Rum Affair (24 page)

“Be careful,” the voice hissed again; and out of the turret stepped the small, woolly figure of Bob Buchanan, swinging the red bulb of a torch. “Oh, it’s you; what a shame – I’ll have given you a right fright. I was after your young friend, Rupert. My goodness, those were the days! Fancy scaring their after-dinner guests with yon thing!” He laughed, switching his torch from the red bulb to white, showing the determined grin and the bony ridge round his eyes: Bob Buchanan hadn’t slept much either. “It works from a wee red bulb in the ceiling, but you can get just the same effect with a torch . . . Have you seen Nancy?”

“She’s looking for you. She thought you were upstairs with the hummingbirds.”

“I’d better go, then. I was, but I thought I’d come down. D’you know what they’ve got up there? A—”

He never did tell me. Before he could speak, the hideous rumbling began.

I know the sound of disaster. I have heard a building about to fall. I know the ringing, clamouring thump a steam cylinder makes when it is about to explode. When a roar like that begins inside a house one should run, and run fast.

I threw myself at the door, flung it open and flew out into the lightless hall.

There the clamour was frightening. Men’s voices, shouting, weaved through and above it, echoing among the panelled grotesqueries. The house vibrated with thunder. I saw, huddled under the staircase before me, four silent figures: Hennessy, Ogden, Johnson, and Nancy Buchanan, their faces glowing with inexplicable light. My ears roared with groaning air under pressure. The eruption heaved up noise from its guts like a geyser, drumming tinnily between gasps. I fell on my knees beside Johnson.

The shuddering combers of sound rose, coalesced, fell into vast and shivering order and became, inflated beyond all human tolerance, the
intermezzo
from
Cavalleria Rusticana,
played on the organ. Played on an Imhof & Mukle electrical organ, from a roll of unwinding red paper, fitted under the stairs. Dumbly, with the others, I gazed.

Behind glass doors, the organ pipes glistened. And above, throbbing with passion, a triangle, two drums and a cymbal sat emoting for ever. The orchestration belted breathily into some climax; the triangle moved; and at the height of its palsied
fortissimo,
invisibly directed as Punch slamming a policeman, the row of truncated drumsticks jerked forward to pummel the drumskin, while, unasked, the cymbals quivered and clashed. Deafened we watched it flog itself hysterically through such a crisis. Trumpets blared; invisible hands pounded invisible keyboards; the drumsticks vibrated, halted, vibrated like flyweights boxing a punchball. Jangling, roaring, shuddering, the whole Teutonic nightmare landed with a thud back on to its tonic, and Johnson turned, his bifocals steamy with tears, and said: “We were trying to turn on the lights.”

It was then, as the machine uncoiled an oily
legato,
and Nancy giggled, and Bob exclaimed and Hennessy craned purposefully into the mechanism, that we heard Kenneth’s voice far above, shouting.

I was first on the stairs, with the other four pounding after me. Johnson was nearly level. I hissed as we ran: “I thought you were to stay with him?” He did not answer. There were eight people in that house – nine, if Rupert was there. Could no one guard Kenneth? I could have cried with sheer rage, as we ran.

At the top, we hesitated; until another cry guided us. “The lab wing,” said Johnson shortly, and led across the width of the house to where Kenneth’s room was. We turned the corner, and stepped into a searing dazzle of light. In this wing, every lamp was lit, every door was open, and at the far end of the passage Kenneth stood, unhurt, his hand on the doorpost, and silently showed us, as we reached him, the chaos inside.

His locked laboratory had been opened and ruined. The original object, perhaps, was to search. If so, what happened next was the result of disappointment and temper. I knew from Kenneth that nothing of importance had been left locked here when he was taken to Rona. But whatever the reason, the vandalism was something that shocked. There was no fitting, no pane of glass, no piece of equipment left undestroyed. Papers littered benches and floor, some burnt, some destroyed with acid and ink. Every drawer and cupboard was open, everything of Kenneth’s own, even his spare clothes, his blankets and sheets, had been ripped and scattered about. It was the work of an obsessive, a feminine, vindictive and familiar mind. I, of all people there, knew at once that it was the work of Michael: my Michael Twiss. I left them there, while they turned over debris and exclaimed at it; and I ran back through the house to find Michael this time, alone.

I did not turn switches, although the lighting, I realised, must now be on. I ran along the high gallery ringing the hall, where the saffron windows barely lit the dark ruby walls, and beside me, half-seen
bizarreries
alternated with the big secretive cabinets, heavy with doors. Glass glinted – the hummingbirds. I was on the first storey now, heading for the bedrooms, dressing rooms, bathrooms in the dark, silent wing where no one was sightseeing, exclaiming over the period niceties; where Michael, surely, was waiting. Did he guess that Kenneth meant to unmask him? Did he know, I wondered, that soon the
Sioras
would be leaving the jetty to make rendezvous in mid-loch with the ferry from Mallaig – to receive post and to place on the ferry any mail, any parcels, any visitors wishing to return quickly from Rum to the mainland?

It was very quiet. I followed the corridor round, and round again. On my right, faintly, metal glimmered high on the wall and drew my eye to a display of weapons – swords, daggers, boomerangs, inlaid
s
amurai. I turned my back on it and called, hardly stirring the air. “Michael! Come out!”

Silence. Below someone had found the switch for
Cavalleria Rusticana
and turned the automaton off. Distantly, from Kenneth’s room, I could hear voices arguing. An owl called thinly outside, and the trees sounded through the glass like a soft breaking sea. I said again: “Michael?”

Opposite me was the dark mouth of a room. I had no wish to draw the others. On the other hand, it was only with an effort of logic that I found I could make myself walk through that door. In my hand was the little torch I had brought all the way from
Dolly,
switched to a thin, pencil light. It shone on a death’s head.

It was only a painting, a macabre motif. After a moment, I moved the beam, and it showed me a Jacobean four-poster, dark and carved, with the painted symbol of death at its head and foot, under the crown and dark drapes. The curtains hid nobody. The room, as I lit it inch by inch with my torch, was sparsely furnished and empty. I went out, and into the next.

I don’t know how many I searched before I came to the bamboo-furnished bedroom. There, for the first time, when I called I sensed some kind of presence. I called again, and waited. When no one replied, I went right inside.

It was a big bedroom this time, with vast cupboards lining each wall. A bamboo lattice work decorated the neat bed and its suite. But the sound I had heard came not from here, but from the bathroom beyond. It smelled damp. I paused there, controlling my breath, and then I said for the last time: “Michael! I know you are here. Michael, come out and talk.” And when he did not reply, I switched on my torch.

Curtains. Ceiling-high cupboards. A washbasin with wrought-iron legs. A bath, hooded man-high in mahogany, and tiered with knobs like an organ for every hydraulic device known to Edwardian man. I had got so far when the white light above me burst into unexpected, brilliant life. I gazed, dazzled at this wonderland bath; and gradually I realised why, tonight, Michael Twiss did not come when I called. For Michael was here, in the bath; and his Trumper haircut was all ruffled and soaked, and his Lobb footwear fatally stained.

He was dead.

The torch in my hand was still on. I put it off, staring at the occupied bath. It did not occur to me to see who had switched the bedroom and bathroom lights on. I was gazing at Michael.

He had been shot. The light, dove-grey quilted coat which he bought with such pride for a long weekend with a marquess, was all spoiled and charred, and a spreading stain had soaked irregularly, like a bad dye, into the fabric. The untidy hair was unlike him, but there was no great change in the smooth face, which I supposed most people would call handsome; which in five years or less would have begun to show, under the skin, the traces of gross self-indulgence which had not yet marred his trimness. He had seated himself, one would guess, gun in hand, on the edge of the massive bath, under the knobs labelled wave and douche, and holding the gun to his heart, had fired and fallen tidily backwards, organised in death as in life.

So one would guess, except for two things, Michael was a man – had been a man – of no great courage and of immense spite. He was also a man of vainglorious ambition, who above all things loved life. If you knew Michael Twiss, you would know that of all men he was the least likely to kill himself.

You would also know that he did not smoke. And you would wonder why, therefore, the closed air of this bathroom held, as well as the faint unpleasant odours of cordite, of mustiness, of sweat, and of freshly shed blood, a tinge, already vanishing as I traced it, of recent smoke. I thought this; and a sharp voice at my shoulder said: “
What have you done?”
and I turned to face Hennessy, just as I thought: Kenneth smokes.

Then Hennessy said: “What have you done?” again, and, stepping forward, shook me alive. I suppose my face was quite blank. There was suddenly so much to consider, so quickly. When did it happen? Not while I had been searching: I should have heard the sound of the shot. A little before, then. Of course . . . while the organ was playing. A machine gun could have fired then and none of us would have heard it. And Kenneth was then upstairs. I realised that Hennessy was staring at me, his two hands still on my shoulders, my loose hair tumbled over them from the shaking. A little blood had come through the white bandage over his ear, and he was pale. It was not a nice sight, Michael folded into the bath. “Tina!”

My eyes focused on him, I felt his grip and I stirred. “I haven’t done anything – I’ve just come. Stanley, it’s his own gun. He’s killed himself.”

His eyes still stared into mine – cold eyes, of a chilly grey-blue, now the charm was turned off. “Why?”

I said quietly: “I told him not to come near me. I didn’t want him as my manager any more . . . It was Michael who shot at you on South Rona, Stanley. He was jealous – of Kenneth, of you. That’s why he followed me. And when he found it wasn’t any good . . .” I bit my lip.

“Don’t cry, sweetheart. It isn’t your fault.” His tone had quite changed.

It was not hard to let my voice shake. I said, and it was true: “I don’t feel sorry. I ought to feel sorry for him, and I don’t feel anything. I worked with him for years . . . He made me everything I am,
and I didn’t like him and I’m not sorry he’s dead!”

I burst into tears, and Hennessy held me; and then Johnson’s voice, cool in the background, said: “Can three play? Who’s dead? Oh, I see. The late Mr Twiss.” His bifocals, gleaming in the bright doorway, were bent on the bath and then, grieving, on me. “Madame Rossi. You’ve been a bad girl, haven’t you? Well, let’s telephone the police.”

Hennessy snapped at him. “She didn’t do it. It’s suicide.”

“Is it?” The black eyebrows shot up. “There’s blood in the bedroom. Suicides don’t usually shoot themselves in one room, and then run quickly backwards and jump into the bath. It was meant to look like suicide, let us say. By someone with a rather poor torch.”

I couldn’t see his eyes, but his voice was colder than Hennessy’s. Behind him in the bedroom Rupert had suddenly appeared. Beside me, I felt Hennessy fractionally recoil. He said harshly: “Is that true?” And then: “The gun’s there, in the bath. Fingerprints would show . . . Tina said it was the gun that shot me.”

“Very likely. She would know,” said Johnson softly. “After all, he was her manager and intimate friend, was he not? Who was just about to give to the world, wasn’t he, Tina, all the sordid and unprestigious details of your warm friendship with Kenneth Holmes? Was that kind, Tina? You may have saved your own reputation, but where has poor Kenneth’s hope of exculpation now gone?”

It was then, for the first time that I could remember, that I began to feel a true, chilling fear. “Where’s Kenneth?” I said sharply.

“Here. They’re all here,” said Johnson agreeably, and I saw that they were, huddled behind in the bedroom: Nancy, Bob, Ogden and Kenneth. Only Kenneth moved quickly forward, pushing past Johnson and Rupert and Hennessy to my side, where no one wished to be, and said hurriedly: “Valentina! You didn’t do it, of course? You couldn’t have!”

It sounded like a cry from the heart, and my mind boggled and the blood ran from my heart. For if Kenneth himself had abandoned me, my only bulwark had gone.

Except myself. I was alone when I was born, and I am no worse off now. Use your common sense, Tina. I said: “If he was shot in the bedroom he must have been carried here. I couldn’t do that.”

“He’s a small, lightly-built man.” Johnson’s tone was one of gentle conjecture. “And as a singer, you are an agile, muscular woman. He was not afraid to stand close, either, to the person who shot him.”

“Do you think, after all that has happened, that Michael would want to stand close to me? In the dark, anyone might have crept up to him without his knowing.”

“Exactly,” said Johnson, and I felt my colour rising along with my fear of him. I said quickly: “Another thing. I was with someone else all the time until just before the organ was stopped. I heard it stop while I was standing beside those wall weapons. I hadn’t time to shoot him.”

“You had, provided you went straight to this room.”

Damn him to hell. “But I didn’t. And I can prove it,” I said. “Mr Hennessy came in here behind me. He can swear that I had just arrived when he switched on the light.”