Oberhauser

The Smythes both put on weight and Major Smythe had the first of his two coronaries and was told by his doctor to cut down on his alcohol and cigarettes and take life more easily. He was also to avoid fats and fried food. At first Mary Smythe tried to be firm with him; then, when he took to secret drinking and to a life of petty lies and evasions, she tried to back-pedal on her attempts to control his self-indulgence. But she was too late. She had already become the symbol of the janitor to Major Smythe and he took to avoiding her. She berated him with not loving her any more and, when the resultant bickering became too much for her simple nature, she became a sleeping-pill addict. Then, after one flaming, drunken row, she took an overdose ‘just to show him’. It was too much of an overdose and it killed her. The suicide was hushed up, but the resultant cloud did Major Smythe no good socially and he returned to the North Shore which, although only some three miles across the island from the capital, is, even in the small society of Jamaica, a different world. And there he had settled in Wavelets and, after his second coronary, was in the process of drinking himself to death when this man called Bond arrived on the scene with an alternative death warrant in his pocket. 

Major Smythe looked at his watch. It was a few minutes after twelve o’clock. He got up and poured himself another stiff brandy and ginger ale and went out on to the lawn. 

James Bond was sitting under the sea-almonds, gazing out to sea. 

He didn’t look up when Major Smythe pulled up another aluminium garden chair and put his drink on the grass beside him. 

When Major Smythe had finished telling his story, Bond said unemotionally, ‘Yes, that’s more or less the way I figured it.’ 

‘Want me to write it all out and sign it?’ 

‘You can if you like. But not for me. That’ll be for the court martial. Your old Corps will be handling all that. I’ve got nothing to do with the legal aspects. I shall put in a report to my own Service of what you’ve told me and they’ll pass it on to the Royal Marines. Then I suppose it’ll go to the Public Prosecutor via Scotland Yard.’ 

‘Could I ask a question?’ 

‘Of course.’ 

‘How did they find out?’ 

‘It was a small glacier. Oberhauser’s body came out at the bottom of it earlier this year. When the spring snows melted. Some climbers found it. All his papers and everything were intact. The family identified him. Then it was just a question of working back. The bullets clinched it.’ 

‘But how did you get mixed up in the whole thing?’ 

‘MOB Force was a responsibility of my, er, Service. The papers found their way to us. I happened to see the file. I had some spare time on my hands. I asked to be given the job of chasing up the man who did it.’ 

‘Why?’ 

James Bond looked Major Smythe squarely in the eyes. ‘It just happened that Oberhauser was a friend of mine. He taught me to ski before the war, when I was in my teens. He was a wonderful man. He was something of a father to me at a time when I happened to need one.’ 

‘Oh, I see.’ Major Smythe looked away. ‘I’m sorry.’ 

James Bond got to his feet. ‘Well, I’ll be getting back to Kingston.’ He held up a hand. ‘No, don’t bother. I’ll find my way to the car.’ He looked down at the older man. He said abruptly, almost harshly – perhaps, Major Smythe thought, to hide his embarrassment – ‘It’ll be about a week before they send someone out to bring you home.’ Then he walked off across the lawn and through the house and Major Smythe heard the iron whirr of the self-starter and the clatter of the gravel on the unkempt drive. 

Major Smythe, questing for his prey along the reef, wondered what exactly those last words of the Bond man had meant. Inside the Pirelli his lips drew mirthlessly back from the stained teeth. It was obvious, really. It was just a version of the corny old act of leaving the guilty officer alone with his revolver. If the Bond man had wanted to, he could have telephoned Government House and had an officer of the Jamaica Regiment sent over to take Major Smythe into custody. Decent of him, in a way. Or was it? 

A suicide would be much tidier, save a lot of paperwork and tax-payers’ money. 

Should he oblige the Bond man and be tidy? Join Mary in whatever place suicides go to? Or go through with it – the indignity, the dreary formalities, the headlines, the boredom and drabness of a life sentence that would inevitably end with his third coronary? Or should he defend himself – plead wartime, a struggle with Oberhauser on the Peak of Gold, prisoner trying to escape, Oberhauser knowing of the gold cache, the natural temptation of Smythe to make away with the bullion, he, a poor officer of the Commandos confronted with sudden wealth? Should he dramatically throw himself on the mercy of the court?