Death in the Andamans (19 page)

‘You follow me like a shadow,' grinned John Shilto derisively. ‘I mean just that.'

The Chief Commissioner turned on him angrily: ‘This is no joking matter, Shilto! We are wasting valuable time. I suggest we go down to the Guest House immediately. And the sooner we get the police on to this, the better.'

Mr Shilto gave another bark of mirthless laughter: ‘The police? A fat lot of good they're going to be to us while they're all stranded over on Aberdeen! We haven't a single police official here on Ross; and until this sea goes down, and the jetty is repaired, they have as much hope of reaching us as if we were surrounded by a hundred miles of open sea. What's more, with the telephone line to Aberdeen gone, and this fog, we have no possible means of communicating with them.'

Sir Lionel looked at him with a curiously narrowed gaze. ‘Yes, of course,' he said slowly. ‘I had forgotten that. I suppose, to a murderer, it would be a useful circumstance.' He turned to Dr Dutt: ‘You have not told us yet how Surgeon-Lieutenant Harcourt met his death.'

Dr Dutt's lower jaw dropped noticeably, and he shuffled his feet uncomfortably: ‘I – I regret, sir, to have made no note as yet. The man he is dead, so I do not pause for examination but come hastily to inform yourself.'

‘Then in that case, the sooner we get down to the Guest House and find out, the better!'

The Chief Commissioner turned abruptly to the door, and followed by Mr Shilto, Leonard Stock and Dr Dutt, passed down the hall stairs and out into the fog.

*   *   *

As the sound of their footsteps died away, Copper said in a muffled voice: ‘I think … I think I'm going to be sick.' Her face and voice fully confirmed this statement, and Valerie, jerking herself out of her own horror-stricken immobility, grabbed her by the arm and rushed her out of the room.

‘Feeling better now?' she inquired some ten minutes later.

‘Yes,' gasped Copper, rising rather shakily from the bed where she had flung herself after putting her recent threat into execution. ‘I can't think why I should behave like this. Idiotic of me. I do apologize.' She walked unsteadily over to the windows, and subsiding on to the broad window-seat unlatched them and flung them wide, letting in a cool drift of mist-laden air.

Valerie left the room, and returned a few minutes later carrying two small glasses: ‘Brandy,' she announced. ‘I think we'd better try it. It may pull us together.'

Copper accepted a glass and drank the contents with a wry face: ‘
Ugh
— beastly stuff; it always reminds me of being extremely seasick on the Dover–Calais boat. However, I do feel slightly better. How about you?'

‘Oh, I'm all right, but
____
Oh, Coppy, isn't it ghastly! Poor Dan … and only last night he was alive, and
____
'

‘Don't!'
said Copper violently. ‘If we start thinking of it like that we shall go to pieces and start behaving like Ruby and Rosamund. Don't let's go over it all again: I can't bear it! Let's talk about something else instead. No, of course we can't really do that. But couldn't we try and see if there isn't something we could do about it? Then we could at least think of it as a sort of cold-blooded problem, like a crossword puzzle or a cypher.'

Valerie said: ‘We can try, anyway. I'm all for doing something. Let's – let's be really female and start by ordering ourselves a cup of tea.' She rang the bell and gave a brief order to the house-boy who answered it, and as the door closed behind him Copper said abruptly: ‘Val, I've got an idea. No one has told Ruby yet, have they? About Dan, I mean?'

‘I don't think so. No, of course they haven't. They all went straight from the drawing-room to the Guest House. Why?'

‘I thought it might be a good idea if we went along and broke the news, just … just to see how she takes it.'

Valerie looked puzzled. ‘What are you getting at? She'll only have hysterics again. You know what she's like. And frankly, I don't think I could bear another of her scenes just now. She was doing her alluring best with Dan yesterday, and the minute she hears this she'll be able to convince herself that he adored her, and dramatize herself accordingly.'

‘I wonder?' said Copper thoughtfully. ‘Val, I've been thinking. She must have been creeping about the house last night. Have you any ideas as to what she was up to?'

‘Yes,' said Valerie promptly, ‘I think she was probably after
____
' She stopped abruptly, and flushed.

‘— Nick,' finished Copper.

‘Well, yes,' admitted Valerie uncomfortably. ‘Bitchy of me of course, and I've no evidence. But then she
is
a bit of a man-chaser as well as being very attractive in an opulent Serpent-of-the-Nile sort of way, and frankly, I couldn't see any reason for her to be prowling about the house at night, and without her slippers — you've no idea the fuss she makes about possible scorpions — unless she'd staged an assignation with someone. Sorry!'

‘Don't apologize,' said Copper sadly: ‘I'm a cat myself where Nick is concerned — a hell-cat, I suppose! I thought the same thing until I remembered that he wasn't the only man in the house.'

‘You mean it might have been Dan?'

Copper nodded. ‘But that's not what I'm getting at. Listen, Val, suppose we were both wrong and it wasn't anything like that? Suppose she knows something? Heaven knows what and I've no idea why she should know anything. But you must admit it's a little odd that she should be prowling about last night of all nights. She could have heard something!'

‘Perhaps,' admitted Valerie after some thought. ‘Anyway, it's worth trying even if we
do
have to cope with another bout of hysterics! If there really was any connection between her night prowlings and Dan's, she may give herself away when she hears that he's dead.'

‘That's why I'd like to be there to see how she takes the news,' said Copper. ‘And if we wait until Leonard gets back he'll get in with it first. So what about it?'

‘Right! Come on — let's go now.'

They found Mrs Stock sitting up in bed, attired in the same pink satin garment whose abundant supply of marabou-trimming had betrayed her wanderings on the previous night. She was engaged in applying scarlet lacquer to her finger-nails, and though she appeared placid enough, Copper wondered if her unusual high colour did not owe more to rouge than to the natural bloom of which she was so inordinately proud. If there were dark circles below her eyes they had been carefully disguised with cream and powder, and she certainly did not give the impression of having passed a wakeful night.

She greeted the two girls languidly and then, with more energy, inquired fretfully why she had not been informed earlier that Ferrers Shilto's funeral was to take place that morning? ‘Of course, I might have known that Leonard wouldn't tell me. He never tells me
anything!
But I do think, Valerie dear, that you at least might have let me know. Shaken as I feel after that shocking occurrence yesterday, it was my duty to attend — if only out of respect for poor Ferrers.'

‘You needn't worry,' said Valerie, ‘it's been postponed.'

‘What's that?' Mrs Stock sat up quickly, scenting mysteries. ‘You don't say so!… Oh—' she sank back against the pillows: ‘the weather, I suppose. But I expect the fog will clear by lunchtime and they'll have it in the afternoon. I wonder, Valerie dear, if you would send down to my house for my hat-box? I shall need a black hat. The
ciré
straw, perhaps
____
'

Valerie interrupted firmly. ‘I'm afraid the funeral won't be this afternoon either, Ruby. You see, when they went to put Ferrers's body in the coffin, they found that it had disappeared.'

‘
Disappeared!
But what
____
?'

‘There was a body there all right. But it wasn't Ferrers's body. It – it was Dan Harcourt's, and he was dead. Someone killed him last night and put him there instead.'

If they had wanted a reaction from Mrs Stock, they got it. But it was an entirely different reaction from the one they had expected, for Ruby neither screamed nor indulged in the emotional hysterics with which she had greeted the appearance of Ferrers's corpse on the previous day. She merely stared at Valerie in appalled silence, while every vestige of colour drained slowly out of her face until it was no longer a face but a grey clay mask, crudely patched with staring blotches of vivid pink rouge and gashed with scarlet lipstick.

She tried to speak, but though for a moment or two her lips moved soundlessly, no words came, and then quite suddenly she toppled sideways in a dead faint. ‘Now we've done it!' gasped Valerie. ‘For heaven's sake come and help, Coppy. Fetch some water, or brandy, or something!'

‘Shove her head over the side of the bed,' suggested Copper anxiously. ‘It'il bring the blood back to it.'

This treatment, though crude, proved remarkably effective, and a few moments later Mrs Stock was lying back among her pillows, white and shaken, but once more in full possession of her faculties. In very full possession, it appeared, for she neither wept nor dramatized. She accepted an offer of brandy, and having gulped down a few fiery mouthfuls, lay still for a while; staring fixedly ahead of her as though she were remembering something — and making it fit …

She seemed to have forgotten that Valerie and Copper were in the room, but at last her enormous eyes turned to them and her lips twisted into the semblance of a smile. ‘You really should be more careful, Valerie dear,' she said huskily. ‘My nerves are not strong, and bad news always affects me more than it does other people. Such shocking news, too! If you don't mind, I think I should like to be quite quiet for a little; to give myself a chance to recover. You won't mind?'

‘No,' said Valerie awkwardly. ‘No, of course not. I'm so sorry. Are you sure you wouldn't like one of us to stay with you? I don't like leaving you like this.'

‘I assure you I am perfectly all right,' snapped Mrs Stock with a sudden return of vigour: ‘All I need is a little peace and quiet.'

Valerie and Copper, murmuring apologies, backed out thankfully and fled back across the ballroom to the safety of a verandah sofa.

‘Well, what do we make of that?' inquired Valerie dropping down among the sofa cushions. ‘Have we got anywhere or haven't we? I was scared stiff for a moment: I thought we'd given her a heart attack. Do you really think she knows anything about Dan?'

‘No. At least, it's obvious that she didn't know a thing about him being dead. She may be a good actress, but I'm quite sure she isn't as good as all that. It gave her a ghastly shock.'

‘It certainly seemed to,' admitted Valerie doubtfully. ‘But you're wrong about one thing. I've seen her act in amateur shows, and believe me, she is darned good.'

Copper looked thoughtful: ‘You mean the whole thing may have been an act?'

‘No — not really. I don't believe even Sarah Bernhardt could have made herself turn that horrid colour. She got a terrific shock all right. But there may have been several reasons for it besides the obvious one. If you ask me, I think that something happened last night that she didn't quite know what to make of, but that the minute she heard our story, it – it made sense.'

‘I see,' said Copper slowly. ‘And her faint needn't have been a real one, but only to give her time to think and to pull herself together?'

‘Well, you saw how quickly she came out of it! And how she flung us out of her room as soon as she could. Believe me, that alone is more than peculiar, because if there is one thing that Ruby enjoys more than another it's an audience, and this sort of thing should have been meat and drink to her. The fact that she didn't want to say or hear anything more about it is reasonably good proof, to anyone who knows her, that she either suspects something or thinks she knows something.'

Copper stared reflectively out into the fog beyond the wet window-panes and bit at the tip of one finger and presently she said: ‘You know, there's something we've both rather taken for granted. We've both decided that Dan was murdered. But there may be something in your father's theory about someone finding his body and getting scared stiff of being accused of killing him. After all, who on earth would want to kill Dan? — and why?'

‘Perhaps we'll know now,' said Valerie, turning her head to listen: ‘Isn't that someone coming up the drive at last?' They heard the front door bang and steps ascending the stairs, and then Charles and Nick came into view and joined them in the verandah just as a
khidmatgar
appeared bearing a laden tea-tray.

‘I forgot that we'd ordered tea,' said Valerie. ‘Would you two like some, or would you prefer something stronger?'

‘I could do with a stiff brandy and soda myself,' said Charles. ‘Same for you, Nick?'

Nick, who was looking white and grim, answered with a brief affirmative. He lit himself a cigarette from the box on the writing-table, and Copper, watching him, saw that his hands were shaking. Perhaps he was aware of it himself, for he flicked the match into the ash-tray and thrust his hands into his pockets.

Valerie poured out tea, and a minute or two later a house-servant appeared with brandy and soda.

‘I needed that,' said Nick, putting down a half-empty glass. He dropped into an armchair and stared bleakly ahead of him into the dim ballroom beyond the dark, carved head of ‘Hindenburg', and Valerie said tensely: ‘Tell us what happened.'

Nick finished the contents of his glass before replying, and then said curtly: ‘He was murdered, of course.'

He heard Copper draw in her breath in a little hard gasp, and turned towards her, his voice suddenly gentle: ‘It's all right, Coppy. He can't have known a thing about it. He was hit on the side of the head, and as far as we can tell, it must have killed him instantly.'