It is dark in the bush

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 151, 15 May 1942, Page 24

It is dark in the bush

SYNOPSIS Three students discover the body of James Collins on a tree in backblocks bush. 'The inquest reveals that Collins died of luminal poisoning, and the body was afterwards hanged. Graham is arrested, evidence against him being that as Charles Preston he suffered a heavy jail sentence in Australia for a crime for which his secretary, Peter Langley, alias Collins, was responsible, and that he is known to have bought luminal soon after reaching New Zealand. Mrs. Marsden confesses to Judith that she saw Preston in the clearing on the afternoon of the murder. Preston tells his lawyer that a week before the murder, Langley came to Murray’s house, Te Rata, and meeting Preston, attempted to blackmail him, Preston, after several days’ , hesitation, goes up to Langley’s shack with the money and finds him already dead. There is an empty bottle of luminal on the table. Realising he will be suspected of murder, he drags the body into the bush and hangs it, hoping that in the event of its discovery, Langley will be presumed to have killed himself. "Guilty, with a strong recommendation to mercy," is the jury’s verdict. The evening after the trial, David arranges to meet Mrs, Marsden at her hotel. He finds her already dead. Mrs. Marsden leaves a letter for David and another for the police, in which she confesses that she was Langley’s murderer.

CHAPTER XXIX. (Cont'd) AVID remembered with shame and compunction all his doubts and suspicions of good old George Murray. Had he once been mad enough to connect that kindly and generous nature with murder and concealment? Then he sighed quickly. After all, whose heart was naturally kinder or more generous than Mrs. Marsden’s? — and yet the world now knew her for a self-confessed murderess. Who, after all, was he to judge?-he who as yet could understand so little of the whole mysterious business. Ann was incredulous and aghast at the news, but Mr. Murray received it more calmly than David had dared to hope. That evening, when the shock had subsided and they were all able to speak and think calmly again, they sat out on the veranda in the cool dusk and the old man told them something of the history of the last three months. "Tt was about a fortnight before the murder when I first realised that Langley had some hold over her," he said. "Ever since the villain’s death I have been blaming myself bitterly that I did not intervene at that point and drive him out of the district. But I hesitated at the moment and then it was too late." "How did you know of the trouble?" "By accident, and by overhearing what I was not meant to hear — that made it all so much more difficult. I had told Mrs. Marsden that I would be eut for the day but returned unexpectedly because my horse had gone lame. I was taking a short-cut across the grass when I heard their voices in the trees behind the tennis court apd Mrs. Marsden’s was so different from her usual low icnes that I stcpped involuntarily and listened." "What was she saying?" "*You mean to say that you have put it down-my whole story-in black and white? Then, if- you die, someone may find those papers and my secret will never be safe, Oh, you villain, you

black-hearted villain. .. . And you swore to me when I let you have that last twenty pounds that you would go away, leave New Zealand altogether.’ "That was all. I heard, for I felt all the guilt of the eavesdropper and hurried away. But when I got to the house I looked back and was amazed to see Langley’s figure slipping away up the track. I lay awake all night, pondering what I ought to do, but at last I decided that I must intervene. I went to her next morning and asked her if she was in any trouble. At once her head went up like a frightened horse’s, and she denied it absolutely. I said, ‘Well, don’t forget I’m here. Twenty years of friendship constitutes.a claim and there’s little I wouldn’t do to satisfy it.’ She looked at me in silence for a moment and then she said, ‘You can help me best by seeing nothing, knowing nothing. It will all come right. It must come right.’ You know the sort of woman she was, so selfcontained and reliant; all I could do was to say, ‘Well, here I am. Don’t’ forget and don’t hesitate if you want me.’ She smiled at me, that sudden warm smile she sometimes had." The old man’s voice broke and they all sat in silence for a minute. Presently he ‘said, "I was very fond of her. Oh, not in love at all... . Perhaps it seems strange to you young people that a feeling so warm and so sincere could last for twenty years and never turn to anything closer? Well, it never did. I’d had my romance and she’d had her tragedy. . « . What it was I never knew, but it closed her heart to love as mine was closed. But much remained, friendship and admiration and all those little jokes we used to make about her, always with her encouraging us without seeming to. » + I shall miss her very much," "Tell me, Mr. Murray," said David later, " Why did you follow me to the cottage that night?" "Because I was haunted by the fear of someone finding those papers. I could ‘tell from the words I’d overheard that that villain had written it all down and hidden it somewhere. I thought he’d probably used the same threat to Preston and that Preston had told you — and that was why you were spending all your time up there. I didn’t want you to find them; I didn’t mean anyone to interfere with Mrs. Marsden’s plans. I didn’t. know-I didn’t dare think-who had killed Langley. But I knew well enough that if she had, she wouldn’t let Preston suffer. For some reason, she wanted more time-and she was going to have it. I was dreadfully ashamed of

allowing Ann to suffer more than she needed, but I knew I could trust Mrs. Marsden-and wait for her." "So it was you who found them!" "Found them? What, the papers? My dear boy, I never saw a sign of them." "Then who on earth has got them?" There was a thoughtful pause and then George Murray said, "No one, obviously no one — certainly not the police, or it would all have come. out. Perhaps he destroyed them himself in a last decent impulse. Anyway they haven’t fallen into outside hands, or the police would have known. That’s all that matters now. Yes, David — I was the villain that tripped you up-and a dirty trick it was." "What a muddle it’s been," David confessed later. "Do you know, sir, I suspected the most unlikely people of the crime." George Murray smiled. "I know you had your doubts of me. Oh, don’t apologise. I’ve often wished I had murdered the villain. I’d have made a better job of it and saved one valuable life and a lot of unhappiness to everyone. ... No, no, my boy, of course I understand what was in your mind when Ann told me that she had shown you the torn shirt and that you, had remembered urgent business in town." They looked at each other kindly and with understanding; peace had come to them, but the sadness remained. CHAPTER XXX. On this morning of the same day on which David had carried the news of Mrs. Marsden’s death to the Te Rata household, Judith was anxiously tearing open a letter in the bedroom of the seaside hotel where they were staying. The morning’s letters and papers had arrived by launch and, while John sat idly smoking on the veranda outside the room Judith was unfolding a letter written in the housekeeper’s upright, characteristic hand. One glance at its contents and she rose hurriedly; at all costs the papers must be kept from John until she had been able to tell him the last chapter of the tragedy in the bush. She satisfied herself that he was entirely absorbed’ in a sporting paper a week old, and buried herself in her letter; as she read on, her breath came in little choking gasps and the tears were running unchecked down her cheeks. There were two letters in the envelope, the first was short, but the second was marked "Entirely Private." The shorter letter tan thus: "My Dear Judith, This should, I suppose, be a conventional letter of farewell; but you and

I understand each other too well to take much heed of the conventions. There has, I think, been little hidden from your clear eyes during the last two months; my lie about Charles Prestonor rather the twisting of the story by which I led you to infer that I cared for him-deceived you for a time, ‘but not for long. How the whole truth was revealed to you I do not know, but I imagine from the discovery of the hidden papers. Your discretion towards the world, your trust in me, have linked us in a tie which I scarcely think death will break. "By the time you read this I shall know whether human ties can survive the grave, for I shall be dead. You have probably divined that I meant to take this way out if Mr. Preston were found guilty. I stayed in town for this purpose, because I wished to bring no more unhappiness than was necessary to the people I care for, nor to throw any heavier shadow upon that house where I hope you will yet be very happy. I believe that you will be. "Don’t grieve for me, my dear girl. One thing I will tell you, that even your wise eyes have not seen, but which will now convince you how very foolish it would be to mourn for me. I had only a few months to live in any case; those repeated visits of mine were to a doctor, not a dentist, a specialist who told me the truth. It was too late to operate by the time I went to him, and in any case I had accomplished what I most wished to do. You know, I think, what that was. . . . I went to this doctor under an assumed name, but his prescription made it easier for me to obtain luminal without attracting undue attention. Tell Mr. Murray and John of my illness, it will reconcile them to my death, but will not, I am sure, make them think that I was influenced to make my confession or to take my own life by the fact that that life was in any case a bad one, as the insurance agents would say! "Give John my love; he knows, I think, that he has always had it. To Mr. Murray also it seems unnecessary to send any conventional message. To (Continued on next page)

IT IS DARK IN THE BUSH (Continued from previous page) you, dear Judith, go all my best wishes. The friendship and affection that you have shown to me under such difficult circumstances have done much to help me through it all. I am your affectionate friend, Elizabeth Marsden." When she had read this letter slowly and carefully, Judith opened the second enclosure. She had hardly glanced at it when a movement from the balcony made her hurriedly conceal it as her husband entered. "Coming down to get a paper and see the news?" "Presently, John; but I have something to tell you first." "Why, darling, what’s the matter? You’ve been crying." " Ah, so will you, too, when you know. --~ But try to believe it is for the best. . «+ John, dear John, we’ve lost our best friénd. . . . Mrs. Marsden is dead." " Marsy? But that’s impossible... . There’s a mistake. . . . Marsy couldn’t have died like that. . . . She’s perfectly well, always fit as a fiddle." "She wasn’t well, but that has nothing to do with it. Mrs. Marsden took her own life," and very gently she went on to tell him the main points of the tragic story. It seemed as though John’s intelligence was incapable of grasping the facts; impossible at first to convince him that she and no other had been guilty of Langley’s murder. Kindly ,and. carefully Judith told him the housekeeper’s tragedy and presently, with sorrow but with no regret, she watched the slow and difficult tears that came when at last he realised that he had lost his old friend for-ever. Dreadful though John’s grief was to her, it would have seemed even more dreadful if he had had no tears to shed. Love such as Mrs. Marsden’s deseryed such mourning. * "But what made you first suspicious?" he asked later in a dazed voice. She told him of the patch that she had just put into the quilt when the torn material was found, of Mrs. Marsden’s deliberate misleading of her, of her gradual realisation that there was some far different explanation. " But what convinced you in the end?" "T found some papers, quite by accident, which Langley had hidden: On them he had written the whole story of his evil life, and part of that was connected with Mrs. Marsden; after that, it was easy to guess the rest." . "But whatever had that beast Langley to do with Mrs. Marsden?" Judith turned her steady eyes on her husband. "Do you think that I have any right to tell you? I found out by accident; she had been ready to die to keep her secret safe. Shouldn't we let her take it with her to the grave?" "You mean? ... Yes, yes, I see.... But won’t she have told the police? You say she will have left a full confession. «. Well, won’t everybody know." "TI don’t think so. It wasn’t necessary to tell them more than would clear Mr, Preston. ... We'll get a paper presently and see. If she has remained silent, then I know you will want me to do the same."

But John did not pursue the subject; it was the loss of his oldest friend, it was her personal tragedy and suffering that mattered to him. He could not picture a world without her; he could not really grasp the fact that the woman who had said good-bye to him so calmly two days before was now dead. Presently he said, "I can’t stay on here, Judith. Don't think I’m morbid, but I feel I must see her again. . ..I must go to the funeral. ... I want to feel that I’ve gone with her just as far as I could, as she always did with me," and his wife turned and kissed him with a sudden brightness of tears in her eyes. While uncle and nephew were away at the: funeral, the girl, sitting alone in her bedroom of the same little hotel in which they had all stayed before, and in which Mrs. Marsden had ended her life, took out once again the sheets of that second letter, and, with tears which at last she could allow.to flow freely, she read once more the real story of the dead woman’s tragic life. "How much, I wonder, did those papers reveal? The whole truth, I suppose, but told in the most brutal and biased way. Yet you have never turned from me, dear girl, never once shrunk away in your youth and your innocence. | So now I tell the whole story, for your ears alone. If at any future time you should wish to tell it to John, you have my permission to do so, but only if you are sure that the truth will comfort, not hurt him. I leave this, as I leave my boy’s future, in your wise hands, in the perfect confidence that you will do what is best for him-and what it means to me, my dear, to be able to say that, you may some day discover when you have children of your own. ... "You have learnt, I think, that I was James Murray’s wife and that John is my son. I married the father when I was only eighteen, a pretty, impulsive, weak creature, in whom you would find no possible shade of resemblance to the somewhat grim and always commonplace woman of to-day. He was very much older, on shore for a month’s leave and taken by a pretty face. For the first year we were not actively unhappy as my husband was away for long periods and still very much in love during the short spells when we were together. _" Later the marriage proved a failure. Who shall say which was most to blame? I can see now that I must have been a most trying wife for a middle-aged autocrat with narrow views and a nature which was sometimes violently loving and sometimes coldly disapproving. In any case, old quarrels are best buried and I will say that I spent the second year of my married life alone in a strange port, in a condition of active misery and fear of his visits. The sequel is sordid and not even original. I met a charming young man-can you picture Peter Langley as having a brother very different from himself and most sympathetic and kindly? We fell in love and I knew two months of happiness and excitement that blinded me even to the wrong I was doing my husband." (To be continued next week),