Skeleton Island (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  The official notice board in the common-room held not only the school time-table and the Staff duty rota, but the masters’ room numbers. She consulted it, and discovered that Ferrars occupied bedroom thirty-six on the second floor. She went upstairs again, and cautiously tried the door. All the keys, by the headmaster’s orders, were kept in the locks and on the outside, since the doors, as in other hotels, were self-locking, and there had been unnecessary and irritating occasions, during the first week, when masters had locked themselves out and had been obliged to trouble the headmaster for a second key which was kept in the hotel office.

  The door of room thirty-six opened soundlessly, and Laura stood in the doorway and listened. There was no sound in the room, the curtains had not been closed, and soon, even in the faint light of the very early morning, she could see that the narrow bed was unoccupied. She closed the door again and, this time, left the building, carrying the stout ashplant which accompanied her on long walks, and slinging on a pair of binoculars.

  It was just after six o’clock. If Ferrars had decided upon tramping the island before meeting the girl, there were only two routes he would be likely to have taken. These roads formed, roughly, the letter Y in reverse. That is to say, there was only one road from the end of the causeway to the hotel and a mile beyond it, and then it forked, one way, that to the left, leading to Spalding’s lighthouse and out to the new lighthouse on the Point, the other, that to the right, going out to the quarries and the few arable fields beyond them. After that it led towards the high, relentlessly perpendicular, grass-covered cliffs which formed the west coast.

  There were only two villages on the island, for the chief place, at the end of the causeway, was properly called a town. It was ugly, compact, and grey-walled with nothing of the dignity and beauty of Cotswold towns, but was far more reminiscent of the mining villages of Durham or South Wales. It had several mean-looking shops and a couple of public houses, a church built in the mid-nineteenth century and a Baptist chapel. There was also one cinema and this concluded the amenities.

  The two villages were placed one at the junction of the stem of the letter Y and the other half-way along its western arm. These villages housed the quarrymen and fishermen. The town, presumably, was the supply depot of the island and had been built, no doubt, to form a useful link with the mainland. Somewhere behind and to the east of it lay the prison. Laura’s cove was about half-way between the prison and Spalding’s lighthouse.

  Laura’s instinct inclined her to take the path to the cove. About two-thirds of the way down the long, winding slope which led to the shore, a narrower path, trodden by feet and not made by hands, led away to the broken cliffs. The cove itself was empty, except for its boulders. There was no boat lying off-shore and no sign of any human being. She took the path. It was rough and uneven, but it meandered, mostly downhill, and skirted the edge of a quarry which must have been abandoned early in its history, for it was nowhere very deep, and the quarrymen had not even troubled to cart away some of the excavated stone, but had left it lying untidily, some on the lip of the asymmetrical hole and some in rough heaps in its depths. Grass and bushes had grown up, but not so thickly that she was unable to see that there was no sign of Ferrars.

  She walked on. The path broadened and narrowed in illogical fashion and was never straight for more than a dozen to twenty yards at a time. Now it ascended and wound inland for a bit, now it dipped to a shallow little valley and at one point it came out upon low cliffs. Laura went to the edge of these and looked about her long and earnestly, but there was nothing except the sea, and, a long way off to her left, on the arc of the bay, a faint suggestion of the buildings of the mainland seaside resort from which her car had brought her to the island.

  She went back to the path and followed its windings until it dipped between gorse bushes, rose to a little knoll and suddenly came to an end on the edge of a precipitous drop. On the other side of this she could see, in the distance, a rectangular menace of dark grey stone which she took to be the prison. There was no obvious way of crossing the dangerous inlet, so she turned back and made her way towards the cove.

  To her right, but some distance ahead, she could see the ancient castle. Nothing was left of it but a tumble-down gatehouse and a small, rectangular keep. It occurred to her that Ferrars might have decided, in spite of the warning notices, to climb over the fence which barred it from the public and take a look inside. If he had done so, anything might have happened to him, for the warning notices were grim.

  Laura stood still and looked about her. On the far side of the cove a very steep path seemed to lead to the grounds of the hotel. She did not believe that this could really be the case, for she had explored these fully and there was no trace of any path which might lead down to the cove. However, she thought it worthwhile to find out where the steep path went, so she descended to the cove, picked her way among the boulders and began to mount the headland.

  As she had supposed, the path skirted but did not lead to the hotel grounds. It brought her out high above the cove and in view of the rented lighthouse. It stood startlingly white against a gloomy, early-morning sky which promised rain. The sea, now that she had turned her back on the bay, where, owing to the long breakwaters which enclosed the harbour, the water always seemed comparatively calm, was becoming ruffled as the wind got up.

  To the right, on the landward side, there were trees and bushes on the slope from the hotel to the cliff-top. It was almost the only wooded area on the island. She made her way towards it, downhill at first and then in a fairly steep climb with no path to act as guide. Sometimes she stopped and shouted for Ferrars, and then listened, but, apart from some startled birds, there was no response. She had forgotten the escaped convict.

  She reached the hotel boundaries, where some glass-fronted observation châlets had been erected, and an iron fence, grimly spiked at the top, barred off the private grounds from the rest of the hillside. She did not think that even the biggest and boldest boys would attempt to scale it. Apart from the spikes themselves, she did not think that the space between them would accommodate the width of a shoe. For her there was nothing for it, so far as she could see, but to scramble down to the cove and return by the way she had come.

  It was easy enough to find a way down and to regain the original path. The cove itself looked desolate and unwelcoming, and the wind, which had risen higher by this time, blew in, cold and damp, from the sea. When she had passed the tremendous limestone cliff on which the castle stood and from which it seemed to be growing, she found herself on a pleasant little grassy plateau. Here she saw that there was a means of approach to the castle by way of some fencing which had been broken away. She looked at her watch again and decided that there was still time for exploration before she needed to return to get ready for breakfast. There was just a possibility that Ferrars was lying there injured and helpless.

  Beyond the broken fence was an area of rough pasture, gorse bushes, and blackthorn, but there was a well-defined trackway across it which led to a bridge and the castle. The bridge, however, was strongly barricaded off with barbed wire. It spanned a lower archway between two enormous out-croppings of the rock on which the castle was built, and at the end of it, distant perhaps a score of yards, was the shell of the gatehouse.

  She studied the set-up for perhaps as long as five minutes, and then made up her mind. It was possible, she thought, to squeeze past one end of the barbed-wire barrier where a bit of the hillside had either crumbled away or had been forcibly dislodged by adventurous local youths, so she laid her ashplant on the ground, and, exercising due caution, particularly in not looking down, for the rock-strewn ground, at this point, was some forty feet below her, she worked her way round and was soon on the bridge. The gatehouse was no more than an open archway and was partially barred off by a notice board of formidable size which announced, in thick black letters a foot high: Danger. Keep Out. Falling Masonry.

  “If that’s all,” said Laura, aloud,
“I may as well take a chance.” She drew her ashplant between two uprights of the fencing, but, before she ventured all the way in, she took the precaution of gazing through the gatehouse arch into the small courtyard of the keep in an attempt to determine whether the masonry had sustained any recent damage. Her survey was reassuring, particularly as the ruined keep was open to the sky. The notice, she concluded, was directed against those who wanted to climb about on the walls. There seemed no danger so long as she remained away from these, and under the open sky, but, before going any further, she stood in the middle of the courtyard and called on Ferrars to answer. There was no reply, so she ducked under a narrow, round-headed archway and entered the keep.

  It was in such a ruinous state that she thought at first it offered no points of interest, but then she saw, in one of the angles, a spiral stair. She went over to it. It was on the seaward side of the keep and seemed in fairly good repair. She stood at the foot of it and called again, but nothing except the booming reverberations of her own voice, as it went echoing down a winding passageway, came back to her.

  Laura had the average person’s instinct for exploration, and newel staircases had for her an almost morbid fascination, so much so that her employer, who was psychiatric consultant to the Home Office, had waxed facetious upon the subject and had spoken, tongue in cheek, of retrogressions and conditioned reflexes, references to which the non-suggestible Laura was accustomed to respond with rude hoots of laughter.

  She paused, however, on the brink of this particular newel stair. It occurred to her that perhaps, in the interests of her husband and her young son, it might be as well if she refrained from getting herself knocked out by a fall of stone from the roof. She called again, but there was no answer. She laid her stick on the ground, ascended five steps, one hand on the newel post for support, stopped, and listened. Then she called Ferrars’ name for the third time before she turned carefully round on the narrow stair and went back to the outer air.

  Something white was blowing about the interior of the roofless keep. She followed it and snatched it up just as a gust was about to blow it into the courtyard. It was a handkerchief, a man’s handkerchief, freshly laundered (by the look of it) and bearing the embroidered initial R. Ferrars’ first name was Ronald. She called out again and again, but still received no answer, so at last she tucked the handkerchief into her pocket and turned back towards the hotel.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Manoel is Missing

  “It was not very long after this that there occurred the first of the mysterious events…”

  Laura had squeezed cautiously past the end of the barbed wire and negotiated the slight cliff-fall, and was fairly back on the track which led to the broken fencing and the lane, when she remembered her faithful ashplant. She also remembered something else: somewhere on the island, unless he had managed to elude the police cordon or been captured or had managed to escape by boat, there was the convict lurking about, and he was, she had to infer, a desperate man. It occurred to Laura that there might have been another cause for thankfulness in her having exercised caution in exploring the castle, apart from the risk of falling masonry.

  However, the stick was a favourite one, so she went back for it. She remembered exactly where she had laid it down and she re-entered the forbidden territory, cautiously, as before, in the confident expectation of picking up the ashplant and returning to the hotel with it. To her chagrin, surprise, and alarm, it was no longer there. There seemed only one interpretation to be put upon this. Somebody else must be in the keep—and who more likely than the convict to seize the chance of arming himself with a lightweight but still formidable weapon? It was not a pleasant thought.

  Laura was the last person to panic, but it seemed the height of foolishness to stand upon the order of her going. She went at once, and, as soon as she was outside the barbed-wire barrier, she ran until she reached the gates of the hotel. The time was twenty minutes to eight. She took the stairs in great bounds and made for the headmaster’s sitting-room. She knocked loudly. Mr. Eastleigh himself opened the door.

  “Quick!” said Laura. “I think Mr. Ferrars is in the ruined castle. I need help and some rope or perhaps a stretcher. Can we organise something at once? I think the escaped convict may be there, too.”

  “Breakfast will be ready in twenty minutes,” said the headmaster, calmly. “We are not going to chase about after Ferrars or the convict just now. I am not pleased with Ferrars, and if you have been searching for him on your own, Mrs. Gavin, without telling anyone what you were doing, I consider you have been very foolish and irresponsible. You know there is this escaped convict about. Go and get yourself tidy. You look dishevelled.”

  Laura took herself off with outer meekness and inward fury. She felt about ten years old. On the stairs she met Skelton, the games master.

  “Good morning,” he said. “What’s up? You look wind-swept.”

  “Oh, shut up!” she said. “I’ve just had that from the Man. I say, Ferrars isn’t back, and I think the convict is hiding in the castle ruins and Ferrars may be there, too. I want to organise a search party, but Mr. Eastleigh won’t hear of it. He ticked me off. Why shouldn’t we look for Ferrars?”

  “Job for the police now, not us. You don’t mean you’ve been cruising around on your own?” He looked at her sternly.

  “Why shouldn’t I? Anyway, I’d forgotten about the convict. I was only thinking of Ferrars.”

  “He’s a young ass. As for you…”

  “Oh, all right!” said Laura crossly. She went to her room and presented herself at the headmaster’s table some fifteen minutes later, tidy and self-possessed, although inwardly she was still fuming.

  “I have given the police your message about Ferrars,” said Mr. Eastleigh. “I had already reported his absence from the school.” He smiled at her. “Now have your breakfast and then you can tell us what you’ve been up to. No, not a word until you have got to the toast and marmalade stage.” He laughed at her indignant expression. “I am really very angry with you,” he added.

  “Why, what has Mrs. Gavin done?” asked his wife, coming into the room.

  “I have forbidden her to mention it until we have eaten some, at least, of our breakfast. Sometimes I think my Staff need bear-leaders, but we will say no more about it until the proper time.” He laughed again at Laura’s scowling face and passed her a plate of ham and eggs. “Now, then,” he said encouragingly, a little later on, “come along, Mrs. Gavin. Out with it. What makes you think that the convict and perhaps Ferrars are in those ruins?”

  Laura gave an account of her walk.

  “But you might have been set upon and killed!” exclaimed Mrs. Eastleigh. “What on earth should we have said to your husband?”

  “I don’t believe I should be killed all that easily,” argued Laura. “Besides, I don’t think the convict was armed. He took my ashplant. At least, somebody did. It was a bit odd about the handkerchief, though.”

  “Have you got it?”

  “Yes, I brought it down with me.” She produced it from her handbag.

  “Oh, yes, that belongs to Ronald Ferrars,” said Mrs. Eastleigh. “I know it from the laundry mark. What is so odd about it?”

  “Well, it wasn’t there when I went just a few steps up the newel stair, and it was there when I came down again.”

  “Oh, it blew in from somewhere. There always seems to be a wind blowing on this island. He might have dropped it anywhere and at any time,” said the headmaster.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” agreed Laura, but she spoke doubtfully. Before more could be said upon the subject there came a knock on the door.

  “Oh, dear!” said Mrs. Eastleigh, getting up. “Can’t we even have breakfast in peace?”

  “Sit down, my dear. I’ll see to it,” said her husband. “It may be a message from the police.” He went to the door, partly closed it behind him and re-entered, looking perturbed.

  “What is it?” asked his wife. He shook his head
, finished his cup of coffee without sitting down again, and went out of the room.

  “I wonder whether they’ve found Ferrars, and he’s met with an accident or been clobbered by the convict?” said Laura. “Well, I’d better go and get ready for Assembly, I suppose. I might as well show up. I’m teaching, first period.”

  Assembly, which took the form of a short service consisting of hymn and prayers, followed by any notices which Mr. Eastleigh chose to give out, was, ordinarily, a noisy, haphazard sort of affair until the headmaster entered. It was Mr. Grange’s business to see that the boys were in some sort of order and were seated cross-legged on the floor, then he sent a prefect to Mr. Eastleigh. Upon receipt of the message, the headmaster, followed by the rest of the Staff, came in, and the boys stopped their cheerful chattering and stood up.

  On this occasion, however, Laura, from her place in the official queue, could hear nothing except Mr. Grange’s voice. It sounded solemn and doom-laden and was falling into the kind of hush which she associated with the major crises of her own schooldays, crises in which she had often taken a distinguished although not an enviable part.

  “What’s blowing up?” she muttered to Skelton, who was standing immediately behind her.

  “Rumours, so far,” he muttered back. “Manoel’s missing.”

  “Oh, gosh!” There was no time for more. The prefect appeared in the doorway and there were the usual exchanges.

  “Mr. Grange’s compliments, sir, and the boys are in the hall.”

  “My compliments and thanks to Mr. Grange. We will attend him.”

  The little procession entered the large lounge, and the assembled boys, with shining morning faces and wearing the mid-week clean shirts, stood up and stood still.