Bear Island (19 page)

    I left, not hurriedly, through the lee door, then paused to see if anyone was interested enough in my departure to follow me out. And someone did follow me, almost immediately, but if he had any interest in my movements he wasn't letting me see it. Gunther Jungbeck smiled at me briefly, indifferently, and hurried forward to the entrance to the passenger accommodation. I waited a few more seconds then climbed up the vertical steel ladder to the boat deck, immediately abaft the bridge and radio office.

    I circled the funnel and engine intake fans casing and found no one there. I hadn't expected to, even a polar bear wouldn't have hung around that bitter and totally exposed boat deck without a very compelling reason. I moved aft by one of our two motorised lifeboats, took what illusory shelter I could find beside a ventilator and peered out over the afterdeck.

    For the first few moments I could see nothing, nothing, that was, that was likely to be of any interest to me, not so much because of the driving snow as the fact that all objects crowding the afterdeck-and there were well over a score of them, ranging from fuel drums to a sixteen-foot work boat on a special cradle-were so deeply shrouded in their shapeless cocoons of snow that, in most cases, it was virtually impossible to decide upon not only their identity but whether they were inanimate or not. Not until any of them might move.

    One of the cocoons stirred, a slender ghostly form detaching itself from the shelter of a square bulky object which I knew to be the cabin for a Sno-Cat. The figure half-turned in my direction and although the face was almost entirely hidden by a hand that held both sides of the parka hood closed against the snow, enough of straw-coloured hair showed to let me identify the only person aboard with that colour of hair. Almost at once she was joined by a person moving into my line of vision from behind the break of the boat deck and I didn't even have to see the thin ascetic face to know that this was Heissman.

    He approached the girl directly, took her arm without, as far as I could see, any kind of opposition being offered, and said something to her. I sank to my knees, partly to reduce the risk of detection if either chanced to look up, partly to try and make out what was being said. The concealment part worked but the eavesdropping failed, partly because the wind was in the wrong direction but chiefly because they had their heads very close together either because they regarded suitably low and conspiratorial conversation as being appropriate to the occasion or because they were affording each other's faces protection from the snow. I inched forwards to the very end of the boat deck and squatted back on my heels with my head bent forward but this was of no help either.

    Heissman now had an arm around Mary Stuart's shoulders and this time the gesture of intimacy did produce a reaction although scarcely the expected one for she reached up an arm around his neck and put her head on his shoulder. At least another two minutes were spent in this highly confidential tete-etete, then they walked slowly away towards the living accommodation, Heissman still with his arm around the girl's shoulders. I made no move to follow them, for such a move would not only have almost certainly resulted in quick detection but it would have been pointless: whatever personal they'd had to say had already been said.

    "Yoga in the Barents Sea," a voice said behind me. "That's dedication for you."

    “Fanatics always carry everything to excess," I said. I rose awkwardly but without too much haste before turning round for I knew I had nothing to fear from Smithy. Clad in a hooded duffle coat and looking a great deal fitter than he had been doing just before midnight, he was looking at me with what might have been an expression of quizzical amusement except that his eyes didn't seem to find anything humorous in what they saw. "You have to be regular in these things," I explained.

    "Of course." He walked past me, looked over the boat deck guardrail and examined the deep tracks left in the snow by Mary and Heissman. "Bird-watching?"

    "The haunts of coot and tern."

    "Yes, indeed. But an oddly assorted pair of love birds, wouldn't you say?"

    "It's this film world, Smithy. It seems to be full of very oddly assorted birds."

    "Odd birds, period." He nodded foreword, towards the charthouse. “Warmth and cheer, Doe, just the place for some more ornithological research."

    There wasn't a great deal of warmth owing to the fact that Smithy had left the side door open after he'd looked out through the window and observed me moving cautiously along the boat deck but there was a certain amount of cheer in the shape of a bottle he produced from a cupboard. He said: "Shall we send for the king's taster?"

    I looked at the unbroken lead seal. "Not unless you think someone has brought his own bottling plant aboard."

    "I've checked." Smithy broke the seal. "We talked last night. At least, I did. You may or may not have listened. I was worried last night. I thought you might not be levelling with me. I'm worried stiff now. Because I know you're not."

    "Because I've taken up ornithology?" I said mildly.

    "That among other things. This wholesale poisoning, now. I've had time to think, just a bit. Of course you couldn't have had any idea who the poisoner was-it's hardly conceivable that if you knew the person who had done in that Italian boy that you'd have let him do the same to six others, two of whom were to die. In fact you couldn't even have been sure that the whole thing wasn't accidental, the poisoning was on so apparently haphazard a basis."

    "Thank You kindly," I said. My opinion of Smithy had fallen sharply. "Except that it wasn't on an apparently haphazard basis. It was haphazard.”

    “That was last night." It was as if he hadn't heard me.

    "Then you couldn't have had any idea. Now you can. Things have happened, haven't they?”

    “What things?" My opinion of Smithy had risen sharply. He was sure that there was mayhem afoot, but why? Was he making a mental short list, guessing as to who might be the handy lad with the aconite-not that he could possibly know the poison used was aconite-wondering where he had got it, where he kept it now, where he had learned to prepare it so skilfully that it could indetectably be introduced into food? And not only who was the poisoner but why was the poisoner acting as he did? And why the random nature of the poisoning? Was he basing his guesses just on my stealthy behaviour?

    "Lots of things, not all of which have necessarily lately happened, just things that have come to light or seem odd in view of what we might call recent developments. For instance, why have Captain Imrie and Mr. Stokes been chosen for the job instead of any two young and efficient yacht and charter skippers and engineers who usually find themselves unemployed at this time of year? Because they're so old and so soaked in Scotch and rum that they can't tell the time of day twenty hours out of the twenty-four. They just don't see what goes on and even if they were to they'd probably attach no significance to it anyway."

    I didn't put down my glass, look keenly at Smithy or in any other way indicate that I was not listening with undivided attention. But I was. This thought had never occurred to me.

    Smithy continued. “I said last night that I thought the presence of Mr. Gerran and his company up here at this time in the year was a bit odd. I don't think so any more. I think it's damned peculiar and calls for some sort of rational explanation from your friend Otto, which we're not likely to get.”

    “He's not my friend," I said.

    "And this." He pulled out a copy of the Olympus Productions manifesto. "A load of meaningless rubbish that old smoothie Goin has been inflicting on everybody in sight. Have you-”

    “Goin? A smoothie?”

    “An untrustworthy, time-serving, money-grubbing smoothie with his two hands never on speaking terms and I'd say that even if he weren't a professional accountant.”

    “Maybe he'd better not be my friend either," I said.

    "All this ridiculous secrecy they harp on in this clap-trap. To protect the importance of their damned screenplay. A hundred gets one it's a screen to protect something an awful lot more important than their screenplay. Another hundred gets one that there's no screenplay in the bank vaults they speak of for the reason that there is no screenplay. And their shooting schedule for Bear Island. Have you read that? It's not even comic. Just a lot of unrelated incidents about caves, and mysterious motorboats and shooting dummy submarines and climbing cliffs and falling into the sea and dying in Arctic snows that any Eve-year-old could have dreamed up.

    "You've got a very suspicious mind, Smithy," I said.

    "Have I not? And this young Polish actress, the blonde one-”

    “Latvian. Mary Stuart. What of her?”

    “A strange one. Aloof and alone. Never mixes. But -when there's illness on the bridge, or in Otto's cabin or in the cabin of that young lad they call the Duke, who's there? Who but our friend Mary Stuart.”

    “She's a kind of Samaritan. Would you be so conspicuous if you wanted to avoid attention?”

    “Might be the very best way to achieve it. But if that's not the case why make a point of being so damned inconspicuous just now when meeting Heissman in a blizzard on the afterdeck?"

    I would very much rather, I thought, have Smith for me than against me. I said: "A romantic assignation, perhaps?”

    “With Heissman?”

    “You're not a girl, Smithy.”

    “No." He grinned briefly. "But I've met ‘em, Why are all the big nobs on the management side so pally with Otto in public and so critical in private? Why is a cameraman a director? Why--”

    “How did you know that?”

    “Uh-huh. So you knew too. Because Captain Imrie showed me this guarantee thing that you and the directors of Olympus had signed: the Count had signed as one of them. Why is the director, this Divine fellow who is supposed to be so good at his job so scared of Otto, while Lonnie, who is not only a permanent alcoholic layabout but latches on to Otto's private hooch supplies with impunity, doesn't give a damn about him?”

    “Tell me, Smithy," I said, "Just how much time have you been devoting lately to steering and navigating this boat?”

    “Hard to say. just about as much time, I would say, as you have been to the practice of medicine."

    I didn't say "Touche" or anything like that, I just let Smithy pour some more of the aconite-free drink into my glass and looked out the window at the grey swirling icy world beyond. So many whys, Smithy, so many whys. Why had Mary been foregathering clandestinely with Heissman when the Heissman I'd observed last night had been so clearly unwell as to be unable to indulge in any skullduggery-not that this ruled out the chilling possibility that Heissman might be one of two or more who held life so lightly and might easily be either a principal or a go-between? Why had Otto, though himself a poisoning victim, reacted so violently including having been violently ill-when he'd heard that Antonio had been a poisoning victim? Had Cecil's larder raid been as innocuous as he had claimed? Had Sandy's? Who had checked on the aconitine article, disposed of the leftovers in the galley, been in my cabin during the night and searched my baggage? Why had he searched my baggage? This extremely active poisoner, the same man, perhaps, who had doctored the Scotch bottle, clobbered me and been responsible for Halliday's death? Again, was there more than one of them? And if Halliday had died accidentally, as I was sure he had, then why had he come to the saloon, where his visit, I was equally sure, had not been accidental?

    It was all so full of "ifs" and "buts" that I was beginning to clutch at ridiculous straws rather than fight my way through the impenetrable fog. What accounted for Lonnie's diatribe-for it had amounted to no less against Judith Haynes to the effect that she detested all mankind, especially when they were womankind. No doubt Miss Haynes was as capable of being catty and jealous as many other otherwise likeable females are but one would have thought that she had too much going for her in the way of wealth, success, fame, position, and looks to have to bother too much about despising every woman she met. But if that were so, why had she cold-shouldered Mary darling?

    But what could that have to do with murder? I didn't know, but nothing the slightest bit odd, I thought gloomily, could be dismissed out of hand as having nothing to do with the very odd goings-on aboard the Morning Rose. Were Jungbeck and Heyter, for instance, to be considered as being possibly under suspicion because one had recently followed me from the saloon-especially as Conrad had earlier thrown a degree of suspicion on them by disclaiming all knowledge of them as actors? Or did this factor of apparently throwing suspicion bring Conrad himself under just the tiniest cloud? Dammit to hell, I thought wearily, if I keep on thinking like this I'll he casting young Allen as the master poisoner just because he'd told me that he'd once studied chemistry, briefly, at university.

    "A penny for your thoughts, Dr. Marlowe." Smithy wasn't very much of a one for letting his face act as a front man for his mind.

    "Don't throw your money away. What thoughts?”

    “Two thoughts. Two kinds of thoughts. All the thoughts you're having about all the things you're not telling me and all the guilty thoughts you're having about not telling me them.”

    “It's like a rule of nature," I said. "Some people are always more liable to have injustices done to them than others.”

    “So you've told me all your thoughts?”

    “No. But the ones I haven't told aren't worth the telling. Now, if I had some facts--“

    "So you admit something is pretty far wrong?”

    “Of course.”

    “And you've told me everything you know, just not everything you think?”

    “Of course."

    “I speak in sorrow," Smithy said, "for my lost illusions about the medical profession." He reached up under the hood of my parka, pulled down the scarf around my neck and stared at what was by now the great multicoloured and blood-encrusted weal on my neck. "Jesus! That is something. What happened to you?"