Duck Season Death (15 page)

“Oh, I don't think that's likely to happen. After all, you won't be there.” McGrath caught the pillow Charles threw at his head, returned it deftly and went out.

Charles's emotional state after this encounter was not conducive to sound slumber. He spent part of the night lying awake apostrophising with eloquent invective McGrath, Athol, Shelagh and anyone else whose mental image came before him. In a vain effort to atrophy his feelings, he turned over the review books belonging to Athol. But when he read on one of the publisher's slips a message which ran ‘Pan this, Athol, and I'll shoot you!' He threw them to the floor, slumped on his bed and groaned loudly and unheedingly.

From this lonely pastime, he was aroused by a light knock at the door. A happier gleam came into his eye and he sat up. “Who is it?”

A soft voice said anxiously, “It's Frances Turner. Are you all right, Mr Carmichael? I thought I heard you call out.”

“You can come in. I was groaning, not calling out.”

She put her head in, surveying him doubtfully. “Are you ill? Is there anything I can do?”

Her air of concern was easy on Charles's jaundiced gaze and wounded spirit. “No, there's nothing you can do. I can't sleep, that's all.”

“Oh, how wretched!” she exclaimed in a whisper. “Have you—”

“Yes, I've tried a sedative, reading and counting sheep. I'm sorry to have disturbed you. Please go back to bed.”

She cast an anxious look over her shoulder. “Andy's got some special sleeping tablets. Let me get you a couple.”

“They're certain to have no effect on me,” said Charles in martyred accents. “So please don't bother. I'll just lie here and wait for the dawn.”

She smiled a little. “It's quite a wait. You might as well try them. Andy has made me take them before this and they're marvellous. I'll be back in a moment.”

She returned presently carrying a tumbler of water. “Here they are! Swallow them down and let me straighten your bed.”

“Very good of you,” Charles mumbled as he gulped.

“That's all right. I know what it's like not being able to sleep.” She pulled and tucked deftly and thumped up his pillows, her face grave and kind.

Charles suddenly knew how it was patients so often fell in love with their nurses. A certain type of nurse, he thought darkly, remembering Shelagh. “That's just wonderful!” he announced, as she smoothed the sheet under his chin, then stood surveying him as though she'd like to find more to do. “Were you a nurse, by any chance?”

She shook her head. “No, but I looked after my invalid sister for many years. You can't help finding out how to make people comfortable. Now you just relax and I'm sure you'll drop off soon.”

“Andy's a very lucky man,” said Charles.

She turned back from the door, smiling shyly at the compliment. She then said seriously, “Don't think worrying thoughts. It's worry that keeps you awake—and bad memories. Good-night!”

“Good-night!” echoed Charles. What a nice little woman, he thought, putting out a hand to switch off the lights. Too bad that lout will never appreciate her. Such a nice, understanding, womanly, little—Charles rolled over and fell fast asleep.

XI

The strident sound of a car engine with an open throttle taking the rise up to the hotel awakened Charles the next morning. He got up and went to the window. Ellis had planned to conduct his guests further afield than Teal Lagoon. The ducks had been frightened away from there and it would be some days before the decoys would coax them back again. Charles dimly remembered hearing the departure of the party in the Bryce station wagon.

Presently the Turners' utility came into view, driven by Ellis with Jerry alongside. It drew up under Charles's window. “Is anything
the matter?” he called sharply, as Ellis opened Jerry's door and proceeded to help him out.

Ellis looked up. “The very person I want to see! Come on down, my dear fellow.”

Charles hurried on his dressing-gown and went downstairs. The Bryces were in the hall, Jerry with one arm supported by his other hand. There was blood on the upper sleeve of his yellow pullover and he looked more than ordinarily stormy.

“He got into someone's range of fire,” explained Ellis. “Just a graze or two—nothing serious—but such a coincidence, don't you agree, Charles? Do you know, I have the oddest feeling that here, but for a quirk of fate, am I.”

“I wish you'd stop talking and help me out of this,” said Jerry, trying to ease his way out of his pullover.

“You render assistance, Charles. I'll go and find Shelagh. An admirable girl in crisis. The sight of blood may turn some people squeamish, but to my daughter it is a challenge.”

“He's been talking like that all the way back,” said Jerry. “We left the station wagon for the others.”

“What on earth possessed you to get ahead of the guns?”

“I didn't get ahead,” he returned indignantly. “We were all spread around the Upper Lagoon. That fool Dougall's idea—he said we'd bag more if we separated.”

“Then you don't know who did it?”

“If I knew that,” declared Jerry roundly, “I'd be peppering someone's backside right now.”

“Shelagh's coming,” announced Ellis, coming back, “plus a bowl of water and a dozen other accoutrements. My poor Jerry, what an unpleasant mess! I must say I'm glad you were so insistent on my handing over your pullover. Never mind, you can wear a sling and Margot will change the range of her gaze. I understand slings have the most devastating effect on females.”

“Was the pullover exchange the quirk of fate?” asked Charles.

“How acute you are!” Ellis marvelled. “I was only saying so to our stolid friend McGrath last night; hoping, of course, to inspire a little acuteness into him. That unwinking solemnity and so slow to reply! I tried every way I could to shock him into natural behaviour—even hinting broadly that I agreed with you about Athol's accident and that, should the effort not be so tedious, it would be well in my powers to find the person who killed him.”

Charles gave him a withering glance. “You were a fool to talk like that. Don't you realise what could have happened—what might happen yet?”

“And I thought you'd be grateful,” said Ellis plaintively. “Admittedly I dislike the idea of being a clay pigeon, but it does help to clarify the position for you.”

“I don't need anything clarified.”

“No, but your friend Mr McGrath might,” said Ellis gently.

“Well, let this be a warning to you,” said Charles, pointing to Jerry.

“I think that is all it was meant to be,” Ellis reflected. “Long range and a shotgun. You can't expect to do the same damage as with—let's say—a Wilding.”

“Well, I'm damned glad it wasn't a Wilding,” protested Jerry, outraged. “I might have been killed.”

“The thought of such a possibility, my son, appals me,” said Ellis kindly. “Ah, here is your sister, come to put everything to rights and everyone in their places!”

“I'm going upstairs to get dressed,” said Charles, suddenly conscious of his unshaven, dishevelled state.

As Ellis had predicted, Margot fussed prettily over Jerry at breakfast, cutting his toast and decapitating his boiled egg. Shelagh had ordered him to Dr Spenser's morning surgery for a check up on her work which she knew was an unnecessary precaution, and McGrath had offered to escort him.

“You're not running out on me, are you?” Charles asked suspiciously, waylaying the detective in the hall.

“What a thought!” exclaimed McGrath virtuously. “I have a good mind not to ask for a loan of your car. You look like Sunday's leftovers, boy! Anything troubling you?”

“Oh, no, not a thing! Here I am, sweating my insides out trying to solve a murder which you think I committed and which no one else thinks happened, and you go off with Jerry to hold his hand.”

McGrath grinned. “Perhaps if you'd come out with the party this morning, it might have been your hand.”

Charles's expression changed quickly. “What did you make of the shooting? Ellis thinks it was intended as a warning to him.”

“A very whimsical character is Mr Bryce,” said the other, not committing himself. “Well, I'd better collect the patient and make tracks. Want me to do anything for you in the township?”

“Nothing, thanks—but I'd still like to know why you're escorting Jerry.”

“Just out of the kindness of my heart—plus the fact that there are one or two commissions I have to perform.”

“Commissions for whom?”

“You, boy! By the way, you don't happen to have that bullet on you—the one that killed your uncle?”

Charles stared at him wonderingly. “I have it right here. Why do you want it?”

“Thanks.” McGrath slipped it into his pocket casually and turned to go.

Charles caught him by the arm. “Come on, Mac,” he said coaxingly. “What are you going to do with that bullet?”

“Send it down to Melbourne for a ballistics report.”

“What sort of report can they give without the gun that fired it?”

“Oh, I'm sending that along too,” returned the detective easily.

Charles choked. “You—where—?”

“Now, take it easy, boy!”

Charles found his voice. “Where did you discover it and why didn't you tell me? You know damned well how much finding that Wilding means to me.”

McGrath cocked an eyebrow. “I told you before, boy, I don't know anything damned well.”

“When and where?” Charles demanded in a pent-up voice.

“This morning—under the front seat of your car.”

“Yes, I was going to search the cars this morn—what did you say? My car?”

“You seem amazed,” observed McGrath coolly.

Charles mouthed and waved his hands like Wilson in one of his spasms while the detective watched him with a detached interest. “A plant!” he pronounced at last.

“I rather expected you to say that,” McGrath said maddeningly.

“Now, look here, Mac—I know what you're thinking, or rather what you're pretending to think, but I had no idea that bloody gun was in my car. Absolutely no idea! Is that clear?”

“Whatever you say, boy, but you don't mind if I have my own ideas on the subject.”

Charles groaned in despair. “I give up. I'll shoot myself and leave a letter explaining all.”

McGrath chuckled. “Oh, don't do that. The game's never lost until it's won, or should that be the other way round?”

“The way you're playing it, the game's to the killer. I looked for help from you, Mac not hindrance.”

“I'm not hindering you. You keep on going right ahead.”

“Okay, I will,” snapped Charles. “I'll find the person who killed Athol and shot at Ellis this morning, if it's the last thing I do.”

XII

It was a bright fine morning and the guests had wandered outside to blink and idle in the sun, leaving the house free for Miss Bryce and Shelagh to tear purposefully through their work. Their energy
had inspired Ellis into taking refuge in the bar where he was conducting a desultory stocktaking.

Mrs Dougall's platform tones reached Charles's ears first—“. . . a full moon and just a faint breeze, enough to carry the scent of the prey. Conditions were ideal. Ah, Mr Carmichael, good morning! I was running through the drill for this afternoon. As a literary man, you must tell me what you think of it.”

“One of these days you really must write your memoirs, my dear,” said Major Dougall, his eyes bulging sycophantically. “I'll never forget that tiger shoot, and you describe it so well that it seems only yesterday.”

“I'd rather you described this morning's duck-shoot,” said Charles.

The major looked at him as though he had mentioned the blockage in the local sewer. “Disgraceful business! Can't think what people are coming to nowadays.”

Mrs Dougall looked at Charles full in the eye. “Lamentable carelessness, but an accident, of course.”

“Oh, without doubt an accident. Is it tactless to enquire if anyone knows who was responsible?”

“No one knows and no one wishes to know,” said Mrs Dougall severely.

“Then I take it you don't intend to lose sleep over the incident.”

Before his wife could engage the enemy, Major Dougall broke in with an affable choke. “Nothing ever disturbs my wife's slumber. Remember that time in Bombay, my dear? We were staying at the Taj and a thief got into our room. I woke up, grabbed him and called the police, but you slept through the whole thing.”

“How very interesting!” said Charles politely. “You must include the story in your memoirs, Mrs Dougall.”

He strolled across to where Margot was lounging with careful grace in a cane chaise-lounge and turning over the pages of a fashion magazine in which her own countenance appeared several times. Wilson was hovering about her adoringly.