A Moment on the Edge:100 Years of Crime Stories by women

by Elizabeth George

  It did not surprise Jemima Shore one bit to discover that Tina Archer—formerly Harrison—was easy to get on with. Anyone who left the hostile and graceless Greg Harrison was already ahead in Jemima’s book. But with Tina Archer chatting away at her side, so chic and even trendy in her appearance, the revelation of the interior of the house was far more of a shock to her

  than it would otherwise have been. There was nothing, nothing at all, of the slightest modernity about it. Dust and cobwebs were not literally there perhaps, but they were suggested in its gloom, its heavy wooden furniture—where were the light cane chairs so suitable to the climate?—and above all in its desolation. Archer Plantation House reminded her of poor Miss Havisham’s time-warp home in Great Expectations. And still worse, there was an atmosphere of sadness hanging over the whole interior. Or perhaps it was mere loneliness, a kind of somber, sterile grandeur you felt must stretch back centuries.

  All this was in violent contrast to the sunshine still brilliant in the late afternoon, the rioting bushes of brightly colored tropical flowers outside. None of it had Jemima expected. Information garnered in London had led her to form quite a different picture of Archer Plantation House, something far more like her original impression, as she drove down the avenue of palm trees, of antique mellow grace.

  Just as Jemima was adapting to this surprise, she discovered the figure of Miss Archer herself to be equally astonishing. That is to say, having adjusted rapidly from free and easy Tina to the moldering, somber house, she now had to adjust with equal rapidity all over again. For the very first inspection of the old lady, known by Jemima to be at least eighty, quickly banished all thoughts of Miss Havisham. Here was no aged, abandoned bride, forlorn in the decaying wedding-dress of fifty years before. Miss Izzy Archer was wearing a coolie straw hat, apparently tied under her chin with a duster, a loose, white, man’s shirt, and faded blue-jeans cut off at the knee. On her feet were a pair of what looked like child’s brown sandals. From the look of her, she had either just taken a shower wearing all this or been swimming. She was dripping wet, making large pools on the rich carpet and dark, polished boards of the formal drawing room, all dark-red brocade and swagged, fringed curtains, where she had received Jemima. It was possible to see this even in the filtered light seeping through the heavy brown shutters which shut out the view of the sea.

  “Oh, don’t fuss so, Tina dear,” exclaimed Miss Izzy impatiently—although Tina had, in fact, said nothing. “What do a few drops of water matter? Stains? What stains?” (Tina still had not spoken.) “Let the government put it right when the time comes.”

  Although Tina Archer continued to be silent, gazing amiably, even cheerfully, at her employer, nevertheless in some way she stiffened, froze in her polite listening attitude. Instinctively Jemima knew that she was in some way upset.

  “Now don’t be silly, Tina, don’t take on, dear.” The old lady was now shaking herself free of water like a small but stout dog. “You know what I mean. If you don’t, who does—since half the time I don’t know what I mean, let alone what I say. You can put it all right one day, is that better? After all, you’ll have plenty of money to do it. You can afford a few new covers and carpets.” So saying, Miss Izzy, taking jemima by the hand and attended by the still-silent Tina, led the way to the farthest dark-red sofa. Looking remarkably wet from top to toe, she sat down firmly in the middle of it.

  It was in this way that jemima first realized that Archer Plantation House would not necessarily pass to the newly independent government of Bow Island on its owner’s death. Miss Izzy, if she had her way, was intending to leave it all, house and fortune, to Tina. Among other things, this meant that Jemima was no longer making a program about a house destined shortly to be a national museum—which was very much part of the arrangement that had brought her to the island and had, incidentally, secured the friendly cooperation of that same new government. Was all this new? How new? Did the new government know? If the will had been signed, they must know.

  “I’ve signed the will this morning, dear,” Miss Archer pronounced triumphantly, with an uncanny ability to answer unspoken questions. “I went swimming to celebrate. I always celebrate things with a good swim—so much more healthy than rum or champagne. Although there’s still plenty of that in the cellar.”

  She paused. “So there you are, aren’t you, dear? Or there you will be. Here you will be. Thompson says there’ll be trouble, of course. What can you expect these days? Everything is trouble since independence. Not that I’m against independence, far from it. But everything new brings new trouble here in addition to all the old troubles, so that the troubles get more and more. On Bow Island no troubles ever go away. Why is that?”

  But Miss Izzy did not stop for an answer. “No, I’m all for independence and I shall tell you all about that, my dear”—she turned to Jemima and put one damp hand on her sleeve—“on your program. I’m being a Bo’lander born and bred, you know.” It was true that Miss Izzy, unlike Tina for example, spoke with the peculiar, slightly sing-song intonation of the islanders—not unattractive to Jemima’s ears.

  “I was born in this very house eighty-two years ago in April,” went on Miss Izzy. “You shall come to my birthday party. I was born during a hurricane. A good start! But my mother died in childbirth, they should never have got in that new-fangled doctor, just because he came from England. A total fool he was, I remember him well. They should have had a good Bo’lander midwife, then my mother wouldn’t have died and my father would have had sons—”

  Miss Izzy was drifting away into a host of reminiscences—and while these were supposed to be what Jemima had come to hear, her thoughts were actually racing off in quite a different direction. Trouble? What trouble? Where did Greg Harrison, for example, stand in all this—Greg Harrison who wanted Miss Izzy to be left to “die in peace”? Greg Harrison who had been married to Tina and was no longer? Tina Archer, now heiress to a fortune.

  Above all, why was this forthright old lady intending to leave everything to her companion? For one thing, Jemima did not know how seriously to treat the matter of Tina’s surname. Joseph Archer had laughed off the whole subject of Sir Valentine’s innumerable descendants. But perhaps the beautiful Tina was in some special way connected to Miss Izzy. She might be the product of some rather more recent union between a rakish

  Archer and a Bo’lander maiden. More recent than the seventeenth century, that is.

  Her attention was wrenched back to Miss Izzy’s reminiscing monologue by the mention of the Archer Tomb.

  “You’ve seen the grave? Tina has discovered it’s all a fraud. A great big lie, lying under the sun—yes, Tina dear, you once said that. Sir Valentine Archer, my great great great—” An infinite number of greats followed before Miss Izzy finally pronounced the word “grandfather,” but Jemima had to admit that she did seem to be counting. “He had a great big lie perpetuated on his tombstone.”

  “What Miss Izzy means—” This was the first time Tina had spoken since they entered the darkened drawing room. She was still standing, while Jemima and Miss Izzy sat.

  “Don’t tell me what I mean, child,” rapped out the old lady; her tone was imperious rather than indulgent. Tina might for a moment have been a plantation worker two hundred years earlier rather than an independent-minded girl in the late twentieth century. “It’s the inscription which is a lie. She wasn’t his only wife. The very inscription should have warned us. Tina wants to see justice done to poor little Lucie Anne and so do I. Independence indeed! I’ve been independent all my life and I’m certainly not stopping now. Tell me, Miss Shore, you’re a clever young woman from television. Why do you bother to contradict something unless it’s true all along? That’s the way you work all the time in television, don’t you?”

  Jemima was wondering just how to answer this question diplomatically and without traducing her profession when Tina firmly, and this time successfully, took over from her employer.

  “I read history at universi
ty in the UK, Jemima. Genealogical research is my speciality. I was helping Miss Izzy put her papers in order for the museum—or what was to be the museum. Then the request came for your program and I began to dig a little deeper. That’s how I found the marriage certificate. Old Sir Valentine did marry his young Carib mistress, known as Lucie

  Anne. Late in life—long after his first wife died. That’s Lucie Anne who was the mother of his youngest two children. He was getting old, and for some reason he decided to marry her. The church, maybe. In its way, this has always been a God-fearing island. Perhaps Lucie Anne, who was very young and very beautiful, put pressure on the old man, using the church. At any rate, these last two children of all the hundreds he sired would have been legitimate!”

  “And so?” questioned Jemima in her most encouraging manner.

  “I’m descended from Lucie Anne—and Sir Valentine, of course.” Tina returned sweet smile for sweet smile. “I’ve traced that, too, from the church records—not too difficult, given the strength of the church here. Not too difficult for an expert, at all events. Oh, I’ve got all sorts of blood, like most of us round here, including a Spanish grandmother and maybe some French blood, too. But the Archer descent is perfectly straightforward and clear.”

  Tina seemed aware that Jemima was gazing at her with respect. Did she, however, understand the actual tenor of Jemima’s thoughts? This is a formidable person, Jemima was reflecting. Charming, yes, but formidable. And ruthless, maybe, on occasion. Jemima was also, to be frank, wondering just how she was going to present this sudden change of angle in her program on Megalith Television. On the one hand, it might now be seen as a romantic rags-to-riches story, the discovery of the lost heiress. On the other hand, just supposing Tina Archer was not so much an heiress as an adventuress? In that case, what would Megalith—what did Jemima Shore—make of a bright young woman putting across a load of false history on an innocent old lady? In those circumstances, Jemima could understand how the man by the sunny grave might display his contempt for Tina Archer.

  “I met Greg Harrison by the Archer Tomb this morning,” Jemima commented deliberately. “Your ex-husband, I take it.”

  “Of course he’s her ex-husband.” It was Miss Izzy who chose to answer. “That no-good. Gregory Harrison has been a no-good since the day he was born. And that sister of his. Drifters. Not a

  job between them. Sailing. Fishing. As if the world owes them a living.”

  “Half sister. Coralie is his half sister. And she works in a hotel boutique.” Tina spoke perfectly equably, but once again Jemima guessed that she was in some way put out. “Greg is the no-good in that family.” For all her calm, there was a hint of suppressed anger in her reference to her former husband. With what bitterness that marriage must have ended!

  “No-good, the pair of them. You’re well out of that marriage, Tina dear,” exclaimed Miss Izzy. “And do sit down, child—you’re standing there like some kind of housekeeper. And where is Hazel, anyway? It’s nearly half past five. It’ll begin to get dark soon. We might go down to the terrace to watch the sun sink. Where is Henry? He ought to be bringing us some punch. The Archer Plantation punch, Miss Shore—wait till you taste it. One secret ingredient, my father always said—”

  Miss Izzy was happily returning to the past.

  “I’ll get the punch,” said Tina, still on her feet. “Didn’t you say Hazel could have the day off? Her sister is getting married over at Tamarind Creek. Henry has taken her.”

  “Then where’s the boy? Where’s what’s-his-name? Little Joseph.” The old lady was beginning to sound petulant.

  “There isn’t a boy any longer,” explained Tina patiently. “Just Hazel and Henry. As for Joseph—well, little Joseph Archer is quite grown up now, isn’t he?”

  “Of course he is! I didn’t mean that Joseph—he came to see me the other day. Wasn’t there another boy called Joseph? Perhaps that was before the war. My father had a stable boy—”

  “I’ll get the rum punch.” Tina vanished swiftly and gracefully.

  “Pretty creature,” murmured Miss Izzy after her. “Archer blood. It always shows. They do say the best-looking Bo’landers are still called Archer.”

  But when Tina returned, the old lady’s mood had changed again.

  “I’m cold and damp,” she declared. “I might get a chill sitting here. And soon I’m going to be all alone in the house. I hate being left alone. Ever since I was a little girl I’ve hated being alone. Everyone knows that. Tina, you have to stay to dinner. Miss Shore, you must stay, too. It’s so lonely here by the sea. What happens if someone breaks in?—Don’t frown, there are plenty of bad people about. That’s one thing that hasn’t gotten better since independence.”

  “Of course I’m staying,” replied Tina easily. “I’ve arranged it with Hazel.” Jemima was wondering guiltily if she, too, ought to stay. But it was the night of her hotel’s weekly party on the beach—barbecue followed by dancing to a steel band. Jemima, who loved to dance in the Northern Hemisphere, was longing to try it here. Dancing under the stars by the sea sounded idyllic. Did Miss Izzy really need extra company? Her eyes met those of Tina Archer across the old lady’s straw-hatted head. Tina shook her head slightly.

  After a sip of the famous rum punch—whatever the secret ingredient, it was the strongest she had yet tasted on the island—Jemima was able to make her escape. In any case, the punch was having a manifestly relaxing effect on Miss Izzy herself. She became rapidly quite tipsy and Jemima wondered how long she would actually stay awake. The next time they met must be in the freshness of a morning.

  Jemima drove away just as the enormous red sun was rushing down below the horizon. The beat of the waves from the shore pursued her. Archer Plantation House was set in a lonely position on its own spit of land at the end of its own long avenue. She could hardly blame Miss Izzy for not wanting to be abandoned there. Jemima listened to the sound of the waves until the very different noise of the steel band in the next village along the shore took over. That transferred her thoughts temporarily from recent events at Archer Plantation House to the prospect of her evening ahead. One way or another, for a brief space of time, she would stop thinking altogether about Miss Isabella Archer.

  That was because the beach party was at first exactly what Jemima had expected—relaxed, good-natured, and noisy. She found her cares gradually floating away as she danced and danced again with a series of partners, English, American, and Bo’lander, to the beat of the steel band. That rum punch of Miss Izzy’s, with its secret ingredient, must have been lethal because its effects seemed to stay with her for hours. She decided she didn’t even need the generous profferings of the hotel mixture—a good deal weaker than Miss Izzy’s beneath its lavish surface scattering of nutmeg. Others, however, decided that the hotel punch was exactly what they did need. All in all, it was already a very good party long before the sliver of the new moon became visible over the now-black waters of the Caribbean. Jemima, temporarily alone, tilted back her head as she stood by the lapping waves at the edge of the beach and fixed the moon in her sights.

  “You going to wish on that new little moon?” She turned. A tall man—at least a head taller than she was—was standing beside her on the sand. She had not heard him, the gentle noise of the waves masking his approach. For a moment she didn’t recognize Joseph Archer in his loose flowered shirt and long white trousers, so different did he look from the fisherman encountered that noon at the graveside.

  In this way it came about that the second part of the beach party was quite unexpected, at least from Jemima’s point of view.

  “I ought to wish. I ought to wish to make a good program, I suppose. That would be a good, professional thing to do.”

  “Miss Izzy Archer and all that?”

  “Miss Izzy, Archer Plantation House, Bow Island—to say nothing of the Archer Tomb, old Sir Valentine, and all that.” She decided not to mention Tina Archer and all that for the time being.

  “All that!” He
sighed. “Listen, Jemima—it’s good, this band. We’re saying it’s about the best on the island these days. Let’s be dancing, shall we? Then you and me can talk about all that in the morning. In my office, you know.”

  It was the distinct authority with which Joseph Archer spoke quite as much as the mention of his office which intrigued Jemima. Before she lost herself still further in the rhythm of the dance—which she had a feeling that with Joseph Archer to help her she was about to do—she must find out just what he meant. And, for that matter, just who he was.

  The second question was easily answered. It also provided the answer to the first. Joseph Archer might or might not go fishing from time to time when he was off-duty, but he was also a member of the newly formed Bo’lander government. Quite an important one, in fact. Important in the eyes of the world in general, and particularly important in the eyes of jemima Shore, Investigator. For Joseph Archer was the minister dealing with tourism, his brief extending to such matters as conservation, the Bo’lander historic heritage, and—as he described it to her—“the future National Archer Plantation House Museum.”

  Once again it didn’t seem the appropriate moment to mention Tina Archer and her possible future ownership of the plantation house. As Joseph himself had said, the morning would do for all that. In his office in Bowtown.

  They danced on for a while, and it was as jemima had suspected it would be: something to lose herself in, perhaps dangerously so. The tune to “This is my island in the sun” was played and Jemima never once heard the graveyard words in her imagination. Then Joseph Archer, most politely and apparently regretfully, said he had to leave. He had an extremely early appointment—and not with a fish, either, he added with a smile. Jemima felt a pang which she hoped didn’t show. But there was plenty of time, wasn’t there? There would be other nights and other parties, other nights on the beach as the moon waxed to full in the two weeks she had before she must return to England.