Operation Nassau (20 page)

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 Cay next morning, Wallace Brady and I, in
Dolly’s
white 50 m.p.h. 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 on to the jetty, and into a green Daimler convertible, which was waiting there empty. Johnson again took the wheel. ‘Green is the Akbar colour,’ 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 on to a broad metalled 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 doctor bird, 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 F. Bloomfield,’ 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.
‘Miniskirts 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. ‘Miniskirts and midriffs are not allowed,’ said Johnson chidingly. Stables, tennis-courts, shuffle-board. 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 were 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, sun-tanned 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 coloured boy to take out our cases. 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 3-D noughts and crosses?’

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 too far off it,’ said Johnson admiringly. ‘Actually, it’s an I.Q. 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 give 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 round. Sergeant Trotter, in a clean shirt and white trousers, came hesitatingly into the room. ‘Rodney! Some coffee,’ said the 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 coffee pot, executing a swift half-dancestep 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-siphon, 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 trying 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’s drum solo, was singled out because he wore Sir Bartholomew’s jacket? Suppose Denise was gassed and pushed down that slope?’