Ah King (3 page)

I did indeed. One of the most disconcerting things to the traveller is to see stout, middle-aged gentlemen, with bald heads, speaking and acting like schoolboys. You might almost think that no idea has entered their heads since they first passed through the Suez Canal. Though married and the fathers of children, and perhaps in control of a large business, they continue to look upon life from the standpoint of the sixth form.

“But he was no fool,” Gaze went on. “He knew his work from A to Z. His estate was one of the best managed in the country and he knew how to handle his labour. He was a damned good sort, and if he did get on your nerves a little you couldn’t help liking him. He was generous with his money, and always ready to do anybody a good turn. That’s how Cartwright happened to turn up in the first instance.”

“Did the Bronsons get on well together?”

“Oh, yes, I think so. I’m sure they did. He was good-natured and she was very jolly and gay. She was very outspoken, you know. She can be damned amusing when she likes even now, but there’s generally a sting lurking in the joke; when she was a young woman and married to Bronson it was just pure fun. She had high spirits and liked having a good time. She never cared a hang what she said, but it went with her type, if you understand what I mean; there was something so open and frank and careless about her that you didn’t care what she said to you. They seemed very happy.

“Their estate was about five miles from Alor Lipis. They had a trap and they used to drive in most evenings about five. Of course it was a very small community and men were in the majority. There were only about six women. The Bronsons were a god-send. They bucked things up the moment they arrived. We used to have very jolly times in that little club. I’ve often thought of them since and I don’t know that on the whole I’ve ever enjoyed myself more than I did when I was stationed there. Between six and eight-thirty the club at Alor Lipis twenty years ago was about as lively a place as you could find between Aden and Yokohama.

“One day Mrs Bronson told us that they were expecting a friend to stay with them and a few days later they brought Cartwright along. It appeared that he was an old friend of Bronson’s, they’d been at school together, Marlborough, or some place like that, and they’d first come out East on the same ship. Rubber had taken a toss and a lot of fellows had lost their jobs. Cartwright was one of them. He’d been out of work for the greater part of a year and he hadn’t anything to fall back on. In those days planters were even worse paid than they are now and a man had to be very lucky to put by something for a rainy day. Cartwright had gone to Singapore. They all go there when there’s a slump, you know. It’s awful then, I’ve seen it; I’ve known of planters sleeping in the street because they hadn’t the price of a night’s lodging. I’ve known them stop strangers outside the Europe and ask for a dollar to get a meal, and I think Cartwright had had a pretty rotten time.

“At last he wrote to Bronson and asked him if he couldn’t do something for him. Bronson asked him to come and stay till things got better, at least it would be free board and lodging, and Cartwright jumped at the chance, but Bronson had to send him the money to pay his railway fare. When Cartwright arrived at Alor Lipis he hadn’t ten cents in his pocket. Bronson had a little money of his own, two or three hundred a year, I think, and though his salary had been cut, he’d kept his job, so that he was better off than most planters. When Cartwright came Mrs Bronson told him that he was to look upon the place as his home and stay as long as he liked.”

“It was very nice of her, wasn’t it?” I remarked.

“Very.”

Gaze lit himself another cheroot and filled his glass. It was very still and but for the occasional croak of the chik-chak the silence was intense. We seemed to be alone in the tropical night and heaven only knows how far from the habitations of men. Gaze did not speak for so long that at last I was forced to say something.

“What sort of a man was Cartwright at that time?” I asked. “Younger, of course, and you told me rather nice-looking; but in himself?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I never paid much attention to him. He was pleasant and unassuming. He’s very quiet now, as I dare say you noticed; well, he wasn’t exactly lively then. But he was perfectly inoffensive. He was fond of reading and he played the piano rather nicely. You never minded having him about, he was never in the way, but you never bothered very much about him. He danced well and the women rather liked that, but he also played billiards quite decently and he wasn’t bad at tennis. He fell into our little groove very naturally. I wouldn’t say that he ever became wildly popular, but everyone liked him. Of course we were sorry for him, as one is for a man who’s down and out, but there was nothing we could do, and, well, we just accepted him and then forgot that he hadn’t always been there. He used to come in with the Bronsons every evening and pay for his drinks like everyone else, I suppose Bronson had lent him a bit of money for current expenses, and he was always very civil. I’m rather vague about him, because really he didn’t make any particular impression on me; in the East one meets such a lot of people, and he seemed very much like anybody else. He did everything he could to get something to do, but he had no luck; the fact is, there were no jobs going, and sometimes he seemed rather depressed about it. He was with the Bronsons for over a year. I remember his saying to me once:

“‘After all I can’t live with them for ever. They’ve been most awfully good to me, but there are limits.’

“‘I should think the Bronsons would be very glad to have you,’ I said. ‘It’s not particularly gay on a rubber estate, and as far as your food and drink go, it must make precious little difference if you’re there or not.’”

Gaze stopped once more and looked at me with a sort of hesitation.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I’m afraid I’m telling you this story very badly,” he said. “I seem to be just rambling on. I’m not a damned novelist, I’m a policeman, and I’m just telling you the facts as I saw them at the time; and from my point of view all the circumstances are important; it’s important, I mean, to realize what sort of people they were.”

“Of course. Fire away.”

“I remember someone, a woman, I think it was, the doctor’s wife, asking Mrs Bronson if she didn’t get tired sometimes of having a stranger in the house. You know, in places like Alor Lipis there isn’t very much to talk about, and if you didn’t talk about your neighbours there’d be nothing to talk about at all.” “‘Oh, no,’ she said, ‘Theo’s no trouble.’ She turned to her husband, who was sitting there mopping his face. ‘We like having him, don’t we?’

“‘He’s all right,’ said Bronson.

“‘What does he do with himself all day long?’

“‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Mrs Bronson. ‘He walks round the estate with Reggie sometimes, and he shoots a bit. He talks to me.’

“‘He’s always glad to make himself useful,’ said Bronson. ‘The other day when I had a go of fever, he took over my work and I just lay in bed and had a good time.’”

“Hadn’t the Bronsons any children?” I asked.

“No,” Gaze answered. “I don’t know why, they could well have afforded it.”

Gaze leant back in his chair. He took off his glasses and wiped them. They were very strong and hideously distorted his eyes. Without them he wasn’t so homely. The chik-chak on the ceiling gave its strangely human cry. It was like the cackle of an idiot child.

“Bronson was killed,” said Gaze suddenly.

“Killed?”

“Yes, murdered. I shall never forget that night. We’d been playing tennis, Mrs Bronson and the doctor’s wife, Theo Cartwright and I; and then we played bridge. Cartwright had been off his game and when we sat down at the bridge-table Mrs Bronson said to him: ‘Well, Theo, if you play bridge as rottenly as you played tennis we shall lose our shirts.’

“We’d just had a drink, but she called the boy and ordered another round.

“‘Put that down your throat,’ she said to him, ‘and don’t call without top honours and an outside trick.’

“Bronson hadn’t turned up, he’d cycled in to Kabulong to get the money to pay his coolies their wages and was to come along to the club when he got back. The Bronsons’ estate was nearer Alor Lipis than it was to Kabulong, but Kabulong was a more important place commercially, and Bronson banked there.

“‘Reggie can cut in when he turns up,’ said Mrs Bronson.

“‘He’s late, isn’t he?’ said the doctor’s wife.

“‘Very. He said he wouldn’t get back in time for tennis, but would be here for a rubber. I have a suspicion that he went to the club at Kabulong instead of coming straight home and is having drinks, the ruffian.’

“‘Oh, well, he can put away a good many without their having much effect on him,’ I laughed.

“‘He’s getting fat, you know. He’ll have to be careful.’

“We sat by ourselves in the card-room and we could hear the crowd in the billiard-room talking and laughing. They were all on the merry side. It was getting on to Christmas Day and we were all letting ourselves go a little. There was going to be a dance on Christmas Eve.

“I remembered afterwards that when we sat down the doctor’s wife asked Mrs Bronson if she wasn’t tired.

“‘Not a bit,’ she said. ‘Why should I be?’.

“I didn’t know why she flushed.

“‘I was afraid the tennis might have been too much for you,’ said the doctor’s wife.

“‘Oh, no,’ answered Mrs Bronson, a trifle abruptly, I thought, as though she didn’t want to discuss the matter.

“I didn’t know what they meant, and indeed it wasn’t till later that I remembered the incident.

“We played three or four rubbers and still Bronson didn’t turn up.

“‘I wonder what’s happened to him,’ said his wife. ‘I can’t think why he should be so late.’

“Cartwright was always silent, but this evening he had hardly opened his mouth. I thought he was tired and asked him what he’d been doing.

“‘Nothing very much,’ he said. ‘I went out after tiffin to shoot pigeon.’

“‘Did you have any luck?’ I asked.

“‘Oh, I got half a dozen. They were very shy.’

“But now he said: ‘If Reggie got back late, I dare say he thought it wasn’t worth while to come here. I expect he’s had a bath and when we get in we shall find him asleep in his chair.’

“‘It’s a good long ride from Kabulong,’ said the doctor’s wife.

“‘He doesn’t take the road, you know,’ Mrs Bronson explained. ‘He takes the short cut through the jungle.’

“‘Can he get along on his bicycle?’ I asked.

“‘Oh, yes, it’s a very good track. It saves about a couple of miles.’

“We had just started another rubber when the bar-boy came in and said there was a police-sergeant outside who wanted to speak to me.

“‘What does he want?’ I asked.

“The boy said he didn’t know, but he had two coolies with him.

“‘Curse him,’ I said.

“‘I’ll give him hell if I find he’s disturbed me for nothing.’

“I told the boy I’d come and I finished playing the hand. Then I got up.

“‘I won’t be a minute,’ I said. ‘Deal for me, will you?’ I added to Cartwright.

“I went out and found the sergeant with two Malays waiting for me on the steps. I asked him what the devil he wanted. You can imagine my consternation when he told me that the Malays had come to the police-station and said there was a white man lying dead on the path that led through the jungle to Kabulong. I immediately thought of Bronson.

“‘Dead?’ I cried.

“‘Yes, shot. Shot through the head. A white man with red hair.’

“Then I knew it was Reggie Bronson, and indeed, one of them naming his estate said he’d recognized him as the man. It was an awful shock. And there was Mrs Bronson in the card-room waiting impatiently for me to sort my cards and make a bid. For a moment I really didn’t know what to do. I was frightfully upset. It was dreadful to give her such a terrible and unexpected blow without a word of preparation, but I found myself quite unable to think of any way to soften it. I told the sergeant and the coolies to wait and went back into the club. I tried to pull myself together. As I entered the card-room Mrs Bronson said: ‘You’ve been an awful long time.’ Then she caught sight of my face. ‘Is anything the matter?’ I saw her clench her fists and go white. You’d have thought she had a presentiment of evil.

“‘Something dreadful has happened,’ I said, and my throat was all closed up so that my voice sounded even to myself hoarse and uncanny. ‘There’s been an accident. Your husband’s been wounded.’

“She gave a long gasp, it was not exactly a scream, it reminded me oddly of a piece of silk torn in two.

“‘Wounded?’ “She leapt to her feet and with her eyes starting from her head stared at Cartwright. The effect on him was ghastly, he fell back in his chair and went as white as death.

“‘Very, very badly, I’m afraid,’ I added.

“I knew that I must tell her the truth, and tell it then, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell it all at once.

“‘Is he,’ her lips trembled so that she could hardly form the words, ‘is he-conscious?’

“I looked at her for a moment without answering. I’d have given a thousand pounds not to have to.

“‘No, I’m afraid he isn’t.’

“Mrs Bronson stared at me as though she were trying to see right into my brain.