Death in the Andamans (3 page)

‘I know — but I still don't like the look of it.'

‘Nonsense! It's wonderful. It's like a transformation scene in a pantomime.'

As they watched, the fiery glow faded from the quiet sky and the sun leapt above the horizon and flashed dazzling swords of light through the diamond air. Hard shadows streaked the lawns, and the house awoke to a subdued bustle of early morning activity.

The new day was full of sounds: the low, hushing, interminable murmur of the sea; the sigh of a wandering breeze among the grey-green casuarina boughs; a distant hum and clatter from the servants' quarters; and the dry click and rustle of the bamboos.

‘Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not,'
quoted Copper, who had once played Miranda to Valerie's Ferdinand in a sixth-form production of
The Tempest.

She had been thinking of the contrast between the darkness and terror of the past night and the shining glory of the morning when Caliban's charmed, immortal lines slipped into her mind, and she had repeated them almost without knowing it: speaking them as though they were an assurance of safety and a spell against evil, and so softly that the words were barely audible. But Valerie's ear had caught them, for she said with an unexpected trace of sharpness: ‘That's all very well, but speaking for myself I'm distinctly afeard, and at the moment I'd say Keats was more on the ball than Caliban!'

‘
Keats?
Why Keats?'

‘“La Belle Dame sans Merci”. That place by a lake, where “no birds sing”. Well, there are still none singing here this morning and I don't like it — or that red sky either! I don't like it one
bit!
'

Copper stared at her: and puzzled by her uncharacteristic vehemence, turned to lean out of the window again and listen intently. But Valerie was right. The isle was still full of noises. But in its gardens no bird sang.

2

The Andaman Islands, green, fairy-like, enchanted, lie some hundred miles off the Burmese coast in the blue waters of the Bay of Bengal. Legend, with some support by science, tells that their hills and valleys were once part of a great range of mountains that extended from Burma to Sumatra, but that the wickedness of the inhabitants angered Mavia Tomala, the great chief, who caused a cataclysm which separated the land into over two hundred islands, and marooned them for ever in the Bay of Bengal.

For close on a hundred years a small part of the Andamans had been used by the Government of India as a penal settlement. The only important harbour, Port Blair, lies on the south-east coast of South Andaman, with its harbour guarded from the sea by the tiny triangular islet of Ross, the administrative headquarters of the Islands.

Ross covers less than a mile in area, and into its narrow confines are packed over forty buildings that include a clubhouse, barracks, two churches, a hospital and a native bazaar. Topping this heterogeneous collection of dwellings, and set among green gardens, stands the residence of the Chief Commissioner: a long, rambling two-storeyed building that for some forgotten reason is known in the Islands as ‘Government House', and whose windows look down on roofs and tree-tops and out to sea where the lovely, lost islands stray away on either hand to the far horizon like a flight of exotic butterflies.

On this particular Christmas Eve morning the Massons and Miss Randal were breakfasting as usual in the dining-room of Government House. It was not yet nine o'clock but the day was unusually hot and close for the time of year, and the electric fans were whirring at full speed as Valerie filled in the details of the day's programme — an all-day picnic to the top of Mount Harriet followed by a large dinner party at Government House — to an inattentive audience.

The Chief Commissioner, normally an amiable though somewhat absentminded man, was frowning over a letter that had arrived half an hour earlier with a batch of official correspondence, and which he had already read at least twice, while Copper's gaze had strayed to the open windows that looked out across the harbour mouth to the pink, Moorish-looking walls of the cellular jail and the little town that some homesick Scot had named Aberdeen, which lies facing Ross on the mainland of Port Blair. A ‘mainland' that is in fact only the largest of the Islands, though always referred to by the inhabitants by the more imposing title.

To the right of the town the land curves in a green arc between Aberdeen and North Point, embracing Phoenix Bay with its boats and steam-launches and lighters rocking gently in the blue swell; tiny Chatham Island with its sawmills and piled timber; Hopetown jetty where, in 1872, a Viceroy of India was murdered; and rising up behind it, on the far side of the bay, the green, gracious slope of Mount Harriet.

For once, however, Copper was not alive to the exotic beauty of the view, her attention at that moment being centred upon the slim, gleaming lines of a cruiser that lay at anchor far up the reaches of the harbour.

His Majesty's Ship
Sapphire
was paying a fortnight's visit to the Andamans; to the delight of the British denizens of Port Blair, for the problems of an enclosed society are many. It becomes difficult to infuse much enthusiasm into entertaining when every dinner, dance, bridge party or picnic must of necessity be made up of combinations and permutations of fifteen or twenty people, all of whom have lived cheek by jowl for months past — often for years — and whose individual interests and topics of conversation have become so well known that any form of social gathering is apt to become a routine performance. Which explains why the arrival of H.M.S.
Sapphire
had been welcomed with relief as well as pleasure.

Copper's thoughts, however, were not concerned with the
Sapphire
either as a social saviour or a decorative addition to the scattered collection of seagoing craft reflecting themselves in the pellucid waters of the bay. To her the cruiser existed solely as the ship which numbered among its company of officers and men, one Nicholas Tarrent R.N.

There was a certain electric quality about Nick Tarrent that had nothing whatever to do with his undoubted good looks, for possessing it a plain man or an ugly one would have been equally attractive, and Copper had been in love with him for precisely eight days, seven hours and forty-two minutes. In other words from the moment she had first set eyes on him, two hours after the arrival of H.M.S.
Sapphire
in Port Blair.

‘— and some of them,' continued Valerie, ‘want to sail from here to Hopetown jetty, where a lorry will meet them and take them up to the top of Mount Harriet. Charles had the boats brought across from Chatham last night so that they can start from the Club pier. The rest of us will take the ferry to Aberdeen and then go on by car. Harriet is only just across the other side of the bay, and I don't suppose it's more than two or three miles from here as the crow flies. But to get to it by road it's over thirty miles and — Copper! you're not listening.'

‘I'm sorry,' apologized Copper in some confusion. ‘I was looking at the view. It's fascinating.'

‘Yes, I know: but if I'd realized you'd be able to see him at this range I'd have had the blinds drawn. Really, Coppy, you might
pretend
to take some interest. Here have I been going over all the arrangements for your benefit, and you haven't bothered to listen to a word. If you could just stop thinking about Nick Tarrent for five minutes, I'd be deeply grateful!'

Copper had the grace to blush, and Valerie laughed and said contritely: ‘I'm sorry, Coppy. That was abominably rude and scratchy of me. I can't think why I should be feeling so jumpy and cross this morning. I suppose it's the heat. I shall be glad when we reach Mount Harriet: it's always much cooler up there.'

‘It does seem to be a lot hotter today, doesn't it?' said Copper, relieved at the change of subject. ‘Or perhaps it's just because it's so still? There doesn't seem to be a breath of air. Who's coming on this picnic?'

‘Almost everyone. They're all finding their way there under their own steam. Rendezvous about twelve to twelve-thirty, at the top. You and I are going with Charles.'

‘Who's Nick going with?'

‘He's sailing over. He and Dan Harcourt and Ted Norton are taking one of the boats, and Hamish is going in another with Ronnie and Rosamund Purvis, and I think George Beamish is supposed to be taking that gloomy girlfriend of his, Amabel, in the third. Mr Hurridge is having a lorry sent to meet them at Crown Point jetty, so they ought to fetch up at Mount Harriet a good bit ahead of us. Except that there's no breeze today.'

‘And what about
dear
Mrs Stock? I suppose she'll be there — worse luck!'

‘Don't be catty, Coppy!'

‘Why not? I enjoy being catty about Ruby. I heard her telling Nick in a honey-sweet voice at the Withers's barbecue that it was “
such
a pity that dear Copper gave the impression of being just a
tiny
bit insipid, because
actually
the girl was really terribly,
terribly
efficient — a complete blue-stocking in fact — she used to hold a
dreadfully
responsible executive post in London”!'

Valerie laughed. ‘Dear Ruby! She probably still believes that old story that men are terrified of intelligent women.'

‘And in nine cases out of ten, how right she is,' commented Copper gloomily.

‘Perhaps. But at a guess I'd say that Nick is the tenth; if that's any comfort to you. As for Ruby, she hasn't a brain in her head.'

‘She doesn't appear to need them! You have to admit that she has what it takes. And I suppose she
is
rather attractive in an overblown “Queen of Calcutta” way; what with that black hair and those enormous eyes — not to mention her vital statistics. What really defeats me is how she ever came to marry someone as depressingly ineffectual as poor Leonard. Whenever I see them together I catch myself wondering why on earth she did it? I suppose he must have had
something
that she wanted: though I can't imagine what! Leonard always reminds me of one of those agitated little sand-crabs that pop up out of holes at low tide, and nip back again when they see you looking. An apologetic sand-crab. He ought by rights to have married someone like Rosamund Purvis; they'd have made a marvellous pair — not an ounce of guts or sex-appeal between them. Then Ruby could have married Ronnie, which would have been far more suitable all round.'

‘I expect,' said Valerie thoughtfully, ‘that Ruby considered one person with sex-appeal in a family to be quite enough. She seems to be allergic to competition.'

‘Unless she is promoting it,' observed Copper tartly. ‘Anyway, I still don't see why she has to go after Nick when she already seems to have every other available male in the Islands lashed to her chariot wheels — with the solitary exception of your Charles.'

‘She collects them,' explained Valerie, helping herself to more coffee, ‘— the way some people collect stamps or matchboxes or Old Masters.'

‘So it would appear,' said Copper crossly. ‘And I can't think why her husband stands for it.'

‘Oh,
Leonard
____
! He doesn't count. And anyway, I don't suppose he notices it by this time. Or minds any more.'

‘Perhaps not. But I should have thought Rosamund Purvis would. It can't be pleasant to see your husband dancing attendance on someone else's wife. Though if it comes to that, I suppose she's used to it, too. In fact her dear Ronnie and Leonard's Ruby are two of a kind; except that with Ronnie it's Old Mistresses! Oh dear — why am I being so bitchy and bad-tempered? What's the
matter
with us today, Val? We must have got out of the wrong sides of our beds this morning. I'm feeling all edgy and irritable. Not at all the right spirit for Christmas Eve. Or any other eve, for that matter!
“Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward Men”
— and Women, I suppose: which presumably includes Ruby Stock. When are we due to start off on this expedition?'

‘Just as soon as you finish that mango. I told Charles we'd meet him at the Club not later than a quarter to ten, so we'd better get a move on.'

The Chief Commissioner, who had heard nothing of this conversation, folded up the single sheet of paper that had been engrossing his attention, returned it to its envelope and rose from the table: ‘If you will excuse me,' he said, ‘I have some work to do. By the way, Valerie, do you want the launch this evening?'

‘No thank you, Dad. We'll catch the six-thirty ferry. We shall have to get back early if Copper and I are to change and then decorate the table and see that everything is set for the party.'

The Chief Commissioner groaned. ‘Good lord, I'd forgotten that we had a dinner party here tonight. I take it this means that I shall not get to bed until after midnight? Oh well, I suppose one cannot avoid one's social obligations at Christmas time.'

He turned away from the table, and then paused and turned back: ‘By the way, I forgot to mention that I have had a cable from the Captain to say that the
Maharaja
has been delayed and will not be in until late on Boxing Day.'

‘Oh,
Dad!
Oh, no! — that means no Christmas mail.'

‘I'm afraid so,' murmured the Chief Commissioner mildly. ‘Well, it can't be helped.' He removed himself from the dining-room, Kioh, the Siamese cat, stalking sedately at his heels. And fifteen minutes later his stepdaughter and her guest left the house and walked down the short, steep, sunlit road to the Club, where Valerie's fiancé, Charles Corbet-Carr, senior subaltern of the detachment at present occupying the military barracks on Ross, was waiting for them.

Charles, a tall, fair young man of a type frequently described by female novelists as ‘clean-limbed', possessed a pair of startlingly blue eyes and a sense of humour that was at present prompting him to model his conversation upon the only reading provided by the Calvert Library: an institution that would appear to have been last stocked during the frivolous twenties by a fervent admirer of such characters as Bertie Wooster, Berry and Co., and ‘Bones of the River'.