The unnamed Narrator—obviously a fictionalized version of the author, Somerset Maugham, who routinely inserted himself as a character in his fiction—is visiting Tanah Merah of the Federated Malay States during the height of the British colonial empire in the early decades of the 20th century. He is invited by his acquaintance, Chief of Police Gaze, to join a game of bridge with a wealthy British couple that it turns out has a notorious past.
Upon remarking that the 19-year-old daughter of the couple bears a much stronger resemblance to her father than her mother, Gaze informs him that the husband is actually the step-father of the girl whose biological father had been mysteriously killed in an unsolved murder twenty years earlier. The disconnect at work in this revelation piques the interest of the Narrator and stimulates the Police Chief to tell the backstory of the murder which takes up the bulk of the narrator.
Mrs. Cartwright had once been Mrs. Bronson, married to successful plant Reggie. Reggie Bronson extends an invitation for his friend Theo Cartwright—who is suffering financial setbacks—to come to Malay and take a job helping with the plantation. What was supposed to be a temporary situation until Cartwright got back on his feet stretches into a year during which time Cartwright and Mrs. Bronson become active tennis partners. One night Reggie Bronson is discovered murdered in the jungle and Gaze’s investigation concludes that the murder was likely the unintended collateral damage of a theft since both his watch and substantial sum of money are missing from the murder scene.
In the ensuing year following the murder, Cartwright and the widowed Mrs. Bronson marry. Less than nine months after the murder, she had given birth to a daughter, Olive, naturally assumed to have been fathered by the late M. Bronson. By this time, Gaze has considered the case closed, but unsolved as neither the watch nor the missing money has ever shown up. The case grown cold and public interest having moved on, Gaze considers it closed. And then about a year later, the elusive watch suddenly shows up in the hands of a Chinese man trying to pawn it. Upon interrogating the suspect, Gaze is moved by the man’s seeming honesty to investigate his claim of having found the watch in the jungle near the exact site the murder occurred.
A return trip to the jungle confirms the believability of the Chinese man’s unlikely story in a most unexpected and convincing way: the missing money is also finally discovered. In light of the new evidence suggesting that robbery was not a motive in the murder, Gaze becomes convinced that Cartwright murdered his friend at the urging of Mrs. Bronson as a solution to an embarrassingly inconvenience: she was already carrying Cartwright’s illegitimate child.
Unfortunately, though all the evidence points toward this being the explanation, none of that evidence is strong enough to bring a case. Since public focus has turned away from the murder and, besides, Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright are popular and pleasant, he allows them to get away with their crime, suggesting that he would not want to be God on their judgment day.
