Bear Island (16 page)

    I became aware that Halliday was on his feet and was lurching unsteadily in my direction, bottle in one hand and glass in the other: the bottle, I noticed almost mechanically, was about one third full. He halted, swaying, in front of me and poured a generous measure into the glass, bowed slightly, offered me the glass and smiled. "Maybe we're both on the hidebound and conservative side, Doe. In the words of the song, I will if you will so will I.”

    I smiled back. "Your willingness to experiment does you credit. But no thanks. I told you, I just don't like the stuff. I've tried it. Have you?”

    “No, but I--”

    “Well, how can you tell, then?"

    “I don't think-=”

    “You were going to try it anyway. Go on. Drink it."

    Mary Stuart opened her eyes. "Do you always make people drink against their will? Is this what doctors do-force alcohol on those who don't want it?"

    I felt like scowling and saying, `Why don't you shut up?" but instead I smiled and said: "Teetotal objections overruled.”

    “So what's the harm?" Halliday said. He had the glass to his lips. I stared at him until I remembered I shouldn't be staring which was all of a fraction of a second, smiled indulgently, glanced at Mary Stuart whose ever so slightly compressed lips registered no more than a trace of prudish disapproval, then looked back in time to see Halliday lowering his half empty glass.

    "Not bad," he pronounced. "Not bad at all. Kind of a funny taste, though.”

    “You could be arrested in Scotland for saying that," I said mechanically. The villain had nonchalantly quaffed the hemlock while his accomplice had looked on with indifference. I felt very considerably diminished, a complete and utter idiot: as a detective, my inductive and deductive powers added up to zero. I even felt like apologising to them except that they wouldn't know what I was talking about.

    "You may in fact be right, Doe, one could even get to like this stuff!' Halliday topped up his glass, drank again, took the bottle across to its wrought-iron rest and resumed his former scat. He sat there silently for perhaps half a minute, finished off the Scotch with a couple of swallows and rose abruptly to his feet?. "With that lot inside me I can even ignore Lonnie's hobnails. Good night, all." He hurried from the saloon.

    I looked at the doorway through which he had vanished, my mind thoughtful, my face not. I still didn't understand why he had come to the saloon in the first place: And what thought had so suddenly occurred to him to precipitate so abrupt a departure? An unprofitable line of thinking to pursue, I couldn't even find a starting point to begin theorising. I looked at Mary Stuart and felt very guilty indeed: murderesses, I knew, came in all shapes, sizes, and guises but if they came in this particular guise then I could never trust my judgement again. I wondered what on earth could have led me to entertain so ludicrous a suspicion: I must be even more tired than I thought.

    As if conscious of my gaze she opened her eyes and looked at me. She had this extraordinary ability to assume this still and wholly expressionless face but beneath this remoteness, this distance, this aloofness lay, I thought, a marked degree of vulnerability. Wishful thinking on my part, it was possible: but I was oddly certain it wasn't. Still without speaking, still without altering her expression or lack of it, she half-rose, hobbled awkwardly in her cocoon of steamer rugs and sat close beside me. In my best avuncular fashion I put my arm round her shoulders, but it didn't stay there for long for she took hold of my wrist and deliberately and without haste lifted my arm over the top of her head and pushed it clear of her. Just to show that doctors are superhuman and incapable of being offended by patients who aren't really responsible for their own behaviour I smiled at her. She smiled back at me and her eyes, I saw with an astonishment that I knew was not reflected in my face, were filled with unshed tears: almost as if she were aware of those tears and wished to hide them, she suddenly swung her legs up on the settee, turned towards me and got back to the short-range examination of my shirt front, only this time she put both her arms around me. As far as freedom of mobility was concerned I was as good as handcuffed, which was doubtless what she wanted anyway. That she harboured no lethal intent towards me I was sure: I was equally sure that she was determined not to let me out of her sight and that this was the most effective way she knew of doing just that. How much it cost that proud and lonely person to behave like this I couldn't guess: even less could I imagine what made her do it at all.

    I sat there and tried to mull things over in my now thoroughly befogged mind and, predictably, made no progress whatsoever. Besides, my tired eyes were being almost hypnotised by the behaviour of the Scotch inside the Black Label bottle, with the almost metronomic regularity with which the liquid ascended and descended the opposite sides of the bottle in 0l response to the regular pitching of the Morning Rose. One thing led to another and I said: "Mary dear?”

    “Yes?" She didn't turn her face up to look at me and I didn't have to be told why: the area around the level of my fourth shirt button was becoming noticeably damp.

    “I don't want to disturb you but it's time for my nightcap."

    ‘Whisky?”

    “Ah! Two hearts that beat as one.”

    “No." She tightened her arms.

    “No?"

    “I hate the smell of whisky.”

    “I'm glad," I said sotto voce, "I'm not married to you.”

    “What was that?"

    I said, "Yes, Mary dear."

    Five more minutes passed and I realised that my mind had closed down for the night. Idly I picked up the Olympus manifesto, read some rubbish about the sole completed copy of the screenplay being deposited in the vault of a London bank, and put it down again. Mary Stuart was breathing quietly and evenly and seemed to be asleep. I bent and blew lightly on the left eyelid which was about the only part of her face that I could see. It didn't quiver. She was asleep. I shifted my position experimentally, not much, and her arms automatically tightened round me, she'd clearly left a note to her subconscious before turning in for the night. I resigned myself to remaining where I was, it wasn't a form of imprisonment that was likely to scar me permanently: I wondered vaguely whether the idea behind this silken incarceration was to prevent me from doing things or from chancing upon some other devilry that might well be afoot. I was too tired to care. I made up my mind just to sit there and keep a sleepless vigil until the morning came: I was asleep within not more than two minutes.

    #

    Mary Stuart was not and didn't look as if she was built along the lines of a coal-heaver but she wasn't stuffed with swansdown either for when I woke my left arm was asleep, wholly numb and almost useless, a realization that was brought home to me when I had to reach across my right hand to lift up my left wrist to see what time the luminous hands of my watch said it was. They said it was 4:15.

    It says much for my mental acuity that at least ten seconds elapsed before it occurred to me why it had been necessary for me to consult the luminous hands. Because it was dark, of course, but why was the saloon dark? Every light had been on when I'd gone to sleep. And what "had wakened me? Something had, I knew without knowing why that I hadn't wakened naturally but that there had been some external cause. What and where was the cause? A sound or a physical contact, it couldn't be anything else, and whoever was responsible for whatever it had been was still with me. He had to be, insufficient time had elapsed since I'd waked for him to have left the saloon: more importantly the hairs on the back of my neck told me there was another and inimical presence in the saloon with me.

    Gently I took hold of Mary Stuart's wrists to ease her arms away. Again the resistance was automatic, hers was not a subconscious to go to sleep on the job, but I was in no mood to be baulked by any subconscious. I prised her arms free, slid along the settee, lowered her carefully to the horizontal, rose and moved out towards the middle of the saloon.

    I stood quite still, my hands grasping the edge of a table to brace my self, my breathing almost stopped as I listened intently. I could have spared myself the trouble. I was sure that the weather had moderated, not a great deal but enough to be just noticeable, since I'd gone to sleep, but it hadn't moderated to the extent where any stealthy movements-and I could expect none other-could possibly be heard above the sound of the wind and the seas, the metallic creakings and groanings of the ancient plates and rivets of the Morning Rose.

    The nearest set of light switches--there was a duplicate set by the stewards’ pantry--was by the lee door. I took one step in the remembered direction then stopped. Did the presence in the room know that I was awake and on my feet. Were his eyes more attuned to the darkness than my newly opened ones? Could he dimly discern my figure? Would he guess that my first move would be towards the switches and was he preparing to block my way? If he were, how would he block my way? Would he be carrying a weapon and what kind of weapon-I was acutely aware that all I had were two hands, the left one still a fairly useless lump of tingling pins and needles. I stopped, irresolute.

    I heard the metallic click of a door handle and a gust of icy air struck me: the presence was leaving by the lee door. I reached the door in four steps, stepped outside on to the deck, flung up an instinctively protective right forearm as a bright light abruptly struck my eyes and immediately wished I had used my left forearm instead for then it might have offered me some measure of protection against something hard, heavy, and very solid that connected forcibly and painfully with the left side of my neck. I clung to the outside edge of the door to support myself but I didn't seem to have much strength left in my hands: and I seemed to have none at all in my legs for although I remained quite conscious I sank to the deck as if my legs had been filleted: by the time the momentary paralysis had passed and I was able to use the support of the door to drag myself shakily to my feel?, I was alone on the deck. I had no idea where my assailant had gone and the matter was one of only academic interest, my legs could barely cope with supporting my weight in a static go position: even the thought of running or negotiating ladders and companionways at speed was preposterous.

    Still clinging to whatever support was at hand I stepped back into the saloon, fumbled the lights on and pulled the lee door closed behind me. Mary Stuart was propped on an elbow, the heel of one palm rubbing an eye while the lid of the other was half-open in the fashion of a person just rousing from a very deep or drugged sleep. I looked away, stumbled towards Captain Imrie's table and sat down heavily in his chair. I lifted the bottle of Black Label from its stand. It was half-full. For what seemed quite a long time but could have been no more than seconds I stared at this bottle, not seeing it, then looked away to locate the glass that Halliday had been using. It was nowhere to be seen, it could have fallen and rolled out of sight in a dozen different directions. I selected another glass from the table rack, splashed some Scotch into it, drank it and made my way back to my seat. My neck felt awful. One good shake of my head and it would fall off.

    "Don't breathe through your nose," I said, "and you'll hardly smell the demon drink at all." I propped her up to a sitting position, rearranged her rugs and forestalled her by, for a change, putting my arms around her. I said: "There now.”

    “What was it? What happened?" Her voice was low and had a shake to it.

    "Just the door. Wind blew it open. Had to close it, that's all.”

    “But the lights were off."

    “I put them off. Just after you'd gone to sleep."

    She wriggled an arm free from the blankets and gently touched the side of my neck.

    "It's colouring already," she whispered. "It's going to be a huge ugly bruise. And it's bleeding." I reached up with my handkerchief and she wasn't making any mistake: I stuffed my handkerchief into my collar and left it there. She went on in the same little voice: "flow did it happen?”

    “One of those stupid things. I slipped on the snow and struck my neck on the storm sill of the door. Does ache a bit, I must say."

    She didn't answer. She freed her other arm, caught me by both lapels, stared at me with a face full of misery and put her forehead on my shoulder. Now it was my collar's turn to become damp. It was the most extraordinary behaviour for a wardress-that her function was to keep tabs on and effectively immobilise me I was increasingly sure-but, then, she was the most extraordinary wardress I'd ever come across. And the nicest. Dr. Marlowe, I said, the lady is in distress and you are but human. I let my suspicions take five and stroked the tangled yellow hair. I'd been led to believe, I forgot by what or by whom, that nothing was as conducive to the calming of upset feminine feelings as that soothing gesture: only seconds later I was wondering where I'd picked up this piece of obviously blatant misinformation for she suddenly pushed herself upright and struck me twice on the shoulder with the base of her clenched left fist. I was more than ever convinced that she wasn't made of swansdown.

    "Don't do that," she said. "Don't do that.”

    “All right," I said agreeably. I won't do that. I'm sorry.”

    “No, no, please! I'm sorry. I don't know what made me-I really-" She stopped speaking although her lips kept on moving and stared at me with tear~filled eyes, the no longer beautiful face defenceless and defeated and full of despair: it made me feel acutely uncomfortable for I do not like to see proud and self-contained people thus reduced. There was a quick indrawing of breath then, astonishingly, she had her arms wound round my neck and so tightly that it would appear that she was bent upon my instant asphyxiation. She wept in silence, her shoulders shaking.

    Splendidly done, I thought approvingly, quite splendidly done. Irrespective of for whose benefit it might be-'and then I despised myself for my cynicism. Quite apart from the fact that her acknowledged limitations as an actress put such a performance out of the question I was convinced, without knowing why I was convinced, that what I was seeing was genuine uninhibited emotion. And what on earth had she to gain by pretending to lower her defences in front of me?