Bear Island (12 page)

    “Well, you can't do that now," I said reasonably. "You can't expect me, as a professional man, to perjure myself in the witness box. Besides, there's no harm done, nothing stolen. You've no losses to pay for, so why get in bad with Captain Imrie?" I looked at Sandy, then at the tins on the floor. "Was that all you stole?"

    “I swear to God---“

    "Oh, do be quiet." I said to Haggerty: "Where was he, what was he doing when you came in?”

    “He'd his bloody great long nose stuck in the big fridge there, that was what he was doing. Caught him red handed, I did."

    I opened the refrigerator door. Inside it was packed with a large number of items of very restricted variety-butter, cheeses, long-life milk, bacon, and tinned meats. That was all. I said to Sandy: "Come here. I want to look through your clothes.”

    “You want to look through my clothes?" Sandy had taken heart from his providential deliverance from the threat of physical violence and the knowledge that he would not now be reported to those in authority. "And who do you think you are then? A bleedin cop? The CID, eh?”

    “Just a doctor. A doctor who's trying to find out why three people died tonight." Sandy stared at me, his eyes widening behind his rimless glasses and his lower jaw fell down. "Didn't you know that Moxen and Scott were dead? The two stewards',”

    “Aye, I'd heard." He ran his tongue over his lips. "What's that got to do with me?”

    “I'm not sure. Not yet.”

    “You can't pin that on me. What are you talking about':" Sandy's brief moment of truculence was vanished as if it had never been. "I've nothing to do--”

    “Three men died and four almost did. They died or nearly died from food poisoning. Food comes from the galley. I'm interested in people who make unauthorised visits to the galley." I looked at Haggerty. I think we'd better have Captain Imrie along here."

    “No! Christ, no!" Sandy was close to panic. "Mr. Gerran would kill me--”

    “Come here." He came to me, the last resistance gone. I went through his pockets but there was no trace of the only instrument he could have used to infect foodstuffs in the refrigerator, a hypodermic syringe. I said: "What were you going to do with those tins?”

    “They weren't for me. I told you. What would I want with them? I

    don't eat enough to keep a mouse alive. Ask anyone. They'll tell you."

    I didn't have to ask anyone. What he said was perfectly true: Sandy, like Lonnie Gilbert, depended almost exclusively upon the Distillers Ltd. to maintain his calorific quota. But he could still have been using those tins of meat as an insurance, as a red herring, if he'd been caught out as he had been.

    "Who were the tins for, then?”

    “The Duke. Cecil. I've just been to his cabin. He said he was hungry. No, he didn't. He said he was going to be hungry "cos you'd put him on tea and toast for three days." I thought back to my interview with the Duke. I'd only used the tea and toast threat to extract information from him and it wasn't until now that I recalled that I had forgotten to withdraw the threat. This much of Sandy's story had to be true.

    “The Duke asked you to get some supplies for him?”

    “No.”

    “You told him you were going to get them?”

    “No. I wanted to surprise him. I wanted to see his face when I turned up with the tins."

    Impasse. He could be telling the truth. He could equally well be using the story as a cloak for other and more sinister activities. I couldn't tell and probably would never know. I said: "You better go and tell your friend the Duke that he'll be back on a normal diet as from breakfast.”

    “You mean-I can go?"

    “If Mr. Haggerty doesn't wish to press a charge."

    “I wouldn't lower myself." Haggerty clamped his big hand round the back of Sandy's neck with a grip tight enough to make the little man squeal in pain. "If I ever catch you within sniffing distance of my galley again I won't just squeeze your neck, I'll break the bloody thing." Haggerty marched him to the door, literally threw him out and returned. "Got off far too easy if you ask me, sir."

    "He's not worth your ire, Mr. Haggerty. He's probably telling the truth not that that makes him any less a sneak thief. Moxen and Scott ate here tonight after the passengers had dinner?"

    "Every night. Waiting staff usually cat before the guests-they preferred it the other way round." With the departure of Sandy, Haggerty was looking a very troubled and upset man, the loss of two stewards had clearly shaken him badly and was almost certainly responsible for the violence of his reaction towards Sandy.

    “I think I've traced the source of the poison. I believe the horse-radish was contaminated with a very unpleasant organism called Clostridium botulinum, a sporing anaerobe found most commonly in garden soil." I'd never heard of such a case of contamination but that didn't make it impossible. "No possible reflection on you-it's totally undetectable before, during, and after cooking. Were there any leftovers tonight?"

    “Some. I made a casserole for Moxen and Scott and put the rest away.”

    “Away?"

    "For throwing. There wasn't enough to reuse for anything."

    "So it's gone." Another door locked.

    "On a night like this? No fear. The gash is scaled in polythene bags, then they're punctured and go over the side-in the morning."

    The door had opened again. "You mean it's still here?"

    "Of course." He nodded towards a rectangular plastic box secured to the bulkhead by butterfly nuts. "There."

    I crossed to the box and lifted the lid. Haggerty said: `You'll be going to analyse it, is that it?"

    "That's what I intended. Rather, to keep it for analysis." I dropped the lid. "That won't be possible now. The bin's empty."

    "Empty? Over the side--in this weather?" Haggerty came and unnecessarily checked the bin for himself. "Bloody funny. And against regulations."

    "Perhaps your assistant-"

    "Charlie. That bone-idle layabout. Not him. Besides, he's off-duty tonight." Haggerty scratched the grey bristle of his hair. "Lord knows why they did it but it must have been Moxen or Scott."

    "Yes," I said. "It must have been."

    #

    I was so tired that I could think of nothing other than my cabin and my bunk. I was so tired that it wasn't until I had arrived at my cabin and looked on the bare bunk that I recalled that all my blankets had been taken away for Smithy and Oakley. I glanced idly at the small table where I'd left the toxicological books that I had been consulting and my tiredness very suddenly left me.

    The volume on Medical jurisprudence that had provided me with the information on the aconitine was lying with its base pressed hard against the far fiddle of the table, thrown there, of course, by one of the violent lurches of the Morning Rose. The silken bookmark ribbon attached to the head of the book stretched out most of its length on the table, which was an unremarkable thing in itself were it not for my clear and distinct recollection that I'd carefully used the bookmark to mark the passage I'd been reading.

    I wondered who it was who knew I'd been reading the article on aconitine.

    5

    I suddenly didn't fancy my cabin very much any more. Not, that was, as a place to sleep in. The eccentric shipping millionaire who'd had the Morning Rose completely stripped and fitted for passenger accommodation had had a powerful aversion to locks on cabin doors and, having had the means and the opportunity to do so, had translated his theories into practice. It may have been just a phobia or it may have stemmed from his assertion that many people had unnecessarily lost their lives at sea through being trapped in locked cabins as their ships went down-which, in fact, I knew to be true. However it was, it was impossible to lock a cabin door in the Morning Rose from the inside: it didn't even have a sliding bolt.

    The saloon, I decided, was the place for me. It had, as I recalled, a very comfortable corner bulkhead settee where I could wedge myself and, more importantly, protect my back. The lockers below the settee seats had a splendid assortment of fleecy steamer rugs, another legacy, like the lockless doors, from the previous owner. Best of all, it was a brightly lit and public place, a place where people were liable to come and go even at that late hour, a place where no one could sneak up on you unawares. Not that any of this would offer any bar to anyone so ill-disposed as to take a pot shot at me through the saloon's plate-glass windows. It was, I supposed, some little consolation that the person or persons bent on mayhem had not so far chosen to resort to overt violence, but that hardly constituted a guarantee that they wouldn't: Why the hell couldn't the publishers of reference books emulate the prestigious Encyclopaedia Britannica and do away with bookmarks altogether?

    It was then that I recalled that I'd left the board of Olympus Productions in full plenary session up in the saloon. How long ago was that? Twenty minutes, not more. Another twenty minutes, perhaps, and the coast would be clear. It wasn't that I harboured any particular suspicion towards any of the four: they might just consider it very odd if I were to elect to sleep up there for the night lien I'd a perfectly comfortable cabin down below.

    Partly on impulse, partly to kill some of the intervening time, I decided to have a look at the Duke, to check on his condition, to ensure him a restful night by promising he'd be back on full rations come breakfast time and to find out if Sandy had been telling the truth. His was the third door to the left: the second to the right was wide open, the door stayed back at ninety degrees. It was "Mary Stuart's cabin and she was inside but not asleep: she sat in a chair wedged between table and bunk, her eyes wide open, her hands in her lap.

    "What's this, then," I said. "You look like someone taking part in a wake.”

    “I'm not sleepy.”

    “And the door open. Expecting company?"

    “I hope not. I can't lock the door.”

    “You haven't been able to lock the door since you came aboard. It doesn't have a lock."

    “I know. It didn't matter. Not till tonight.”

    “You--you're not thinking that someone might sneak up and do you in while you're sleeping?" I said in a tone of a person who could never conceive of such a thing happening to himself.

    “I don't know what to think. I'm all right. Please.”

    “Afraid', Still- I shook my head. "Fie on you. Think of your namesake, young Mary darling. She's not scared to sleep alone.”

    “She's not sleeping alone.”

    “She isn't? Ah, well, we live in a permissive age.”

    “She's with Allen. In the recreation room.”

    “Ah! Then why don't you join them? If it's safety you wrongly imagine you need, why then, there's safety in numbers."

    “I do not like to play-what do you say-gooseberry."

    “0h, fiddlesticks!" I said and went to see the Duke. He had colour, not much but enough, in his cheeks and was plainly on the mend. I asked him how he was.

    "Rotten," said the Duke. He rubbed his stomach.

    "Still pretty sore?”

    “Hunger pains," he said.

    "Nothing tonight. Tomorrow, you're back on the strength-forget the tea and toast. By the way, that wasn't very clever of you to send Sandy up to raid the galley. Haggerty nabbed him in the act.”

    “Sandy? In the galley?" The surprise was genuine. "I didn't send him up.?

    "Surely he told you he was going there?”

    “Not a word. Look, Doc, you can't pin--”

    “Nobody's pinning anything on anybody. I must have taken him up wrong. Maybe he just wanted to surprise you-he said something about you feeling peckish."

    \

    “I said that all right. But honest to God--”

    “It's all right. No harm done. Good night."

    I retraced my steps, passing Mary Stuart's open door again. She looked at me but said nothing so I did the same. Back in my cabin I looked at my watch. Five minutes only had elapsed, fifteen to go. I was damned if I was going to wait so long, I was feeling tired again, tired enough to drop off to sleep at any moment, but I had to have a reason to go up there. For the first time I devoted some of my rapidly waning powers of thought to the problem and I had the answer in seconds. I opened my medical bag and extracted three of the most essential items it contained-death certificates. For some odd reason I checked the number that was left-ten. All told, thirteen. I was glad I wasn't superstitious. The certificates and a few sheets of rather splendidly headed ship's note paper-the previous owner hadn't been a man to do things by half-went into my briefcase.

    I opened the cabin door wide so as to have some light to see by, checked that the passage was empty and swiftly unscrewed the deckhead lamp. This I dropped on the deck from gradually increasing heights starting with about a foot or so until a shake of the lamp dose by my car let me hear the unmistakable tinkle of a broken filament. I screwed the now useless lamp back into its holder, took up my briefcase, closed the door and made for the bridge.

    The weather, I observed during my very hurried passage across the upper deck and up the bridge ladder, hadn't improved in the slightest. I had the vague impression that the seas were moderating slightly but that may have been because of the fact that I was feeling so tired that I was no longer capable of registering impressions accurately. But one aspect of the weather was beyond question: the almost horizontally driving snow had increased to the extent that the masthead light was no more than an intermittent glow in the gloom above.

    Allison was at the wheel, spending more time looking at the radarscope than at the compass and, visibility being what it was, I could see his point. I said: "Do you know where the captain keeps his crew lists? In his cabin?”

    “No." He glanced over his shoulder. "In the charthouse there." He hesitated. "Why would you want those, Dr. Marlowe?"

    I pulled a death certificate from the briefcase and held it close to the binnacle light. Allison compressed his lips.