Ngaio Marsh - Scales of Justice

“What, sir, do you reckon—” Oliphant began, and catching sight of his superior’s face, was silent.

Alleyn said harshly, “The case will rest on expert evidence of a sort never introduced before. If her counsel is clever and lucky, she’ll get an acquittal. If he’s not so clever and a bit unlucky, she’ll get a lifer.” He looked at Fox. “Shall we go?” he said.

He thanked Oliphant and Gripper for their work and went out to the car.

Oliphant said, “Has something upset the Chief, Mr. Fox?”

“Don’t you worry,” Fox said. “It’s the kind of case he doesn’t fancy. Capital charge and a woman. Gets to thinking about what he calls first causes.”

“First causes?” Oliphant repeated dimly.

“Society. Civilization. Or something,” Fox said. “I mustn’t keep him waiting. So long.”

“Darling, darling Rose,” Mark said. “We’re in for a pretty ghastly time, I know. But we’re in for it together, my dearest love, and I’ll watch over you and be with you, and when it’s all done with, we’ll have each other and love each other more than ever before. Won’t we? Won’t we?”

“Yes,” Rose said clinging to him. “We will, won’t we?”

“So that something rather wonderful will come out of it all,” Mark said. “I promise it will. You’ll see.”

“As long as we’re together.”

“That’s right,” Mark said. “Being together is everything.”

And with one of those tricks that memory sometimes plays upon us, Colonel Cartarette’s face, as Mark had last seen it in life, rose up clearly in his mind. It wore a singularly compassionate smile.

Together, they drove back to Nunspardon.

Nurse Kettle drove in bottom gear to the top of Watt’s Hill and there paused. On an impulse, or perhaps inspired by some unacknowledged bit of wishful thinking, she got out and looked down on the village of Swevening. Dusk had begun to seep discreetly into the valley. Smoke rose in cosy plumes from one or two chimneys; roofs cuddled into their surrounding greenery. It was a circumspect landscape. Nurse Kettle revived her old fancy. “As pretty as a picture,” she thought wistfully and was again reminded of an illustrated map. With a sigh, she turned back to her faintly trembling car. She was about to seat herself when she heard a kind of strangulated hail. She looked back and there, limping through the dusk, came Commander Syce. The nearer he got to Nurse Kettle, the redder in the face they both became. She lost her head slightly, clambered into her car, turned her engine off and turned it on again. “Pull yourself together, Kettle,” she said and leaning out shouted in an unnatural voice, “The top of the evening to you.”

Commander Syce came up with her. He stood by the open driving window, and even in her flurry, she noticed, that he no longer smelt of stale spirits.

“Ha, ha,” he said, laughing hollowly. Sensing perhaps that this was a strange beginning, he began again. “Look here!” he shouted. “Good Lord! Only just heard. Sickening for you. Are you all right? Not too upset and all that? What a thing!”

Nurse Kettle was greatly comforted. She had feared an entirely different reaction to Kitty Cartarette’s arrest in Commander Syce.

“What about yourself?” she countered. “It must be a bit of a shock to you, after all.”

He made a peculiar dismissive gesture with the white object he carried.

“Never mind me. Or rather,” Commander Syce amended, dragging feverishly at his collar, “if you can bear it for a moment—”

She now saw that the object was a rolled paper. He thrust it at her. “There you are,” he said. “It’s nothing, whatever. Don’t say a word.”

She unrolled it, peering at it in the dusk. “Oh,” she cried in an ecstasy, “how lovely! How lovely! It’s my picture-map! Oh, look! There’s Lady Lacklander, sketching in Bottom Meadow. And the doctor with a stork over his head — aren’t you a trick —and there’s me, only you’ve been much too kind about me. ” She leant out of the window, turning her lovely map towards the fading light. This brought her closish to Commander Syce, who made a singular little ejaculation and was motionless. Nurse Kettle traced the lively figures through the map: the landlord, the parson, various rustic celebrities. When she came to Hammer Farm, there was the gardener’s cottage and his asthmatic child, and there was Rose bending gracefully in the garden. Nearer the house, one could see even in that light, Commander Syce had used thicker paint.

As if, Nurse Kettle thought with a jolt, there had been an erasure.

And down in the willow grove, the Colonel’s favourite fishing haunt, there had been made a similar erasure.

“I started it,” he said, “some time ago — after your — after your first visit.”

She looked up, and between this oddly assorted pair a silence fell.

“Give me six months,” Commander Syce said, “to make sure. It’ll be all right. Will you?”

Nurse Kettle assured him that she would.

The End