Death in the Andamans (6 page)

Leonard was not earning anything approaching the pay that several other suitors of the dashing Ruby De Castres could offer, but for all that he was considered among her set to be a good match. First and foremost because he was what Anglo-India refers to, snobbishly, as a ‘Sahib', and secondly, because rumour had it that although his present position in the Civil Service was a modest one, he would go far.

Rumour, however, as is frequently the case, had been misinformed. Leonard Stock was a pleasant enough little man, amiable, friendly, and unassuming, but totally incapable of firmness or decision — as Ruby De Castres, now Ruby Stock, was to discover within a few brief months of her marriage. Facing the fact that her husband would never rise to any heights if he remained in Midnapore, she had urged him to accept a position in the administration of the Andamans when that opportunity had offered. And so the Stocks had come to the Islands, and at first all had been more than well with them.

Here no echo of her past life had penetrated, and Ruby manufactured, with that facility of invention and superfluous falsehood that is so frequently the hallmark of her type, a father who was a retired Lieutenant-Colonel, an ancestral estate in Ireland, and a Spanish great-grandmother. She entertained lavishly, and to her Leonard's anxious remonstrances over their steadily mounting bills, merely retorted that it was necessary for them to keep up their position if he was ever to get on in the world. And when the four years' tenure of his post in the Islands was up, she persuaded him to apply for an extension.

The move was a fatal one, and he knew it. But he was too weak to resist, for Ruby answered his half-hearted protests with tears and temper, and eventually he gave in. With the result that his post in India, to which he could have returned, was filled. Other men moved up to close the gap, and now he must either continue to ask for and obtain extensions, or find himself out of a job. That had been sixteen years ago; and the Stocks were still in the Islands …

Beautiful, ambitious Ruby, the erstwhile belle of Midnapore, was now a soured and embittered woman who clung to her fading charms with despairing tenacity as being her only defence against the dragging monotony of her existence. And since women were few in the Islands, there had always been some man, often several, tied to her apron-strings. The pursuance of ‘affairs' had become the sole interest of her shallow, childless life, and as a result of this she looked upon every other woman in the light of a possible rival.

Until the arrival of Valerie, Mrs Stock had possessed no serious competitor in Port Blair, and she had resented the girl's youth and distinction with an acid inward bitterness and an outward display of gushing friendliness. But Valerie had not proved the rival she had feared, for her instant annexation by Charles Corbet-Carr had made her impervious to the attentions of all other men. Copper Randal, however, posed a definite threat.

Ruby had decided on sight to add Nick to the ‘chain-gang', as Port Blair was wont to refer, ribaldly, to Mrs Stock's admirers. But from the first it was painfully apparent that the option, if any, on Nick Tarrent's affections was held by that newly arrived tow-headed chit from Government House. Wherefore Mrs Stock's greeting of the aforementioned chit was characteristic
____

‘What on earth kept you, darling?' (Ruby had read somewhere that people in fashionable social circles constantly referred to each other as ‘darling'.) ‘No — don't tell me, I can guess. You had a puncture! Such a romantic road, isn't it? I expect John Shilto is completely
épris
by now! Quite a catch my dear, I assure you. Dear me, how useful punctures are! I wonder how people did without them before there were cars?'

The tinkling laugh that accompanied this pleasantry was not untinged with malice, and Copper's smoke-blue eyes widened into an expression of child-like innocence: ‘Well, of course you'd know, Mrs Stock,' she countered sweetly.

‘
Game, set and match,
I think!' murmured Nick to his immortal soul. Aloud he said briskly: ‘Hullo, Copper. You're abominably late. I gather you brought the drinks with you — and about time too! I could do with one. And I'm sure Ruby could too. Let's go and collect them.' He took Copper firmly by the arm and walked her rapidly away across the lawn before Mrs Stock had time to reply.

‘Oh dear, that was
beastly
of me,' said Copper remorsefully. ‘But she did ask for it! All the same, we shouldn't have just walked off and left her.'

‘Thanks,' said Nick grimly, ‘but I had no desire to act as referee at a cat-fight. You are too quick on the uptake for one so young. It shocks me. It also appeared to shock poor Ruby considerably. Shall I mix you a gin sling, or would you rather have shandy?'

‘Shandy, please. The box with all the gingerbeer and the rest of the soft drinks is still in the car, I think.'

‘Here it is,' said Leonard Stock, appearing beside them with a bottle-filled packing-case. ‘Where shall I put it? Good-morning, Miss Randal.'

‘Dump it somewhere in the shade,' advised Nick. ‘Here, let me help you.'

‘Don't bother, I can manage.' Mr Stock deposited his burden in the shadow of a group of flame trees and hunted through the bottles for one containing gingerbeer: ‘Shandy, I think you said. We might make a large jug of it. I could do with some myself. It really has been a very trying morning. Quite exceptionally airless. I had hoped that there would be a breeze up here; one can usually count on it. But there does not seem to be a breath of wind anywhere today.' He fumbled in his pockets for a handkerchief, and having wiped the palms of his hands, dabbed ineffectually at the sweat that trickled down his face and neck.

‘Hullo, Leonard,' said Valerie, joining them. ‘You're looking very hot and bothered. And so you should be! — what's all this we hear about you bringing Ferrers Shilto along to join the glad throng?'

Mr Stock threw a hunted look over his shoulder and said in an agitated undertone: ‘Yes, I – I'm afraid we did. But how
were
we to know? You see, the padre and Mrs Dobbie brought us in their car, and as they wanted to ask Ferrers about bringing some bedding — he's staying with them for Christmas you know — we stopped at his bungalow, and … Well, it seemed only neighbourly to ask him to come on with us to the picnic, for of course we had no notion that John would be here.
None!
It really is
most
awkward.'

‘You're telling us!' said Charles, accepting a glass of Mr Stock's shandy. ‘In fact, here we go now. Stand by for fireworks! The cousins Shilto, Copper. Grand reunion scene in three sharp explosions. That's Ferrers in the beachcomber get-up: the skinny little shrimp with his back to us and seething fury in every line of it.'

The phrase was descriptive, for there was a tense and quivering animosity about the wizened figure in the stained and crumpled suit of drill who faced John Shilto's confident advance, and a sudden silence descended upon the company as the older man came to a stop before his cousin and held out a large, fleshy hand. Perhaps because of it, his voice when he spoke sounded unnaturally loud and forced: ‘Well, well! This is a surprise!' said Mr Shilto with spurious heartiness. ‘I must admit that I didn't bargain on running into you here, old man. But as we have met, what about taking this opportunity to call bygones bygones? Eh?'

His laugh rang as loud and forced as his voice, but it appeared that Ferrers Shilto was either short-sighted or else that he did not intend to take his cousin's proffered hand, for he did not move. The silence deepened and drew out until it seemed to acquire a solid entity of its own, and once again John Shilto's heavy features became mottled by a dark, ugly tide of colour. He dropped his hand but managed, with a palpable effort, to retain the semblance of a smile: ‘Oh, come on, old man, be a sport! After all, it's Christmas, you know.
“Peace and Goodwill”.
'

Ferrers Shilto laughed — a shrill, cackling, almost hysterical sound — and said, astonishingly: ‘So you've found out, have you? I wonder how you managed it? Well a hell of a lot of good may it do you!'

The words, meaningless as they appeared to the openly listening bystanders, evidently possessed a meaning for John Shilto. And afterwards Copper was to remember the way in which both colour and smile had been wiped off his face as though with a sponge, leaving it pasty white and raw with rage. To remember, too, the hot, bright sunlight and the dappled shadows, the silent group of people, and the strange, fleeting look that she had surprised on one other face …

John Shilto put up a fumbling and uncertain hand and tugged at his collar as though it were too tight for him, then turning abruptly, he walked away across the lawn with a curious stumbling tread.

Hurried and somewhat guilty conversation broke out again as the spectators of the recent drama awoke to a belated sense of social shortcomings. But as Ferrers Shilto turned on his heel, Valerie heard Copper draw in her breath in a short hard gasp and saw her stiffen as though the sight of the little man's face had given her a violent shock. ‘What's the matter, Coppy?' she asked sharply: ‘You look as if you'd seen a ghost.'

‘I believe I have,' said Copper huskily.

She forced an uncertain laugh and said in a voice that was not entirely under control: ‘Don't look so alarmed, Val. I'm not mental. At least I don't think I am. But — that nightmare I had. I know it sounds fantastic, but the man I saw in it was Ferrers Shilto!'

*   *   *

A period of deep, warm, post-luncheon peace had descended upon Mount Harriet.

Those members of the picnic party who had failed to secure one of the coveted beds in the house had disposed themselves for slumber on rugs and cushions in various shady corners of the garden, and Valerie, Copper, Charles and Nick, beaten by a short head in the race for the comforting though restricted shade of the fig trees on the eastern edge of the lawn, had retired with all the rugs they could muster to the lorry.

This capacious and utilitarian vehicle, the property of the Public Works Department, was ordinarily employed in carrying loads of gravel or stone for road repairs, but had on this occasion been borrowed to transport half the party from Hopetown jetty to Mount Harriet. Traces of its workaday occupation still lingered between the boards and littered the corners, but failed to discommode the four who, climbing in over the tail-board, spread rugs and cushions upon the dusty floor and settled down to a peaceful afternoon's siesta.

‘This is bliss,' said Charles drowsily. ‘Wake me up in time for a late-ish tea, someone. And let us pray that no hearty friends get bitten with the idea of going down to bathe and drive off with us, like last time!' He settled himself comfortably on his back on the floorboards and closed his eyes: only to open them a moment later as footsteps crunched the gravel outside and some unseen person approached the lorry and, pausing beside it, laid a hand on the edge of the tail-board.

Copper opened her mouth to speak, but stopped at a grimace from Charles.
‘Ronnie!'
mouthed Charles silently; and indicated by dumb show that if Mr Purvis discovered their occupation of the vehicle he would undoubtedly add himself to their party. Whereupon the four lay quiet and made a creditable attempt to cease breathing, and after a moment or two the hand was withdrawn and the footsteps moved away in the direction of the house.

‘Saved!' sighed Charles. ‘That tedious Romeo would have pressed in and talked the entire afternoon.'

‘It wasn't Ronnie,' announced Copper, peering through a crack in the side of the lorry. ‘It was the Shilto cousin — Ferrers.'

‘That's odd,' said Valerie. ‘I thought it was Ronnie, too. I wonder why? What do you suppose Ferrers is doing wandering around loose? I'd rather hoped that after the Big Scene the padre would put a leash on him. Charles, do you suppose
____
?'

‘No, I don't!' said Charles firmly. ‘I see no evil, I hear no evil and I speak no evil. Not at the moment, anyway. I am suffering from post-prandial torpor and I intend to slumber. So pipe down, light-of-my-life, and let us have not only peace but quiet.'

The lorry had been parked in the shade of the house, and presently a faint, unexpectedly cold breeze stole across the garden, cooling the clogging warmth of the afternoon to a more pleasant temperature. A drowsy silence fell, in which Charles snored gently and a wandering bluebottle investigated Nick's unconscious chin …

*   *   *

Afterwards not one of them could be quite certain at what point they had awakened. But awakened they were, all four of them. And by the time they had arrived at full consciousness they had overheard sufficient to make them realize that this was no time to rise and disclose themselves. Therefore they lay still, concealed by the high wooden sides of the lorry, while a scant yard away the cousins Shilto exchanged words of an uncousinly nature.

Piecing together, in the light of after-events, what they could remember of that conversation, it appeared that John Shilto had offered to buy back his cousin's plantation at more than twice the price he had originally received for it; giving, as a reason for this astounding gesture, his desire to put an end to the old quarrel between them. This offer Ferrers was in the process of rejecting with every indication of scorn and loathing when the occupants of the lorry awoke to the fact that they were involuntarily eavesdropping on a private conversation.

‘— and if,' announced Ferrers Shilto, concluding a speech generously interlarded with expressions of a distressingly personal and opprobrious character, ‘you imagine for one minute that I am going to be had for a mug twice over by a crook like you, you can think again! You could offer me
forty
times the sum you swindled out of me for that stinking, rat-ridden, pestilential plantation, and I wouldn't take it! And what's more I shall make my will tomorrow — just to be sure that you never get your hands on it! No, my beloved cousin, this is where I get my own back at last. That plantation is mine. Every single, slimy acre of it, wet or dry. And if you so much as set foot on it, I'll have my servants thrash you off it!'