The Governor's Lady (51 page)

‘Will you leave this with me?' he said.

The sigh that Harold gave was a long one; there was sheer relief, almost of contentment, in it.

‘It's all in your hands now,' he said. ‘I've done my bit.'

He got up from the table as he was speaking, and laid his hand on the Chief Magistrate's arm. The CM. was rather surprised how firmly he was gripping it.

‘You don't blame me, do you?' he asked. ‘Clearing out like that, I mean. But I couldn't have gone on, could I? Not living with her on Gardie's money. That's why I never saw her again. I left her that same night. And that's why I can't forgive myself. Just when she needed me most, I walked out on her. I let her down, didn't I? That's what you must be thinking.'

The CM. did not go to bed when Harold had left him. He lowered the flame in the pressure lamp, and sat on there, with the letter still open on
the table in front of him and his pencil stuck between his lips again.

He was getting on towards retirement age himself; had a whole lifetime's experience of the law behind him. He had long ago ceased to be surprised by anything that was told him, in court or out of it; so long as there were human beings around, the most unexpected things were bound to go on happening.

By the time the CM. heard about them, it was always too late to do anything; what was left was to assess the consequences. On the bench there were, of course, the rules to help him: his task was not too difficult. The system worked. It was only when moral judgments were called for that he realised how hopeless, how impossible, it all was. That was why he wished that Harold had never asked him that final question.

What else was there that Harold could have done? he asked himself. It was sheer commonsense to have left her. On any showing, he was far better shot of the woman: she had been too much mixed up with Fate already.

Not that he was necessarily condemning Lady Anne. There had been pressures on her, too. In a sense, she had been driven to it. Indeed, in their separate ways, every one of them had been driven: that was what made it so difficult to disentangle.

And, come to think of it, they were all much nicer people than Harold made them sound; Harold himself included. The CM. saw quite clearly that he could make out a case for every one of them. A good case, too. And the underlying motive, even though they would have been unaware of it, was an uncommon one: it was loyalty.

Take Sir Gardnor, for instance. His loyalty had been to the Crown. Rather than allow any scandal, he had been prepared to see his wife sleeping around with anyone she could get hold of. And what had he done about it? Nothing at first; simply closed his bedroom door on her.

Admittedly, it was a rather ugly sort of ambition that had driven him; nothing less than sheer greed to reach the top. And India
was
the top. That was why he had stuck it out so long, with the knowledge that his whole household staff was laughing at him behind his back. To a man who, over the years, had been prepared to endure all that, even the thought of murder—and the CM. was inclined to accept Lady Anne's version of the shooting accident that had cost Harold his eye—was quite understandable. Sir Gardnor would simply have told himself that he was doing the right thing; defeating the gossip-mongers.

And Lady Anne. She was by no means the first frustrated, highly-sexed young woman whose affairs had, in the end, come up to him. The courts were full of her sort all the time. And they were not necessarily unpleasant females. When they found someone to satisfy them, they were ready to go to any lengths to protect him. Poison was the method they usually employed; but, with the hysterical type, stabbing —or shooting—fell recognisably within the pattern. Harold would have been quite right: when she killed her husband, Lady Anne would not have been thinking about herself for a single moment.

The CM. stretched out his legs and found himself wondering what, in her prime, Lady Anne had really been like. There must have been something rather remarkable about her. Otherwise, why should anyone as solid and dependable as Harold have been ready to betray his own employer, and then ruin the rest of his life by covering up for her afterwards?

The CM. only dimly remembered the pictures of Lady Anne at the time: what was far clearer was the one they had printed with the Obituary. He recalled quite plainly the large, rather startling eyes and all that carefully-waved white hair.

About Sybil Prosser, he was not so sure: she sounded a singularly unprepossessing sort of person. Not nice, in any sense. But certainly loyal. Even ready to make the sacrifice of giving up what she had fought so hard to get: she couldn't have liked doing it, even though she knew she'd lost.

Best of the whole lot, of course, was Old Moses. The CM. dismissed out of hand the idea of fear of Gardie's spirit; after all, there were plenty of ways of fooling and defeating disgruntled spirits; for a fee, any good witch doctor could have seen to that.

No: there was much more to it than fear. Old Moses had really loved Sir Gardnor; had loved everything that belonged to him. Those belongings included Lady Anne, and the memory that Sir Gardnor was leaving behind him. Rather than see anything go wrong with either of them, Old Moses had been prepared to offer up himself.

Admittedly, he was well over eighty at the time; nobody knew quite how old. But those last few years had presumably been precious; nobody, black or white, really likes bringing the shutters down.

Then there was Harold himself. He was, the CM. would have thought, exactly cut out for an even, uneventful sort of life. The CM.
doubted very much whether he had really wanted to get mixed up with Lady Anne in the first place: it was merely one of those things that had happened. And, with a foot-loose, good-looking woman a little older than himself, he'd probably never stood a chance; wouldn't even have suspected at first what forces he was really up against.

But it had lasted a long time. There must have been moments—hi between seeing her, for instance—when he could have seen the way things were going; the kind of chances he was taking with his life. It would have been perfectly in character if he had simply decided to cut his losses and drop out. He hadn't done so, however. Not that there was anything particularly loyal about that; sheer weakness, rather.

The loyalty had come right at the end when it was all over; that was what made it so extraordinary. And he had certainly paid the price for it. No family; no home life; no love even. Just going on, solitary and uncaring, through all those years in the Service, being shifted from one post to another until he had finished up at last in Kubanda.

It was down somewhere at the bottom of the list of British colonial possessions, Kubanda; a second-rate, down-at-heel protectorate really, with one silted-up harbour and no hinterland. But, if it had been any bigger, the CM. reflected, Harold Stebbs would probably never have got his Governorship.

As it was, he had been left there, only halfway up the ladder, waiting; waiting, watching himself grow old, and turning eagerly to the Deaths column whenever a fresh batch of
The Times
arrived from home. With what object? Simply in order to make this futile, uncalled-for statement that he had set his heart on: to tell a policeman, as it were, and put his mind at rest.

The CM. got to his feet, and winced as he began to straighten himself. Flexing the toes upwards was the only cure he knew when cramp caught him; it quite often came on when he had been sitting for too long in one position. He was still hobbling when he went through to the sideboard in the dining-room and came back with the big brass tray that the boy used for bringing round the drinks.

The tray was so large that he had to move the Gordon's bottle and the water jug and the empty glasses before there was room for it on the table top. And, even then, it half covered-up Sir Gardnor's letter and the long, official-looking envelope.

He pulled the letter out, holding it between his thumb and forefinger and, with the light of the pressure lamp shining down on him, he proceeded to tear the Government House notepaper into long, narrow strips. The paper was so old, it was quite brittle; little pieces, the black ones particularly, broke off as he tore at it. Then he shredded down the envelope, and dropped the remains of it on top. It looked as if a wastepaper-basket had been emptied there.

He was prepared to burn the bits one by one, holding them out, taper-fashion. But, when he struck a match and tried it, the whole pile ignited; dry like that, it kindled immediately. The paper bonfire blazed up, darkening one side of the porcelain lampshade with its smoke, and, died down again. All that was now left on the tray was a charred and fragile skeleton, the kind of relic that a bush fire leaves behind it.

He went through to the verandah, down the steps and out onto the lawn of the small garden. In the small hours, there was always a wind blowing off the sea in Kubanda; and when he lifted the tray and shook it, a dense, sooty dust cloud blew past him. It was gone; all gone. Nothing now remained on which to base any reasonable confession.

The CM. felt rather pleased with himself. What he had just done was clearly so sensible. Suppressing that last piece of evidence had not worried him in the slightest. Not now that it was all over. It would have been awkward, of course, if the Governor had brought it to him while Lady Anne had still been alive. Then he would have had to consider it. As it was, he had saved everyone a great deal of unnecessary trouble. And above all, he had stopped people talking. A Colony was a terrible place for malicious, ill-informed tittle-tattle. Once started, it would go through the place like an epidemic.

Besides, after all those years in Africa, the Governor deserved a decent retirement; some proper rest and quiet when he got back to England, even a little happiness and contentment if he could find it.

The CM. himself still had some time to go before retirement. He was comfortable enough as things were. And there was always the chance that the next train from Motamba would bring the new fan that Stores had ordered. Or, if not, the next train, the one after; or the one after that.

for Joan and Bob

This electronic edition published in July 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

Copyright © Sarah Helen Collins and Michael Howard Seys-Phillps 1968

The moral right of author has been asserted

All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise
make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
(including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying,
printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the
publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

ISBN: 9781448201266
eISBN: 9781448202584

Visit
www.bloomsburyreader.com
to find out more about our authors and their books
You will find extracts, author interviews, author events and you can
sign up for
newsletters
to be the first to hear about our latest releases and special offers