Death in the Andamans

by M. M. Kaye

  ‘Here Leonard Stock reappears on the scene, and we are back again at guess-work. But this is what seems to have happened. Leonard must have got a nasty jar when Ferrers’s body was reported to be present and correct, but a much nastier one when Val’s father mentioned during dinner that night that he’d had a letter from Ferrers — possibly on the subject of pearls. As far as we can make out he must have slipped out that night and gone down to the office to hunt for it, but failed to find it. For the simple reason that John Shilto had got there first. In fact he was probably on his way back from the office when he saw Dan cross the ballroom, and realized what he was up to.

  ‘After that he presumably slid back to his room, pulled a pair of pants on over his pyjamas, shoved on a raincoat, and left by the back staircase that leads out of his bathroom. He must have calmly stepped over the Indian guard, who, it now appears, was asleep for the greater part of the night with his mackintosh over his head.’

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ said Copper, appearing abruptly from behind the tree with her eyes watering from the effects of wood smoke, ‘is why Ruby didn’t hear him; considering that he had to go through her room to get to the ballroom and the office.’

  ‘Because, my sweet,’ said Charles, ‘Ruby’s reported insomnia is pure baloney. She apparently sleeps like the proverbial log, and the insomnia racket was merely another method of annoying Leonard and making a fuss over herself. In other words, it was a complete myth and Leonard knew it, though he found it convenient to play up to her sometimes. You remember how he told us the next day how badly Ruby had slept? Well, as it happened, though he wasn’t aware of it, he was right for once.

  ‘Ruby wasn’t sleeping so well that night, and she did hear Leonard go out. And come back again! It puzzled her considerably. So much, in fact, that she didn’t immediately rise up and inquire what the heck he meant by it, but after a bit of brooding got out of bed and went into his room to institute inquiries. He wasn’t there, and what’s more, the back door from his bathroom was open.

  ‘Being Ruby, she seems to have jumped to the conclusion that he was carrying on with some woman, and she put on her dressing-gown and went out into the ballroom to investigate. I cannot suppose that she ever really expected to find either of you two holding her husband’s hand in the verandah, but anyway she evidently had a good snoop round, and after leaving a chunk of feathers as a souvenir on Hindenburg, got back to her room and found there was still no Leonard.

  ‘It was just about then that she began to get nervous. There was something a bit sinister in this silent popping to and fro, and she wondered if Leonard was beginning to suffer from softening of the brain? She says that she must have stayed awake for nearly an hour, waiting for him, and it was during that time that it occurred to her to go through his pockets and see if they didn’t contain some betraying note suggestive of a rendezvous. She found something all right! Knotted into a corner of his handkerchief was a pearl.

  ‘It was evidently a pretty good line in pearls, and to Ruby, “money talks”. She seems to have had quite a chat with it that night, and the upshot was that she lay doggo and didn’t see her husband again until after you two had broken the news about Dan.’

  Valerie looked bewildered: ‘But – but why did she behave so oddly when she heard about it? Copper and I thought that she must either have done it herself or seen it done. She very nearly had a fit!’

  ‘Use your brain, my small angel. Put yourself in her place. She has been wondering what on earth her husband could have been up to on the previous night, and suddenly she hears that at just about the time that he was out and about, a murder was committed. I don’t wonder she had a fit. If I’d been in her shoes, I’d have had a dozen. She obviously jumped to the instant — and perfectly correct — conclusion that her husband had done it____

  ‘You know, I feel we all owe Ruby an apology if we’ve ever spoken slightingly of her brain. She’s got brains all right — the cunning kind. Having flung you two out, she ties a wet towel round her head and thinks things over. Why was Dan killed? What was he doing in the Guest House? Why has Ferrers’s body disappeared? The answers that we missed, she got in one. And the pearl gave her the clue to the murderer of Ferrers. Oh, she’s clever all right, is our Ruby!’

  Valerie said: ‘Then it was the pearl that she threw away? Why?’

  ‘Because she lost her nerve. She had no idea how many people knew about those pearls, or how long it would be before everyone knew and the motive for the murder begin to look obvious. She wasn’t taking any risk of being mixed up in it herself, so she took that pearl and heaved it into the sea. And it must have broken her heart to do it. About a hundred and fifty quid in the ash can!’

  ‘But what about John Shilto?’ asked Copper. ‘Why did he go about grinning to himself in that revolting manner? And why did he borrow that typewriter?’

  ‘Taking your questions in order,’ said Charles, ‘he had good reason to be pleased with himself. He discovers that Ferrers is on to a fortune in pearls, and when he tries to get in on it, is told to go and boil his head. A few hours later Ferrers is dead and he, John, is the next of kin. As to your second question, Shilto senior, just to make assurance doubly sure, borrows a typewriter for the praiseworthy purpose of forging a will, purporting to be Ferrers’s, leaving all his worldly goods to cousin John in the hope that he will forgive and forget. It was an extremely touching document, and in spite of the solemnity of the occasion we all laughed like a row of buckets when we read it. It was found in his coat pocket, and I imagine the main reason for his pinching that letter from the office was because he needed a signature to forge from.’

  ‘What did we pack the tea in?’ demanded Copper, reappearing for the second time: ‘How did the letter get into Sir Lionel’s room?’

  ‘In that thing like an aluminium soap-dish,’ said Valerie. ‘Yes, how did it get there, Charles?’

  ‘I expect one of the khidmatgars shoved it in with a spoon____ Oh, you mean the letter? Well, your father too evidently had his suspicions about John Shilto. He’d lent him his bathing-wrap to wear as a dressing-gown — that striped towelling one.’

  Valerie said: ‘Charles, what are you babbling about? What on earth has a bathing-wrap got to do with all this?’

  ‘Only that there was a thread of striped towelling caught on the broken edge of the office desk that morning. That’s why, when he found the letter was missing, your father didn’t say anything for fear of putting Shilto on his guard. But he watched his opportunity and sneaked into the turret room later that day where, sure enough, he unearthed the letter. He left the envelope where he found it, and took the letter away to go through it later and try to discover why it had been pinched; hoping Shilto wouldn’t spot that it had been removed. Result — we find the envelope in Shilto’s room, and Copper finds the letter in your father’s. Dense fog of confusion all round.

  ‘As for John, if his fate hadn’t already been decided upon before, it was definitely sealed when you told Leonard that the letter — you didn’t say “envelope only” — had been discovered in John’s room. Leonard didn’t know exactly what Ferrers had written in that letter, but he guessed that it would be enough to put John Shilto on to the right track as regards the pearl bed, and shortly afterwards he pushed off to his house. Presumably in order to compose and type that “confession” and to plan out any odd details.

  ‘He’d already pinched Ronnie’s revolver; I suppose the discovery of Dan’s body made him realize that he might at any moment have to pin the murders on someone else, and what better way of doing it than a third murder, dressed up to look like suicide? He went down to his own house at about a quarter to ten, taking an orderly with him for the look of the thing, and was away more than two hours, for it was roughly about midnight when he got back. And then of course Ruby played right into his hands.

  ‘She was certain that he was the murderer, and she was scared to death. Here was a man whom she’d bullied and brow-beaten for years, and now
he had killed two men in cold blood. She was in mortal terror for her own life, and she changed her room so that she could lock herself in for the night. But even then she daren’t sleep, and although she heard the shot and the general uproar afterwards, she didn’t stir from her room until morning.

  ‘Well, that’s about all that’s new. The rest is pretty well what Leonard told you himself. Shilto had drunk too much and was out like a light, so it was money for jam. All that Leonard had to do was just stroll in about two a.m., switch on the small bedside light, pull out the mosquito net, pin that “confession” to the pillow, and, wearing a glove of Ruby’s on his right hand, put the muzzle of the revolver to Shilto’s head and pull the trigger …

  ‘The moment the shot was fired he put the thing in Shilto’s hand and closed his fingers round it, tucked in the mosquito net, snapped off the light and stepped out of the window. The whole thing can’t have taken more than ten or fifteen seconds, and he knew he could count on a margin of at least half a minute after the firing of the shot. He’d even chosen his costume with care. That jazz-patterned thing of Ruby’s was a perfect camouflage against the criss-cross patterns of the woodwork and the tree shadows on the wall. But he forgot about the mosquito net, and worst of all he forgot about that red stuff on the outside woodwork. Anything else you want to know?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Valerie promptly: ‘What about Ronnie? Why was he in such a hopeless panic that last evening?’

  Charles chuckled. ‘Ah, that was Amabel! You see, two murders on two successive days had been too much for Ronnie’s nervous system. He hadn’t an inkling as to why they had been done, and then Amabel-the-Ever-Bright, by some curious fluke, produced the same theory that had already occurred to Copper.

  ‘She made some fatuous remark about his ring while Ronnie was up at the hospital that afternoon, and then, remembering that Ferrers had also worn one, offered the suggestion that perhaps red rings were bad luck, and he might be killed too. A typically Amabelish remark, which might have passed over his head if she hadn’t followed it up by adding that perhaps the murderer had mixed him up with Ferrers?

  ‘At the time, Ronnie apparently laughed it off, because it sounded so ludicrously far-fetched that only Amabel’s unfaltering determination to take the worst possible view of everything could have thought it up. But after a bit he began to wonder if perhaps there mightn’t be something in it? He couldn’t imagine why anyone — even John — should bother to kill Ferrers, and the thought that perhaps someone had meant to take a crack at him instead gave him no ordinary jar. And when on top of this he discovered, around five-thirtyish, that his revolver had taken unto itself legs, he went straight off the deep end and drank about half a bottle of whisky, neat. After that, there being no more alcohol in the house, he pushed off to continue the good work at the Club. Which is where we came on the scene.’

  ‘I see.’ said Valerie thoughtfully. ‘Poor Ronnie! It shows he realizes that he’s not all that popular if he could think up several reasons why someone should want to kill him.’

  ‘Do him a lot of good,’ said Charles callously. ‘Nasty little philanderer! With any luck it will have given him such a heck of a jolt that he’ll turn over a whole tree full of new leaves, and blossom into a Perfect Husband. In which case, if I may coin a phrase, “Good will have come out of Evil”.’

  A meditative silence fell upon the group under the big tree, in which they could hear the friendly bubble of a boiling kettle and the snap and crackle of flames. ‘Tea!’ announced Copper, appearing round the tree trunk with an outsize teapot, her cheeks flushed from the fire.

  24

  The sun dipped below the rim of the horizon as they packed up the picnic-baskets and strolled back along the shore to the anchored Jarawa.

  The retreating tide had transformed the wet sands into a curving silver mirror that reflected the colours that flooded the pale sea and pearly sky in waves of wonder. The far islands had lost their look of shimmering transparency and become silhouettes of violet velvet against the opal sea, and a dimness had crept over the flaming green of the jungle-clad hills; softening and blurring it with a blue, grape-like bloom.

  Sky and sea turned slowly from shell-pink to primrose and gold, and then to lavender and green. And a full moon rose through the twilight above the quiet glassy floor as the little Jarawa throbbed her way home across the darkening sea past dim romantic shores and lonely reefs uncovered by the retreating tide, towards the tiny island of Ross that was already pricked with pin-points of light. Presently in the gathering twilight a single star gleamed palely; to be joined before long by another, and another, until the dim bowl of the sky was sequined with them: their brilliance dimmed by the growing glow of the moon.

  Nick, lying prone upon the roof of the launch and following up a private train of thought, said: ‘My ship gets in tomorrow.’

  He did not add that it also left on the morrow, and that this was therefore his last evening in the Islands, for they already knew that.

  For a moment no one answered him, and then Valerie said: ‘Let’s not go home. Let’s take our supper to Corbyn’s Cove. It’s such a heavenly moon, and it’s going to be a heavenly night.’

  Charles gave his unqualified approval, and then observed, more practically, that they would have to return to Ross for food. ‘All right,’ agreed Valerie. ‘We’ll collect some from the Club, and ring up from there for a car to meet us at Aberdeen, and phone Dad and tell him we shan’t be in to dinner. Then we shan’t waste any time.’

  ‘My practical Penelope!’ murmured Charles approvingly. ‘What an organizer the little woman will make! With her at my side, a Field Marshal’s baton is as good as in my pants pocket.’

  He relapsed into a contented silence which was broken by Copper’s suggestion that they should add George and Amabel to the party. ‘Heaven forbid!’ said Charles, sitting up in alarm. ‘I have no wish to spend the evening refereeing. Romance is what I yearn for; moonlight and tropic shores to delight the eye, and some of the more soupy and sentimental recordings of Bing Crosby to soothe the ear — plus caviare and Guinness to stay the inner man. An evening with Amabel and George in their present humour can only lead to high words and indigestion.’

  Copper laughed, but stuck to her point with unexpected stubbornness.

  ‘Oh, let ’em come, Charles,’ said Nick lazily. ‘Can’t you see that Copper’s gone all sentimental? She wants to try her fine Italian hand at playing Cupid, or Providence, or something of the sort, and reunite two sundered hearts. Isn’t that right, Coppy?’

  Copper flushed and frowned. ‘You’re too acute, Mr Tarrent, but I suppose you’re right.’

  ‘Of course I’m right. And I agree with you. Left to themselves, those two fat-heads will spend the remainder of George’s term of penal servitude drooping about the island like a couple of bereaved earwigs and avoiding each other’s eye. But if we plant them on a nice strip of moonlit beach, and then sneak off and leave them to it, they’ll be publishing the banns by the time we get them home. I defy anyone to resist a night like this.’

  Copper gave him an odd sideways look, but made no comment, and Charles said: ‘Oh, all right. Let us sacrifice ourselves on the Altar of Romance. It can only lead to our being stung for an expensive plated fish-slice and/or toast-rack apiece, but what of it? “It is a far, far better thing that we do now, than we have ever done before,” — or words to that effect. Hullo, here we are!’ The Jarawa bumped alongside the rough-and-ready structure that temporarily replaced the damaged jetty, and the picnickers disembarked.

  An hour later, packed into the same aged Ford that had taken them up to Mount Harriet on that fateful Christmas Eve picnic, they were speeding along the moon-drenched road to Corbyn’s Cove.

  Nick, who was driving, had Copper and Amabel and an assortment of biscuit tins beside him, while Valerie, George and Charles shared the back seat in company with the picnic-basket, a variety of bottles and several travelling rugs. And it was, as Valerie had predicted, a
heavenly night.

  Moonlight striped the road with lines of white satin between the ebony shadows of the tree trunks, the air was warm and still and heavy with the scent of flowers, and the lovely, curving bay of Corbyn’s Cove was a silver arc fringed with tall palms that leaned out across the sands, cutting clear patterns against the moon-washed sky and barring the sands with shadows, ‘sable on argent’.

  A gramophone provided undemanding music while a picnic supper was eaten on the dry sand in front of the palm-thatched bathing-huts, and though the records that had been borrowed at random from the Club proved to consist solely of dance-music, played by popular bands and sung by crooners, the slurred sweetness of the trite melodies that drifted out across the white beach and the glimmering bay were transmuted by the wizardry of the night into pure magic.

  ‘George, dear,’ begged Valerie charmingly, at the conclusion of the meal, ‘would you be a darling and see if I brought a torch in the pocket of the car? It doesn’t matter if it isn’t there.’

  George trotted off obediently, and having dispatched Amabel to the water’s edge with a pile of dishes to be washed, the remaining four members of the party removed themselves hurriedly from the scene.

  ‘Phew!’ gasped Valerie, flinging herself down panting and breathless on a bank of sand at the far end of the beach. ‘I haven’t run like that since the days when for my sins I played right wing in the school hockey team! I wonder what Amabel will do when she finds we’ve left her to it?’

  ‘You mean,’ corrected Charles, ‘when she finds that we’ve left her to George. Well, if she has a spark of intelligence — which I doubt — she will fling herself into his arms and say, “George darling, if you will only forgive me, I’ll never touch fruit cup again!” But judging from what I know of the young dim-wit, she’ll give her famous imitation of an underdone doughnut instead. And the same, I fear, will apply to George.’