Her husband, David Nicholl, sat opposite her, between Jan and Sara Massingham. Andrew had been told that the young man was a colleague of Tony’s, working at the Institute of Marine Biology. He looked perhaps a year or two older than his wife, though this might have been the result of the gravity of his expression. He was of medium height and sturdily built and was either shy or naturally given to silence, for he spoke very little to either of the women who sat beside him. But when from time to time he responded to one or the other of them, he had a smile of singular charm. Like his wife, he did his duty by the turkey, reminding Andrew that at the young man’s age he too would have been able to eat gigantically of anything so good.
He found it tempting to do so now, but he knew that if he did his digestion would make him pay for it. And if he yielded to temptation too often he knew that he would soon find himself putting on those extra pounds which at the age of seventy-one it was wisest to keep at bay. There had been a time, soon after Nell’s death from cancer, when he had more than half hoped that a heart attack would put an end to the almost unbearable problems of loneliness, but gradually he had found that life had still something to offer him, so that keeping his weight down had come to seem simple common sense.
Not that there was any point in thinking too much about that sort of thing today. After the turkey came a Christmas pudding, aflame. But between the two courses came a ritual which Andrew had never encountered anywhere but in Australia. There was a long, long pause during which people smoked, drank, talked and then all of a sudden decided to go for a walk in the garden. They filed out and went wandering round between the glorious jacarandas, the oleanders, plumbagos and hibiscus. Andrew found David Nicholl walking beside him. He seemed, from one of his small, sudden smiles, to wish to show friendliness to the stranger, but to have no words in which to do it.
Andrew could not think of anything to say either, but noticing Clare Nicholl on the path ahead of him, he remarked, “Those are very pretty earrings your wife is wearing.”
David Nicholl’s response was another of his charming smiles.
“You really think so? They’re malachite which I dug out of the rock myself some time ago. I got the silverwork done by a fellow called Dudley Blair. A very weird character who sometimes hangs around in Adelaide for a time, when he isn’t off walking on his own in the desert or North Australia. English and one of your real eccentrics, who have a way of turning up in Australia from time to time, looking for I don’t know what, and God knows what he lives on, but he does some quite fine work.”
“I’ve met him,” Andrew said. “So you’re a rock-hound, are you, like Tony?”
“I used to be, but then—” He hesitated. “I dropped it.”
“You got tired of it?”
“You could say that. No, that wasn’t it. Something happened.”
“Something put you off it?”
David Nicholl darted a sideways look at him. “Of course you know the whole story of the murder of Jan’s first husband, don’t you?”
“I think I know most of it by now,” Andrew said.
“Well, you see, I was the bloke who found the body.”
“I see, and so you don’t like going back to the quarry.”
“That’s it. I get the feeling I might find another there. Stupid, but it was a bloody unpleasant experience. I can’t forget the way he lay there, half in and half out of the water. And the blood…” He swallowed painfully. “I’ve never been much good at blood.”
“Did you know him?” Andrew asked.
“A little.”
“I mean, did you recognize him when you found him?”
“Oh yes, though he’d been battered about the head in a way that may have been meant to hide his identity. But I knew Tony—we’re in the same sort of job, you know—before Jan and Wilding got married and I used to go up to Hartwell with him sometimes and met Wilding there. And then we’d occasionally meet at the quarry. I recognized him at once.”
“What did you make of his body having been dragged down to the pond? Does it make any sense to you?”
“I can’t say it does.”
“Jan told me that one of the police theories about it is that the murderer was dragging the body to a car to take it out into the bush, or anyway to conceal it somewhere, then he was interrupted by someone else coming on the scene.”
“I know.”
“Were you that person, d’you think?”
“I could have been.” The young man’s answers were becoming increasingly terse and a deep frown had taken the place of the occasional smile.
“I’m sorry,” Andrew said. “It’s not a subject for Christmas Day.”
“My fault,” David said. “I started it. And the fact is, it’s difficult to keep off it, once you get started. They’ll never find who did it, of course, unless they’ve got some evidence they’ve kept quiet about. I don’t think they have, but it’s always possible. If they haven’t, it’s too long ago now for them to come up with anything. But I don’t like the quarry any more.”
“Where did the lump of crystal in the Lightfoots’ room come from?” Andrew asked. “Do you know that?”
“I think Tony gave it to them,” David answered, and as if he had said all that he wanted to for the moment, the young man suddenly left Andrew’s side and went ahead to join his wife.
Andrew found himself strolling alongside Bob Wilding, who had been walking with Sara Massingham, who had just left him and gone walking ahead by herself with a long, graceful stride that had soon out-distanced everyone else in the party.
There was a slight flush and a look of excitement on Bob Wilding’s hollow-cheeked face.
“So that’s settled,” he said. He gave Andrew a slap on the back as if he were congratulating him for something. But as it turned out, the congratulations were for himself. “She’s agreed definitely at last. I found the right lever to make her do it. She’s a lovely creature, isn’t she?”
“Miss Massingham?”
“That’s right. Isn’t she lovely?”
“Very.”
“And it was quite simple really. All I had to do was promise to sell the sheep station and come back to live in Adelaide, and as I’ve been thinking of doing that myself for some time…” He paused. “But you don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve been trying for months to get Sara to agree to marry me, and if she’d said before that being a farmer’s wife wasn’t her idea of bliss, I’d have told her right away I was ready to sell up any time. My father was very keen that I should keep the farm going, so I thought I ought to give it a try, but I’m not cut out for it.”
“So now you’ve told her that and she’s happy?”
“That’s it. Wonderful. Difficult to take in at the moment. I can’t quite believe in it. I’ve wanted it so badly for so long.” Bob Wilding gave an abrupt, almost crazy-sounding little laugh that matched the excitement in his face. “I suppose I oughtn’t to be talking about it like this. She’ll probably be crook at me, but I don’t feel I can keep it to myself. If I hadn’t told you, I’d have told somebody else. I may do that anyway. Then tell them all to drink to it, that’d be a perfect end to this fine dinner. But Sara might not like it. She always keeps her feelings to herself. I’ve never been sure whether or not she’d ever care for me. So now it’s gone to my head a little. I’m sorry about that. I oughtn’t to have unloaded it straight on to you, a perfect stranger. I expect you think I’m a little mad.”
“I feel very honoured,” Andrew answered sedately.
“Yes, of course that’s what you’ve got to say,” Bob said. “But the truth is, ever since I inherited the damn farm, I haven’t known what to do with it. I was an engineer, doing pretty well in an Adelaide firm, before my father died and left the place to me. I thought of selling it right away, but that seemed kind of callous. He’d been quite wrapped up in it himself and he trusted me to keep it going, which is why he didn’t leave even a share of it to that damn girl…
I’m sorry, she’s a friend of yours, isn’t she?”
“Jan?” Andrew nodded.
“There, that’s the sort of thing I always do,” Bob went on, “saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. I’ve nothing against her, you know. I’ve never believed the sort of thing people have said about her. But it’s a difficult thing having a stepmother younger than yourself. I was very attracted by her once and had to forget about it when she married my father. And next it was Kay—yes, by God, I was really in love with Kay for a time. I was really upset when she married Denis, though we’ve always stayed friends. That’s how it is I’m here today. I’m staying with them for a day or two. I invited myself and it was nice of them to let me come, but in the end, you see, it was a lucky thing for me she married Denis, because it was after that that I met Sara, and this thing with her is quite another matter. I’d cut my throat if it went wrong. Are you married, by the way?”
“I used to be,” Andrew said.
“Ah. Divorced?”
“No, my wife died.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. But there I go again, you see, saying the wrong thing, quite the wrong thing, to the wrong person.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But I ought to be more careful what I say. I’ve a way of saying anything that comes into my head. Perhaps Sara will cure me. She may manage to teach me some tact. She’s got lots of it. Talking about my father and Jan, by the way, you know all about that, I suppose.”
“About his death, you mean?”
Bob nodded. The colour in his cheeks had subsided, but his eyes still had a slightly wild gleam in them.
“I think I’ve been told most of what there is to know,” Andrew said.
“Terrible thing. It’s cast a shadow on us all ever since. There’s no one here today who hasn’t been involved in it to some extent except yourself. Even the ones of us with alibis have been made to feel that the mere fact of having an alibi can be suspicious. Isn’t there something odd about remembering just what you were doing at just a certain time on a certain day? It would sound much more normal not to be too sure about it. But people who aren’t sure envy the ones who are.”
“I believe you’ve an alibi yourself,” Andrew said.
“Who, me?” Bob sounded careless about it, considering what he had just been saying. “Yes, Kay and I were out together, having a picnic in the nature reserve near Hartwell. I remember it because she chose that day when I was making up my mind to ask her to marry me—we were on the shores of a lake there, you should get Tony and Jan to take you to it, it’s a lovely place with pelicans, kangaroos and everything—well, there we were and she suddenly told me she was going to marry Denis. Said they’d had a love affair going on for months. I remember I said, ‘Is that right?’ and she said, ‘Yes, that’s right,’ and that’s all there was to it. Then we got home and heard the news about my father.” There was a break in his hurrying speech. “A shock, of course, the way it happened, but I never managed to pretend much in the way of grief. The truth is, he was a brutal bastard. I’d a sort of affection for him, I suppose, a kind of admiration because he was so tough, but he knocked me about like hell when I was a kid. If Jan knows anything about his murder, I don’t blame her… No, I didn’t mean to say that. How can she know anything? It’s just because of the way people talk…”
As if he felt that he had said more than he had intended, perhaps because of the champagne and the wine that he had drunk with the turkey, he went hurrying ahead to rejoin Sara Massingham.
When he did so, however, she fell back and fell into step beside Andrew. She gave him her attractive smile and said, “I know what Bob’s been talking to you about, but please don’t take him too seriously.”
“You aren’t actually engaged to him then?” Andrew asked.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” She laughed, as if she enjoyed the situation.
“He appears to think that you are,” Andrew said. “If you aren’t, it might be a kindness to put him out of his agony.”
“Poor Bob, he always lives in a state of agony,” she said. “He rather likes it. He’s very excitable. If he weren’t really unsure of me, I think he’d soon lose interest in me.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t.” It was not merely a meaningless compliment. He thought her one of the most beautiful and arresting women he had seen for a long time and that she could probably do just as she liked with Bob Wilding.
“Ah, you don’t know him,” she said. “He’s very unstable. And so am I, I’m afraid. I’ve accepted him in a provisional sort of way, but I’m not even sure if I want to get married at all. I think I’m in love with him, he’s good-looking and he’s rich and for the moment he’s quite adequately infatuated, which are all very nice things, but am I in love with him?… Ah, good, I think we’re being summoned to go in and eat the pudding. You won’t say anything about what Bob’s said to you, will you?”
She walked ahead again and slipped her arm through Bob’s.
Neither of them said anything about any engagement even when the magnificent pudding had been eaten and the last of the wine in the bottles still on the table had been drunk. Andrew knew by then that the party were planning to swim as soon as the meal was finished, and although with so much rich food inside him he would not have been averse to having a short sleep before plunging into the sea, he did not want to be difficult about it. He and Tony and Jan had brought their bathers, as the Gardiners called them, with them in the car and when the party began to break up and Kay started clearing the table, Tony went to bring them in.
“I’ll join you later when I’ve tidied things up,” Kay said. “I shouldn’t like to come back to such a mess.”
“I’ll stay and help,” Jan said. “It won’t take long between us.”
“No, you go and swim, I’ll stay,” Clare Nicholl said.
An argument about it developed among the women in which Sara Massingham did not join. She seemed to detach herself serenely from any necessity to take part in domestic chores. In the end it was Jan who stayed behind to help Kay tidy the dining room and stack the dishwasher, while everyone else found bedrooms in which to change into their swimming things.
Andrew regretted the fact that he had not taken more of a liking than he had to Kay. She had been a charming hostess, concerned for the pleasure of all her guests, and Jan had told him that she was a wonderful person. But that was part of the trouble, for whenever he was told that of anyone he was inclined to expect the worst. He was always happier with understatement than with exaggeration, and after all, there were very few people who really turned out to be wonderful. Nice, kind, good, generous, affectionate, yes. They might have all kinds of excellent qualities. But to call them wonderful, he always felt, was going a bit far.
Denis took a large, brightly coloured umbrella down to the beach and erected it so that anyone who wanted to lie in the shade rather than in the full sunshine could do so. Andrew sat beneath the umbrella for a little while, then decided to go in swimming. Although the sea looked rougher than it had during the last few days, there was really no force in the waves. Striking out through the small breakers to the deeper water beyond them, he saw Bob Wilding swimming powerfully ahead of him, but most of the other members of the party had stayed where it was shallow, and presently Andrew found himself alone where low rollers with white crests swept past him.
He felt an immense pleasure in it. Letting himself be rocked by the waves, he stayed there for a while, seeing that the party who had stayed near to the beach were playing some kind of game which involved a good deal of splashing and shrieking with laughter. After a short time he swam back to the shore, waded out through the breakers and threw himself down on the sand, a little removed from the shade of the umbrella. Stretched out with the warmth of the sun on his skin as well as the coolness of the light breeze that was blowing in from the sea, in a few minutes he was sound asleep.
He had not noticed what the time was before he fell asleep. The long Christmas dinner had gon
e on until fairly late in the afternoon, but when he woke he saw on the clock on the tower of the Town Hall of Betty Hill, which was just visible from the beach, that it was a quarter past six.
He sat up and looked around him. Sara Massingham was lying alone in the shade of the umbrella, no doubt being careful to protect the whiteness of her skin. Clare and David Nicholl were standing at the edge of the water, looking as if they were making up their minds to go into it once more. Andrew could not see Denis Lightfoot or Bob Wilding or Tony, though he saw some heads bobbing about some distance out to sea which were too far off for him to be able to recognize them, but he thought it probable that that was who they were. There was no sign anywhere of Kay or Jan. It was taking them a long time, he thought, to clear up the remains of the dinner.
Lying gazing up at the sky, he saw the white ghost of a full moon adrift in the deep blue overhead. It looked almost transparent, a mere puff of cloud with its sad face expressing as always a yearning for something that would never be given. Andrew lay still for a little while, then thought that he would swim once more before the party decided to return to the house.
He passed David and Clare, who had just gone hand in hand into the water. He saw that Clare was not a very confident swimmer and wanted David to stay near her. But reaching the deeper water Andrew suddenly found himself face to face with Tony, who was swimming back towards the beach with smooth, elegant strokes.
He checked himself when he met Andrew and said, “Had a good day?”
“Wonderful,” Andrew said.
“Time to be going in soon,” Tony said. “We ought to be getting home. Where’s Jan, do you know?”
“I haven’t seen her,” Andrew answered.
“Having a kip, perhaps. Have you seen Kay?”
“No, but I’ve been asleep. They may have come down to the beach and gone in again.”
“That’s right, I expect it’s what they did. Well, we’d better join the others and go in.”
The Crime and the Crystal Page 6
