The Devil's Making

by Seán Haldane

  ‘Really, Chad. Evidence, not mere impression.’

  ‘I meant that the vivid impression of him as a “King George Devil” or a “George Devil” might be communicated, in a few words, by a dying man.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Second, there’s the association, the sexual imbroglio, if you like, between the two men – so productive, as you say, of violent feelings, and especially in this case where there is evidence he was being treated by the Doctor, either formally as a patient, or informally as a friend, for a nervous problem to do with women.’

  ‘Yes. “Witherspoon”’, said Pemberton dryly.

  ‘Third, he does not provide an alibi for the day of the murder. My point is, Sir, that under ordinary circumstances – if he were, say, a merchant in this town – I know that I should have no compunction in requiring him to provide an alibi for that afternoon, and in submitting him to formal questioning.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. It’s so damned inconvenient, his being a military man. If guilty of a crime he must be tried and sentenced by military court. Those are the rules here, even if the crime is against a civilian. A city policeman doesn’t even, I think, have the right to question him in a case like this, except in the presence of a superior officer. A most embarrassing situation it would be if we – it would have to be you and I together, they would merely shoo a junior like you away from the Camp – if we quizzed a man on the details of his intimate life in front of his commanding officer, and our suspicions were proved to be groundless.’

  ‘We might start with the alibi, not the more sordid details; and he has admitted to keeping company with McCrory.’

  ‘Do you seriously think he was involved in this murder?’

  ‘On the one hand I don’t believe he could have been – as an officer and gentleman, of course, and a civilised chap, although somewhat strange. But his involvement with McCrory is unexplained. What I might call the logic of the situation seems to involve him,’

  ‘Of course, my boy. But to get back to mens rea, where is it? Why would he murder McCrory at that moment? Where was the provocation? And so on. But I take your point. Although it’s most distasteful to me. I shall think about it for a day or two, then if I still feel as I do now I shall compose a most tactful note to Captain Delacombe, Mr Beaumont’s commanding officer on San Juan, and suggest that you and I pay a visit to ask a few “official questions, for the record” to Mr Beaumont, early next week. There’s no hurry. Myself, I used to rush into things when I was your age – a tendency I’ve curbed with great difficulty. It will be three weeks, I think, before Wiladzap comes to trial, so there’s time. I think you’re leading us on a wild goose chase, but I’m ready to back you up on it. One thing, Chad. If an interview with Beaumont should prove to be very embarrassing, your head will fall.’

  ‘I understand, Sir.’

  I had meant to pursue with Pemberton the subject of getting Wiladzap a better lawyer than Mulligan, but now was not the time. With a rather stiff return to formality, Pemberton showed me to the door.

  24

  ‘Dear Mr Darwin:

  Just before I left England for British Columbia, where I am now a Sergeant in the Victoria police (my university degree was in jurisprudence), an Oxford acquaintance, Mr Browne, of All Souls, mentioned to me that you were engaged in researches for a study of the ‘Expression of Human and Animal Emotions’. He was not sure of the exact title or direction of your study, but said you had been circulating among your acquaintances, and in particular among missionaries and residents of far corners of the world, a list of questions along such lines as: do the natives in your area express anger with a frown and with clenching of the teeth? Do they express astonishment by a raising of the eyebrows? Do they jump up and down for joy? And so forth. Perhaps I misrepresent what Mr Browne told me, but I gather your interest is in the possible universality of emotional expression. This letter is to say that, should you wish to send me a copy of your questions, I should be most happy to see if I could answer them with reference to the Indian peoples of the Northwest Pacific coast, with some of whom I deal in my work – though not all as criminals, I hasten to say.

  ‘My preliminary observations would seem to indicate that there is little if any difference between the emotional expression of these Indians and that of the Englishman, save in degree. The impassivity of the Indian face in moments where an Englishman might show agitation, anger or grief, is of course notorious. I imagine it is at the root of such clichés as that the native “cannot be trusted”, is treacherous, cunning, etc; for the impassive expression cannot be “read” with regard to intentions. Similarly, I have heard it said by Americans in this Colony that the English, and in particular the official class, “cannot be trusted”; and of course we have been trained to more self control than many of the more ‘easy-going’ (as they put it) Americans.

  ‘It seems to me beyond doubt, however, that when the usual control of emotions, for social ends, is overwhelmed by events, a certain universality is revealed. I have seen a chief of the Tsimshian tribe, imprisoned in a cell, maintain his habitual impassivity for long periods, but at times I have caught an expression in his face which I should call ‘sadness’: a drooping at the corners of the mouth, a sagging of the cheeks, a downcast expression of the eyes. Yet, in moments of hope, his smile has been identical to that of an Englishman, with the eyes and mouth partaking in the familiar expression of narrowing with a light contraction of the surrounding musculature. I have also seen a Tsimshian woman in a state of extreme horror, her eyes and mouth opened to their widest extent, one hand raised to cover her mouth, all the while backing away slowly from the source of her horror.

  ‘Please let me know if I can be of any assistance to you. Should you suggest particular avenues of observation, I should be most happy to pursue them and to attempt precise descriptions. I do not have to say how honoured I should feel at being able to assist in any way the author of The Origin of Species which has wrought fundamental changes in my view of life, as I know it has done in that of others.

  Yours truly,

  Chad Hobbes.’

  TELEGRAPH

  In this way I tried to hold my mind together. Every daily act – the routine of license fee collecting, responding to complaints, arresting vile drunks – had to be accomplished by an effort of the will. I felt my heart was breaking, and feared my mind might be too. I was eaten up by remorse – that literal (in Latin) ‘biting back’ on the self. I could not live with what had occurred between me and Lukswaas. Yet I could take no action to resolve it. At first, wild ideas had rushed through my brain: to go to Cormorant Point, do the honourable thing, marry her. How preposterous! Even if such a thing were possible, I would not be accepted by her now. I felt as if I had befouled her – not with my body, which was as ‘cleanly wanton’ as hers, but with my mind. Her face of horror had shown she knew this. Her own mind was pure. Mine was not. It was contaminated with something. And I had an idea of what it was: my mother again. My dear mother whom I love and to whom I can talk about anything – as I feel I can with Lukswaas. Do I expect married women to be perfidious? That is the question that haunts me. Why did I not simply ask Lukswaas what she felt about being with me when she was, as I thought, Wiladzap’s wife? Because at some level I took it for granted that she could be perfidious. Her reaction showed she could not! Horror!

  Then the day after I posted my letter to Darwin I received a letter, delivered by messenger to the courthouse, on a rather feminine speckled grey paper in a matching envelope.

  ‘Dear Mr Hobbes:

  I am afraid I was rather short with you on our mountain-top walk, because of the natural strain of recent events. Our conversation has been much on my mind, and I should like so much to redeem myself with you, and take up our relationship again at the civilized level of discourse about music and ideas where I feel sure it belongs. But unfortunately my mother no longer sees you as ‘persona grata’ in this house, because she says you asked her ‘offensive�
�� questions (although she will not name them). I have told her that in your line of duty it must be difficult to proceed with tact; indeed it must be necessary at times to proceed without tact, and for that you can surely be forgiven. As you discovered on our mountain-top, I myself am not always tactful.

  ‘Since I am old enough, at twenty four, to take care of my own reputation without always paying heed to my family, I have a proposition to make to you: please meet me this Sunday, at 3 o’clock, at the small side road which you may have noticed about half a mile before the main Elk Lake Road. I often take the cart or a horse over the hill to there on my own, and I shall do so this Sunday. I shall bring a small picnic and we can talk at our leisure. Please do not think this forward of me. Else, how can I make amends for my rudeness last Sunday? But do, in tactful consideration of the circumstances, destroy this missive once read.

  Yours truly,

  Aemilia Somerville.’

  This letter, written in a somewhat spiky hand for a lady, but with a dainty flourish in the signature, lifted me from my gloom. There was something appealing in its naiveté (‘destroy this missive’), its forthrightness, and of course in its risqué proposition. I destroyed the letter, crumpling it and throwing it into a stove, and waited. Weary of the longing and sadness for Lukswaas, which made me literally drag my feet from task to task, I let myself feel flattered, excited, apprehensive and grateful that Aemilia had taken her reputation into her hands and made this overture. I also could not help wondering it I might question her further about McCrory. This prospect caused a lightening of the heaviness the case had assumed. My best hope would be the interview with Beaumont: Pemberton had written to Beaumont’s commanding officer. Otherwise all would be lost. Aemilia’s letter helped me survive the rest of the week. It also prevented me from following my daily impulses to get a horse and gallop – in sofar as this was possible on one of Victoria’s hired nags – out to the Indian camp and throw myself at Lukswaas’s feet. Which, after all, would have been ridiculous. Although I feel my mind has been emancipated by Darwin and by the scientific spirit of the age, my whole life has been framed by the social proprieties. There is no question of me throwing myself at the feet of an Indian girl who in society’s eyes is a mere ‘squaw’. There is every question, as my friend Frederick has known from the start, of me, of modest means but a gentleman, paying court to Aemilia Somerville, of somewhat more prosperous means and – well, certainly by Colonial standards – a lady. Only in flashes of despair as I toss and turn at night in my narrow bed in my courthouse prison do I allow myself to think that Lukswaas is an Indian princess.

  * * *

  The place I would meet Aemilia was a little over five miles North of town, along Douglas Street, which runs parallel to and West of Cedar Hill road. I hired a horse, since I wanted to be sure of getting back in time to my jail-guarding – or rather card-playing – duties with Seeds. This road was busier than Cedar Hill, with people in buggies, on horseback, or walking, taking the air. Some at least would be heading for Elk Lake where the water had warmed up enough for swimming, and where there were Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s bathing places. I am not experienced in Victoria weather, but I have been told that a hot spell like this is not uncommon in early summer, although it could turn cool and foggy any time. This day, like so many in the past three weeks, was like the best of English summer days – hot in the sun, cool in the shade.

  I reached the place just before three o’clock, dismounted, and walked my horse into the side road so as to profit from the shade and to maintain discretion about this clandestine meeting. The road was really a track through towering firs, like the forest on the other side of Mount Douglas, and as silent. I could hear Aemilia’s buggy before I saw it turning in from the main road. Less pretentious than the two horse buggy which the Somervilles used for formal excursions, this was a small one-horse cart. Aemilia’s lilac dress was dappled by sunlight and shade. She was wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat with ribbons. Behind her on the cart was a picnic hamper. As she pulled up she seemed to smile and frown at the same time. ‘You have a horse,’ she called. ‘I thought you always walked.’

  ‘Just a hired nag.’

  ‘Can you hitch her to the back or do you want to ride behind?’

  ‘I’ll hitch her.’ I did so. The nag was tranquil enough. Then I climbed up and sat beside Aemilia on the cart seat. She moved over to give me room, but not too far. I could smell her lemon scent mingled with that of fir-resin from the forest, along with the inevitable smell of the horses. We smiled at each other intimately, as the presence in our minds at least, of the destroyed letter, allowed us to. I felt a stir of excitement and a pleasurable relief. ‘Thank you for your invitation.’ I said. ‘It’ll be so nice to let go of my work and be with you on an afternoon like this.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad you don’t feel I was indiscreet.’ That being settled, Aemilia turned her attention to encouraging her horse along the narrow and bumpy road. ‘This leads into what they call Beaver Lake,’ she said, ‘a Southern arm of Elk Lake, much less popular with the bathing set. But I’ve found yet another track to an even nicer part of the lake. I often come here when the strain of Mamma and my sisters becomes too much.’

  She now directed the horse down a side track so narrow that the cart wheels brushed through bushes, and after only a hundred yards or so, she stopped. ‘This is as far as we can go,’ she said. ‘Since no one comes here, I just leave the cart on the path, and tie the horse to a tree. There’s a small stream and I have a bucket, so we should water them.’

  Very practical. We both got down and worked together to unhitch the horses, tie them to trees on opposite sides of the path, and water them using a dented bucket hooked on the back of the cart. Aemilia maintained a mood of cheerfulness, but at moments when in the sombre patches of shade, I thought she looked pale and anxious. Then with an eager smile she directed me to take the hamper, while she took a light brown Hudson’s Bay blanket and a table cloth.

  The hamper was quite heavy, but I could carry it in front of me. I followed Aemilia into the woods. At once the path was only wide enough for walking single file, through the usual rocks and ferns among fir trunks. Then there was light ahead and we came out into a sunny glade of grass and bare smooth rocks which jutted out as a small peninsula into the blue waters of the lake which formed a narrow arm with the same dense forest on the other side. At the end of the little peninsula was a clump of bushes, so that there were two short stretches, one on either side, where the grass ran down to a fringe of bull rushes and lily pads at the edge of the lake.

  Aemilia set down the blanket in the shade, still within the embrace of the forest, and showed me where to put the hamper, between the blanket and a rock. This done, we gazed around.

  ‘It’s Paradise,’ I said.

  ‘I think a settler must have cleared this little patch to build a house, but I dare say something went wrong and he gave up.’ In spite of the touch of cynicism in this remark, Aemilia looked happy now, radiant in the sun in her lilac dress and broad straw hat with its lilac and white ribbons. She walked forward toward the lake and I followed her. Pairs of sapphire coloured dragon-flies were cavorting in the air over the water, some of them joining in flight, tail to tail, into a tumbling S-shape, then coming apart again. This might have embarrassed Aemilia but apparently did not. ‘They’re early this year,’ she remarked lightly. ‘Damsel flies. Do you have them in England?’

  ‘Not like these. I believe all ours are brown and drab. I’ve never seen anything like these except as jewelled brooches or pins. We do have swallows though.’ A couple of swallows were swooping here and there over the lake. I could not see if they were catching the damsel flies or something smaller. There were no midges as there would be in England.

  As if attuned to my thoughts, Aemilia remarked that there were not enough insects to support a very large population of swallows. The birds which flourished best at the edges of forests were the crows. Sure enough, some crows, which I would
have called ravens, were cawing hoarsely from the fir tops. We continued this naturalistic discussion, then when it became too hot standing in the sun we withdrew into the shade. Aemilia spread out the blanket and we sat down. I half sprawled on one elbow, which was the only comfortable posture, Aemilia demurely sitting, I supposed cross-legged, within the hoops of her dress, like a huge inverted flower.

  It was indeed a rather intimate tête à tête, of a sort quite out of bounds for the unmarried or unrelated. It was totally compromising. As if both were thinking of this, the naturalistic conversation flagged, and we looked at each other.

  ‘I’m glad you forgive me for last Sunday,’ Aemilia said.

  ‘Of course. There’s nothing whatsoever to forgive. I appreciate your frankness in expressing your thoughts. Sometimes the truth is painful.’ I stopped.

  ‘But we don’t need to discuss it now, do we? I don’t want to talk about the Indians, Dr McCrory, or even your work. Do you mind?’

  ‘Of course not.’ For a moment I did mind: I would have to abandon all ideas of questioning Aemilia. But then, why bother? It was agreeable and exciting, to be here with her. I would have willingly discussed the moon …

  ‘Let’s talk about music. Tell me where you learned to sing.’

  So we talked about Handel, church music, the songs I had learned from my mother, the execrable quality of the music at Oxford, only slightly improved by the wave of ardent liturgical revivalism. We even discussed the liturgy, then, rather abstractedly, the difference between social and religious morality. Aemilia had obviously done a lot of thinking about this. I was inhibited by her prohibition of discussing police work, and she too, perhaps out of sense of privacy, kept the discussion general.

  ‘No matter how much we talk,’ I said eventually, ‘you’re something of a mystery to me.’

  ‘So I should be.’ She smiled and fluttered her eyelids in a coquettish way which was uncharacteristic of her. ‘A woman should always be a mystery to a man. He may try very hard, Mr Hobbes, but a man can never really know a woman – no, not even when he has “known” her in the biblical sense.’ She bit her lip, obviously aware that this was too shocking a remark for a young lady to make. ‘Let’s begin our picnic.’ She said. ‘It’s a small one, but quite special. Look.’