Skeleton Island (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  As the intruder dropped on to the floor, Dame Beatrice stepped out and shone the powerful torch full on him and observed, in her deep and beautiful voice:

  “Stand still, sir. I am armed.”

  “Good Lord! It’s Thorvald!” exclaimed Laura. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “I might ask the same question of you,” replied the young man, raising both hands in response to a slight motion made by Dame Beatrice with her weapon.

  “So this is Mr. Thorvald?” said Dame Beatrice. “Pray close the window and be seated. You may lower your hands. I think we may be upon the same errand, but I shall continue to keep you covered. By the way, just to satisfy my secretary, who, I am glad to say, retains the fresh, enquiring mind of a youngish child, do you know how to raise the trap-door in the floor of the lighthouse tower? She thinks there may be some kegs of brandy concealed there.”

  “I thought she drank whisky,” said Thorvald, who had carried out instructions and seated himself. “By the way, it’s all right to light the gas. It can’t be seen from this room because of the high wall round the back yard. I suggest it because your torch is a bit too powerful for my eyes.”

  “I am sorry about that. Later on, perhaps, when Laura has satisfied her curiosity. Can you help her?”

  “Oh, yes. But there’s nothing in the cellar at present. We’re running the stuff ashore tonight, as you seem to have guessed. All you have to do to open the trap is to tap it fairly hard in the middle of the edge which faces towards the door. The gas poker there would do it, I should think. I generally stamp on it with the back edge of the heel of my shoe, but that might throw you off balance if you don’t know how the thing works. The blow releases a spring, and then the thing works on the same principle as a jack-in-the-box. The lid flies up, and Bob’s your uncle. But I assure you you’ll find nothing but a long, low cellar, clean, I hope, but empty.”

  “I’ll take your word for it, then,” said Laura. “You’re one of the gang, are you? And Bunting was Ferrars. I suppose you know he’s dead?”

  “I saw in the papers that your chap Ferrars had been killed, but that wasn’t Bunting. Couldn’t have been, you know, Laura. Bunting was a yachtsman, not a schoolmaster. I’ve known him for nearly three years. I used to base Pronax in Jersey. It was his suggestion that she’d be much less conspicuous among the craft here.”

  “More proof, then, that your Bunting and our Ferrars are one and the same.”

  “Oh, nonsense! There couldn’t be any connection. Now, look here, what’s the drill? My gang will turn up all right, unless somebody tips them off. Are the rozzers all round this place?”

  “They are. And if anybody tips your mates off, all I can say is that it had better not be you. Dame B. is a dead shot, and a woman of blood and iron, so Ae toot an’ ye’re oot, as the elder of the kirk said to the old lady with the ear-trumpet. Understand?”

  “Only too well. But look, Laura, be reasonable. You can’t expect me to shop Eric and Tony and the Louse.”

  “The louse?”

  “Our contact on the other side, Louis by name. I call him the Louse, because that’s what he is. I wish we didn’t have to use him, but we can’t handle the French end without him. The other two…”

  “Look,” said Laura, “I don’t give a damn for the contraband side of the business. I derive from a lawless, thieving ancestry. But I am out to get the murderer of Ronald Ferrars, and what it all boils down to is that he must have been a member of your gang. If you yourself get caught up in the works, well, that’s your problem, so, if Dame B. will keep her little rod trained on your dangerously large target of a frame, I’d better be about my business.”

  “You will need the torch,” said Dame Beatrice, “so Mr. Thorvald may now light the gas, and that should make him much more comfortable.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Island Lives up to its Name

  “First she loomed before me like a blot of something blacker than darkness…”

  “…and that was the only sound excepting the swish of the sea…”

  A little worried at leaving her small, elderly (although indomitable) employer alone with the large and powerful Thorvald, Laura felt, however, that she had no option but to carry out the plan previously arranged with the inspector. He and his men, by this time, would be hidden in the quarry and amid the humps and bumps on the westward side of the lighthouse, the opposite side from that on which the smugglers would be compelled to come in from the sea.

  The inspector had argued long and earnestly against having her and Dame Beatrice mix themselves up in the affair, but had found them adamant. Their basic argument was that to deplete the force which would have to face smugglers—and nobody knew how many of these there might be—by putting even one policeman on watch from the lighthouse gallery, would be a tactical error. As Laura argued, she on the gallery and Dame Beatrice in the bungalow could be in no possible danger of getting mixed up in any fighting which might take place. She clinched the matter by reminding him that he thought the whole thing probably a mare’s nest, anyway, and had only consented to bring his men on the off-chance that she might be right and that an attempt would be made to land the contraband that night.

  “They’ve probably been cruising about with the stuff ever since Ferrars was killed,” she had said in conclusion. “They daren’t put in to port to refuel, with that sort of cargo on board. They’re bound to try to land it soon, and the moon and the tide are right for the night I’ve picked. Besides, they’ve no idea how much longer the lighthouse is going to be (as they think) empty.”

  Reflecting on these words, she climbed to the lamp room, then, crouching low, she went out to the gallery rail and peered into the gloom.

  The wind had risen and was blowing gustily. Already it was very cold up there in the open. Lights were appearing in the fishermen’s cottages and, far off, she could see the lamps which marked the promenade of the mainland watering-place. Nearly half a mile from her eyrie, its great light flashing its code signal to shipping approaching the Race, was the modern lighthouse, and somewhere over in the same direction were the inspector and his men, crouching in the hollows and probably cursing the cold.

  Laura huddled into her sheepskin jacket and continued to strain her eyes against the darkness, but there was no sign of a ship. As the moon was not yet up, she thought it was safe to retreat into the lamp room out of the wind. She perched herself on the stool which Howard had left there, and from time to time she left shelter and peered over the rail again. Then the moon rose, but the clouds were heavy, dark and low, and, more often than not, they obscured it.

  “Here’s fun!” thought Laura. “I may not be able to spot them coming in.”

  “So why,” asked Dame Beatrice, laying aside her revolver, “did you decide to visit Les Ecrehous?”

  “I had a thing or two to clear up there. You see, when I got the tip from Bunting that the lighthouse was inhabited, I knew I’d got to get the grape-vine working so as to give our contacts the tip-off.”

  “You left it rather late to do that, did you not?”

  “Yes. Pronax had been laid up for repairs. Anyway, Mrs. Gavin’s little expedition turned out to be a godsend because it gave me a cast-iron reason for going over to the Channel Islands. I had an idea, you see, that the rozzers were on the alert.”

  “I see. And then?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know any more, except that Eric and Tony would never have taken any hand in murder.”

  “How many people would have been aboard this ship you mentioned?”

  “They had to keep day and night watches, of course. I was always on board Pronax, so Louse had a crew of six, including Eric and Tony. The drill was to run in as close as they could to the only cove on this island, then transfer the stuff bit by bit to Pronax, and then I would run her round to the fishermen’s derrick, put up a signal, and the chaps up top would winch the kegs up in a net and trundle them round here to the lighthouse. Local chaps, of course
, and I’m not going to name them.”

  “And how often did this happen?”

  “Oh, about every two or three weeks, I think. I couldn’t tell you exactly. Then, of course, these Spaldings rented the lighthouse and that rather spiked our guns. We didn’t even know about them until we got the tip-off from Bunting.”

  “That means Mr. Ferrars.”

  “I suppose so, yes.”

  “Why did somebody kill him?”

  “I couldn’t hazard a guess. I mean, our lot—Tony and Eric and Bunting and myself—weren’t out to double-cross the others. That would have been the only motive for killing one of us, so far as I can see, and that motive didn’t exist.”

  “Were your friends—those you call Eric and Tony—on board the ship?”

  “Oh, yes. They had a quarter share each. The other half belonged to Louse.”

  “What about Mr. Ferrars?”

  “So far as I know, his only share was the one-tenth interest in Pronax.”

  “Did you ever have any difficulty in receiving payment for your part in these transactions?”

  “None whatever. Louse, I’ve no doubt, would have liked to do me down, but he couldn’t do without Pronax. She’s well-known in every creek and harbour from Falmouth to Lowestoft, as well as in the Channel Islands, so no one ever suspected (so far as I know) that she was anything but what she appeared to be, the plaything of a comfortably-off yachtsman. When I mentioned the rozzers, it was the ship they were beginning to be interested in, not my boat.”

  “Did you make your entire living in this way?”

  “Good Lord, no! I’m in films. So’s Pronax, when required. It all helped with the camouflage. When she wasn’t available, Louse used his ship’s tender, but he wasn’t too keen on that. It’s only happened that way twice, when I was laid up for repairs, but that’s when the authorities began to get a bit suspicious.”

  “And when you were filming? What happened then?”

  “Oh, when I was on location, Lilian handled Pronax for them. She’s as handy with the helm as I am, and has a great taste for diddling the Customs ever since they soaked her at Liverpool for trying to smuggle cigars in from Las Palmas. As a matter of fact, she’s at the helm tonight. That’s why I’m able to be here. She’ll clear off as soon as the stuff is landed. The fishermen will take the chaps back to the ship. The locals help, as I said, but Louse doesn’t trust a soul, so he always comes ashore with Eric and Tony to make sure there’s no double cross.”

  Suddenly, under the racing clouds and the intermittent moonlight, Laura spotted the ship. She knew it was the one she was looking for. It carried no lights. All she saw, before the black clouds blotted out the moon, was an even blacker shape on the dark and sullen sea. The vessel was coming in on the tide and had rounded the Point. She wondered whether the keeper on duty on the lighthouse proper had seen it, too, and had logged it as carrying no lights.

  “It’s a damn-silly game to play,” thought Laura, “for the sake of saving the duty on a few dozen kegs of brandy and a few dozen pounds of tobacco. You’ve got to have moonlight, and yet that’s just what lays you open to being spotted.” She turned her back on the ship, which was swallowed up by the darkness once more, and switched on her torch. She waved it from side to side as the signal she had agreed on with the inspector, and then went down to the living-quarters to find her employer and the master of Pronax in the middle of a game of chess with the tiny pocket-set which Thorvald had brought with him.

  “Thought I might have a long wait here on my own, you see,” he explained, “so I wanted something to do. There are always problems one can work out on one’s own, but a game against a notable opponent is very much better. Does your presence down here mean that the ship has been sighted?”

  “It does,” said Laura, “and I’ve given the police the signal. What, exactly, did you come here to do?”

  “I thought we’d agreed that I came here to make certain the place was empty and to warn the gang if it was not.”

  “Well, it isn’t empty, and, if you attempt any signals, Dame B. will plug you.”

  “There will be no need for anybody to plug me—not that I’d risk it, mind you. I’m sorry for Tony and Eric, if they get dropped on, but I suppose it will only mean a fine. But if Louse killed Bunting—Ferrars, I suppose I should say—then I’m as keen as you are to get him.”

  “How many of the ship’s company are likely to land and come here?” asked Dame Beatrice.

  “Oh, as I said (I thought), Louse, Tony, and Eric. We don’t let the deckhands know where the hide-out is. It wouldn’t do. They must know we’re running contraband, but they get good pay and are willing to take the risks for the extra money.”

  Laura said, “There’s somebody outside. In case it’s the police, Thorvald, you’d better scram. Go into one of the bedrooms. They won’t search the bungalow, but they may look in on Dame Beatrice and me. They know we’re here.”

  Thorvald, aware that the cargo could not possibly have been landed in so short a time after Laura’s report that she had seen the ship, apparently decided that her advice was good. He tiptoed along the dark passage with one hand stretched out in front of him (to warn him of any obstacles which might be in his way) and the other groping along the wall to find a doorhandle. Dame Beatrice parleyed in the entrance hall. He flattened himself against the wall to listen.

  “Who is it?”

  “Me. The sergeant, madam. We thought we saw a signal.”

  “You did.” Dame Beatrice, who had picked up her revolver, let him in. “The ship is standing off the island.”

  “I see you’ve lit the gas, madam. Better have it out if they’re close to hand. Perhaps, when you’ve turned it off, you and the other lady had better lock yourselves in. There’s bound to be some unpleasantness with these customers when they realise we’ve caught ’em red-handed.”

  “Is the inspector with you?”

  “No, madam. He’s detained over the other side of the bridge.”

  “What bridge?”

  “Why, the road that’s been built on the shingle to join us here to the mainland. Visitors call it a causeway, but on the island it’s known as The Bridge. Being as we are an island, that’s the rights of it.”

  “Well, come in, sergeant.”

  “No, thank you, madam. I only wanted to let you know we were on hand. I’ve got half a dozen men outside surrounding the place. The inspector’s plan is to let ’em bring the stuff right inside the tower. We’ll take ’em with the goods actually on ’em, that way, and make sure, too, as they don’t run off in the dark.”

  “What has detained the inspector? Not that he was at all convinced that they would be certain to land the contraband tonight.”

  “A couple of bodies has detained him, madam. Murdered bodies, so the call came through. Bashed on the back of the head and chucked into the sea on the ebb, so the local police officer thinks. Of course, you can’t rely on what our tides’ll do. That’s a chancy coast, that is. Matter of luck where anything might fetch up what’s chucked in the sea off the island. There’s double tides, you see, and a nasty swell all along our great old pebble bank. Why, the sea even sizes up the pebbles theirselves, let alone chucking out a couple of bodies as it don’t fancy stowing away in Davy Jones’ locker. You can’t rely on the tides off that old bank of ours. Treacherous as a jealous woman, her be. Well, with your permission, I’ll get my men in position. You won’t forget to turn the gas out, will you? We mustn’t risk it giving them a chance to smell a rat.”

  “Let alone a rabbit,” said Laura. The sergeant caught his breath, and then spoke sternly.

  “Us don’t care to have they things mentioned on the island,” he said. “That’s very bad luck, that is. Best not forget that while you’re here.”

  Laura apologised, but was mystified. When the sergeant had gone, she said:

  “What an odd superstition! By the way, it’s a nuisance Thorvald had to be here when the sergeant came. Even if he’s gone to
earth in one of the bedrooms, he could have heard what was said. The sergeant has a fine, loud, carrying voice.”

  “I can make certain that Thorvald does not go out by the door,” said Dame Beatrice, “but if he decides to get out of the window…”

  “He can’t, except for this one. He’s far too big. Have you got your little gat handy?”

  “Yes, and my torch, too. You remain here. I will go and guard the outer door.”

  “No need,” said Thorvald, from the doorway. “I wasn’t supposed to contact Louse. I shall be very glad to see him, all the same.” His tone was quiet and grim.

  “Stay where you are,” said Dame Beatrice. She shone her torch on him. “I have you covered. What is more”—she switched off the torch—“my hearing is acute, and I share just one attribute with Mr. Sherlock Holmes. I can see pretty well in the dark.”

  “May I talk?” asked Thorvald.

  “Yes, if you keep your voice down. But I know what you are going to ask me.”

  “About those two chaps washed up on the ridge? You don’t think, do you…?”

  “That they may be your friends Eric and Tony? There are answers less likely, I fear.”

  “They tipped me off Louse wanted to change the cargo. Dope, they thought. That’s why I’m here—to see fair play.”

  “So that’s it,” said Laura. She pulled back the curtains which she had drawn. The moon, which, for the moment, had swum quite clear of the clouds, was high in the sky. Laura picked up a chair and placed it so that Dame Beatrice could be seated. She herself perched on the table. Thorvald reached out a long leg and hitched a small chair forward and seated himself composedly on it.