Eric stood back, gasping.
Libby burst into tears.
And Tim, of course, fainted.
There were just the eight of us, trapped on Crocodile Island. And I had to admit, our reunion hadn’t got off to a very good start.
AFTER DARK
“It was horrible,” Tim groaned. “It was horrible. Rory McPoodle … he was in pieces!”
“I don’t want to hear about it, Tim,” I said. Actually, it was too late. He’d already told me twenty times.
“Why would anyone do that?” he demanded. “What sort of person would do that?”
“I’m not sure,” I muttered. “How about a dangerous lunatic?”
Tim nodded. “You could be right,” he said.
We were sitting in our bedroom. We knew it was the bedroom that McDougal had prepared for us because it had Tim’s name on the door. There were seven bedrooms on the same floor, each one of them labelled for the arriving guests. This room was square, with a high ceiling and a window with a low balcony looking out over a sea that was already grey and choppy as the sun set and the evening drew in. There was a four-poster bed, a heavy tapestry and the sort of wallpaper that could give you bad dreams. There was also something else I’d noticed and it worried me.
“Look at this, Tim,” I said. I pointed at the bedside table. “There’s a telephone socket here – but no telephone. What does that tell you?”
“The last person who slept in this room stole the telephone?”
“Not exactly. I think the telephone has been taken to stop us making any calls.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“To stop us reporting the death of Rory McDougal to the police.”
Tim considered. “You mean … someone knew we were coming…” he began.
“Exactly. And they also knew we’d be stuck here. At least until the boat came back.”
It was a nasty thought. I was beginning to have lots of nasty thoughts, and the worst one was this: someone had killed Rory McDougal, but had it happened before we arrived on the island? Or had he been killed by one of the people from the boat? As soon as we had arrived at the house, we had all split up. For at least ten minutes nobody had known where anybody else was, which meant that any one of us could have found Rory and killed him before the others arrived.
Along with Tim and myself, there were now six people on the island … six and several halves if you counted Rory. Eric Draper, Janet Rhodes, Sylvie Binns, Mark Tyler, Brenda Blake and Libby Goldman. Tim hadn’t seen any of them in ten years and knew hardly anything about them. Could one of them be a crazed killer? Could one of them have planned this whole thing?
I looked at my watch. It was ten to seven. We left the room and went back downstairs.
Eric Draper had called a meeting in the dining-room at seven o’clock. I don’t know who had put him in charge but I guessed he had decided himself.
“He was head boy at school,” Tim told me. “He was always telling everyone what to do. Even the teachers used to do what he said.”
“What was Rory McDougal like as a boy?”
“Well … he was young.”
“That’s very helpful, Tim. I mean … was he popular?”
“Yes. Except he once had a big row with Libby Goldman. He tried to kiss her in biology class and she attacked him with a bicycle pump.”
“But she wouldn’t kill him just because of that, would she?”
“You should have seen where she put the bicycle pump!”
In fact Libby was alone in the dining-room when we arrived for the meeting. She was sitting in a chair at the end of a black, polished table that ran almost the full length of the room. Portraits of bearded men in different shades of tartan looked down from the walls. A chandelier hung from the ceiling.
She looked up as we came in. Her eyes were red. Either she had been crying or she had bad hay fever – and I hadn’t noticed any hay on Crocodile Island. She was smoking a cigarette – or trying to. Her hands were shaking so much she had trouble getting it into her mouth.
“What are we going to do?” she wailed. “It’s so horrible! I knew I shouldn’t have accepted Rory’s invitation!”
“Why did you?” I asked. “If you didn’t like him…”
“Well … he’s interesting. He’s rich. I thought he might appear on my television programme – Libby’s Lounge.”
“I watch that!” Tim exclaimed.
“But it’s a children’s programme,” Libby said.
Tim blushed. “Well … I mean … I’ve seen it. A bit of it.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” I muttered.
Libby’s eyes went redder.
Then three of the others came in: Janet Rhodes, Mark Tyler and Brenda Blake.
“I’ve been trying to call the mainland on my mobile phone,” Janet announced. “But I can’t get a signal.”
“I can’t get a signal either,” agreed Mark, speaking as quickly as ever. He sort of shimmered in front of me and suddenly he was sitting down.
“There is no signal on this island.”
“And no phone in my room,” Janet said.
“No phone in any room!” The singer was looking pale and scared. Of course, she was the one who had found the body. Looking at her, I saw that it would be a few months before she sang in a concert hall. She probably wouldn’t have the strength to sing in the bath.
Somewhere a clock struck seven and Eric Draper waddled into the room. “Are we all here?” he asked.
“I’m here!” Tim called out, as helpful as ever.
“I think there’s one missing,” I said.
Eric Draper did a quick head count. At least everyone in the room still had their heads. “Sylvie isn’t here yet,” he said. He scowled. You could tell he was the sort of man who expected everyone to do exactly what he said. “We’ll have to wait for her.”
“She was always late for everything,” Janet muttered. She had slumped into a chair next to Libby. “I don’t know how she managed to come first in chemistry. She was always late for class.”
“I saw her in her room a few moments ago,” Mark said. “She was sitting on the bed. She looked upset.”
“I’m upset!” Eric said. “We’re all upset! Well, let’s begin without her.” He cleared his throat as if we were the jury and he was about to begin his summing up. “We are clearly in a very awkward situation here. We’ve been invited to this island, only to discover that our host, Rory McDougal, has been murdered. We can’t call the police because it would seem that there are no telephones and none of our mobiles can get a signal. Unless we can find a boat to get back to the mainland, we’re stuck here until Captain Randle – or whatever his name was – arrives to pick us up. The only good news is that there’s plenty of food in the house. I’ve looked in the kitchen. This is a comfortable house. We should be fine here.”
“Unless the killer strikes again,” I said.
Everyone looked at me. “What makes you think he’ll do that?” Eric demanded.
“It’s a possibility,” I said. “And anyway, ‘he’ could be a ‘she’.”
I noticed Libby shivered when I said that – but to be frank she’d been shivering a lot recently.
“Did Rory invite you here too?” Mark asked.
“Not exactly. He invited Tim, and Tim couldn’t leave me on my own at home. So I came along for the ride.”
Eric scowled for a second time. Scowling suited him. “I wouldn’t have said this place was suitable for children,” he said.
“Murder isn’t suitable for children,” I agreed. “But I’m stuck here with you and it seems to me that we’ve all been set up. No phones! That has to be on purpose. All the rooms were prepared for us, with our names on the doors. And now, like you say, we’re stuck here. Suppose the killer is here too?”
“That’s not possible,” Brenda whispered. But she didn’t sound like she believed herself.
“Maybe Rory wasn’t murdered,” Tim suggested. “Maybe it was an acc
ident.”
“You mean someone accidentally chopped him to pieces?” I asked.
Janet glanced at the door. She was looking nervous. A hairdresser having a bad hair day. “Perhaps we should go and find Sylvie,” she suggested.
Nobody said anything. Then, as one, we hurried out of the room.
We went back upstairs. Sylvie’s room was halfway down the corridor, two doors away from our own. It was closed. Tim knocked. There was no reply. “She could have fallen asleep,” he said.
“Just open the door, Tim,” I suggested.
He opened it. Sylvie’s room was a similar size to ours but with more modern furniture, an abstract painting on the wall and two single beds. Her case was standing beside the wall, unopened. As my eyes travelled towards her, I noticed a twist of something silver lying in the middle of the yellow carpet. But I didn’t have time to mention it.
Sylvie was lying on her back, one hand flung out. When I had first seen her I had thought her small and silent. Now she was smaller and dreadfully still. I felt Mark push past me, entering the room.
“Is she…?” he began.
“Yes,” Tim said. “She’s asleep.”
“I don’t think so, Tim,” I said.
Eric went over to her and took her wrist between a podgy finger and thumb. “She has no pulse,” he said. He leant over her. “She’s not breathing.”
Tim’s mouth fell open. “Do you think she’s ill?” he asked.
“She’s dead, Tim,” I said. Two murders in one day. And it wasn’t even Tim’s bedtime.
Libby burst into tears. It was getting to be a habit with her. At least Brenda didn’t scream again. At this close range, I’m not sure my eardrums could have taken it.
“What are we going to do?” someone asked. I wasn’t sure who it was and it didn’t matter anyway. Because right then I didn’t have any idea.
“It might have been a heart attack,” Tim said. “Maybe the shock of what happened to Rory…”
Darkness had fallen on Crocodile Island. It had slithered across the surface of the sea and thrown itself over the house. Now and then a full moon came out from behind the clouds and for a moment the waves would ripple silver before disappearing into inky blackness. Tim and I were sitting on our four-poster bed. It looked like we were going to have to share it. Two posters each.
Maybe it had been a heart attack. Maybe she had died of fright. Maybe she’d caught a very bad case of flu. Everyone had their own ideas … but I knew better. I remembered the twist of silver I had seen on the carpet.
“Tim, what can you tell me about Sylvie Binns?” I asked.
“Not a lot.” Tim fell silent. “She was good at chemistry.”
“I know that.”
“She used to go out with Mark. We always thought the two of them would get married, but in the end she met someone else. Mark ran all the way round England. That was his way of forgetting her.”
Mark Tyler had been the last person to see Sylvie alive. I wondered if he really had forgotten her. Or forgiven her.
“Maybe she was ill before she came to the island,” Tim muttered.
“Tim, I think she was poisoned,” I said.
“Poisoned?”
I remembered my first sight of Sylvie, on the quay. She had been eating a chocolate flake. “Sylvie liked sweets and chocolate,” I said.
“You’re right, Nick! Yes. She loved chocolate. She could never resist it. When Mark was going out with her, he took her on a tour of a chocolate factory. She even ate the tickets.” Tim frowned. “But what’s that got to do with anything?”
“There was a piece of silver paper on the floor in her room. I think it was the wrapper off a sweet or a chocolate. Don’t you see? Someone knew she couldn’t resist chocolate – so they left one in her room. Maybe on her pillow.”
“And it wasn’t almond crunch,” Tim muttered darkly.
“More likely cyanide surprise,” I said.
We got into bed. Tim didn’t want to turn off the lights, but a few minutes later, after he had dozed off, I reached for the switch and lay back in the darkness. I needed to think. Sylvie had eaten a poisoned chocolate. I was sure of it. But had she been given it or had she found it in her room? If it was already in the room, it could have been left there before we arrived. But if she had been given it, then the killer must still be on the island. He or she might even be in the house.
There was a movement at the window.
At first I thought I’d imagined it, but propping myself up in the bed, I saw it again. There was somebody there! No – that was impossible. We were on the first floor. Then I remembered. There was a terrace running round the outside of the house, connecting all the bedrooms.
There it was again. I stared in horror. There was a face staring at me from the other side of the glass, a hideous skull with hollow eyes and grinning, tombstone teeth. The bones glowed in the moonlight. Now I’ll be honest with you. I don’t scare easily. But right then I was frozen. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t cry out. I’m almost surprised I didn’t wet the bed.
The skull hovered in front of me. I couldn’t see a body. It had to be draped in black. It’s a mask, I told myself. Someone is trying to frighten you with a joke-shop mask. Somehow, I managed to force back the fear. I jerked up in bed and threw back the covers. Next to me, Tim woke up.
“Is it breakfast already?” he asked.
I ignored him. I was already darting towards the window. But at that moment, the moon vanished behind another cloud and the darkness fell. By the time I had found the lock and opened the window, the man – or woman, whoever it was – had gone.
“What is it, Nick?” Tim demanded.
I didn’t answer. But it seemed that whoever had killed Rory McDougal and Sylvie Binns was still on the island.
Which left me wondering – who was going to be next?
SEARCH PARTY
Janet Rhodes didn’t make it to breakfast.
There were just the five of us, sitting in the kitchen with five bowls of Frosties and a steaming plate of scrambled eggs that Brenda had insisted on cooking but which nobody felt like eating. Libby had another cigarette in her mouth but everyone had complained so much that she wasn’t smoking it. She was sucking it. Eric was still in his dressing-gown, a thick red thing with his initials – ED – embroidered on the pocket. Mark was wearing a track suit. A security camera winked at us from one corner of the room. There were a lot of security cameras on the island. But none of us felt even slightly secure.
“What are we going to do?” Brenda asked. I got the feeling that she hadn’t slept very much the night before. There were dark rings under her eyes and although she’d put on lipstick, most of it had missed her lips. “This island is haunted!” she went on.
“What do you mean?” Eric asked.
“Last night … my window … it was horrible.”
“I’ve got quite a nice window,” Tim said.
“I mean … I saw something! A human skull. It was dancing in the night air.”
So she’d seen it too! I was about to chip in, but then Eric interrupted. “I don’t think it’s going to help, sharing our bad dreams,” he said.
“I didn’t dream it,” Brenda insisted.
“We’ve got to do something!” Mark cut in. “First Rory, then Sylvie. At this rate, there won’t be any of us left by lunch-time.”
“I don’t want any lunch,” Libby muttered.
“We need to talk about this,” Eric said. “We need to work something out. But there’s no point starting until we’re all here.” He glanced at the clock. “Where the hell is Janet?”
“Maybe she’s in the bath,” Tim suggested.
“In the water or underneath it?” Eric growled.
The minute hand on the kitchen clock ticked forward. It was nine o’clock. Suddenly Mark stood up. “I’m going upstairs,” he announced.
“You’re going back to bed?” Tim asked.
“I’m going to find her.”
He
left the room. The rest of us followed him, tiptoeing up the stairs and along the corridor with a sense of dread. Actually, Eric didn’t exactly tiptoe. He was so fat that it must have been quite a few years since his toes had tips. Mark Tyler had moved quickly, taking the stairs four at a time as if they were hurdles and he was back at the Olympic games at Atlanta. He was outside the door when we arrived.
“She’s overslept,” Tim said to me. “She’s fine. She’s just overslept.”
Eric knocked on her door. There was no answer. He knocked again, then turned the handle. The door opened.
The hairdresser had overslept all right, but nothing was ever going to wake her up again. She had been stabbed during the night. She was lying on her back on a four-poster bed like the one in our room, only smaller. The bed was old. The paint had peeled off the posts and there was a tear in the canopy above her. In fact the whole room looked shabby, as if it had been missed out by the decorators. Maybe I noticed all this because I didn’t want to look at the body. You may think I’m crazy, but dead people upset me. And when I did finally look at her, I got a shock.
Whoever had killed her hadn’t used a knife. There was something sticking out of her chest and at first I thought it was some sort of rocket. It was silver, in the shape of a sort of long pyramid, with four legs jutting out. Then, slowly, it dawned on me what I was looking at. It was a model, a souvenir of the building that I had climbed up with Tim only the year before.
It was incredible. But true. Janet Rhodes had been stabbed with a model of the Eiffel Tower.
“The Eiffel Tower!” Tim muttered. His face was the colour of sour milk. “It’s an outrage. I mean, it’s meant to be a tourist attraction!”
“Why the Eiffel Tower?” I asked.
“Because it’s famous, Nick. People like to visit it.”
“No – I don’t mean, why is it a tourist attraction. I mean, why use it as a murder weapon? It’s certainly a strange choice. Maybe someone is trying to tell us something.”
“Well, they certainly told Janet something,” Tim said.
We were back at the breakfast table. The scrambled eggs were cold and congealed and looked even less appetizing than before. All the Frosties had gone soggy. But it didn’t matter. There was no way anybody was going to eat anything today. The way things were going, I wondered if any of us would ever eat anything again.