Bear Island (13 page)

    "Top drawer, port locker."

    I found the lists, entered up the name, address, age, place of birth, religion, and next of kin of each of the three dead men, replaced the book and made my way down to the saloon. Half an hour had elapsed since I'd left Gerran, his three co-directors and the Count sitting there, and there all five still were, seated round a table and studying cardboard covered folders spread on the table before them. A pile of those lay on the table, some more were scattered on the floor where the rolling of the ship had obviously precipitated them. The Count looked at me over the rim of his glass: his capacity for brandy was phenomenal.

    "Still abroad, my dear fellow? You do labour on our behalf. Much more of this and I suggest that you be co-opted as one of our directors.”

    “Here's's one cobbler that sticks to his last." I looked at Gerran. "Sorry to interrupt, but I've some forms to fill up. If I'm interrupting some private session-”

    “Nothing private going on here, I assure you." It was Goin who answered. "Merely studying our shooting script for the next fortnight. All the cast and crew will have one tomorrow. Like a copy?”

    “Thank you. After I've finished this. Afraid my cabin light has gone on the blink and I'm not much good at writing by the light of matches.”

    “We're just leaving." Otto was still looking grey and very tired but he was mentally tough enough to keep going long after his body had told him to stop. I think we could all do with a good night's sleep.”

    “It's what I would prescribe. You could postpone your departure for five minutes?"

    “If necessary, of course.”

    “We've promised Captain Imrie a guarantee or affidavit or what will you exonerating him from all blame if we have any further outbreaks of mysterious illness. He wants it on his breakfast table, and he wants it signed. And as Captain Imrie will be up at 4 A.m. and I suspect his breakfast will be correspondingly early, I suggest it would be more convenient if you all signed it now."

    They nodded agreement. I sat at a nearby table and in my "best handwriting, which was pretty bad, and best legal jargon, which was awful, I drafted a statement of responsibility which I thought would meet the case. The others apparently thought so too or were too tired to care, for they signed with only a cursory glance at what I had written. The Count signed too and I didn't as much as raise an eyebrow. It had never even crossed my mind that the Count belonged to those elevated directorial ranks, I had thought that the more highly regarded cameramen, of which the Count was undoubtedly one, were invariably free-lance and therefore ineligible for election to any film company board. But, at least, it helped to explain his lack of proper respect for Otto.

    "And now, to bed." Goin eased back his chair. `You, too, Doctor?”

    “After I've filled out the death certificates.”

    “An unpleasant duty." Goin handed me a folder. "This might help amuse you afterwards."

    I took it from him and Gerran heaved himself upright with the usual massive effort. "Those funerals, Dr. Marlowe. The burials at sea. What time do they take place?”

    “First light is customary." Otto closed his eyes in suffering. "After what you've been through, Mr. Gerran, I'd advise you to give it a miss. Rest as long as possible tomorrow.”

    “You really think so?" I nodded and Otto removed his mask of suffering. `You will stand in for me, John?”

    “Of course," Goin said. "Good night, Doctor. Thank you for your cooperation.”

    "Yes, yes, thank you, thank you," Otto said.

    They trooped off unsteadily and I fished out my death certificate forms and filled them out. I put those in one sealed envelope, the signed affidavit -I just in time remembered to add my own signature-in another, addressed them to Captain Imrie and took them up to the bridge to ask Allison to hand them over to the captain when he came on watch at four in the morning. Allison wasn't there. Instead, Smithy, heavily clad and muffled almost to the eyebrows, was sitting on a high stool before the wheel. He wasn't touching the wheel, which periodically spun clockwise and counterclockwise as of its own accord, and he'd turned up the rheostat. He looked pale and had dark circles under his eyes but he didn't have a sick look about him any more. His recuperative powers were quite remarkable.

    "Automatic pilot," he explained, almost cheerfully, "and all the lights of home. Who needs night sight in zero visibility?”

    “You ought to be in bed," I said shortly.

    "I've just come from there and I'm just going there. First Officer Smith is not yet his old self and he knows it. just come up to check position and give Allison a break for coffee. Also, I thought I might find you here. You weren't in your cabin!”

    "I'm here now. What did you want to see me about?”

    “Otard-Dupuy," he said. "How does that sound?”

    “It sounds fine!" Smithy slid off his stool and headed for the cupboard where Captain Imrie kept his private store of restoratives. "But you weren't hunting the ship to offer me a brandy.”

    “No. Tell you the truth, I've been trying to figure out some things. No dice with the figuring, if I was bright enough for that I'd be too bright to be where I am now. Thought you could help me." He handed me a glass.

    "We should make a great team," I said.

    He smiled briefly. "Three dead and four half dead. Food poisoning. What poisoning?"

    I told him the story about the sporing anaerobes, the one I'd given Haggerty. But Smithy wasn't Haggerty.

    "Mighty selective poison, isn't it? Clobbers A and kills him, passes up B, clobbers C and doesn't kill him, passes up D and so on. And we all had the same food to cat.”

    “Poisons are notoriously unpredictable. Six people at a picnic can cat the same infected food: three can land in hospital while the others don't feel a twinge.”

    “So, some people get tummy aches and some don't. But that's a bit different from saying that a poison that is deadly enough to kill, and to kill violently and quickly, is going to leave others entirely unaffected. Pm. No, doctor but I flat out don't believe it."

    “I find it a bit odd myself. You have something in mind?”

    “Yes. The poisoning was deliberate.”

    “Deliberate?" I sipped some more of the Otard-Dupuy while I wondered how far to go with Smithy. Not too far, I thought, not yet. I said: "Of course it was deliberate. And so easily done. Take our poisoner. He has this little bag of poison. Also, he has this little magic wand. He waves it and turns himself invisible and then flits around the dining tables. A pinch for Otto, none for me, a pinch for you, a pinch for Oakley, no pinches for, say, Heissman and Stryker, a double pinch for Antonio, none for the girls, a pinch for the Duke, two each for Moxen and Scott, and so on. A wayward and capricious lad, our invisible friend: Or would you call it being selective?"

    “I don't know what I'd call it," Smithy said soberly. "But I know what I'd call you-devious, off-putting, side-tracking, and altogether protesting too much Without offence, of course.”

    “Of course."

    “I wouldn't rate you as anybody's fool. You can't tell me that you haven't had some thoughts along those lines."

    I had. But because I've been thinking about it a lot longer than you, I've dismissed them. Motive, opportunity, means-impossible to find any. Don't you know that the first thing a doctor does when he's called in to a case of accidental poisoning is to suspect that it's not accidental?"

    "So you're satisfied"

    "As can be."

    “I see." He paused. "Do you know we have a transmitter in the radio office that can reach just about any place in the Northern Hemisphere? I've got a feeling we're going to have to use it soon."

    "What on earth for?”

    “Help.”

    “Help?"

    "Yes. You know. The thing you require when you're in trouble. I think we need help now. Any more funny little accidents and I'll be damn certain we need help."

    "I'm sorry," I said. "You're way beyond me. Besides, Britain's a long, long way away from us now."

    "The NATO Atlantic forces aren't. They're carrying out fleet exercises somewhere off the North Cape."

    "You're well informed," I said.

    "It pays to be well informed when I'm talking to someone who claims to be as satisfied as can be over three very mysterious deaths when I'm certain that someone would never rest and could never be satisfied until he knew exactly how those three people had died. I've admitted I'm not very bright but don't completely underestimate what little intelligence I have."

    “I don't. And don't overestimate mine. Thanks for the Otard~Dupuy."

    I went to the starboard screen door. The Morning Rose was still rolling and pitching and shaking and shuddering as she battered her way northwards through the wild seas but it was no longer possible to see the windtorn waters below: we were in a world now that was almost completely opaque, a blind and bitter world of driving white, a world of snowy darkness that began and ended at scarcely an arm's-length distance. I looked down at the wing bridge deck and in the pale light of wash from the wheelhouse I could see footprints in the snow. There was only one set of them, sharp and clearly limned as if they had been made only seconds previously. Somebody had been there, for a moment I was certain that someone had been there, listening to Smith and myself talking. Then I realised there was only one set, the set I had made myself and they hadn't been filled in or even blurred because the blizzard driving horizontally across the winddodger was clearing the deck at my feel?. Sleep, I thought, and sleep now: for with that lack of sleep, the tiring events of the past few hours, the sheer physical exhaustion induced by the violent weather and Smithy's dark forebodings, I was beginning to imagine things. I realised that Smithy was at my shoulder.

    "You levelling with me, Dr. Marlowe?”

    “Of course. Or do you think Fin the invisible Borgia who's flitting around, a little pinch here, a little pinch there?”

    “No, I don't. I don't think you're levelling with me, either." His voice was sombre. "Maybe someday you are going to wish you were."

    Someday I was going to wish I had for then I wouldn't have had to leave Smithy behind in Bear Island.

    #

    Back in the saloon, I picked up the booklet Goin had given me, went to the corner settee, found myself a steamer blanket, decided I didn't require it yet and wedged myself into the corner, my feet comfortably on a swivel chair belonging to the nearest table. I picked up, without much interest, the cardboard file and was debating whether to open it when the lee door opened and Mary Stuart came in. There was snow on the tangled corn-coloured hair and she was wearing a heavy tweed coat.

    "So this is where you are." She banged the door shut and looked at me almost accusingly.

    "This," I acknowledged, "is where I am.”

    “You weren't in your cabin. And your light's gone. Do you know that?"

    I know that. I'd some writing to do. That's why I came here. Is there something wrong?"

    She lurched across the saloon and sat heavily on the settee opposite me. "Nothing more than has been wrong." She and Smithy should meet up, they'd get on famously. "Do you mind if I stay here?"

    I could have said that it didn't matter whether I minded or not, that the saloon was as much hers as mine, but as she seemed to be a touchy sort of creature I just smiled and said: I would take it as an insult if you left." She smiled back at me, just an acknowledging flicker, and settled as best she could in her seat, drawing the tweed coat around her and bracing herself against the violent movements of the Morning Rose. She closed her eyes and with the long dark lashes lying along pale wet cheeks her high cheekbones were more pronounced than ever, her Slavonic ancestry unmistakable,

    It was no great hardship to look upon Mary Stuart but I still felt an increasing irritation as I watched her. It wasn't so much her fey imaginings and need for company that made me uneasy, it was the obvious discomfort she was experiencing in trying to keep her seated balance while I was wedged so very comfortably in my own place: there is nothing more uncomfortable than being comfortable one's self and watching another in acute discomfort, not unless, of course, one has a feeling of very powerful antagonism towards the other party, in which case a very comfortable feeling can be induced: but I had no such antagonism towards the girl opposite. To compound my feeling of guilt she began to shiver involuntarily.

    "Here," I said. "You'd be more comfortable in my scat. And there's a rug here you can have."

    She opened her eyes. "No, thank you.”

    “There are plenty more rugs," I said in something like exasperation. Nothing brings out the worst in me more quickly than sweetly smiling suffering. I picked up the rug, did my customarv two-step across the heaving deck and draped the rug over her. She looked at me gravely and said nothing.

    Back in my corner I picked up the booklet again but instead of reading it got to wondering about my cabin and those who might visit it during my absence. Mary Stuart had visited it, but then she'd told me she had and the fact that she was here now confirmed the reason for her visit. At least, it seemed to confirm it. She was scared, she said, she was lonely and so she naturally wanted company. Why my company? Why not that of, say, Charles Conrad who was a whole lot younger, nicer, and better looking than I was? Or even his other two fellow actors, Gunther Jungbeck and ion Heyter, both very personable characters indeed? Maybe she wanted to be with me for all the wrong reasons. Maybe she was watching me, maybe she was virtually guarding me, maybe she was giving someone the opportunity to visit my cabin while-I was suddenly very acutely aware that there were things in my cabin that I'd rather not be seen by others.

    I put the book down and headed for the lee door. She opened her eyes and lifted her head.

    "Where are you going?"

    “Out.”