Death in the Andamans (15 page)

‘I don't mean here,' said Copper. ‘I meant farther along, where the sea-wall stops. Even at high tide there is still a strip of sand there that isn't covered. Look — I'll show you.'

The small curving beach below the house was protected by two natural breakwaters of rock, and they had little difficulty in scrambling down the steep slope between the palm trees and reaching the narrow strip of sand. And as Copper had predicted, the towering waves that swept down upon the island appeared doubly awe-inspiring when seen from the level of the shore. Like dark hills of water that mounted higher and higher as they neared the shore, their crests and flanks streaked with livid bars of foam, to curl over at last and crash down into acres of boiling surf.

‘Imagine being wrecked in a sea like that,' shuddered Copper. ‘You wouldn't stand a chance. There can't be a lifeboat in the world that could get through it. I'm not surprised that the
Sapphire
ran for her life!'

‘Wonder where the old girl's got to?' murmured Dan Harcourt disrespectfully, screwing up his eyes against the stinging salt-laden wind and peering out to sea: ‘I don't suppose she's far off. Except that there isn't a harbour worth mentioning around here, so she may have made for the coast. Anyway, I'll bet the boys are all feeling pea-green and peculiar.'

‘What would have happened if they hadn't left Port Blair?' inquired Copper, interested.

‘The same thing that happened to the old
Enterprise,
' said Ronnie Purvis:
‘Smasho!'

‘Why? What happened to it?'

‘Oh, don't you know?' Amabel, who could be counted upon to know the details of any disaster, brightened up a trifle and added her voice to the conversation: ‘They had come here on a visit, like the
Sapphire;
only of course it was years and years ago — 1891, I think — and a storm got up before they could leave harbour and they got driven on to the rocks off South Point. Ever so many of them were drowned, and there's a tablet to them in the church. Didn't you notice it?'

‘No,' said Copper shortly. ‘I'm thankful to say I did not!'

But Amabel was not to be deflected from the recital of disaster: ‘Well, it's there; and the new
Enterprise
presented the ring of bells in the church steeple in memory of them. At low tide you can still see the boilers of the old
Enterprise
on the rocks off South Point, all covered with barnacles. We sail round them sometimes when we go fishing. I suppose the tide carried the rest of the ship out to sea when it broke up, but these were too heavy. Fancy all those people drowning so close to the shore. It just goes to show, doesn't it?'

‘Show what?' inquired Copper irritably. Amabel's story had spoilt her enjoyment in the sight of the thundering seas, and what had seemed so splendid a spectacle a few minutes ago, now appeared sinister and cruel and strangely menacing. All those people, going to their deaths so close to that same shore, in that same cold, savage sea …

‘The natives say,' continued Amabel, determined to extract the last ounce of gruesomeness from her story, ‘that when there's a storm the noise the tide makes coming over those boilers is the voices of the drowned men among the rocks calling for help, and that on stormy nights you can see their faces coming up through the water like…' She was interrupted by a sudden gasping cry from Mrs Stock, and broke off, staring: ‘What's the matter?'

Mrs Stock, still retaining her grip upon Dan and Hamish, was peering intently at the waves, her head a little thrust forward. She flushed at the inquiry, and laughed a little uncertainly. ‘It's funny,' she said, ‘but for a minute I thought I saw a face looking at me from out of a wave, just before it broke. I suppose that story about the drowned men of the
Enterprise
is making me see things. But it looked so real that it gave me quite a nasty shock. It was just out there
____
' She released Hamish's arm to point with a vermilion-tipped finger: ‘In the second line of waves. I expect it was one of those seal things. A dugong.'

‘A dugong?' exclaimed Copper, thrilled. ‘You mean one of those creatures that people used to think were mermaids? Where!… Where!'

They all turned with her to stare into the grey, crashing seas, their eyes confused by blown spray and distracted by bobbing wreckage.
‘There!'
said Valerie suddenly. ‘I believe I saw something over to the right. No, it isn't — it's only half a coconut!'

‘No, it's not,' said Copper. ‘It's – it's
____
What is it, Nick?
'

The cold ridge of water that was towering to its fall raced in upon the shore, and from beneath its curling crest, pale and glimmering against the dark wall of water and whiter than the boiling foam, there peered a face
____

Mrs Stock screamed at the top of her voice as the wave, crashing in spray, surged up the beach and flung its burden at their feet. Ferrers Shilto had returned.

‘Don't look, dear!' said Nick sharply. He caught Copper by the shoulder and swung her around forcibly. But Copper had seen, as they had all seen …

He lay on his back where the tide had flung him, his feet in the creaming froth of foam and flotsam, his eyes wide open and his face, unmarked by the jagged coral rocks, wearing an expression of almost ludicrous astonishment. His left hand lay across his chest and something glinted redly: a single splash of scarlet.

‘There's blood on it!' sobbed Copper. She wrenched herself from Nick's hold and faced the thing that lay on the beach. But the foam of the next wave dragged at its feet, disturbing the limp figure so that its hand fell away from its breast and lay palm down on the sand. And there was no blood. Only the red blotch of the big garnet that winked and glowed from the clumsy bronze ring on Ferrers Shilto's finger.

Nick said: ‘Get these women away, George. Purvis, you'd better get up to the hospital and collect a stretcher. Go on, Copper darling. You and Val see to those two women. George will go with you.' Copper turned obediently, and taking the shivering Amabel by the arm, dragged her away up the steep grassy slope above the beach, followed by George and Valerie almost carrying the now completely hysterical Ruby between them.

The noise of their departure died away among the palm trunks, and on the beach Nick, Charles and Hamish lifted the limp, wizened body. There was a small pinkish stain where the head had lain, but as Dan Harcourt stooped above it the lash of another wave obliterated it, and he straightened, frowning, and followed to where they laid the dead man above the reach of the waves.

John Shilto had made no move to help them, and now he stood motionless beside the bedraggled object that had been his cousin, staring down at it with a curiously unpleasant expression on his pasty features. I believe the bastard's actually
gloating!
thought Nick disgustedly. And turning away, he took out a cigarette and lit it, shielding the match flame from the wind with his cupped hands, and leant back against a palm tree to wait for Ronnie Purvis and the stretcher.

Charles and Hamish followed his example, but Dan Harcourt remained beside the body, staring down at it with an intent expression that suggested, strongly, a terrier at a rat hole. Presently he went down upon his knees and examined the widened pupils of the staring sightless eyes, and then, carefully and minutely, the fingers of both lax hands. The big garnet winked redly as it turned, and he let the cold hand fall and came to his feet again, brushing the sand off his knees.

Charles said: ‘It's odd that he hasn't been smashed up at all: you'd have thought all those rocks and reefs would have battered him to bits.'

‘Tide,' said John Shilto curtly, speaking for the first time. ‘It must have pulled him out of the harbour mouth clear of the rocks. And, as you see, when it turned it landed him back at the one place where there is a clear strip of sand. The current pulls in strongly towards this beach and most of the big wreckage gets flung up here.'

‘Oh yes?' said Hamish without interest, and looked anxiously at his watch. They had left the house just before five but now it was well past six o'clock, and aided by the thick blanket of the storm-clouds the swift tropic darkness was closing in on them: ‘I wish Ronnie would get a move on,' he said uneasily. ‘It'll be dark before he gets back.'

‘It's all right,' said Charles, ‘here he is now — with young Dutt and a couple of troops, plus stretcher. They must have run most of the way.'

‘Truda is behaving like a lunatic,' panted Ronnie Purvis, sliding down the bank on to the narrow strip of beach: ‘She says that she won't have the body in the hospital because she's there by herself — except for my wife, who for some goddam reason won't leave, and backs her up. If we insist, we'll have them both in hysterics. What the hell are we going to do? It'll be dark inside fifteen minutes and we can't bury him until tomorrow. We've got to park him somewhere for the night.'

‘What about the church?' suggested Hamish, prompted by some hazy notion of lying-in-state. Ronnie Purvis gave a short laugh. ‘Can you see Mrs Padre standing for it? Or half the old women in the place, for that matter! No. We've got to get him under cover somewhere. But I'm damned if I know where.'

‘If I might make suggestion,' said Dr Vicarjee's young assistant in his soft, imperfect English, ‘there is Guest House. It is empty and very seldom used. For many months now no one is using.'

‘That's the ticket!' said Mr Purvis with relief. ‘Well done, Dutt. Only outside visitors are ever put up in that moth-eaten dump, and they won't ever hear that it's been used as a morgue. If we planted him anywhere else you'd find people refusing to live in the house afterwards. Right, then. Take him along to the Guest House, will you.'

Hamish said: ‘I'll go along too, just to see it's O.K. I suppose you'll have to make some sort of examination, Dutt, now that Vicarjee is marooned on the mainland?'

Dan Harcourt took a swift step forward as though he would have spoken, but he evidently changed his mind, for he checked and turned away without speaking, and Charles said: ‘See you later then, Hamish; I gather we are both attending a Christmas party up at the house. We've certainly had a jolly day for it! Come on, Nick.'

They turned together and made off in the gathering darkness towards the house whose already lighted windows gleamed through the trees above them, and John Shilto, with one last, long stare at the sheeted figure being lifted on to the stretcher, turned on his heel and followed them.

11

If the Christmas Eve party had been a failure, the dinner party on Christmas night could definitely be classed, in the hostess's phraseology, as a total frost.

Mrs Stock had taken to her bed, but there had been no question of cancelling the party, for with the house full of guests the table was bound to be fairly crowded. And as Valerie said, one or two more were not likely to add or detract from the general gloom, so if she had to give a dinner party at all she might as well have Charles there to hold her hand under the table and help her through it.

Whether Charles fulfilled the first of these conditions was a matter only known to himself and Valerie, and as he happened to be left-handed the matter was in doubt. But in spite of his best efforts at cheerfulness and his fiancée's valiant support, the conversation at dinner was barely more than spasmodic. Copper looked white and on edge, while Nick was for once strangely taciturn.

Nick had problems of his own to contend with. The sight of Copper's distress had not only disturbed him but made him explicably angry: a combination of emotions that caused him considerable irritation, since he was not yet sure of his own feelings towards her. She appealed to him in a way that no woman had ever done before — and a good many women had held a temporary appeal for Nick Tarrent. But Copper was something different. There were times when he would have liked to snatch her up in his arms and kiss her so that she could not breathe, and others when he would have liked to pick her up and throw her into the sea — though whether from a sense of irritation with her or himself, or a desire to be free from her disturbing hold on his heart, he did not know. Nor was he at all sure that he wished to find out …

Seated on Nick's left, John Shilto was eating oysters in a manner which caused the majority of his fellow-guests to wish that he would extend his habitual silence to his consumption of food, and beyond him sat Dan Harcourt, absent-mindedly manufacturing bread pills and gazing thoughtfully into space. Valerie, looking drained and tired, was keeping up a desultory conversation with Leonard Stock and Ronnie Purvis, while beyond them Amabel and George sat side by side in a state of congealed gloom and unconcealed misery.

Silly idiots! thought Copper bleakly: they've only got to say two words and they'd be sobbing on each other's necks inside half a minute. I wonder why it's so difficult to say ‘I'm sorry?'… I wonder why you can't ever be really sensible about the people you care for most? I wonder why I should have dreamt that Ferrers had been stabbed? — everything else was the same, but there wasn't a knife …

Her thoughts, back again in that frightening groove, sheered away from it violently, and she turned feverishly to the silent Hamish. ‘I had no idea that there were oysters in these waters, Hamish. Do you ever find pearls in them, or are the pearl kind different?'

‘Eh?' said Captain Rattigan, waking abruptly from his sombre meditations. The demon of jealousy was gnawing painfully at Hamish's vitals, for although his goddess could do no wrong in his infatuated eyes, Ruby's attentions to Surgeon-Lieutenant Harcourt that afternoon had been more than marked. And almost more than Hamish felt himself able to bear. He had not heard Copper's question and she repeated it.