It was the worst in years. Everything the cyclone could destroy, it did. Within hours, there was flooding all over the island. Rumors of landslides. Trees came down. Rivers burst their banks, a nickel mine collapsed, and the two major coastal roads from south to north were closed. Houses in Nouméa went without electricity, while whole shantytowns were flattened. The ocean was vast, breakers crashing all the way up the beach, ruining shops and restaurants. The British consul sent out a reminder not to drink water unless it was boiled, with an offer of free blankets and food.
Despite the heavy wind and rain that were still raging outside, Mrs. Pope’s Three Kings party went ahead. Her paper chains remained intact, as did her nativity scene and Christmas tree. She told Mrs. Peter Wiggs, also known as Dolly, that she was expecting at least fifty.
In the end it was over two hundred. The consulate villa was packed. Maurice must have invited every waif and stray he’d ever met. Mrs. Pope had a little quartet playing Christmas carols in the hall and wore her gold king costume, but she ran out of mince pies after half an hour. Worse, barely anyone had bothered to dress up. All people wanted to talk about was the cyclone. Either that or the big story that had just reached New Caledonia about the call girl Nancy Collett and the Woman With No Head. (“Though technically she must have a head,” said Mrs. Pope to Dolly. “It’s ridiculous that the newspapers have given her a name like that.”
“It’s because she’s a woman,” said Dolly: “If she was a man, they wouldn’t make a joke of her.”)
The British consul introduced his wife to the POW who’d arrived recently. It was a trick he often pulled: Maurice would drag her over to meet some social misfit, then disappear. This man had been hassling them for days, ever since Maurice rescued him from the French police. He just kept showing up at the front door, asking if his passport was ready. Maurice had given him a change of clothing. Some extra currency to tide him over. But he kept waiting outside. Mrs. Pope had even spotted him asleep at the end of the garden.
He proudly showed her his passport. He turned to the page with his new visa stamp. He said he’d only just got it.
“And you’re hoping to travel north now?” she said, to make conversation. There was something not right about him. His hair was shaved too short and he had a habit of speaking over her shoulder. He was also sweating hard and as thin as a rake. Obviously, one had to be kind to the man because he’d been a POW and everything, but she couldn’t help wishing he was a bit more civilized. “I think you’ll be lucky after the cyclone. There are only two roads that go all the way to the north and they are both closed, Mr. Mundic.”
He mumbled something she couldn’t catch. She thought it might be about a person he was looking for. A British woman.
She said merrily, “Well, we have quite a few of those here!”
But he didn’t laugh. He said something about a beetle.
“Oh, do you mean the two women who went north?” she asked. “But they left over a month ago.”
“Two?” He knocked his head, as if he had something inside it that shouldn’t be there. “Two of them?”
“Yes. They came for cocktails.”
“Two?”
“That’s right.”
“No. You’re wrong. Miss Benson’s traveling alone.”
“No. She has her assistant, Mrs. Pretty. Do you know her, Mr. Mundic?” She asked this question only because he had begun to do something very odd. He was rubbing his fingers, twisting the joints, and clicking them. She’d never seen such vast hands. Then he did something even more strange. His eyes filled with tears. “Why?” he said. “Why? Why would she say that? I’m leading this expedition. I saved her life.”
Mrs. Pope glanced over her shoulder for her husband, but he was deep in conversation with some young woman she’d never seen before. She said vaguely, “Miss Benson never mentioned that.”
“She didn’t?”
He pulled an old notebook out of his pocket. It was a tatty thing, and the pages were crammed with writing. Not just sideways, but even up and down. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve, then flicked through, trying to find a fresh page. “Where were they going?”
“Poum,” she said, to rhyme with “room.”
“How do you spell that?” He shoved his notebook against the wall. In the end she had to give him the word letter by letter; he couldn’t get it right. He kept crossing it out and trying again.
She said, “I do hope they survived the storm. We warned them not to go. Maurice didn’t mention you were from the Natural History Museum.”
He ignored her. He just kept trying to spell Poum. Such a small word, yet he couldn’t get the letters in the right order.
“They were held up here for a whole week. There was a problem with her luggage. It got lost. Do you know if she found it?”
Now he turned. He cocked his head. “Not her collecting equipment?” he said. And to her confusion he actually laughed, his thin face raked open, as if he knew something she didn’t, which was not a situation Mrs. Pope liked. On the whole, it was the other way round. She changed the subject.
“Will you be here for Valentine’s Day, Mr. Mundic? We’ll be having another special party at the British consulate. Lots of paper hearts. Terribly jolly.”
Even as she said it, she regretted it. She had no idea whom she could pair the man up with. And she liked to do a little matchmaking on Valentine’s Day. She had once dressed up as Cupid, wings and all.
Fortunately, Mr. Mundic said he wouldn’t be free. He was heading north. “Poum,” he said. And again he stared at the word he’d written in his notebook. “Is it a big town?”
This time it was Mrs. Pope’s turn to laugh. It was the idea of Poum being a town. She hadn’t heard anything so funny in ages. She couldn’t stop. “A town? It’s no more than a few huts. You’ll find your colleagues in no time.”
But Mr. Mundic wasn’t laughing anymore. He stared at her, stone cold, as if she had insulted him, then elbowed his way out of the room, and left.
Later Mrs. Pope called a private meeting of the British wives in the kitchen. The staff were washing up, but she kept her voice low so they wouldn’t understand.
“Something is going on,” she said. “Those two women in the north are up to something.”
“Do you mean espionage?” cried Dolly, who read too many thrillers.
“I don’t know, but whatever they’re doing, I don’t think it’s about beetles. There’s something suspicious about the man who’s joining them.”
But here she was interrupted. One of the servants was wailing about the carving knife. It had gone, she said. It had gone from the drawer. Someone had walked out of the British consulate with the British consulate’s carving knife.