A Woman of Bangkok (45 page)

Approaching the gate I walked slower and slower. Each of the tall brick gate-posts was surmounted by a globe which tonight was lighted. Together they threw a soft yellow glow for several yards around.

I crossed to the far side of the lane and stood staring through the open gateway at the House. The fact that the gate was open and those lamps left on meant that somebody was out in the car. But who? It might be the Samjohns, but it might just as likely be Frost or Drummond.

After staring through the gateway for a short time I realized I’d have to go in nearer to the House to find out. There were too many banana palms and mango trees between the House and me, and the ornate trellis-work over the front porch, with the tangled arcs of the bougainvillaea sprays drooping from it, practically blotted out the lighted ground-floor windows of the Samjohns’ quarters.

I made sure that there was no one to see me in the lane, then I bent down and quickly unlaced my shoes. I took them off and walked as naturally as I could across the lane to the gate. Under the lighted globes I paused and peered at one gate-post as though I were a stranger trying to ascertain the number of the House. I was still afraid someone might be watching me. Then I walked through the gate onto the granite chips which bit into my stockinged feet painfully. I dropped my shoes behind the gate-post as I passed by it. I was relieved to find that I could walk quite silently on the drive in my stockinged feet.

I never considered how I was going to explain away my shoeless state if I was surprised. I never considered being surprised by Frost or the others at all. It was not in my plan to be surprised.

Just where the light was least satisfactory, from the watchman’s point of view, there was a small tree about six yards from the drive. Without altering my pace or crouching suspiciously or anything like that I turned off the drive and crossed to this tree. I stood behind it, visible perhaps from the lane, but quite invisible, I was sure, from the House or the servants’ quarters.

I parted the branches and looked at things carefully. As I had expected, the view from this tree was much better.

I could now see clearly into the Samjohns’ sitting-room. There was the Old Man all right, peaceful in an armchair, reading. The light from a standard lamp poured down over his white hair and one pink cheek. He had on heavy-rimmed glasses which he never wore at the office and the usual cigar was smoking idly in his mouth. As I watched, he removed it, and lifted a glass. He held the glass at his mouth while he turned a page, then tossed off the drink and resumed smoking. He even settled himself a little deeper in his chair; he was obviously very much at his ease and relaxed.

I couldn’t see any signs of his wife. She might be in a chair that was invisible to me, or on the other hand it might be she that had gone out in the car. I couldn’t be sure.

Then I turned to the Frost-Drummond half of the House. There were lights on in all the rooms, upstairs and down. The French windows of their sitting-room were open but the ceiling fan wasn’t working. I was pretty sure it would have been if the room had been occupied. Perhaps they were out too—or perhaps they were upstairs. Drummond had a habit of retiring early and reading under his mosquito net. Frost, a more gregarious character, was much more likely to be out than in bed.

I was entirely satisfied with this situation. It never occurred to me that a burglar generally makes a more thorough reconnaisance of a building before he enters it. Nor did I realize that, after making wholly inadequate observations, I’d jumped to some very hasty conclusions. The coast was clear: all I’d got to do, I thought, was walk straight in … And this I did.

Now that I was inside the House and unobserved I believed that the hard part of the job was done. I began to feel a little stir of excitement for the first time—not because I was aware of any danger—I never felt more at ease on that point in my life—but because I could see triumph in my grasp—I could visualize Vilai’s delight to come. Partly I’d agreed with her up till then—I wasn’t the cowboy type, it would be just like me to make a mess of this job as of most of the others I’d undertaken—but now I was feeling a lot more confident. Everything was turning out to be so easy. Nothing could go wrong, surely, now I’d come so far …

I walked past the open door of Samjohn’s sitting-room with the quiet unhurried tread of a servant going upstairs on some household errand. I don’t think he was conscious of anyone passing at all. He was facing the window, not the door, and he was entirely absorbed in his whisky, his smoke, and his book. I looked into the other sitting-room, opposite Samjohn’s, on the right, as I passed, but without stopping: it was as I had anticipated, empty.

I walked up the thickly-carpeted stairs. There was one tread that creaked and I tried to remember which it was, though I didn’t think it mattered much. I avoided the tread which I thought was the noisy one but it was actually the one two steps higher up. Or maybe another tread had started to creak since I was last on those stairs. It made rather a loud noise, but I wasn’t bothered. Probably my ears had exaggerated the sound anyway. I kept going.

When I reached the landing I found myself quite breathless. I had to pause a minute with my hand resting on the top of the bookcase. No doubt the injuries and exertions and the lack of sleep during the last forty hours were taking their toll of my strength. Not to speak of the emotional tension I was under. I was momentarily scared I might faint.

With an effort I got control of myself again. It would be absolute farce if I cracked up at this point.

I bent and opened the sliding glass panels of the bookcase. Ever since I’d set out from the hotel I’d been obsessed with the importance of arranging alibis. I seldom read crime fiction, but this one point seemed to have been made in all the examples of the genre that had come my way: if your alibi’s no good, you’ve had it. So I’d determined to select two books and leave them on top of the bookcase when I went into the bedroom. Then, if I was interrupted, I could say I’d come to the House for some books to read—there they are, over there on the bookcase—I didn’t want to disturb anyone because it was so late—I took my shoes off because they were muddy after walking up the lane—I though I heard a suspicious noise in the bedroom and I just peeped in to investigate—and so on. The tale seemed to me perfectly plausible as I made it up …

This is why I took time off in the middle of my burglarizing to study literature. It wasn’t easy to choose the right books. Two whole shelves in the case were devoted to crime and the Wild West and as I’d never shown any interest in them before it might look suspicious if I did so now. All the rest of the books were on the bottom shelf, and there weren’t enough of them to fill it. Moreover, some of them I’d read already, and Mrs. Samjohn, who always took great interest in my literary predilections, might happen to remember which. Then there were books like
Adam Bede
and
East Lynne
which nobody ever reads—you just let people assume you’ve already had a go at them and have benefited greatly thereby. What was left was a duck-shooter’s reminiscences, a first-aid manual, a system of statistics, a study of Chinese porcelains, three Ethel M. Dell’s and a very ancient volume
of Punch
. I chose porcelain and ducks.

I placed these books conspicuously on top of the bookcase and looked around me. The stairs were empty. All the bedroom doors were shut—Frost’s and Drummond’s on the right, Samjohn’s ahead—except for Mrs. Samjohn’s on my left. Hers was wide open (except for the screen-door)—inviting me to enter.

I walked across the landing and pushed the screen-door gently. I noticed it squeaked, but what matter? Everybody on the premises was absorbed in his own affairs. I could make as much noise as I liked, and whoever was in the house would assume it was somebody else whom he knew to be in the house moving around as usual …

The screen-door squeaked wide on the end of my finger. I lifted my foot to go in—and stopped aghast. My heart came up into my throat and started to swell there like a frightened toad. I felt the bones in my legs liquify. Mrs. Samjohn was there. Sitting in front of her mirror, in a very decollete pink nightdress, combing her hair. With her back to me, as it happened, but still there …

For some stupid reason it had never occurred to me that Mrs. Samjohn could be upstairs. I’d imagined that Frost or Drummond might be—had been prepared all the time I’d been on the landing for one or the other to emerge from his bedroom. But I’d somehow got it fixed in my mind that, since she wasn’t in the sitting-room with her husband, Mrs. Samjohn was out visiting somewhere. The shock of finding that she wasn’t almost paralysed me for a moment.

But only for a moment. Then suddenly I saw red. Dear God, I wasn’t going to let an old frump like her interfere with my plans. I’d come this far for Vilai’s sake: now nothing could turn me back …

In my first dismay at seeing that woman in her room I’d let the door shut but I now thrust it violently open again and took a long stride—

‘Joyce.’ The word came from behind me, to the left—from the stairs. The voice was Samjohn’s—not raised, but with a sharp imperative note in it that pulled me up short as if he’d thrown a lasso round my neck. ‘Joyce,’ he said again, even more sharply: ‘just exactly what’s your game, young man?’

He was standing on the stairs—cut off from the waist down by the edge of the landing so that he looked like some old time windjammer’s figurehead—but standing upright, not slanting forwards, and modernly whiskerless. He still had on those heavy black-rimmed glasses and their lenses were pools of reflected light that completely obscured his eyes. He watched me for a second or two, then came on up the rest of the stairs. One of them creaked loudly under his foot. He was carrying a decanter, and for one wild hopeful minute I thought he had just caught me by accident on his way to bed—that he was taking the decanter with him for a nightcap before he turned in. But the next intant I realized from the way that he was carrying it that it was a weapon—the first that had come to his hand.

‘Well?’ he said, stopping a few feet away from me. I could see his eyes now, very wide and wary; but his voice sounded more puzzled than angry, and I noticed that the arm that held the decanter was slowly relaxing. ‘I asked you what you’re doing here.’

I remembered my alibi. ‘I came to borrow some books, sir.’

He didn’t answer, but abruptly walked past me and opened the screen-door to his wife’s room. ‘Sorry to trouble you, dear, but have you any books in here?’ he called in to his wife.

‘Books?’ She sounded most surprised. ‘Why, no. Only the Agatha Christie I’m going to read in bed.’

He let the door shut again and turned to me, his bushy white eyebrows clamped down over the black-rimmed glasses. ‘Just why were you barging into Mrs. Samjohn’s bedroom, Joyce?’

‘I—I thought I heard someone in there, sir.’

‘Very likely, too. Mrs. Samjohn happens to be getting ready for bed.’

‘I mean, I thought it was a burglar, sir.’

‘You mean you mistook Mrs. Samjohn for a burglar?’

‘No, no—’

‘But surely you recognized Mrs. Samjohn sitting at her dressing-table—the
first
time you opened the door?’

So he’d been watching me for some time. I hadn’t the faintest idea how to answer him—my mind had gone numb.

But just at this moment Mrs. Samjohn came out of her room. She’d thrown a frivolously lacy dressing-gown over her shoulders. ‘Whatever’s going on?’ she asked her husband, and then catching sight of me, ‘Why, Mr. Joyce!’ She pulled a handful of lace over the yawning neck of the nightgown. ‘What a surprise to see you back so soon! I thought you were still in the Northeast. And you look so ill—really, dear,’ turning to her husband, ‘Mr. Joyce looks as if he’d just seen a ghost.’

‘He has,’ said Samjohn drily. ‘Joyce seems to be suffering from a whole lot of hallucinations, in fact. But don’t you worry about him, dearest. You go to bed and read yourself to sleep.
I’ll
deal with this young man downstairs.’

I’m not going to give a verbatim report of that interview. Samjohn made me sit down, settled himself in his own favourite chair, painstakingly prepared a cigar for the burning, and then, talking out of the midst of a cloud like certain ancient deities, launched into the subject of my defects. After twenty minutes, having brushed aside any small protests I tried to make, he lighted another cigar and began his summing up. ‘It all mounts up to this, Joyce,’ he said. ‘You’ve been acting in a very peculiar manner indeed. First of all you seem to think you can chuck your job and come gallivanting up to town whenever it suits you. If you did that in the Army you’d be court-martialled for deserting your post—you might even be shot for it. Well, business isn’t run like the Army—which is probably a pity in some ways, but damn’ lucky for irresponsible people like yourself. The fact remains that you just walked out on Windmill without any consideration for the firm, or Windmill, at all. You say you did so for ‘personal reasons,’ but you decline to say what those reasons were. Now, frankly Joyce, as I’ve already told you, I can’t conceive of a young single man in good health like yourself having
any
personal reasons strong enough to warrant his walking out on his job. I may be wrong about this, but I think if your personal reasons were really adequate—or if they were completely honourable—you’d have no hesitation whatever in telling me what they were.’ He paused a moment, giving me one last chance to make a clean breast of it all, but I remained obstinately silent. So he continued:

‘Right-ho. You drop everything and come rushing up to Bangkok. In the firm’s jeep, as it happens. And in your haste to get here you apparently drive down the face of a precipice. You blame this mishap on a storm. Well, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt there—there
was
a storm last night—a remarkably bad one. But the points that puzzle me are these. Why can’t you tell me how badly damaged the jeep is? If it’s only upside down, as you say, couldn’t it have been turned right way up again sometime today? Why did you just leave it there upside down? And why haven’t you done a single thing about recovering it yet?’ He took his cigar out of his mouth and squinted at the wet end.