Rum Affair: Dolly and the Singing Bird; The Photogenic Soprano

by Dorothy Dunnett

  “What letters?” This was what he had been longing to tell me, while the bloody rulebook told him he shouldn’t. “And of course you should have told them I had a key to that laboratory. Do you think I’d let you take all the blame?” I stopped. “No wonder your boys are bugging your dates. What letters? Let’s have it all.”

  That was simple, too. He was being blackmailed: had been ever since his return from Nevada. Over his meetings in Nevada with me.

  I heard that one out in silence, and the two dried-up steaks and the bottle of champagne in that damnable flat seemed a brave thing, when you knew. Someone had been bleeding him dry; someone with microfilm evidence of letters and notes I had written him, and of his letters back.

  And to obtain that microfilm evidence, the blackmailer must have had access to that laboratory.

  For that was where Kenneth kept my letters to him.

  Kenneth had had no reason to think that anything else in his lab had been tampered with. His precious device hadn’t vanished, and the plans were intact. If he had not had my reputation to protect he would have reported the illegal entry, and asked the police to trace the blackmailer for him. It was not until the discoveries on Lysander that he realised that the blackmailer was probably also a spy. And then he had been torn two ways.

  He could keep me away from it, so that I should never know I was involved. Or he could meet me somewhere, somehow, and ask me who else during that long, hot idyll in Nevada could have had the use of my key. For the lab he was lent in Nevada had a special lock. No one could have picked it. No one had forced their way in otherwise. And there were only two keys.

  He was, I think, right to take the second course. However silent he kept, those blackmail letters would have brought me into the story eventually. I had come to him there on South Rona at some cost and I was glad . . . A man of Victorian principles. It was part of his fascination for me.

  But there was no future for either of us unless I cut through this tangle. There were two keys to the laboratory where Kenneth’s papers and his sonic device were in storage. Two keys, he had said. His . . . and mine.

  And I knew who could have had mine.

  The shouting had stopped. Outside the Land Rover the rain had begun again, drumming on the canvas roof and reflecting, in half-tones and tones of differing texture, its descent on road, on grass, rock and bog. Dimly, through the van’s windows, the hills appeared, remained and disappeared to the turn of the lighthouse, like a badly-wired shop sign, telling me nothing. I said: “I know who could have taken my key – and who had access to my letter from you. I know who must have been blackmailing you. No wonder he didn’t want me to meet you . . . It’s Michael, of course. Michael Twiss.”

  “I wondered,” was all Kenneth said. And then, in the same careful voice: “But it doesn’t help, does it? We can’t have him talk. And it only fouls up your relationship with him. I know what he does for your work.”

  “We’ve parted already,” I said. I felt suddenly vicious. “Michael Twiss and I. Do you think I care? Or would you rather be shot as a spy than have it known that I was your mistress?”

  “Yes,” he said with perfect simplicity. And I couldn’t shake him from that. So at length I said the only possible thing. “Then I’ll tell the police about Michael myself.”

  “You won’t.” His hands on my shoulders pushed me hard back on my seat, and kept me there. “Why do you think I’ve tried to keep away from you? Valentina – it hasn’t been easy, God knows, this past week. You must promise not to throw it away. Promise! Now, before you leave. Swear you’ll never throw away your reputation and your career for my sake. You’ve worked so hard . . . and you’ve far more to lose than I have.”

  It was quixotic, and it was crazy. I was shivering, too. I said, slowly: “I can stop Michael’s blackmail – that, at least; if only by threatening to expose him for your sake. But no threat of mine would make him give himself up in your place over the bomb. Kenneth, what is the worst that can happen to you, if they pursue a charge? They have no real evidence against you, surely?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what they’ll do to me, Tina. But ultimately, it was my mistake that killed those three men. And if I must pay for it, then I will.”

  I had nothing to say. Kenneth moved and, cupping my face in his hands, kissed me lightly on the mouth. “Don’t worry. You’ve done all and more that you can. They can hardly shoot me. I’ll go abroad, eventually: there’s always a country somewhere wanting a scientist. We’ll meet again. I’m sorry it was such a depressing story you had to hear, in the end. But I have your promise, don’t I? Valentina . . .”

  “Yes. I promise,” I said. And at that moment the lights came on, by the pier, the road and the base camp; and the faint illumination, striking up from the road under the half-unrolled canvas, showed me for the first time Kenneth’s face. I stared at him, my hood back, and my hair fallen loose about my shoulders and brow, and he made a sudden little sound, a sound I remembered from long ago; and pulled me to him, bruisingly hard.

  The world exploded. There was a mind-deadening roar, a shuddering, and a jerk under our feet that sent me cannoning into his stomach. Then our Land Rover drove smartly off.

  It had everything. The seaside postcard, the horselaugh, the Mack Sennett comedy, the lovers, locked in a clinch on the removable rug.

  I can tell you what it is like when it happens to you. It makes you feel sick. Sick with interrupted emotion and outrage and shock. Sick and shaken and ill.

  Kenneth was the first to recover. While I was still on all fours, and the car was pursuing a racketing descent towards the crossroads and jetty, Kenneth had his fingers on the back of the driving seat, and then on the neck muscles of the man sitting there, his hands turning the wheel. The car swerved. I shrieked. “Kenneth! Let him go! It’s a friend!”

  I had my doubts even as I spoke, but I didn’t want to be a road accident victim on South Rona. Kenneth heard me. Slowly, he let his arm fall.

  “That’s better, Dr Holmes,” said Johnson gracefully. “Thank you, Tina.” Braking, he brought the car to a halt at the head of the pier.

  Kenneth said nothing. But his face in the harbour lights, switched across and across by the shadow of the Rover’s windscreen wipers, was disturbingly grim. “That,” I said to him with precision, “is Johnson Johnson. The man who helped pack Mr Chigwell away. His sense of humour conceals a love of dumb animals and a passionate feeling for cribbage.” I turned to Johnson and snapped: “Have you been in the car all this time?”

  He had, of course. Prone, I suppose, on both seats in the dark.

  “I fell asleep,” said Johnson agreeably. The twinkling glasses were not unamiable. But he was not looking at me. “Isn’t it rather lucky? For I have no inhibitions about informing against Michael Twiss.”

  “You bloody little spy,” said Kenneth blankly. I wished he would either shut up or beat Johnson into a pulp. I didn’t much care which. There were times when Kenneth’s Victorian principles lost their charm. Now I said wearily: “I know. He heard everything we said. But he already knows all about Chigwell, Kenneth, and he couldn’t have handled it better. I’m sure he won’t make mischief, not now.”

  “You’re sure he won’t make mischief? A man who would dream of climbing into that car and snooping on you through the whole of our . . .”

  Words failed him. Words hadn’t failed me, but I didn’t dare use them. No wonder Johnson had set off so cheerfully in the opposite direction. It was merely the preliminary to coming cheerfully back. The show with the biggest TAM rating in South Rona. If I thought of one or two things I was grateful for, it didn’t affect my natural instinct to grind his face in the windscreen.

  Kenneth, recovering his breath, said: “If he heard all that, he knows exactly how we’re placed. If you denounce Michael Twiss, Johnson, you expose Madame Rossi to all I’ve been trying to save her from . . . If you really have a kindness for Tina, then keep quiet and let us both go. God knows, that way I’ll p
ay any debt I have owing in full. And at least she won’t suffer.”

  “No. But then,” said Johnson mildly, “what of all the future victims of the ubiquitous Mr Twiss? Including Madame Rossi herself? Hennessy got in the way of that bullet, but it was probably intended for her. Or didn’t you realise Michael is finding her an embarrassment?”

  I said: “Wait a minute. Who shot at Hennessy?”

  “Someone with a revolver,” said Johnson brightly. “And the guards all had rifles: remember?”

  “But you said Michael had something to do with it. Michael didn’t come to South Rona.”

  “Oh, but he did,” Johnson said. “It was Old Home Week on South Rona tonight. The bloody place was like Charley’s Aunt done by the Flintstones.”

  I still couldn’t believe it. “But you said you left Michael ashore at Portree.”

  “I did. One can only conjecture,” said Johnson, “but I suppose he learned somewhere on shore that, far from being tucked up sleeping on Dolly, you had sailed into the Kodachrome on Hennessy’s Symphonetta. Then, when he most wanted to be on board, he’d find that Dolly had disappeared, too . . . I don’t suppose he wanted to be parted finally from Dolly, whatever he said. Anyway, he cadged a ferry from Cecil Ogden’s Seawolf. I don’t know what he told Ogden, but Victoria was ashore, having a bath and a kip down with friends; so Cecil was quite free.

  “According to the naval chaps here, Seawolf came in and anchored some time after we landed at Acarsaid Mor, and two men went on up to the lighthouse. According to the men there, they were Ogden and Twiss. Twiss left after a bit – he said to try and find me – and Ogden followed him later. Then they both boarded Seawolf and made back for Portree.

  “I shouldn’t,” said Johnson blandly to Kenneth, “be blind to the fact that while Michael Twiss is about, Tina is really highly unsafe. That’s why I make you this unrivalled sporting offer. Dolly’s here. I wirelessed to Acarsaid Mor for her. Come aboard Dolly with Tina, and sail with us to Portree to pick up Michael on board again. Then we’ll get at the truth . . . How about that?”

  There was a short silence. Then Kenneth said bitterly: “And how do you propose to persuade the Navy to allow me to leave?”

  “I don’t,” Johnson said calmly. “The Navy need never find out that you’ve gone. They know me. They know Hennessy and I brought Madame Rossi on shore for a bet, and Hennessy got mildly hurt in a clash with the security guards, and I’ve come back to collect Madame Rossi. We spun them that tale in order to get Hennessy’s ear attended to: they’ve sent him back to his own boat by naval launch, protesting like hell. I’ve had a ticking off for getting mixed up with security, and I’ve made my peace. So long as no one prowls about their precious buildings, they’re not all that worried. They’ll never notice an extra passenger crossing to Dolly . . . and the Willa Mavis, if need be, can carry you back. Come aboard Dolly,” said Johnson. “And I’ll help you shake the truth out of Twiss.”

  Kenneth didn’t take much more persuading. I could see him registering the points as Johnson made them. It was a chance. And Kenneth and I had no other, if Johnson chose to inform the base of what he had just overheard. Kenneth would have his career wrecked, if no worse, for handing out gratuitous keys, and would also probably be accused of his friend Chigwell’s murder. And I should have to face all that he was trying to spare me. Kenneth made a last effort. “But if I come . . . how will Michael Twiss’ confession make any difference?”

  “In several ways,” said Johnson, surprised. “For instance, we could blackmail Michael Twiss.”

  We had, as he said, no real alternative. We were at his mercy, whether we liked it or not. We did as he said.

  Forgathered on Dolly, with the lights of the base high above us, and the lighthouse shuttering and unshuttering its monotonous warning, I took Kenneth’s hand. At least he was with me, and if one could trust Johnson there was hope, of a kind. The only trouble was, I didn’t trust Johnson.

  I looked at him, as he stood, hand on wheel, watching Rupert cast off, and thought of something he had never explained. “Nancy Buchanan,” I said. “What was she doing tonight?”

  “Ah, yes.” His hand moved, and responding to the thrust of the engine, Dolly’s bows moved slowly round and she began, gently, to nose her way out of the anchorage. No one stopped us. Lenny, crouched in the bows, waved as she took up her course. “Ah, yes,” said Johnson, and lifted his eyes from the chart. “Clear, Lenny . . . If you want filthy villainy, take the Buchanans. No wonder they wouldn’t let anyone down in their cabin. Little, Holmes, did we know.”

  I’d had enough. I snapped: “What did they do?”

  “They crawled,” said Johnson, easing the wheel, “across the whole length of South Rona, in the dead of night in a rainstorm, tripping over alarm wires with the precision of clockwork, until Bob actually fell over one of the guards who were watching him and made such a noise the poor chap had to raise the alarm. That was when the shooting occurred. And why we had so far been so little troubled.

  “Then, considerably accelerated by circumstances and the general bedlam now let loose around them, the Buchanans carried out their prearranged plan. Bob, who is as you know an engineer, got in among the power machinery and disconnected it, while Nancy plodded on and created a diversion to let Bob carry out the next part of the plan. It was perfectly fascinating, and I’m told the Navy sat at its windows in rows and watched it like home movies.”

  “They didn’t stop them?” I said. It sounded like the silliest thing yet.

  “They didn’t need to,” said Johnson. “They’d had a tip-off about the Buchanans. They knew what they were going to do.”

  “What?” I said.

  “You can see. They haven’t pulled it down yet. Probably want to take pictures of it tomorrow and frame them.” Johnson, looking over his shoulder, waved generally upwards and back. We all looked.

  High above the neat roofs of the camp, where the radio transmitter bore its tall web, floated a large, home-made banner, fully twenty feet long, and illuminated by all the battery spotlights the base was able to muster, as well as the intermittent glare of the lighthouse.

  It said, with old-fashioned point, and less than old-fashioned spelling: ban the bomm.

  THIRTEEN

  I think we made that journey to Portree in absolute silence. We weren’t very talkative, either, when we found no Michael Twiss waiting to walk into our arms on the pier. For whatever reason, he hadn’t wanted to come back to Dolly. He had stayed on Seawolf, picked up Victoria, and was off on the next stretch of race in Cecil Ogden’s string-netted chicken coop.

  I wasn’t surprised, when I thought about it. And the more I thought about it, the more it concerned me. If he hadn’t abandoned the race altogether, it was because he still had hopes of showing a profit. And I didn’t want the profit to be my sudden demise, or Kenneth’s. For Kenneth’s death, one couldn’t deny, would be very convenient indeed. If an accident happened to Kenneth, the blame for Lysander would go to his grave.

  In the early hours of Sunday morning, after a brief debate carried by Johnson, we put off the engine, raised sail, and followed Seawolf on the next stage of the race, to the island of Rum. This really was my last sail, though I didn’t know it, on Dolly.

  I was tired to the bone. And although my world might be turned upside down in the next twenty-four hours, I was past thinking about it. I slept, half-dressed where I lay on my bed, and didn’t waken until well after breakfast time, when the crash of a jarring boom sounded overhead and there was a jolting lurch, first to one side and then to the other, while every block on Dolly clattered and banged. It was dark, and until I switched on the little light by my bed, I thought we were still in the night.

  When I saw the time, I jumped to my porthole and looked. Outside was a world of grey smoke, eddying and swirling above greasy water flowing in coils and whorls, which appeared and disappeared like oil under the grey, lightless veil. We were in the tidal race at the narrows of Kylerhea, the narrow
sea passage separating the mainland from the south coast of Skye; and at the wrong state of the tide.

  There is some comfort in adequate clothing. I had white knee boots with me, and a white quilted tabard that slips over a hooded ski suit in wool. I dressed, thrown this way and that against the side of my bunk as I did it, and went out into the cockpit.

  Johnson was at the helm: a bad sign even if you cared for Johnson, and since the previous night I had reservations. At that moment he had eyes for nothing but the swirl of the current just ahead; and as the sails shuddered above me, slackly banging, I realised that, to add to the discomfort, the wind had almost totally dropped. Then he noticed me and said: “Did you sleep the sleep of the just? I’m sorry about this. We’ll be through fairly soon, but it’s going to be a wearing journey to Rum. There’s fog pretty consistently forecast, and we’ve still got the swell from the storm. Lenny’ll make breakfast, if you can stand it.”

  He and Rupert and Lenny had had, I suppose, relatively little sleep between them since we left Barra. Rupert, I saw on entering the saloon, looked a bit hollow-eyed, but he had just come off duty, and disappeared very soon into the spare cabin foreward, leaving Lenny and Johnson on deck.

  I did not want breakfast. I sat down in the saloon opposite Kenneth, who was sitting slack-tied, his head tilted back against Johnson’s rough weave cushions, expelling cigarette smoke in cancerous clouds. Under the table at his feet was a mess of upset cigarette butts and ash, and a chart thrown down from its ledge. I saw all the fiddles were up, and a table cloth, folded neatly in its place in the galley, had been soaked before being used. I had slept through some unpleasant weather.

  Kenneth, I could tell from his face, had not slept at all. As I sat, his head came down, and putting out his cigarette quickly, he reached for my hands. It was then that he asked me to marry him, and I refused.