The Sun Place

by Ray Connolly

  Sarojine needed no second bidding. Together they left the room. At the door Hardin found Homer and Eugene Waterman.

  “What in the name of God …?” began Waterman, but Hardin silenced him.

  “Just make sure no one goes in there. Nobody at all, not even you guys. Okay?” he said.

  The two men nodded. At moments like this, natural leaders are instinctively obeyed. And Hardin was a natural leader. A crowd of guests, some in pajamas, others in shorts and T-shirts, and yet others in nightdresses and sweatshirts over pants, was spreading down the balcony, sheltering from the swirling rain and asking each other what was happening. Ingrid was kneeling in a doorway and sobbing breathily into the arms of Sharon Kennedy.

  Hardin raised his voice. “Listen. Everyone must go immediately to the restaurant. This is extremely urgent. Don’t panic. Coffee will be served there, and I will come to talk to you all in a few minutes. I will explain the situation then. Go immediately, and take all of your families with you.”

  Then Hardin pushed his way through the throng, down the steps, and through the garden toward E Block and the inevitable meeting with Quatre Bras.

  Hardin found him standing at his door in large blue-and-white striped pajamas. Even in such undignified dress, Quatre Bras looked extremely formidable.

  In three sentences Hardin explained what had happened and of his decision to have an immediate roll call in the restaurant.

  “I can’t allow that. You’ll panic the guests,” said Quatre Bras.

  “I can’t afford to risk not panicking them,” said Hardin. “The only way to protect the guests is to put them all under one roof until we find whoever did this thing.”

  “I think you’re panicking, James,” said Quatre Bras slowly, watching Hardin carefully.

  “Okay, maybe I am. But I’m panicking to protect people. Now will you get the hell over to the restaurant with the other guests? You made me chief here, remember?”

  Quatre Bras gazed over Hardin’s head and stared, unseeing, into the wind and rain and swirling trees. “This will finish us in the American zone,” he said quietly.

  Hardin looked at him uncomprehendingly. “Are you out of your mind? This has already finished a young girl. Do you understand? A young girl has been murdered. That’s more important than your Club Village.”

  Quatre Bras gazed at him flatly. “Not to me. The club comes before everything in my life. Everything.”

  “Then I feel very sorry for you,” said Hardin quietly, and without waiting for a reply he set off back across the village toward his office.

  By now the village floodlights had been turned on, and groups of scantily clad guests were hurrying through the gale toward the central area. In the crowd Hardin spotted Anthony Scorcese with one arm wrapped protectively around Beta Ullman. They were both still fully dressed.

  “Anything I can do to help?” called Scorcese.

  Hardin shook his head and hurried on.

  He was about to enter his office when he saw Cassandra coming toward him through the wind, a blanket wrapped around her head as protection from the rain, still wearing her nightdress.

  “If you can make coffee, you can make yourself useful,” he shouted at her as he pushed her into the office and toward a coffee percolator.

  Cassandra did not argue.

  Picking up the phone, Hardin began to dial Police Chief Johnston’s number. The death had to be reported, although what Johnston could do about it in the middle of the night and in a storm like this he could not imagine.

  The singsong voice of a local Bahamian woman answered. Hardin asked for Johnston.

  “Oh, no, man,” the woman replied. “Him and Clive, they gone to Nassau for the night. They having a policeman’s reunion, so you can bet they be gettin’ up to no good, drinkin’ and runnin’ around and chasin’ all them young girls they got there.”

  Hardin hung up. Again and again his mind returned to the slashed neck of Karen Sorensen. He remembered seeing her at the pareo-tying contest, a pretty girl, full of smiles. He was already dreading having to inform her parents.

  Turning to Cassandra he said, “I would say you got the story you came for.”

  She didn’t reply. There was nothing to say.

  Over in the corner room of C Block neither Florinda nor Chloe saw the extraordinary atmospherics which illuminated their sea view. They did not hear the cannons of thunder, or the howling gale, just as they had not heard Ernst Ronay leave them. As the wind outside had risen and the rain had begun to beat a tattoo on the patio in front of their room, Florinda had moved drowsily toward the warmth of her sleeping friend, but she had not awakened.

  Not even when their door had opened had they stirred. And when at last Chloe had opened her eyes as she felt something warm trickling down her skin, she had only just been in time to realize that she was drowning in her own blood, while a ghoulishly painted gargoyle had stood over her, tears of frustration running down his cheeks onto the double-edged knife he was holding.

  “I’m sorry,” he had whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  But there had been no one alive to hear him.

  There was no sign of panic in the restaurant. Indeed, there was hardly any noise at all. Husbands tried to murmur comforting words to wives, while the few children in the village were held close to confused, anxious parents. It was nearly four in the morning. Outside, the storm had turned into heavy torrential rain and wind, the electricity of the earlier clash having burned itself out.

  Cassandra checked her watch. It wouldn’t be light for another two and a half hours. That still seemed like forever. As she stared at the crowds of people who were sitting waiting for the comfort of dawn, she noticed that the faces of the other guests constantly scanned each other, as though each person were trying to find the killer.

  Cassandra was obsessed with the idea that perhaps she had only just escaped attack earlier in the week when she had seen the face at the window. And she wondered whether any of the three murdered girls had awakened before the attack, and seen that insanely grinning face.

  English Henry and Waterman, the accountant, had discovered the bodies of Florinda and Chloe after the girls’ absence from the restaurant had been noticed. Hardin had tried to keep the news secret from the guests. But within minutes rumors began to spread and he was forced to make a brief announcement absolutely forbidding anyone from leaving the restaurant.

  Just as he finished speaking the lights in the village went out as the storm hit the generator. Luckily the restaurant was well stocked with lanterns and candles, but the eerie glow that was now cast upon the assembled villagers did nothing to ease the tension.

  At the back of the restaurant, near the entrance to the kitchens, the CVs served a never-ending supply of coffee. For the first time since she had been in the village, Cassandra was aware of silence. It was as though she were in church, she thought. If anyone had to speak they whispered, and an undercurrent of politeness extended itself even to the most bombastic.

  Cassandra moved through the restaurant, seeing and noting everything. After the initial shock, her journalistic spirit was quickly reviving. She wanted to remember everything about this night, exactly as it happened. Seeing these hundreds of frightened people, huddled together for protection against an unknown horror, made her wish she had had the presence of mind to bring her camera to the restaurant with her. When all of this was over, the haggard expressions on the faces of Quatre Bras and Ernst Ronay would be a fascinating illustration of paradise stricken by terror.

  “If you ask me, they got what they deserved,” a rasping nasal voice cut through her thoughts.

  Cassandra turned around. Hamlet Yablans was sitting in a corner by himself. Guests and CVs tried to ignore him, but his voice sliced through the silence around him.

  “They were just hookers, let’s admit it. That’s all that kind deserves,” he went on. Apparently Shakespeare had deserted him.

  “For God’s sake, will you keep your foul mouth closed?” sai
d a voice behind Cassandra. It was Sacha. He was looking at Hamlet with loathing and anger. For a moment Cassandra thought Sacha was about to punch him.

  “Methinks he doth protest too much,” said Hamlet quietly, grimacing horribly at Sacha, showing his incomplete set of ugly, yellow-stained false teeth.

  Sacha refused to rise to the bait. Instead he looked disdainfully at the black-clad clown. “You know your trouble, Hamlet?” he said. “You’re a complete asshole.”

  Hamlet’s face collapsed, like a balloon suddenly released of air. Loneliness covered it. “I know,” he said simply.

  Cassandra moved between the two men. “Could I get you two some coffee?” she asked, trying to relieve the tension.

  Sacha smiled sweetly. “Let me get it, Cassandra,” he said, and went off to join the line.

  Hamlet sat in his corner, his legs crossed, his black tights running at the knees and his velvet smock smeared with sweat. Since the electricity had been cut the air conditioning had gone off, and, as the storm was still howling outside, it had been impossible to open the windows. Cassandra knelt down alongside him. She didn’t like him. She found him repellent. But when Sacha attacked him she saw a dreadful loneliness and hopelessness in Hamlet. She felt sorry for him. He was ugly and untalented in a place of youth and beauty. His act, his talking to the skull, his comments on the dead girls, now appeared only as pleas for attention from a desperately unhappy and lonely man. People laughed at him, but no one wanted to sit with him at dinner. No one ever bought him a drink. He was a grotesquerie, the modern equivalent of the ugly little dwarf doing cartwheels on the dining table of the medieval baron.

  He was a reminder to everyone of just how beautiful they were. People sometimes regressed to their most primitive urges, and poor Hamlet filled the urge to taunt the misshapen. For the first time Cassandra saw all this and was ashamed that she had been so disgusted by the strange and lonely man.

  She leaned forward toward him. “I know you didn’t mean that about the girls, Hamlet,” she said.

  Tears were filling Hamlet’s large, bloodshot eyes. An unpleasant aroma of perspiration mingled with cheap deodorant rose rankly from his smock. “I don’t even know why I said it,” he said haltingly after a moment or two. “I guess I’m just jealous. They were so beautiful, and they could have their pick of every man here in Club Village. And they were always so arrogant … Chloe and Florinda, I mean. The other one, I only spoke to her for the first time tonight, you know. She sort of told me to get lost. That’s what they always say. You get used to hearing it, but you never get used to being hurt by it. Silly, isn’t it?”

  Cassandra didn’t say anything. Sacha returned with two coffees in paper cups, and handed them down to her and Hamlet. Then, with a dismissive look to Hamlet, he moved a few feet away and sat down, alone and thoughtful, at a vacant table.

  “You know, all my life I’ve wanted to make it with a girl like that. Couple of times I paid for it. And they were pretty good. But they didn’t even try to hide the expressions on their faces. Everyone wants to fuck an Al Pacino or a Robert Redford. But I got feelings, too, you know.”

  Suddenly Cassandra remembered something. “Hamlet, you told me a couple of days ago that there was someone who was very sick in this village.… Whom did you mean?”

  Hamlet laughed. “You wanna know? I meant me. I’m sick. I really am. I’m so sick I sometimes hate myself. You know what I mean? You know what it really means to hate yourself? Really hate? I hate the way I look, I hate the way I talk, I hate the way I smell … yeah, sure I know I smell. God, I stink when it gets hot. But I use deodorants, and there’s nothing I can do to stop my breath smelling. I seen a doctor once about it. He said it has to do with stress and bad eating habits. But it doesn’t go away. That’s why I always turn away from people when I’m talking to them. You ever noticed that? You want to know something? I’m a fucking lonely man. That’s me. Hamlet Yablans … lonely and pathetic. And the thing I hate most of all is me feeling sorry for myself, and people like you coming to talk to me because you feel sorry for me. I don’t need anyone feeling sorry for me. I can handle it all by myself. All right? I’ve always been by myself … always … and I’ve gotten along okay, so don’t you start coming around here pretending that you give a shit, because I know your type. I seen your picture in that magazine. And you was writing about a lot of rich and good-looking people, people who wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire.

  “Well, I don’t need your sympathy. Because I’m okay. I get along all right. Everything’s just great with me. Okay? I’m sorry that those girls got killed … honest to God, I’m sorry … but, you know, I bet they never had a bad day in their lives before. Know what I mean? Maybe the young kid was okay, but the other two—shit!—did they love themselves? I heard they got their throats cut … that true? I heard there was blood everywhere. Did you hear that? Shit! They didn’t deserve that.”

  “Who do you think killed them, Hamlet?” Cassandra asked quietly.

  “Holy shit, lady.” Hamlet shook his head slowly. “You’re asking me? Listen, I do the Hamlet act here, not the Lady Macbeth. Okay? Now please push off and get out of my light because, you know, you’re beginning to bug me a little. Okay? Nothing personal. Okay?”

  Cassandra moved away from Hamlet and sat down at the table alongside Sacha. She felt ashamed that it had taken a situation like this to get her to talk to Hamlet, and now even more ashamed that it should ever have crossed her mind that he might be capable of murder. All week he had seemed sinister and frightening. But now, hunched up in the corner, he reminded her of a frightened, shunned, lame little animal who has been driven from the herd.

  “The world is very unfair,” said Cassandra to Sacha, who was gazing at his hands quietly. “I just upset Hamlet because he thought I might be suggesting that he was in some way involved in … in, you know, what happened tonight.”

  “Why is it unfair?”

  “Oh, I suppose because in my mind I equated the fact that he’s ugly, and well, weird, and … almost deformed, with guilt.”

  Sacha nodded. “God, I wish they could open the windows in here, or something. The air is just about pure carbon dioxide.” He screwed up his nose.

  “It should be dawn in about two hours,” replied Cassandra. “I suppose they’ll let us all go back to our rooms then. Everyone feels safer in the daytime.”

  “Yes,” Sacha agreed.

  For the sake of conversation, Cassandra continued to talk. “You were friendly with Florinda and Chloe, weren’t you? It’s terrible about … I mean, I’m really sorry.”

  “Yes. Not great friends, you understand. They were very much into each other. They were cute though,” he said, with that detached air of sadness, which is quite different from grief.

  Farther down the restaurant Alex, the bartender, sat alone.

  For the first time since he had been in Club Village he felt good. The evil were being punished. Retribution had started. God’s fiery sword was burning out the cancer of sin. Smiling secretly to himself, Alex surveyed the hundreds of frightened people. He was not afraid. With God on his side, why should he be?

  For the first time in his life Ernst Ronay understood the experience of disorientation. He simply could not believe what had happened to him. What had started out as a deliciously wicked evening had turned first bitter, and then poisonous.

  After being told what had happened, he had gone to the restaurant and sat quietly by himself for a long time, staring out mutely at the storm, listening to the sea, which suddenly sounded as though it were about to swallow the whole island in its fury. Suddenly the life of the high-flying socialite jet-setter had lost its attraction. He looked around for Beta and saw her sitting next to Scorcese. He had an arm around her shoulder.

  He looked out the window again and thought about the girls who had died. They could have been his own children, he told himself. A large lump grew in his throat as he thought about his own daughters and son back at school in England, and h
ow hurt they would be when they learned of his involvement.

  Quatre Bras was not thinking about the dead girls. He had hardly known them so he did not feel any particular loss, although as the patriarchal head of Club Village he would later issue a statement heavy with grief, claiming that it was as though he had lost a child.

  In the meantime, his most important task was to save the good name of the club. There had never been a murder on the grounds of Club Village before (more by good fortune than anything else, he was prepared to concede), and he was already beginning to plan ways to introduce new security measures.

  If anyone grieved deeply for Karen Sorensen, Chloe, and Florinda that night, it was not the staff of Club Village, whose reactions had been dulled by years of forced smiles and false living. Oddly it was the guests who felt the shock most deeply. John Arrowsmith summed up their feelings most accurately.

  “I feel ashamed,” he said to Michael Roeg and their two wives as they huddled over a corner table drinking coffee. “When I first heard all the panic, when they began beating on the doors, when I first heard that some kid had been murdered, I didn’t even stop to ask her name. I was so goddamn scared all I could think was, ‘Thank God it wasn’t me.…’ And even now, I’m sitting here looking around at everybody else, thinking, ‘Is it him?’ or ‘Is it him?’ and I’m still finding it hard to feel sorry for the kids he got to.”

  There was a long silence, broken at last as Ruth said, “It sort of makes everything else seem so unimportant, doesn’t it?” She gazed steadily at her husband.

  Arrowsmith tried a wan, apologetic smile toward her. Gently she took his hand, in a gesture of mutual comfort. Alongside murder, everything else pales into insignificance.

  For two people the events of the night were to act as catalysts. Anthony Scorcese and Beta Ullman talked for hours, telling their life stories. He insisted on being told everything about her. He wanted no lies, no coverups, just the truth as she saw it. They sat in a corner and she told him everything she could think of, even the bits that embarrassed her, such as her fling with Hardin. And he listened quietly, nodding from time to time, although whether the nods were intended to convey understanding, or were simply a way of punctuating her thoughts, she had no way of knowing.