Ah King (Works of W. Somerset Maugham) Page 4

  “The only thing now was to sit down and wait till the hue and cry had died down and the murderers thought the affair was forgotten. The itch to spend those ill-gotten dollars would grow more and more intolerable till at last it could be resisted no longer. I would go about my business, but I meant never to relax my watch, and one day, sooner or later, my time must come.

  “Cartwright took Mrs Bronson down to Singapore. The company Bronson had worked for asked him if he would care to take Bronson’s place, but he said, very naturally, that he didn’t like the idea of it; so they put another man in and told Cartwright that he could have the job that Bronson’s successor had vacated. It was the management of the estate that Cartwright lives on now. He moved in at once. Four months after this Olive was born at Singapore, and a few months later, when Bronson had been dead just over a year, Cartwright and Mrs Bronson were married. I was surprised; but on thinking it over I couldn’t help confessing that it was very natural. After the trouble Mrs Bronson had leant much on Cartwright and he had arranged everything for her; she must have been lonely, and rather lost, and I dare say she was grateful for his kindness, he did behave like a brick; and so far as he was concerned I imagined he was sorry for her, it was a dreadful position for a woman, she had nowhere to go, and all they’d gone through must have been a tie between them. There was every reason for them to marry and it was probably the best thing for them both.

  “It looked as though Bronson’s murderers would never be caught, for that plan of mine didn’t work; there was no one in the district who spent more money than he could account for, and if anyone had that hoard buried away under his floor he was showing a self-control that was superhuman. A year had passed and to all intents and purposes the thing was forgotten. Could anyone be so prudent as after so long not to let a Little money dribble out? It was incredible. I began to think that Bronson had been killed by a couple of wandering Chinese who had got away, to Singapore perhaps, where there would be small chance of catching them. At last I gave it up. If you come to think of it, as a rule, it’s just those crimes, crimes of robbery, in which there is least chance of getting the culprit; for there’s nothing to attach suspicion to him, and if he’s caught it can only be by his own carelessness. It’s different with crimes of passion or vengeance, then you can find out who had a motive to put the victim out of the way.

  “It’s no use grizzling over one’s failures, and bringing my common sense to bear I did my best to put the matter out of my mind. No one likes to be beaten, but beaten I was and I had to put as good a face on it as I could. And then a Chinaman was caught trying to pawn poor Bronson’s watch.

  “I told you that Bronson’s watch and chain had been taken, and of course Mrs Bronson was able to give us a fairly accurate description of it. It was a half-hunter, by Benson, there was a gold chain, three or four seals, and a sovereign purse. The pawnbroker was a smart fellow and when the Chinaman brought the watch he recognized it at once. On some pretext he kept the man waiting and sent for a policeman. The man was arrested and immediately brought to me. I greeted him like a long-lost brother. I was never so pleased to see anyone in my life. I have no feeling about criminals, you know; I’m rather sorry for them, because they’re playing a game in which their opponents hold all the aces and kings; but when I catch one it gives me a little thrill of satisfaction, like bringing off a neat finesse at bridge. At last the mystery was going to be cleared up, for if the Chinaman hadn’t done the thing himself we were pretty sure through him to trace the murderers. I beamed on him.

  “I asked him to account for his possession of the watch. He said he had bought it from a man he didn’t know. That was very thin. I explained the circumstances briefly and told him he would be charged with murder. I meant to frighten him and I did. He said then that he’d found the watch.

  “‘Found it?’ I said. ‘Fancy that. Where?’

  “His answer staggered me; he said he’d found it in the jungle. I laughed at him; I asked him if he thought watches were likely to be left lying about in the jungle; then he said he’d been coming along the pathway that led from Kabulong to Alor Lipis, and had gone into the jungle and caught sight of something gleaming and there was the watch. That was odd. Why should he have said he found the watch just there? It was either true or excessively astute. I asked him where the chain and the seals were, and he produced them immediately. I’d got him scared, and he was pale and shaking; he was a knock-kneed little fellow and I should have been a fool not to see that I hadn’t got hold of the murderer there. But his terror suggested that he knew something.

  “I asked him when he’d found the watch.

  “‘Yesterday,’ he said.

  “I asked him what he was doing on the short-cut from Kabulong to Alor Lipis. He said he’d been working in Singapore and had gone to Kabulong because his father was ill, and that he himself had come to Alor Lipis to work. A friend of his father, a carpenter by trade, had given him a job. He gave me the name of the man with whom he had worked in Singapore and the name of the man who had engaged him at Alor Lipis. All he said seemed plausible and could so easily be verified that it was hardly likely to be false. Of course it occurred to me that if he had found the watch as he said, it must have been lying in the jungle for more than a year. It could hardly be in very good condition; I tried to open it, but couldn’t. The pawnbroker had come to the police-station and was waiting in the next room. Luckily he was also something of a watchmaker. I sent for him and asked him to look at the watch; when he opened it he gave a little whistle, the works were thick with rust.

  “‘This watch no good,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Him never go now.’

  “I asked him what had put it in such a state, and without a word from me he said that it had been long exposed to wet. For the moral effect I had the prisoner put in a cell and I sent for his employer. I sent a wire to Kabulong and another to Singapore. While I waited I did my best to put two and two together. I was inclined to believe the man’s story true; his fear might be ascribed to no more guilt than consisted in his having found something and tried to sell it. Even quite innocent persons are apt to be nervous when they’re in the hands of the police; I don’t know what there is about a policeman, people are never very much at their ease in his company. But if he really had found the watch where he said, someone had thrown it there. Now that was funny. Even if the murderers had thought the watch a dangerous thing to possess, one would have expected them to melt down the gold case; that would be a very simple thing for any native to do; and the chain was of so ordinary a pattern they could hardly have thought it possible to trace that. There were chains like it in every jeweller’s shop in the country. Of course there was the possibility that they had plunged into the jungle and having dropped the watch in their hurry had been afraid to go back and look for it. I didn’t think that very likely: the Malays are used to keeping things tucked away in their sarongs, and the Chinese have pockets in their coats. Besides, the moment they got into the jungle they knew there was no hurry; they probably waited and divided the swag then and there.

  “In a few minutes the man I had sent for came to the police-station and confirmed what the prisoner had said, and in an hour I got an answer from Kabulong. The police had seen his father, who told them that the boy had gone to Alor Lipis to get a job with a carpenter. So far everything he had said seemed true. I had him brought in again, and told him I was going to take him to the place where he said he had found the watch and he must show me the exact spot. I handcuffed him to a policeman, though it was hardly necessary, for the poor devil was shaking with fright, and took a couple of men besides. We drove out to where the track joined the road and walked along it; within five yards of the place where Bronson was killed the Chinaman stopped.

  “‘Here,’ he said.

  “He pointed to the jungle and we followed him in. We went in about ten yards and he pointed to a chink between two large boulders and said that he found the watch there. It could only have been by the merest c
hance that he noticed it, and if he really had found it there it looked very much as though someone had put it there to hide it.”

  Gaze stopped and gave me a reflective look.

  “What would you have thought then?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what I thought. I thought that if the watch was there the money might be there, too. It seemed worth while having a look. Of course, to look for something in the jungle makes looking for a needle in a bundle of hay a drawing-room pastime. I couldn’t help that. I released the Chinaman, I wanted all the help I could get, and set him to work. I set my three men to work, and I started in myself. We made a line-there were five of us-and we searched from the road; for fifty yards on each side of the place at which Bronson was murdered and for a hundred yards in we went over the ground foot by foot. We routed among dead leaves and peered in bushes, we looked under boulders and in the hollows of trees. I knew it was a foolish thing to do, for the chances against us were a thousand to one; my only hope was that anyone who had just committed a murder would be rattled and if he wanted to hide anything would hide it quickly; he would choose the first obvious hiding-place that offered itself. That is what he had done when he hid the watch. My only reason for looking in so circumscribed an area was that as the watch had been found so near the road, the person who wanted to get rid of the things must have wanted to get rid of them quickly.

  “We worked on. I began to grow tired and cross. We were sweating like pigs. I had a maddening thirst and nothing in the world to drink. At last I came to the conclusion that we must give it up as a bad job, for that day at least, when suddenly the Chinaman-he must have had sharp eyes, that young man-uttered a guttural cry. He stooped down and from under the winding root of a tree drew out a messy, mouldering, stinking thing. It was a pocket-book that had been out in the rain for a year, that had been eaten by ants and beetles and God knows what, that was sodden and foul, but it was a pocket-book all right, Bronson’s, and inside were the shapeless, mushed-up, fetid remains of the Singapore notes he had got from the bank at Kabulong. There was still the silver and I was convinced that it was hidden somewhere about, but I wasn’t going to bother about that. I had found out something very important; whoever had murdered Bronson had made no money out of it.

  “Do you remember my telling you that I’d noticed the print of Bronson’s feet on each side of the broad line of the pneumatic tyre, where he had stopped, and presumably spoken to someone? He was a heavy man and the prints were well marked. He hadn’t just put his feet on the soft sand and taken them off, but must have stopped at least for a minute or two. My explanation was that he had stopped to chat with a Malay or a Chinaman, but the more I thought of it the less I liked it. Why the devil should he? Bronson wanted to get home, and though a jovial chap, he certainly was not hail-fellow-well-met with the natives. His relations towards them were those of master and servants. Those footprints had always puzzled me. And now the truth flashed across me. Whoever had murdered Bronson hadn’t murdered him to rob and if he’d stopped to talk with someone it could only be with a friend. I knew at last who the murderer was.”

  I have always thought the detective story a most diverting and ingenious variety of fiction, and have regretted that I never had the skill to write one, but I have read a good many, and I flatter myself it is rarely that I have not solved the mystery before it was disclosed to me; and now for some time I had foreseen what Gaze was going to say, but when at last he said it I confess that it gave me, notwithstanding, somewhat of a shock.

  “The man he met was Cartwright. Cartwright was pigeon-shooting. He stopped and asked him what sport he had had, and as he rode on Cartwright raised his gun and discharged both barrels into his head. Cartwright took the money and the watch in order to make it look like the work of gang robbers and hurriedly hid them in the jungle, then made his way along the edge till he got to the road, went back to the bungalow, changed into his tennis things, and drove with Mrs Bronson to the club.

  “I remembered how badly he’d played tennis, and how he’d collapsed when, in order to break the news more gently to Mrs Bronson, I said Bronson was wounded and not dead. If he was only wounded he might have been able to speak. By George, I bet that was a bad moment. The child was Cartwright’s. Look at Olive: why, you saw the likeness yourself. The doctor had said that Mrs Bronson was upset when he told her she was going to have a baby and made him promise not to tell Bronson. Why? Because Bronson knew that he couldn’t be the father of the child.”

  “Do you think that Mrs Bronson knew what Cartwright had done?” I asked.

  “I’m sure of it. When I look back on her behaviour that evening at the club I am convinced of it. She was upset, but not because Bronson was killed; she was upset because I said he was wounded; on my telling her that he was dead when they found him she burst out crying, but from relief I know that woman. Look at that square chin of hers and tell me that she hasn’t got the courage of the devil. She has a will of iron. She made Cartwright do it. She planned every detail and every move. He was completely under her influence; he is now.”

  “But do you mean to tell me that neither you nor anyone else ever suspected that there was anything between them?”

  “Never. Never.”

  “If they were in love with one another and knew that she was going to have a baby, why didn’t they just bolt?”

  “How could they? It was Bronson who had the money; she hadn’t a bean and neither had Cartwright. He was out of a job. Do you think he would have got another with that story round his neck? Bronson had taken him in when he was starving and he’d stolen his wife from him. They wouldn’t have had a dog’s chance. They couldn’t afford to let the truth come out, their only chance was to get Bronson out of the way, and they got him out of the way.”

  “They might have thrown themselves on his mercy.”

  “Yes, but I think they were ashamed. He’d been so good to them, he was such a decent chap, I don’t think they had the heart to tell him the truth. They preferred to kill him.”

  There was a moment’s silence while I reflected over what Gaze said.

  “Well, what did you do about it?” I asked.

  “Nothing. What was there to do? What was the evidence? That the watch and notes had been found? They might easily have been hidden by someone who was afterwards afraid to come and get them. The murderer might have been quite content to get away with the silver. The footprints? Bronson might have stopped to light a cigarette or there might have been a tree-trunk across the path and he waited while the coolies he met there by chance moved it away. Who could prove that the child that a perfectly decent, respectable woman had had four months after her husband’s death was not his child? No jury would have convicted Cartwright. I held my tongue and the Bronson murder was forgotten.”

  “I don’t suppose the Cartwrights have forgotten,” I suggested.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised. Human memory is astonishingly short and if you want my professional opinion I don’t mind telling you that I don’t believe remorse for a crime ever sits very heavily on a man when he’s absolutely sure he’ll never be found out.”

  I thought once more of the pair I had met that afternoon, the thin, elderly, bald man with gold-rimmed spectacles, and that white-haired untidy woman with her frank speech and kindly, caustic smile. It was almost impossible to imagine that in the distant past they had been swayed by so turbulent a passion, for that alone made their behaviour explicable, that it had brought them in the end to such a pass that they could see no other issue than a cruel and coldblooded murder.

  “Doesn’t it make you feel a little uncomfortable to be with them?” I asked Gaze. “For, without wishing to be censorious, I’m bound to say that I don’t think they can be very nice people.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. They are very nice people; they’re about the pleasantest people here. Mrs Cartwright is a thoroughly good sort and a very amusing woman. It’s my
business to prevent crime and to catch the culprit when crime is committed, but I’ve known far too many criminals to think that on the whole they’re worse than anybody else. A perfectly decent fellow may be driven by circumstances to commit a crime and if he’s found out he’s punished; but he may very well remain a perfectly decent fellow. Of course society punishes him if he breaks its laws, and it’s quite right, but it’s not always his actions that indicate the essential man. If you’d been a policeman as long as I have, you’d know it’s not what people do that really matters, it’s what they are. Luckily a policeman has nothing to do with their thoughts, only with their deeds; if he had, it would be a very different, a much more difficult matter.”

  Gaze flicked the ash from his cheroot and gave me his wry, sardonic, but agreeable smile.

  “I’ll tell you what, there’s one job I shouldn’t like,” he said.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “God’s at the Judgement Day,” said Gaze. “No, sir.”

  THE DOOR OF OPPORTUNITY

  THEY got a first-class carriage to themselves. It was lucky, because they were taking a good deal in with them, Alban’s suit-case and a hold-all, Anne’s dressing-case and her hat-box. They had two trunks in the van, containing what they wanted immediately, but all the rest of their luggage Alban had put in the care of an agent who was to take it up to London and store it till they had made up their minds what to do. They had a lot, pictures and books, curios that Alban had collected in the East, his guns and saddles. They had left Sondurah for ever. Alban, as was his way, tipped the porter generously and then went to the bookstall and bought papers. He bought the New Statesman and the Nation, and the Tatler and the Sketch, and the last number of the London Mercury. He came back to the carriage and threw them on the seat.