Tour de Force (7 page)

‘And there you were, as Lem Putt would say – catched.'

She looked at him in innocent astonishment. ‘Good lord – how extraordinary that you should say that.'

‘Is it?' he said, a little guiltily.

‘Well, yes, because I … Well, I'll go on telling it straight through. There I was, as you say, catched. Well then by the sound of it The Lane appeared and she must have put something into the cabin next to me because I called out to her, hey, you haven't got a pin of sorts, have you? but she evidently didn't hear because she just went on. So I peeked out, holding the bra together with one hand, but by that time it really was most unsafe; and I saw them all watching her going out along the diving rock and she dived off and disappeared. Then she came back and she told them she'd try and do one that Leo could manage, and to go down and watch it from the beach. So I thought good, then I can hop out and run back to my room and sew the thing up. But just as they were going – Miss Trapp, the last, being most gallantly handed down by dear Fernando – she must have said something very quietly to Miss Trapp, because Miss Trapp went most terribly white, at least she went mud grey actually, and let out a sort of squawk and just stood there. Miss Lane didn't say anything more, she walked out along the rock and did her dive and I wish she'd come a bit flatter, that's all. But anyway, meanwhile Fernando had come back up the path to see what was happening to his lady love, I suppose; and there followed the most shy-making conversation which I really cannot bring myself to repeat; and I realized that they didn't know I was there. But not one word from the Trapp about La Lane. That was peculiar, wasn't it?'

‘Under the circumstances,' said Cockie, ‘perhaps not.'

‘Well, perhaps. Anyway you can see that I was more catched than ever and by this time I was doing a St Lawrence in my little hut, just now and again turning a flank to get the roasting even.' She wriggled her shoulders under their protecting stole of hotel towel. ‘I sunburn terribly easily and the roofs of those things are only sort of slats: I shall be striped like a zebra-crossing to-morrow.'

‘Oh, yes?' said Cockie, vaguely. It was certainly odd that three minutes after Miss Trapp had been reduced to mud-grey by a word from Miss Lane, she should have been so extravagantly solicitous for the lady's well-being. ‘And then?'

‘And then?' She screwed into an ungraceful huddle, squinting ruefully over a reddened shoulder to try to estimate the extent of the sunburned strips. ‘Oh, yes. Well then, as Miss Trapp seemed slightly distrait and not madly responsive to Fernando's declarations, he gave up for the time being and said they had better go on down to the beach, to which proposition, I can assure you, St Lawrence responded with one tiny half-baked cheer. My dear, I look like something off one of those silver grills in the posher restaurants.'

‘Never mind your back,' said Cockie. ‘What happened then?'

‘Then I went out and practised breathing, which I had practically forgotten how to do, and hung back a bit so that they shouldn't know I'd been there and feel embarrassed at my having overheard their conversation, which I can assure you they had every cause to do; and then I was just going to bolt up to my room when the Lane came up the path to the top of the rock and I tottered forward on my poor charred stumps of legs and said had she got a pin or anything? She said rather unfriendlily that she didn't carry a housewife when she went bathing and hadn't I got a scarf I could use? So I groped about in the old red plastic and dug out a handkie and here, as you see, it is; but while I was fixing it, I was drooling on with what I thought was a gay account of my sufferings in the hut and she suddenly interrupted me and said – well, Inspector, what do you think she said?'

‘I should think she said, “And there you were – catched”,' said Cockie. ‘Like I did.' He added, equably: ‘Everyone quotes “The Specialist”.'

She considered that. She gave a little shrug. ‘Well – could be. But then she said something more and she said it very significantly, sort of looking straight at me but
not
quite straight at me. And then she walked past me and up the steps to the top terrace and never even glanced back.' She gave a little shudder. ‘It was the way she looked at me!'

‘But what was it she said?' said Cockie.

‘It was something out of “The Specialist” too. Come on – as you're so clever, you guess again. What do you think she said?'

‘I think she said that there wasn't even a window to look out of this time,' said Cockie. ‘A little window, shaped like a star.'

No rabbit pulled out of any hat had ever enjoyed a more gratifying reception.

The long, hot afternoon wore on. Flat on the terrace beside him, Louvaine slept, her curly red head on her arm. Down on the beach, Miss Trapp had shaken off the attentions of Fernando and with the aid of a bathing towel and a large beach umbrella, established a sort of private nudist camp at the foot of the diving rock, and there genteelly sunned herself. Fernando in a series of porpoise wallowings by no means fulfilling his boast of a missed half-blue for swimming, had managed to reach the big wooden raft which was anchored five or six yards from the shore and lay spreadeagled upon it, unafraid of the sun: as the raft dipped and swayed with the ripples of the incoming waves, Cockie caught glimpses of the great, red-brown torso, glistening like satin with its only too natural oils. In a rubber boat, shaped like a duck, Mr Cecil drifted lazily up and down, paddling himself with languid white hands at the ends of slowly reddening thin white arms. The Rodds had thrown themselves down under the sun-shed – a long, narrow roof of dried palm leaves, supported on four-foot poles, open-sided except at the short ends, where one could lie half in, half out of the shade. From where he sat, Cockie could see the backs of Helen's Dutch doll legs sticking out straight and shapeless towards the sea, and the rope soles of her bright yellow canvas espadrilles; at the opposite side, away from the sea and nearer to him, Leo's head and shoulders appeared. He had brought down some manuscript music with him and, his wife's yellow sun-glasses perched on his nose, was holding it against the sky, lying flat on his back, reading upwards; but after a bit, evidently tiring, he relaxed his arm, propped the manuscript over his face like a sort of tent and presumably went to sleep beneath the lot. Miss Lane had evidently taken Miss Trapp's advice to have a nice lie down, for she did not appear. Inspector Cockrill applied himself joyously to the adventure of Carstairs and the leaping lady.

At seven o'clock they began to drift up from the beach. The sun was still high but they could not accustom themselves to the idea that dinner would not be served one minute before nine. Louli, wakened by people stepping over her legs, put out a lazy hand and caught at a passing ankle. ‘Who's this? Oh, you, Cecil! My dear, what on earth have you been doing? You look as though you'd been boiled in cochineal.'

Mr Cecil was in a terrible taking. ‘I went to sleep in my duck, my dear,
silly
me! – and I must have been drifting and drifting about getting redder and redder every minute.…'

‘Most peculiar, ducky, because the back half of you's quite white; you can almost see a seam where the red and white join.…'

Fernando arrived, springing up the steps after his innamorata, glittering with health and vitality. ‘Ah, ha, Miss Barker, Inspector, this is where you hide yourselves, is it? – sleeping together all afternoon on the terrace.' He nudged the Inspector in the ribs with an elbow like a well-cooked pork chop. ‘I have been wide awake all the time,' said Cockie austerely.

Leo Rodd bowed to Louvaine. ‘Under the circumstances, that was only gallant.' His glance met hers and shifted away at once. He added rather hurriedly: ‘Has anyone seen Miss Lane?'

Nobody had. ‘I hope she's all right; I feel a bit guilty, she was trying the dive for me.'

In view of his conversation with Louli, it was quite fascinating, thought Cockie, to watch Miss Trapp go into her routine as the solicitous, the know-all nurse; apparently sincere, apparently truly concerned, and yet with the oddest underlying air of absolute insincerity, of not caring a damn whether the patient lived or died. But that in itself was queer; for if it were true that Miss Lane had uttered to her one of those oddly baleful half-threats of hers, would Miss Trapp be really so detached about her health, would she not rather wish her ill than well? As it was, she led the way up the long, shallow steps to the upper terrace, up the curved wooden steps to the balcony, in a ceaseless twitter of brandy and aspirins, cups of tea, eau de cologne and nice lie downs. At the door of Miss Lane's room, she paused and listened and, as though caught by some imperceptibly rising tide of hysteria, they all paused and listened too. ‘Not a sound. I wonder if … Should I just give a teeny knock?'

The teeny knock was not answered, nor were teeny cries of enquiry and concern and gradually heightening alarm. Fernando shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘She is in her bathroom or she has gone out.'

‘I hope she's all right,' said Leo Rodd again.

Louli Barker leaned back on her elbows against the rail of the verandah. ‘Why don't you just look in and see?'

‘Well, but, ducky, would she
like
that …?'

‘I don't see why not,' said Louli. ‘Either she's there or she isn't. If she's there, why doesn't she answer? If she isn't, she won't know that we looked.' The sun gleamed through the tangle of the curly red hair tossing about her shoulders; against the white satin of the Bikini, her skin was almost as smoothly white. She twirled the gay red plastic bag by its gay red strings. ‘Go on, Miss Trapp, I dare you – have a bash!'

A crimson shawl had been thrown across the bed so that, with her dark hair, still wet from the bathe, spread all about her head, she looked like some modern Ophelia afloat on a lake of blood. But the four tall posts, the looped back white curtains, made of the bed a catafalque; and upon the catafalque, she had been ceremonially laid out, pale face composed, pale feet placed neatly together, pale hands loosely clasped upon her heart: wrapped in a long white garment like a shroud, laid out ceremonially upon a crimson shawl, with something that looked like crimson rose petals scattered upon her breast. For a moment you might think it some monstrous joke, might suppose it simply a girl asleep on a curtained, four-poster bed: until you caught sight of the dagger handle between the lax fingers – and saw that the crimson rose petals were not rose petals at all.

Chapter Five

C
OMMUNICATIONS
on the island of San Juan el Pirata are inclined to be slow; but there is as a last resort the telefono and by this extravagant means a message was finally conveyed to El Gerente de Politio just as he was about to board his ship with the rest of the smuggling fleet. The Gerente, torn between regret and excitement, collected his men from their various vessels and despatched them off home to change back into uniform. All except Jose: Jose had better stay behind and prepare Number 1 cell for reception of an inmate – the bales of illicit tobacco could go into the corridor, the hashish had better be put in the safe if it could be crammed in and the coffee must stay where it was – it wouldn't leave much room but criminals couldn't be choosers. The goats must certainly be accommodated elsewhere. If the she-goat had kidded, Jose must use his discretion as to what had best be done with mother and child, but they couldn't go into the office, it didn't look well.… Puffed up with these triumphs of organization, he hurried off home to change too.

Meanwhile, at the hotel, aghast and bewildered, the handful of tourists who – however slight the acquaintance – had best known the dead girl, huddled together in the chill shade of her murder. Horrible, terrifying, shocking, incredible – but true! At half-past four on that sun-baked afternoon, she had left them, walking off, splendid and vital in her blue-black bathing suit, up the narrow path to her hotel room. Less than three hours later, they had found her there – dead. ‘And it was I who made her go,' sobbed Miss Trapp, sick with the shock and distress of it. ‘If I hadn't made her go …'

‘Don't upset yourself, Miss Trapp, think rather of me who must arrange all these matters. The Company – the Company will want investigations,' stammered Mr Fernando, grey to the gills.

‘So incongruous,' said Mr Cecil, wretchedly. ‘Lying there dead, with all that sunshine outside!'

‘And the dagger still – still …'

‘A dagger like the ones we bought in the town.'

Louvaine sat white and silent in her wooden armchair, out on the flower-gay terrace, not a stone's throw from where the girl lay dead – dead and murdered, laid out ceremonially on a four-poster bed. ‘I suppose I was the last person who ever spoke to her.'

‘Except for the murderer,' said Leo quickly.