Johnson Johnson 04 - Dolly and the Doctor Bird (15 page)

“Oh. My mistake,” said Sir Bartholomew vaguely. But he smiled at Johnson before he turned in the door, and closed it gently behind him. And below the bifocals Johnson’s lips, I saw, stirred in an answering smile.

It had disappeared when he turned toward me. “That was interfering of you, Doctor,” he said. “But not as disastrous this time as it might have been. If you could take a moment now to veil your splendid nubility, I should like to see where Denise Edgecombe died.”

I didn’t speak to him even after I dressed. I cannot remember addressing a word to Johnson through all the dreadful, drawn-out proceedings of the long day. The police came, and another doctor, and questions were asked, but in a climate of reverent pity. Lady Edgecombe had died from a fall, after being made dizzy by the inadvertent use of a gas tarpaulin. So all the experts said, and who were Johnson or I to contradict them. Or perhaps it was because of Johnson, behind the scenes, that the formalities were so smoothly completed.

Denise, taken from her resting place in the nurse’s tidy white trailer, was flown at last to Nassau, her husband beside her. Johnson let them go, and restrained me also from following. “There is nothing you can do. He will be under the eye of the hospital, and besides, he can take care of himself.”

“I want to go to the funeral. I was their guest,” I said. They were the first words I had spoken to him directly, since that sadistic discussion that morning.

“He doesn’t want you. I’m sorry, but that is the truth. He doesn’t want anyone. And I wish you to come to Crab Island,” Johnson said.

We were back in Bart Edgecombe’s empty house. I was watching his maid pack up Denise’s things, and Johnson, French windows open, was standing on the sun deck over the golf course, absently filling his pipe. “A splendid idea,” I said. I picked up an ashtray and marching out, placed it on the table beside him. “A big, cheerful party with the Begum and James Ulric, and who? Krishtof Bey ogling and Sergeant Trotter giving his famous imitation of a Royal Canadian Mounty on top of a camel. That’ll soon cheer us up.”

“You’d find it compatible compared with the clubhouse,” he said. “Stage people hate death.”

“Who doesn’t?” I said. I badly wanted a quarrel.

“Some people come to terms with it,” Johnson said. “The Begum, for one. And your father, for another… Why didn’t you tell me about Pentecost’s family?”

“I meant to make some inquiries myself,” I said brusquely. And so I had. Only there had been so little time. I said, “Who told you? Dahlia?”

“Eventually,” Johnson said. “She disappeared after you saw her, and my people only found her this morning. By then it was too late.”

“How?” I asked.

“The family had gone from Bullock’s Harbour. Someone put two and two together and guessed that the water tower would lead us to Dahlia. They left yesterday to go work on Abaco. So they said. Of course, now there’s no trace.”

I was silent. I had meant to do that myself, when I first set foot on Great Harbour Cay. Instead I had swum, and bought myself clothes, and listened to the doctorbirds in the hibiscus bushes. And had lain on a beach chair with Paul’s warm hand massaging my spine, while Denise Edgecombe fell to her death. Johnson said, “I know Bart asked you to stay here. But it would send you crazy, Beltanno.”

“So would Crab Island,” I said.

“It won’t,” he said. “Or if it does, I’ll bring you straight back to this house. Or to Nassau. Or anywhere else you want to go.” He paused, and then said, “I’m taking Wallace Brady over with me… Do you know, Beltanno, what it means to finish a job?”

And I understood that. No apologies for the inexcusable; no reference to what had happened that morning. No further reference, either, to Pentecost. I thought of Brady’s voice indignantly refuting my own ironical suggestion. Leave things long enough and they’ll find their own answer.

Whatever one thought of Johnson, he was concerned at the moment with bringing the author of two deaths to light. And for that he wanted my help. I didn’t want to go to Crab Island. I wished to avoid the Begum, more than ever in the company of my father. The friends she surrounded herself with, I did not know. The three I knew, Brady, Krishtof and Trotter, were each still men of mystery — figures of unproved suspicion. And Johnson himself I distrusted, after this morning.

He had been watching me, while lighting his pipe. He took it out of his mouth. “Have you ever seen,” he said, “a bronchial patient being lambasted out of a spasm? Perhaps you’ve had to do it for your father.”

I had, twice. I didn’t say anything.

“It isn’t pleasant,” he said.

The maid had finished. I walked back into the room and turned on one of the lamps. I thought of my own lapse with Pentecost. “Sometimes,” I said, “it may be necessary.”

He came in and stood in the doorway, the lamp igniting the bifocals, the pipe glowing red in his hand. He had extraordinarily thick dense black hair, with no hint of gray. But he was older, of course, than I was. “Sometimes it shouldn’t be,” he said unexpectedly. “Denise Edgecombe should not have died.”

I looked at him. “You said so yourself. Who could have stopped it?”

“I could,” said Johnson. “I personally, Big Daddy, could. But I didn’t.”

“Why not?” I said. He had had, I think, a shade more whiskey than even a top person could carry with no sign at all.

But he had not had as much whiskey as that. “Probably because you had that blue thing on at the airport,” he said, sticking his pipe in his mouth. “How many inches above the knee did it come? Ten? Twelve?… I want you to wear the blue thing on Crab Island, Beltanno. And the bathing suit. And everything else you’ve got. Don’t become a case history. Mix your professions like me.”

“Do you need me on Crab Island?” I said.

I thought he was going to quip for an answer, but he didn’t. “Yes,” he said.

“In the Spoonmakers’ Union?”

“In close affiliation to it. A tong, perhaps.”

“All right,” I said.

We dined briefly in the clubhouse, beleaguered at a table with Mr. Brady and Mr. Tiko, to whom with some misgivings I introduced Johnson Johnson. I had no need to worry. Johnson, it was clear, had not heard of the heir to the MacRannochs. Mr. Tiko, on the other hand, had heard of Johnson Johnson. They discussed Japanese painting, to the confusion of the long chain of well-wishers who came to commiserate with us over Lady Edgecombe’s sudden death, and to inquire in the nicest possible way into her domestic circumstances.

We separated early, Johnson to sleep in a rented rondette for the night, I to retire alone in the Edgecombe’s silent big house. But first, he came in and watched while I checked the mesh frames at every window, and locked the French windows. I had my gun by my bed.

“I fancy you’re safe, with Bart away, but it doesn’t do to take risks. Nervous?” he asked.

I shook my head, as near truthfully as makes no difference. One takes one’s precautions. Then it is merely a matter of will power.

“Good girl,” said Johnson.

“And Bart Edgecombe?” I said.

“I give you my word,” said Johnson. “Nothing will happen to him in Nassau. And after it’s over, I’m bringing him back to Crab Island with me.”

I remember concealing my rising horror, and tackling instead the more domestic connotations of this statement. “Heavens,” I said. “How big a house has the Begum?” For
guests
with the Begum Akbar never meant seven blow-up mattresses on the sitting room floor. It meant seven bedrooms with full, personalized plumbing. We, who had been forced to put in all those extra bathrooms in Castle Rannoch, were sorely aware of it. Crab Island was a half-mile across. “And the sewage!” I added, as my stream of consciousness began to run faster.

But Johnson Johnson merely gazed at me through his bifocals. “Good night, Doctor. I won’t spoil the surprise. Wait,” he said, “till you see it.”

WE SET OFF for Crab Island next morning, Wallace Brady and I, in
Dolly
’s white 50-mph Avenger launch, Johnson at the wheel. Brady, neatly and rather formally dressed, was not in a talkative mood; and neither was I. I noted that the approach road and first span of Brady’s bridge were already in position not far from where we embarked. The outline of Crab Island was quite visible from the shore of the larger island, and we followed the line of the new bridge all the way, tying up where the piles at the Crab Island end already stood in the water. There was a small jetty, without a great deal of weather protection, off which
Dolly
rested at anchor.

We climbed out of the speedboat onto the jetty, and into a green Daimler convertible, which was waiting there empty. Johnson again took the wheel. “Green is the Akbar color,” he said. “And philanthropy their habit. You should see the Akbar elephants campaigning for family planning. There’s been a population explosion of tigers, because the elephants are all pooped with handing out condoms.”

The jetty ended. A uniformed man at the entrance to a low modern bungalow unlocked a pair of wrought iron gates and saluted, and the Daimler swept onto a broad metaled road edged with Japanese fuchsias, Royal Palms, and oleander bushes. We passed a man in two shades of green, spraying them. A large scarlet butterfly trembled past.

Brady said, “That’s a—” and Johnson lifted one hand from the steering wheel and waved with it. “It is. They buy them in and release them. Same with birds. Ever seen a doctorbird, doctor bird?”

“Frequently,” I said.

“They’re a damned nuisance, aren’t they?” said Johnson. “Whoa.”

The Daimler came to an expert short halt. Overhead were tall pines, their spaced and interleaved branches like fruit espaliers, each feathered in dark silky green hair. In front of us, crossing the road with their salmon necks looping, was a small flock of flamingoes. They stepped with great deliberation, their elbows like pink coral beads on pink needles. Their feathered bodies could be worn with an eye-veil at weddings. One came close and gazed pupil to pupil with Johnson, its yellow whorled eyes glistening over its thick black-tipped beak.

“
Forsan et Haec Olim Meminisse Iuvabit
. Virgil,” said Johnson.

“The kiss of the sun for pardon,

The song of the birds for mirth,

One is nearer God’s heart in a garden,

Than anywhere else on earth.

“Dorothy Frances Gurney,” said Wallace Brady, surprisingly.

I’d been to the Ardastra Gardens too. “ ‘These flamingoes are the unique gems of the tropical bird world,’ ” I said helpfully. “ ‘Mini skirts and midriffs are not allowed. Lack of modesty breeds contempt.’”

Johnson took the bird by the beak and turned its head firmly away. “That wasn’t contempt. That was just one of the dirty old men of the tropical bird world,” he said. “I could see its Polaroid camera.”

It was, I suppose, a short dress. Wallace Brady gave me a hesitant smile. I hadn’t the strength of mind not to smile back. And yet, what shaft of brilliance had called forth this tribute of manly comradeship? In a nutshell; my knees.

The drive continued between flowers and trees for a considerable distance, considering the size of the island. Johnson reassured us that it was all done with mirrors, and we were still back to back with the Ghost Train. He seemed to have forgotten Lady Edgecombe’s death in the thrills of forthcoming reunion with Trotter.

We passed a gazebo, a fountain, a bridged pool with duck, a dovecote, and two marble statues. “Mini skirts and midriffs are
not
allowed,” said Johnson chidingly. Stables, tennis courts, shuffleboard. The glimpse of a pool. The roofs of staff houses, discreetly tucked away behind a landscaped wood of coarse orchids. An avenue of firs, which turned with a sweep at the end. “Shut your eyes, Doctor,” Johnson said. Nonsense.

A moment later he looked in the mirror and said coolly, “What are you scared of?” I shut them.

The car turned the corner, slowed and ran to a quiet halt. “Open them, Doctor,” Johnson said. I opened them.

In front of us rose the Begum Akbar’s house on Crab Island. I didn’t examine it, floor by floor and window by window. I didn’t even speculate on the number of rooms she had, or what promoted the unique and unusual ground plan.

I didn’t need to. The Begum’s house on Crab Island was an exact copy, turret for turret and stone for stone, of Castle Rannoch in Scotland. She had built James Ulric a second home here in the Bahamas.

Beside and in front of me, there was silence. Johnson, of course, knew the house. Brady had probably helped her to build it. They were waiting with unconcealed interest to see what I would do.

There was quite a number of things I could do, including make a fool of myself. I regulated my impulses. I said patiently, “I do manage to take your point. So far as I know, no patent was ever applied for. I suppose this makes my father the only clan chieftain to lodge in two seats. One for each buttock.”

The bifocals dwelled on me for a long, lingering moment. “Beltanno,” said Johnson, “the steel industry needs you.” He turned to Brady. “And you know what she thinks? She thinks they’re all lying around in there wearing beads and stoned out of their skulls on French Blues or Black Bombers or one of the lighter character rums.”

Wallace Brady turned his pleasant, suntanned all-American gaze on my knees, and then smoothly, up to my face. “The intelligent rich don’t do that,” he said. “The intelligent rich play children’s games and tell each other true ghost stories prior to going to bed with each other. Other stimuli they do not require.”

“They don’t play golf?” I said. I wondered if it was Johnson’s company. Wallace Brady hadn’t talked like that on Great Harbour Cay.

“You and I play golf,” said Brady. “Golf is played by the intelligent candidates for ascendancy.”

I thought of the price of those golf bags. “A few seem to have made it,” I said; but Brady shook his head firmly.

“First-generation tyros. Until you see a man playing a children’s party game, you may know he doesn’t belong to the real aristocracy of wealth.”

The car door was opened by a manservant, who directed a black boy to take out our suitcases. I walked up the steps and entered, with more than a few misgivings, the dark and echoing hall of my own home. Her footsteps padding through what appeared to be a series of vacant apartments, the Begum appeared smiling, her hands outstretched. She wore a dark blue sari of floating organza. “Beltanno! Wallace!”

She stopped and lowered her hands. “Johnson. What are you looking for?”

“Paper games,” said Johnson. “Or Monopoly would maybe do. Or three-D ticktacktoe?”

The Begum looked at him critically. “You have that stuffed and smiling look,” she said. “Like a piece of hand-carved ethnographica. What are you doing? Auditioning for Mensa?”

The glasses glittered. “You’re not far off it,” said Johnson admiringly. “Actually, it’s an IQ and stock-holding index. No doubt your half-year figures were buoyant?”

“They were,” said the Begum Akbar calmly, leading the way into the morning room. She appeared in no way amazed.

“And your intelligence is undoubted. Therefore… Ah!”

He pounced.

“We think it’s the meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba,” said the Begum serenely, “but the club never gives you a subject and they won’t answer letters, damn them. Coffee?”

“Yes, please,” I said. Brady, grinning foolishly, had followed Johnson to the immense baize table set out in the window with the largest jigsaw puzzle I have ever seen.

“Thelma,” said Johnson.

“Damn you, darling,” said the Begum in her careful, mannered English voice. “It’s the Queen of Sheba. Krishtof recognized the cut of her trousers.”

“She’s smoking a cigarette,” Johnson said. He slid another piece into place and surveyed it.

“She was in advance of her time,” said the Begum calmly. She opened the French windows and called into the bushes. “James! Your daughter is here.”

A lithe Turkish figure in a gold necklace and a pair of green cotton beach pants stepped out of the hibiscus and did a mild leap into the morning room. “He’s paddling,” said Krishtof Bey. “Bloody hell!” He stood rigid over the table.

“She’s smoking a cigarette,” said the Begum placidly. “Black or white, Beltanno?”

“White,” I said.

“It’s a lie!” said Krishtof Bey furiously. “It doesn’t fit!”

“It does,” pointed out Wallace Brady. I admired him for the way he was keeping his head.

“So do the trousers,” said Johnson.

“It’s Rita Hayworth in
Salome
?” said the Begum tentatively.

Krishtof Bey snorted. “She didn’t smoke a cigarette in
Salome
.”

“She might have, off set,” said the Begum helpfully. “James? Does Rita Hayworth smoke?”

“Is she on fire?” said my father, appearing dripping in the window, cackling. He looked like Picasso. He emitted a roar. “Who put that damned fag in her mouth?”

“
His
mouth,” I said.

They all turned and looked accusingly at me. The Begum stirred her coffee.

“They all want to know how you know.” She looked around. Sergeant Trotter, in a clean shirt and white trousers, came hesitatingly into the room. “Rodney! Some coffee,” said Begum. “The Queen of Sheba’s a man.”

Sergeant Trotter stopped looking hesitant. “Get along with you,” he said. “With them trousers?”

“Unisex,” said Johnson. “Or how Solomon got wise. I agree with Beltanno. You are looking at two virile forms. Krishtof, tell us who dresses like Turks, apart from Turks?”

“I thought Turks dressed like Indians?” I said innocently.

“English dress like Indians,” the Begum pointed out, with justice. She thought. “Racing car drivers dress like Turks. And old Harrovians. And men from pirate radio ships. And antique dealers. And fashion photographers.”

Johnson picked up another piece of the jigsaw. “There’s a dog here,” he said.

The room was plunged into gloom, broken by the chinking of coffee cups. The Begum put hers firmly down. “I will not have my day controlled by ten thousand interlocking pieces of wood,” she said. “Johnson, I wish to break into light conversation. Who killed Denise Edgecombe?”

She was an irresponsible woman. I had always suspected it.

There was a cracking silence, wrecked by the clatter as Sergeant Trotter’s cup jumped in its saucer. Johnson’s bifocals and eyebrows, I was glad to see, had parted company. For a moment he looked like the rest of us: frankly subnormal. Then he said, “Who do you have serious conversations with — morgue attendants? So far as the police know it was an accident.”

“Oh?” said the Begum. “Wallace, do you think it was an accident?”

Wallace, a devotee of good taste if ever I saw one, was markedly reserved. “If you had seen the poor lady in that quarry, Begum, you wouldn’t have any doubt. Of course it was an accident. Why should anyone want to kill Lady Edgecombe?”

Even my father, I was glad to see, was staring at his soulmate with extreme disapprobation. “What did you want to say that for? Pretty woman. Nothing wrong with her.”

“Except boredom,” said Krishtof Bey surprisingly.

“Not when you danced with her,” said Wallace Brady. I had forgotten that.

“No. She had been a good dancer. Not an easy thing to give up,” said the Turk. He moved across to the coffeepot, executing a swift half-dance step as he went, reminding you what an agile body he undoubtedly had. “It gets into the blood. Better to produce, to teach. Hard to leave it altogether.”

“Sir Bartholomew understood it, I think,” I said. “He was most gentle with her.”

“Yes. The slightest touch of patronage, don’t you think?” said the Begum. “I am sorry no one will take up my scandal. My theory was that Denise poisoned her husband, and then killed herself, hoping to land him with the blame. No supporters?”

“Like the Queen of Sheba,” said Johnson, “it’s a novel idea. Could you play thirteen holes of reasonable golf just before killing yourself?”

“My dear man,” said the Begum. “I can’t play golf. I thought it was like making love. If you were enthusiastic, you could do it anywhere, no matter how adverse the circumstances.”

“You can,” said Johnson, seated with his tobacco pouch on his knees. “But golf takes a lot longer.”

“Attend,” said the Begum, and reaching out a leisurely arm for the soda syphon, depressed a squirt accurately into his pipe. “I will not be balked of my fun. What if they are both killed, Sir Bartholomew and Denise Edgecombe? Could someone be attempting to wipe out this family?”

I avoided looking at Johnson. Krishtof Bey, with a fresh cup of coffee, was doing a slow
glissé
prowl back along the edge of the carpet; Sergeant Trotter, sitting poker backed on one of the Begum’s most comfortable armchairs, was looking bored and uneasy; Brady was trying to catch one of Johnson’s eyes. I had been attempting for some moments to impound the other.

Johnson shut his eyes, thus eluding us both. My father, who had been padding about for some time, leaving wet naked footmarks on the parquet, said, “Where’s that damned paper, Thelma? Who should want to dispose of the Edgecombes? Played a perfectly rational game of contract, both of them.”

The Begum’s large long-sighted eyes rested on me. “Your father holds the theory that, against a sure knowledge of cricket and bridge, the criminal classes are powerless,” she said. “He is wrong. It is the man with the brown ale-making set and the night tidy who will attract violence. Suppose Sir Bartholomew was poisoned by the food or the drink he had at the airport. Suppose he was poisoned again when he became worse on the plane. Suppose Johnson here, who was so neatly set alight at the end of Leviticus’ drum solo, was singled out because he wore Sir Bartholomew’s jacket? Suppose Denise was gassed and pushed down that slope?”

Wallace Brady looked across at me. “I told you,” he said. “Paper games.”

“Well, Beltanno?” said the Begum; and they all, even my father, who was searching inside the harpsichord, looked around at me.

I breathed slowly and steadily, avoiding a second glance at Johnson, whose despicable eyes were still shut. I said, “It sounds dramatic, but I think you should look at the probabilities. Who had anything to gain, as my father has said, from killing the Edgecombes?”