Death in the Andamans (32 page)

Copper sighed wearily and laid her aching head against her knees, and as she did so something touched her arm very softly, and once again her heart seemed to stop beating. The next moment she realized that it was only her mosquito net which had billowed inwards, stirred by a draught from the open windows. A breeze had at last arisen to disturb the stillness of the mist-laden air, and outside in the garden it rustled the leaves of the mango trees, set the dry stems of the bamboo clusters clicking together, and passed in a cooling breath through the darkened rooms.

The hall clock struck two, and in the stillness that succeeded its metallic chime, Copper thought she heard a floorboard creak somewhere in the silent house. And instantly she was terrifyingly alert: waiting, with every nerve taut, for the faint vibration that would betray the passing of anyone … of anything … through the ballroom. But she could not have told whether it came or not, for as she waited another puff of breeze, stronger than the last, billowed her mosquito net again and shook the iron rods that supported it. When it had passed, though she continued to strain her ears for any further sound from the ballroom, none came, and after a few minutes she lay back on her pillows and tried to relax.

A faint measure of ease returned to her, probably due more to nervous exhaustion than to anything else, and a blessed drowsiness began to steal over her, drugging her brain. Tomorrow, thought Copper sleepily. Tomorrow I must tell Nick … the revolver … it isn't safe … Tomorrow …

It was then that she heard the shot.

The crashing reverberations of that violent sound shattered the silence into a hundred savage echoes that seemed to fill the house and give no indication of direction. It was followed by a frozen moment of utter stillness; and then the house was full of noises.

Copper was half out of bed, struggling frantically to free herself from the clinging folds of mosquito netting, when the light snapped on and Valerie was standing beside her, clutching at her, her face blanched and even her voice drained of blood:
‘What was it?'

‘Ronnie's revolver!'
sobbed Copper in a harsh, choking whisper. And free of the mosquito net she snatched up her dressing-gown, and without pausing to put it on or to consider what danger she might be running into, tore herself free of Valerie's clinging fingers and ran out into the passage.

There was a blaze of light in Nick's room, and as she reached the doorway someone running out collided violently with her flying figure.

‘Nick!'
said Copper in a breathless sob,
‘oh, Nick!'
The next instant she was lifted off her feet and held so closely that she could hardly breathe. Her own arms were tight about his neck, and she was sobbing in hard, dry gasps.

‘Are you all right?'
Nick's voice was harsh with fear, and he held Copper as though he would never let her go.

‘I thought you'd been killed,' she sobbed. ‘I thought he'd killed you!'

Nick kissed her hard and savagely, holding her close. Lights were flashing on in room after room and the house seemed full of people in pyjamas and dressing-gowns, and noisy with fear-filled voices. Charles, whom the shot had barely awakened, came blundering out into the passage and crashed into them. ‘Left, I think,' he said breathlessly, and Nick thrust Copper away from him, and the two men raced along the passage towards the turret room, Valerie and Copper at their heels.

The turret room was in darkness, and for a blasphemous minute Charles groped for the electric light switch and called John Shilto by name. Then there was a click, and the lights flashed up, and Charles said: ‘Damned if he isn't asleep — or drunk!' for they could see the bed with its close-tucked mosquito netting, and through its shrouding whiteness, the dark bulk of the body that lay on it.

But John Shilto was not drunk. He was not even asleep.

Something was dripping from the bed on to the smooth uncarpeted floor, and each slow drop fell with a monotonous little splash into the small, grinning pool that had already formed beside the bed and was spreading sluggishly along the joins of the floorboards.

Nick tore out the mosquito net with a savage hand, and after one swift look, dropped it and spun round: ‘Get out of here, Copper,' he ordered curtly. ‘You too, Val! You can't do anything. He's dead.'

Neither girl moved. It seemed as though they had lost the power to do so. Then, suddenly, the Commissioner was in the room, and Leonard Stock, his feet thrust hastily into tennis shoes and wearing a vividly patterned dressing-gown that looked as though it must belong to his wife.

Orderlies,
chaprassis
and one of the sentries were thronging the entrance to the turret room, and of all the household only Ruby Stock appeared to be conspicuous by her absence.

The Commissioner pushed past Valerie and strode to the bed. ‘What is it?' he demanded. ‘What happened?
Good God!
' His voice cracked harshly as he swept the mosquito net aside.

There was a sudden frozen silence in the crowded room, broken only by the slow splash of falling blood, and for a moment it seemed as though the house itself were holding its breath from horror.

John Shilto was very dead. Where his head had been there was now only something blotched and shapeless and dripping. One lax hand lay outside the sheet, its fingers loosely clasped about the barrel of a heavy service revolver, a bullet from which had so recently and violently awakened the house. There was a faint reek of cordite in the air, and pinned neatly to one corner of the pillow was a folded sheet of foolscap. ‘
Suicide,
by God!' breathed the Commissioner. He stretched out a hand towards the revolver and Nick said sharply: ‘Don't touch it — fingerprints!'

But he was too late. Sir Lionel's fingers had already closed about it, and he swung round and glared at Nick: ‘Don't talk such damned nonsense! Who else's fingerprints should there be on it, other than his own?'

‘At a guess, Purvis's,' said Charles.

‘
Purvis!
Then how the devil
____
? Here, Stock, you'd better take charge of it for the moment.'

Leonard Stock stepped back hurriedly, treading on the toes of an inquisitive house-servant who, taken unawares, yelped sharply.

‘I
____
? Oh, er — of course. Certainly.' He accepted the weapon reluctantly, as though afraid that it might explode in his hand, and held it as far away from him as possible, eyeing it unhappily, while Sir Lionel, having ordered servants and orderlies from the room, turned back to the bed. ‘And now —' began the Commissioner. But he was not allowed to finish, for Charles cut unceremoniously across his sentence: ‘Val darling, you and Copper clear out, will you? At once, please.'

‘No,' said Copper in a taut voice. ‘I'm not going until I know why he did it. If – if he did it. Why hasn't someone read that paper?'

Sir Lionel swung round with a muffled exclamation and ripped the folded paper from its fastening. It proved to consist of a single closely typed sheet of foolscap with the final signature in a bold sprawling hand. He glanced swiftly through it, and then, very deliberately, read it aloud:

I, John Chalmers Shilto, being of sound health and in my right mind, have decided to put an end to my life. The circumstances which have brought about this decision are as follows:

The estrangement between my cousin, the late Ferrers Shilto, and myself is common property, but few have realized how bitter it has been. I do not propose to weary others with an account of our private dispute. It is enough for them to know that the bitterness of years culminated, on Christmas Eve, in a difference of opinion, on a private matter, which convinced me that the Islands were not large enough to accommodate both my cousin Ferrers and myself. I therefore decided upon his removal.

Fate played into my hands, and during the storm on the evening of the same day, my cousin and I shared for a few moments a hold upon the same upturned boat. At the moment at which we overturned I had grasped at, and still retained, the tiller of my boat. It made an excellent weapon. I struck my cousin on the back of the head and I believe that he must have died immediately. A few moments later another boat bumped into mine, and I left mine and clung to it. The visibility was so poor throughout that I do not believe anyone noticed the exchange, for it was next to impossible to see who was one's neighbour, and I should not have recognized my own cousin except for a ring he wore upon the hand with which he had grasped the keel beside me. No one noticed his absence, and it was not discovered until we were taken aboard the forest-launch nearly half an hour later, when it was naturally assumed that he had been drowned.

However, an unlucky freak of the tides returned his body, undamaged, to Ross; and by an even more unlucky accident, Surgeon-Lieutenant Harcourt was present on that occasion. He saw what Dutt missed, and unfortunately for himself went down to the Guest House on the night of December 25th in order to verify his suspicions.

But since he had already displayed them too clearly I was prepared for some such action on his part. I managed to get clear of the house without being seen, and followed him to the Guest House, where I killed him.

I sincerely regretted having to perform this act, but I had no choice in the matter. It was a case of my life or his, and I preferred, not unnaturally I think, that it should be his. But once again I was unlucky, for the lack of a few inches in the size of the coffin destroyed what I flatter myself was a well-thought-out plan of action.

Since then I have had to realize that the chances of discovery are increasing hourly, and that to diminish them, I should have to kill again. I may say that I enjoyed killing Ferrers, but the elimination of young Harcourt was distasteful to me, and any further killing — perhaps, of necessity, even women — would not only be distasteful, but would also add to the risk of discovery. Life under these conditions would not be worth living, and so I have decided to cut the Gordian knot of a situation that has grown too complicated for me. My regards and apologies.

John Chalmers Shilto

There was a brief silence after Sir Lionel had finished reading, and the page of foolscap crackled harshly as he refolded it. He said heavily: ‘I think we had better send for a doctor. Dutt will have to do.'

Charles took Valerie's arm and propelled her towards the door. ‘You and Copper had better go back to bed, darling.'

Valerie said beseechingly: ‘We can't, Charles — you know we can't!'

‘All right then, go and sit in the verandah. I'll come along as soon as I can. Here, Leonard' — he grabbed Mr Stock by one gaily-coloured sleeve — ‘be a good scout and take these two kids off to the verandah. And just see that they don't start having hysterics. It's all right, Val, Leonard will keep you company and I'll be along in a few minutes.'

He hustled the two girls out of the room, and Mr Stock followed with grateful alacrity.

22

‘I don't believe it!' said Copper, breaking a long silence.

The three of them were sitting in that part of the verandah that lay beyond the drawing-room, for as though by mutual consent they had come as far as possible from the thing that lay in the turret room.

Ten minutes had passed since Charles had ordered them from the room, and for ten minutes they had not spoken. True, Mr Stock had made an abortive attempt at conversation, but the blank and unresponsive stares of his two charges had caused him to drop the idea and he had taken instead to tapping a nervous little tattoo on the arm of his chair.

Valerie turned her blank gaze from the dark window-panes and asked listlessly: ‘What don't you believe?'

‘I don't believe he killed himself.'

‘What's that?' Valerie sat up with a jerk, staring at her, and then relaxed again. ‘Oh, don't be ridiculous, Coppy,' she said wearily. ‘It's quite obvious that no one else could have done it. Besides, what about that letter?'

‘That's just what I mean. Would you have thought that he'd write like that? I mean, express himself in that way?'

Valerie shrugged her shoulders. ‘It was a bit pedantic, but then I imagine that writing one's Last Will and Testament, so to speak, would be inclined to make one go a bit legal and pompous. What do you think, Leonard?'

Mr Stock, who was looking grey and strained, started slightly on being addressed, and thought for a moment. ‘Yes, I think perhaps you are right,' he admitted cautiously. ‘And then, too, anyone contemplating suicide cannot really be considered normal; although they are probably quite sane. So it is not to be expected that they would write a normal letter. I imagine that the majority of suicide notes are either hysterical or dramatized, and the slightly pedantic phrasing of poor Shilto's letter was probably the latter.'

‘
Poor
Shilto!' said Valerie violently. ‘A low-down, cold-blooded cowardly murderer! He at least had the excuse of a quarrel with Ferrers, but he killed Dan just to save his own beastly skin. Poor
Dan
____
!' Her voice broke.

Mr Stock shuffled his feet uncomfortably and murmured something about
‘De mortuis',
and Copper said: ‘Personally, I'd consider the saving of one's own skin a much better reason for committing murder than a mere difference of opinion. And that's another reason why I don't believe he did it. We overheard part of that second quarrel, and however much they spat at each other it didn't seem
____
Oh, I don't know!' She sighed impatiently and turned to stare out into the darkness.

‘What's that?' inquired Mr Stock eagerly. ‘You actually heard the Shiltos quarrelling on another occasion?'