“Philip Masters looked at her for the last time He was never to see her again. He said: ‘All right. You can have the car and the radiogram. Now that’s all. I’ve got to pack. Goodbye.’ And he walked out of the door and up to his room.”
The Governor looked across at Bond. “At least one last little gesture. Yes?” The Governor smiled grimly. “When he had gone and Rhoda Masters was left alone, she took the car and her engagement ring and her few trinkets and the fox fur tippet and went into Hamilton and drove round the pawnbrokers. In the end she collected forty pounds for the jewellery and seven pounds for the bit of fur. Then she went to the car dealers whose nameplate was on the dashboard of the car and asked to see the manager. When she asked how much he would give her for the Morris he thought she was pulling his leg. ‘But, madam, Mr Masters bought the car by hire purchase and he’s very badly behind on his payments. Surely he told you that we had to send him a solicitor’s letter about it only a week ago. We heard he was leaving. He wrote back that you would be coming in to make the necessary arrangements. Let me see’ – he reached for a file and leafed through it. ‘Yes, there’s exactly two hundred pounds owing on the car.'”
“Well, of course, Rhoda Masters burst into tears and in the end the manager agreed to take back the car, although it wasn’t worth two hundred pounds by then, but he insisted that she should leave it with him then and there, petrol in the tank and all. Rhoda Masters could only accept and be grateful not to be sued, and she walked out of the garage and along the hot street and already she knew what she was going to find when she got to the radio shop. And she was right. It was the same story, only this time she had to pay ten pounds to persuade the man to take back the radiogram. She got a lift back to within walking distance of the bungalow and went and threw herself down on the bed and cried for the rest of the day. She had already been a beaten woman. Now Philip Masters had kicked her when she was down.”
The Governor paused. “Pretty extraordinary, really. A man like Masters, kindly, sensitive, who wouldn’t normally hurt a fly. And here he was performing one of the cruellest actions I can recall in all my experience. It was my law operating.” The Governor smiled thinly. “Whatever her sins, if she had given him that Quantum of Solace he could never have behaved to her as he did. As it was, she had awakened in him a bestial cruelty – a cruelty that perhaps lies deeply hidden in all of us and that only a threat to our existence can bring to the surface. Masters wanted to make the girl suffer, not as much as he had suffered because that was impossible, but as much as he could possibly contrive. And that false gesture with the motor car and the radiogramophone was a fiendishly brilliant bit of delayed action to remind her, even when he was gone, how much he hated her, how much he wanted still to hurt her.”
Bond said: “It must have been a shattering experience. It’s extraordinary how much people can hurt each other. I’m beginning to feel rather sorry for the girl. What happened to her in the end – and to him, for the matter of that?”
The Governor got to his feet and looked at his watch. “Good heavens, it’s nearly midnight. And I’ve been keeping the staff up all this time,” he smiled, “as well as you.” He walked across to the fireplace and rang a bell A Negro butler appeared. The Governor apologized for keeping him up and told him to lock up and turn the light out. Bond was on his feet. The Governor turned to him. “Come along and I’ll tell you the rest. I’ll walk through the garden with you and see that the sentry lets you out.”