Father Clay was up and waiting for him in the dismal little European house which had been built amon

Father Clay was up and waiting for him in the dismal little European house which had been built among the mud huts in laterite bricks to look like a Victorian presbytery. A hurricane-lamp shone on the priest’s short red hair and his young freckled Liverpool face. He couldn’t sit still for more than a few minutes at a time, and then he would be up, pacing his tiny room from hideous oleograph to plaster statue and back to oleograph again. ‘I saw so little of him,’ he wailed, motioning with his hands as though he were at the altar. ‘He cared for nothing but cards and drinking. I don’t drink and I’ve never played cards - except demon, you know, except demon, and that’s a patience. It’s terrible, terrible.’
‘He hanged himself?’
‘Yes. His boy came over to me yesterday. He hadn’t seen him since the night before, but that was quite usual after a bout, you know, a bout. I told him to go to the police. That was right, wasn’t it? There was nothing I could do. Nothing. He was quite dead.’
‘Quite right. Would you mind giving me a glass of water and some aspirin?’
‘Let me mix the aspirin for you. You know, Major Scobie, for weeks and months nothing happens here at all. I just walk up and down here, up and down, and then suddenly out of the blue ... it’s terrible.’ His eyes were red and sleepless: he seemed to Scobie one of those who are quite unsuited to loneliness. There were no books to be seen except a little shelf with his breviary and a few religious tracts. He was a man without resources. He began to pace up and down again and suddenly, turning on Scobie, he shot out an excited question. ‘Mightn’t there be a hope that it’s murder?’
‘Hope?’
‘Suicide,’ Father Clay said. ‘It’s too terrible. It puts a man outside mercy. I’ve been thinking about it all night.’
‘He wasn’t a Catholic. Perhaps that makes a difference. Invincible ignorance, eh?’
‘That’s what I try to think.’ Half-way between oleograph and statuette he suddenly started and stepped aside as though he had encountered another on his tiny parade. Then he looked quickly and slyly at Scobie to see whether his act had been noticed.
‘How often do you get down to the port?’ Scobie asked.
‘I was there for a night nine months ago. Why?’
‘Everybody needs a change. Have you many converts here?’
‘Fifteen. I try to persuade myself that young Pemberton had time - time, you know, while he died, to realize ...’
‘Difficult to think clearly when you are strangling, Father.’ He took a swig at the aspirin and the sour grains stuck in his throat ‘If it was murder you’d simply change your mortal sinner, Father,’ he said with an attempt at humour which wilted between the holy picture and the holy statue.
‘A murderer has time ...’ Father Clay said. He added wistfully, with nostalgia, ‘I used to do duty sometimes at Liverpool Gaol.’
‘Have you any idea why he did it?’
‘I didn’t know him well enough. We didn’t get on together.’
‘The only white men here. It seems a pity.’
‘He offered to lend me some books, but they weren’t at all the kind of books I care to read - love stories, novels ...’