Death in the Andamans (11 page)

Mr Shilto did not reply, but the brief spell of embarrassed silence that followed his failure to respond to his hostess's social efforts was broken with unexpected violence by the repetition of her last statement. Rosamund Purvis, subdued, unemotional Rosamund, who had sat throughout the meal in a silence that had been unobtrusive because she was seldom other than silent, spoke in a queer, high-pitched voice that somehow gave the impression that it did not belong to her:

‘But nothing ever happens!'
she said. And suddenly, shockingly, threw back her head and laughed: a shrill, uncomfortable laugh that held no suggestion of mirth, but was purely hysterical.

‘Rosamund!'
Ronnie Purvis's voice cut across the discordant sound but did not check it.

‘Nothing ever happens,'
gasped Mrs Purvis. ‘
Ha! Ha! Ha!
That's funny! That's very funny. Nothing ever happens!'

She rocked to and fro, her hands clutching the tablecloth in front of her while the tears of her uncomfortable mirth wet her faded cheeks and Dan Harcourt, standing up swiftly, crossed to the sideboard and poured out a glass of water: the others sitting in stunned silence.

‘Stop that, Rosamund!' commanded Ronnie Purvis furiously. ‘Stop it at once! You're making an exhibition of yourself!' He jumped to his feet and started towards his wife, but Valerie and Copper were before him. Between them they took the still laughing Mrs Purvis by her arms and lifted her almost bodily from her chair. ‘We'll leave the men to their drinks,' said Valerie composedly: ‘Come on, Rosamund, let's go and have our coffee in the drawing-room.'

Mrs Purvis's mirth subsided as suddenly as it had arisen. She looked round dazedly at the startled circle of faces, and her own pale features flushed painfully: ‘I'm sorry,' she said uncertainly. ‘I – I thought … It seemed funny; nothing happening
____
'

‘So it is,' said Valerie lightly. ‘Dad, don't let them stay swapping stories too long. Come on, Amabel.'

But as though the incident had not been sufficiently unpleasant in itself, young Miss Withers took it upon herself at this juncture to add a further touch of discomfort to the evening's festivities. She rose slowly to her feet, her round cheek bulging with some concealed sweetmeat, and let her prominent blue eyes travel about the table. ‘There are thirteen of us,' she announced with gloomy relish. ‘It's funny we didn't notice before that we'd sat down thirteen.'

A smile of satisfaction illumined her round, pink face, and she added smugly: ‘Well anyway, I'm all right. I didn't get up first, so I shan't be the one who'll die.'

With which pleasing reflection she selected a second lump of coconut ice and trailed away in the wake of Valerie, Copper and Mrs Purvis.

*   *   *

Dan Harcourt, entering the drawing-room some twenty minutes later, noticed with interest that during that interval Mrs Purvis had borrowed some rouge and applied it with an amateur hand. Also that the two uneven patches of pink that now decorated her cheeks merely served to emphasize rather than to conceal the shocking pallor of her face and draw attention to the nervous twitching of her colourless mouth. What on earth's the matter with the woman? he wondered uneasily; she looks as though she was working up for a bad nervous breakdown and I only hope to God she doesn't have it here and now!

There appeared to be some justification for this fear, for Mrs Purvis, who had been discussing a forthcoming tennis tournament when the men entered, faltered on seeing them and ceased speaking, leaving a sentence cut short in mid-air. Furthermore, during the next half-hour, while Valerie served coffee and the conversation became general, she sat silent and rigid; occupying herself with a frightened, furtive scrutiny of her fellow-guests that did not pass entirely unobserved, for Copper's interest too was caught and held by that odd, secretive inspection of Rosamund's …

Nick was talking about Calcutta where the
Sapphire
had been before her arrival in Port Blair: ‘We thought we were going to be there for Christmas week,' he said, ‘and there was a certain amount of sourness when we were suddenly slung off here instead. I remember being fairly outspoken on the subject myself. I'd spent a short leave in Calcutta not long before: stayed at the Grand Hotel, which was a welcome change from stewing on the equator in a two-by-four cabin, and I thought I'd repeat the performance for Christmas. But all things considered this is a decided improvement in programme; hurricanes or no hurricanes. Come on, Copper! take an interest in my laborious social chatter will you, or Stock and Hamish will rope us in to play bridge. They've got that predatory Culbertson gleam in their eye and I refuse to be victimized. Try and look absorbed and interested, there's a good girl.'

Copper said in an undertone: ‘Nick — look at Mrs Purvis.'

‘Why? At the moment I prefer to look at you.'

‘No, seriously Nick. There's something very odd about her tonight.'

‘Cotton stockings and a touch of
la grippe,
at a guess,' suggested Nick. Copper ignored the flippancy and continued as though he had not spoken: ‘… she's got something on her mind, and if it didn't seem so absurd, I'd say she was frightened of someone in the room but hadn't quite made up her mind which one. She keeps looking at everyone in turn as if she was trying to work something out. It's – it's almost as though she were playing
“Is it you?… Is it you?… Is it you?”
'

Nick flung a cursory glance at Mrs Purvis and said: ‘Come off it, Coppy! She's merely had a bit of a shock — what with being tipped into the harbour and then this Ferrers business. You'd be a bit jumpy yourself if you'd been in her shoes.'

‘Watch her,' urged Copper, low-voiced, ‘and
then
tell me that she's only “a bit jumpy”.'

Nick obediently hitched himself round in his chair and did as he was commanded, and after a moment or two his expression changed from resignation to reluctant interest.

Rosamund Purvis was sitting on the extreme edge of her chair, her thin, clever hands clenched together in her lap and tense rigidity in every line of her nondescript figure. She was sitting so still that her very immobility served to draw attention to her flickering gaze, for though she did not turn her head, her hazel eyes, wide as a frightened cat's, darted warily, continuously, searchingly, from face to face in an oddly questioning, oddly disturbing scrutiny. And it was only after watching her for several minutes that Nick noticed something which had escaped Copper's attention: that Mrs Purvis's disturbing scrutiny did not extend to the entire party, but only to certain members of it. Those members who had made up the sailing party.

He was in the process of digesting this curious fact when Dan Harcourt came up behind them and Copper turned her head and spoke in an undertone: ‘Dan, what's biting Rosamund Purvis? Look at her…'

‘I've been doing so,' said Dan, leaning on the back of Copper's chair and continuing to watch Mrs Purvis with detached, professional interest: ‘She looks,' he said musingly, ‘as though she was wondering who had buried the body.'

‘Cheerful couple, aren't you?' observed Nick irritably. ‘Copper has just been propounding a similar enlivening theory. Well, you're a doctor, Pills — why don't you take some action? Advise the woman to take a couple of aspirins and shove off home before she springs another of those Ghoulish-Laughter scenes on us. I'm not sure I could take it twice in one evening.'

Copper said seriously, addressing Dan, ‘Nick thinks she's only edgy because of being upset in the storm. But it doesn't look like ordinary edginess to me. She looks —
frightened
…'

‘So frightened,' agreed Dan Harcourt thoughtfully, ‘that if anyone came up behind her just now and touched her on the shoulder, she'd probably go off like a bomb and scream the roof off.'

The words were barely out of his mouth when the correctness of that belief was unexpectedly proved. Kioh, the Siamese cat, her tail twitching gently like a miniature panther, appeared in the doorway behind Mrs Purvis's chair and having glanced about the room with slanting china-blue eyes, leapt lightly on to the arm of the chair, brushing against Mrs Purvis's bare shoulder. A split second later the languor of that apathetic gathering was as effectively shattered as though a bomb had indeed fallen in its midst, and Valerie's ill-fated dinner party came to an abrupt and shattering close.

Mrs Purvis was on her feet, screaming.

She did not even look to see what had touched her, but stood there for perhaps the space of ten seconds, her eyes starting from her head in stark and horrifying terror and her mouth wide open. Then, before any of her startled audience could collect their scattered wits or move towards her, she crumpled at the knees like a rag doll and fell forward on to the polished floor in a dead faint.

9

‘Why did I leave my little back room in Blooms-bur-ree, Where I could live on a pound a week in lux-ur-ee?'
crooned Copper gently, applying cold cream to her nose some two hours later.

Valerie laughed.

‘I'm afraid it does look like being a pretty mildewed Christmas for you,' she apologized. ‘Today couldn't very well have had a stickier finish, and tomorrow looks like being as bad — if not worse.'

‘Well, at least it hasn't been dull,' said Copper, reaching for the hairbrush. ‘In fact it's been packed with brisk incident. But I'm glad it's over. A few more fireworks from Rosamund and I swear I'd have started screaming myself.'

‘Wasn't it hellish?' sighed Valerie. ‘Poor Dad! I bet it put years on him. He was talking stamps with Hamish when Rosamund exploded, and he rose out of his chair like a rocketing pheasant and his spectacles fell off, and Leonard trod on them.'

She began to giggle, and Copper, catching the infection, said unsteadily: ‘You missed the high spot of the evening. George was clutching a glass of fruit cup that he'd just collected for Amabel, and when Rosamund yelled he nearly jumped out of his skin and the fruit cup went all over Amabel. She was simply soaked, and that new georgette dress of hers immediately shrunk up like a bashful snail — it was on the tight side to begin with, and you know how that stuff shrinks when it's wet! What with a few slices of banana nestling coyly in her hair and a strip of lemon peel hanging round one ear, she looked incredibly abandoned and rakish, and when George tried to pick them off she slapped him. Poor George! I'm afraid his faith in women has received a nasty crack.'

Valerie leant her head against a mosquito pole and gave way to immoderate mirth, and presently, mopping her eyes and striving to recover her composure, observed that it was not a
bit
nice of them to collapse into giggles like that, as it was simply horrid at the time, even though it might seem funny now. ‘I thought poor Rosamund was never coming round. However, she seemed all right by the time they removed her. Dan and Charles went along with her to the hospital while Ronnie went down to fetch her night things.'

‘The hospital is much the best place for her,' said Copper firmly. ‘Besides, it'll give Truda something to fuss over if she really hasn't any patients at the moment. Funny, the way Rosamund refused flatly to go back to her own house. You'd have thought she'd much rather go home instead of insisting on being taken off to sleep in a ward under Truda's eye.'

‘Thank goodness she did!' sighed Valerie, ‘I was scared stiff she was going to stay here. I simply
had
to ask her, but I was madly grateful when she held out for the hospital. She'd evidently made up her mind to go there or go off her head, and if she'd stayed here I'd have gone off mine! One hysterical female in the house is more than enough, and Rosamund's yells have evidently brought dear Ruby to the verge of a nervous breakdown. I bet the miserable Leonard is in for a hell of a night!'

‘“We don't have much money,”'
quoted Copper flippantly, ‘
“but we do see life!”
What did they do with Amabel, Val? I lost sight of her in the general flurry after she'd taken that crack at George. Surely they haven't let her go back to the Purvis mansion unchaperoned?'

‘Good heavens, no! She's gone along to the hospital with Rosamund, which leaves Ronnie abandoned by his entire harem. Rosamund clung to her like a demented limpet and refused to move without her; though whether from a well-founded mistrust of Ronnie, or because she finds something very sedative and soothing about Amabel, I don't know. Anyway they have both trailed off to Truda's tender care.'

‘I wish I'd known that Dan had gone up to the hospital with them,' said Copper. ‘I'd have told him to bring back some form of sedative for Ruby. Chloroform, for preference!'

‘Oh gosh!' gasped Valerie, giving way to a renewed attack of mirth: ‘I
did
enjoy that part of the evening's fun and games! I shall never forget all your faces when she came bursting out of her bedroom on top of Rosamund's big scene, and rushed into the drawing-room like Sarah Bernhardt in pink pyjamas.'

‘I didn't notice her pyjamas,' confessed Copper. ‘Her dressing-gown was what got me. I might have known that she'd have one like a film vamp's, all yards of train and acres of pink satin edged with marabou trimming. The minute I saw it I knew it was only a question of seconds before somebody fell over it, what with everyone dashing about being helpful, and of course it
would
be the wretched George.'

‘I wonder which hurt most?' mused Valerie. ‘The smack in the eye he got from Amabel, or the crack on the jaw he got from Ruby? They both sounded pretty crisp.'

‘Oh,
poor
George,' gasped Copper: ‘It's a shame to laugh! But it
was
funny. At least I thought it was funny until she tripped over her own train and collapsed on to Nick, and then I admit my sense of humour wilted a bit.'