by Nevil Shute
I gave him a whisky and we went to bed.
We had a conference in the library next morning after breakfast. Mollie was there, a little awed by the presence of the lawyer. Perhaps in deference to him she had made herself a bit less ornamental for the occasion; her eyelashes remained unwaxed, and in some subtle manner she had made herself look quieter than before. It may have been that she had less makeup on, it may have been that she was simply blending into the surrounding of my house. I don’t know. I only know that I had expected Jenkinson to have something of a shock when he saw what I’d picked up, but it was I who got the shock.
He began by explaining to her again the position that she was in. In his precise, rather meticulous way he outlined to her the inquiry which the Criminal Investigation Department had in hand, acting on behalf of the Civil Power. He showed her that so far the whole of the evidence available tended to the implication that her brother must be involved in business directed towards the provocation of a breach of the peace, if nothing more serious. He said that he had to point out to her the gravity of the situation in that respect, but would emphasize that there should be no necessity for undue alarm about her brother. Similar cases had occurred during the Irish troubles, and he cited one or two cases in which the clemency of the crown had been directed in favour of persons who were in a similar position in being subordinate to the main issue. He made a point there, that such clemency was only exerted in those cases where a genuine desire to assist the processes of the Law was assured. At the outset of this matter, his advice was to the effect that she should give him authority to express to the police her utmost willingness to assist them in their investigation.
“I am sure that we shall find that this matter will go quite smoothly if we can give them that assurance, Miss Gordon,” he said, and paused for her reply.
She was troubled. “I don’t quite understand,” she said at last. “I’m for Billy. Is that what you wanted me to say?”
I laughed. “No, it’s not,” I said. “We want you to tell the police all you know about Billy.”
She stared at me in perplexity. “But then they’d catch him,” she objected.
We moistened the lips and started again, and for a quarter of an hour I explained to her in as simple language as I could the position that her brother must be in, and what we wanted to do about it. She came to understand it in the end, I think.
“You mean that’s really the best thing for me to do for Billy?” she inquired. “Just tell them all about him?”
Jenkinson interposed: “Perhaps not quite everything. They may ask questions that they have no right to ask, and I would not let you answer those. We shall both be there to help you answer every question, so there will be nothing to be afraid of. Just tell the whole truth when they ask you anything. I’ll stop you saying anything that you ought not to say.”
She turned to me: “You don’t think he’ll be sent to prison? You see, he wouldn’t be doing anything bad.”
I said: “We don’t know what he is doing. But I’ll promise you this. If any proceedings are taken against him, he shall have the best legal defence in the country. We’ll brief Sir Dennis Scott-Neil for him, or somebody like that.”
She eyed me searchingly. “You wouldn’t let me down?”
I met her eyes. “I won’t let you down,” I said. “This really is the best thing to do.”
She nodded gravely, and turned to Jenkinson. “Please,” she said, “you’ll have to tell me when to speak and when not to. You see, I don’t know about these things.”
I glanced at Jenkinson, and he glanced back at me, and after a moment we went on with her examination. Together we asked her what questions we could think of, to prepare ourselves for what she might be going to tell the police, but we found very little that I didn’t know. She knew that her brother had been working on an all-night job, she thought intermittently, for about a couple of months. She could give no further indication as to how to get in touch with him. She thought he was well paid, but who paid him she did not know. She was quite sure he wouldn’t do anything wrong.
We came to an end of all she knew quite soon. After a short talk with Jenkinson I crossed the room and rang up Fedden at his house.
“Good-morning,” I said. “Stevenson speaking. About this statement that you want to get from Miss Gordon. I’ve got Jenkinson down here, and we’ve just been through it all with her. Miss Gordon is quite ready to tell you all she knows, under the guidance of her solicitor of course.”
He said: “I’m very glad to hear that. Norman will be back by lunchtime; we’ll take her statement this afternoon. I see no point in taking it at Newton Abbot. Will you bring her down to the police station here, at three o’clock?”
I pressed the transmitter to my chest and shot a rapid question at Jenkinson. “Certainly,” he said, “that would be quite in order.”
I lifted the transmitter. “I’ll do nothing of the sort,” I said curtly. “Miss Gordon will see you here, in the library of my house, at two o’clock precisely, if you please.”
He said: “That’s most unusual, you know.”
“Miss Gordon had a bad time in your police station yesterday,” I replied, “and I’m damned if she’s going there again. I should like to think that that was most unusual. This is a purely voluntary statement on her part, and if you want it she is willing to give it to you at two o’clock this afternoon. Her solicitor will be present, and you can bring this Major Norman.” I smiled. “I’m willing to sink my prejudices so far as to admit him to my house, on this occasion only. I should like to make that point quite clear.”
He said stiffly: “I understand that perfectly. Very well. You can expect us at two o’clock this afternoon.”
He rang off, and I turned to Jenkinson. “Glad I’m not a Chief Constable,” I said.
There was nothing more that we could do until they came. We went out into the garden; Jenkinson lives at Chislehurst and goes to his office every day in an electric train, and grows begonias and things like that, and takes prizes for them at the local flower show. He is a member of the Royal Horticultural Society, I think; I only know he got me properly tied up, so that I had to get old Robertson out of his hot houses to answer some of the questions that he asked. Together we went round the rose garden, a little absently on my part. I was thinking about what would be necessary for Sweet Anna; we had given her a new mainsail in the previous autumn, but topsails and mizzen were getting very thin. I had a long talk with Tillotson next day, and we decided that she ought to have them. We gave her a new second jib, as well.
In the garden Mollie got on well with Jenkinson; he found in her an eager audience for his rather arid little discourses upon begonias. I had one or two things that I wanted to do in the town that day — I forget what they were at the moment. Those two were getting on quite well together and so I left them to it and went down to the town, wondering as I went what questions she would ask him about me. She wouldn’t get much out of Jenkinson, I thought. He’s too cautious.
I got back home a little late for lunch. They had waited for me, and that made the whole programme late, so that before we had finished lunch Fedden and Norman had arrived. It amused me to send out Rogers to show them into the library and to keep them waiting while we sat and drank our coffee in the dining-room. I had a score to settle with those gentlefolk.
That wasn’t the only thing they had to put up with that afternoon. We went into the library and settled down at the big centre table there, and Jenkinson led off with a sour, legal little speech. In his dry way he informed them that he was acting on behalf of both Miss Gordon and her brother, and would continue to do so. He understood that an examination of Miss Gordon had already been attempted in circumstances which appeared to him to have been most irregular. He trusted that he would have no occasion to complain of any further irregularity of that sort. He quite understood that their business was the detection of crime. His own business was the preservation of the integrity of the Law. It
would be unfortunate if in the pursuance of their business they again ran contrary to his own.
He let them ask some questions then. They had brought a police sergeant with them who took notes, and we sat for some time while they questioned the girl, and this chap took his notes in longhand. She gave her answers pretty well, prompted and assisted every now and then by Jenkinson.
I forget how it all went, and what they asked. I only know that none of it was new. They asked nothing that was not obvious, and they discovered nothing that we had not known before. The girl was quite incapable of assisting them to find her brother; she had not the remotest notion where he was. She could only suggest that her people up in Preston might know something of his movements, but she didn’t think it likely that they would. We sat there for most of the afternoon, and so far as I could see it was an utter waste of time.
It finished up at last; the sergeant closed his notebook and they got up to go. Jenkinson gave them a final word of warning. He told them that he was definitely employed on behalf of Mr William Gordon, and that no statements should be taken from that gentleman, or evidence of any sort, until he had been informed that a solicitor had been engaged on his behalf, and had consulted him.
They went away at last, and we went out to tea upon the terrace looking out over the harbour. I would have asked Fedden to stay, but Norman and the sergeant were with him and I felt I’d had my fill of the CID for the time being.
Jenkinson wanted to catch an evening train back to town. When Rogers brought the tea I sent him to look up trains; it was a warm, sunny afternoon and we sat for a long time over tea, looking out over the rose garden below. We were all a little relieved, I think, that nothing untoward had come out during the afternoon, and glad that it was over. Mollie and Jenkinson were gossiping away together like old friends, and I remember that he was very decent to her in telling her that she was to come to him in case of any further difficulty, whether she was staying with me or not.
His train went from Newton Abbot. I drove him there in the Bentley, leaving Mollie sitting on the terrace; she said that she was tired. I think that may have been tact upon her part. It gave me the opportunity of a word or two with Jenkinson, and I explained to him a little more fully the circumstances in which I had got her down from Leeds, as we drove.
He nodded. “A girl of a good type,” he said.
I was silent for a minute. “I’ve lived very much among my own sort all my life,” I said at last. “It’s not a very common type, is it?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I think you get that quiet, refined sort of girl in every class. I used to see quite a lot of them in police work when I was a young man. Shop assistants, typists — girls of every class. You meet a good few barmaids of that sort. Do you see much of them?”
I shook my head. “I don’t go into bars much. A man like me has to guard against that sort of thing.”
He smiled. “I don’t know what’s happening to the classes in this country,” he said. “One comes on girls like this so frequently — and a good few men, too. The only difference between them and us is that they don’t know quite so many . Behaviour’s just the same. And small difference. . . facts. .” . . that’s a mighty
I put him into his train at Newton Abbot, thanked him for coming down, and saw him off. Then I went back to Dartmouth to my house. I found Mollie in the library; rather to my surprise I saw her sitting curled up upon the chesterfield reading a large book. She laid it down carefully as I came in, and got up to meet me.
“We got that train all right,” I said, and glanced down to see what it was that she had been reading. It was Mortimer’s Naval History, open at the page which describes the action of the Jane Ellen. I glanced at the bookshelves, and there was a gap where she had got the volume from.
“So you’ve got hold of that,” I said.
She looked up at me, and nodded; and then she said: “Tell me, was this really you?” She stooped and picked up the book. “I mean, in here.”
I took the book from her and glanced down the account a little absently; she came closer and looked over my elbow at the page. “Yes,” I said at last, “that was me. Doesn’t seem much like it now, does it?”
“I think it’s wonderful,” she breathed. And then she looked up at me and said; “Mr Jenkinson showed it me. You don’t mind, do you?”
I smiled at her. “Lord, no,” I said. “Not after all these years. It’s all so long ago.”
She stood there staring up at me, puzzled. “Don’t you like people to know about it? I mean, it says here it was all so splendid, and you got a medal.”
“There wasn’t anything splendid about it, really,” I said quietly. “Only in the history books. It was just bloody murder.”
She stared up at me dumbly.
“I shelled them while they were surrendering,” I said. “The engagement was over by that time.” I stared out of the window at the brilliant, sunlit sea. “I don’t know why I did it — I never did know. There was a boy there with me, a midshipman. He wouldn’t speak to me when we got back to land — just cut me dead whenever we met. The funny thing is, I don’t think he told anyone.”
I paused. “When you go and do a thing like that it makes a difference,” I said. A herring gull came sweeping down the lawn and banked steeply past the window in the sunshine with a little cry. I stood there thinking of the long, similar years that I had lived in Dartmouth since the war, living alone with my ships and with my work. “Things haven’t been much fun since I did that,” I said quietly. “Not like they were before.”
I glanced down at her. “Not so very splendid, was it?”
She looked up at me, and then down at the book. “I think it was wonderful,” she said at last. “Fighting on all alone like that. Nobody could have said anything if you’d given in, could they? I mean, when there was only three of you left.”
I laughed. “It wouldn’t have done us much good to give in. They shelled the panic party in the boats. We wouldn’t have stood much chance in a surrender, and so we just stuck where we were.”
She wrinkled up her brows. “You mean that they’d have killed you if you’d given in?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I dare say. They’d probably have left us out on deck when they submerged.”
She came a little closer to me. “Malcolm,” she said, and it was the first time she had called me that, “you oughtn’t to think so much about the bad things of the war. I mean, everyone who fought had to do bad things, and it was the same on each side. And you only did to them what they’d have done to you if you’d surrendered.”
I stood for a moment looking down at her. “That may be,” I said. “But it was I who did it.”
I was touched by the insight that she had shown; I had never been able to speak to anyone about that business as I had to her. She didn’t say any more, and I took her by the arm and we wandered out into the garden for a quarter of an hour before going in to dress. Passing the strawberry bed we stopped and ate a few, and together we picked a few more flowers for her room, although she said the ones she had would last for ‘ever so long’. She told me how she used to make flowers last in the Palais when she wore them in her dress with their stalks wrapped up in cotton wool and silver paper and they kept ever so fresh for days.
Then we went up to dress.
And coming down, I found she was before me in the hall. She had changed into the same blue dancing frock with the silver bodice that she had worn before, that suited her dark loveliness so well. She came up to me as I walked down the stairs, and:
“Please, Commander Stevenson,” she said, and hesitated.
I smiled at her. “Spit it out,” I said.
She didn’t laugh, but looked up at me. “Please,” she said, “I’ve just been thinking. Now that Mr Jenkinson’s gone and the police and everything, I’d better go back to Leeds. I thought I’d go by train tomorrow morning, if that would be all right. I mean, you won’t be wanting me for anything else now, wil
l you?”
For a moment I was nonplussed. “No,” I said mechanically, “I don’t know that there’s anything else, really.”
She stood there looking up at me, dumbly. I moved closer to her and took one of her hands in mine; we stood there together, looking down at it. “You can go if you like, of course,” I said. “But won’t you stay and have your holiday with me? I’d like it awfully if you would.”
She didn’t look at me. “Are you sure you really want me here?” she said. “Don’t you think I’d be in the way, with all your friends, and that?”
I shook my head. “I meant it when I asked you to come down here for your holiday, that night in Leeds. It was useful for the police, but that was only half. I meant it for you as well.”
She raised her head; she had got a colour, and her eyes were very bright. “You mean you really want me to stay the whole time?” she said. “Six more days?”
“Of course I do,” I said. “If it’s not too dull for you.”
She sighed happily. “It’s all so perfect here. It’s going to be the loveliest holiday I’ve ever had.” She rippled into laughter. “Won’t Ethel be jealous when I tell her!” Ethel was her friend who had gone to Scarborough. “And she’ll never believe me when I tell her I’ve been good.”
I laughed and took her arm. “I don’t suppose she will,” I said. And so we went and dined.
I forget what we talked about at dinner that night; I only remember that the telephone bell rang in the middle of it. I left the table and went to it in the library, and it was Joan speaking from her house in Golders Green.
“Is that Malcolm?”
“Speaking,” I said.
“Oh, Malcolm — this is Joan this end.” I said something polite. “What I rang you up about was this: can we come down and spend the night with you tomorrow — me and Philip? We’ve got a couple of days for the Irene, and Philip wants to have a talk with you. Oh, just one minute, he’s here.”
Stenning came to the telephone. “Evening, Stevenson; I say, is it you who’s been putting the CID on my track again? I had a fellow called Norman call to see me two or three days ago — wanted to know all sorts of things. He said I’d told you, or something. Yes, I met him once before — not a bad cove, is he?” I sometimes think that Stenning must know everybody in the world. “Well, what I thought was this: Joan and I might come down in time for dinner tomorrow night, and we’d have a chat about it before going off in the Irene. How’s that?”