‘I’m very, very pleased to welcome you, Lady Jennifer,’ said a man with a tiny head.
Jenny swivelled her head slowly and seemed to focus with an effort. ‘Mm?’
The motherly housekeeper had helped her, in the early evening, along the passage to the sitting-room. Jenny was nearly certain that the housekeeper was innocent – had been told about a mental illness or a suicide attempt.
The sitting-room was charming. Wide doors with fine mesh screens opened on to the veranda. The remains of tea for three was daintily spread on a table on the veranda; a pair of yellow birds pecked at the sugar bowl. In the hibiscus beyond the balustrade a humming-bird darted into trumpet after trumpet. Then the ground fell away steeply and the sea gleamed between coconut-palms.
There were three men in the room.
One stood by the door. He wore faded blue cotton shirt and trousers and faded espadrilles. He was young, tanned, unmistakably English. He was not obviously guarding the door, merely standing beside it. It was clear to Jenny that he would not have let her through the door.
The second stood by the screen-door giving on to the veranda. He was thin and dark; he might have been Spanish. He wore a shirt like an imitation Fred Perry tennis-shirt over very tight black jeans. His feet were bare. He would not have let Jenny out on to the veranda if she had tried to dash for the veranda.
The third man, the man who had spoken, sat exactly in the middle of a chintz-covered sofa. He was slightly over middle height, with a muscular medium build. Jenny guessed he was fifty, but he looked ageless. His face was extraordinarily smooth and healthy. He was lightly tanned. His eyes were clear and blue. He looked like a man with no vices. He spoke like an American, but an American who had spent much time in Britain, a member of a cultured, sophisticated, East Coast minority.
The smallness of his head amounted to a deformity. There was a little sandy hair on his doll-like skull.
He went on: ‘You haven’t been well, Jennifer. Our friends in London were worried. I hope you’ll agree we all did the right thing, bringing you here. You’ll have a lot of fun. Nobody stays sick in a place as beautiful as this.’
‘Mm,’ said Jenny.
‘That’s my girl. Now I very much want you to meet my friends Ricky,’ he indicated the Englishman by the door, ‘and Chuck.’ He waved at the dark man by the veranda.
‘Ricky de Malahide,’ said the Englishman, bowing slightly and grinning with great charm. ‘How do you do?’
‘Chuck Running Deer,’ said the dark man with a ghost of a smile. ‘Hullo, Jennifer.’
‘Chuck is skipper of my yacht Sandalshoon. Probably the only full-blooded Sioux Indian with a job like that.’
Chuck smiled fleetingly again.
‘And Ricky is navigator, crewman, cook—’
‘Cabin-boy, bottle-washer, lady’s-maid,’ finished Ricky with his brilliant grin.
‘Mm,’ said Jenny.
‘You’ll like Sandalshoon, Jennifer. The best-found ship in the Caribbean, if I do say so. Absolutely brand-new. I alas can only spare a day or two now, then I have to go back to New York for a week on business. But I’m relying on you, dear, to be my guest on board.’
A week, thought Jenny. How many pay-offs from how many desperate men can you fit into a week? How many more new yachts can you buy with the result?
She only said: ‘Mm.’
The plump housekeeper brought Jenny some supper in her room. She said her name was Hortensia. She locked the door behind her when she left.
Jenny carefully smelled and tasted the fish-soup and the stew; it was sloppy, invalid food, but she needed it. The soup had a very slight, bitter, chemical tang. It went down the lavatory in the gleaming bathroom which opened off the bedroom. A pity – it looked a rich and nourishing mixture.
With each mouthful of stew Jenny felt strength coming back. But she seemed in a state of comatose collapse when Hortensia came for the plates. Hortensia put her to bed, cooing and fussing.
Her nightdress, like all her possessions, was cheap, anonymous, American, brand-new. Everything she had with her added up to half an hour in any big department store. It was oddly depersonalising, having no single physical object she recognised.
She lay in the dark, listening to the incredible music of the frogs and crickets.
She was aware of misery, of an aching need. She whimpered for whatever kindly forgetfulness she had sent down the lavatory with the soup.
She fought a terrible struggle with herself, to stop herself banging on the locked door and screaming for the drug.
In the morning her hands were shaking; but she poured her coffee down the lavatory.
In the jolly, map-hung hall of the Planters’ Tavern there was a framed photograph of a small ketch. Below the photograph a hand-lettered sign read:
Day Charters. Aux. Ketch Hubris. See the breathtaking coast, the offshore islands, from a new angle. United States $15.00 per head. Min. 2 persons. Your host and skipper Bill Foss.’
Hubris was rather a mess, but Bill Foss sailed her well. He was a lanky Canadian from the Maritimes; he seemed not to enjoy his life.
Sandro and Nigel had collected box-lunches; Bill Foss picked them up from the hotel jetty in his outboard.
Nigel was told what ropes to pull; Sandro seemed to know already. (Bill Foss had no permanent crew; he either pressed his customers into service or sailed single-handed.) They went off under canvas and sailed for two hours on a single tack.
‘Coral Bar Colony,’ said Bill, pointing at the shore.
They could see the road snaking down the hillside. The houses were hardly visible, having been built to blend in with the landscape. There was an administrative building near the sea, and a short beach.
‘Shoal water here,’ said Bill. ‘Hell of a lot of coral. No chart’s up to date more than a year.’
‘You can’t take her in closer?’
‘Nope.’
A yacht was anchored well offshore.
‘Ugly bitch,’ said Bill. ‘Let’s take a look.’
He pointed Hubris closer to the wind. She heeled more steeply, sailed more slowly. They passed a few fathoms downwind of the anchored yacht.
‘Sandalshoon. American.’
‘She looks brand-new.’
‘Maiden voyage,’ said Bill. ‘Ugly bitch.’
She was a motor-sailer with a grey-green hull. There was something clumsy about her stern and her coachwork looked too high and lavish for the hull. She was ketch-rigged, but the mizzen was nearly as tall as the mainmast; both masts were metal and looked too thick for their length. They were festooned with electronic gadgetry, including radar. An awning was stretched over the mizzen boom. The yacht looked comfortable, seaworthy, and very expensive.
‘Twin G.M. diesels. She can shift under power.’
A slim man in faded blue came on deck. He waved to Hubris. Bill Foss waved back. Sandro and Nigel were sitting inconspicuously in the cockpit.
A Boston dory with a big outboard was approaching Sandalshoon from the shore, from the Coral Bar beach. Sandro raised binoculars.
A fair girl. A man with an oddly small head. Luggage.
The little square tender, almost a hydroplane, was steered by a thin dark man. He roared round in a tight curve, throttled back, and drifted expertly to the foot of the ladder amidships on Sandalshoon’s port side.
‘Coral Bar people,’ said Bill Foss. ‘Hollywood or Wall Street. You fellows feeling hungry?’
They anchored half an hour later in the lee of Smith’s Island. They swam, drank Bill’s duty-free gin, ate their sandwiches and headed back.
Sandalshoon was still there. The three men seemed to be dozing under the awning. There was no sign of the girl.
The Charter office had a powerful transmitter for getting messages to its far-flung yachts. Sandro was able to use this at 6 p.m.
He spoke to Colly, far to the south.
Nigel spoke to Nicola.
They were both more cheerful as a result.
‘694238,’ Sandro finished.
‘694238,’ repeated Colly’s distorted voice.
‘An American football play,’ explained Sandro to the girl in the Charter office. ‘A joke. I do not, myself, understand American jokes.’
‘What was that number?’ asked Nigel as they sauntered back towards the jetty and Bill Foss’s dinghy.
‘A coded map reference. We have a rendezvous. Let me think.’
They paused at the edge of the dockyard by an enormous old kedging-anchor, which rust had eaten into the semblance of a fossilised tree.
‘We know that Sandalshoon is booked to come in here in two days for some screws to be screwed up in her engines. We know that her owner is on board her for the first time, and with a new crew. We know that he is a rich American called Mr Henry Body, who comes here sometimes and has an interest also in another yacht.’
This was all dockyard gossip, undoubtedly accurate.
‘We know that General Maxwell is visiting her at eleven tomorrow, there where she is.’
This they had learnt in the office just before Sandro spoke to Colly.
‘They will start a two-day cruise, I think? Starting about noon tomorrow? Then the proud owner can play with his new toy. And their pretty passenger will be more healthy and more attractive.’
‘And then they’re in business.’
‘Exactly as you say. Except that they must kill us first. Which is by the way possible. Let me think. When we hit them it must be very quick and complete, and Jenny must not be shot. Now listen very carefully.’
General Maxwell, late Royal Artillery, had retired to a delightful part-time job. He was retained by a number of British travel-agents to look at yachts available for charter. He was not concerned with seaworthiness or sailing qualities so much as with the comfort of the cabins, the food and drink, and the question of personality. A yacht is a very confined space. Everyone knows stories about charter parties that turned sour – wife-swapping, divorces, the acrimonious shattering of lifelong friendships. The General could do nothing about wives; he could take a view about skipper and crew. He was looking for congenial, tactful people who knew how to behave.
Sandalshoon charmed him. Everything was exactly as it should be. He had met the owner once or twice casually at the Admiral’s Inn, but of course the owner was not the point. The point was the galley, which was the best the General had ever seen in a yacht of Sandalshoon’s size; the three charter-cabins aft, roomy, airy, most ingeniously designed; and above all, the skipper and mate.
The General was not one to say: ‘Of course some of my best friends are homosexuals,’ but he did know enough to regard them highly as servants. Brother-officers had been wonderfully lucky in pansy batmen. They were tidy and tactful, took great pride in domestic management, were often first-class cooks. This Red Indian fellow was presumably a thoroughly competent skipper – Henry Body would hardly entrust a yacht like Sandalshoon to a beginner: but quite on top of all that the General could picture candlelight and finger-bowls and well-chosen music, beautifully presented meals, flowers in the cabins – all the gracious touches which the brochures promised and the yachts so often failed to deliver.
The very pretty, very silent girl was apparently a guest, not part of the complement. The General jovially regretted this. Mr Body and his boys laughed and agreed.
‘I still can’t see,’ grumbled Bill Foss, ‘why you didn’t go with the General. He would have taken you free, and you’re paying me thirty bucks.’
‘Because the good General has business, Bill. We thought it more commodo to come with you. We will see our friend when the General leaves.’
‘Why not do all this yesterday?’
‘We did not know yesterday that Olivia was on board.’
‘That fair chick?’
‘The poor thing. She has not been well. I think Mr Body is very kind. We will surprise her.’
‘Will the owner be glad to see you?’
Sandro indicated the bottle of French wine, which is very expensive in those parts. ‘We bribe him to be delighted.’
Sandalshoon, still at anchor, came into view round the headland.
Ricky brought the General a gin and tonic under the awning, and the four men stood chatting.
‘Hubris,’ said the General, glancing astern and seeing the little ketch in the distance.
‘Funny,’ said Ricky. ‘She came this way yesterday.’
‘She’s on day charter. She comes up here a lot. The people generally have a picnic lunch on Smith’s Island.’
He liked Bill Foss, but he had not felt able to recommend Hubris to the travel-agents. Bill was a bit too prickly and opinionated; and finger-bowls in his saloon were about as unlikely as pâté de foie gras.
His own little sloop Bimini was tied astern of Sandalshoon, alongside the Boston dory. Ricky pulled her up to the big yacht by her painter. The General thanked them all and hopped down on to the deck of his boat. Ricky paid out the painter again and stood ready to cast off. The General hoisted his mainsail, which flapped noisily.
Hubris was close to them now. Mr Body, Chuck and Ricky were all watching the General cleat his main halliard and then scramble forward to hoist his jib. None of them noticed that Hubris was pinching up very close to the wind – her sails were trembling at the luff and she was hardly moving through the water. None of them saw two figures slip over the gunwale on the lee side.
The General waved. Ricky cast off. The General pulled in his painter, Bimini drifted astern, her sails flapping. He got back to his tiller, reversed helm, filled his sails, and went off fast on a broad reach.
With this stiff quartering wind he’d be back in time for a late lunch.
Mr Body, Chuck and Ricky turned inboard. Mr Body picked up a book. Ricky sponged up the damp ring left on the deck by the General’s drink; then he started untying the lashings of the awning. Chuck went below.
Hubris had paid off a little. Her sails were drawing and she was travelling well. She was soon some distance away. Glancing at her idly, Ricky took it that the party on board were playing canasta or being sick below; no one was visible except the skipper.
‘The ladder will not be there much longer. Look, they get ready to go soon. We move now.’
Nigel gulped and nodded.
They were holding on to the stern of the dory, one each side of the outboard. Round the neck of each was a length of nylon cord which secured the mouth of a waterproof polythene bag.
Nigel was no longer able to believe any of the things which were happening to him. He had never expected to be in the Caribbean, or to have a bag round his neck containing two different guns, or to be about to risk his life in a fight with dangerous gangsters. This was not something he had chosen, a situation in which his will had played any part. He was a leaf on a stream.
He was intensely excited, very frightened, and prepared to kill.
Sandro nodded.
Nigel took a deep breath, duck-dived and swam under water. He saw the dark mass of Sandalshoon, and swam on. His lungs felt ready to burst and the polythene bag slithered awkwardly round his body. He surfaced as quietly as he could under the sheer of Sandalshoon’s stern. His breath wanted to come in deep, shuddering gasps; he made himself breathe quietly. He glanced towards the dory. No sign of Sandro. He used his palms against the nile-green hull to work himself silently round to the foot of the ladder amidships. He waited, listening hard.
He heard it: a gurgling which was closely similar to the lapping of the water against the hull, but, if you were waiting for it, a distinctive and additional sound.
He began to count to twenty, using the formula for counting in seconds: ‘One higgledy-piggledy, two higgledy-piggledy—’
At the same time he lifted himself with infinite caution out of the water on to the ladder, and then with one hand undid the neck of the polythene bag and took out the harpoon-pistol.
This was a weapon which horrified him. Sandro had said it was based on something invented by the Philippino gangs. On to a pistol-grip with a trigger was fixed a nine-inch tube containing a powerful spring. It fired a steel knitting-needle. Its advantages were: it was silent; the needle could be recovered, and the wound would be ascribed to a stiletto; it left no smell or powder-stain; if fired into an arm or leg it disabled, and painfully, but it did not smash and maim like a bullet; but it could kill entirely effectively if you wanted it to and were close.
‘Thirteen higgledy-piggledy, fourteen higgledy-piggledy—’
Bare feet flapped by on the deck, inches from his head. They flapped back.
‘Seventeen higgledy-piggledy, eighteen higgledy-piggledy—’
And suddenly a man was standing at the top of the ladder, in the gap in the rail, looking down at him with an expression of amazement. A slim man, in faded blue.
‘Well! Where did you spring from? What’s that thing?’
Nigel raised the harpoon-pistol and shot the man in the thigh. Inches of steel and the neat little head jutted from the blue cotton cloth. A small red stain started and spread. The man screamed and clutched the place and collapsed backwards. Nigel scrambled up the rest of the ladder and crouched on the deck, pulling out the other gun. The proper gun, with bullets.
He saw that Sandro was this moment scrambling over the stern, having swarmed most dangerously up the tender’s painter.
‘Don’t move,’ said Sandro to the small-headed man in a deck-chair by the wheel.
The man did not move.
‘Get below, find the third. Harpoon.’
Nigel nodded, recocking the spring. He ran down into the saloon and into the muzzle of a big automatic.
He stopped.
‘Dump your toys, babe,’ said the thin-lipped dark man holding the gun. ‘Stalemate, Mr Body,’ he called.
‘Thank you, Chuck.’ The man with the tiny head turned lazily to Sandro. ‘Do you want both your friends killed, or will you put that thing away and tell me what I can do for you?’
Nigel dropped his gun and then his harpoon-pistol. They fell with a clatter. The jar released the catch on the spring; a steel knitting-needle thudded into the leg of the table and stuck there, vibrating.
‘Count Ganzarello and Mr Heywood, I think. How clever of you to find us so quickly. I don’t think Lady Jennifer will really be glad to see you, at least not after I’ve finished with you. She is not, I may point out, any use to you just at the moment. But she will shortly be of great use to me.’