Rum Affair (5 page)

Rupert, it seemed, had to smother emotion. “Did it? Did you have it tied on with string, Cecil?”

“I had a lot of string,” said the man called Cecil Ogden, without a trace of a smile. His voice was English, and cultured, with no regional accent I could trace.

“Ogden built
Seawolf
himself single-handed from nothing practically but a half-rotten keelplate. A jolly good show, actually. He’s still building it, aren’t you, Cecil? A few bits to do. But he entered for the Club cruise last year and did pretty well.”

Two patches of red appeared above the long ribs of Ogden’s jawbone and cheeks. “She was caulked in wet weather,” he said sulkily. “The planks always spring when they dry out. The bloody
Britannia
leaks in dry weather.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” said a new, genial voice. “But I don’t expect she’d find herself pooped through the seams from the wake of the Greenock car ferry.”

It was Hennessy. He kissed my hand, all neat, corrugated head and dimple and European suave gallantry: why did I feel like Ginger Rogers? Ogden said: “I don’t have three paid seamen to do the bloody work for me. Maybe that’s why I don’t win races and stick my bloody neck out where it’s not wanted.”

He put down his glass. “Thanks for the drink, Johnson. I’ll have to go. Since I do my own sailing, I’ve one or two things to look after.”

He nodded briefly to Johnson, remembering at the last moment to include me, and strode off, slightly wide at the knees. Watching him go: “Where’s the girl?” enquired Hennessy.

“Laying in stores at Helensburgh, and conning the nearest affluent young man into driving her here with them,” said Johnson, ordering Hennessy a drink. Ogden, it appeared, was subsidised by his sorrowing family to live up there on the Clyde, building and rebuilding his yacht with the help of the pittance which was all they dared allow him, and all the help he could scrounge.

“Including a girl? How domestic!”

Hennessy smiled back at me, but Rupert said: “Oh, there’s always been a girl. He’s the helpless type who attracts them. But he’s damned lucky this time. He’s got Victoria.”

“A plum,” said Johnson, his bifocals stationary. “Rupert is a friend of the family.”

“Don’t be an ass.” Rupert, predictably, was carmine again. “She did the season, and I saw her now and then after. It’s a bit of too much, actually, Cecil commandeering her. There’s a limit to what you should ask anyone to do; and Victoria never thinks of herself.”

He stopped. I said: “Is she the only hand on
Seawolf
?” It seemed very Bohemian for these Calvinist parts.

“Oh, they’ll manage.” Rupert was confident. “She’s Bermudan, and pretty easy to run.”

“Well, good luck to them,” Hennessy remarked. “I don’t expect her miseries will endure very long. On past form, the boat’ll begin coming to bits when the starting gun fires.”

“Yes. But you heard what he said.” It was Johnson who chided. “They have plenty of string.”

Dinner at the Royal Highland Cruising Club is a civilised meal, and Johnson and Rupert provided agreeable company. I found I was recognised after all; and at intervals between the soup and the coffee I signed a great many menus.

The last menu was Johnson’s. I received it, surprised, and opened it ready for autograph. Above the smoked salmon was a quick ballpoint portrait of myself in the Galitzine suit, with the nose shortened just that fraction I have always promised myself. It was ravishing. A perfect likeness. I remarked on it.

“Yours – if you like that sort of thing,” said Johnson. I thanked him warmly, and we both gazed after the drawing which, lifted by a passing acquaintance, had begun to travel from table to table. It reached Hennessy who, rising, called: “Nice bit of work, Johnson. Care to auction it for my committee on Oxfam?”

There was a stir of interest, and I concealed my annoyance. It was my drawing. On the other hand, I must think of my public.

It was auctioned for two hundred guineas, the closing bid being Hennessy’s. His hand, while I signed it for him, rested adhesively on my silk-covered shoulder and he smelled discretely like the Nice branch of Hermès. He invited me to visit the
Symphonetta
at our first shore-going checkpoint to see the drawing framed in his cabin. The thought of being framed in Mr Hennessy’s cabin lingered with me through the rest of my dinner.

Johnson himself seemed quite unaffected by the incident, although he remarked, with some innocent pleasure, that it was the first time he had delineated a lady with her head in the smoked haddock and her bosoms in the cheese. I remembered that he could command two hundred guineas at a time for one thumbnail sketch, and that a finished painting, if as good as that, could be used for publicity for years instead of having my nose shortened. Over the liqueurs, when Rupert had excused himself to complete his work for next day, I said to Johnson: “Now, let’s talk about Johnson.”

“Let’s,” he said immediately. I have never met anyone with such a nondescript face: except for the hair and the eyebrows it seemed positively manufactured of glass. I tidied my hair, fleetingly, in his bifocals. “I like Bach, whisky, striped underpants, Montego Bay, shooting and Peruvian brandy,” said Johnson. “Also beautiful ladies of character. Hasn’t it occurred to you that they will try to kill you as well, now? Assuming your friend Holmes isn’t the murderer?”

My
Rigoletto
of last year had brought me a ruby along with the silk from Bangkok, and I had had it made up in the Burlington Arcade: it made an unusual ring. I twisted it. “No, I hadn’t thought of that,” I said slowly; and it was the truth.

“You’re the only one who could identify him,” said Johnson.
“If
he was the murderer.”

I let go the ring. “He must have been.” It was too ridiculous. “Look, some tatty little sneak-thief caught raiding a flat and letting fire with a gun isn’t going to have the nerve or the money to hunt down and kill someone who may or may not have seen him. He’s going to be far too damned busy getting out of the country.”

“Granted. But are we dealing with some tatty little sneak-thief?” said Johnson. “You saw the bugged table. Your friend Holmes had gone, and he wasn’t the juvenile lead in ‘Mrs Dale’s Diary’. So you say. How do you know he hasn’t been kidnapped?”

“Because I’ve checked, and he hasn’t,” I snapped back, with a smile. If there was a lip reader among the admirals, we were sunk.

The beetle brows rose over the enormous bifocals. “So it did occur to you,” said Johnson. “Then what did your friend say about the late Mr Chigwell?”

I got up. “I’ll tell you when he comes to the phone.”

He stood too. “So you haven’t spoken to him?”

I could feel my teeth clench. Then, my back to the room, I spoke quickly and softly. “Listen. You’re partly right. Kenneth is a scientist, and his work is important. That’s why the table was bugged. But it’s nothing to do with the murder. It’s because of me. They don’t like international attachments. He’s not supposed to be seeing me, even.”

“They must be frightfully pleased then, that you’re on board
Dolly
with me . . . Shall we go out?” enquired Johnson.

I led the way, rather thoughtfully. For the fact was, after all that publicity, it must be all too clear to Kenneth’s bosses as well as to Kenneth that I was making for Rum . . .
if
they knew that I was the person he was expecting in Rose Street that night. And if they knew that, and the late Mr Chigwell came to light any time in the next three or four days, they had the perfect excuse for detaining me. On the other hand . . .

“On the other hand,” said Johnson, exactly as if I had spoken aloud. “Our first theory may be right. Chigwell might have been killed by someone who thought he was Dr Holmes. And having found out his mistake, our little friend with the warts may be at the other end of the country just now, trailing the good Kenneth Holmes.” The bifocals flashed at me. “But you say you can warn him. So that must be all right.”

All right, hell. If somebody was trailing Kenneth Holmes with intent to murder, that somebody was here, on the west coast of Scotland, going the way I was going, to Rum.

I said goodnight to Johnson soon after, at the door of my room where he found considerable interest, it seemed, in gazing over my shoulder at my night attire, laid out on the bed, with my big, gold-fitted toilet case beside it. The trunk and the four travelling cases were standing still locked.

“Uh, tell me,” said Johnson. “Have you ever gone sailing before? On anything less than three thousand tons, for example?”

“
Is
there anything less than three thousand tons?” I replied. I was irritated. I added, remembering the portrait: “I’m sorry; but are you trying to say that the
Dolly
is too small for my luggage?”

“No, no. She isn’t too small.” He thought. “But she’ll sink like a lift.”

Ten minutes later, all my cases were open and had been cannibalised into a small heap of unappetising woollies, some mine and some Johnson’s. I was to put these in the smallest of my cases and leave it outside my door at eight o’clock sharp. Breakfast would be at 8:15, after which Rupert would row me to
Dolly.
At 9:30 we should set sail down the Clyde estuary for Gourock, and after an early lunch, the race would begin.

I listened; I answered; I bade him goodnight; I saw him into the corridor; I returned and took, in due course, to my bed, having made my sole (as yet) gesture of explicit contempt.

I did not give myself the trouble of locking the door.

Next morning the sun was shining, but I had seen the sun shining in Scotland before. I dressed to my satisfaction, and had three calls to my bedroom before I was quite ready, at eight forty-five, to saunter downstairs.

The hall of the Yacht Club was full of pixie caps, turtle necks, stained denims and an inorganic culture of toggles. I was wearing my thin kid trouser suit in almond pink, with matching boots and knitted silk jersey. My hair was in a French pleat, and my dark cat glasses were bought in Miami. I wore a little scent by Patou, and on my right hand was a large uncut emerald.

As I descended the stairs, the noise abated; and Johnson, stepping forward, escorted me into breakfast in a silence almost complete. The bifocals shone with the most profound admiration. “The soft kill. Delicious,” he said, “and you’re not to worry. There’s some Thawpit on board.”

I was not worried, although a little surprised to find after breakfast that instead of Rupert, the girl Victoria had been detailed to row me to
Dolly.
She was, of course, the sole shipmate and crew of Cecil Ogden, the lugubrious remittance man of yesterday’s encounter at the bar.

We were introduced, Victoria and I, on the jetty. I looked for a hockey player and I found one: a centre forward, small, bony, and agile. The central zone of the face, revealed by the inner selvedges of long, hanging, mud-coloured hair, displayed large cow-like eyes under thick eyebrows, and a mouth much too big. She wore denims and a faded striped sweater and talked in a high, clear cordon bleu voice about the last thing I did for Stokowski. But she did not, at least, ask for my autograph.

Seawolf’s
dinghy I did not altogether appreciate. It was a light wooden, flat-bowed shell, known as a pram; and I, for one, was no baby. Victoria all too clearly knew I was about to get wet: she tucked oilskins, still talking, over my trouser suit as soon as I was seated, cast off, and took up the oars. Her arms were bare, and so were her feet. A little water at the bottom of the pram slopped over one of my kid boots. Between tugs: “Thank God there’ll be someone on
Dolly
with the glands to stand up to Johnson,” she said vaguely. “He’s done you an epic scene already, I bet, about the right clothes to take.”

“He has. I had a selected caseful of warm waterproof things fixed to go on board first thing this morning.” I paused. The strip of face between the almost united curtains of hair was mildly expectant. “However, to be on the safe side, I bribed the Club porter to row out three more cases before Mr Johnson was up.”

I was rewarded by a large toothy smile. “I knew you’d be super,” said Victoria. “I adore Johnson: he’s so slow and so frightfully switched on; he gets his own way with everything, and of course Rupert worships him and now Lenny the Crew: if you visit
Dolly
it’s like coping with the Memphis Jug Band . . . The
épater la bourgeoisie
thing is marvellous, if you can bear to go on with it. But anyway you’ll love every second. They all do. The racing bit doesn’t matter much, although some of them make rather a thing of it. But the islands are absolute heaven. Do you know the Hebrides?”

I did not. I was prepared to suffer the Hebrides until I came to the one that was called Rum. The others might sink, plop, as of that moment I shook my head.

“Oh, but how super! You’ll adore them. I like them when it’s
very, very
wet. It is, often. I walk about in my bare feet and the mud goes squidge. Do you know we’re going to pass Staffa?”

I knew. Staffa, which has an underground sea cavern and a rock formation superior to the Giant’s Causeway: I knew. I was sick of Staffa. It was beside Iona, the third call; that was all I was interested in. Then Barra and Rodel in the Outer Hebrides. Then the island of Skye; and then Rum. After Rum,
Dolly
could sink; assuming my portrait was finished. As Victoria prattled on about Staffa, I looked round.

The sea sparkled. On either side of the Gare Loch the hills were green, and above, the sky was a filmy, spacious pale blue. Just ahead of us, as Victoria, twisting round, picked her way towards the lanes between moorings, were the first of the yachts. Some were quiet, with bare poles, but most were bustling with people. There was chat, and the noise of generators and engines turning over, and the grating sound of ropes in pulley blocks as sails were hoisted; all made thin and harmless by the unconfined water and air. As we began to pass them, Victoria did a very passable if libellous commentary about each.