‘How long have you been here?’
‘About three weeks.’
‘Living in this house?’
‘No, in a hut down the path.’
‘You were going to run this place while they were away?’
‘Yes, for six months.’
‘And then?’
‘And then I intended to go on a tobacco farm.’
‘When did you know about this business?’
‘They didn’t call me. I woke and found Mrs Turner.’
Tony’s voice showed he was now on the defensive. He felt wounded, even insulted that he had not been called: above all, that these two men seemed to think it right and natural that he should be bypassed in this fashion, as if his newness to the country unfitted him for any kind of responsibility. And he resented the way he was being questioned. They had no right to do it. He was beginning to simmer with rage, although he knew quite well that they themselves were quite unconscious of the patronage implicit in their manner, and that it would be better for him to try and understand the real meaning of this scene, rather than to stand on his dignity.
‘You had your meals with the Turners?’
‘Yes.’
‘Apart from that, were you ever here – socially, so to speak?’
‘No, hardly at all. I have been busy learning the job.’
‘Get on well with Turner?’
‘Yes, I think so. I mean, he was not easy to know. He was absorbed in his work. And he was obviously very unhappy at leaving the place.’
‘Yes, poor devil, he had a hard time of it.’ The voice was suddenly tender almost maudlin, with pity, although the Sergeant snapped out the words, and then shut his mouth tight, as if to present a brave face to the world. Tony was disconcerted: the unexpectedness of these men’s responses was taking him right out of his depth. He was feeling nothing that they were feeling: he was an outsider in this tragedy, although both the Sergeant and Charlie Slatter seemed to feel personally implicated, for they had unconsciously assumed poses of weary dignity, appearing bowed down with unutterable burdens, because of poor Dick Turner and his sufferings.
Yet it was Charlie who had literally turned Dick off his farm; and in previous interviews, at which Tony had been present, he had shown none of this sentimental pity.
There was a long pause. The Sergeant shut his notebook. But he had not yet finished. He was regarding Tony cautiously, wondering how to frame the next question. Or that was how it appeared to Tony, who could see that here was the moment that was the crux of the whole affair. Charlie’s face: wary, a little cunning, a little afraid, proclaimed it.
‘See anything out of the ordinary while you were here?’ asked the Sergeant, apparently casual.
‘Yes, I did,’ blurted Tony, suddenly determined not to be bullied. For he knew he was being bullied, though he was cut off from them both by a gulf in experience and belief. They looked up at him, frowning; glanced at each other swiftly – then away, as if afraid to acknowledge conspiracy.
‘What did you see? I hope you realize the – unpleasantness – of this case?’ The last question was a grudging appeal.
‘Any murder is surely unpleasant,’ remarked Tony drily.
‘When you have been in the country long enough, you will understand that we don’t like niggers murdering white women.’
The phrase, ‘When you have been in the country’, stuck in Tony’s gullet. He had heard it too often, and it had come to jar on him. At the same time it made him feel angry. Also callow. He would have liked to blurt out the truth in one overwhelming, incontrovertible statement; but the truth was not like that. It never was. The fact he knew, or guessed, about Mary, the fact these two men were conspiring to ignore, could be stated easily enough. But the important thing, the thing that really mattered, so it seemed to him, was to understand the background, the circumstances, the characters of Dick and Mary, the pattern of their lives. And it was not so easy to do. He had arrived at the truth circuitously: circuitously it would have to be explained. And his chief emotion, which was an impersonal pity for Mary and Dick and the native, a pity that was also rage against circumstances, made it difficult for him to know where to begin.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you what I know from the beginning, only it will take some time, I am afraid…’
‘You mean you know why Mrs Turner was murdered?’ The question was a quick, shrewd parry.
‘No, not just like that. Only I can form a theory.’ The choice of words was most unfortunate.
‘We don’t want theories. We want facts. And in any case, you should remember Dick Turner. This is all most unpleasant for him. You should remember him, poor devil.’
Here it was again: the utterly illogical appeal, which to these two men was clearly not illogical at all. The whole thing was preposterous! Tony began to lose his temper.
‘Do you or do you not want to hear what I have to say?’ he asked, irritably.
‘Go ahead. Only remember, I don’t want to hear your fancies. I want to hear facts. Have you ever seen anything definite which would throw light on this murder? For instance, have you seen this boy attempting to get at her jewellery, or something like that? Anything that is definite. Not something in the air.’
Tony laughed. The two men looked at him sharply.
‘You know as well as I do this case is not something that can be explained straight off like that. You know that. It’s not something that can be said in black and white, straight off.’
It was pure deadlock; no one spoke. As if Sergeant Denham had not heard those last words, a heavy frown on his face, he said at last: ‘For instance, how did Mrs Turner treat this boy? Did she treat her boys well?’
The angry Tony, fumbling for a foothold in this welter of emotion and half-understood loyalties, clutched at this for a beginning.
‘Yes, she treated him badly, I thought. Though on the other hand…’
‘Nagged at him, eh? Oh well, women are pretty bad that way, in this country, very often. Aren’t they, Slatter?’ The voice was easy, intimate, informal. ‘My old woman drives me mad – it’s something about this country. They have no idea how to deal with niggers.’
‘Needs a man to deal with niggers,’ said Charlie. ‘Niggers don’t understand women giving them orders. They keep their own women in their right place.’ He laughed. The Sergeant laughed. They turned towards each other, even including Tony, in an unmistakable relief. The tension had broken; the danger was over: once again, he had been bypassed, and the interview, it seemed, was over. He could hardly believe it.
‘But look here,’ he said. Then he stopped. Both men turned to look at him, a steady, grave, irritated look on their faces. And the warning was unmistakable! It was the warning that might have been given to a greenhorn who was going to let himself
