The Grass is Singing Read Free Page B

mainly pity that agitated him, knowing what he knew. It was the disgust that he would feel for any social irregularity, no more than the distaste that comes from failure of the imagination. This profound instinctive horror and fear astonished him.
    The three of them went silently into the living-room. Charlie Slatter and Sergeant Denham stood side by side like two judges, as if they had purposely taken up this attitude. Opposite them was Tony. He stood his ground, but he felt an absurd guiltiness taking hold of him, simply because of their pose, standing like that, looking at him with subtle reserved faces that he could not read.
    'Bad business,' said Sergeant Denham briefly.
    No one answered. He snapped open a notebook, adjusted elastic over a page, and poised a pencil.
    'A few questions, if you don't mind,' he said. Tony nodded
    '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