Bear Island

by Alistair MacLean

  She took my hand away and stared at me: ‘Dr Marlowe, do you mean—’

  ‘I mean you’re a silly young goose. Together, you make a fine pair of silly young geese. It’s not that I just don’t believe that Allen or you had anything to do with Stryker’s death. I know you hadn’t.’

  She sniffed a bit and then she said: ‘You’re an awfully kind person, Dr Marlowe. I know you’re trying to help us—’

  ‘Oh, do shut up,’ I said. ‘I can prove it.’

  ‘Prove it? Prove it?’ There was some hope in the sick eyes, she didn’t know whether to believe me or not, and then it seemed that she decided not to, for she shook her head again and said numbly: ‘She said I killed him.’

  ‘Miss Haynes was speaking figuratively,’ I said, ‘which is not the same thing at all, and even then she was wrong. What she meant was that you were the precipitating factor in her husband’s death, which of course you weren’t.’

  ‘Precipitating factor?’

  ‘Yes.’ I took her hands from my now badly crushed lapels, held them in mine and looked at her in my best avuncular fashion. ‘Tell me, Mary darling, have you ever dallied in the moonlight with Michael Stryker?’

  ‘Me? Have I—’

  ‘Mary?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said miserably. ‘I mean no, no, I didn’t.’

  ‘That’s very clear,’ I said. ‘Let’s put it this way. Did you ever give Miss Haynes reason to suspect that you had been? Dallying, I mean.’

  ‘Yes.’ She sniffed again. ‘No. I mean he did.’ I kept my baffled expression in cold storage and looked at her encouragingly. ‘He called me into his cabin, just the day we left Wick, that was. He was alone there. He said that he wanted to discuss some things about the film with me.’

  ‘A change from etchings,’ I said.

  She looked at me uncomprehendingly and went on: ‘But it wasn’t about the film he wanted to talk. You must believe me, Dr Marlowe. You must!’

  ‘I believe you.’

  ‘He closed the door and grabbed me and then—’

  ‘Spare my unsullied mind the grisly details. When the villain was forcing his unwelcome attentions upon you there came the pit-a-pat of feminine footsteps in the corridor outside, whereupon the villain rapidly assumed a position where you appeared to be forcing your unwelcome attentions upon him and when the door opened—to reveal, of course, none other than his better half—there he was, fending off the licentious young continuity girl and crying, “No, no, Nanette, control yourself, this can never be,” or words to that effect.’

  ‘More or less.’ She looked more miserable than ever, then her eyes widened. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘The Strykers of this world are pretty thick upon the ground. The ensuing scene must have been pretty painful.’

  ‘There were two scenes,’ she said dully. ‘Something like it happened on the upper deck the following night. She said she was going to report me to her father—Mr Gerran. He said—not when she was there, of course—that if I tried to make trouble he’d have me fired. He was a director, you know. Later, when I got, well, friendly with Allen, he said he’d get us both fired if need be and make sure that neither of us would ever again get a job in films. Allen said that this was all wrong, why should we accept this when neither of us had done anything, so—’

  ‘So he tried to make him see the error of his ways this morning and got clobbered for his pains. Don’t worry, you’ve neither of you anything to worry about. You’ll find your wounded knight- errant next door, Mary.’ I smiled and gently touched the swollen cheek. ‘This should be something to see. Love’s young dream in sticking-plaster. You do love him, don’t you, Mary?’

  ‘Of course.’ She looked at me solemnly. ‘Dr Marlowe.’

  ‘I’m wonderful?’

  She smiled, almost happily, and left. Smithy, who must have been watching for her departure, came in almost at once and I told him what had been said.

  ‘Had to be that, of course,’ he said. ‘The truth’s always obvious when it’s hung up in front of you and you’re beaten over the head with a two-by-four to make you take notice. And now?’

  ‘And now, I think, three things. The first, to clear the names of the two love-birds next door: that’s not important at this stage, but they’re sensitive souls and I think they’d like to be on speaking terms with the rest of the company again. Second thing is, I’ve no intention of being stranded here for the next twenty-two days—two days is a lot more like it: who knows, I might be able to pressure unknown or unknowns into precipitate action.’

  ‘I should have thought there had been enough of that already,’ Smithy said.

  ‘You may have a point. Third thing is, I could make life a great deal easier and safer for both of us if we had every person so busy watching every other person that it would make it a great deal more difficult for the disaffected to creep up upon our backs unawares.’

  ‘You touch upon a very sympathetic nerve,’ Smithy said. ‘Your plan into action and at once, I say. A small chat with the assembled company?’

  ‘A small chat with the assembled company. I suggested a couple of hours’ lie-down to Allen but I think he and Mary should be there. Would you?’

  Smithy left and I went into the living area. Goin, Otto and the Count, all armed with glasses as was almost every other person there, were still in solemn and low-voiced conclave. Otto beckoned me across.

  ‘One moment,’ I said. I went outside, coughed and caught my breath as the bitter air cut into my lungs, then trudged against that snow-filled gale across to the provisions hut. Lonnie was seated on a packing case, lovingly examining the amber contents of a glass against the light from his torch.

  ‘Ha!’ he said. ‘Our peripatetic healer. You know, when one consumes a noble wine like this—’

  ‘Wine?’

  ‘A figure of speech. When one consumes a noble scotch like this, half the pleasure lies in the visual satisfaction. Ever tried it in the darkness? Flat, stale, strangely lacking in bouquet. There’s a worthwhile monograph here, I’m sure.’ He waved his glass in the direction of the crates of bottles by one wall. ‘Harking back to my earlier allusions to the hereafter, if they can have bars in Bear Island then surely—’

  ‘Lonnie,’ I said, ‘you’re missing out on the largesse stakes. Otto is dispensing noble wine at this very moment. He’s using very large glasses.’

  ‘I was on the very point of leaving.’ He tilted his head and swallowed rapidly. ‘I have a dread of being thought a misanthrope.’

  I took this friend of the human race back to the main cabin and counted those there. Twenty- one, myself included, as it should have been: the twenty-second and last, Judith Haynes, was deeply unconscious and would be so for hours. Otto beckoned me a second time and I went across.

  ‘We’ve been having what you might call a council of war,’ Otto said importantly. ‘We’ve arrived at a conclusion and would like to have your opinion.’

  ‘Why mine? I’m just an employee, like everyone else here, apart, of course, from the three of you—and Miss Haynes.’

  ‘Consider yourself a co-opted director,’ the Count said generously. ‘Temporary and unpaid, of course.’

  ‘Your opinion would be valued,’ Goin said precisely.

  ‘Opinion about what?’

  ‘Our proposed measures for dealing with Allen,’ Otto said. ‘I know that in law every man is presumed innocent until proved otherwise. Nor do we have any wish to be inhumane. But simply in order to protect ourselves—’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about that,’ I said. ‘About protecting ourselves. I wanted to talk to everybody about that. In fact, that’s what I propose to do this very moment.’

  ‘You propose to do what?’ Otto could arrange his eyebrows in a very forbidding fashion when he put his mind to it.

  ‘A brief address only,’ I said. ‘I’ll take up hardly any of your time.’

  ‘I can’t permit that,’ Otto said loftily. ‘At least, not until you give us so
me idea what you have in mind and then we may or may not give our consent.’

  ‘Your permission or lack of it is irrelevant,’ I said indifferently. ‘I don’t require permission when I’m talking about something that may affect lives—you know, the difference between living and dying.’

  ‘I forbid it. I would remind you of what you have just reminded me.’ Otto had forgotten about the need for conducting delicate matters in conspiratorial murmurs and we had the undivided attention of everyone in the cabin. ‘You are an employee of mine, sir!’

  ‘And I’ll now perform my last act as a dutiful employee.’ I poured myself a measure of Otto’s scotch which, as he and several others were drinking it, I presumed to be safe to drink. ‘Health to one and all,’ I said, ‘and I don’t mean that lightly or in the conventional sense. We’re going to need it all before we leave this island, and let each one of us hope that he or she is not the one who is going to be abandoned by fortune. As for being your employee, Gerran, you can consider my resignation as being effective as from this moment. I do not care to work for fools. More importantly, I do not care to work for those who may be both fools and knaves.’

  This, at least, had the effect of reducing Otto to silence for, to judge by the indigo hue his complexion was assuming, he appeared to be having some little difficulty in his breathing. The Count, I observed, had a mildly speculative expression on his face, while Goin’s face held the impassivity of one withholding judgement. I looked round the cabin.

  I said: ‘It is, I know, belabouring the obvious to say that this trip of ours, so far, has been singularly luckless and ill-starred. We have been plagued by a series of tragic and extraordinarily strange events. We had Antonio die. This might have been the merest mischance: it might equally well be that he was the victim of a premeditated murder or the hapless victim of a misplaced murder attempt that was aimed at someone else. Exactly the same can be said of the two stewards, Moxen and Scott. Similar attempts may or may not have been aimed at Mr Gerran, Mr Smith, Oakley and young Cecil here: all I can say with certainty is that if I hadn’t been so lucky as to be in the vicinity when they were struck down at least three of those might have died. You may wonder why I make such a fuss about what could have been a simple, if deadly, outbreak of food poisoning: it is because I have reason to believe, without being able to prove it, that a deadly poison called aconitine, which is indistinguishable in appearance from horseradish, was introduced at specific points into the evening meal we had on the occasion when those people were struck down.’

  I checked to see if I had the attention of those present and I’ve never made a more superfluous check. They were so stunned that they hadn’t even got to the lengths of looking at each other: Otto’s liquid largesse wholly forgotten, they had eyes only for me, ears only for what I was saying, the average university lecturer would have found it a dream of paradise: but then the average university lecturer rarely had the doubtful fortune to chance upon such wholly absorbing subject- matter as I had to hand.

  ‘And then we have the mysterious disappearance of Halliday. I have no doubt that the cause of his death could be established beyond doubt if an autopsy could be carried out, but as I’ve equally no doubt that the unfortunate Halliday lies on the floor of the Barents Sea this can never be possible. But it is my belief—and this, again, is but conjecture—that he died not from any form of food poisoning but because he had a nightcap from a poisoned whisky bottle that was intended for me.’ I looked at Mary Stuart: huge eyes and parted lips in a white shocked face, but I was the only one who saw it.

  I pulled down the collar of my duffel-coat and showed them the impressively large and impressively multi-coloured bruise on the left-hand side of my neck

  ‘This, of course, could have been self-inflicted. Or maybe I just slipped somewhere and banged myself. Or take this odd business of the smashed radio. Somebody with an aversion to radios, perhaps, and suchlike outward manifestations of what we choose to call progress, or someone who found the Arctic just too much for him and had to take it out on something—you know, the equivalent of going cafard in the desert.

  ‘So far, nothing but conjecture. An extraordinary and even more extraordinarily unconnected series of violent and tragic mishaps, one might claim, coincidence is an accepted part of life. But not, surely, coincidence multiplied up to the nth degree like this; that would have to lie at the very farthest bounds of possibility. I think you would admit that if we could prove the existence, beyond any doubt, of a carefully premeditated and carefully executed crime, then the other violent happenings must cease to be regarded as conjectural coincidences and considered as being what they then would be, deliberately executed murders in pursuit of some goal that can’t yet even be guessed at but must be of overwhelming importance.’

  They weren’t admitting anything, or, at least, if they were admitting anything to themselves they weren’t saying it out loud, but I think it was really a case of their minds having stopped working, not all their minds, there had to be one exception, probably more.

  ‘And we have this one proven crime,’ I went on. ‘The rather clumsily executed murder of Michael Stryker which was at the same time an attempt, and not a very clever attempt, to frame young Allen here for something he never did. I don’t think the murderer had any special ill-will towards Allen, well, no more than he seems to have for the general run of mankind: he just wanted to divert any possible suspicion from himself. I think if you’d all had time enough to think about it you’d have come to the eventual conclusion that Allen couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with it: with a doctor in the house, if you’ll excuse the phrase, he hadn’t a hope in hell.

  ‘Allen says he has no recollection at all about what happened. I believe him absolutely. He’s sustained a severe blow on the back of the head—the scalp is open to the bone. How he escaped a fractured skull, far less concussion, I can’t imagine. It certainly must have rendered him unconscious for a considerable period. Which leads one to assume that this assailant was still in excellent shape after what was clearly his coup de grâce. Are we to assume then that Allen, after having been knocked senseless, immediately leapt up and smote his assailant hip and thigh? That doesn’t make any kind of sense at all. What does make sense, what is the only answer, is that the unknown crept up behind Allen and laid him out, not with his hands but with some heavy and solid object—probably a stone, there’s more than enough lying around. Having done this, he proceeded to cut the unconscious Allen up about the face, ripped his coat and tore off a couple of buttons—all to give the very convincing impression that he’d been in a fight.

  ‘The same thing, but this time on a lethal scale, happened to Stryker. I’m convinced that it was no accident that Allen was merely knocked unconscious while Stryker was killed—our friend, who must be a bit of an expert in such matters, knew just how much weight to bring to bear in each case, by no means as easy a matter as you might think. Then this ghoul, in a stupid attempt to create the impression that Stryker had been the other party to the fight, proceeded to rough up Stryker’s face as he had done Allen’s: I leave it to you to form your own estimate of just how evil must be the mind of a man who will deliberately set about mutilating the face of a dead man.’

  I left them for a little to form their own estimates. For the most part they looked neither sick nor revolted: their reactions were mainly of shock and minds still consciously fighting against comprehension. No glances were exchanged, no eyes moved: their eyes were only for me.

  ‘Stryker had a split upper lip, a tooth missing and a reddish rough mark on his temple which I think must have been caused by another stone—very probably all the injuries were inflicted in this fashion to avoid any tell-tale marking of the hands or knuckles. Had those injuries been sustained in the course of a fight there would have been extensive bleeding and fairly massive bruising: there were no signs of either because Stryker was dead and circulation had ceased before those wounds were caused. To complete what he thought wo
uld be a most convincing effect, the murderer then closed the dead man’s hand round one of the buttons torn from Allen’s coat. Incidentally, there were no signs whatever of the churned-up snow one would have expected to find at the scene of a fight: there were two sets of tracks leading to the place where Stryker lay, one set leading away. No fuss, no commotion, just a quick if not particularly clean dispatch.’ I sipped some more of Otto’s scotch—it must have come from his own private supply for it was excellent stuff—then asked in my best lecturer’s fashion: ‘Are there any questions?’

  Predictably, there were none. They were all clearly far too busy asking themselves questions to have any time to put any to me.

  I went on: ‘I think you’d agree, then, that it now seems extremely improbable that any of the four previous deaths were the results of innocent coincidence. I think that only the most gullible and the most naïve would now be prepared to believe that those deaths were unconnected and not the work of the same agent. So what we have is, in effect, a mass murderer. A man who is either mad, a pathological killer, or a vicious and evil monster who finds it essential to murder with what can be only an apparent indiscrimination in order to achieve God knows what murky ends. He may, it is possible, be all three of those at once. Whatever he is or whoever he is, he’s in this cabin now. I wonder which one of you it is?’

  For the first time their eyes left me as they looked quickly and furtively at one another as if in the ludicrous hope that they might by this means discover the identity of the killer. None of them examined one another as closely as I observed them all over the rim of my glass; if one pair of eyes remained fixed on mine it could only be because its owner knew who the murderer was and didn’t have to bother to look around: but I knew, even as I watched them, that I had no real foundation for any such hope, the murderer may have been no great shakes at physiology, but he was far too clever to walk into what, for an intelligent man with five deaths on his conscience, must have been a very obvious trap indeed. I was certain that there wasn’t a pair of eyes before me that didn’t flicker surreptitiously around the cabin. I waited patiently until I had their combined attention again.