Death in the Andamans (31 page)

‘Just about,' concurred Nick. ‘So how's that for a motive for murder?'

‘It will do to go on with,' said Charles.

‘Then – then it
was
John Shilto!' Valerie spoke in a half-whisper. ‘But how did he find out?'

Charles gave a short laugh. ‘Probably smelt a rat — or rather a load of rotting oysters — when he went up to the bungalow that morning. You can't open a live oyster nearly as easily as a dead one, so it saves time to let 'em die in the sun and then start in looking for pearls. He probably did a snoop round the back premises to see what in the name of Sodom and Gomorrah Ferrers was using to manure his plantation with, and stumbled across the shells. I know he's been to Ceylon, so he may well have seen the pearl fisheries there, and tumbled to the fact that those shells did not merely mean that Ferrers enjoyed eating oysters.'

Nick frowned thoughtfully into the black night beyond the window-panes, and said slowly: ‘Yes. I think it looks more and more as though it must be John Shilto. But I don't think we can just scrub the possibility of its having been someone else.'

‘I agree. And I'm not.'

‘Oh, nonsense, Charles,' said Valerie impatiently. ‘Of course it can't be anyone else! Where would anyone else come in? Ronnie, for instance?'

‘Same place as everyone else, I imagine! Ronnie could probably do with a bucketful of pearls.'

‘Who couldn't?' asked Nick. ‘I don't mind telling you that I could do with them myself. And by the way, Copper, you can now add another black mark to my charge-sheet. If I remember rightly it was only the absence of any motive that stumped you: apart from that you could probably have made out an excellent case against me.'

Copper did not answer, but Valerie, seeing her wince, rushed hotly to her defence: ‘That isn't in the least amusing, Nick! If Copper ever suggested that there might be a case against you it was quite obviously to warn you that, outside of ourselves, you might be considered by some other people to be equally suspect with the rest of the sailing party — and that you should be prepared to face the fact!'

Nick grinned and said without irony: ‘Accept my apologies, Val: there will be no more acidity in court. But returning to Purvis, I doubt if he's got the nerve to commit murder. Though if it comes to that, I don't believe that the Stocks have either! On the other hand, it seems to me to stand out a mile that both Ruby and Leonard know something — or think they know something. A rather dangerous state of affairs, I should have thought, with a murderer around. So I think that at this point a talk with dear Ruby might be profitable, for if that woman really
was
peering over the banisters some time during the night watches, the chances are that she can make a pretty shrewd guess at the identity of the murderer.'

‘Um,'
said Charles. ‘Possibly. On the other hand, if Ruby thinks that she knows who did it, why the hell is she keeping her mouth shut?'

Nick shrugged. ‘You have me there,' he confessed. ‘I could probably dream up half-a-dozen fairly plausible reasons, given time, but the only ones that occur to me at the moment seem a bit flimsy. However you might consider these: sheer panic; the inability to produce any concrete proof beyond her own word which, unsupported, might be insufficient to secure a verdict. Or black terror for fear that she might be the next victim on the list if she admitted to any knowledge of the murder.'

Charles produced a sound uncommonly like a snort. ‘B
____
! I mean, rubbish! Do you mean to say she couldn't pick a time when she was surrounded by a mass of citizens, and then blow the gaff? Of course she could! She's only got to get in a huddle with a few of the local inhabitants, and then say, “There is your murderer! Grab him!”'

‘But suppose she wasn't believed?' said Copper in a low voice. ‘Supposing it was someone – someone…' Her voice trailed off into a whisper as Charles swung round to face her: ‘Supposing it was who, Coppy?'

‘I – I don't know,' said Copper uncertainly. ‘Just — anyone. I mean, supposing she didn't know for certain, but – but only
____
' Once again her voice failed, and she stopped.

‘Only what?'

Copper did not reply, and Nick's eyes narrowed speculatively as he watched her. But Valerie, who did not appear to have noticed her hesitation, said with a sigh: ‘I'm afraid all those laborious notes I made this afternoon are going to need rewriting, now that we've got hold of this pearl motive. What about getting our hands on Ferrers's letter? We could do that easily, because the parent is still working like a beaver down in the office, poor pet.'

Nick shook his head. ‘I wouldn't, if I were you. You see now that we know where it is, it seems to me a good scheme to leave it severely alone and tell no one, but merely keep an unobtrusive watch on that door tomorrow and see who goes to fetch it. Presumably whoever put it there has some reason for wanting it back; otherwise he'd have destroyed it.'

‘Which is not quite so easy as it sounds,' commented Charles. ‘Torn up scraps of paper can be collected and read. See Crime Club. Also traces of burnt paper, in a house where a paper is missing, are apt to wear a suspicious look. However, just between you and me, what about shelving the entire question until tomorrow? My head is reeling with a varied and malignant collection of clues, motives and suspicious acts, and unless I am much mistaken, a collapse into complete lunacy is imminent. Let's talk about the weather instead.'

He drank deeply, and turned to Valerie. ‘By the way, Star-of-my-soul, what alibi did you hand your respected parent to account for my spending the night here? He murmured something to me about the state of the Mess roof, to which, being unprepared, I had no adequate comeback.'

‘I
am
sorry,' apologized Valerie guiltily. ‘I should have warned you. I knew Dad would say it was all nonsense if I said I'd asked you to stay here because I was afraid there might be a murderer in the house, so I told him that the storm had broken the Mess roof and your room wasn't fit to sleep in.'

Charles exhaled noisily: ‘And what,' he inquired, ‘do I say when he comes down tomorrow to view the damage? Just that it was all a hearty little joke? Or that I've just that minute mended it with glue and stamp paper?'

Valerie laughed, and reached out to ruffle his hair. ‘It's all right, darling, you know he never goes near the Mess if he can help it. And anyway, it achieved its object. You
are
sleeping here.'

‘Not yet,' said Charles. ‘But I intend to — and that right speedily!' He drained his glass and stood up. ‘Bed, I think, is indicated. And lots of it.'

One by one the lights snapped out until, except for one in the lower hall, the big house was in darkness. And twenty minutes later Copper and Valerie, tucked inside their respective mosquito nets and with their beds tonight placed side by side in Valerie's room, heard Sir Lionel's footsteps mount the stairs and cross the ballroom. Valerie called out a good-night, and a moment after his answer they heard his door shut.

‘Night, Val.'

‘Night, Coppy. Sleep well.' Valerie slid an arm out from under her mosquito net and switched off the little bedside lamp that stood on a table between them, and darkness and quiet swept down upon the room, broken only by the flitter of a bat's wing and the whisper of the fan blades cutting into the warm damp air. But presently she spoke again, her voice an anxious undertone: ‘I'm glad Charles is here tonight. But – but I wish he wasn't sleeping in Dan's bed…'

Copper did not reply, and supposing her to be asleep, Valerie turned on her side, tucked one arm under her pillow, and went to sleep.

21

Copper was not asleep. And as the dark hours dragged on, sleep receded further and further from her tired brain.

The house was so still. So deathly still that after a time she realized that the rain must have stopped because she could no longer hear the soft drip of water from the gutters at the roof edge. Even the sea had quietened at long last, and the distant roar of the breakers had softened to a lower key; a soft, drowsy note, like the purr of a giant cat. But the isle was still full of noises, and the apparent stillness was, as ever, made up of a hundred small sounds which welded together made up the sum total of silence, and Copper's taut nerves separated each sound from its fellows.

Every unexplained creak or patter, every whisper of a bat's wing or tap of a night-flying beetle against a window-pane — even the familiar sound of the hall clock striking the slow passing of the hours — made her pulses leap with terror; and when a nightjar cried harshly in the garden her heart seemed to jump into her throat and she found herself clutching at her bedclothes with frantic fingers to keep herself from screaming.

She tried not to think of Dan and Ferrers — and death. Or of any of the horrible happenings of the last three days and the sheer terror of the night between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. But it proved to be beyond her powers, for her weary mind betrayed her and took her stubbornly back over every hour of those long hours and through every detail of those grim little notes that Valerie had written down in her sprawling, schoolgirl hand. And with every recollection her fear mounted.

They had been mad — mad and stupid and conceited — to imagine for one moment that they could help to unravel this ugly, bloodstained tangle. Their interference and probing could not possibly help … but it might well end by placing every one of them in terrible danger, for someone who had already killed twice might, if sufficiently frightened, kill again.

Supposing that unknown killer were to grow suspicious of them? Of their actions, their inquisitive interest, their questions — and begin to fear that between them they might stumble upon the truth? The prospect was too frightening to contemplate. Yet it was impossible not to ask questions. Not to guess — and be afraid.

What was Nick hiding? What was Ronnie afraid of? Why had John Shilto drunk so steadily that evening and talked so disjointedly and wildly? What had frightened Rosamund Purvis and why had Ruby changed her room and locked and bolted herself into it that night? Why hadn't Dan told anyone of his suspicions regarding the death of Ferrers Shilto, and why had the news about the finding of the envelope in John Shilto's room come as such a shock to Leonard Stock?

The questions shifted and jostled through Copper's aching brain like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, and it seemed to her that they lacked only the addition of one key piece to fall swiftly and easily into place. And suddenly it was borne in on her, with inexplicable conviction, that the clue to the whole murderous tangle lay concealed behind that final question mark in Valerie's notebook. A red question mark that stood for a trivial incident at the Mount Harriet picnic that had struck her as odd. If only she could recall what it was, the pieces of the puzzle would fit together and the answer to all their questions would be found in the completed picture.

But she could not remember. Try as she would it eluded the grasp of her tired brain, and she turned back wearily to the long procession of information and conjecture that lay between the covers of the notebook, pressing her palms against her aching forehead as she added up the sum of whys and whats and whens. But the only answer that presented itself was too frightening to be faced, and she shied away from it as though it were something tangible that must be avoided at all costs.

Her hunted mind turned desperately to Nick. But with no sense of relief, since Nick, like everyone else, was hiding something: and that in itself was as terrifying to her as the actual fact of Dan's murder, for the core of her terror lay not in any fear that Nick might be implicated in the crimes, but in the fear that he might possess some vital piece of information that was of danger to the murderer, and for the suppression of which he must be silenced. As Dan had been silenced …

Copper sat up in bed, clasping her hands about her knees and staring into the darkness. Tomorrow she must warn Nick — she must warn them all — that in meddling with this affair they were playing not so much with fire as with high explosive. She felt a little sick at the remembrance that it was she herself who was mainly responsible for their activities, since it was she who had suggested that they try and help track down Dan's murderer. But Dan was dead. Nothing that they could do would alter that fact or bring him to life again, but their continued meddling could easily lead to another death on the island. Tomorrow, before it was too late, she must make the others see this.

Before it was too late…? All at once it was as though a cold finger had reached out of the darkness and touched her, stilling the beat of her heart: for suddenly, sickeningly, she remembered Ronnie's missing revolver.

How could she have forgotten it? How could
any
of them have forgotten it? Why hadn't they realized its deadly significance? Ronnie had been so drunk, and they had been impatient of his alcoholic babblings and anxious to get away. And then Valerie had startled them with the remark that he was no longer wearing his ring, and a few moments later they had met Leonard Stock, whose news about the missing letter had sidetracked them on to Ferrers. Sidetracked them when all the time here, surely, was proof that a third murder was not only contemplated, but already planned.

Copper gripped her hands together and tried to think what she must do.

In the morning, as soon as it was light, she would wake Charles and Nick, and after that there must be no rest for anyone on the island until that revolver was found. Thank God the heavy sea swell seemed to be running itself out at last, and perhaps tomorrow they would be able to establish communication with the mainland. The arrival of Dr Vicarjee and Benton, the P.A., of Ted Norton and his police, and of Mr Hurridge, the Deputy Commissioner, would lighten the tension on Ross to a considerable extent.