‘Val’s just phoning Charles to find if he’s down at the Mess,’ said Copper: ‘the Ross wire has been fixed, thank heaven.’
As she spoke, Valerie came out of the verandah where she had been telephoning, looking both worried and annoyed: ‘No,’ she said shortly in reply to Nick’s query, ‘he’s not there. Or up at the hospital — or down at the Club either. Of course there’s still the barracks and Ronnie Purvis. I couldn’t get hold of Ronnie. His man said he was out, and didn’t appear to know if anyone else had been to the house or not. Oh dear! as if there wasn’t enough fuss and unpleasantness without Dan playing the fool!’
‘Dan’s no fool,’ said Nick curtly, ‘and if he isn’t here it’s because he’s got a very good reason for being elsewhere! Either that or the silly ass has fallen over something in this bloody fog. Well, there’s only one thing to do and that’s round up a search-party: I’m off to co-opt Charles and Hamish and anyone else I can get hold of.’
He swung round and bumped into the Chief Commissioner who had been making for the staircase followed by Leonard Stock and Mr Shilto. ‘Blast — I beg your pardon, sir. I____’ He stopped suddenly, checked by the sight of their formal attire.
‘Valerie, my dear,’ said Sir Lionel, ‘we are just off to attend poor Ferrers’s funeral. I thought that we should excuse you from coming as it is such a wretched day.’
‘Oh,’ said Valerie blankly, ‘I’d forgotten. No, I don’t think Copper and I will go, if you don’t mind, Mr Shilto?’
‘I? But of course not, Miss Valerie. I know that your sympathy will be with us, and that is as valuable a tribute as your presence.’ John Shilto grinned maliciously and passed on down the staircase in the wake of Sir Lionel. But they did not reach the hall.
There was a sudden commotion outside the front door, and a dishevelled, unrecognizable figure thrust past the guard and flung itself up the stairs to stop, panting for breath and clinging to the banisters, before the Chief Commissioner.
It was young Dr Dutt, who had apparently run up the steep path to the house, for his gasping words were unintelligible and he appeared to be labouring under the stress of some violent emotion.
The Chief Commissioner, becoming indignantly aware of the curious faces of the orderlies and servants in the hall below, grasped the young man firmly by the arm and propelled him forcibly up the stairs and into the drawing-room. ‘Now,’ said Sir Lionel, thrusting him into the nearest armchair, ‘take your time, and try to get your breath. Stock, will you please fetch a glass of water?’
Leonard vanished obediently, and the young doctor, acting upon the Chief Commissioner’s advice, abandoned his attempts at speech, and concentrated upon regaining his breath.
There was something startling about his appearance as well as his sudden arrival. The slim, dapper, self-satisfied figure of the previous night had disappeared, and in its place sat a frantic-eyed youth with disordered hair and clothing. His shoes and trousers were splashed with the mud of the wet roads, and looking at him Copper experienced a premonition of disaster so violent that for a moment it turned her giddy and sick.
It must have shown in her face, for Nick’s hand shot out and caught her wrist. He held it for perhaps the space of four seconds, and then dropped it with a little encouraging shake; and perhaps it was that more than anything within herself that held her steady during the moments that followed. For Dr Dutt had recovered his breath.
He gulped down a few mouthfuls of water and stood up, holding tightly to the back of his chair, and though his voice was still breathless and jerky and his English had become more dislocated than ever, his story, which he insisted in relating in strict sequence, was only too clear …
He had, he told them, been able to raise a makeshift coffin for the corpse of Ferrers Shilto, and with four men to carry it had repaired to the Guest House some twenty minutes ago for the purpose of coffining the body. But when they removed it from the trestle table on which it rested, they had discovered to their annoyance that owing to the bulkiness of the tarpaulin which had been sewn about it, the coffin lid could not be made to close. There had been nothing for it but to remove the tarpaulin, and after sending out for a knife to rip out the twine with which it was stitched, they presently uncovered the body …
Dr Dutt paused to swallow convulsively and renew his grip upon the chair back, his starting eyes once more visualizing the full horror of that moment.
‘Well, go on,’ snapped Sir Lionel tartly. ‘What was the trouble? Don’t tell me he wasn’t dead after all!’
Dr Dutt licked his dry lips and his eyes turned slowly to Sir Lionel’s, and from there to each face in that silent circle.
‘I am warn before I open,’ he said, his voice barely more than a harsh whisper: ‘My hand — it is wet. And when I look upon it, it is blood. But do I warn? No! I think I am cutting myself on knife. Then the cover is remove, and – and there is not Mr Shilto, but the gentleman who speak to me last night and say, “I also am doctor.” And – and he is dead!’
‘God!’ said Nick in a queer whisper. ‘Dan____!’
He swung round and ran from the room, and they heard his feet on the stairs, and then the crash of the front door as it slammed shut behind him.
13
‘Dan!’ said Valerie in a small, choking voice. ‘Oh, it isn’t true! I don’t believe it. It can’t possibly be true.’
Dr Dutt turned to her almost gratefully: ‘That is what I speak to myself. I say: “It is not true. Here is much witchcraft!” But the other fellows they are seeing too. They are very poor, ignorant men, but they say: “Here is not Shilto Sahib, but the young Sahib from the large ship. It is evil magic!” and they are fearful and they run away. Then I myself run here with great speed to tell of this terrible calamity.’
Sir Lionel, who had not moved or spoken, let his breath out in a long sigh and said in a curiously halting voice: ‘You are certain of this? That it is Surgeon-Lieutenant Harcourt?’
‘How can I mistake? Twice I have seen him!’
‘And – and you are sure that he is — dead?’
‘Most certainly. He is dead as door-nail. There is no doubt.’
‘But how?’ inquired Leonard Stock shrilly, his stunned face a curious greenish white. He took a stumbling step forward and clutched at the young assistant’s arm, shaking it violently: ‘It’s absurd, man! You must be mistaken! A man can’t die and then go off and sew himself up in sacking afterwards. It doesn’t make sense!’
‘Don’t be absurd, Stock!’ snapped Sir Lionel. ‘Is it likely he’d sew himself up? Pull yourself together!’
‘Then – then you think it is — murder?’ gasped Mr Stock in a half-whisper, his eyes flaring with a sudden stark terror.
‘Murder? What the devil are you talking about? Why should it be murder? I imagine that the young fool went down to take a look at the body last night and probably stumbled or met with some accident in the dark, and broke his neck. You know what our local people are like. Always terrified to report any accident for fear that they will be held responsible for it. It’s more than likely that a native guard or that fool of a chowkidar found him, and realizing that he was dead, got into a panic and hit on the idea of sewing him into Ferrers’s piece of canvas in the hope that he’d be buried without anyone being the wiser.’
John Shilto gave vent to a sudden bark of laughter: a shocking and unexpected sound. ‘It’s a good theory,’ he said, ‘but it won’t wash. Why hide one body at the expense of landing yourself with the other?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t follow you,’ said Sir Lionel stiffly.
Dr Dutt said: ‘But Mr Shilto he is right, yess! Two bodies are not present. There is only Mister Harcourt.’
‘What’s that?’ Sir Lionel swung round to face John Shilto. ‘You say that Ferrers’s body has been removed?’
‘Oh, no I didn’t,’ contradicted Mr Shilto blandly. ‘I merely arrived at the obvious, and apparently correct conclusion, that it has been removed. Harcourt was a slim
man, but in spite of that he was a good deal larger than my late-lamented cousin, and although the thickness of a tarpaulin shroud might have accounted for the rather larger appearance of the corpse, it could never for a moment have been expected to disguise two corpses as one. And if, as I imagine, the substitution of the bodies was intended to conceal the fact of Harcourt’s death, it stands to reason that the previous occupant of the tarpaulin must first have been removed.’
‘Do you mean to tell me,’ demanded Leonard Stock, his voice shrill and quivering with shock, ‘that except for the accident of the coffin lid being unable to close, young Harcourt would have been buried as your cousin and nobody would ever have known?’
‘You follow me like a shadow,’ grinned John Shilto derisively. ‘I mean just that.’
The Chief Commissioner turned on him angrily: ‘This is no joking matter, Shilto! We are wasting valuable time. I suggest we go down to the Guest House immediately. And the sooner we get the police on to this, the better.’
Mr Shilto gave another bark of mirthless laughter: ‘The police? A fat lot of good they’re going to be to us while they’re all stranded over on Aberdeen! We haven’t a single police official here on Ross; and until this sea goes down, and the jetty is repaired, they have as much hope of reaching us as if we were surrounded by a hundred miles of open sea. What’s more, with the telephone line to Aberdeen gone, and this fog, we have no possible means of communicating with them.’
Sir Lionel looked at him with a curiously narrowed gaze. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said slowly. ‘I had forgotten that. I suppose, to a murderer, it would be a useful circumstance.’ He turned to Dr Dutt: ‘You have not told us yet how Surgeon-Lieutenant Harcourt met his death.’
Dr Dutt’s lower jaw dropped noticeably, and he shuffled his feet uncomfortably: ‘I – I regret, sir, to have made no note as yet. The man he is dead, so I do not pause for examination but come hastily to inform yourself.’
‘Then in that case, the sooner we get down to the Guest House and find out, the better!’
The Chief Commissioner turned abruptly to the door, and followed by Mr Shilto, Leonard Stock and Dr Dutt, passed down the hall stairs and out into the fog.
* * *
As the sound of their footsteps died away, Copper said in a muffled voice: ‘I think … I think I’m going to be sick.’ Her face and voice fully confirmed this statement, and Valerie, jerking herself out of her own horror-stricken immobility, grabbed her by the arm and rushed her out of the room.
‘Feeling better now?’ she inquired some ten minutes later.
‘Yes,’ gasped Copper, rising rather shakily from the bed where she had flung herself after putting her recent threat into execution. ‘I can’t think why I should behave like this. Idiotic of me. I do apologize.’ She walked unsteadily over to the windows, and subsiding on to the broad window-seat unlatched them and flung them wide, letting in a cool drift of mist-laden air.
Valerie left the room, and returned a few minutes later carrying two small glasses: ‘Brandy,’ she announced. ‘I think we’d better try it. It may pull us together.’
Copper accepted a glass and drank the contents with a wry face: ‘Ugh — beastly stuff; it always reminds me of being extremely seasick on the Dover–Calais boat. However, I do feel slightly better. How about you?’
‘Oh, I’m all right, but____ Oh, Coppy, isn’t it ghastly! Poor Dan … and only last night he was alive, and____’
‘Don’t!’ said Copper violently. ‘If we start thinking of it like that we shall go to pieces and start behaving like Ruby and Rosamund. Don’t let’s go over it all again: I can’t bear it! Let’s talk about something else instead. No, of course we can’t really do that. But couldn’t we try and see if there isn’t something we could do about it? Then we could at least think of it as a sort of cold-blooded problem, like a crossword puzzle or a cypher.’
Valerie said: ‘We can try, anyway. I’m all for doing something. Let’s – let’s be really female and start by ordering ourselves a cup of tea.’ She rang the bell and gave a brief order to the house-boy who answered it, and as the door closed behind him Copper said abruptly: ‘Val, I’ve got an idea. No one has told Ruby yet, have they? About Dan, I mean?’
‘I don’t think so. No, of course they haven’t. They all went straight from the drawing-room to the Guest House. Why?’
‘I thought it might be a good idea if we went along and broke the news, just … just to see how she takes it.’
Valerie looked puzzled. ‘What are you getting at? She’ll only have hysterics again. You know what she’s like. And frankly, I don’t think I could bear another of her scenes just now. She was doing her alluring best with Dan yesterday, and the minute she hears this she’ll be able to convince herself that he adored her, and dramatize herself accordingly.’
‘I wonder?’ said Copper thoughtfully. ‘Val, I’ve been thinking. She must have been creeping about the house last night. Have you any ideas as to what she was up to?’
‘Yes,’ said Valerie promptly, ‘I think she was probably after____’ She stopped abruptly, and flushed.
‘— Nick,’ finished Copper.
‘Well, yes,’ admitted Valerie uncomfortably. ‘Bitchy of me of course, and I’ve no evidence. But then she is a bit of a man-chaser as well as being very attractive in an opulent Serpent-of-the-Nile sort of way, and frankly, I couldn’t see any reason for her to be prowling about the house at night, and without her slippers — you’ve no idea the fuss she makes about possible scorpions — unless she’d staged an assignation with someone. Sorry!’
‘Don’t apologize,’ said Copper sadly: ‘I’m a cat myself where Nick is concerned — a hell-cat, I suppose! I thought the same thing until I remembered that he wasn’t the only man in the house.’
‘You mean it might have been Dan?’
Copper nodded. ‘But that’s not what I’m getting at. Listen, Val, suppose we were both wrong and it wasn’t anything like that? Suppose she knows something? Heaven knows what and I’ve no idea why she should know anything. But you must admit it’s a little odd that she should be prowling about last night of all nights. She could have heard something!’
‘Perhaps,’ admitted Valerie after some thought. ‘Anyway, it’s worth trying even if we do have to cope with another bout of hysterics! If there really was any connection between her night prowlings and Dan’s, she may give herself away when she hears that he’s dead.’
‘That’s why I’d like to be there to see how she takes the news,’ said Copper. ‘And if we wait until Leonard gets back he’ll get in with it first. So what about it?’
‘Right! Come on — let’s go now.’
They found Mrs Stock sitting up in bed, attired in the same pink satin garment whose abundant supply of marabou-trimming had betrayed her wanderings on the previous night. She was engaged in applying scarlet lacquer to her finger-nails, and though she appeared placid enough, Copper wondered if her unusual high colour did not owe more to rouge than to the natural bloom of which she was so inordinately proud. If there were dark circles below her eyes they had been carefully disguised with cream and powder, and she certainly did not give the impression of having passed a wakeful night.
She greeted the two girls languidly and then, with more energy, inquired fretfully why she had not been informed earlier that Ferrers Shilto’s funeral was to take place that morning? ‘Of course, I might have known that Leonard wouldn’t tell me. He never tells me anything! But I do think, Valerie dear, that you at least might have let me know. Shaken as I feel after that shocking occurrence yesterday, it was my duty to attend — if only out of respect for poor Ferrers.’
‘You needn’t worry,’ said Valerie, ‘it’s been postponed.’
‘What’s that?’ Mrs Stock sat up quickly, scenting mysteries. ‘You don’t say so!… Oh—’ she sank back against the pillows: ‘the weather, I suppose. But I expect the fog will clear by lunchtime and they’ll have it in the afternoon. I wonder, Valerie dear, if y
ou would send down to my house for my hat-box? I shall need a black hat. The ciré straw, perhaps____’
Valerie interrupted firmly. ‘I’m afraid the funeral won’t be this afternoon either, Ruby. You see, when they went to put Ferrers’s body in the coffin, they found that it had disappeared.’
‘Disappeared! But what____?’
‘There was a body there all right. But it wasn’t Ferrers’s body. It – it was Dan Harcourt’s, and he was dead. Someone killed him last night and put him there instead.’
If they had wanted a reaction from Mrs Stock, they got it. But it was an entirely different reaction from the one they had expected, for Ruby neither screamed nor indulged in the emotional hysterics with which she had greeted the appearance of Ferrers’s corpse on the previous day. She merely stared at Valerie in appalled silence, while every vestige of colour drained slowly out of her face until it was no longer a face but a grey clay mask, crudely patched with staring blotches of vivid pink rouge and gashed with scarlet lipstick.
She tried to speak, but though for a moment or two her lips moved soundlessly, no words came, and then quite suddenly she toppled sideways in a dead faint. ‘Now we’ve done it!’ gasped Valerie. ‘For heaven’s sake come and help, Coppy. Fetch some water, or brandy, or something!’
‘Shove her head over the side of the bed,’ suggested Copper anxiously. ‘It’il bring the blood back to it.’
This treatment, though crude, proved remarkably effective, and a few moments later Mrs Stock was lying back among her pillows, white and shaken, but once more in full possession of her faculties. In very full possession, it appeared, for she neither wept nor dramatized. She accepted an offer of brandy, and having gulped down a few fiery mouthfuls, lay still for a while; staring fixedly ahead of her as though she were remembering something — and making it fit …