Rum Affair

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Glancing up, I saw, too, that a gallery ran, high above us, round the other three sides of the room; but I could see no one there. Kenneth, stepping carefully among the little mother-of-pearl tables, bent to straighten a leopardskin, laid on the parquet. There was a fine lionskin rug before the big, empty fireplace and the half-panelled walls were lined above with ruby velvet brocade. Gazing at the twin porcelain vases, each nine feet high, which the Rhouma had brought back from the Orient, at the heavy silk brocade curtains and the cut velvet sofas with their trellised fringes and bobbles, I thought of the deer grazing outside, and the volcanic black peaks, and the row of red oil drums, filled with used tins of lager and baby custard and floor wax and dog food: All the bright coloured symbols of modern family living, down on the bleak pier.

  For eleven months of the year the Castle had been accustomed to solitude. Did it appreciate, I wondered, Kenneth’s abstracted footsteps, running up and down to his lab as he worried about Peter’s blackmailing letters? The Rhouma, sailing stiffly on her corrugated blue seas, would have felt such sordid matters beneath her.

  Kenneth moved through the hall and into the dark corridor beyond. I turned to follow him. On my right, someone screamed.

  I saw Kenneth and Johnson both jump round; but Hennessy was quicker. Hennessy had vanished already into the black archway on our right, where the scream had modulated into a whisper and then into another, recognisable sound which was half a bright, social cough.

  Nancy Buchanan’s voice, pitched a full tone higher than usual, said: “Mr Hennessy! Wasn’t it silly of me! It’s such an eerie place, don’t you think? Have you been here before? I thought I was being hugged by a bear!”

  “You were,” said Hennessy’s voice shortly. He had nothing in common with Binkie, and held both the Buchanans jointly responsible, I had no doubt, for the accident to his ear. His immediate reaction on South Rona, Rupert had told me, had been to require the Navy to jail both Buchanans at once.

  Now, I saw as I flew round the corner, he had dropped Nancy like a sticky sweet paper and struck a match to reveal, looming over some cabinets, the life-sized stuffed figure of a brown bear, with Nancy’s round, knitted cap depending from one set of claws. “Free gift week,” said Johnson. “Are you all right, Mrs Buchanan?”

  “Yes! Yes. Oh, is that you, Madame Rossi? What a queer place, isn’t it? There’s a ballroom. Isn’t the parquet lovely? Fancy bringing all these things here! Bob’s upstairs looking at the hummingbirds: there’s cases of them: Bob had an uncle that went to Jamaica. Wasn’t that silly of me!” Hennessy, seeing Nancy beside me, had walked on, after Kenneth and Johnson. I followed, with Nancy between, still chattering with her small cough intermittent.

  She was embarrassed, of course, over South Rona.

  I listened, thinking, waiting for her to make up her mind. Hennessy wouldn’t bother me now she was here. But how did I now get away from Nancy? For upstairs, surely upstairs, Michael was waiting.

  In the ballroom, she began. “All yellow brocade, walls matching the curtains; think of the price! I wonder what he made his money on. I wonder if his wife chose it, or if they called in a decorator. Minstrels’ gallery, see? And a wee hidden hatch in the panelling for serving their drinks . . .” She opened the hatch, proprietarily, and flinched as the cold eyes of Hennessy looked back at her from the other side. “Oh . . . Hallo. That’s the pantry. Going to serve us a glass of champagne, Mr Hennessy?” As he stared at her without replying, she gave her small, nervous laugh and led the way to the Napoleon room.

  It was empty. A bust of the great man stared down on us as Nancy flopped into a seat below the hero of Kinloch Castle and burst into tears.

  The aunties did that, sometimes, if they had ordered too much from the catalogue, and were afraid of telling their man. I put my arm round her shoulders. It was, of course, lack of sleep and reaction. She had wanted to have a wee rest before coming on shore, but Bob had said that the weather might change, and if she wanted to see Kinloch Castle, she had better come now. She had come, in the same way that she went to South Rona. Bob was hot for CND – it was only logical, when you thought of it, and she wouldn’t let Bob down. He was a wee bit too inclined as it was to underrate the opposite sex. Nothing personal, I should understand, or ill-natured: just the way he was brought up. His mother did everything for his father, from the day they were wed. But last night! It was far worse than she had expected. Running through the night like a criminal; and the beastly banner so heavy. And spelled wrong, into the bargain. When they’d unfolded it, Bob’d just about died.

  The guards had nearly caught them beforehand, but of course Johnson had helped. “He’s a lovely man,” said Nancy with feeling, and sent a sidelong glance over to me. I winced, but she didn’t notice, absorbed in telling her tale.

  So the Buchanans ran, and hid, and carried out their laborious plan, and nobody stopped them. And then, when they slipped away from the mast, the statement of belief, the act of defiance completed, a young captain had come forward deferentially to where they lay camouflaged in the heather, and had asked if they’d care for some cocoa.

  That was all. They’d been treated like kids – and it hurt. That they had acted like kids didn’t occur to them.

  In this case I needed to do very little, beyond lending Nancy a handkerchief, as hers was all over paraffin. She wanted to feel understood, and I understood her. I told her she did what she set out to do, and it was over; and she must concentrate now on supporting Bob, who was probably feeling the same. She had not thought of that. She was as feudal in her way as her mother-in-law. She said doubtfully: “D’ye think so? He hasn’t said. But mind you, I hung up a cup the other way in the row, and he came out with a right nasty remark. It’ll be working in him. You’re right.”

  She got up, her leathery face shining with recent tears and present admiration, in the light reflected from Napoleon’s tall brow. “It’s being cosmopolitan that gives you the insight. We were going to Jersey ourselves for our holidays, a couple of years back, and then the Baby Blake seeped in its sea valve during the Tobermory races, and it all came to nothing again. Thanks.” She bent, and amazingly planted a prune-like kiss on my cheek. “You’re a good friend,” she said. Then she’d gone.

  I rose, too, from the chair arm where I was perched, below the row of prints depicting the Emperor at Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland and Wagram. What about Falkirk was so non-cosmopolitan, when Barra could produce a Rupert Glasscock to order? Duncan’s Peggy, who had never left Castlebay, lacked neither polish nor insight. How was that? By the same token, it did not suit Rupert to be applauded in Falkirk. He went for admiration to Duncan’s Peggy, who mostly withheld it. It occurred to me that I was beginning to understand Johnson, too.

  I was alone. I went out, and quickly and quietly continued through the rooms in that wing, looking for Michael.

  It was not a house for the weak-nerved. In the drawing room, all was glazed chintz and tapestry and slim, painted French furniture, but outside in the hall something glimmered in the half-dark: the carcass of a white rabbit, stuffed at the feet of a golden eagle, claws spread, yellow eyes staring at me in the gloom. There, beyond other glass cases, an armed Siamese suddenly faced me: he guarded a doorway, with his carved wooden twin opposite. I opened the door, and it swung shut behind me.

  Books, from floor to ceiling: the library. A desk, furnished with leather books and bridge boxes, all stamped with the name of the house. A framed photograph of the steam yacht, the Rhouma, which I lifted to look at. Cold in my hands, the glass lit suddenly, scarlet as coal. As I dropped it, I heard the thing smash. And behind me, a voice said chidingly: “Be careful.”

  I spun around.

  Outside Kinloch Castle, the trees were quite black. They filled with darkness the tall study windows, and the windowed roundel of the small alcove-turret behind me. It was from the alcove that the voice spoke. And as it spoke, the alcove filled with red light, that light I had just seen, reflected, in the glass of the Rhouma�
��s dark picture. The glare came sliding over the room, from a pair of eyes set between a vast spread of bronze wings. Eight feet high, alone in the alcove, a bronze eagle reared over me, snarling; and by his great claws apes twisted and writhed.

  “Be careful,” the voice hissed again; and out of the turret stepped the small, woolly figure of Bob Buchanan, swinging the red bulb of a torch. “Oh, it’s you; what a shame – I’ll have given you a right fright. I was after your young friend, Rupert. My goodness, those were the days! Fancy scaring their after-dinner guests with yon thing!” He laughed, switching his torch from the red bulb to white, showing the determined grin and the bony ridge round his eyes: Bob Buchanan hadn’t slept much either. “It works from a wee red bulb in the ceiling, but you can get just the same effect with a torch . . . Have you seen Nancy?”

  “She’s looking for you. She thought you were upstairs with the hummingbirds.”

  “I’d better go, then. I was, but I thought I’d come down. D’you know what they’ve got up there? A—”

  He never did tell me. Before he could speak, the hideous rumbling began.

  I know the sound of disaster. I have heard a building about to fall. I know the ringing, clamouring thump a steam cylinder makes when it is about to explode. When a roar like that begins inside a house one should run, and run fast.

  I threw myself at the door, flung it open and flew out into the lightless hall.

  There the clamour was frightening. Men’s voices, shouting, weaved through and above it, echoing among the panelled grotesqueries. The house vibrated with thunder. I saw, huddled under the staircase before me, four silent figures: Hennessy, Ogden, Johnson, and Nancy Buchanan, their faces glowing with inexplicable light. My ears roared with groaning air under pressure. The eruption heaved up noise from its guts like a geyser, drumming tinnily between gasps. I fell on my knees beside Johnson.

  The shuddering combers of sound rose, coalesced, fell into vast and shivering order and became, inflated beyond all human tolerance, the intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana, played on the organ. Played on an Imhof & Mukle electrical organ, from a roll of unwinding red paper, fitted under the stairs. Dumbly, with the others, I gazed.

  Behind glass doors, the organ pipes glistened. And above, throbbing with passion, a triangle, two drums and a cymbal sat emoting for ever. The orchestration belted breathily into some climax; the triangle moved; and at the height of its palsied fortissimo, invisibly directed as Punch slamming a policeman, the row of truncated drumsticks jerked forward to pummel the drumskin, while, unasked, the cymbals quivered and clashed. Deafened we watched it flog itself hysterically through such a crisis. Trumpets blared; invisible hands pounded invisible keyboards; the drumsticks vibrated, halted, vibrated like flyweights boxing a punchball. Jangling, roaring, shuddering, the whole Teutonic nightmare landed with a thud back on to its tonic, and Johnson turned, his bifocals steamy with tears, and said: “We were trying to turn on the lights.”

  It was then, as the machine uncoiled an oily legato, and Nancy giggled, and Bob exclaimed and Hennessy craned purposefully into the mechanism, that we heard Kenneth’s voice far above, shouting.

  I was first on the stairs, with the other four pounding after me. Johnson was nearly level. I hissed as we ran: “I thought you were to stay with him?” He did not answer. There were eight people in that house – nine, if Rupert was there. Could no one guard Kenneth? I could have cried with sheer rage, as we ran.

  At the top, we hesitated; until another cry guided us. “The lab wing,” said Johnson shortly, and led across the width of the house to where Kenneth’s room was. We turned the corner, and stepped into a searing dazzle of light. In this wing, every lamp was lit, every door was open, and at the far end of the passage Kenneth stood, unhurt, his hand on the doorpost, and silently showed us, as we reached him, the chaos inside.

  His locked laboratory had been opened and ruined. The original object, perhaps, was to search. If so, what happened next was the result of disappointment and temper. I knew from Kenneth that nothing of importance had been left locked here when he was taken to Rona. But whatever the reason, the vandalism was something that shocked. There was no fitting, no pane of glass, no piece of equipment left undestroyed. Papers littered benches and floor, some burnt, some destroyed with acid and ink. Every drawer and cupboard was open, everything of Kenneth’s own, even his spare clothes, his blankets and sheets, had been ripped and scattered about. It was the work of an obsessive, a feminine, vindictive and familiar mind. I, of all people there, knew at once that it was the work of Michael: my Michael Twiss. I left them there, while they turned over debris and exclaimed at it; and I ran back through the house to find Michael this time, alone.

  I did not turn switches, although the lighting, I realised, must now be on. I ran along the high gallery ringing the hall, where the saffron windows barely lit the dark ruby walls, and beside me, half-seen bizarreries alternated with the big secretive cabinets, heavy with doors. Glass glinted – the hummingbirds. I was on the first storey now, heading for the bedrooms, dressing rooms, bathrooms in the dark, silent wing where no one was sightseeing, exclaiming over the period niceties; where Michael, surely, was waiting. Did he guess that Kenneth meant to unmask him? Did he know, I wondered, that soon the Sioras would be leaving the jetty to make rendezvous in mid-loch with the ferry from Mallaig – to receive post and to place on the ferry any mail, any parcels, any visitors wishing to return quickly from Rum to the mainland?

  It was very quiet. I followed the corridor round, and round again. On my right, faintly, metal glimmered high on the wall and drew my eye to a display of weapons – swords, daggers, boomerangs, inlaid samurai. I turned my back on it and called, hardly stirring the air. “Michael! Come out!”

  Silence. Below someone had found the switch for Cavalleria Rusticana and turned the automaton off. Distantly, from Kenneth’s room, I could hear voices arguing. An owl called thinly outside, and the trees sounded through the glass like a soft breaking sea. I said again: “Michael?”

  Opposite me was the dark mouth of a room. I had no wish to draw the others. On the other hand, it was only with an effort of logic that I found I could make myself walk through that door. In my hand was the little torch I had brought all the way from Dolly, switched to a thin, pencil light. It shone on a death’s head.

  It was only a painting, a macabre motif. After a moment, I moved the beam, and it showed me a Jacobean four-poster, dark and carved, with the painted symbol of death at its head and foot, under the crown and dark drapes. The curtains hid nobody. The room, as I lit it inch by inch with my torch, was sparsely furnished and empty. I went out, and into the next.

  I don’t know how many I searched before I came to the bamboo-furnished bedroom. There, for the first time, when I called I sensed some kind of presence. I called again, and waited. When no one replied, I went right inside.

  It was a big bedroom this time, with vast cupboards lining each wall. A bamboo lattice work decorated the neat bed and its suite. But the sound I had heard came not from here, but from the bathroom beyond. It smelled damp. I paused there, controlling my breath, and then I said for the last time: “Michael! I know you are here. Michael, come out and talk.” And when he did not reply, I switched on my torch.

  Curtains. Ceiling-high cupboards. A washbasin with wrought-iron legs. A bath, hooded man-high in mahogany, and tiered with knobs like an organ for every hydraulic device known to Edwardian man. I had got so far when the white light above me burst into unexpected, brilliant life. I gazed, dazzled at this wonderland bath; and gradually I realised why, tonight, Michael Twiss did not come when I called. For Michael was here, in the bath; and his Trumper haircut was all ruffled and soaked, and his Lobb footwear fatally stained.

  He was dead.

  FOURTEEN

  The torch in my hand was still on. I put it off, staring at the occupied bath. It did not occur to me to see who had switched the bedroom and bathroom lights on. I was gazing at Michael.

&nbs
p; He had been shot. The light, dove-grey quilted coat which he bought with such pride for a long weekend with a marquess, was all spoiled and charred, and a spreading stain had soaked irregularly, like a bad dye, into the fabric. The untidy hair was unlike him, but there was no great change in the smooth face, which I supposed most people would call handsome; which in five years or less would have begun to show, under the skin, the traces of gross self-indulgence which had not yet marred his trimness. He had seated himself, one would guess, gun in hand, on the edge of the massive bath, under the knobs labelled wave and douche, and holding the gun to his heart, had fired and fallen tidily backwards, organised in death as in life.

  So one would guess, except for two things, Michael was a man – had been a man – of no great courage and of immense spite. He was also a man of vainglorious ambition, who above all things loved life. If you knew Michael Twiss, you would know that of all men he was the least likely to kill himself.

  You would also know that he did not smoke. And you would wonder why, therefore, the closed air of this bathroom held, as well as the faint unpleasant odours of cordite, of mustiness, of sweat, and of freshly shed blood, a tinge, already vanishing as I traced it, of recent smoke. I thought this; and a sharp voice at my shoulder said: “What have you done?” and I turned to face Hennessy, just as I thought: Kenneth smokes.

  Then Hennessy said: “What have you done?” again, and, stepping forward, shook me alive. I suppose my face was quite blank. There was suddenly so much to consider, so quickly. When did it happen? Not while I had been searching: I should have heard the sound of the shot. A little before, then. Of course . . . while the organ was playing. A machine gun could have fired then and none of us would have heard it. And Kenneth was then upstairs. I realised that Hennessy was staring at me, his two hands still on my shoulders, my loose hair tumbled over them from the shaking. A little blood had come through the white bandage over his ear, and he was pale. It was not a nice sight, Michael folded into the bath. “Tina!”