Death in the Andamans Page 9

  She began to giggle, and Copper, catching the infection, said unsteadily: ‘You missed the high spot of the evening. George was clutching a glass of fruit cup that he’d just collected for Amabel, and when Rosamund yelled he nearly jumped out of his skin and the fruit cup went all over Amabel. She was simply soaked, and that new georgette dress of hers immediately shrunk up like a bashful snail — it was on the tight side to begin with, and you know how that stuff shrinks when it’s wet! What with a few slices of banana nestling coyly in her hair and a strip of lemon peel hanging round one ear, she looked incredibly abandoned and rakish, and when George tried to pick them off she slapped him. Poor George! I’m afraid his faith in women has received a nasty crack.’

  Valerie leant her head against a mosquito pole and gave way to immoderate mirth, and presently, mopping her eyes and striving to recover her composure, observed that it was not a bit nice of them to collapse into giggles like that, as it was simply horrid at the time, even though it might seem funny now. ‘I thought poor Rosamund was never coming round. However, she seemed all right by the time they removed her. Dan and Charles went along with her to the hospital while Ronnie went down to fetch her night things.’

  ‘The hospital is much the best place for her,’ said Copper firmly. ‘Besides, it’ll give Truda something to fuss over if she really hasn’t any patients at the moment. Funny, the way Rosamund refused flatly to go back to her own house. You’d have thought she’d much rather go home instead of insisting on being taken off to sleep in a ward under Truda’s eye.’

  ‘Thank goodness she did!’ sighed Valerie, ‘I was scared stiff she was going to stay here. I simply had to ask her, but I was madly grateful when she held out for the hospital. She’d evidently made up her mind to go there or go off her head, and if she’d stayed here I’d have gone off mine! One hysterical female in the house is more than enough, and Rosamund’s yells have evidently brought dear Ruby to the verge of a nervous breakdown. I bet the miserable Leonard is in for a hell of a night!’

  ‘“We don’t have much money,”’ quoted Copper flippantly, ‘“but we do see life!” What did they do with Amabel, Val? I lost sight of her in the general flurry after she’d taken that crack at George. Surely they haven’t let her go back to the Purvis mansion unchaperoned?’

  ‘Good heavens, no! She’s gone along to the hospital with Rosamund, which leaves Ronnie abandoned by his entire harem. Rosamund clung to her like a demented limpet and refused to move without her; though whether from a well-founded mistrust of Ronnie, or because she finds something very sedative and soothing about Amabel, I don’t know. Anyway they have both trailed off to Truda’s tender care.’

  ‘I wish I’d known that Dan had gone up to the hospital with them,’ said Copper. ‘I’d have told him to bring back some form of sedative for Ruby. Chloroform, for preference!’

  ‘Oh gosh!’ gasped Valerie, giving way to a renewed attack of mirth: ‘I did enjoy that part of the evening’s fun and games! I shall never forget all your faces when she came bursting out of her bedroom on top of Rosamund’s big scene, and rushed into the drawing-room like Sarah Bernhardt in pink pyjamas.’

  ‘I didn’t notice her pyjamas,’ confessed Copper. ‘Her dressing-gown was what got me. I might have known that she’d have one like a film vamp’s, all yards of train and acres of pink satin edged with marabou trimming. The minute I saw it I knew it was only a question of seconds before somebody fell over it, what with everyone dashing about being helpful, and of course it would be the wretched George.’

  ‘I wonder which hurt most?’ mused Valerie. ‘The smack in the eye he got from Amabel, or the crack on the jaw he got from Ruby? They both sounded pretty crisp.’

  ‘Oh, poor George,’ gasped Copper: ‘It’s a shame to laugh! But it was funny. At least I thought it was funny until she tripped over her own train and collapsed on to Nick, and then I admit my sense of humour wilted a bit.’

  ‘Personally, I was extremely grateful, because if it had been anyone but Nick the confusion would have been ten times worse. I thought he dealt with her in a masterly manner. “The Silent Service” for ever! Charles, for instance, would probably have felt it his duty to prop her on a sofa and fetch brandy or salts or something, but Nick simply slung her up as if she’d been a sack of coals and dumped her back in her bedroom with, as far as I can make out, instructions to stay there and put a sock in it. She was so astonished she stopped squealing at once and didn’t move out of her room again. Which you must admit was no ordinary achievement.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ agreed Copper doubtfully. She sat silent for a few moments, slowly removing cold cream with a wad of pink tissue and frowning at her reflection in the mirror, and presently observed thoughtfully: ‘Dan says he has a hell of a temper. Ruby was gushing about Nick at that Corbyn’s picnic, and Dan told her that if she’d ever had the wrong side of Nick’s tongue she’d realize that skinning was preferable. It’s funny, because I should have thought he was too lazy.’ She rose, yawning. ‘I suppose we ought to go to bed. I’m dead tired. What’s the time, Val?’

  ‘Nearly midnight. In a few minutes it’ll be Christmas Day. Somehow it doesn’t seem possible, does it?’

  ‘No,’ said Copper, pulling out the edge of her mosquito net and scrambling into bed, ‘but I don’t see why it shouldn’t. It’s odd how one always associates Christmas with snow and icicles and holly, when the first Christmas Day belongs to a little hot town in the East with palm trees and camels and flat-roofed houses.’

  ‘Well I must admit I like the Frost-and-Carol idea best,’ confessed Valerie. ‘And as for Christmas morning without a stocking, it’s a mere hollow mockery to me. But this wretched Maharaja having let us down with a thump, there won’t be any stockings tomorrow: or many presents either.’

  She stopped and lifted her head, listening. The clock in the lower hall was striking midnight, and they kept silence until the last chime died away in the darkness.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Val.’

  ‘Merry Christmas, Coppy darling — and good-night.’ Valerie slid off the bed and tucked in Copper’s mosquito net for her, and switching off the light vanished through the curtained doorway into her own room. A few minutes later her own light winked out and the house settled down under the blanket of the stormy darkness.

  The wind still blew in a half gale, and above the steady drumming of the rain Copper could hear the muffled clamour of the sea raging furiously about the tiny island. There was a certain sullen rhythm in that sound which at any other time might have been soothing, but tonight, mingled with the desolate, wolf-pack howl of the wind and the remorseless thunder of the rain, it held something sinister, and the thought that had been kept at bay all the evening rose as a clear picture before Copper’s mental eye; held relentlessly before her by the roar of the breakers.

  Somewhere out in that cold, malignant sea, Ferrers Shilto’s wizened body must be being dragged and battered by wind and tide; swung and tossed between black, hissing hills of water; pounded in a roaring maelstrom of foam upon the jagged coral reefs of forgotten beaches, or swept out in the close clasp of the currents into that lonely, landless sea that stretched away and away to the South Pole____

  Copper dropped into an uneasy sleep …

  She was standing among the coconut trees on the shore of North Bay in a high wind that tore through the palm fronds and drove the steel-grey seas in upon the rocks at her feet. Something glimmered whitely among that welter of foam: something now half-seen, now hidden by the flung spume. It came nearer — larger — clearer … and as the wind blew louder, it shook itself clear of the grey sea, and Ferrers Shilto came walking up out of the bay. Water ran from his soaked garments and streamed in wind-blown rivulets from his shock of grey hair, and a band of seaweed that had caught about his skinny throat fluttered in the wind as though he wore a curiously woven scarf. His small, wrinkled face wore an expression of almost ludicrous astonishment, and as he came nearer, Copper saw that he held his left hand agai
nst his breast, and that from between the spread fingers protruded the handle of a knife.

  There seemed nothing unnatural in the fact that he should walk up out of the sea, even though she knew that he had been drowned; and fear did not touch her until her eyes fell on the knife. But with the sight of that shining handle the blind panic of nightmare swept down upon her, freezing her, so that she could neither move nor scream. Ferrers’s wide, incredulous eyes came nearer and nearer, and there was blood upon his hand: a single splash of scarlet. He was so near her that the wet, wind-blown strand of weed about his throat touched her face … And Copper awoke, shuddering with terror, to find a cold drip of water from yet another leak in her ceiling trickling down her cheek …

  The storm seemed to have blown itself out, though not the rain, and she pulled up her mosquito net and switched on the light. Slow, gleaming drops were forming and falling from the ceiling immediately overhead. She looked about her bedroom in shivering exasperation, and having fetched a soap-dish and the tooth-glass from the bathroom, pushed her bed to one side of the latest leak, threw out her wet pillow, and placing the soap-dish and the tooth-glass where they would do most good, climbed back into bed and switched off the light. But this time she could not go to sleep. The horror of her recent dream, coupled with the necessity for action in the matter of leaks, had awakened her too thoroughly, and sleep had receded beyond recall.

  The air inside her shuttered room was warm and damp and heavy, and the swish of the fan blades seemed barely to disturb it. And now that the wind had dropped the house was very quiet. It was still raining, but only very lightly, and after the recent clamour of the gale the silence was an almost tangible thing; emphasized rather than broken by the sound of the sea, whose muffled thunder seemed only to provide a background to the hush that had fallen with the falling of the wind. Yet there was no quality of restfulness in the silence, but rather one of suspense and waiting; as though the storm, far from blowing itself out, had merely called a brief halt in which to collect its forces for a renewed attack. Inside the darkened house the stillness was full of little sounds. Tiny, tinkling sounds in a dozen different keys, caused by water dripping into a varied assortment of bowls and basins. A sudden crack of wood as a piece of furniture contracted, the thin keening of mosquitoes, the flitter of a bat’s wings in the darkness and the light patter of rain on the roof. And after a time Copper became aware that there was someone else besides herself who could not sleep that night. Someone who came quietly up the staircase and crossed the dark ballroom floor.

  She heard the tread of the top step creak and felt the slight vibration of the floorboards as someone went past her door towards the turret room. It’ll be one of the house servants going round to see that everything’s all right, she thought.

  A moment later the noiseless footsteps returned, and although she still could not hear them, the familiar vibration of the floorboards told her that the night wanderer had passed her door again. It occurred to her that it might be Kioh on the prowl, but she dismissed the idea almost immediately, for though Kioh was addicted to night prowling, the pressure of her velvet paws was not sufficient to betray her passing in this particular manner.

  The unknown promenader returned across the ballroom once more: this time from the direction of the drawing-room for Copper heard the creak of the loose board just outside the drawing-room door. And inexplicably, with that sound the house began to fill with fear.

  Fear crept in upon it like the noiseless advance of the monsoon mists across the wet forests, until it pervaded every nook and corner of the dark rooms. Fear blinked from behind the wet, glimmering window-panes, whispered in the rustling patter of the rain and dried Copper’s mouth as she shrank back against her pillows, staring into the darkness with eyes that were wide with unreasoning panic. She could hear the beating of her own heart like an urgent, frantic drum in her breast. A drum that seemed to prevent her breathing as she strained her ears to catch a nearer sound. There was a second loose board in the passage to the right of her room, and she was waiting to hear it creak …

  When at last it did so, she pulled herself together with an effort and reached for the switch of the bedside lamp. But with her finger upon it she hesitated; checked by the unpleasant thought that with a light in her room she would be clearly visible to anyone standing in the darkened hall outside.

  Her hand dropped and she sat listening; rigidly erect beneath her shrouding mosquito net and struggling desperately with that rising tide of terror. A distant rumble of thunder blended with the sound of the breaking seas, but the silent walker did not return, and suddenly she could bear it no longer. She slid out of bed and groped her way across the room to the curtained doorway that separated her room from Valerie’s, moving very warily for fear of making a sound and agonizingly aware of the pitfalls presented by the various objects that had been set to catch the drips. And when in spite of her caution her foot encountered the cold enamel rim of the soap-dish, it was all she could do to keep from crying out.

  ‘For God’s sake pull yourself together!’ Copper told herself frantically. ‘You’re behaving like a hysterical schoolgirl, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself!’ But reason failed to make a stand against the fear that filled the dark house, numbing her body and whispering to her imagination that if she continued to walk forward in the darkness, her outstretched, groping hands would not touch the friendly, swaying curtains or the solid wall, but a face — a wet face with a band of seaweed bound like a scarf about its skinny throat.

  Copper’s own throat stiffened with that fear, and she found she had to force herself forward as though her body was a machine which would no longer obey her will. And then she had reached the curtains, and was through them and dragging at Valerie’s mosquito net.

  Valerie had been asleep. But few people sleep very deeply in the Andamans, and she was awake almost before Copper’s fingers touched her shoulder. She sat up and reached for the electric light switch, and a comforting yellow radiance illumined Copper’s white face and the hanging folds of mosquito netting. ‘What’s the matter, Coppy? Been having another nightmare?’

  ‘There’s someone walking about the house.’ Copper’s whisper was unsteady in spite of her efforts to control it, and Valerie turned swiftly to face the door into the ballroom and listened for a moment or two. But except for the light patter of the rain, the swish of fan blades and the little chorus of drips from the leaking roof, the house was silent.

  ‘Nonsense! No one would be trotting about the place at this hour. You know Dad doesn’t let the house servants come upstairs at night and that Iman Din always sleeps down in the hall at the foot of the staircase. Besides, who on earth would be likely to want to perambulate around on a night like this? I expect it was bats. Or Kioh.’

  ‘It wasn’t,’ insisted Copper, shivering uncontrollably. ‘There was someone in the hall … they were walking around in the dark. I felt the floor shake. You know how it does when anyone crosses the ballroom. And those two loose boards — the one outside the drawing-room and the one in the passage — I heard them creak.’

  ‘Probably Ruby wanting a drink or a biscuit.’

  ‘Then why go along the passage or into the drawing-room for it? And why walk up and down? Whoever it was out there has crossed the ballroom at least three times.’

  ‘You’ve been having another nightmare,’ accused Valerie. ‘Own up, Coppy!’

  Copper flushed guiltily, remembering her unpleasantly vivid dream of Ferrers Shilto’s return from the sea. But since she had no intention of admitting to that at the present moment, she ignored the accusation and said stubbornly: ‘It wasn’t bats and its wasn’t Kioh, and I wasn’t asleep. Someone has been walking about the house … And what’s more,’ she added, her voice dropping again to a whisper, ‘they’re still there — look at Kioh!’

  The Siamese cat had evidently been curled up asleep in the cushioned seat of Valerie’s big armchair, for there was a betraying hollow that marked where her sleek
, small body had rested. But something — perhaps Copper’s entry — had disturbed her, and now she was standing upon the floor in front of the chair, facing the door that led into the ballroom.

  The doors between the bedrooms and the ballroom were of the type that Copper had previously criticized: two swinging shutters, such as one sees in the taprooms of public houses and railway refreshment rooms, that spanned the centre of the door space, and closed with a latch, leaving a few feet of open space above and below. These half-doors were wide enough to stop anyone outside from seeing more than the extreme upper section of the wall and part of the floor of the bedrooms; and conversely to prevent anyone inside seeing into the ballroom, even by daylight. But cats can see in the dark; and Kioh, from the floor, had an uninterrupted view of the room — and of someone, or something, who was moving about there.

  Her short, sleek, cream-coloured coat was no longer smooth but roughened where the hairs had lifted along her back, and she had crouched a little; her black tail twitching and her china blue eyes glaring fixedly at something that Copper and Valerie could not see. They watched her head turn slowly as her gaze followed someone who moved in the darkness beyond the door, and Valerie cleared her throat, which had suddenly become constricted, and raising her voice called out: ‘Kaun-hai?… Who’s there?’ There was no reply, but once again there came the familiar tremor of the floorboards as someone crossed the ballroom.

  Kioh’s black, pricked ears flattened and she began to growl softly in her throat — a small, oddly unnerving sound. Then step by step, and still growling, she backed away from the door until she had reached the safe harbourage of Valerie’s bed.

  ‘That’s funny,’ said Valerie, unaware that she too was speaking in a whisper, ‘she’s usually a most truculent animal.’ She reached down to stroke the crouching shape, and the cat, whose eyes were still fixed on the doorway, seemed to explode at her touch as though it had been a small charge of dynamite, and whirling about, spitting and snarling, it streaked across the room to vanish behind the wardrobe …