by Nevil Shute
She was awake and smiled to see me come, and I bent down and kissed her on the lips, regardless of the nurse. It seemed to me that she was less restless than she had been before, but every bit as hot; she was noticeably weaker than she had been in the morning. I sat down beside her bed and took her hand in mine, and I began to talk to her about the first things that came into my head.
If I were to try and put down all I said to her that night I should fill many volumes of this ledger, for I talked for hours. She said very little in reply; I sat there stroking her hand and arm, and every now and then she squeezed my hand a little, and smiled up at me. I started off with what we’d do as soon as she was fit to leave the nursing home. I told her that I’d get her moved back into her own room and bathroom in my house as soon as possible, and for that she smiled, and murmured: “I’d love to be there.” And I told her how she could sit out in the sun in the garden all day till her shoulder healed, and read magazines and look out over the flowers at the harbour and the sea. And I told her that I’d get her a kitten to keep her company while I was away at the office in the mornings.
And then, without heeding that the nurse was there, I told her again that I loved her, and she lay there smiling at me with her eyes. I told her that I wanted her to marry me as soon as she felt she could, and if she felt she couldn’t just at first we’d go away together as she wanted, and we’d get married when she liked. I told her that we’d go away and have a real holiday together, a holiday that would go on for as long as we wanted to. And that would be the first real holiday that I had taken since the war.
I told her that we’d start off at Torquay, and she smiled up at me, and whispered: “Lovely.” I said I’d have the Runagate round there, and we’d live in a fine hotel just up above the harbour, in a double room, and we’d spend every day sailing and bathing together, and motoring upon the moors. And she could teach me to dance really properly at night, so that she could dance with me with pleasure all our lives. She said: “You’ll learn ever so quick.”
I told her that we’d stay there for as long as ever she liked, but that once or twice we’d just run up to town to buy her clothes. And I told her that she could have her frocks designed for her, but that I wanted one that would be like the silver and blue one she had worn in the evenings at my house; she must have one like that. And I said that Joan would help her and show her where to buy the things, and where to go for everything she wanted. And then we’d come back to Torquay and she could learn to drive a car, and I’d get her a little light saloon that she could drive herself.
And then I told her, as the autumn came, we’d slip across to the New World. Because once, so many years ago, I met an old merchant skipper — not one of my men — who told me that of all the places that he had seen all through the world there was one that was so supremely beautiful that it stood out like a mountain over all the lovely sights that he had ever seen.
That was the harbour at Halifax in the fall of the year. He pictured it to me as a wide inlet between wooded hills, and full of wooded islands on the water’s face. And all these woods were maple woods, so that in the autumn they turned bright scarlet. With the calm water, the red woods, and the long, cloudless, pale blue autumn days it made a picture that that old man had carried with him all his life; he had longed to return to it again before he died. And it had bitten deep into me, too, so that I told her we would go and see it as the autumn drew on.
And then we’d go on to New York and see the greatest city of the century, so great that the foreigner is faintly homesick when he leaves. I told her that we’d stay there, possibly, till Christmas time, learning about America, and seeing how they lived. I told her, if she liked, we’d go across to Hollywood and see how films were made.
And then I told her that we’d come back home and go to Switzerland. Because by that time her arm would be quite strong again and she could learn to ski, and I told her about the snow and ski-ing and the skating, and the sitting in the blazing sun to eat your lunch on the veranda of the hotel above the snow. I told her about the joy of running on good snow in the sunshine, sweeping in stemming christies down the slopes to the inevitable drink of ice-cold milk in the châlet at the bottom. I told her about the hotels and the snow mountains, rose coloured in the sunset, and I told her about the people that she’d meet, and the dancing in the evenings, where nobody would be so good as her.
They came in then to do something to her, Dixon and McKenzie, and they sent me from the bed. After a quarter of an hour they went away, and I came back to her and took up my tale again where I had left it off. And I told her that in the spring we’d come back home and live at Dartmouth, with the sea and with my ships all summer, because that is home, and one cannot be travelling all the year through. And I told her that I’d teach her how to sail, and that I’d get a little sailing dinghy rigged for her so that she could take her friends out up the river bathing, because it’s warmer up there. And all her friends would come and stay with us from time to time, girls on their one week’s holiday from the grey cities of the north. And she whispered: “I’d have Edna first, if I may.”
And then I told her that we would stay at home for all the summer months, close to the sea, and I would show her the fun of cruising in the English Channel and the West of Ireland. And perhaps, if she wanted to, we’d have one month of that away, and take the car to France, and run down to the south through Chartres and Arles and Avignon, until we reached the sea, to live the Lido life a little at some bathing place. And then back home again, to stay a week in Paris at a quiet place I know that overlooks the Bois, and she could get some shopping done. Then we’d go home, and be at home for August when her friends had holidays.
And in September we might go to Scotland for a little shooting, with some friends of mine.
Evening drew on, and she lay smiling at me there, seeming to drift into a doze, and then rousing again to squeeze my hand. McKenzie came in from time to time to see how she was getting on; the temperature showed no sign of going down. “Ye’ll keep her interest,” he chance. . . ordered once in a soft tone. “Just keep her interest, and give me drugs a .”
I went on talking to her, and I told her that we’d finish up our two-year honeymoon by going round the world. Because I never had seen India, and very little of the East at all, and I was longing to go there with her. I told her that we’d go there with no very settled plan, but that I wanted to go up into Kashmir to see a man who was at school with me, and that I wanted to work down into Ceylon to see the pilgrimage to Adams Peak among the flowers. And then, I said, we’d go on over to Malay and on from Singapore to the South Seas. And there we’d charter a schooner to get off the beaten track, and we’d go cruising through the islands towards Honolulu at the end. Then we would cross to San Francisco and up into Canadian summer in the Rockies, two years hence, and so to Montreal, where I have many friends. And so we’d come back home, after our honeymoon, to settle down to work again, to stay till we were tired and longed to see the world again beyond the sea.
She lay there quiet, in a sort of dream. And about nine o’clock I bent towards her lips, and I heard her say: “I wish the others could have seen us, dear, just once. None of them ever had a gentleman friend like I’ve had.”
I sat with her till far into the night. Then they made me come away, and Dixon took me home.
Chapter 14
I DO NOT think I need put down the events of the succeeding week in any detail. A reliable account of the two inquests came out in The Times, and is available if I should want to look it up — a most improbable contingency. The other newspapers were only fit to burn.
They held the first at Dartmouth upon the two Gordons and the Superintendent. Norman gave evidence in a restricted sort of way. I think that he had had a conversation with the coroner before the case came on, for nothing came out that was of any consequence. They called me next and I swore by Almighty God that the evidence which I should give to that inquest should be the truth, the who
le truth, and nothing but the truth; an oath which I took with every intention of committing perjury. But all the evidence they wanted from me was quite formal; I told them something of Mollie and her brother, and their lives. Only one question I remember clearly, when the coroner said delicately: “Are we to understand that these two were related to you in any way, Commander Stevenson?”
I raised my heavy head. “I had asked Miss Gordon if she would do me the honour to become my wife,” I said. “I don’t know if you call that a relationship or not.”
That passed with a little buzz of interest in the court, and next morning I saw a placard close outside my own lodge gates:
Q-BOAT CAPTAIN’S TRAGIC LOVE FOR
MYSTERY DANCING GIRL
Stenning and Joan had wanted to come and stay with me to see it through, but I had told them, brutally perhaps, that I would rather be alone. And so they stayed down in the town, and I went back to build up my old life, working upon the drawings of the little cruiser I am building now, and working all day in my office at the yard.
The verdict in the first inquest was one of ‘Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown’. It could not be fixed upon the people drowned in the wreck of the bawley, as neither Stenning nor I, nor anyone, could give more than presumptive evidence that the bawley we had come upon not far from the Eddystone had anything to do with the affair. So the thing rested till the inquest on the bodies from the wreck was held, over at Pentressan, some days afterwards.
And that produced little but identification. Three bodies were washed up within five miles of the coast, and it seems reasonable to suppose that that is all there were. The cause of death in every case was drowning.
The first was a young man called Peter Marston. He was twenty-three years of age, and had left Cambridge about ten months before. His father came down to identify the body, a grey-haired, venerable old man, from Colchester. He was much cut up. They were people of some means, and the boy since leaving Cambridge, had followed no occupation. He was interested in the fishing industry. The bawley was his property, and he used to cruise in it a great deal, but his father knew little of the companions that he had upon these trips. The father had never before seen any of the other bodies.
The second body was that of a man of between thirty-five and forty years of age, dark haired, wearing a dark suit and boots of continental manufacture. There was no name upon the clothes, but in the pocket there was a love letter from a woman, addressed to Alexander Kura, Poste Restante, Rotterdam. This letter was in a mixture of Russian and German, and bore no address. That was all, except that a small automatic pistol was found in the hip pocket.
The third was a man of about thirty, pale and thin. This man was known to the police, who identified him as an alien called Aukitch, who had been deported from this country for a case of robbery with violence. He was believed to be a Russian Jew.
This inquest was quite short, the verdict being ‘Death from Misadventure’, as I had supposed.
So those inquests passed, a little inconclusively perhaps, but no one had a shadow of a doubt that justice had been done. By that time I had lost interest in a great degree in the inner meaning of the business. I only wanted to be left alone, to get back to my rut and to forget the last six weeks. But I went down one day to the police station when Norman was there, and had a little talk with him about the business.
They had been to Trepwll, and had removed what they had found. They found a barn half full of munitions — thirty-two light machine guns, a number of cheap automatic pistols, a few bombs, and a great amount of ammunition. And they found a farmer who protested that he knew nothing of the contents of his barn, and they were forced to the conclusion that he spoke the truth. He had leased his barn to a man called Palmer for the warehousing of goods, and he knew nothing of the nature of the goods inside the packing cases. He knew that some of them were carpet sweepers, because he had seen the labels.
The police had removed what they had found, and had contrived to hide the matter from the Press.
And there the matter, Norman said, must rest till after the election, now only a fortnight off. There was no evidence at all of any destination of the arms; they had been brought to the barn and stored, and no one from the district had been near the place. At the Yard they suspected that the arms had come from Russia, and they were certain that the introducers of the arms were dead, drowned in the bawley. He agreed that there must be some local agent in the Glanferis district who had some knowledge of the business, but so far they had found no trace of him. And, acting on instructions from above, they did not intend to prosecute their search for him just at the moment.
“Frankly,” he said, “I think this is the end of the affair.”
I thought about it for a minute. “It may be,” I said at last, “but I don’t see how you come to that conclusion all the same. You’ve not discovered anything about the directing intelligence behind it all.”
He smiled a little. “That depends on how you look at it,” he said. “Do you doubt that the directing intelligence was Russian in its origin?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Well then,” he replied, “there isn’t any question of the origin, essentially. What you mean is that we haven’t found the intermediate agents. I hope that we shall do so in due course. But the important thing is the discovery. For the time we have stopped the importation of the arms, simply because their secrecy has broken down. That gives us breathing space.”
“Till after the election,” I put in, a little cynically.
He shuffled with the papers on his desk. “I have no concern with that aspect of the matter, as you know.”
I went away, and tried to concentrate upon my work for the next few days. Stenning and Joan had gone back to their place in town, tired, I suppose, of the treatment I had given them. And I went on living in my house alone, working all day and drinking rather heavily all night, dining alone in a black tie, and sitting after dinner in the library till I could feel that I could face my bed.
And after two or three days I came to the conclusion that I was not satisfied. The police might give this up, but I went over to Plymouth one fine afternoon, driving the Bentley faster than I might have done if I had had a little less to drink at lunch. I went to the accountant who handles my audit, and I said to him:
“See here. Isn’t there some intelligence bureau that you people use? I mean, if you want to find out about anyone? For finding out their credit in hire-purchase matters, and that sort of thing?”
He nodded. “Certainly. I can get you a confidential report on anyone, if you like. It’ll cost you one-and-sixpence in the ordinary way.”
It seemed cheap to me. “That boy called Marston who was drowned the other day,” I said, and I gave his address in Colchester. “I want to know about his women friends.”
He wrinkled his brows. “That’s a little out of the ordinary line,” he objected. “The agency will handle it all right, but it may cost you a bit more. You want their names, social position and that sort of thing?”
I nodded. “That’s exactly it. I want a list of all the women he knew well, who would have gone about with him, alone. Their addresses, and what you can find out about each of them.”
He mused a little. “It’ll probably be one-and-sixpence each,” he said. “Generally takes about two days. I’ll telephone you when it comes to hand.”
And three days later I had the report. There were only two of them, apparently: a waitress in a Cambridge restaurant, and his cousin, Adela Jennings, lately down from Girton. It did not seem to me that the waitress was the one I wanted, and so I concentrated upon Adela.
She lived at Esher, in her parents’ house. I thought about it for a day, wondering if I should meet all Scotland Yard upon the doorstep of that house, and then I took the car and went to London.
I stayed at my club. Nobody I knew was there, and I was disinclined to go and look for anyone. And so I dined very well, alone, and sat alone in
the top smoking-room with my cigar and with a magazine all evening, save once, when a waiter brought me whisky and I stopped him by my chair, and he told me about the Test matches, and we talked for a little time. Then he went away, and I sat on with the decanter by the fire, alone. At about three o’clock I went to bed.
Next morning I drove down to the house at Esher in the Bentley. It was a fair-sized place that stood in its own grounds; I drove up to the front door in my car, and rang the bell, and asked to see Miss Adela. They showed me into a morning-room and presently she came to me, an earnest-looking girl in a dark dress with a touch of black in it.
And when I saw her I knew that I had not gone wrong.
I rose to meet her as she came. “Good afternoon, Miss Jennings,” I said grimly. “I’ve come up from Dartmouth to meet you. I want answers to one or two questions, about your cousin and yourself.”
She stared at me, flaming, indignant at my tone. I was standing by the window in bright light, and whispered: . . suddenly she faltered, and the colour died out of her face. And then she .” “Oh.
I stood there eying her. “You seem to know my face.”
She pulled herself together, and said quietly: “I don’t. Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
I smiled, a little cruelly perhaps. “I’m a sojourner,” I said, “as all my fathers were.”
There was a long, restless pause after that. At last she said: “Have you come from the police?”
I stared at her in the eyes. “I’ve come to get answers to my questions,” I said harshly. “True answers, and none of your damn trickery. If you want to know, I’ve come to inquire into a murder.”
She pulled herself together. “I don’t know what you mean.”
I smiled. “Then I’ll explain. You’ve caused the death of five men and a girl, you and your precious friends. I know that much. If you go playing with me any more I shall disclose the whole affair, your part in it as well. You know what that means. Prison for you, and for a damn long spell.”