Beyond Sunrise (16 page)

Chapter Twenty

Built crudely of saplings bound together with vines, the gates to the French commissioner's compound hung open and untended in the thick, sun-baked air. Once, the high, spiked walls had provided a refuge for European traders and missionaries in times of unrest. Now the gates were used mainly at night, their purpose less to protect the lives of the compound's inhabitants than to guard their property. The island's Melanesian peoples, who judged a man's worth not by the number of possessions he accumulated but by the generosity with which he gave his bounty away, had never quite been able to bend their minds around to understanding the white men's possessive attitude toward things.

With India at his side, Jack paused in the compound's open, muddy courtyard, his gaze flicking from the tangled, rioting ruin of Georges Lefevre's once well-tended garden, to the empty, fly-buzzed blue shadows of the main bungalow's bougainvillea-draped veranda. For a moment, he turned, his eyes narrowing as he stared, again, at the nearly deserted lagoon below the settlement, where a scrawny native dog could be seen foraging for scraps on the refuge-strewn beach.

"What is it?" India asked, touching his arm.

He shook his head. "I don't know." Crossing the court and the untidy, overgrown garden beyond it, he climbed the wooden steps to the bungalow's veranda two at a time. "Georges?" he called. In the hot, heavy silence, his footsteps echoed hollowly. "Georges?
Ou est tu?"

A whisper of white muslin lightened the dark, open doorway before him as an unexpected but wholly familiar scent came to him, the scent of lilies of the valley and talcum powder; a European woman's fragrance, mingling oddly with the tropical scents of frangipani and gardenia, honeysuckle and stephanotis wafting up from the rioting garden below.

"Hello, Françine." Jack paused at the edge of the veranda, one hand still resting on the weathered wood of the rail. He was intensely conscious of the presence of India in the garden below, her gaze riveted on the petite, exquisitely fair Frenchwoman who came to trail one hand down Jack's arm in a familiar, almost intimate caress.

"Jacques," said Françine Poirot. "You look as if you've spent the last month in the jungles." Her small, turned-up nose crinkled. "And you smell like it, as well,
mon ami."

Jack caught her hand in his, then let it go. "What are you doing here, Françine?"

"You did not know?" She pursed her full lips into a pouty moue that had once heated Jack's blood, but now made him feel only wary and uncomfortable. "Pierre is Takaku's new commissioner."

Jack let his gaze drift, again, around the compound that was not, he now realized, as deserted as he had thought. Two gendarmes had appeared near the gates; another waited, silent and hard-jawed, at the end of the veranda.

"I suppose I should congratulate Pierre, but commiserate with you. Pepeete might be a backwater, but it's better than this." In the courtyard below, India McKnight had not moved, but he knew from her tense, still posture that she was as aware as he of the gendarmes, and all the implications of their presence.

Françine shook her head, as if overcome by sadness. "You should not have come here,
mon ami."

"I could leave," Jack said amicably.

"Actually, I don't think you could."

Another gendarme appeared from around the side of the bungalow, then another. "Five men," said Jack. "Pierre must think I'm dangerous."

"He knows you are."

"I have no quarrel with the French."

"
Non
. But there were some Englishmen here this morning, a Captain Simon Granger and his lieutenant, a fiercely passionate young man who takes himself far too seriously. They say you are a wanted man."

"Wanted by the English. That's nothing new." Jack brought his gaze back to the Frenchwoman's delicate features. "Since when have the French turned themselves into Her Britannic Majesty's policemen?"

"There's a diplomatic revolution under way in this world," said a heavily accented, masculine voice. "Had you not heard?"

Shifting slowly, Jack met the gaze of the man who had appeared in the bungalow's open doorway. He was a slim, darkly handsome man, Captain Pierre Poirot, with fierce eyes and an aristocratic nose and a perfectly proportioned physique. It wasn't until he limped across the veranda floor to pause behind Françine that it became apparent he stood only a few inches taller than his incredibly dainty wife.

Jack gave Takaku's new commissioner a tight smile. "Cheeky of the Germans, isn't it, to decide at this late date in history to unite, and upset the Franco-Anglican domination of the world?"

A muscle bunched along the other man's clenched jaw. "Where you made your mistake, Monsieur Ryder, was in leaving Neu Brenen. No German gunboat here."

Jack swung to gaze out over the palm-fringed, sun-spangled turquoise waters of the lagoon. "No Royal Navy corvette, either."

"The
Barracuda
will be back." The Frenchman smiled. "After I've arrested you."

Jack raised one eyebrow in mild inquiry. "On what charge?"

"The forced and violent abduction of a British travel writer."

"That's ridiculous," said India in her crisp, Scots-accented voice. "Obviously, there's been some sort of misunderstanding. Do I look as if I have been kidnapped?"

Turning, Jack watched her climb the stairs, her sensible, lace-up boots treading firmly on the plank steps. Her hair might be bound in a simple plait secured at the end by a twisted vine, her Expedition Outfit might be ripped and muddied and reduced in volume and propriety by well-intentioned theft, but it would take more than cannibals and jungles and Aussie renegades, Jack thought with a private smile, to diminish the powerful, no-nonsense presence of Miss India McKnight. She had her head held high, her piercing gaze fixed on the Frenchman. As she reached the veranda, it was Pierre Poirot who swallowed hard, and took a step back.

"As a matter of fact, mademoiselle," said the commissioner, his eyes widening as he assimilated the wonder of that tattered, jungle-stained tartan skirt and belted shirt, "you do."

"Nonsense." She planted herself directly in front of the French commissioner; the top of his head came up just shy of her shoulder. "I did have a spot of trouble with the cannibals on the southern end of the island, but Mr. Ryder acted the part of the rescuer, not the abductor."

Tipping back his head, Pierre Poirot stared up at her, his jaw slack with bemusement. "You are Miss India McKnight?"

She held out her hand. "How do you do?"

After the briefest of hesitations, Captain Poirot took the proffered hand in a limp clasp, quickly released. "And you say this man did not kidnap you?"

"That is what I say, yes."

A light feminine laugh drew everyone's attention, for a moment, to Françine Poirot. "Really, Jacques," she said softly, her head tipping to one side in a practiced artifice that reminded Jack of a small bird contemplating a choice morsel. "I would not have thought her your type. Yet you appear to have seduced her quite effectively."

Pierre Poirot's skin darkened perceptibly as a muscle jumped along his suddenly tightened jaw. He did not look at his wife. "Thank you for your information, Mademoiselle McKnight. But Monsieur Ryder is still under arrest."

"This is absurd," said India in her best Sunday-school teacher voice.

A curt jerk of the commissioner's chin brought the gendarmes in a slow advance across the compound. "You can go willingly," he said to Jack, "or you can fight."

"Well," said Jack, glancing from the gendarmes on the veranda to those still in the garden, "since you put it that way..." He ducked and stepped back to bring his fist up into the nose of the first gendarme who reached for him. "I guess I'll fight."

There were only five of them, after all, and Jack had grown up with four older brothers who'd taught him all he needed to know about using his fists and his feet. He tripped the second gendarme, then sent the third spinning back into the first as, blood spilling down his face, the bellowing Frenchman came at Jack again in a blind, angry rush.

Wrapping his hands around the rail, Jack vaulted off the veranda to land in a hibiscus- and fern-breaking crouch in the garden below. A roundhouse kick in the stomach sent the fourth gendarme back into the fifth, and bought Jack enough time to deal with one of the men from the veranda who came charging down the stairs with a howl of rage. Jack stopped him with left clip that caught the man under the chin and sent him sailing into a bed of rioting zinnias. Spinning around, Jack knocked down the gendarme who had just managed to come flailing out from beneath the prone body of his comrade.

A sweat-dampened lock of hair fell into Jack's eyes and he shook it back, assessing the distance to the open gates and the welcoming darkness of the jungle beyond. But behind him, Pierre Poirot picked up one of Georges Lefevre's clay flowerpots and dropped it in a shower of dirt and crimson geranium petals and cracking terracotta onto the top of Jack's head.

He saw a flash of brilliant light, felt a stunning wave of pain. Then he saw nothing, and felt nothing.

A cool, wet cloth touched the back of
Jack's
head.

He became aware, slowly, of the fact that he was lying on his stomach, his nose pressed against what must be a mattress, thin and noisome and thrown directly on a flagged floor. He tried to move, but his muscles were curiously unresponsive and his gut heaved alarmingly, taking away whatever inclination he might have had to move again or even open his eyes.

He contented himself with a soft groan.

"And you call me stubborn and stupid," scolded a familiar, stern voice, the Scots accent unusually thick. "I'd like to know how you'd describe that stunt."

Jack heard a trickle of water, then the cloth touched the back of his head again, stinging like crazy. "Ouch," he said. "That hurts."

"Stop whining. The flesh is broken, and there's dirt in the wound that must be cleaned out. The last thing you can afford at this point in your adventurous and disreputable career is a tropical infection."

Jack opened his eyes. He had a vague, pain-filled vision of India's tight, concerned face leaning over him. Behind her rose nondescript piles of shadowy objects and the contrastingly bright glare from a small, barred window. Then his stomach heaved again and he squeezed his eyes shut against the light. "Where am I?"

"Locked in the storeroom of the local Chinese trader's shop. It seems to be the most secure establishment in the settlement."

"It usually is."

"How's your stomach?"

"Rebelling. Why?"

"I'm afraid you might have a concussion."

By clenching his teeth, Jack was able to summon up the courage to roll over and open his eyes. A dusty ceiling swam sickeningly overhead, then the world righted itself, and he sighed. "What happened to Georges? Did anyone say?"

India dipped her cloth in the water again, and laid it on his forehead. It felt
cool,
and so good he changed his mind about telling her to stop fussing over him. "I gather he was recalled to France. Something about a duel."

"And the powers that be decided to replace him with Napoleon Poirot." Jack gave another low laugh. "Now, how's that for irony?"

"I thought the commissioner's name was Pierre."

"It is."

"Huh." She stood abruptly and went to stand by the window. "Madame Poirot tells me her husband limps because you shot him."

He wished she'd come away from that damned window. The light hurt his eyes, and he had to
twist
around in an awkward angle to see her. "He challenged me to a duel."

She swung to face him, her elbows cradled in her palms, her features in shadow. "Are all French trade commissioners so enamored of the practice of dueling, or only the ones who have the dubious distinction of encountering you?"

Jack sighed. "Georges Lefevre wasn't trying to kill me. Napoleon Poirot was."

"Why? For calling him Napoleon, or for sleeping with his wife?"

Jack slewed around on the torn, filthy mattress to stare at her, but he still couldn't see more than the sun-dazzled outline of her head. "How the hell did you know that? Did she tell you?"

"Do you think she needed to?"

"Obviously not."

"One might have expected even you to have more sense than to seduce the French commissioner's wife."

"He wasn't a commissioner at the time. And you've got it all wrong. She seduced me."

She let out another one of those scornful huffs of hers, like she didn't believe him or something. And it came to him in a kind of wonderment that she was jealous. He might even have smiled about it, if the back of his head hadn't felt as if he'd been scalped. He rolled gingerly onto his side. "Come away from that damned window, would you? The sun hurts my eyes."

"The wages of sin," she said crisply. But she came away from the window.

She was still wearing her Expedition Outfit, although she had washed her face, and wound that glorious fall of thick, chestnut-shot hair back up into its customary neat, controlled chignon. "How long have I been in here?" he asked suddenly.

"Less than an hour. The
Barracuda
is expected after six, when the tides change."

Jack nodded. The tides here in the South Pacific were solar, cresting regularly at midnight and noon. "I'm surprised Napoleon let you in to see me."

"He didn't want to. But I reminded him that you were a British subject, and as the only other British subject currently on the island, I had a responsibility to see to your needs."

"I wouldn't have expected that argument to impress him much."

"It didn't." Her lips curled into that slow, secret smile that he liked, the one that had first told him she wasn't nearly as proper and starchy as she chose to appear. "So I thought it best to let him know about the chapter I was thinking of adding to my book, the one about the shocking corruption and abuse of power prevalent among the French colonies in the South Seas. That convinced him."

Jack laughed softly. "You're a dangerous woman, Miss McKnight."