Scobie visits the Commissioner and learns he has been passed over for the top post due to his enemies.

Louise asks Scobie to send her to South Africa to escape her misery in the colony.

Scobie is denied a bank loan for Louise's passage due to a wartime overdraft policy.

Scobie borrows two hundred pounds from the Syrian trader Yusef to fund Louise's voyage to South Africa.

Scobie puts Louise on a liner bound for South Africa, and she asks him to say he loves her.

Tallit is arrested when port inspectors discover illegal diamonds hidden inside a parrot's crop.

Scobie arrives at Pende and watches stretcher-borne shipwreck survivors being carried ashore.

Scobie and the young widow Helen Rolt begin a romantic affair.

The Commissioner confirms to Scobie that Wilson is a spy sent to investigate his unit for corruption.

Louise sends a telegram from South Africa announcing her imminent return home.

Yusef reveals he holds Scobie's love letter to Helen and blackmails Scobie into delivering a suspicious package.

Louise returns from South Africa and insists Scobie begin attending Mass and communion.

Scobie goes to confession and discloses his adultery to Father Rank.

Yusef has Scobie's loyal servant Ali murdered after Scobie expresses paranoid distrust of him.

Scobie swallows a lethal dose of pills and dies, staging his death as heart failure.

Henry Scobie, a colonial police officer passed over for promotion, spirals into moral crisis when his wife Louise's unhappiness drives him to borrow money from a criminal Syrian trader named Yusef. After sending Louise to South Africa, Scobie begins a guilt-laden affair with a young shipwreck survivor named Helen Rolt. Trapped between his duty to Louise and his entanglement with Helen, Scobie's troubles deepen when a spy named Wilson begins investigating him and Yusef blackmails him using a stolen love letter. Louise's return forces Scobie to confession, but he remains uncontrite, and his indirect complicity in the murder of his loyal servant Ali pushes him to the edge of spiritual collapse. Unable to bear the weight of his responsibilities, his sins, and his belief in his own damnation, Scobie stages his death as heart failure by swallowing a lethal dose of pills.

Wilson arrives in the colony and meets Harris, who points out Scobie below and alleges he is corrupt.

Scobie inspects the Portuguese ship Esperança and discovers a hidden letter inside the captain's cistern.

Scobie reads the smuggled letter, concludes the captain is innocent, and discards his own official report.

An Indian fortuneteller reads Wilson's fortune and publicly exposes his secret love of poetry.

Scobie travels to Bamba and learns from Father Clay that assistant Commissioner Pemberton died by hanging.

Yusef visits Scobie in Bamba and burns all of Pemberton's outstanding debts and IOUs.

A dying young girl mistakes Scobie for her father; he makes rabbit shadows on her pillow until she dies.

Scobie visits Helen Rolt in the rest-house and reads A Bishop among the Bantus aloud to her.

Harris discovers a poem secretly written by Wilson and dedicated to 'L.S.' in an alumni school newsletter.

Helen kicks Scobie out of her Nissen hut after a bitter argument about his Catholic hypocrisy.

Scobie writes Helen a letter declaring he loves her more than Louise or even God.

Scobie returns to Helen's hut to find she never received his love letter.

Wilson visits Louise and professes his love; she slaps him when he calls Scobie by her private pet name.

Scobie retroactively adds diary entries about sleeplessness and heart pain to fabricate a terminal illness.

Wilson notices retroactive additions in Scobie's diary entries and concludes Scobie staged his own death.

From Wilson's suspicious arrival in the colony to the posthumous exposure of Scobie's forged diary, this pool covers the hidden layers of deception that define the novel's world. Scobie's early compromise — concealing an innocuous smuggled letter after reading it illegally — foreshadows the deeper dishonesty to come, while Wilson's secret love of poetry hints at the hidden vulnerabilities beneath his cold espionage facade. The death of a young shipwreck girl and Scobie's first bedside visits to Helen Rolt mark the emotional turning point from which his doomed affair grows. As the affair deteriorates through bitter quarrels and a mysteriously vanished love letter, Wilson pursues Louise and quietly builds a case against Scobie. The pool closes with Scobie's meticulous diary falsifications and Wilson's chilling discovery that Scobie engineered his own death.

The secrets, discoveries, and deceptions that surround Scobie.

Scobie tells Louise he will not be made Commissioner; she urges him to retire and leave the colony.

Wilson kisses Louise on a hillside and declares his love; she firmly rejects him and says she loves Scobie.

Scobie finds Pemberton's suicide note in his quarters, in which Pemberton apologizes to his father.

Scobie decides to accept a loan from Yusef despite knowing the dangers of becoming indebted to him.

Yusef visits Scobie after Louise's departure and reveals details of Tallit's diamond-smuggling scheme involving a parrot.

Wilson and Harris descend into a furious argument while competing in their cockroach-killing game.

Helen accuses Scobie of weaponizing his Catholic faith against her to avoid divorcing Louise.

Scobie contemplates suicide for the first time after reading Louise's telegram announcing her return.

Scobie and Helen quarrel at a dinner party while Wilson observes them from across the room.

Scobie delivers a suspicious package to the captain of the Esperança under Yusef's coercive blackmail.

Helen warns Scobie to be careful around Wilson after learning that Wilson has been spying on him.

Father Rank refuses to grant Scobie absolution because Scobie shows no genuine contrition for his adultery.

Scobie takes communion despite being refused absolution, feeling an eternal sentence on his tongue.

Helen tells Scobie she must leave him, but Scobie insists his sense of responsibility to her is unbreakable.

Father Rank tells Louise the Church knows all the rules but not what goes on in a single human heart.

This pool traces the pivotal choices and emotional confrontations that drive Scobie toward his tragic end. From Scobie telling Louise he has been passed over for promotion, to his fateful decision to accept Yusef's loan despite the obvious dangers, each moment tightens the net around him. Wilson's failed pursuit of Louise and Helen's accusations of hypocrisy force Scobie to confront the contradictions at the core of his identity, while Louise's telegram of return triggers his first serious thoughts of suicide. His attempt at spiritual cleansing is thwarted when Father Rank refuses absolution, yet Scobie takes communion anyway, privately convinced his soul is already condemned. The pool ends with Father Rank's radical suggestion that the Church's rules cannot encompass God's mercy, leaving the question of Scobie's eternal fate profoundly unresolved.