Bear Island (27 page)

    He'd found him, all right. Michael Stryker was lying face down in the snow, arms and legs outspread in an almost perfectly symmetrical fashion. Both fists were clenched tight. On the snow, beside his left shoulder, lay a smooth elliptical stone which from its size-it must have weighed between sixty and seventy pounds-better qualified for the name of boulder. I stooped low over this boulder, bringing the torch close, and at once saw the few dark hairs imbedded in the dark and encrusted stain. Proof if proof were required but I hadn't doubted anyway that this was what had been used to smash in the back of Stryker's skull. Death would have been instantaneous.

    "He's dead! Jungbeck said incredulously.

    "He's all that," I said.

    "And murdered!”

    “That, too." I tried to turn him over on his back but Conrad and Jungbeck had to lend their not inconsiderable weights before this was done. His upper lip was viciously split all the way down from the nostril, a tooth was missing and he had a peculiar red and raw looking mark on his right temple.

    "By God, there must have been a fight," Jungbeck said huskily. "I wouldn't have thought that kid Allen had had it in him.”

    “I wouldn't have thought so either," I said.

    "Allen?" Conrad said. "I'd have sworn he was telling the truth. Could he-well, do you think it could have happened when he was suffering from amnesia?”

    “All sorts of funny things can happen when you've had a bump on the head," I said. I looked at the ground around the dead man, there were footprints there, not many, already faint and blurred from the driving snow: there was no help to be gained from that quarter. I said: "Let's get him back."

    So we carried the dead man back to the camp and it wasn't, in spite of the uneven terrain and the snow in our faces, as difficult a task as it might have been for the same reason that I'd found it so difficult to turn him over-the limbs had already begun to stiffen, not from the onset of rigor mortis, for it was too soon for that yet, but from the effects of the intense cold. We laid him in the snow outside the main cabin. I said to Hendriks: "Go inside and ask Goin for a bottle of brandy-say that I sent you back for it, that we need it to keep us going." It was the last thing I would ever have recommended to keep anyone warm in bitter outdoor cold, but it was all I could think of on the spur of the moment. "Tell Goin—quietly--to come here."

    Goin, clearly aware that there was something far amiss, walked out casually and casually shut the door behind him, but there was nothing casual about his reaction when he saw Stryker lying there, his gashed and marble-white face a death's head in the harsh light of several torches. Goin's own face was clear enough in the backwash of light reflected from the snow. The shocked expression on his face he could have arranged for: the draining of blood that left it almost as white as Stryker's he couldn't.

    “Jesus Christ!" he whispered. "Dead?"

    I said nothing, just turned the dead man over with Conrad's and Jungbeck's help again. This time it was more difficult. Goin made a strange noise in his throat but otherwise didn't react at all, I suppose he'd nothing left to react with, he just stood there and stared as the driving snow whitened the dead man's anorak and, mercifully, the fearful wound in the occiput. For what seemed quite a long time we stood there in silence, gazing down at the dead man: I was aware, almost subconsciously, that the wind, now veering beyond south, was strengthening, for the thickening snow was driving along now almost parallel to the ground: I do not know what the temperature was but it must have been close on thirty degrees below freezing. I was dimly aware that I was shaking with the cold: looking around, I could see that the others were also. Our breaths froze as they struck the icy air but the wind whipped them away before the vapour had time to form.

    "Accident?" Goin said hoarsely. "It could have been an accident?"

    "No," I said. I saw the boulder that was used to crush his skull in." Goin made the same curious noise in his throat again and I went on: "We can't leave him here and we can't take him inside. I suggest we leave him in the tractor shed."

    "Yes, yes, the tractor shed," Goin said. He really didn't know what he was saying.

    "And who's going to break the news to Miss Haynes?" I went on. God alone knew that I didn't fancy doing it.

    'What?" He was still shocked. "What was that?"

    "His wife. She'll have to be told." As a doctor, I supposed I was the one to do it but the decision was taken from my hands. The cabin door was jerked abruptly open and Judith Haynes, her two dogs by her ankles, stood there framed against the light from the interior with Otto and the Count just vaguely discernible behind her. She stood there for some little time, a hand on either doorjamb, quite immobile and without any expression that I could see, then walked forward in a curiously dreamlike fashion and stooped over her husband. After a few moments she straightened, looked around as if puzzled, then turned questioning eyes on me, but only for a moment, for the questioning eyes turned up in her head and she crumpled and fell heavily across Stryker's body before I or anyone could get to her.

    Conrad and I, with Goin following, brought her inside and laid her on the camp cot so lately occupied by Smithy. The cocker spaniels had to be forcibly restrained from joining her. Her face was alabaster white and her breathing very shallow. I lifted up her right eyelid and there was no resistance to my thumb: it was only an automatic reaction on my part, it hadn't even occurred to me that the faint wasn't genuine. I became aware that Otto was standing close by, his eyes wide, his mouth slightly open, his hands clenched together until the ivory knuckles showed.

    "Is she all right?" he asked hoarsely. "Will she--”

    “She'll come to," I said.

    "Smelling salts," he said. "Perhaps-”

    “No." Smelling salts, to hasten her recovery to the bitter reality she would have to face.

    "And Michael? My son-in-law? He's-I mean-”

    “You saw him," I said almost irritably. "He's dead, of course he's dead.”

    “But how-but how-”

    “He was murdered." There were one or two involuntary exclamations, the shocked indrawing of breath, then a silence that became intensified with the passing of seconds by the hissing of the Coleman lamps. I didn't even bother to look up to see what the individual reactions might be for I knew by now that I'd learn nothing that way. I just looked at the unconscious woman and didn't know what to think. Stryker, the tough urbane, cynical Stryker had, in his own way, been terrified of this woman. Had it been because of the power she had wielded as Otto's daughter, his knowledge that his livelihood was entirely dependent on her most wayward whim, and I could imagine few more gifted exponents of the wayward whim than Judith Haynes? Had it been because of her pathological jealousy which I knew beyond all question to exist, because of the instant bitchiness which could allegedly range from the irrational to the insane or had she held over his head the threat of some nameless blackmail which could bring him at once to his knees? Had he, in his own way, even loved his wife and hoped against hopeless hope that she might reciprocate some of this and been prepared to suffer any humiliation, any insult, in the hope that he might achieve this or part of it? I'd never know but the questions were academic anyway, Stryker no longer concerned me, I was only turning them over in my mind wondering in what way they could throw any light on Judith Haynes's totally unexpected reaction to Stryker's death. She had despised him, she must have despised him for his dependence upon her, his weakness, his meek acceptance of insult, the fear he had displayed before me, for the emptiness and nothingness that had lain concealed behind so impressively masculine a facade. But had she loved him at the same time, loved him for what he had been or might have been, or was she just desolated at the loss of her most cherished whipping boy, the one sure person in the world upon whom she knew she could with impunity vent her wayward spleen whenever the fancy took her? Even without her awareness of it he might have become an integral, an indispensable part of her existence, an insidiously woven warp in the weft of her being, always dependable, always there, always ready to hand when she most needed him even when that need was no more than to absorb the grey corrosive poison eating away steadily at the edges of her mind. Even the most tarnished cornerstone can support the most crumbling edifice: take that away and the house comes tumbling down. The traumatic reaction to Stryker's death could, paradoxically, be the clinching manifestation of a complete and irredeemable selfishness: the as yet unrealised realisation that she was the most pitiful of all creatures, a person totally alone.

    Judith Haynes stirred and her eyes fluttered open. Memory came back and she shuddered. I eased her to a sitting position and she looked dully around her.

    "Where is he?" I had to strain to hear the words.

    "It's all right, Miss Haynes," I said, and, just to compound that fatuous statement, added: "We'll look after him.”

    “Where is he?" she moaned. "He's my husband, my husband. I want to see him.”

    “Better not, Miss Haynes." Goin could be surprisingly gentle. "As Dr. Marlowe says, we'll take care of things. You've seen him already and no good can come--”

    “Bring him in. Bring him in." A voice devoid of life but the will absolute. I must see him again."

    I rose and went to the door. The Count barred my way. His aquiline aristocratic features held a mixture of revulsion and horror. `You can't do that. It's too ghastly--it's--it's macabre.”

    “What do you think that I think it is?" I felt savage but I know I didn't sound that way, I think I only sounded tired. If I don't bring him in, she'll just go outside again. It's not much of a night for being outside."

    So we brought him in, the same three of us, Jungbeck and Conrad and myself, and we laid him on his back so that the fearful wound in the occiput didn't show. Judith Haynes rose from her camp cot, moved slowly towards him like a person in a dream and sank to her knees. Without moving, she looked at him for some moments then reached out and gently touched the gashed face. No one spoke, no one moved. Not without effort, she pulled his right arm close in to his side, made to do the same with his left, noticed that the Est was still clenched and carefully prised it open.

    A brown circular object lay in the palm of his hand. She took it, placed it in the palm of her own hand, straightened-still on her knees-and swung in a slow semicircle showing us what she held. Then, her hand outstretched towards him, she looked at Allen. We all looked at Allen.

    The brown leather button in her hand matched the still remaining buttons on Allen's tom coat.

    9

    I'm not sure how long the silence went on, a silence that the almost intolerable hiss of the lamps and the ululating moan of the south wind served only to deepen. It must have lasted at least ten seconds, although it seemed many times as long, a seemingly interminable period of time during which nobody moved and nothing moved, not even eyes, for Allen's eyes were fixed on the button in Judith Haynes's hand in fascinated uncomprehension, while every other eye in the room was on Allen. That one small leather-covered button held us all in thrall.

    Judith Haynes was the first to move. She rose, very slowly, as if it called for a tremendous effort of both mind and muscle, and stood there for a moment, as if irresolute. She seemed quiet now and very resigned and because this was the wrong reaction altogether I looked past her towards Conrad and Smithy and caught the eyes of both. Conrad lowered his eyes briefly as if in acknowledgement of a signal, Smithy shifted his gaze towards Judith Haynes and when she began to move away from the body of her husband both of them moved casually towards each other to block off. her clearly intended approach to Allen. Judith Haynes stopped, looked at them and smiled.

    "That won't be necessary at all," she said. She tossed the button to Allen who caught it in involuntary reaction. He held it in his hand, staring at it, then looked up in perplexity at Judith Haynes, who smiled again. "You'll be needing that, won't you?" she said and walked in the direction of her allocated room.

    I relaxed and was aware that others were doing so also, for I could hear the slow exhalation of breaths of those standing closest to me. I looked away from Judith Haynes to Allen and that was a mistake because I had relaxed too soon, I'd been instinctively aware that the seemingly quiet and sad resignation had been wholly out of character but had put it down to the effects of the shattering shock she had just received.

    "You killed him, you killed him!" Her voice was an insane scream but no more insane than the demented fury with which she was attacking Mary Darling who had already stumbled over backwards, the other woman falling on top of her, clawing viciously with hooked fingers. "You bitch, you whore, you filthy slut, you-you murderess! You're the person who killed him! You killed my husband! You! You!" Sobbing and shrieking maniacal invective at the terrified and momentarily paralysed Mary Darling who had already lost her big horn-rimmed spectacles, Judith Haynes wound one hand round the unfortunate Mary's hair and was reaching for her eyes with the other when Smithy and Conrad got to her. Both were big strong men but she fought with such crazed and tigerish ferocity -and they had at the same time to cope with two equally hysterical dogs that it took them quite some seconds to pull her clear and even then she clung with the strength of madness to Mary's hair, a grip that Smithy ruthlessly and without hesitation broke by squeezing her wrist until she shrieked with pain. They dragged her upright and she continued to scream hysterically with all the strength of her lungs, no longer attempting even to mouth words, just that horrible nerve~drilling shrieking like some animal in its dying agony, then the sound abruptly ceased, her legs buckled and Smithy and Conrad eased her to the floor.

    Conrad looked at me. "Act two?" He was breathing heavily and looked pale.