The Twenty-Third Man (2 page)

She unpacked and went down the wide, cool, stone staircase to lunch. At a table for four were Caroline Lockerby and her brother. The tall, pale young man who had invited Dame Beatrice to share his taxi was standing at the entrance to the shuttered dining-room and was scanning the tables. He saw Dame Beatrice at once.

‘Why, look,’ he said, ‘those two people from the boat seem to have spare chairs. Who are they?’

‘They are Mrs Lockerby and her brother,’ Dame Beatrice replied.

‘Do you think they’d like us to join them? Family party, wouldn’t you say? I can’t abide eating alone.’ There was something peculiar in his tone. He walked towards the table at which Caroline and her brother were seated, and pulled out a chair for Dame Beatrice. Telham gave him an appraising glance, reminding Dame Beatrice of the attitude of an older brother towards a younger one, and nodded as the introductions were made.

The four made an ill-assorted quartet – Caroline in her late twenties, beautiful after the fashion of the pre-Raphaelite painters, but with eyes whose passion Burne-Jones never painted, the two young men, the one dark, pallid, and restless, the other fair-haired with strained, weak eyes and a mouth which mocked at himself, and, a truly incongruous figure, the spare and upright, black-haired, quick-eyed psychiatrist, humorous, shrewd, and mellowed. On her yellow, claw-like hands the precious stones with their witchcraft fire of rubies, opals, and emeralds, glowed in magnificent rings.

Young Clun put his fingers on her yellow wrist. Her hand was palm-downwards on the table.

‘You seem to be worth robbing,’ he said. Dame Beatrice looked down at his hand and he took it away. She flexed her fingers and grinned.

‘Yes,’ she said pleasantly, ‘quite worth robbing – up to a point, dear child. Beyond that point, of course, not.’ She glanced at his face. Clun shrugged, but his eyes fell away.

‘As a matter of fact, it wasn’t robbery,’ he said. ‘It was brought in as manslaughter. I hit a bloke a little bit too hard. Three years. Quite a packet for the all-too-human mistake of not realizing what the poor corpse would look like, you know.’

There was a crash. Telham had leapt up and pushed his chair from the table with so much violence that it had
fallen
over. His face was scarlet. He made Dame Beatrice an awkward, stiff little bow.

‘You won’t expect me to sit down with a murderer,’ he said. His sister rose, but in a composed manner.

‘Please forgive us,’ she said. She put her hand on her brother’s arm, and the pair walked over to an empty table in a different part of the room. It was another table for four, and the brother and sister seated themselves with their backs to the places they had left.

‘Well, I’m damned,’ said Clun mildly. ‘What bug, do you suppose, has bitten
them
?’

‘Manslaughter,’ replied Dame Beatrice. ‘And Mrs Lockerby, I gather, recently lost her husband.’

‘Well, hang it, how the hell was
I
to know?’

‘You couldn’t know – unless, of course, you knew. Would you care to order for both of us? I can eat anything except the island pork. Veal, I am glad to notice, does not appear on the menu.’

‘You know,’ said Clun, when they were served, ‘you’re the sort of person who gets told things. You seem what they call a born confidante.’

‘Naturally. It is my profession.’

‘A barrister? Yes, you
could
be. Don’t care much about barristers. Mine failed to get me off, yet I should have thought there were extenuating circumstances. Provocation, for instance. Doesn’t provocation count for anything in the eyes of the law?’ A twisted smile came into play. She wondered what the provocation had been, but he wanted her to ask him and for this she was disinclined.

‘I am not a barrister,’ she said.

‘A doctor, then? The medico let down the prisoner at my trial. Would the blow have killed the man before he fell down the stairs? Yes, it would. Perhaps it wouldn’t. Sit on the fence and don’t commit yourself. It was really pretty to hear him. Anyway, the ayes had it. You ever been in prison?’

‘I have not had that experience, but I
am
a doctor. I am also a psychiatrist and a specialist in nervous diseases.’

‘One of those “lie on the couch and spout any rot that comes into your head” merchants? Somehow, I shouldn’t have thought it. You seem, if you don’t mind my saying so, more like a rather cynical but sporting aunt.
Are
you an aunt, by any chance?’

‘Certainly I am, and a great-aunt, too.’

‘I knew it well, you’d better adopt me as an extra nephew. I have a feeling that we are going to get on rather well.’

‘What,
precisely
, did you do to be sentenced?’

‘I got tight and punched a chap and he tumbled downstairs.’

‘Extenuating circumstances, I think you said.’

‘None, great-aunt. He did not fall: he was definitely pushed.’

‘I do not need another great-nephew.’

‘Oh, well, there was no harm in trying. See you later, alligator.’

Dame Beatrice grinned, looking much like the creature in question. Clun smiled in response, made her a jerky, ironic bow, and, waving aside the waiter who was bringing ice-cream and a profusion of the fruits of the island, sauntered out. Dame Beatrice finished her lunch and was about to get up from the table when the brother and sister came up to her.

‘I say,’ said Telham, the flush still visible on his cheekbones, ‘I ought to apologize, but, well…’ He glanced at his sister.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not now. One day I’ll tell Dame Beatrice all about it. What are we going to do this afternoon?’

‘I’, said Dame Beatrice, ‘am going to sit in the sun and watch lizards.’

‘Lovely. Telham and I thought of going down to the beach. They say the bathing here is delightful, and this hotel has its own private path down the cliff – a wonderful zigzag affair with the most marvellous views from every angle.’ But her panegyrics rang false, thought Dame Beatrice. She herself did not get into the sunshine as soon as
she
had hoped. She was taking coffee in the shaded lounge of the hotel when a small, spare woman who might once have been very good-looking, came up to her and demanded: ‘Are you a bird-watcher?’

‘I am interested in all wild life,’ Dame Beatrice cautiously replied.

‘Field-glasses?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Do you possess field-glasses?’

‘Certainly I do.’

‘Oh, good. Then you won’t need to borrow the club ones. I like to lend those to the natives. You would be surprised at the interest they take.’

‘In watching birds?’

‘What else?’

‘David watched Bathsheba, you know.’

‘Really!’ said the fanatic. ‘What an idea!’ Dame Beatrice gazed at her retreating, upright, narrow back with an indulgent leer.

Just as she was finishing her coffee, a rotund man, with china-blue eyes and the complexion of mahogany furniture, put a tall glass and a bottle of tonic-water on her table and seated himself beside her.

‘Introducing Daniel Nathaniel Snodgrass,’ he said jovially. ‘A poor pseudonym, madam, but mine own. Actually, my name is Peterhouse, and my motto is that we British should stick together.’

‘Laudable, but unfortunately I am not British,’ said Dame Beatrice, summing him up as mentally unsound.

‘But – the hotel register?’

‘Oh, that!’ She dismissed it with a wave of her yellow claw. ‘I mean, I am not British in the matter of sticking together. I am, to borrow a word, an isolationist.’

‘Well, well,’ said Mr Peterhouse, conceding the point almost contemptuously, ‘so am I, in my own way, of course. That is to say, I am a botanist.’

‘This island surely must give you scope.’

‘Oh, it does! Orchids, for instance. I have sent to Kew
Gardens
several specimens for which they themselves have had to find names.’

‘That is indeed a wonderful achievement, but is not an exploration of the island fraught with danger to life and limb?’

‘To both, I can assure you. Ravines, crevasses, caverns, mountain fastnesses – I have explored them all. The trouble, of course, is Tio Caballo.’

‘A local landowner?’ (Not that ‘Uncle Horse’ sounded a likely name for a feudal lord, she thought.)

‘A local brigand, madam. Twice have I lighted upon his hide-outs. Once, when I was in pursuit of
Cavernus epiglottis
, whose antecedents are found only in New Mexico, as you probably know, I stumbled upon Caballo and his band and was held to ransom. The fact that I had no money but was carrying a case of rather strong cigars of local manufacture won me my freedom. I also had to promise to pray for Caballo’s soul. He is a deeply religious man and risks getting into trouble by sneaking into the Cathedral to hear Mass. I was able to redeem my promise by proxy. A small donation secured the services of Brother Pedro-Maria, a fellow botanist, who lives in the monastery at Puerto Santo, a few miles up the coast, and he took care of the matter for me.’

Dame Beatrice nodded genially.

‘And your second adventure?’ she asked.

‘Not quite so happy. Caballo and half the band – they number eight or nine men – were off on some, no doubt, illegal errand, and I rounded a bluff high up in the mountains to run into his lieutenant, José el Lupe. José, not a bad fellow in his way, had need of a disguise so that he could visit his girl friend here in Reales. When he is rich enough they will marry. He took my clothes and lent me some of his, not that we are anything of the same build, but I would not have offered any criticism of the arrangement except that his garments were verminous. I ventured to point this out. The Spanish for lice is
piojos
. José was most amused.’

‘I begin to see what your motto involves. All Britons on this island should stick together. With a posse of clean-limbed Englishmen at your back you could penetrate the territory of Tio Caballo without fear of reprisals or the necessity for prayers. What about forming a club and lending the members field-glasses so that they could espy the bandits from afar?’

‘That woman is mad,’ said Mr Peterhouse solemnly. ‘I hope she hasn’t been pestering you? She always waylays people who are fresh to the hotel. She’s a menace. Of course,’ he added hurriedly, as he caught Dame Beatrice’s eye, ‘we do lead rather a dull life here, in a way, so far as the hotel is concerned. One does rather like to see new faces. Are you staying here long?’

‘A month at least – until the next ship calls, you know. Longer than that if I like it.’

‘Do you play bridge?’

‘No.’

‘Then I advise you to begin. There’s nothing to do here in the evening except to play bridge.’

‘Then I shall do nothing in the evenings.’ She nodded, put down her cup and strolled out. ‘
Cavernus epiglottis?
’ she thought. ‘How ridiculous!’

By three o’clock in the afternoon she was sitting in brilliant sunshine watching the lizards. The heat was intense, but, like the lizards themselves, Dame Beatrice appeared to thrive on it. She saw several saurians, some of European-Mediterranean, some of North African type, and there was one fine creature, twenty inches long, who lay sunning himself for half an hour or more, his throat pulsating and his reptilian eyes fixed (she felt certain) on her own.

‘
Locerta simonyi
,’ said Dame Beatrice, addressing him affectionately, ‘I wonder what brought you to the Island of Dead Men? You are not indigenous here.’

‘Not what. Who,’ stated a voice behind her; and a very handsome man, wearing the kind of linen shirt, shapeless drawers and thin, worn blanket which the island peasants
affected,
seated himself beside her. ‘It was I, Karl Emden, who introduced
Locerta simonyi
to this island. He, like Beelzebub, is the Lord of Flies. You are staying with us at the
Sombrero
, I believe?’

‘Yes, I am spending a holiday here.’

‘I have lived here for two months. Delightful place! I saw you sitting in the lounge drinking coffee. I wouldn’t encourage Mrs Bluetit Angel, if I were you. She’s mad. Did she talk about birds? It’s her only subject, so she’s certain to have got on it. Charlie Peterhouse, too, the silly old pest.
He
collects plants. Did he try to get you to play bridge? He’s the biggest cheat on the island. You don’t want to get into any set where
he
manipulates the cards. Have you met Ruiz yet? If not, you will. He’s a bit of a bore, actually. Got a son doing well in South America. Ruiz is all right, I suppose, but to listen to him you’d think he was lord of this island. Oh, you’ll find them all out in time. Luisa, now, his daughter. She acts as book-keeper, so watch your bill when you get it. Are many people staying off for a holiday? I wasn’t in to lunch. Amaryllis – the current issue, don’t you know – kept me busy, so we had a snack and a drink at Puerto del Sol, down the coast. Pretty little place. You ought to go and see it while you’re here.’

‘I expect I shall, if it is worth a visit. I am here for a rest as much as anything.’

He surveyed her spare, upright figure quizzically.

‘You don’t look like one who has much use for rest,’ he said. ‘You look very much on the alert. I suppose you’ve been a professional woman of some sort?’

‘I still am, I hope. I am a psychiatrist.’

‘Good Lord! Just the woman! I could do with a check-up. Do you care to have a patient? I don’t think I’m bats, or have suicidal tendencies, or a split personality, but I’m exercised in my mind and I’d like to confide in the right sort of person. The right sort of person would seem to be an elderly lady – men don’t like me, for some reason. Don Juan is seldom popular with his own sex. Jealousy, I suppose.’

‘I must interrupt you,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I am here on holiday. Your complexes and difficulties must be taken elsewhere.’

‘Yes, but you don’t know what my difficulties are. I’ve only one, actually. It’s concerned with murder.’

‘Have you committed murder?’

‘No, of course not. Never mind. Tell me about the other people who are stopping off. I’m told that we generally get half a dozen or more at this time of year.’

‘I know only of three, apart from myself.’

‘Are they all three together?’ His voice was strangely eager.