Dolly and the Bird of Paradise - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 01 (14 page)

She took a deep breath, and looked at me properly, as if she were sorry for me. She said, ‘It was cancer, Rita, and serious. He didn’t
have
a future. He was really fond of you. He saw you as his heir, in his work and in everything else. He wanted you secure in this job, and learning how to take your place in the world. And when he thought he had it all fixed, he killed himself.’

I repeated, ‘Cancer. His heir,’ like a zombie. I didn’t believe her. He would never have told her that, and not me.

She said, ‘In every sense. I witnessed his will the other day, Rita. He left you everything he owned.’

I felt funny. They all looked at me, and then towards the hall, where you could hear Aurelio letting people in.

‘And so,’ said Johnson, ‘I think we should settle for suicide. For if we bring up the idea of murder, the only person with the time, the opportunity and the motive, ridiculous though it seems, is Miss Geddes.’

I saw Johnson’s eye catch the lawyer’s, and Kazimierz came over and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘You can be jailed for a long time in a foreign country if they get the wrong idea. I think it was suicide, and so does everyone else. But you’ll never find out, one way or the other, if they stick you behind bars. Will you leave it to us?’

A hint. A warning. A threat.

Whichever it was, I agreed.

They knew, I suppose, by the way I looked that they’d only put me off for the moment.

If they were going to stop me, they’d have to kill me, too.

Two days later, the Curtis family arrived from California to take the body back home for burial. It took two more days to make the arrangements, and for the Madeira police to decide that we could leave the island too if we wanted to.

I’m not sure, even yet, how I could have got through that time without Ferdy.

To begin with, he shed the Hon. Maggie like underwear. It wasn’t really fair, as she was fit to turn into a total drunk alone at the Sheraton, and the boys she knew weren’t going to help her do anything but drink harder.

Between them, Johnson and Natalie had her to meals and were nice to her, considering, and after a while she began to perk up. After that, it seemed you fell across her wherever Johnson was, and sometimes you would even find her looking for Johnson, who had been there a moment before but had rolled quietly away.

She had meant, I suppose, to use Johnson to make Ferdy jealous.

Instead she was on the way to getting a crush on him herself. From what I’d heard, there had been plenty of dramas in her life before. She’d be lucky if this got the length of a drama.

I didn’t mind, because it freed Ferdy to help me. Not to help me get over Kim-Jim’s death, but to help me find out who caused it.

I’d expected everyone to be against me, as they had on the night of the shooting. I’d kept my mouth shut then, when the
guardia
came, and the doctor, and the consular advisers, and all the questions began. When they talked about suicide, I didn’t speak. But when I went to Ferdy afterwards and said, ‘O.K. I went to that rotten party of Johnson’s because you said you’d help me find Eduardo. So now what about it?’

When I went to Ferdy and said that, I thought he and Natalie would be fiercely against my starting any sort of enquiries. But they weren’t.

It was Natalie who gave me the number of the clinic Kim-Jim had been treated at, and let me check it with Directory Enquiries, and then let me phone them in Lisbon and get them to tell me what had been wrong with him.

It was cancer. Affecting more than his eyes, and eating him up. He had had a month or two to live, that was all. They were sending a formal report to the authorities and to his family.

I went off and sat in his workroom for a long time. It was still neat, because I’m a tidy worker as well. It had always been neat because he’d known he would never use it again.

All the stuff in these cupboards now belonged to me. His television, his cassettes, his radio equipment. His investments. The money lodged in the banks whose papers they’d found in his desk. I wasn’t badly off already, but once the will was proved and everything properly wound up, I need never work again, even while Robina was still alive.

I hadn’t gone through his papers myself, or anything he had. I’d left his room as it was, with the photographs. Only, I’d taken back my yellow cat.

It stood with mine, in my room, with the same knowing black smile on its face. My mother had one too, but not my aunt. Already, there were more cats than people.

Then Ferdy had come in and said, ‘Look. About Eduardo. Where do you want to go? To his house again?’

I’d drawn up a list of what I wanted to do, and Ferdy did it with me.

Eduardo wasn’t at home. He had left the sledges, we understood, and had taken casual work, they didn’t know what. He had promised to come when he had a day off .

At the sledges, the story was different. Eduardo had been sacked for staying away once too often. Of course, he would get work somewhere else in the season. If not in a hotel, then at his father-in-law’s. There was always work in bananas.

I remembered the cauldron. I said, ‘I thought the family worked with cane?’

His brother-in-law did, they said.. But his father-in-law – didn’t I know? – was overseer of Coombe’s Bananas.

We had borrowed Aurelio’s estate car. As he got behind the wheel again, Ferdy whistled. ‘Rita, my Bird of Paradise. I don’t see how he can have done poor bloody Kim-Jim any harm, but I begin to believe that the sledge-run wasn’t an accident. Van Diemen paid your Eduardo to wreck us, and meanwhile got himself out. The chap’s crazy.’

The sun fell on this vine called a Golden Shower covered with big orange trumpets and I could see the twinge on Ferdy’s face as he drove past, but he didn’t say anything. He hadn’t even put his camera into the back. A good pal, was Ferdy.

He just said, ‘O.K., let me guess. Up the hill to the baby farm? Or the airport first?’

We went to the airport first.

They confirmed that Mr van Diemen had lost an afternoon flight to Lisbon, and had rebooked for the following morning.

They confirmed that on the second occasion, the booking had been taken up.

They agreed that they knew Mr van Diemen well by sight. He came through all the time.

They couldn’t confirm that the man who actually flew was Mr van Diemen. It had been a very full plane. The most they could say was that no one remembered speaking to him. It would take some time to trace the steward and hostesses on that particular plane, never mind find out when they might land again in Madeira. If it was important, perhaps Mrs Sheridan would write a letter? Or was this a police enquiry?

They had been pretty helpful, considering, and Ferdy had been brilliant but he had to sheer off at that.

What was clear was that there was no proof, at the moment, that Roger van Diemen had actually flown out the second time, and not someone else using his ticket.

The Coombe Banana Company’s office were helpful as well.

As far as they knew, Mr van Diemen had left when he said. They hadn’t heard from him since. They didn’t expect to, until his next visit. Yes, he travelled regularly between all parts of the Coombe empire. If he had completed his business in Europe, he would probably be in South America or the Caribbean by now. The Liverpool office might be able to supply us with his movements.

‘He doesn’t sound crazy,’ said Ferdy. ‘At least, they’re still entrusting all their bananas to him. I suppose in a firm of that size, someone would notice if the Financial Director had gone off his rocker. Maybe it’s just lust for Natalie that does him in. Do I look crazy?’

‘I thought Natalie was lusting for you,’ I said.

I looked at him. He was frowning. I said, ‘If that guy didn’t fly out, he’s still here.’

‘Point taken,’ said Ferdy shortly.

He was still frowning. I made an effort. ‘So,’ I said, ‘if you make it with Natalie, for God’s sake keep it quiet. You want to finish the flower book.’

‘What do you mean,
if I
make it with Natalie?’ Ferdy said. The frown had disappeared. He whooped. ‘Rita! You care!’

The car turned off the coast road and began climbing again into the mountains. The sun went in. We passed another shower of dangling trumpets and then plunged into pine trees.

‘Don’t worry,’ Ferdy said. I could see songs from Prince Eager climbing up inside his neck. The thought of sex always cheers him up and he’s not the sort, anyway, to mope about anything much.

‘Don’t worry. From now on, I shall confine my practices entirely to flowers. Madeira, the Island of Sin. All the bloody bees’ll come off with V.D.’

It didn’t snow, but we ran into mist higher up, and it was no joke rounding the bends, with trucks and taxis and things looming up with their lights on. At one point we were held up for five minutes by a flock of sheep on the road, and then later on by a skidded lorry trying to get out of a ditch.

There was no mist around Eduardo’s mother-in-law’s house, and you could see the boiler boiling in the back yard with no trouble. I thought the sight of Ferdy getting out of the car and walking up to the front door was worth the Vicarage Cross, and told him later.

At the time, I couldn’t get a word in edgeways because of the great welcome he was getting, and invitations to come in and see the baby the Senhor had blessed with so many escudos, and drink a glass of wine to his health.

We did, too. We walked through about every room in the house on our way to that baby, and met all its relatives, young and old through four generations, ending up with the baby’s mother parked in bed like a double airship, cheerfully feeding the baby, and not from a bottle, I can tell you.

Ferdy’s eyes glistened with sorrow from not having his camera. Then they stopped glistening as I noticed who was sitting next to the bed and dug him in the ribs.

‘That,’ I said, ’is Eduardo.’

It was, too, although he didn’t have his hat on. He got up, wearing the same grin that went from ear to ear under this huge Pancho Villa moustache and said, ‘But Senhora! So generous, so kind over the hat! And this is the Senhora’s husband?’

I believe in attack.

‘Eduardo,’ I said. ‘Where is Mr van Diemen?’

The smile met round the back of his neck. ‘The Senhora knows Senhor van Diemen! But naturally, the Senhora and her husband know all of importance on Madeira. Eduardo is glad to have served her.’

‘Where?’ I said. ‘We want to speak to Mr van Diemen. Urgently. Is he here? Was he here yesterday?’ I waited, and then said, ‘Eduardo, it would be worth a lot to me to know just what Mr van Diemen has been doing. An
awful
lot.’

Eduardo exchanged dimpling smiles with his mother-in-law and turned back, all attention.

‘Mr van Diemen? This visit, alas, I have not seen him. Since we met, the Senhora and I, have I not been here, to look after my wife’s family? They will tell you. Not a step have I stirred from the house these three days, except to go for the priest and the doctor.

‘Mr van Diemen? No. But why come to me? There is an office in town, a big office. There you will get your answer.’

He produced this great smile, and held it. I gazed at him, and so did Ferdy, and so did everyone else in the room except the baby, who suddenly got filled to the brim and fell off the slopes.

A jet of milk hit the ceiling and fell like a tennis-court marker along and down Ferdy’s tanned head and fawn whiskers.

Ferdy said, ‘Rita?’

I knew it was awful and they were all lying and everything, and I was heartsick myself underneath it all, but I’d never seen anything so brilliant as the horror of Ferdy’s face at that moment. Even though I shut my eyes and dug my teeth in my lip, I could feel the tears of laughter hanging on to all my lashes.

By the time I opened my eyes, Ferdy was laughing too, politely, along with everyone else, and wiping his head with his hankie.

We thanked Eduardo, drank our wine, and got out, leaving another pittance on the bed for the baby. In the car, I said I was sorry.

‘It is the first time,’ said Ferdy, ‘I have been zonked in the eye by a Portuguese baby. You realise we can’t prove anything?’

‘I know. But we haven’t proved they couldn’t have done it,’ I said. ‘Van Diemen could have got Eduardo to do things for him. He must have, or Eduardo would have shopped him. They could have planned the sledge bit between them. They could even have planned —’

‘Rita,’ said Ferdy. The mist had cleared. He was driving quite carefully down back to the coast again, honking at bad corners and thinking. He said, ‘Even if van Diemen and Eduardo were both seen outside the villa the night Kim-Jim died, how could they possibly have killed him? That’s the real facer.’

‘I know,’ I said.

After a bit, he said, ‘Then what next? Say the word. I’ll do anything you want. You could try to get Eduardo alone, if you want to see what a really big bribe could do. If you think it’s worth it.’

I said, ‘I don’t think he’d take it, even if the family weren’t there. He’s sort of a family man. I don’t think he’d think twice about fixing that sledge trip. Or any other kind of stupid, dangerous trick. The thing is…’

‘You liked him,’ said Ferdy. ‘And you don’t think he would deliberately set out to murder.’

I thought that was very decent, considering how, one way or another, they had soaked him. I said, ‘I did like him.’

‘I could tell,’ said Ferdy. ‘He’s got your sense of humour. Well, what? What do we do next?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. I really didn’t. And it wasn’t fair to keep Ferdy dangling. He had his own work to do. I said, ‘Natalie wants to get back to London.’

She had some meetings to set up for the film. Since Kim-Jim died, she hadn’t asked me again if I wanted the contract, and I hadn’t told her.

Ferdy said, ‘Will you stay with her? With that money, I suppose you can do anything you like.’

‘It’s too soon. I don’t know that either,’ I said. ‘But if she wants me, at least I’ll go back to England with her. By the time she’s ready for the next trip, I’ll know what I want to do.’

‘Plenty of work in London just now,’ Ferdy said. ‘The Princess’s wedding. And they’re doing a telly film drama series of that American book. Nice work there, if you want it.’

‘I know,’ I said.

We were nearly back at the villa. Ferdy drew in, and stopped the car, and turned and looked at me.

‘Poor Rita. You bloody miss him, don’t you?’ he said. ‘I’m not going to pry, but you know the questions everyone is asking. Sugar daddy? Future husband? Real daddy, even?’

The idea of Kim-Jim as my father made me snort, which I suppose was the idea.

All the same, in a way Ferdy deserved an answer. And Kim-Jim deserved that folk thought of him decently, as he had been.

I said, ‘Of course he wasn’t my father. And I didn’t go to bed with him either. Ferdy, we’d only
met
once before.’

Ferdy’s round eyes were gazing at me quite seriously between the earrings, and I tried to explain.

‘He was just a nice, lonely man who needed to talk shop with a pal. I don’t know why he picked me to leave his money to, except that he didn’t have anyone else. I was sort of his cats’ home.’

Ferdy didn’t speak. I went on sitting, and he went on looking at me. Then he took a spike of my hair on either side and turned my face round, and grinned at me.

‘What’s this cats’ home?’ he said. ‘Who named you the Scotch Bird of Paradise? King Ferdy, the world’s best photographer. Who’s going to take London by storm, and to hell with Madeira and the rest of the world’s sweaty islands? Rita Geddes, the world’s best make-up artist. Check?’

Ferdy can get very sentimental. Singing ‘The Song of the Flea’ really suits him much better. But he means well.