The Tropical Issue (44 page)

Without whom none of us would have been there.

Jinx Josie. Compared with us, Napoleon was laughing.

‘Are you sitting comfortably?’ said Johnson. ‘O.K. The rest of the tale about Rita.’

Public school people are great exclaimers. From the moment Johnson fed them the compressed story of the Curtis family and my mother, Ferdy and Maggie formed a most satisfactory audience of two, alternately whistling or yodelling and sometimes saying the same thing together.

Maggie said, ‘It’s
the
sensation. So Kim-Jim asks Ferdy to use Rita for this commission he’s got to photograph Natalie. And as a result, Natalie offers Rita a temporary job, and then makes it permanent. And all the time poor Kim-Jim knows he’s going to pop, and that Rita will be left with a nice job, and lots of contacts and no more hang-ups about going abroad. You should see
my
bloody brother.’

Amy got up from picking bits of meat off the carpet round the dog bowls. She said, ‘But you hadn’t told him, I thought, who you were?’

I hadn’t told him who I was. He didn’t know who I was, I would swear it, all the time we were working together, and later, when we exchanged all the tapes. All the tapes about work.

And then, I had begun to wonder. And after the legacy, of course, I was sure.

I said, ‘He found out, I think. He never said. The thing is, he was quite keen on families, although he’d cut himself off from his own. He’d sort of placed me where I could meet the other Curtises if I wanted, and make up my own mind. He never talked about them.’

Ferdy said, ‘He was a gentleman, Kenneth James. Never gossiped about anyone. Natalie thought he was your father: bloody rubbish. Brought him back from Lisbon to cope with you when she thought some funny stuff was going on. I should think he would detest his family. Probably guessed what they were up to.’

I said, ‘No. Or he would never have brought me over.’

Natalie caught Dodo’s eye and sat up.

She didn’t look sympathetic any more. She had got her story. And she owed Johnson quite a few digs.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘It is, I must admit, a new experience. To discover oneself the gullible centre of a neat family conspiracy to arrange soft living and a fair amount in wages – what did I pay you the other day, Rita? A thousand pounds? – between brother and sister.’

She surveyed us all coolly, ending with Johnson.

‘Not to mention between sister and Ferdy. How much of the thousand pounds went into that rather tight pocket, I wonder? How lucky that the Josephine film is not to have the benefit of your joint attention.’

Ferdy stood up. He said, ‘Natalie, old lady, it sounds like sour grapes. Rita’s done great things today. You don’t want to appear in the gossip columns as the world’s most beautiful bitch. You keep quiet, and we won’t tell on you.’

Natalie lay back and looked at him. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Of course. She’s an heiress now. Having benefitted hugely from her brother’s death, and now, one supposes, from her father’s. Doesn’t Maggie object?’

They stared at one another. My head throbbed and buzzed. I wished I were somewhere else. In Glasgow. In Troon. With Napoleon.

I shut my eyes.

Johnson’s voice said, ‘Are we stranded, Amy? Or can we get transport back to Hurricane Hole?’

The dog at Amy’s feet stirred, and she rubbed its ears.

‘We’re stranded,’ she said. ‘The police won’t let anyone leave.’

‘Pity,’ said Johnson. ‘You mentioned a cabaret?’

‘I did,’ said Amy drily. ‘Can’t tell you how to stop a fight, though. Unless you want to watch some video. There’s a set.’

‘I suppose,’ said Natalie, ‘there inevitably is. But need we see it?’

I opened my eyes.

‘Vote from Rita,’ said Johnson. ‘And considering everything, a casting vote. Suppose we all stop talking and let her relax. Amy, what have you got?’

What she had, we discovered, was four cassettes of the Ty-phoo Chimps, one of the Guinness Toucan, and a very old film of Tom Mix.

It was a very small T.V. set, and it took some time to connect it. Eventually, Tom Mix flickered on to the screen.

Porter was already asleep. Dodo followed. In turn, Ferdy, Raymond and Maggie slumped in their seats.

Natalie’s anger and frustration kept her awake longer. Then slowly, the self-applied eyelashes dropped and her nicely drawn mouth fell slightly open.

Johnson’s glasses remained vertical, though his face was much the same yellow-grey as the caldera. He said, ‘Amy?’

She jumped. ‘Christ!’ she said. ‘The effing bird’ll be missing it.’

She got up, groggily, and went out.

The room wheezed with heavy breathing, and the sound of the wind outside the shutters. Johnson said, ‘Are you all right?’

I had been watching Tom Mix, with concrete on my eyelids, but I looked at him, and stayed looking. I said, ‘I’m all right. What about you?’

‘Nearly finished,’ he said. ‘Trust me if you can.’

He paused, and said, ‘Amy and I exchanged a few coarse words a while ago. She overruled me about letting you go after your father. I gather she classes you roughly somewhere between a chimpanzee and a jaguar. Thought you’d like to know.’

‘I knew,’ I said. I knew they had been anxious about me. I knew they had hoped to lead Old Joe out without risking lives. I said, ‘It’s O.K.’

‘It’s not, very,’ said Johnson. ‘Especially as I have something else to ask. Will you do something for me?’

I could hardly hear him. I meant to say, ‘What?’

I said, ‘Yes.’

‘Will you remember, then,’ said Johnson, ‘that there is no such person as Roger van Diemen?’

I only had time for a nod. Then Amy came back, and he turned to her.

On her shoulder was a green St Lucia parrot, with a bright eye in a brilliant blue head.

It was nearly midnight. After a long and terrible day, the lines on her sunken face were like the graining on teak, and her cropped white hair was limp.

The parrot, hyped by the light and the company, was bright-eyed as a drunk, and as talkative.

Travelling across to its stand, where Amy chained it, the raucous Californian voice drowned out Tom Mix.

‘Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight! You get that damned dialogue wrong once more and you can take your ass right over to Disney
,’ the parrot said.

Natalie opened her eyes.

‘Mr Christian
!’ said the parrot.
‘Effing bread-fruit for breakfast again!’

Raymond, Dodo and Maggie opened their eyes.

‘Bugger the bitch>!’
said the parrot slily, in Ferdy’s voice.

‘Cohn!’
I said.

Ferdy opened his eyes. He sat up. He said, ‘My darling Toucan. You’ve never traded the Ziegfeld Parrot of 1933 for hard bleeding cash. Is it Cohn?’

‘Mind your own effing business,’ said Amy placidly. ‘What Rita chooses to do with her legacy is her own effing affair. Lay golden eggs, do these birds.’

Ferdy’s eyes gleamed. ‘It’s too old, darling,’ he said. ‘Check it out, do, or you’ll give the poor thing a stroke. I’ll bet you it rewinds all the way back to
The Jazz Singer.
To Edison. To Bell.’

I was tired, and I was fed up, and I didn’t want to think about Cohn. I said, ‘Do you mind? I’m trying to watch the film.’

‘Sweetheart,’ said Ferdy, ‘it’s your day. It’s your party. I am now shutting up.’

He was nice. It would have been fine, except that the telephone rang.

It rang twice, and cut off.

It was enough for Natalie.

She sat instantly, calling for Amy. ‘The system’s connected again! You don’t mind if I make a few calls?’

The telephone system might have come back to life, but Tom Mix had disappeared into a haze.

It didn’t come back. I lay there like the dogs and the parrots and the snakes and Natalie and said, ‘Amy!’

Amy was swearing into the telephone, and drumming her hand on the rest. She said, ‘Nope. There’s no sound on the wire. No effing dice, Mrs Sheridan. O.K., Rita, what’s your worry?’

I explained dopily, wishing I hadn’t mentioned it.

Amy was undisturbed.

‘Cohn!’
she yelled.

Everyone who had been asleep woke up.

The parrot fixed her with an uneasy eye, looked away, and then gurgled under its breath, scraping a claw on its perch.

Tom Mix suddenly returned.

‘It’s a miracle,’ said Johnson, with interest.

‘Bloody parrot,’ said Amy.

I felt suddenly cold, which in that heat was practically frightening. I said, ‘What’s the parrot to do with it?’

Natalie said, ‘If it’s Cohn, Kim-Jim taught it to watch all these films. You remember. It talks all the time.’

‘Sure effing does,’ Amy said. ‘Switches the programmes all the time, too. Every time the effing phone rings.’

‘What?’ I said.

Maggie was listening too, and Raymond, and Dodo and Natalie, turning round with the telephone still stuck vainly in her ear.

‘And
calls the effing dogs,’ Amy continued. ‘Ultrasonic sound. Parrots have it. Imitate the sounds you can’t hear on the T.V. control pad. Change the effing programme.’

‘When the telephone rings twice,’ I said.

I had the full attention of Johnson’s bifocals.

‘Explain,’ he said.

I said, ‘It doesn’t matter. It reminded me of something.’

Raymond said, ‘Rita. It does matter. You look terrible. What?’

They were all looking at me. This couldn’t be what Johnson meant.

This could be what Johnson meant.

I said, ‘It reminded me of the night Kim-Jim died in Madeira. He was watching video in his study. I passed his door, and heard the telephone ring twice. Then he turned the video off while he answered it. That’s how we knew he was still alive long after everyone had gone. That’s how the police were sure it was suicide.’

Maggie said, ‘But we know it was suicide. The gun, the wound and everything. He had cancer. The only person around was you, and my God, you’re his sister.’

Ferdy said, ‘Wait a minute. What you’re saying, Rita, is that it was the
parrot
that switched off the video?’

‘We’ve just seen him do it,’ I said.

Ferdy stared at me, thinking, and nursing his bad shoulder absently. ‘Consider, then, children,’ he said.

‘Bird responds to telephone ring, and puts the video off. Poor old K-J doesn’t put it on again, so is presumed done for. Call unimportant: could be a ring-through of the one I made to what’s-his-name . . . Aurelio, to tell him we were getting a free ride home. But still doesn’t help very much. Guy was alive when I left him, and dead by the time the phone rang.’

‘It doesn’t help at all really,’ Johnson said. ‘Except, of course, that if Kim-Jim were murdered, it shows us what time the murderer wanted his alibi for.’

Maggie said, ‘Look. We’ve had enough killings tonight. Kim-Jim wasn’t murdered. The police said so.’

Johnson said, ‘But look what we’ve found out since then about the Curtis family. The police might think it well worth while now to have another look. Think of all the new possible motives. Revenge by someone who thought Kim-Jim was in the drugs business. Execution by someone who thought he knew too much and might give away his own family. A murder of passion, over Natalie. A murder for gain, by someone with designs on Rita.

‘It’s only an idle thought, but so many of the principals are dead now, that it might be quite easy to find someone who is willing to talk, now that he knows there’s no one around to make him pay for it.’

Maggie said, ‘But it doesn’t alter the facts. Rita’s brother was alive when we all left. The house was locked. The kitchen people were in each other’s company all the time. And the only person roaming about after was Rita.’

‘That is true,’ Dodo said. ‘The girl came home early. The play was still on. The Queen Elizabeth play in the study.’

‘My name is Bond. James Bond
,’ said the parrot. It let off a lot of gunfire and added, in a strong American accent,
‘I guess there’s just you and me left.’

It was beastly. I said, ‘It said that as we were leaving. As we left Kim-Jim to come to your party.’

‘Did it?’ said Johnson. ‘With the gunfire?’

Maggie said, ‘Well, what’s that to do with it? That’s rifle fire your star-struck little green friend has just come out with. The thing that killed Kim-Jim would produce one single bang, I suppose. Or pop. Or whatever.’

‘I think,’ said Natalie, ‘the point Johnson is making is that the parrot may have produced its gunfire sounds after being triggered off, so to speak, by a real one. Is it possible?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Ferdy. ‘No gunfire in Queen Elizabeth’s day, unless they’d got to Plymouth Hoe. Talking of Spaniards, did anyone ever track down the filthy dozen who did down
Dolly
? My shoulder and I would like to meet them.’

‘Not yet,’ Raymond said. ‘Being smugglers by trade, they’re a bit elusive. They’re maybe even a bit dead, if the Curtis family wanted it that way. But they’ve found the first step in the chain. The place where the dope was loaded into the Dozen’s boat by Clive Curtis’s other partner.’

Natalie said, ‘Other partner? Who? Where was this?’

‘Oh, let’s leave it,’ said Johnson. ‘They only got half the story before the wires went. Once the storm’s fully over, we’ll hear it all. And the police say that now his sister is dead, Clive seems quite keen to talk.’

Natalie said, ‘So they don’t know who the man is in Colombia?’

‘Not in Colombia,’ Johnson said. ‘Or maybe originally. But the boat that attacked
Dolly
had loaded the dope in Tobago. You didn’t see them, Ferdy?’

Raymond grinned. ‘I bet he’s glad he didn’t,’ he said. ‘Or it might have been Goodnight Ferdy, like it was Goodnight Kim-Jim.’

‘Goodnight
,’ said Kim-Jim’s voice.

It was fairly horrible. It was such a good imitation that we turned round.

The parrot liked that. He clucked and bobbed, and then gave a repeat performance.

‘Goodnight,’ said Kim-Jim’s voice again. ‘Have yourself a good time. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’

Everyone avoided looking at me. Ferdy got up and stretched. I looked at Johnson.