by M. M. Kaye
Staring at him with dilated eyes, she said in a harsh whisper, and as though the words were forced out of her: ‘I’m afraid. Charles, I’m afraid.’
Charles knelt swiftly, and catching her cold hands held them tightly against him. His own were warm and steady and very reassuring, and he smiled at Sarah; a smile that did not quite reach his eyes.
‘No, you’re not. Brace up, Sarah darling!’
‘It’s easy for you—’ began Sarah on a sob.
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ interrupted Charles roughly: ‘It’s damnably difficult for me!’
He dropped her hands, and standing up abruptly returned to the dining-room where Sarah, following him, found him hunting in the cupboard under the sideboard with the aid of the torch. ‘Don’t you keep anything to drink on this boat except orange squash and soda water?’ demanded Charles irritably.
‘There’s brandy in the corner cupboard.’
‘Thank God for that! We could both do with some.’ He splashed a generous amount into a glass and held it out. ‘Drink that up and you’ll feel better.’
‘No thanks,’ said Sarah distantly.
‘Don’t be so missish,’ advised Charles with a suggestion of a snap.
‘I’m not. I just don’t like brandy!’
‘Who asked you if you liked it? Just drink it up, there’s a good girl. We still have a lot of the night before us!’
He pushed the glass across the table and grinned unexpectedly. ‘You needn’t worry,’ he assured her. ‘I fully realize that I am alone on this boat with you, and that it is long past midnight. In fact not one of the charms of yourself or the situation has escaped me. But I’m not trying to make you drunk.’
Sarah glared at him furiously and instantly drained the glass, and Charles reached out and patting her shoulder approvingly said: ‘Good girl.’
‘I believe you said that on purpose,’ accused Sarah, thinking it over, ‘just to make me mad enough to drink the stuff. Did you?’
‘Well, it worked anyway,’ said Charles equably. He poured a strong peg for himself and taking Sarah by the elbow returned to the living-room.
‘And now let’s get back to business,’ said Charles, ensconcing her on the sofa with Lager on her lap. ‘First of all, what was in that letter of Janet’s that you burnt? The sooner we get that clear the better. Try and remember it word for word.’
Sarah told him, knitting her brows in an endeavour to remember the exact wording, and Charles said ‘Hmm; now I wonder why on earth she didn’t——Oh well, she didn’t, and that’s that. At least we know that she hid something on this boat. The trouble is that several other people appear to know it too. Or so it would seem. But how?—and why? Did you tell anyone else about that letter?’
‘No.’
‘Could anyone else have seen it at any time? Did the envelope look as if it had been tampered with when you opened it?’
‘N–o,’ said Sarah doubtfully. ‘I don’t think so. You see, I didn’t think of looking for anything like that. I came back to the house that day—it was the evening of Aunt Alice’s party for the Blue Cross Ball—and I was late back and there was a big mail in. I read all the home letters first, and I hadn’t time to read this one. It looked dull, so I put it into my bag to read later.’
‘How long had it been on the hall table?’ asked Charles.
‘I don’t know. Two or three hours, maybe? I had been out since about three o’clock and I didn’t get back until past seven.’
‘Then anyone could have seen it there and steamed it open and read it and put it back again?’
‘Of course not!’ said Sarah indignantly. ‘Only someone in the house; and as we were all out watching polo that afternoon, there would only have been the servants, and none of them would read or write English. Anyway, what would have been the point? If anyone had wanted to see it, it would surely have been simpler just to steal it and be done with it? Then I should never have known about it.’
‘Oh well,’ said Charles. ‘Let it go. What then? Did you leave your bag about anywhere?’
‘No. You see it was one of those bags that are meant to go with a certain dress. It had grey roses on it and hung on a band round my wrist. The only time it was out of my hands was during dinner, and then it was hung on the back of my chair. You were there. You could have touched it. No one else.’
‘Yes,’ said Charles slowly. ‘That’s true. To think I had the damned thing not six inches from my hand for nearly an hour on end! If I’d only known——Well, go on.’
‘I didn’t open the letter until halfway through the dance, and as I didn’t know what was in it I didn’t think of looking to see if the envelope had been tampered with. Anyway, there wasn’t very much light. Only those paper lanterns. And then Helen Warrender interrupted and—well you know what happened after that. You were there. You——’
Sarah was struck by a sudden thought, and sitting upright with a jerk that almost dislodged the comatose Lager from her lap, she stared accusingly at Charles: ‘Was that why?’ she demanded.
‘Was what why?’
‘You know! Did you come to the party because of me? Was that why you seemed to be around so much and yet never——’ She stopped and bit her lip.
Charles’s lips twitched, but his voice was perfectly grave: ‘But of course,’ he said. ‘How could I keep away?’
Sarah flushed pinkly. ‘I didn’t mean that,’ she said with some heat. ‘You know quite well what I meant! I mean was it because I had known Janet? Were you only keeping tabs on me?’
‘Yes,’ admitted Charles frankly. ‘I was—interested.’
Sarah laughed. It was, despite herself, a somewhat bitter little laugh. ‘And I thought—’ she said, and stopped again.
‘Did you?’ asked Charles softly. He watched the smoke from his cigarette spiral slowly upwards for a moment or two; then: ‘But you see Sarah, you might have been the one.’
‘What one? What do you mean?’
‘The one who killed Janet.’
Sarah’s gasp of rage made a soft explosive sound in the quiet room and she struggled for words: ‘You–you–you think that I—you thought that I——’
‘All right,’ said Charles calmly. ‘I’ll take it as read.’
‘Do you really think—’ began Sarah.
‘No,’ said Charles, as one giving the matter his consideration: ‘I don’t. Not now. But it was perfectly possible. It has also been said—and proved with regrettable frequency—that most female criminals are also good actresses. You knew Janet and Mrs Matthews. Your fingerprints were on the brass poker in Janet’s room, and I met you in that snowstorm not a hundred yards from the hut by the Gap. You had to be watched.’
‘And you watched me,’ said Sarah tartly.
‘Among others, yes,’ admitted Charles with a grin. ‘And as luck would have it, I happened to be present when you opened Janet’s letter. I even had to watch you burn it—and with my own lighter!—when every instinct was urging me to reach out and grab it.’
‘Then why didn’t you?’ demanded Sarah. ‘Oh!… Oh, I think I see. If I had been the one, then … yes, I see. Very difficult for you.’
‘Damnably,’ admitted Charles cheerfully. ‘Still, even if I didn’t know what was in that note, I knew where it had come from, and could check up on it to a certain extent.’
‘How did you know that?’ asked Sarah sharply. ‘Did you know her so very well?’
‘Who? Janet? No. Hardly at all.’
‘Then you are asking me to believe that you could recognize her handwriting from just that glimpse? The letter wasn’t signed and I held it so that it couldn’t be read.’
For answer Charles drew out a leather pocket-book from his breast-pocket, and after hunting through it, extracted a small sheet of folded paper that he tossed onto Sarah’s lap.
Sarah jerked it open and stared at it incredulously. It was the covering note from the firm of lawyers in Rawalpindi that had accompanied Janet’s sealed enve
lope.
She looked up at Charles and discovered that he was watching her with the same curious intentness that she had observed before, and she said a little unsteadily: ‘I–I don’t understand. How–how did you——?’
‘How did I get that letter? I picked it up off the lawn. You’d forgotten it.’
‘But I couldn’t … I would have noticed…’
‘No you wouldn’t. You see you gave me an excellent piece of advice—have you forgotten? When you knocked that whisky and soda all over poor Helen Warrender you said that there was nothing like a good shock for putting things out of people’s minds. You then very obligingly presented me with an opening, and I provided the shock. Remember?’
A slow wave of colour, starting at the base of her throat, mounted to the roots of Sarah’s hair, and she stood up, dropping Lager in a velvet heap onto the floor. ‘Oh!’ breathed Sarah stormily. ‘You–you——’
‘Go on,’ urged Charles. ‘Let’s have it. What about “You cad, sir!”?’
Sarah sat down again abruptly, and Charles laughed.
‘It’s no use, Sarah darling. All’s fair in love and war, you know. And it worked. It worked like a charm! You swept off like an insulted Archduchess, entirely forgetting that letter, which had fallen onto the grass and which I had carefully edged under your chair. What’s more, the shock was apparently sufficient to keep you from realizing you’d lost it right up to this very minute. And—if it’s any consolation to you—I enjoyed it very much, thank you.’
‘I think,’ said Sarah with dignity, ‘you are the most insufferable man I ever met.’
‘And you,’ said Charles, ‘are without any doubt at all, the most attractive and infuriating woman I have yet encountered in the course of a long and varied experience of crime.’
A dimple appeared unexpectedly in Sarah’s cheek and she collapsed into a sudden fit of slightly hysterical mirth.
‘Oh dear! I am sorry. But I suddenly thought of “Olga-Poloffski-the-Beautiful-Spy” and all those. Is it really true, do you suppose? I mean, do you meet dozens of ravishing female spies?’
‘You’d be surprised,’ said Charles. ‘And now let us abandon these fascinating personalities and get back to business. How long have you been on this boat?’
‘Five days,’ said Sarah promptly.
‘Found anything yet?’
‘No. I’ve made a start though. I looked in all the obvious places first of course, and then I thought it was probably in one of those wretched books up there. I’ve been through about half of them, but it’s a tough assignment; specially when you don’t know what you’re looking for.’
‘Well now you’ll have me to help you. A “record” she said?’
‘That’s it. There were some old gramophone records in the bottom drawer of that desk. I thought at first she’d used the word literally, so I had them out and played them over on the Club radiogram. But they were just tunes; and cracked at that.’
‘A record,’ said Charles thoughtfully. ‘Might be anything. Scratched on a window-pane, written on the underside of a floorboard. Hidden behind one of those fiddling little bits of wood on the ceiling. Hell! It isn’t going to be easy. But we’ve got to get it even if it means taking this boat apart plank by plank. And the sooner we find it the better, for it seems to me that too many people are interested in this boat.’
‘That reminds me,’ said Sarah slowly. ‘You never answered a question of mine. If you were keeping tabs on me, how was it that you didn’t know I was on this boat?’
‘I did,’ said Charles. ‘But as you surmised, I was assured that you would be at the Nedou’s dance. A nasty accident of the usual sort overtook one of our local agents, and the understudy wasn’t as efficient as he might have been.’
‘Accident? You mean—murder?’ Her voice cracked oddly on the word.
‘It isn’t so unusual, you know,’ said Charles gently.
‘Yes, I know,’ said Sarah with a little catch of her breath. ‘I saw it happen to Janet. I didn’t believe it, but I saw it happen.’ Her fingers twisted together in her lap and she said jerkily: ‘Charles, why is it only now that I’ve taken the boat that so many people want it? After all it’s been empty for months. Why do they want it now?’
‘Ah, that’s the question,’ said Charles. ‘I’d like to know the answer to that one myself. The way I see it is that our lot aren’t the only people who linked you up with Janet Rushton. The chances are that someone else, or possibly several people, have been keeping a watchful eye on you as well—just in case. You can also bet your bottom dollar that this boat was searched pretty thoroughly after Janet died, if not before.’
‘Then if you think that, what’s the use of our searching it? The record was probably found weeks ago!’
‘Use your head, Sarah,’ urged Charles. ‘If it had been found, no one would have taken any further interest in the boat. Whereas quite a surprising amount of people are taking an active interest in it. So it stands to reason it wasn’t found.’
‘But I don’t see——’
‘Listen,’ said Charles patiently: ‘Janet lived in this boat, and paid a cash deposit on it, reserving it up to the end of June this year with the proviso that should she be unable to make use of the boat herself, whoever held the receipt for the money could do so instead. That clear?’
‘Quite, but——’
‘Ssh! Janet dies, and you can be sure that this boat was searched from top to bottom. Not because they had any idea that she had hidden anything in it, but just to be on the safe side. Nothing is found and the boat ceases to be of any interest. Then, suddenly, a Miss Parrish, who had been present at the January Meeting of the Ski Club, occupied the room next to Janet Rushton’s and been seen talking to her in the moonlight outside the ski-hut (you say there was someone watching), and is therefore, in all probability, an object of suspicion, receives a mysterious letter.’
‘But no one could possibly have known about that!’ objected Sarah.
‘Don’t interrupt. On receipt of this letter she suddenly changes her plans, and instead of going to Ceylon, decides to return to Kashmir. Now I don’t suppose that anyone else got onto that letter of Janet’s. We did—through you! But I admit I think it’s unlikely that anyone else did. But—Miss Parrish, still almost certainly under surveillance, arrives in Kashmir and produces the receipt for Janet Rushton’s boat. Now do you see?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Sarah slowly.
‘There’s no “suppose” about it. Why has Miss Parrish decided to come to Kashmir? And where did she get the receipt for the Waterwitch? Obviously, from Janet Rushton. The Waterwitch immediately becomes worth watching again—and so does Miss Parrish!’
‘But if, as you think, they have already searched the boat—’ began Sarah.
‘Of course they’ve searched it. But that doesn’t mean they feel any easier about letting someone whom they have every reason to be suspicious of do a bit of independent searching. Because you have been searching; and I bet you any money you like, your mānji has reported to that effect. In fact the whole set-up is probably causing a lot of uneasy speculation. Why are you here? How did you get hold of Janet’s receipt for the Waterwitch, and what are you looking for? The sooner they get you off the boat the better.’
‘Of course,’ said Sarah slowly, ‘there’s another thing. I might even find it for them.’
Charles gave her a curious slanting look and said softly: ‘That, I should imagine, is pretty well at the top of their list. For all they know you may have been told where to look. If so, and supposing they can’t shift you off the boat, and next best thing is to keep tabs on you and let you do the finding. Should you turn up anything——’ Charles broke off and frowned.
‘Go on,’ said Sarah. ‘And should I turn up anything?’
‘Oh well,’ said Charles lightly. ‘I imagine they’d find it fairly simple to steal if off you. They’d have saved themselves a hell of a lot of brainwork, and pinching the solution off you wo
uld be child’s play.’
‘That isn’t what you were going to say,’ pointed out Sarah.
Charles stood up suddenly and walked restlessly across the small room, his hands in his pockets. Then he turned and came back to Sarah and stood in front of her, frowning down at her.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ said Charles shortly. ‘The sooner you get off this boat and out of this country the better. You can pack up and move into Nedou’s Hotel tomorrow morning, and we can get a car to take you down the hill the next day.’
Sarah smiled disarmingly at him. ‘Suppose I don’t want to go?’
‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ said Charles curtly. ‘As long as you are here you are a nuisance and a liability.’
‘Oh no, I’m not,’ corrected Sarah firmly. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. As long as I’m here there is just a chance that I may be merely a simple-minded tourist after all, who has got mixed up in this entirely by mistake and doesn’t know a thing. And who quite possibly bought the receipt off this Miss Rushton, at that! For all they know, Janet may have decided she didn’t want the boat, and seen a chance of getting her money back by selling it to someone who wasn’t likely to know that houseboat rents would fall considerably this season. Don’t you see? They can’t be sure.’
‘That’s not the point,’ said Charles roughly.
‘Yes it is. And there’s another thing. If I go, this boat goes to the next applicant on what seems to be a nice long list.’
‘No it wouldn’t. I should take it on.’
‘And become a marked man at once? You’ve said yourself that once anyone in your job becomes suspect his usefulness is reduced to a minimum. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but——’
‘No, it’s my turn to hold the floor. I’m not going! It isn’t because I don’t know exactly what you were going to say just now when you pulled yourself up. You were going to say that if and when I find anything, I should go the same way as Janet.’
