Full as the sea tractor had been when it eventually arrived, with a gay young crowd seemingly hell-bent on going up to play golf at the Bigbury Golf Club, I was the sole passenger on the way back, though I could see plenty of other guests disporting themselves on the tiny island ahead, tennis seeming an obvious attraction on the courts to the right of the startlingly white and modern hotel. Its design, even now in 1937, some eight or nine years after its completion, is considered by many to be far too advanced in style to be either compatible with taste or the Devon countryside and coastline. But needless to say, its clean, curved and somewhat outrageous architecture is beloved of the smart set and the richer members of the theatrical fraternity, who never cease to remind the less sophisticated that Noel Coward — they pronounce his name in hushed tones, as if it were he who has just replaced Edward VIII on the throne — chooses to spend many of his vacations there.
As far as I was concerned, I love the place because it is always gay and alive. The architecture I can take or leave and it certainly doesn’t offend me.
Once off the tractor, I climbed up the steps and made for the Ganges bar. But there was no sign of Tracy or Peter and Prissy, though I was rather thrilled to see the unmistakable figure of Agatha Christie seated in a corner reading a book. I had just finished one of her latest, The ABC Murders, and was half tempted to go over and tell her how much I had enjoyed it. But she looked too engrossed in her reading for me to interrupt. As I left the bar, I smiled to myself as I wondered what she would make of Seagrave and Diana Travers’ suspicions. One thing was sure, it couldn’t be less than I had so far.
I made my way across the lawns to the steep steps cut into the rock that lead down to the hotel’s private playground — a wonderfully sheltered private beach that, through the clever use of artificial dams, is not subject to the tides. In the centre of the splendid sea-water pool thus created is, incredibly, a bandstand on which I had on quite a few occasions seen Harry Roy and his band perform. Naturally enough, it is to the beach that most guests gravitate when the sun shines, for there is waiter service for the odd gin fizz cocktail and even for exotic seafood snacks, complete with lobster tails, should they be desired.
Before I was down the long flight of steps, I spotted the slender form of Tracy supine to the sun’s rays at one end of the somewhat crowded paved area that borders the cliffs. Next to her were arranged three deckchairs. On each was an object to pronounce possession — a towel, a bathing cap and a copy of what looked like The Illustrated London News. Clever girl. She’d anticipated our arrival. I threaded my way through the bronzing guests towards her, tossing my car keys onto her rather damp Jantzen-clad tummy to announce my arrival.
She looked up, shading her eyes.
‘Oh hello, Johnny. Are you alone?’
I laughed and pointed to the other gay young things around us.
‘Hardly, old girl.’
‘No, you idiot. I meant you haven’t seen Peter or Prissy around, have you?’
I removed the towel and sat down beside her.
‘No. Agatha Christie, yes. Peter and Prissy, no.’
‘Yes, I saw her too. The barman tells me she may be planning to set one of her whodunnits here. Anyway, Johnny, did you bring your trunks?’
I nodded. ‘I have them on underneath my flannels.’
I undid two more buttons of my shirt and relaxed back in the old deckchair.
‘Ah, this is the life,’ I grinned. ‘Thanks for inviting me. It’s just what I needed.’
Tracy sat up. I noticed quite a few male eyes swivel in her delectable direction.
‘Seagrave case getting you down?’
‘No, not really. I feel better this morning.’ I lowered my voice. ‘Anyway, the Seagrave affair isn’t really a case yet. It’s just a set of suspicions inside Diana Travers’ head, isn’t it?’
She squinted her eyes at me and whispered back, ‘Sounds as if you’ve already made up your mind that Seagrave is innocent.’
I shook my head. ‘Not at all. I was hoping my meeting with him would give me some kind of intuitive feeling. But it didn’t, more’s the pity. He could be innocent as the day is long or the nastiest bounder the world has ever seen.’ I chuckled. ‘Comes of all that acting experience, I would imagine.’
‘You were an actor,’ she reminded me.
‘Only for a short while, filling in time after I was grounded. And if Denham Airfield hadn’t been near Alexander Korda’s Denham Studios ...’
‘... you wouldn’t have been an actor at all, I know.’ She smiled. ‘I hardly believe you were. I’ve seen Things to Come three times just because you said you were in it and I haven’t spotted you yet.’
‘Not surprising. I was the 898th extra in the “Everytown” scenes and one of the rocket technician’s assistants, who ended up on the cutting-room floor.’
I was starting to feel distinctly hot in my shirt and flannels.
‘Like a swim?’ I asked Tracy.
‘No, thanks. I just had one before you came.’ She lay back again on her towel. ‘You go ahead.’
I did. I went back up to the hotel to strip off, in case I offended the more delicate sensibilities of the smart sunning set and soon was back and in the cooling water.
I swam out to the far rocks and clambered up onto them. Looking back, the hotel guests, reclining, tanning, sipping, parading, posturing and pontificating, seemed like actors and actresses in a play and hardly real at all. Above the cliffs, the dazzling white hotel appeared like some ethereal palace that would disappear again at the wave of a wand or the snap of a finger.
I soaked up the warm spring sun for a while and lazily watched a Tiger Moth doing its routine rounds of the Devon beaches, towing an advertising banner for the Sunday Despatch — one of the aeronautical experiences I did not envy, for towing anything robbed an aircraft of its freedom of manoeuvre and lightness of control, and to me, was akin to hitching a caravan to a racing car or a brewer’s dray to a Derby winner.
After ten minutes or so, I decided it was a trifle unsporting to leave Tracy alone for too long, so I stood up preparatory to diving back into the water. As I angled my arms for the dive, a shriek of girlish laughter emanated from behind me. I looked around to see a bathing-capped girl of no more than seventeen clambering down towards me, having obviously climbed the rocks from the sea side. I moved sideways to let her pass and she smiled a big thank you, before shouting back over her shoulder.
‘I told you, Michael, you’d never catch me.’
As she splashed me with her dive into the pool, I looked back and to my horror, saw who this Michael was. Instantly, I crouched down again and put my head in my hands. Hairy legs flashed past and it was not until I heard the splash that I dared peep out through my fingers.
Seagrave, by now, had almost reached the bandstand in the middle of the pool and the girl was already climbing up the ladder onto it. I cursed my luck, for bathing trunks are not exactly the greatest garment for hiding one’s identity. All I could do was turn sideways, so my hand hid more of my face. I determined that from now on Johnny Black, like Sherlock Holmes, would assume theatrical disguises when assuming identities other than his own. Had I worn a deerstalker, a false moustache and hair-piece and affected a stutter, I might not be imprisoned on a rock like an unthinking Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’.
The wind being off the shore, their voices carried clearly from the bandstand.
‘Wow — the pool’s much warmer than the sea.’ A girlish giggle.
‘Early in the year yet. Rather surprised you accepted my challenge to brave the open water.’
‘You knew I’d accept.’
‘Did I?’ Those two simple words were said with a suggestion of intimacy that rather betrayed Seagrave’s theatrical background.
Moving my hand and head slightly, I could see the two figures were now close to each other, reclining back on the bandstand boards.
The girl mumbled something I couldn’t catch in reply, and then he asked, ‘Do
you think you can persuade your parents?’
‘Gosh, I hope so.’
‘Try and make it a further two weeks instead of one.’
‘I’ll try. I’m sure Father will have to go back to London, even if he allows Mother to stay on for a bit.’
‘That’s all right, isn’t it?’
A pause. ‘Mother on her own may be more of a problem.’
‘Why?’
‘She won’t have anything to do but worry where I am all the time.’
‘Doesn’t she like me?’
Laughter. ‘She thinks you’re positively charming. But then she doesn’t know ... it all, does she?’
‘You think she will disapprove if she finds out?’
Silence. Then, ‘Oh, come on, Michael, let’s enjoy now. Don’t let’s worry about what might happen.’
‘All right, Susan. But will you promise to ask your parents tonight?’
‘I promise.’ Then, excitedly, ‘Now, race you back to the hotel.’ Two splashes followed and I dared to look round. Both were athletic swimmers and were out of the water and starting up the cliff steps in no time at all. When they had disappeared from view at the top, I at last plunged back in the water and over-armed it back to an expectant Tracy.
‘Did you see him?’
I laughed. ‘Tracy, he almost trod on me.’
‘He didn’t recognise you?’
‘I don’t think so. Unless he’s one of those people who can tell a person from their hands.’ I dabbed myself with Tracy’s towel and sat down. ‘You don’t know who the girl is, by any chance?’ I asked.
‘No, never seen her before.’
‘Name is Susan, from what I could hear.’ I recounted their bandstand conversation. Tracy grimaced.
‘Hasn’t taken him long, has it?’
‘You mean, to recover from his grief and get on the trail again?’ She nodded. ‘From what you overheard, it would appear she may know about his wife and the way she died.’
‘Could be. If she does, she clearly isn’t bothered by it. It seemed to me, she was leading him on, as much as he was leading her.’
Tracy thought for a moment. ‘I assume he wants her to stay on here at the hotel for longer than her parents had planned.’
‘Looks like it.’
‘I wish I knew who the family is.’
‘Well, they’re not actually poor to stay in a place like this.’
‘You implying that Seagrave might already be after another heiress?’
I shrugged and Tracy went on, ‘He could be just after her because she’s young and pretty. After all, he has Deborah’s money now.’
‘Could be.’
She looked at me.
‘You don’t like the feel of it, do you?’
I sighed. ‘Maybe I’m old-fashioned or something. But I do think it’s a little early for Seagrave to be girl chasing again. Mind you, I saw enough of that kind of thing in the four years I was with my uncle in Kenya. There, as Cole Porter so catchily puts it, “Anything goes”.’
‘Devon is hardly Happy Valley,’ she laughed.
‘Thank the Lord, old girl.’ I lay back in the deckchair and closed my eyes.
After a while, Tracy commented, ‘I’m surprised Peter and Prissy aren’t here yet. It’s nearly twelve.’
‘They’ll turn up. PC is not exactly renowned for his punctuality. At Brooklands, they’re always surprised he remembers to turn up in time for the races.’
But we had to wait another twenty minutes before we saw the dashing couple descending the cliff steps.
‘Sorry, darlings,’ Prissy exclaimed in her familiarly loud and flamboyant manner, as she trod elegantly through the maze of tanning guests. ‘All PC’s fault. Met some old chums of his father’s in the hotel lobby. Just had to hob-nob. Know what he’s like. Worse than a woman.’
She collapsed in the deckchair next to me, crushing the Illustrated London News beneath her. I felt a hand on my bare shoulder. I looked up. Peter had arrived a little more discreetly.
‘Apologies, old boy, old girl. Bit late setting off, then got waylaid in the lobby, like Prissy said. Couldn’t ignore the Prendergasts — old friend of the family and all that.’ He winked. ‘Anyway, they’ve got a rather fetching daughter.’
I vaguely remembered Peter talking of the Prendergasts before. Something about their having made more than the odd million out of paper-making. The Prendergast Mills, that was it.
Peter hovered by the deckchair we’d reserved for him.
‘Anyway, old sports, now we’re here, how about us all quenching our thirsts?’
‘Hang on a minute, PC.’ I interrupted. ‘How old is their daughter?’
He laughed. ‘Bit on the young side for you, old boy, I’d have thought. Can’t be more than seventeen or so.’
‘Regular features, fair skin? Blondish hair from what little I could see peeping out from under her bathing cap? Oh and her name, I think, is Susan?’
Peter looked at Tracy in amazement. ‘It’s all right, PC,’ she came to my aid. ‘Johnny’s not head over heels. We’re both interested in her, as a matter of fact.’
He sat down at last. ‘How’s that, old girl?’
So we told him.
And that’s how we came to find out that Michael Seagrave would be landing much more than a beauty if he succeeded in hooking this nubile Susan of the bandstand.
Five
I felt sorry for PC and Prissy. For Seagrave’s unexpected appearance had really put paid to our having lunch at the hotel for fear he might spot Mr John White from the British Sports Car Association. So we packed up, took the sea tractor back to Bigbury, picked up the three cars and, at PC’s suggestion, had a road race along the coast to Bantham. Luckily, we met neither police nor obstructive four-legged transport and arrived at our designated hostelry — an old haunt of Peter’s — in double-quick time. Much to our racing driver’s surprise and chagrin, Tracy won. More by guile than driving skill, however. For half-way there, she had honked her horn endlessly at PC’s Bugatti ahead of her and when she had gained his attention, had pointed down at one of his rear wheels as if he had tyre trouble. When he had slowed to check, she zoomed past with a flourish and a ‘fooled you’ smile.
The rest of the day was spent on Bantham beach, Burgh Island mocking us in the distance across the river estuary. By the time I got home, Groucho didn’t seem to recognise me at all. I failed to get a squawk, ‘Drop’em’ or ‘Hello, baby,’ out of him. It wasn’t until I saw my reflection in a mirror that I discovered the reason. My face was now the colour of the jolly old lobster we had devoured at lunch. I should have realised that spring sun, shimmering sea and brisk breezes can be real burners after a winter’s gloom. A face as red as Seagrave’s Alvis was hardly a compelling advertisement for a private eye. After all, if he’s not bright enough to protect his own skin, how can he be any good at protecting that of others?
Sunday dawned showery and, luckily, my complexion by then had shed around a third of its fierceness, my time in Africa obviously having toughened my skin somewhat. I walked down into Dartington and bought myself the only paper the little local store had left, the Sunday Dispatch — so much for the power of aerial advertising — but found, on reaching home, that I could not settle down to reading. In fact, I found I could not settle to anything, my mind being more than preoccupied with the bandstand conversation and all it might imply.
I decided to forget a day of rest and take a trip to the Imperial in Torquay. But just as I was donning my trench coat, the telephone clanged. It was one of the old acting buddies whom I had asked to dig around to see if they could unearth anything about Seagrave’s past. Ten minutes later, I left to go to see old Ted Shilling at the Imperial, with some very interesting information indeed.
*
‘Got some special news for you, Johnny boy,’ Ted beamed, as he splashed some soda into my Scotch.
‘Not another certainty for tomorrow’s two thirty,’ I sighed. ‘You know I’ve foresworn be
tting since my Grand National win. Quit while you’re ahead. That’s my motto.’
He leaned forward onto the bar. ‘Not about horses, Johnny. Next best thing, though — women.’
He laughed and had to push his glasses back up his nose.
‘Women?’
‘Women. Or rather a woman. Or rather a girl.’
‘Girl?’
‘Don’t act stupid, Johnny boy. You know what you asked me last time, about that fellow Seagrave, who he came in here with and all that?’
‘Yes, tell me,’ I said with growing interest.
He leaned right across the bar and said behind his hand, ‘He’s been in again.’
‘Seagrave?’
He nodded. ‘With a girl. Pretty little thing.’
‘Blond, regular features, around seventeen and answers to the name of Susan?’
He frowned. ‘No. Red head, snub nose, around twenty and from what I could overhear, was called Daphne.’
I took a draught of my Scotch. ‘Gets around, this Seagrave.’ I removed Ted’s frown by telling him about the blond girl at Burgh Island, then asked, ‘Don’t know any more about this Daphne, do you?’
‘Well, happens that I might. That evening I had a temporary barman to help me. Stan Timmins. Now he’s seen too many Fred Astaire flicks for his own good, he has. He is dance mad. Even learning ruddy tap now. That’s how he claimed to have met the girl.’
‘At a dance?’
‘No, at that ballroom dancing school that opened a year or two back. You know, near Woolworths. He spends most of his wages there, from all accounts.’
‘This Daphne is learning to dance too?’
‘No, Johnny, she’s one of the teachers there, isn’t she? Or so he says. Hasn’t taught Stan though, much to his disgust.’ Ted sniggered. ‘His teacher’s got a face like the back of a train compared to her, I gather. I guess they reserve this Daphne for the better class of student — and not for the likes of young Stan.’
Black Eye (A Johnny Black Mystery) Page 6
