Rum Affair (32 page)

Now we should never know what was recorded. For not even Johnson had heard it. I thought, standing in silence beside Kenneth: now the concrete evidence clearing Kenneth and fixing the guilt for
Lysander
on Ogden has gone. All the other evidence against him and against me, was so far circumstantial. And the only real proof – the trick Ogden played on me with the pen and what followed – was seen only by Kenneth and Victoria.

Victoria even yet did not understand it. Victoria was always, in any case, for the underdog. I drew breath and Kenneth said, in an abominable voice: “Don’t. I can’t bear it.”

So long as there was the faintest chance that I might not be guilty, Kenneth would have loved and protected me: would even, perhaps, against all his own interest, have destroyed Johnson’s tape if he got it from Ogden, unheard.

But not now. He was a man, hell, of Victorian principles.

I didn’t try to dissuade him.

Soon after that, the lights of another boat appeared far away and approached dancing, blinkered by the intervening seas. It was a largish boat, a motor cruiser, and coming from the south, not the north where one would expect
Dolly
or
Binkie
to be. Kenneth, roped round the waist, knelt on the coachhouse roof with the Aldis, and after a moment, their signal replied.

Soon they were alongside; a tow rope passed, and a man in yellow oilskins jumped nimbly aboard to belay it. Then one by one we were guided over the rail and onto the other smooth manicured deck, shining like a well-kept street with its wash of storm spray; its windows glistening and spreading the warm golden light from its plate glass over the heaving, watery wastes.

Rotund in oilskins, the owner trotted out to greet us. “Madame Rossi! Victoria, my dear! Come in, come in. What an ordeal. What an experience! My, you’ll have something to terrify the old folks back home with! Come along. Hot baths. Hot drinks. Then straight to bed with a bottle. Not that kind of bottle, ha! Ha! Though I’d say you deserve it. Come along, sir. We’ve room for you all. Come along; May is waiting inside.”

It was the floating Wimpy Bar. May and Bill Bird with their power yacht
Evergreen.

I lay for a long time after waking in my warm bunk, watching the sunlight from the porthole casting a golden disc, seamed with watery light, on the panelled walls of my room.

It was very still; and only the remotest swaying beneath me betrayed that we were on water, in some Highland harbour no doubt. I felt, as one must feel after childbirth, peaceful and empty and numb. My recollections of arriving the night before were hazed over with heady fantasies of whisky and steam and the warm anaesthetic of bed. I remembered watching Kenneth talking low to Billy Bird and thinking, I was right. He is giving me up, in all the senses there are. That is the kind of man Kenneth is. With another, I might have persuaded this queer pair to help me. I might have got to the mainland and safely away.

At the time, it did not matter because I knew that bodily I could go nowhere. Now, I was sorry; but only a little. In Kenneth, I had found an honest man, who had been my undoing. In Johnson – I face facts; I admit it – I had found a master. I spit. Oh, I spit.

I lay dreaming, until my dreams were dispersed by a voice I knew: Rupert’s. Speaking very close, perhaps in the next room, with a porthole open near to mine, it said: “We played fair.”

And Kenneth’s, tired and roughened by exposure and shouting, replied: “You call that playing fair?”

Rupert said patiently: “You must see our side of it, sir. A hell of a lot of people depend on your work. There were other leaks, small ones we did know about. Not your fault, we were convinced, but we never felt we had your full confidence. So, we put you on unscheduled work, and took certain other precautions. And candidly, sir—”

“What?” said Kenneth’s voice sharply.

“You didn’t make it too easy.”

He hadn’t. He had protected me all along; and it had led to the
Lysander.
No wonder, poor Kenneth, you vanished from Rose Street when you found the flat had been bugged by your own people. Kenneth said now, curtly: “You didn’t make it easy for her, either. Hounding her . . . Spying on her . . . The only rules she knows are the hard ones she’s been made to live by. Now what chance has she got?”

Rupert said quietly: “You told us the truth about her yourself, sir. First thing this morning.”

“I know. Of course I did. I had to – once I knew what the truth was for certain.”

“It may reassure you to know that we gambled on that.” That was Johnson’s voice, rougher too than I remembered it. Of course
Dolly
had also been sailing all night, with Hennessy and Rupert and Johnson on board. Johnson went on. “You and Tina both wanted the tape for your various reasons. It seemed likely that, having got you together, Ogden would exorcise his anger by telling you all about Tina. Obviously, his powers of persuasion would be greater than mine.”

Kenneth said slowly: “So you meant us to join Ogden on
Seawolf?”

“Which would fall apart, in the classic phrase, if the termites stopped holding hands. Yes, it was intended. For the risks I made you run, I apologise. But Christ, Holmes! The risks moral and ethical you were running made tonight’s big thrills look pretty small beer . . . What got into you? Oh, no need to answer. Tina Rossi got into you. And despite this rugged exterior of poor quality talc, I assure you that after a week of her company, I can quite understand.”

I said aloud: “Thank you, Master.” The efficient, dispassionate voice ran straight on.

“It took them a long time to dig Tina Rossi out of your private life; and having dug her, they flung her at me . . .” There was a pause. Then Johnson went on. “I said I was responsible for the
Lysander.
In fact, I’m responsible for you. I’m the unofficial witch doctor in this bloody outfit. I’ve no commitments and no boss and no office. But if a key man, somewhere, develops unsavoury habits and starts throwing off stress signs like a Catherine wheel, I’m the bloke they ask to cruise around, painting, before the gunmen have to start moving in. Then, sometimes, the gunmen never need to move in . . . As when you told us the truth about Tina, of your own accord now.”

“And if I hadn’t told you?” asked Kenneth. The tidy, scientific mind.

“Use your imagination,” said Johnson shortly. “In any case, we had our own evidence long before then. There’s a fellow in Stornoway lit up like a Christmas tree with gold teeth and diamonds who’s told us all we wanted to know about Tina Rossi . . . I knew her history, of course: she made it her trademark. The rich little poor girl who can’t cry, who feels nothing, who has worked hard and earned her rewards without treading on anyone’s toes.

“I know that, left alone, you feel you could have given her the heart she has lost. I wonder in fact, if you could. You said something just now to Rupert about not making it easy for Tina. But that isn’t the best way for Tina. The best way is to make it hard; and that is what we did, Rupert and I, through all that voyage with
Dolly.
Innocently or not, she was your main worry, we thought. So we set out to discover what she was like; and then to teach her a little about herself. It sounds damned presumptuous. It nearly succeeded. If it
had
succeeded, she would have confessed to clear and save you. But there wasn’t quite enough time, or I hadn’t quite got what it takes . . . or
she
hadn’t quite got what it takes. It flopped, anyway.”

Rupert’s voice, defending the prestige of his master, broke in against the almost tangible barrier of Johnson’s intention. “She was hard as bloody nails and you know it,” said Rupert, my godlike golden friend Rupert. “As it was, we were afraid, sir, she’d make you her scapegoat. By eavesdropping in the Land Rover, Johnson put paid to that. But that’s not all. She’d have killed Michael Twiss before Ogden did, if she had got to him first, that night on Rum.”

“Michael Twiss? Why Michael Twiss?” Kenneth’s voice was distracted.

“Michael and she were in the blackmail thing together.” Johnson had stepped in, quietly, to break the news to the patient. Dear Johnson. “Selling and photographing papers was her racket solely, however. Twiss didn’t know about it, but she felt it would be convenient to land the blame on his corpse. She had a certain amount of justification in that Twiss had shown distinct signs of wanting to do the same thing to her. She didn’t see the logic of amassing a small fortune to have Michael Twiss walk away with it.”

“She could have had police protection. She could stop him stealing, by law.”

“She could. She tried to safeguard her life, actually, by closing her deposits against him. But the final outcome of any legal case might not have sustained her.”

He paused. He did not, unfortunately, drop dead. He said: “You know the story of how she met Michael Twiss and he became her musical manager? She never told all of it, and neither did he: it would have destroyed the
diva’s
elegant image. But he made one condition, the far-sighted Michael Twiss, when he first became this young, untried girl’s impresario.

In the greatest possible secrecy, he married her. Michael Twiss and Tina Rossi were husband and wife.”

There was a long silence. I listened, but Kenneth made no response I could hear. He was probably, like Rupert, rolling over the name on his tongue. Tina Twiss. Damn them.
Damn them to hell.

I had one other visitor that morning, as I lay sipping my coffee: Victoria. Slipping round the door, dressed in some unsuitable pink chiffon thing of May Bird’s, her hair still uncombed, her feet bare, she stood asking silent permission and then curled up on the chair by my bunk, her hands childishly folded, her gaze childishly direct. She had been crying. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’m sorry too. I knew Ogden wouldn’t kill you. It was just a test.”

She said: “He was sick, you know. His people were rotten to him. They set him up with the bare ribs of
Seawolf,
and just dared him to get on with it. He hated them – and all the people with money to spend . . . He loved his boat,” added Victoria, her voice thickening. “That was the really good part for him. And he got on well with everybody round the coast. They laughed at him, but they liked him. He always had a girl around you know, but he wasn’t interested in us. Just someone he could order around, who would wash his socks and rub his chest when he got his bronchitis . . . He was getting a lot better with me, I thought. You can’t blame him. I don’t blame anyone . . . What are you going to do?” asked Victoria.

I don’t know what I should have answered. No, that is not true. I do. But I didn’t get the chance. For the door opened and Rupert appeared, and said briskly and formally: “Good morning. Victoria, Dr Holmes wants you. Madame Rossi—”

“Rupert?” I said. “Tell me,
is
there a proper bulkhead between this cabin and the next?”

He looked much older than he had done, sailing
Dolly.
He said, still formally: “No. It’s just a partition. Johnson thought . . .”

“I know just what Johnson thought. And did you think I was as hard as bloody nails, darling Rupert,” I continued sweetly, “when holding my hand back on
Dolly?
I’m beginning to think Johnson’s the only ethical person among you – don’t go. There’s one thing I must ask you.”

“Ask Johnson.” He already had one foot out of the door.

“No, I want to ask you. Who won?”

He was careful. “Who won what?”

“Who won the race. The race, you idiot. You had a five thousand bet on with Hennessy.”

“Oh.” He had totally forgotten. “I don’t know. Didn’t we abandon it?
Seawolf
’s
out of it anyway, using her motor and being towed in the end.
Dolly
didn’t use her engine, except for the bits outside the race at Lochgair and South Rona. It was too damned rough last night: we got way off her, not on – and I don’t think
Binkie
did. Or
Symphonetta.”

“Symphonetta?
But we left her at anchor off Rum. Surely you brought Hennessy back with you on
Dolly?”

“Yes, we did. But the three boys evidently thought they ought to keep up with the old man. They sailed
Symphonetta
hell for leather after us, and came in damned nearly . . .”

A curious expression had overspread Captain Glasscock’s tanned face. I said encouragingly: “Yes? You came in this morning, after daybreak? By the way, where are we?”

“Tobermory. On the island of Mull. Yes. We came in, all sort of together. We’d all stayed hove-to more or less during the storm, and then
Evergreen
had radioed that she’d pick you up—”

“Evergreen?
Had she got Dr Holmes’ SOS?”

“Yes, of course,” said Rupert with some praiseworthy reluctance. “The Birds are colleagues of Johnson’s – did nobody tell you? We’ll be taking you off in about an hour – a boat’s coming from Oban. Anyway . . .” He returned to his decimating thought. “So when the storm moderated, we went on rather together.
Dolly
sailed well: we got in just ahead of
Binkie,
and
Symphonetta
a little behind. And . . .

“And I’ve just remembered,” said Rupert simply. “There was a bang as we came into harbour. I thought someone had tripped over a nail in the pier.”

“It was the winning gun,” I offered.

“It must have been,” said the good captain blankly. And a haze of dim, innocent pleasure surrounding him, he went out the door.

I can do this so simply with boys. But then, Johnson wasn’t a boy.

An hour later, dressed in my Ricci suit and sheared beaver jacket sent over from
Dolly,
I stepped out on deck. Below me was
Evergreen’s
speedboat, with two discreet plain-clothes men in her, waiting. And over there the ship which would take me to Oban and then to the south for public exhibition and trial.

It need not worry me now, the
Suor Angelisa
I was to do in November with Tolliati, who will not believe his leading oboe is sharp. I did not have to concern myself about the mosquitoes at the Caracalla baths or the long flight to Sydney next year.