Rum Affair Read online

  “Where is Ogden?” asked Bob Buchanan. Without their woolly hats, he and his wife looked like brown pickled otters. They chose to drink gin.

  “Sulking,” said Lenny under his breath. He was right, too. With Victoria beguiled from his side, Ogden had shown no inclination to board Johnson’s liner friend Evergreen; and had stayed on his own yacht to towel and change. Later, he was supposed to motor Dolly’s dinghy over to Dolly, trailing his own recovered small boat; and I wouldn’t trust him to do even that, but that he wanted to collect a pair of substitute oars Johnson had offered him. Like Lenny, I found riling the permissive atmosphere concerning Ogden. As for Victoria, she would learn too late that in this world one must look out for oneself.

  Johnson sat down beside me.

  “Well?” I said. There are some things which are beneath me, and I do not mind delegating those. I disliked having had to abandon this particular enquiry to Johnson, but it was necessary. Perhaps Johnson was as well known as I was. But he had an excuse through his burglar for making it, and I had no excuse at all.

  So I said: “Well?” in a tone no doubt less than patient; and Johnson stared down thoughtfully at the pitcher of Scotch in his hands, glass to glass, and said: “Would you like to know why Michael Twiss is actually here?”

  There was a short silence, broken by a distant rendering of “Any Old Iron”.

  “I can guess,” I said gloomily.

  “Quite. Why didn’t you tell me,” said Johnson pleasantly, through both parts of the bifocals at once, “that Dr Kenneth Holmes was on Rum?”

  Damn. “Because I wanted to find out for myself first what really happened in Rose Street,” I said sulkily. “How did you hear about Kenneth?”

  The owl-like glasses inclined. “If Kenneth Holmes really killed Chigwell, what on earth do you imagine you could do anyway? Although I must admit he’s still in the running. The police have found no trace of my burglar or your small, warty friend. Nor, I deduce, have they yet found the late Mr Chigwell, with coat hanger or without. Lastly, if you wish to know, I learned of Dr Holmes’ whereabouts in the same way that Michael Twiss did: from the radio news.”

  “He’s dead,” I said blankly.

  “He’s not dead. He’s the Ministry’s chief explosives engineer, now doing prototype instrument work for the Nature Conservancy on Rum, and he has been called in to advise after the bomb outrage on the submarine Lysander.”

  “The nuclear submarine? The one undergoing trials somewhere up here?”

  “Correct. She was returning to her base in South Rona and had passed outside Raasay when the explosion occurred. It could have sunk her, and the damage to instrumentation was considerable, I quote, but she was able to return under her own power. A navigating officer, a naval scientist and a leading mechanic in the affected compartment lost their lives. You are not alone in suffering tribulations at sea.”

  He was pipped. “You’re angry because I came with you under false pretences,” I said gently. “I’m sorry.”

  “Goodness me. Dear girl,” said Johnson, and rapped his pipe smartly on a big onyx dish with a chromium model of Evergreen stuck on its rim, “I want your face, that’s all. I don’t want your confidences.”

  He was a cool customer. Perhaps he and I had more in common than I thought. A man who knows his own mind, under some circumstances, can make a very good ally.

  The idea sustained me, or nearly, through an evening of nerve-wracking ennui. We were shown over the boat, not missing a deep freeze or a centrifugal windscreen wiper, by May Bird, who then put on a frilly apron over the pink cloqué and served a large, expensive meal which she had cooked herself, no doubt by radar. After this, having sung comic songs to each other without cease over the radio telephone, the neighbours arrived from the floating trattorias all around, each boatload slightly plastered but prepared to sink its trayful of vodka and remain to join in the good, clean, innocent fun. A little complex of cigars and emba minks settled down to high stake poker in one corner, but I did not join them. I never gamble.

  Halfway through all this, Michael caught me. By that time it had occurred to me that if we were going to have a row, we might as well have it masked by the bedlam on Evergreen rather than amid the gentlemanly hush of Dolly. I allowed Michael Twiss therefore to whisk me into an empty, heavily upholstered cabin where, leaning arms folded against a bleached walnut wardrobe, he fixed me with his why-the-hell-all-the-portamento basilisk stare.

  “Right,” he said. “Now we know why you were so bloody anxious to get a date fixed at Edinburgh. Your gorgeous big chemist is working up north.”

  My Mr Twiss was a sharp little man: sharp of feature, sharp of voice and filed to a positive barb where his ten per cent was concerned. After Johnson, I was getting more than fed up with the carping, but it was no good getting riled. I said: “You have a coarse little mind, Michael. Calm down. You needn’t call in the Salvation Army just yet.”

  “I told you to drop Holmes,” said Michael. Having to keep his voice low was a little handicapping his style. “It’s bad for you, and bad for your career. And if it’s all so damned innocent, why hide the fact that he’s not in London but Rum?”

  “Because he asked me to,” I said nastily. “He’s important. He’s a scientist, remember? Anyway, how did you find out?”

  Same story. He had heard a news broadcast about the explosion on the submarine Lysander. Why the hell they had chosen this moment to broadcast Kenneth’s name I should like to have known. Filling my lungs, I settled down on the mock ponyskin bedspread, and proceeded to handle my manager.

  It wasn’t a jolly encounter, but I did it, eventually. After all, if I’d been itching to fling my cap over the opera house and live the life of Riley with Kenneth, I should have done it long since. I reiterated, wearily, that nothing mattered to me, either, but my career, and I was not likely to jeopardise it. That my painting by Johnson was not something to abandon lightly, nor was my promising new friendship with Hennessy. That provided Michael also came aboard Dolly, what the hell could I do that would shake his shirtmaker’s confidence?

  He was not easy to placate, but he granted me so much, angrily, on my final, clinching argument that I had no other dates anyway. I was not walking out of the big slot in the Württembergische Staatstheater Ballet in order to snuggle with Kenneth. I was on holiday; and that was bloody well that.

  Then May Bird’s voice hunting us began to ring through the passages, and we had to abandon hostilities and return to the gig.

  I wasn’t sorry. I had begun to feel that there were either too many or far too few people around. I wanted people I knew on either side of me, and a good solid wall at my back.

  Johnson said as much, too, later on, when the saloon had been cleared for the Birds’ double act and we sat on the carpet behind a row of motor cruisers in beaded dresses, falling about laughing. The jokes were all about the Prime Minister, lodgers and Sheffield Wednesday, but they still fell about laughing, and May Bird, pleased as hell, gave them an encore, tripping back on her fat little feet in their ghastly pink satin shoes. Johnson murmured: “Stick it. It won’t last for ever. And you’re safest in crowds. You couldn’t slip a stranger in here. They know each other too well.”

  “It isn’t worrying me,” I said.

  The bifocals inspected me: I could feel them. “Isn’t it? You’re not only mixed up with a vanishing boyfriend and a murder, you know. You’re in the middle of some damned big cock-up to do with nuclear submarines. Or hadn’t it struck you?”

  “It’s struck me all right,” I said gloomily. This was what was known as a dilemma. I wanted protection, all right. But I didn’t want Johnson Johnson supervising any meeting with Kenneth. The situation with Kenneth was delicate enough as it was.

  “D’you really want to go on?” said Johnson. The canal should be safe enough, but we’ll have to spend the night in Crinan basin tomorrow.”

  Billy Bird, in a straw bloater, had joined his wife, and someone was working a record player. I
t burst into sound. Billy tipped his hat over one eye and picked up a cane. May sidled behind him, kneecaps crossed; plump hand arched on his shoulder, and they both plunged into song:

  “She’s . . . ma . . . lady love; she is ma dove . . . ma . . . baby love.

  She’s . . . no gal . . . for sittin’ down to dream . . .”

  It was all there: the cocked eyebrow, the nimble reverse, the one-step, the little unified skip. The audience stamped with delight. “I want to go on,” I said, and smiled. I could see my wrapped-around hair shining in his glasses, and my citrine topazes. “If I may.”

  “It’s your risk,” said Johnson. “We’ll be with you all through the canal, and at night you can lock the cabin door and we’ll tarpaulin the hatch. Although anyone who knows boats can usually tell the moment we’re boarded. The rest of the time we’ll pick you a bodyguard. If your manager doesn’t object.”

  “Object! He’s the one I need guarding from,” I hissed under my breath. “He doesn’t like Kenneth. He’d stop me meeting him if he possibly could.”

  “I see. Then in that case,” said Johnson, taking out his pipe, “we’d better not chat in his hearing about your body in Rose Street. Or Kenneth’s body, as it might prove to be.”

  “She is de Lily . . . of Laguna . . .

  She is ma Lily . . . and ma Rose.”

  And exit off, with Billy’s straw hat held high over his ruffled white head, and May’s diamond earrings swinging, one beat behind.

  It seemed a long time before the party ended and I was finally back in bed on Dolly. The weather had changed. Coming out on deck we had found the water quite black, freckled with grey where the white caps were catching our light. The air moaned in, making the geraniums shake.

  Now, half-asleep on Dolly between my monogrammed sheets I could hear the wind and waves still, and the creaking of wood; and buzzing among them, my own tangled thoughts. I wondered, now, whether I was right in pursuing Kenneth like this. Why not, indeed, forget the whole affair, leave the country, let fate and the police take their course? Johnson would help me. Hennessy, even.

  I thought about it, and I might even have acted on it if Johnson and Michael hadn’t both been so keen that I should. I am an obstinate woman, and I dislike being pushed. By anyone, anywhere.

  Then I must have slept, for how long I don’t know; for I was wakened by a sound I could swear was a human voice, calling my name. “Valentina!” it said. “Valentina, my sweet!”

  I sat up, my heart giving huge, exhausted beats like a worn-out dynamo. I was dreaming. That was a name only one man, ever, had been permitted to use. I listened again.

  The wind. The sound of a thin rope, whipping. The clink and gurgle of waves on the hull. The creak of decking over my head, and a muffled thud.

  Then again a voice, the same voice, the same guarded whisper, so careful not to waken the rest: “Tina! Valentina, come quickly!” It could only be Kenneth.

  Then I swung my legs out of bed slowly, and took my dressing gown slowly, and opened my door. Where would the others be? Johnson had stayed on board Evergreen. Lenny and Rupert were in the main saloon bunks, and Michael had the big stateroom forward, at the other end of the boat. Unless Lenny and Rupert heard and opened the door into the cockpit, I was safe. I stepped into the cockpit . . . There was no one.

  No one on the deck to right or to left. It was very dark. The sea was black: the sky black and starless. No lights showed now on land, and none in the bay but for the tossing sparks of ships’ anchor lights. Far across, in Evergreen, a single window was lit.

  I looked in front. Among the tangle of dark shadows made by mast and rigging and coachhouse roof, I could make out nothing alien in the dark: no warm, waiting presence with muscular body and rough, uncared-for brown hair. The air round me was damp and sharp and I shivered, and shivered again as in the dark the queer whine in the rigging rose a tone and then another, and fell, whimpering like a child. Then from behind me came the whisper again. “Valentina! Tina, my darling!”

  I turned; and there on the roof of my cabin was the kneeling shadow I looked for, black in the black night. The wind rose. I stretched out my hands. The orchestration high in the wire rigging was rising fast to a scream. The presence on the cabin roof, as if stirred by the wind rose up over me. Die Fledermaus – a man, a whirlwind, a muffled, cloaked bat.

  It rose. It fell. I felt the warmth of its flesh. And then all the howling darkness about me was resolved in a single sharp blow over the shell of my skull that lifted me, hurled me, propelled me over the edge of the cockpit and into the sea.

  “She’s coming to. How do you feel?” It was Michael’s voice, full of anxiety for his investments. I opened my eyes.

  I was in bed in my cabin on Dolly, but the swaying motion had stopped. It was still night: the lights were on and someone had undressed me. The someone was bending over me now, on the other side from my manager – May Bird. I thought of the whisper, the howling in the rigging, the blow from which my head reeled and ached, and the sight of the black water rushing to meet me; and my eyes blackened and my heart thumped again. May Bird, her brightly painted face raddled and puffy said: “Now you lie still, love. Dolly’s boom never killed anyone yet, but you had a right do all the same. Johnson’s gone for a doctor.”

  Michael looked sullen, and I knew what he was thinking. Bad publicity. A drunken party with some second-hand concert artistes in some dead-and-alive spot in Scotland, ending in a spectacular ducking. I said hoarsely: “I don’t want a doctor. I’m all right. What happened?”

  I didn’t want a fuss either. If Kenneth was there.

  Soon everybody had explained what had happened. The wooden crutch for the boom had blown down in the wind, a lashing had given way, and a sudden gust of wind must have brought the heavy spar hard over just as I stepped up on deck. Luckily, to men used to the sea, the slightest change in a boat’s motion means action. The bump, the lurch and the splash as I went over had both Lenny and Rupert awake instantly, and they fished me hastily out. No one mentioned seeing anyone else. Johnson had been summoned over the R.T. and had brought Mrs Bird: Michael had slept through the whole thing and had had to be wakened. We were now in the canal basin where we had motored.

  If it was Kenneth who had called me, why did he go? Or was it Kenneth at all? Sitting up, feeling sick, I listened to Rupert and Lenny in furious argument about their bloody crutch. I didn’t know whose fault it was and I didn’t care, though Lenny was perhaps protesting the most. He swore he tested it when we all came back from Evergreen, and it was quite secure then. I was examined and pronounced lucky to have a hard head; Michael swore the doctor to secrecy; and finally I persuaded everyone to let me have my own way and proceed with the cruise as we had planned.

  But I wondered. Oh, God, I wondered if I was right.

  SEVEN

  On the following day, Wednesday, the sun shone and the day’s slow motoring through the Crinan Canal provided all the convalescence I needed. While Rupert and Lenny leaped up and down cavernous walls, threw and received ropes, switched engines on and off, heaved open lock gates in the company of curious sunburnt men and their dogs, greeted oncoming boats and dispensed, for four solid hours, more invidious regional gossip than fifty women in fifty teashops could do in a lifetime, Johnson continued to paint me; and as he did so, I talked.

  Afterwards, I wondered if it was the gin or merely the blow on the head which made me so loquacious. Or perhaps, when there is violence in the air, one has an instinct to make one’s will to society: to be known and to be understood.

  I am not ashamed of my past. On the contrary, I like to remember how I, from nothing and less than nothing, have become Tina Rossi, with ninety thousand pounds in the bank, and cinnamon diamonds.

  Nor am I bitter. In the war my father’s family in Poland were killed. I suffered nothing but to be born in Fife, Scotland, where my father flew with other exiled Polish airmen, met and married my mother, and then died in a crash. I never knew him – or my mother
, who died when I was born.

  I was in an institution of one sort or another until I was seven. Then I was at school, and finding out that children from a Home were regarded as different; and also finding out what “bastard” implied. My father had married my mother, but the result was the same. He was a foreigner; she was a potato picker; they were both absent, and my mother’s relatives were largely unemployed and unemployable. It didn’t do to shout back or to fuss. I changed the subject, made a new game, admired a hairclasp. My teacher had by then discovered that I had a talent – a high, true voice – but it didn’t do to make much of that either. I hated it when I was singled out to deliver a song. It destroyed in a minute all the laborious progress I had made.

  Later, when I was passed from one foster home to another, it was different. A talent brought the household some credit. I sang in church choirs, and was spoken to by ministers’ wives, but the attention I attracted was fleeting. In those days one moved without warning. I would hear a strange voice downstairs, and my foster mother of a year or less would shout to me to fold up my clothes. In half an hour I would be packed and walking downstairs, to the nameless persons waiting below.

  Sitting in the train with a strange woman, in a shrunken coat with my battered bag on the rack, I never wondered where I was going. Places were all much the same. The woman might have two children of her own, or three, as well as several she was paid for; and human nature being what it is, the best of the clothes and the food went to her own. I learned to keep house in a dozen different ways in a dozen different sorts of places, from stone fisher cottages on the windy, raw east coast to a shepherd’s timber house in the Borders. Every woman had her own way, and what I learned to do in one place I had to unlearn quickly at the next.

  I moved on from one to the other without regret, and bent all my mind only to making myself acceptable and useful as quickly as possible. I worked hard, and I smiled all the time. And while I was smiling, I decided that one day I was going to be rich, and famous, and sought after. I would imagine, while writing my weekly letters to all my foster mothers and to the lady superintendents of the homes, how I would gradually break the news. I was a constant letter writer in those days.