The Governor's Lady (41 page)

‘You don't have to ask me,' the superintendent of railways replied. ‘You know my views. You could have had them when we sat down. Guilty.'

The foreman moved on further down the table.

‘No doubt about it. Guilty. Plain as a pikestaff. Afraid so.'

The chief cashier hadn't even bothered to look up as he was speaking.

‘And you, sir?' the foreman asked, turning towards the bank manager.

I'm by no means sure he did,' the bank manager replied, ‘and I'm by no means sure he didn't. He had the knife in his hands, that's for certain. And, as our friend here'—he indicated the chief cashier as he said it—‘explained to us it doesn't prove anything how he was holding it. If it wasn't him, I don't know who it was. So, I suppose, it's guilty.'

The shipping representative did not hesitate: even without any evidence at all, he would have been ready to convict.

‘Guilty,' he said.

They had come back to the schoolmaster. His finger-tips were pressed together in readiness.

‘I, too, say “guilty”,' he replied, separating his hands for a moment and then bringing them back again. ‘But only for the time being. I may still change my mind. I don't, by any means, regard the case as closed you know.'

The chairman thanked him and passed on hurriedly: he felt that a mind like that needed very gentle handling.

‘And you, Mr. Ngono?'

Instead of answering immediately, Mr. Ngono tried to light another cigarette. But it was no use. His hands were trembling too much.

‘It's up to you,' the foreman reminded him. ‘It's your opinion we're waiting for.'

Mr. Ngono was aware that all eyes were turned on him. They were eager, expectant eyes: he knew how warmly they would light up if only he said the right thing. And they were certainly the élite of Amimbo who were sitting there: between them, they could be of immense business assistance. They could make him.

On the other hand, there was Mr. Talefwa: he, too, cast a long shadow. Mr. Ngono remembered very clearly their last talk in the
War Drum
offices, recalled sentence by sentence what Mr. Talefwa had said about the brief future for White Rule everywhere ; about an all-African Government in Amimbo when Independence came; and, most of all, about himself installed at the new Ministry of Commerce. Mr. Talefwa had more than half-promised.

Mr. Ngono decided, therefore, that the only thing to do was to keep talking. He spread out his hands, palm upwards.

‘Why damn well bother so much about me?' he asked. ‘Why not rely on these other distinguished gentlemen?'

‘Unanimous, or nothing,' the foreman told him. ‘That's the law.' Mr. Ngono shifted in his seat.

‘Then why not a ballot?' he suggested. ‘In secret, of course. That would give you our inmost thoughts. And in writing, too.'

The foreman shook his head.

‘No ballot,' he said.

Already, the eyes seemed to have hardened: they were glinting at him.

Fortunately, he still had his skill as a debater: it comforted him to remember how many times his speeches at Cambridge had been admired, how often he had been congratulated.

‘You really want the goddam truth?' he asked.

‘I do.'

‘Then I say we're barking up the wrong tree,' he said. ‘Being led up the garden path by our bloody noses, in fact. One eminent Counsel says one thing, and the other eminent Counsel clouds our minds for us. What do we know about the law in comparison with such clever people?'

‘It's got nothing to do with the law.'

Mr. Ngono saw this for his opportunity. With his debating experience, he felt sure that he could keep things going indefinitely, simply wear them down until they grew tired of asking him.

He threw up his arms above his head. ‘Nothing to do with the law if he's guilty?' he demanded. ‘Then I damn well ask you what is the law there for?'

Mr. Ngono, however, was forgetting that the cocoa man had spent most of his life on the equator: he knew what it was to get caught up in native arguments.

‘You're wasting our time,' he said bluntly. ‘I'm asking you a straight question: is Old Moses guilty, or isn't he?'

Mr. Ngono put his hand over to his heart this time.

‘You are asking me that again?' he replied. ‘I have only just answered you. My advice is that we keep out of it. Not take sides at all. It is most kindly-meant advice, too. Entirely considerate.'

‘ “Yes” or “no”?' the foreman repeated.

Mr. Ngono tried again to light his cigarette, but he could not keep the flame steady enough.

‘I am prepared to say “yes”,' he answered. ‘But only in the sense that
it is one of them. Nobody in particular. No hard personal feelings. No grudge. But one of them definitely “yes”. Of that you may have no damn doubt whatsoever.'

He paused.

‘Those are my views. No beating about the bush. No frills, either.'

The foreman drew out his wet, sticky handkerchief.

‘You're playing the fool with us,' he said. ‘That's what you're doing. Just playing the fool.'

It was the schoolmaster who leant forward.

‘Would you mind if I asked our friend a few questions?' he enquired. ‘I think it may help to clear things up.'

‘Good luck to you,' was all the foreman said.

He was wiping the back of his neck again.

The schoolmaster was all ready. His pen was wound up, and his finger-tips were together.

‘In your view, is Mr. Stebbs the murderer?' he asked.

Put that way, the question shocked Mr. Ngono. He had always liked Harold Stebbs, and he felt sure that Harold Stebbs liked him, too.

He banged on the table.

‘That is just the kind of thing I damn well warned you against,' he said. ‘It is jumping to extremely false conclusions. Like some bloody bull in a china shop. Mr. Stebbs is my friend, and I say “no”. Even if you wish to keep me here all night I shall continue to deny it.'

The schoolmaster nodded.

‘Then the A.D.C., perhaps?'

This time Mr. Ngono laughed quite openly. He did not even attempt to conceal his feelings. It was a rude, mocking sort of laugh.

‘That snob?' he asked. ‘You are suggesting that he would harm someone with a title? An H.E. at that! If you think that sort of thing, you damn well don't know human nature. By God, you damn well don't.'

He had managed to light his cigarette by now, and he blew the cloud of smoke carelessly into the schoolmaster's face.

‘Besides,' he added, ‘he is like so many of his sort. He is just a poof. A harmless, bachelor poof. He wouldn't bloody well kill a mosquito. It would be too damn much like bad manners.'

Bringing in the word ‘bachelor' was very clever: the schoolmaster was unmarried, too.

‘What about the kitchen boy?' the schoolmaster asked. ‘He wouldn't mind killing things, would he?'

So it was back to racialism: Mr. Talefwa had warned him from the start that it would go that way. This time, Mr. Ngono got really angry.

‘If that brave young man himself was in the room,' he replied, ‘you wouldn't damn well dare to utter.'

His stomach was turning over again, and he had to raise his hand to his mouth to excuse himself.

‘Besides,' he resumed, smiling quite charmingly, ‘we are all men of the world, aren't we? I mean, we all have been in some pretty dirty spots in our time. Most disgraceful, in fact. When we were younger, of course. Before we had reached our present high positions. And we damn well know what the kitchen boy was up to that night, don't we? His tribe is renowned for it.'

‘So you don't think it was the kitchen boy?'

Mr. Ngono winked back at him.

‘You know damn well, it wasn't.'

Even turned as he was full face towards Mr. Ngono, the schoolmaster did not seem to have noticed the wink. He was deep in thought; intense, painful thought. The tips of his fingers were pressed so tightly together that he might have been praying.

‘Then are you telling us that it's Lady Anne?' he asked.

He had separated his hands as he was speaking, and was holding them out in an open gesture of invitation for Mr. Ngono to come forward.

But Mr. Ngono saw it at once for the trap that it so obviously was. Instinctively, he drew back.

African independence was one thing; and well worth waiting for. But it was still a long way off; no more than a bright gleam in the eye of Mr. Talefwa, in fact. In the meantime, Mr. Ngono had his European business connections to consider. And how could he ever hope to secure another contract within the community if he was known to have gone around suggesting that Governors married the kind of women who might murder them?

Thinking of the terrible position in which he might have found himself, he became indigant.

‘Lady Anne is a most pure and virtuous person,' he replied. ‘A saint, in fact. For her of all people, a halo would not be too damn much.'

He was aware of the eyes again; the accusing, probing eyes all round him.

He looked hard at the schoolmaster.

‘The stink of what you have just said hangs all round you,' he told him. It is most extremely nauseating.'

He raised his thumb and forefinger in the air, and squeezed both nostrils hard together.

‘Then that brings us back to Old Moses, doesn't it?' the schoolmaster asked him.

A fresh stab of pain shot through Mr. Ngono's stomach.

‘I have told you before,' he shouted back. ‘Old Moses has damn well nothing to do with it.'

‘Oh, but he has,' the schoolmaster replied in the same quiet classroom voice. ‘You said it was one of them, and you've ruled out all the others. There's no one left now but Old Moses, is there, Mr. Ngono?'

Mr. Ngono's shoulders were heaving. He was pressing down hard on the buckle of his trouser belt.

‘You must excuse me,' he said. ‘I am most extremely unwell. It is my bad digestion.'

‘Then, as we're all agreed, shall we go through?' the foreman asked.

They had been shut up with each other for nearly three hours, and the prospect of release seemed merciful. There was the immediate scraping of chairlegs.

Only Mr. Ngono remained seated. Ever since the schoolmaster's last question, he had been sitting with his hands on his knees, looking downwards at his feet. He was utterly exhausted; too exhausted even to care any longer.

If only Mr. Talefwa had been there in person, he would have seen how courageously he had fought. How stubbornly, too. Even brilliantly, at times. Mr. Ngono could not find it in him to reproach himself: the reason for his defeat was simply that he had been so hideously outnumbered.

The Chief Justice did not prolong things. After the days of heavy strain on the prisoner and remembering his advanced years it would, he said, be kinder to bring the trial to an end without delay. It had been a fair one, he added, and no exertions had been spared to secure an acquittal.
Nevertheless, the evidence had been overwhelming, and the finding of the jury was both just and inevitable. He produced the black cap, and passed sentence accordingly.

Mr. Das instantly gave notice of appeal.

That same evening, Mr. Ngono was beaten-up on the way back home from his night club.

Public feeling was undoubtedly behind the assault. But the fact that his monogrammed cigarette case, gold pencil and chiming wrist watch were all missing suggested that common robbery might have figured somewhere in it, too.

By now, they had been three days at sea; and, already, Amimbo seemed far off and long ago.

Mr. Frith had sent for Harold as soon as the trial was over. It was that eye of his that was worrying them, Mr. Frith had said: he'd had a word with the Governor, and they both agreed that, if he didn't want to lose the use of it, he ought to get it properly attended to. Moorfields was what Mr. Frith had in mind, and that meant a trip back home for him. He'd fixed up the bit about sick-leave, and there was a boat leaving on the Friday. If Harold got to work on it straightaway, he might just be able to make it.

Going away or staying made not the slightest difference, Sybil Prosser told him: so long as she was around, no one was going to see Lady Anne.

It was a miracle that she had survived the trial, Sybil Prosser added; and, if Harold was any friend of Lady Anne's, he'd see that the kindest thing that he could do now would be to leave her alone so that she had a chance to recover. Of course, he could write if he wanted to: she couldn't stop him doing that. After all, it was only natural that Lady Anne would like to hear from him. Letters weren't nearly so tiring as visitors.

Joining the ship wasn't quite the everyday affair that Harold had imagined: word had got round, and they were on the look out for him. He found himself a someone, a celebrity. It wasn't every day that they carried a star witness from a big murder trial, and the Captain was proud to have him on board.

He was popular, too. Everyone liked the decent showing he had made under cross-examination. The whole of the First-Class passenger list agreed that, after what he had been through, he deserved to be left alone to get a good rest, and invited him to join them at little parties specially laid on around the bar on the afterdeck.

But it was no use: he simply wasn't a good mixer; and, after one or two disappointments, they began to leave him alone again. Not that it was altogether Harold's fault. There was that everlasting pain that went on underneath the eyeshade; and his mind wasn't on what was being said, anyhow. It was on Lady Anne mostly.

She kept coming back into his mind, uninvited and unannounced. If he picked up a book and began reading, there she was, in between his eyes and the page, looking up at him. She even spoke sometimes. It was mostly as he was going off to sleep that he had heard her. Just his name usually, spoken quite quietly; whispered almost. And, with the sound of her voice, came that perfume that she always wore; little eddies of it kept drifting across the cabin, and then getting lost again as the blades of the endlessly whirring fan began to play on them. Once, during the night, when he was still asleep he had thrown out his arm in the darkness groping to feel if she was there beside him.