He thought of Nyagatha, high in the foothills of Mount Kenya, amid forest and gorges, glowing with eternal sunshine, as if in retrospect the rainy seasons had been suspended for the duration of his childhood. He savored again the huge dry vistas of Africa under the empty sky, the velvet tropical nights when the stars roamed just above the treetops like clouds of diamond dust. He saw the dusty compound with the Union Jack hanging limp in the baking heat, scavenging chickens, listless dogs, laughing native children in the village. He recalled the guv'nor handing out medicines in the sanitarium; the mater teaching school in the shade of the veranda to a score of wriggling black youngsters and three or four whites; tribal elders arriving after treks of days or weeks to conclave in the black shadow of the euphorbia trees and listen solemnly to Bwana's advice or judgment; visiting Englishmen passing through the district, drinking gin and tonic at sundown and amusing themselves by talking to the boy, the future builder of Empire. It had all seemed quite natural—was not this how all white people grew up?
Above all he remembered the leggy, bony girl in pigtails, who bossed him and all the other children of every color—who chose the games they would play and the places they would visit and the things they must do and the things they must not do, and with whom he never argued. He remembered again his horror when she had to go Home, to England, to the mystical ancestral homeland her parents had left before her birth.
"Edward?"
Hospital and pain returned. “I beg your pardon, sir. What did you say?"
Holy Roly closed his eyes in sorrow. “Why can you not see that prayer and repentance are your only hope of salvation, Edward? He will make allowance for your doubts. Lord I believe; help thou mine unbelief!"
His sepulchral, ivy-coated bleating was probably comforting the ward next door. It was giving his nephew prickly heat.
"I appreciate your kindness in coming all this way to see me, sir."
Hints were wasted on Uncle Roland.
"Edward, Edward! Your father was a misguided apostate and look where it got him!"
Edward tried to sit up and his leg exploded in flame. He sank back on the pillow, streaming sweat.
"Good-bye, sir!” he said through clenched teeth. The pain was making him nauseated. “Thank you for coming."
A flush of anger showed in the sallow cheeks. Roly slammed the bible shut. “Do you still not see? Exodus, chapter twenty-one, the fifth verse: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me."
"I never quite saw that as fair play, somehow,” Edward said, wondering what insanity was boiling inside the old maniac now. “Bowing down to what?"
"Idols! False gods! The Father of Evil! Your father was a disgrace to his country and his calling and his race! Read what the board of inquiry wrote about him, how he betrayed the innocent savages placed in his care—"
"Innocent savages? They were innocent until you Bible-bangers got to work on them! My parents would be alive today if a bunch of meddling missionaries—"
"Your father turned away the Word of God and frustrated the laws of his own people and sold his soul to the Devil!"
That did it. "Out!" Edward screamed, hauling on the bell-pull. “Go away or I shall throw things at you."
"I warned him that the Lord would not be mocked!"
"Nurse! Constable! Matron!"
"Wherefore, seeing we are encompassed about ... “ declaimed his uncle, rolling his eyes up to inspect the electric lighting.
The lanky policeman appeared in the doorway. Footsteps were hurrying along the corridor.
"Get this maniac out of here!” Edward yelled.
" ... sin which does so easily beset..."
"Nurse! Matron! He's driving me as mad as he is. He's insulting my parents."
"And it is also written—"
"He's preaching sedition. Remove him!” To emphasize the point, Edward grabbed up the kidney-shaped dish and hurled it, aimed to bounce off the book his uncle was again clutching to his breast. It was unfortunate that at that moment the old man started to turn. The dish, in cricket parlance, broke to leg. As Matron steamed into the room, a loud shattering announced that Edward had bowled a vase.
She impaled him with a glance of steel. “What is the meaning of this?"
"He insulted my father...."
Too late the expression on Holy Roly's cadaverous face registered. Edward could not call back the words, nor the act itself.
He had resorted to violence!
Matron spoke again and he did not hear her; he did not see an ample, whaleboned lady in a stiff white cap and starched uniform. He saw instead the crown prosecutor in black silk and wig. He heard himself being forced to admit to the jury the damning answer he had just given, and he heard the question that would follow as surely as night must follow day:
"Do you remember discussing your father with Timothy Bodgley?"
24
THE SUSPECT HAD TRAVELED TO PARIS AND BACK WITH Julian Smedley, who was therefore an obvious witness. The Smedleys resided at “Nanjipor,” Raglan Crescent, Chichester, and Leatherdale could justify another drive in that spiffy motorcar General Bodgley had placed at his disposal.
"Nanjipor” was a terrace house. It had an imposing facade fronted by a garden of roses, begonias, and boxwood topiary hedges. From the outside, therefore, it was identical to all the other houses in its row. The interior was suffocatingly hot and resembled a museum of Oriental art—wicker chairs, gaudy rugs, brass tables, lacquer screens in front of the fireplaces, idols with innumerable arms, hideously garish china vases, ebony elephants. The English had always been great collectors.
A chambermaid ushered Leatherdale into a parlor whose heavy curtains had been drawn, leaving the room so dark that the furnishings were barely visible. There he met Julian Smedley.
For Bank Holiday, young Smedley wore flannel trousers with a knife-edge crease, a brass-buttoned blazer, and what must obviously be an Old Fallovian tie—he was too young to lay claim to be an Old-Anything-Else. His shoes shone like black mirrors. He sat very stiffly on the edge of a hard chair, his hands folded in his lap, staring owlishly at his visitor. He added, “sir,” to every statement he uttered. He gave his age as seventeen; he did not look it.
A certain amount of reticence could be expected in anyone who found himself involved in a very nasty murder case and Smedley was probably shy at the best of times. He might have been more forthcoming had Leatherdale been able to speak with him alone.
His father was present and had a right to be, as the boy was a minor. Sir Thomas Smedley was ex-India, a large, loud, and domineering man. He apologized for not being at his best: “Just recovering from a touch of the old malaria, you know.” He certainly did not look well—he was sweating profusely and his hands trembled. Tropical diseases were something else the English collected while bringing enlightenment to the backward races of the world.
Sir Thomas had offered sherry and biscuits, which were declined. He had thereupon opened the interview with a ten-minute diatribe against the Germans: “Blustering bullies, you know. Always have been. Stand up to them and they crawl, try to be reasonable and they brag and threaten. Absolutely no idea how to handle natives, none at all. Made a botch of their colonies, all of them. Thoroughly hated, everywhere. Southwest Africa, Cameroons, East Africa—it's always the same with the Boche. The Hottentots taught them a thing or two, back in ‘06, you know. Never did get the whole story diere. Now they think they can make a botch of Europe. Might is Right, they say. Well, they've got a surprise coming. Russians'll be in Berlin by Christmas, if the French don't beat them to it."