Operation Nassau (21 page)

Wallace Brady looked across at me. ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘Paper games.’

‘Well, Beltanno?’ said the Begum; and they all, even my father who was searching inside the harpsichord, looked round at me.

I breathed slowly and steadily, avoiding a second glance at Johnson, whose despicable eyes were still shut. I said, ‘It sounds dramatic, but I think you should look at the probabilities. Who had anything to gain, as my father has said, from killing the Edgecombes?’

Sergeant Trotter said, ‘Well, it usually boils down to money. Who gets the nest-egg?’

‘There wasn’t any,’ said Johnson. He sat up, opening his eyes, and, taking out a clean handkerchief, began to dry the blackened bowl of his pipe, reproachfully. ‘They were comfortable, but far from the top of the cheese trolley. No heavy insurance either, and no family.’

‘No Queen of Sheba either, Thelma,’ said my father, and cackled. He appeared to have found what he wanted: he sat down in another chair with a thick file of papers on his knee. ‘You’re on the wrong track.’

The Begum stretched her elegant legs on her lounge chair. The furniture on Crab Island, I had to admit, was lusher than Castle Rannoch had ever possessed. ‘There are other reasons for murder. He was in the diplomatic service abroad. What about you, Rodney? Did you get cashiered in Aden for selling cut-price juke-boxes to oil sheiks? Does Sir Bartholomew know the secret of your horrible past?’

Sergeant Rodney Trotter was a little man in quite excellent health. But for a moment the veins stood out on his cheeks, and I thought his upper plate was going to drop. He said, ‘Why me?’

‘You were at the airport and on the plane and in the Bamboo Conch Club,’ said the Begum. She was clever. And idle. And enjoying herself.

‘I wasn’t on the golf-course,’ said Trotter.

The Begum stretched herself luxuriously. ‘If you could pay a waiter at the Conch Club, you could pay a groundsman at Great Harbour Cay,’ she said.

‘Then why pick on me?’ said Sergeant Trotter. He was becoming angry. ‘It might have been anyone, by that reckoning. Anyone else on that plane. Someone on the B.O.A.C. staff.’

‘But I gather,’ said the Begum gently, ‘no one else knew Sir Bartholomew, or had any dealings with him, or indeed was likely ever to see him again. No one else in the Monarch Lounge was going to stay on or near Great Harbour Cay. Except, of course, for Mr Brady.’

More sophisticated by far than Trotter, Wallace Brady had of course been waiting for it. He grinned at the Begum, his hands clasped over his pale cotton stomach. ‘I’ve been here six months, and I’m going to be here a good few months yet. If Bart Edgecombe knew any dirty secrets from my past, I feel we would have slugged it out long before now.’

James Ulric, hugging his file, produced an actionable grin. ‘Maybe it wasn’t an old blot in the games book, Brady. They tell me you were seeing a lot of Denise.’

Wallace Brady got up. ‘Begum,’ he said. ‘Enough is enough. The lady we are talking about is dead, and you’re acting like it was a game. The Edgecombes were neighbours of mine, and I did all a good neighbour would do. That’s all there ever was to it. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to take Beltanno out and show her the gardens.’

The Begum got up, but James Ulric didn’t stir. He nodded at me. ‘Some day that girl will be worth nearly three million dollars,’ he said. ‘You should get your hooks into her, now Denise is out of the way. Although she tells me she’s going to marry an effing Japanese . . Have you asked him yet?’ he demanded.

I stared at him and said, ‘No. But I shall.’

‘Who?’ said Wallace Brady. He was looking at me as if I’d just knocked down his hamster on a Suzuki 120.

‘Mr Tiko.’ I said.

‘Great jumping Jesus,’ said Wallace Brady.

‘I suppose,’ said my father, ‘I should ask him to the Gathering? We are having a Bahamian Steel Band leaping through flaming circles on motorbikes. Since accidents are so plentiful, no doubt he could have one.’

‘I shall arrange it.’ said Krishtof Bey.

We had forgotten him. Even the Begum turned round sharply, and he smiled up at her from where he reclined on the carpet. ‘Am I not a suspect too?’ he said. ‘I have been in all the right places at all the right times, although I have not yet found a motive. The lovely Denise? But I barely met her. A sordid event in my past? But all dancers have lascivious pasts: it is expected of them. No one can blackmail a dancer.’

‘Let’s pretend,’ said Johnson suddenly, ‘that you were wanted for some major crime, say in Turkey, which would involve a long prison sentence. A top dancer wouldn’t remain a top dancer, would he, if he had to spend ten years breaking stones in a quarry?’

Krishtof Bey put both hands to his head, spun round and fell full length, with a light thud, at Johnson’s feet. ‘Save me! Save me!’ he screamed.

I gazed at the magnificent lumbar area of his vertebral column as the Begum said, ‘Foolish boy. No one suspects you. You haven’t the application.’

The dancer rose compactly to his feet, his face rigid with hauteur.

‘You say no application to me? When I practise seven hours a day?’

‘You don’t practise hate seven hours a day,’ said the Begum calmly. ‘That is a European trait, Krishtof. Beside, you would kill with a knife.’

‘And you?’ said the dancer. He tossed back his long hair and seizing her chiffon scarf from a chair, draped it swiftly over his head and shoulders, one slender hand holding it in place. His walk and carriage had changed: he was the impudent replica of the Begum herself. ‘You, Thelma, have been much in evidence. What did Sir Bartholomew and his wife know of you that you preferred The MacRannoch and his daughter should not know?’

For a moment the beautiful, ageing face was quite still: then she drew the scarf from his hands and flicked it lightly round his throat. ‘That my friends don’t play cricket or bridge. Who are the false eyelashes for?’

‘Johnson,’ said the dancer immediately, his faun’s mouth lifting. He had quick wits. Nor did the lightly accented voice have any trouble at all with his English. I saw with misgiving that his eyelashes were false. He gazed through them at Johnson’s Aertex shirt and shambling trousers. ‘He is going to paint me, is he not? In the sun, in my natural state. An animal, a leopard. Lithe and lordly. Pan, leaning against a tree trunk. A hibiscus flower here and there?’

Johnson looked uneasy. ‘I’m a rather splashy painter,’ he said.

The Begum drew her veil lightly from Krishtof’s throat. ‘Are you trying to shock Johnson?’ she said. ‘You won’t.’ The brittle gaze, wavering round, rested on the impassive bifocals. ‘You boring, smug little man,’ she said. ‘I was hoping for a colourful morning. And now you say all these events are pure accidents.’

‘I don’t,’ said Johnson. He was filling his pipe. The muscles of my abdominal wall recoiled like a spring and I choked. No one noticed.

‘You did,’ said my father. ‘You said -’

‘You said they were accidents,’ said Johnson. ‘Actually, Sir Bartholomew was poisoned with arsenic, and his wife Denise was undoubtedly killed. Beltanno will corroborate.’ He struck a match and puffed at his pipe.

Everybody stared at him. The Begum sat down, and after a moment Krishtof Bey slid to her feet. My father remained seated, his bony finger still keeping the place in his unspeakable papers. Trotter and Wallace Brady, by contrast, both slowly rose to their feet. No one spoke.

Johnson wagged the match, dropped it, and took the pipe comfortably out of his mouth. ‘All right, Thelma?’ he said. ‘Status redeemed? Pumped up the pre-lunch adrenalin?’

Someone let out a long sigh. The Begum half relaxed, still staring at Johnson. ‘You hideous creature. You are trying to re-enter my good books?’

‘Not at all,’ said Johnson. ‘I never touch a good book before lunchtime. It is nearly lunchtime?’

‘Then they were accidents?’ Brady said. He was still standing.

‘Beltanno says not,’ said Johnson blandly. ‘She took stomach tests, which the hospital didn’t. And she’s got signed papers to prove it. It was arsenic.’

Sergeant Trotter’s parade-ground voice, though muted, was still cold and carrying to a degree. ‘Then why don’t the police know?’ he said.

‘Because Sir Bartholomew asked Beltanno not to tell them,’ said Johnson; and they all turned again and looked at me.

A large number of well-adjusted persons go through life ignorant as a cabbage of their own likely reactions in sudden emergency. Mine are not only within my awareness: they are timed and graded according to the emergency. This I would rate as an acute abdomen. I thought with commensurate speed.

I said. ‘I did take tests, that’s true. Sir Bartholomew was given a dose of arsenic both times, by whom I don’t know. I need hardly say’ - I looked at Johnson - ‘if the police get to hear that I’ve concealed the fact, it’ll be the end of my career.’

‘We won’t tell them,’ said Johnson soothingly. ‘Thelma, you can vouch for everyone here? We don’t want Beltanno in trouble.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ said James Ulric suddenly. My dear, doting old father. ‘But didn’t Edgecombe want the police told? And why did Florence Nightingale here agree not to tell them?’

‘Tell them,’ said Johnson through the haze of his pipe. ‘You won’t believe this, Thelma, and I’ll thank you to remember it the next time you accuse me of boring you, although I must remember in future not to raise these matters before meals. Beltanno, tell them what Bart said that his job was.’

It was like double-talk in the operating theatre when the patient is only partly anaesthetized. I kicked the Spoonmakers’ Union mentally in the teeth and gave my answer, right or wrong, but bang on the cue. ‘He said he was a member of the British intelligence service,’ I said. ‘He persuaded me, too.’

Like a handsome doll in her robes, the Begum was staring at me. ‘You’re making it all up. Johnson, what are you teaching this girl?’

‘Listen,’ said Johnson. ‘No one has anything to teach Dr B. Douglas MacRannoch. She believed Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe, and I believe her. And what’s more, I’m keeping my mouth shut about it. If the espionage network is gunning for Bart, then the counter-espionage network can get on with gunning right back without help from us.’

Four people said ‘But—’ and I swear you could hear their ectopic cardiac beats chiming like clocks. My father said, ‘In that case he’s not coming here. Thelma, I forbid you to invite Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe here. Johnson here was once nearly killed in mistake for that man, and his wife has been killed. Which of us might be next?’

‘Really, James,’ said the Begum with interest. ‘You mean you think the killer is here?’

My father is not one to boggle. ‘If he isn’t here, he could get here without blowing his mind. How many people are coming from Nassau for this beach barbecue next week?’

‘Seventy-five,’ the Begum said serenely. ‘Most of them MacRannochs, darling.’

Krishtof Bey, his face solemn, shook his head slowly. ‘This is bad. Even registered breeds have their deviants.’

I despised them all, and especially Johnson’. I said icily, ‘I cannot imagine that Sir Bartholomew returning from his wife’s funeral will wish to attend a beach barbecue. May I invite Mr Tiko?’

My father shouting, ‘No!’ clashed with the Begum answering, ‘Yes.’ She went on firmly, ‘Of course Sir Bartholomew need not come to the barbecue unless he wishes. But I will not throw this poor man to his attackers. He will stay safely here on my island as long as he wishes. And so far as the Asiatic 46th Chief of the MacRannochs is concerned, the answer is equally simple. Beltanno will tell you. The quickest way to make anyone immunologically competent is to expose them freely to the disease.’

It was a layman’s imprecise grasp of a precise physical law but I overlooked it. If I was an emotional midget, the fault was my father’s. tramping through all my nascent relationships to visit his traplines. This time I was setting my own gin with the Begum’s assistance, and James Ulric wasn’t going to keep Mr Tiko away. I wanted to see Mr Tiko’s face when he found out I was The MacRannoch’s sole daughter. If I lived long enough. that is to say.

The lunch gong sounded as the Begum’s butler was handing round drinks and everyone was in the midst of exclaiming and speculating about Edgecombe’s precise function in the unbelievable and slightly ridiculous world of espionage. During all the boring repetition of events at the airport, at the club and elsewhere it was remarkable how earnest was the conversation and thoughtful were the theories of the three men most closely implicated: Brady, Trotter and the dancer.

Since the Begum’s fantasy had turned into cold fact, no one had had the bad taste to refer to the favoured position of these three in the list of suspects. No one either appeared to notice that Johnson had done the very thing he had warned me against in Nassau. He had warned the murderer, if the murderer were one of these three, that I alone had the physical proof that Bart Edgecombe had been poisoned.

My irritation with James Ulric evaporated. Even my plans for Mr Tiko began to appear somewhat flat. If anyone in this house was laying traps, it was Johnson Johnson. And the lure, 126 lb deadweight, was me.

I remember very little of that lunch, except that during it, I decided to apply for a Heinz Fellowship in Zambia. After coffee, the Begum announced that the immediate hours of heat were to be spent, by order, in siesta, and that we should forgather later by the swimming-pool. Having tried to catch Johnson’s eye yet again, and been repulsed by those despicable bifocals, I walked upstairs to my room and locked myself in.

I took off my dress and lay on the bed. Without petticoat and girdle, I had to admit, my pores functioned more freely. There was a pink patch, from the second rib down to the navel, where Paul’s oiling yesterday had ameliorated the effect of the sun. Above my head a fan moved like an aircraft propeller, stirring my wig and rustling the long blossoming stems in a Chinese vase in the corner, across an unthinkable expanse of white fitted bearskin. The air- conditioner hummed.

It was peaceful, as under a hair-dryer. In cedarwood fitted cupboards, my new clothes hung out of sight. Beside me on a low table were a Chinese lamp, some new books in glossy dust-jackets, cigarettes, a lighter and ash tray and a vacuum flask of iced water. No telephone. No telephones on the out-islands of the Bahamas. No telephones or radio transmitters on Crab.