Island in the Sun

by Alec Waugh

  I gave my love a baby

  With no cryin’.

  It was a song that he too had learnt in childhood and he answered her,

  How can there be a cherry

  Without a stone?

  How can there be a chicken

  Without a bone?

  How can there be a story

  Without an end?

  How can there be a baby

  With no cryin’?

  How in tune we are, she thought.

  Round a bend of the road Maxwell saw the cane field where he had flung Carson’s watch. By now it must lie deep in mud. There had been heavy rain. Would it be ever found? Most likely not. The cane would be cut and the stubble burnt. Then the ground would be ploughed over. The cane would sprout again.

  Sylvia was singing the response,

  A cherry in the blossom

  It has no stone.

  A chicken in the egg

  It has no bone.

  The story of “I love you”

  It has no end,

  A baby when it’s sleepin’

  Has no cryin’.

  They were passing the field where he had flung the wallet. Long before the cane was cut, its leather would have swelled and blistered under the rain and sun: the seams would have burst, the lining rotted, the papers pulped. The watch might one day be found, the wallet never. He had got away with it. He had no qualms about his interview with Whittingham. He had only to keep his head. He had been warned by many detective stories.

  As he drove through the market place he noticed David Boyeur leaning out of an M.G. convertible talking to a girl. The car was brand new, the girl was only slightly colored.

  “Isn’t that the Morris girl?” he asked.

  “I think it is. She’s pretty, isn’t she?”

  “I’ll say so.”

  A traffic light held him up. He had time to look at them. Boyeur was talking fast, the girl’s lips were parted and her eyes were bright. He’s cutting himself a swath, he thought. He remembered how Boyeur had strode into that path of light at his first meeting. Was it only ten days ago? It seemed a happening in another century. He chuckled. The light changed to green and he drove on. He checked by the M.G.

  “Why didn’t you come out to my meeting the other afternoon?” he said.

  Boyeur turned quickly, surprised, taken off his guard.

  “I made a mistake the first time, holding it in the dark. One needs to see one’s hecklers face to face.” Maxwell’s tone was easy, self-confident, contemptuous. “I look forward to our meetings in the Leg. Co. It’ll be very amusing. It’s one thing to make promises at the hustings, quite another to get them carried out in parliament. It’s all going to be most entertaining.”

  Before Boyeur could answer he had driven on. That’s a point back for me, he thought. Boyeur had humiliated him in front of Sylvia. Boyeur had been paid back in his own coin, humiliated before that pretty girl.

  “Will you be lunching at the club?” Sylvia asked.

  “I expect my father’ll want me to.” Actually he had planned to go there. He wanted to show himself, to assert himself: to make the others recognize what he amounted to. He dropped Sylvia at his father’s house, then drove to the police station. He was taut, expectant; as he had felt sitting in the changing room, waiting for a football match to start.

  2

  Whittingham was seated in his swivel chair, the bottom drawer of his desk drawn out and his foot tucked into it. He was holding a leather wallet, turning it over between his fingers. It was a pigskin wallet. It must have been expensive, but it had been subjected to rough treatment. The leather was discolored and warped. Maxwell stared at it. Could there be two wallets like that in the colony? Whittingham put it down on the top of the desk, then swung round to face his visitor.

  “It’s good of you to come round,” he said. “I don’t suppose, as you say, that there’s anything that you can tell me, but quite often something that seems unimportant to one man may have a meaning for another. Heavens but I feel ill this morning.”

  He raised his arm and laid the back of his hand against his forehead. “Fell among friends, I’ll say I did. A losing battle with the sherbet. I ought to know better at my age. They talk about the last drink doing it, but it isn’t the last drink, it’s the fifth. Up to four you are all right. From the sixth onward you are lost. Refuse the fifth. That’s what I always tell myself, but I keep forgetting. And it’s too early for the hair of the dog yet.”

  With his high bald forehead, his fresh pink complexion he looked like a disgruntled baby, crying for its bottle. He was not a person you could take seriously, Maxwell told himself: an amiable old fossil who by slow processes of seniority had become a colonel. But all the same his nerves were tingling. That wallet! What was it doing here? Was it Carson’s? There might be, there must be several pigskin wallets in the island; but why should there be another wallet that had been exposed to rain? A pigskin wallet was expensive. Its owner would take care of it. No one in this island was rich enough to be casual about a pigskin wallet. And anyhow why should any wallet but Carson’s have found its way into the police station?

  Maxwell longed to look at it, but knew he mustn’t. It would be suspicious. How could he recognize it as Carson’s in its discolored state? He was not supposed to know that Carson’s wallet was missing. All he knew of the case was what he had read in the paper and what he had been told by Bradshaw. Had Bradshaw mentioned it? He could not remember. Perhaps Bradshaw had not known. He must not show a knowledge that he could not have come by naturally. That was the way criminals got caught.

  “Suppose you tell me all that you can remember about that evening. The most trivial incident may be the one piece needed in a jigsaw puzzle. What time did you leave your father’s house?”

  “It might have been after six. It was almost dark.”

  “You were alone.”

  “Yes,”

  “Where was Sylvia?”

  “At Belfontaine.”

  “So you came in alone. Isn’t that unusual?”

  “Yes, but it was the day that article of Bradshaw’s was printed in The Voice. The one about our having colored blood. I wanted to discuss it with my father. It was a shock to me. I had no suspicion of it. That’s why I was going to the club alone. My first appearance there would be important. Everyone would be discussing the article. They would wonder how I’d be taking it, how the family’d be taking it. We agreed that it would be best if we didn’t arrive in a body. That’s why I didn’t drive. I wanted to clear my mind, by walking.”

  Whittingham nodded. With eyes half closed he was rotating himself in his swivel chair, from the leverage of his foot against the drawer. He seemed half asleep. Maxwell was desperately tempted to turn his head, to look at that wallet on the desk, but he mustn’t. He knew he mustn’t. He had no excuse for being interested in a battered wallet.

  “I suppose you were pretty upset inside yourself, I mean you were all worked up?” the colonel asked.

  “Of course, naturally. That’s, I suppose, why I never discovered at the club that Carson had had that scene with Leisching.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You know that Carson had made a fool of himself, tried to apologize and dropped a glass.”

  “Yes, I heard that.”

  “It must have happened only a few minutes before I arrived; normally I should have stood around a little, caught the atmosphere of the place, listened before I began to talk, but that night I had to attack. I went straight up to Bradshaw. I thanked him for his article: I congratulated him on it. I told him how much easier it would make it for all the Santa Martans like myself who could pass for white. I took the wind out of his sails. I took the wind out of everybody’s sails. I made myself the center of the evening. I was excited; as you say worked up. I stood drinks all round. But you heard all that, you hear everything.”

  Whittingham smiled, rocking himself in his chair.

  “You walked back by the same rout
e?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And when would that have been?”

  “I can’t say exactly: quarter to eight roughly.”

  “Did you see any lights in Carson’s house?”

  “No, but then from the road you can only see one upper window.”

  “Indeed, is that so, I hadn’t realized that. You saw no one in the street outside his house.”

  “No.”

  “And on the way to the club, did you see anyone hanging outside Carson’s house? It’s important this, because you must have passed at about the time he was being killed.”

  “I saw no one. There was only one car that drove by afterward.”

  “Afterward. After what?”

  “After I’d passed the turning to Carson’s house.”

  “Ah, I see. And that was all.”

  “Yes, that was all. I’m afraid I haven’t been much help. I warned you, didn’t I?”

  “Negative information can be quite useful. It precludes certain possibilities.”

  “You mean that you know certain things didn’t happen, therefore others must have done.”

  “That’s roughly what I meant. Oh God, my head. And I wanted to feel well too for your sister’s party. The fifth drink. Never forget that. It’s the fifth that counts.”

  Maxwell stood up. There was clearly nothing more to say. As he rose, he allowed himself for the first time during the interview to turn his eyes toward the desk. He blinked. It must be the wallet he had taken from Carson’s hip. Whose else could it be? He longed to touch it, to turn it over in his hands. The very wallet.

  He pulled himself together. “I shall be seeing you tonight,” he said.

  In the passage outside he closed his eyes. His knees felt weak. His heart was pounding. He leant against the wall. He had been exposed to a greater strain than he had realized. But I got through all right, he reassured himself. I was natural. I didn’t give away a point.

  In the room behind him, Whittingham swung back to his desk and took up the wallet. It was empty and he filled the pockets with paper. He gauged its weight in the palm of his hand. That was about right. He rang the bell and a corporal appeared. “Is Albert there?”

  “Yes, sir, he there.”

  “Good, have you got the car?”

  “Yes, sir, I have the car.”

  “Then we’re on our way.”

  In the outside office, a ragged, frightened peasant was seated beside a constable. Whittingham beckoned to him. “Come.”

  The man followed whimpering and blustering. “I steal nothing, Colonel sir. I find purse in cane field. No money in purse. I keep purse. Why not keep purse, Colonel sir.”

  “It’s all right, Albert. Don’t fuss. No one’s blaming you. You show me where you found that purse, then you can go home. Come.”

  They drove along the road to Belfontaine.

  “Here, Colonel sir.”

  “Right. Out you get. Walk to the spot where you found this purse.”

  The man crossed the road and walked five yards into the cane.

  “No farther than that?”

  “No, Colonel sir, me saw it from the road.”

  “O.K.”

  Whittingham stood at the edge of the road and with a backhand flick flung the pocketbook toward the peasant. It carried ten yards over his head. The corporal had some difficulty in finding it.

  “O.K., stay where you are,” said Whittingham. He got into the car, put it into reverse, stopped, then drove back toward Belfontaine. As he neared the spot, he flung the wallet through the open window. He had the road between him and the cane field. His right arm was not free, his left hand was on the wheel; his attention was partially upon his driving. The wallet did not quite reach the peasant. So, he thought. It didn’t prove anything, but it was an indication.

  “O.K.,” he called out. “Back we get.”

  He drove Albert to his village. “Don’t fuss yourself,” he said.

  He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out two single dollar bills.

  “This’ll make up for the day’s work you’ve lost.”

  He drove back, with the corporal in the front seat beside him.

  “What did you make of that?” he asked.

  “Make of what, sir?”

  “My experiments. You saw what I did.”

  “Yes, sir, sure, sir. First you throw the wallet from the roadway, then you throw it from the car.”

  “Exactly. And what did I learn from that?”

  “Learn from that, sir?”

  “Yes. What did I learn from that?”

  “Well, sir.” The constable pondered, his face puckered and puzzled. “I can’t properly say, sir,” he said at length.

  Whittingham shrugged mentally. This constable was responsible enough when he was given work to do, but he would be helpless on his own. That was the trouble about these people, they were only effective when they worked under precise instructions.

  “The experiments,” he explained, “prove nothing. They could not be produced as evidence in a court of law. But they can be useful to us as indications of what may have happened. It is probable, but not certain, that that wallet was flung into the cane field by the murderer, after he had taken from it anything of value. We can assume that the murderer was a man. No woman would have been strong enough. There is the possibility that a pair may have worked together, but the actual murder was the work of one man unaided. If there had been a partner, I believe there would have been some sign of his presence. I cannot say what it would have been, but I think things would have happened differently if there had been a partner. Let us assume anyhow that the murderer was a man, alone, and that he wanted to get rid of the wallet as soon as he had emptied it. That cane field is three miles out of town. Why did he wait so long? That wasn’t the first cane field, the first empty stretch of road. Why did he walk so far carrying the wallet? It was a wet night, remember. Isn’t it likely that he was in a car?

  “Let’s see how those experiments bear that out. We can assume that a man wanting to get rid of a wallet would throw it as far away from himself as possible. He would go to the side of the road and throw it into the cane field. If he had done that the wallet would have carried far beyond the spot where it was found; though again we have to face the possibility that Albert did not stand in the spot where he found the wallet. All the same we must remember that he did see the wallet from the road. I can see no reason why he should have lied. If the wallet had been thrown by a man standing near the ditch, it would not have been seen from the road.

  “Remember now what happened when I threw the wallet out of the car window. A man driving a car would throw an object through the right hand window. As he is driving on the left side of the road, he would therefore have the roadway between himself and the cane field. His right arm would not be free: his attention would be distracted by his driving. You saw what happened when I threw the wallet from the car. It did not reach Albert. Though this is largely guesswork, we can assume for our own purposes that the wallet was thrown from a car traveling north along the windward coast road. You realize the significance of that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What would you deduce from it?”

  “Well, sir.”

  Once again the puckered, puzzled look came into the policeman’s face. Whittingham had learnt patience. There was only one way to teach these people, through a friendly forcefulness.

  “How many private cars are there on this island?”

  The answer came back pat. “Three hundred and seventeen, sir.”

  “And how many trucks?”

  “Eighty-seven motor lorries and forty buses, sir.”

  “Then if we are right in believing that the wallet was thrown through the window, we can limit the field of our inquiries to the four hundred and forty-four car-owning families. Instead of searching among a hundred thousand people, we have to search among seven hundred. What do you propose that we should do?”

  “C
heck up on what every car was doing at that time, that night, sir.”

  “Exactly. And will you bring me a list of the car owners who live on the windward coast, north of that cane field.”

  “And check the taxis, sir?”

  “Yes, check the taxis.”

  They were now on a point of routine and Whittingham had complete confidence in his constable’s capacity to carry out his instructions with accuracy and speed. He had remembered the number of car licenses in the island and he would be thorough and systematic in drawing up his report. West Indians made first-class lawyers. They had regard for authority and precedent and order. They were an odd mixture. “Delegate all other work,” he said, “till this job’s finished. And I’d like that list of car owners by this evening. I’ll find out who was at the Aquatic Club; then try and trace their movements.”

  As they reached town, an idea struck him. Instead of driving straight to the police station, he made a detour by the offices of The Voice.

  “I won’t be three minutes,” he told the constable.

  He found the editor in. The young man rose hurriedly. He looked nervous. Had he got into trouble over those articles? It was a free country, a free press, but even so. Whittingham guessed at his reaction.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m not here to arrest you. I’m bringing you a news release.”

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  “I’ve an ulterior motive. You don’t need telling that. So before I give you a piece of genuine hot news, I want your promise that if you do use it, you’ll use it the way I want.”

  “I agree, naturally.”

  “The news is this. Carson’s wallet has been found, in the possession of a peasant. I want you to say that the police regard this as a most valuable clue and that they are keeping the peasant in question under close observation.”

  Whittingham chuckled as he walked down the steps. The paragraph would appear tomorrow. One member of those four hundred car-owning families would be enjoying his last carefree sleep tonight.

  Chapter Nineteen

  1

  “As you have no doubt heard,” His Excellency was saying three hours later to Grainger Morris, “our old friend Lestrange is being promoted and is to become a judge. That leaves vacant the post of Attorney General. If you will accept the post, my own work will be made a great deal easier.