of course it is. Everything is. If you think he’s a bounder perhaps it was you who did him in.’
‘Wish I had. Not enough courage.’ Hadley began to sing, in a surprisingly melodious voice:
Come all pretty maidens wherever you be,
Don’t love a man before you try him,
Lest you should sing a song with me:
My husband’s got no courage in him.
‘The village girls used to sing that, at home. Quite poetic, don’t you think? Double meaning of course. My wife said I had no “courage” in that sense, but it was McCrory who put her up to it.’
‘Could you start at the beginning?’
‘If you insist. Go and talk to Annie about it. Then you can make a judgement on who’s right. You’ll take her side. Everyone’s sorry for her. I mean everyone who knows about it, since we’re all keeping the separation quiet. But she went on her own.’
‘Yes. But let’s start with McCrory.’
‘All right. Annie’s family knew Mrs Somerville, and we would go out there from time to time on Sundays. We met the witchdoctor – as I call him – out there. Very ingratiating chap. But actually it was Mrs Somerville who suggested that Annie go to see him for medical advice. Isn’t it rotten…’ Hadley looked fiercely at me, ‘the way women get together and discuss intimate matters?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I dare say because Annie’s mother is a total Scotch prude, she wanted to discuss things with another sort of mother.’
‘Another sort?’
‘I think she’s immoral, Mrs Somerville. In fact, between you and me, I think she was McCrory’s mistress. They were so close. But Annie thinks I have a dirty mind. I may have. Admittedly the Somerville girls are pure as pie. If I had only met Aemilia before Annie! Just my luck.’
‘So what happened?’ I said, trying to hurry things along.
‘Annie went to see McCrory. He gave her mysterious “treatments,” about which she would not tell me. Then he told her the real trouble was me, and that I should come for treatment.’
‘Wait a minute. What had her trouble originally been?’
‘Female troubles,’ said Hadley darkly. ‘Unmentionable. But why not? Our marriage was unconsummated. In spite of much effort. She had some kind of obstruction, it seemed to me. Everything – as it were – was closed. During the treatments it opened. I thought perhaps he had done surgery on her. But she swore he had not, and indeed there were no signs of such a thing, no blood or bandages. She actually said it was a result of “magnetic passes.” Rubbish! And she had suddenly, after two years of lying with her legs closed, become as lubricious as a rat! And I became useless! Partly because I was worried sick at what he might have done to her.’ Hadley stopped.
‘And what was that?’
‘Deflowered her, I imagined. Surgically might have been all right. But I suspected another way.’
‘On what evidence?’
‘None whatsoever, apart from the fact that she was now very definitely opened up.’
‘And you accused her of…’
‘Yes. She’s a religious girl. Scotch Presbyterian. The “kirk.” She took a bible and swore on it McCrory had never touched her. He had simply done magnetic passes over her body. These had provoked a crisis in which she cried and cried, and remembered all sorts of things, griefs and pains, from when she was a little girl. She refused to talk in detail about these. But the crisis cured her. And there I was, angry about it. Then McCrory, with whom she discussed me, had the gall to send me a note in which he said that ejaculatio ante portae could be cured, and why did I not come for treatment? I wrote him back referring to ejaculatio ante portas – correcting his Latin. It means ‘to ejaculate in front of the gates,’ and he muddled the cases. You wouldn’t understand that. A Peeler doesn’t have to know Latin.’
‘What else did you write to him?’
‘That the phenomenon in question was temporary, and that it was none of his business, and I was forbidding my wife to see him. She cried about it. I assumed that if the gates had been closed for two years, and opened in dubious circumstances, it was natural enough for me to become unnerved. Then it turned out she was pregnant! I was furious. I accused her of fornication with McCrory. She swore on the bible again. But she went to see him! Against my express command not to! She wanted to get him to see me here. Which he did. Stood in our parlour, smooth as a cursed ginger tom, and told me, in front of my wife, that I should come to him for treatment for my nerves! He also said that medical science had established beyond doubt that impregnation could occur without full penetration. He said my sperm at the “introitus of the vagina” as he put it, had impregnated her. All this in front of Annie! I told him he was a bounder and should leave at once. Then you know what he did?’
‘What?’
‘He tore strips off me for almost an hour. He said I needed what he called a “criticism.” And he gave it to me. He started with a physical description of me. The way I walked, the way I stood “buttocks tight together,” the way my eyes were piercing but my chin and mouth weak and with “the expression of a dissatisfied baby.” Then he went on to the way I wanted to “control” Annie and possess her. He said she was a weak woman, debilitated by her condition, but now she was suddenly stronger I could not tolerate the change. “You’re like a dog with a bone,” he said, “pushing it back and forth between his paws, snarling and biting it and letting it go. What would the dog do if the bone suddenly took on a life of its own and began to move? He’d run away with his tail between his legs – like yours is now.” And other elaborate imagery of this sort. He said I was pompous about knowledge, about being a schoolmaster. He said my position gave me an authority which was not natural to me. No doubt I had come to “America,” as he insisted on calling it here, because I could gain the authority of power as a missionary of English civilisation. He said my correcting his Latin was a sign of pedantry and fussiness. Who cared? he said, whether the case was nominative or accusative? I had understood what he meant, hadn’t I? He said I should become dried up like an old stick if I did not change my ways. It wasn’t enough for me to try and feel alive by drinking too much to get the blood circulating in my body, he said. I was frightened of the idea of the animal magnetism because it was not something I could control. But the only method of changing my ways would be to come to him for treatments. I “owed” it to my wife to do so.’
Hadley reached for his bottle again and filled his glass, his hands trembling. I was reminded of the Irish Rose. I wondered if on balance McCrory had increased or decreased human misery. Anyway drink, in Victoria, was an easy and cheap way out of most dilemmas.
‘After a while I was stunned,’ Hadley went on. ‘I just stood there, growing hot and cold by turns. Then he said goodbye and went away. The strange thing was that although I felt as if the sky had fallen on me, and weak as a kitten, that was one moment when I did not feel angry with McCrory. Although some of what he said was too subjective on his part to be accurate, much of it was the painful truth. By itself, I should have survived it, and it even crossed my mind that since he had no illusions about me whatsoever, there was no need for me to put up a show in front of him. I felt free for a moment to be myself, such as I am. I might even have gone to see him for treatments. But in fact – and this is where I’m really angry…’ Hadley stopped for breath, but his emphasis had been weak. He was indeed a mouse. ‘In fact that bounder had, through his tirade, destroyed my marriage. Annie had been sta
nding there all the while, and she could not bear me. Before McCrory’s arrival I had been yelling at her to get out of the house, to go and live with her seducer or go back to her mother. But now it was she who said she would go. She said that although McCrory could not have made her pregnant because he hadn’t touched her, she wished a man like him was the father of her child. He was in fact the spiritual father, she said ravingly. He was ten times the man I was, and so on. So she went back to her mother. And she’s still there. Only three hundred yards – three hundred and fifty three paces, to be precise – from this door. She is five months pregnant and she still won’t come back. And here I am. Hating that bounder, even though he’s finished.’
‘Did you see him after this “criticism”?’
‘No. I’ve been nursing my wounds.’
I could easily believe it. Hadley seemed to be drowning not only in spirits but in self pity. ‘When did you hear of McCrory’s death?’
‘Two days afterwards, from the newspaper. For a moment I felt an irrational sadness. But after that I felt pleased. For one thing, with him dead, Annie’s affections may be free to come to me again.’
‘Have you talked to her since then?’
‘No. I’m just waiting.’ Hadley took another gulp of rum. However, he was showing no signs of drunkenness.
I could not resist giving him some advice. ‘I think you should get off the bottle and go and see her. Undoubtedly the child is yours.’ Not that I wholly believed this.
‘Don’t tell me what to do. I can make up my own mind. What if the child isn’t mine? It’s easy for you to say so.’
I felt hopeless. I should leave advice to the McCrorys of this world. I contented myself with asking: ‘Where were you on the afternoon McCrory was killed?’
‘At school of course. Everybody there can tell you that.’