Skeleton Island (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “I have believed, from the beginning, that he ran off on his own,” said Mrs. Eastleigh. “That being so, I should have thought the police would have found him by now, though. Surely a boy of his age, and with a markedly foreign accent, at that, cannot have got very far?”

  “There’s a feeling abroad that he had a good deal more cash on him than the ordinary school allowance of pocket-money,” said Laura. “It’s only a rumour, but, where boys are concerned, rumours are apt to be based on facts, however much distorted in the telling.”

  “True,” agreed Mr. Eastleigh. He looked gloomy. “I don’t much like the sound of that.”

  “I suppose he didn’t meet that escaped convict and get set upon and robbed?” suggested the headmaster’s wife, her eyes widening. “If so, he might be lying injured, or even dead, in one of the quarries.”

  “The quarries are being methodically examined,” said her husband, “but, of course, that sort of search takes time. Anyway, it is a task we must leave to the police.”

  “There was no money on the convict when he was caught,” said Dame Beatrice. “Laura, I think, has her own ideas on the subject of the child’s disappearance, and they may be worth a passing thought.”

  “I’ve talked it over with Dame Beatrice,” said Laura, in response to a keen, half-hopeful glance from the headmaster, “and, if you agree to release me for a few days, she is willing to take over my classes while I’m away.”

  “No, no, I could not think of her troubling herself to that extent,” protested Mr. Eastleigh. “The Extra English boys can remain with their own forms, as they have been doing for the past few days, and that leaves only twelve periods unaccounted for. I will continue to look after those myself. But what is your scheme, Mrs. Gavin?”

  “Not so much a scheme, actually, as a hunch. Could we have a word with Colin Spalding after breakfast?”

  “Certainly. I will send for him. How do you think he can help us?”

  “I don’t know that he can, but it’s worth trying.”

  “Anything is worth trying,” said the headmaster. He sent for Colin before Assembly, beamed at him and handed him over to Laura. Mrs. Eastleigh went out, but Mr. Eastleigh and Dame Beatrice remained in the room. Colin seemed nervous.

  “Cheer up,” said Laura. “Nobody’s feeling cannibalistic towards you.”

  “Sit down, Spalding,” said the headmaster kindly, “and give Mrs. Gavin your fullest attention, for she thinks perhaps you can help us.”

  “Well,” said Laura, “I expect you’re sick of doing it, but could you cast your mind back to that evening at tea when you told your tales? There should have been nine boys and yourself, you at the head, a prefect at the foot, and four boys on either side. Right?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Peters was the prefect, then I had Sanderson and Rogers on either side of me, Peters had Redwood and the younger Geoghan, and next to Sanderson was the missing boy, de Roseda. Opposite him (I think) was Sculley and the other two boys”—he frowned in concentrated thought—“oh, yes, were Conelly and Philips. Why?”

  “Just so that we know de Roseda was there,” Laura replied. “Can you remember what you talked about?”

  “Smugglers, mostly. That’s what led to the game of hide-and-seek afterwards. We left out Peters, of course, because he’s older, and has his own friends, but when tea was over I raked in the rest of my chaps and we began the game.”

  “Can you remember mentioning any particular smugglers’ coves and so forth?—any special localities, you know?”

  “Only vaguely. I promised them—that’s how it all began—that I’ll read Moonfleet to them in the half hour after prep.—just for the fun of it, you know, sir,” he added, turning to his headmaster. “I thought I’d get them looking forward to the book, that’s all, so I talked about smuggling and the excisemen in a general sort of way, and told them something about smugglers’ caves and pack-horses, and then somebody suggested this game of hide-and-seek, so I got it organised. I’m sorry it’s led to so much trouble. Of course, if I’d had any idea—”

  “Nonsense, my dear chap! No fault of yours, and nobody blames you in the slightest,” said Mr. Eastleigh. He looked expectantly at Laura. She turned again to Colin.

  “Moonfleet, as I remember it, is set somewhere along the great bank of shingle which ends by carrying the causeway over to this island, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Yes, of course it is. I told the chaps that.”

  “So it’s a real place. Do you remember any other real places you may have mentioned?”

  “Oh, I told them about the Cornish wreckers and I believe I mentioned various smugglers’ holes between here and South Devon, and then I talked about the Channel Islands and the smugglers on Jersey and Guernsey, but I don’t remember an awful lot of what I said. I was interrupted by questions and by boys getting up from table to pour themselves out more tea from the pot on the sideboard, and I was giving a general eye to things as well—you know, making sure everybody had his fair whack at the fishpaste sandwiches and didn’t hog all the cake…”

  “I know how it is,” said Laura. “Right. Thanks a lot, Colin. Well, that’s all from me.”

  “Thank you, Spalding,” said Mr. Eastleigh. Colin hesitated, looking puzzled, but, as nobody volunteered any other remark, he bowed awkwardly and went off.

  “Well, that only took us about as far as I thought it would,” said Laura. “Next on my list are Sanderson and Rogers, taking Sanderson first. He’s got a retentive memory, judging by the answers I get from him in history lessons. He’s also a natural criminal, so smuggling should be right up his street.”

  Sanderson proved to be a small, composed, straw-haired child in glasses.

  “If it’s the white mice, sir, yes, sir,” he said, addressing the headmaster. “But I’ve sold them, sir. They won’t cause any more trouble, I assure you, sir.”

  “Never mind the white mice, Sanderson,” said Mr. Eastleigh, to whom this saga was new. “We can deal with those later, if necessary. Kindly give your full attention to Mrs. Gavin.”

  “If it’s the rude drawing on the history time-chart, Mrs. Gavin, yes, Mrs. Gavin,” said Sanderson. “But I can clean it off with my new soft indiarubber, and I solemnly promise to do so.”

  “Goodness me! How many crimes are you going to confess to?” demanded Laura. ‘For goodness’ sake keep the rest of your guilty secrets to yourself, or we shall be here until lunch-time. Now, then.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Gavin?”

  “Do you remember a game of hide-and-seek—only it was called Smugglers and Excisemen—which you played with Mr. Spalding a few days ago?”

  “Oh, yes, Mrs. Gavin. And, of course…”

  “No!” said Laura firmly. “You confine yourself to answering my questions. I’ve no doubt whatever that there was mayhem and general fratricide as an accompaniment to the revels, but I don’t want to hear the details now. Listen—and think! When Mr. Spalding at tea-time was talking about smugglers’ holes, which did he specifically mention?”

  “He was telling us about the book Moonfleet—it’s very good, but I read it when I was seven—and then he mentioned—let me see, now—” He took off his glasses. Laura waited. The tip of a red tongue appeared between Sanderson’s thin and resolute lips, and his greenish eyes fixed themselves on the past.

  “Well, boy?” said Mr. Eastleigh, when he judged that the moment had come.

  “Yes, sir. Yes, Mrs. Gavin.” Sanderson closed the greenish eyes and recited at speed, “He—Mr. Spalding—mentioned Banks Cove, Sandy Bay, Greenland Hole, Hales Head, Dead Man’s Dunes, and some places in the Channel Islands on Jersey and Guernsey. I don’t think they had actual names. They were caves in coves, he said.”

  “Many thanks. That’s fine,” said Laura. “Did the boys seem to know any of these places?”

  “Some of them had been to the Channel Islands, and I think Philips had been to Dead Man’s Dunes.”

  “Did the missing boy, de Roseda, speak about any of the
se places?”

  “He said his tutor—he has a tutor to look after him in the holidays—had taken him to the Channel Islands, but he didn’t say which ones.”

  “Were all the boys interested in smugglers?”

  “Oh, yes, Mrs. Gavin, of course. Conelly said his mother once smuggled in some silk stuff from Italy by showing the Customs a ticket for admission to the Roman ruins at Pompeii, and when the Customs saw the price on the ticket they thought it was the price of the silk, and she didn’t have to pay any duty. We thought it was a wizard idea. Conelly said his mother honestly thought she was showing them the proper bill for the silk stuff, but I should doubt that very much, Mrs. Gavin, wouldn’t you? Besides, it spoils the story.”

  “Get along, if Mrs. Gavin has finished with you,” said Mr. Eastleigh. The literary critic put on his glasses and took his departure.

  “A brilliant child,” said the headmaster indulgently, “but a rather naughty one. His father is a professor of Greek and his mother models waxworks for Madame Tussaud’s.”

  “Well, that’s my hunch, for what it’s worth,” said Laura, when the door had closed behind Sanderson. “Manoel is reminded of his visit to the Channel Islands, remembers (I’m prepared to bet) that there are two Roman Catholic churches in St. Helier alone, and makes his getaway with the dual purpose of going to church and tracking down the smugglers’ haunts.”

  “But how would he get himself there—a boy of nine?” asked Mrs. Eastleigh.

  “By paying his fare, I suppose,” said Laura, bluntly. “It seems he had plenty of money. I take it you wouldn’t care for me to go after him and see whether I can chase him up and bring him back? This is what I meant when I asked you to release me for a few days,” she added, turning to the headmaster. Mr. Eastleigh looked doubtful.

  “It isn’t that I won’t release you,” he said, “but I think you would be going on a wild-goose chase. The police are doing everything they can to trace the boy, I am sure.”

  “They haven’t got around to the Channel Islands,” said Laura. “They still think he’s about here or perhaps has managed to get as far as the mainland, you know. I suppose they asked how much money he was likely to have had on him, and based their deductions on that, not knowing that probably he had a lot more. How about it, then? Do I get leave of absence for a few days?”

  “I suppose you’re tired of routine and want a jaunt,” said the headmaster, with the smile he kept for her. He found her refreshing after the brash or apologetic young University men he usually had to recruit. “If Dame Beatrice is agreeable, it’s all right with me. I think you’ll find the sea and air services a bit restricted at this time of year, but you would have to enquire about those.”

  “I’ll manage,” said Laura, thinking with glee of the diesel-engined cruiser she could charter. “I have my methods, and they’re pretty good, at that.”

  “Ship you over to St. Peter Port, with maybe a chase round the other islands?” said the owner of Pronax. “Well, don’t blame me if it’s rough. Couldn’t you take your holiday later on in the year?”

  “It’s no sort of holiday,” said Laura. “I’m chasing a runaway.”

  “Daughter or son?”

  “Neither, as it happens. It’s simply a kid who’s vanished from the school where I work, a boy of nine.”

  “Gone off on his own, has he?”

  “We don’t know. What time will you start in the morning?”

  “Tide’s right at about ten. How long do you reckon to be away?”

  “I have no idea. Does it matter? You haven’t any other commitments, have you?”

  “Only a new-wedded wife. You being you, I think I’d better bring her along. We’ve only been married eight months, and I don’t want her getting ideas.”

  At ten on the following morning they left the harbour and soon were out in the bay. They stood well away from the island, which, from the sea, presented a stark, forbidding outline of cliffs and headlands, and by noon they had left it far behind and were bucking along through heavy seas which reminded Laura of large, well-intentioned but formidably powerful horses.

  The wife was also large and well-intentioned, a plain, sensible, motherly girl, active and competent in the tiny galley and capable of taking her turn at the wheel. Laura, who was an excellent sailor, thoroughly enjoyed the trip and was sorry when, after a very rough passage, they made St. Peter Port, with its jetties, piers, castle, and lighthouse.

  “I’ll come with you when you go ashore,” said the wife. Her name was Lilian. “Two people making enquiries always seem so much more convincing than one. What will you do, Thorvald?”

  “Juice up the boat and then go ashore for a drink, I expect. See you later.”

  The advantage of a private charter, apart from avoiding the tedious business of booking a flight or a passage on a boat, was that the big cruiser could be used as an hotel. Laura had foreseen this, and soon decided that she could not have made a wiser move than to have hired the Pronax for her trip, very expensive though it was.

  Enquiries for a lost boy answering to Manoel’s description, and made first at the official information bureau on the Victoria Pier and then at the police station in St. James Street, proved abortive. It was most unlikely, said the island police, that a small boy would have been able to land unnoticed, either from an aeroplane or a boat, if he was unaccompanied. They were very properly guarded in their reception of Laura’s admission that she did not know whether the child had been alone or had been accompanied. She gave a description of Ferrars, but it could have applied, the police pointed out, to hundreds of young Englishmen who visited St. Peter Port every year.

  Laura’s next and last call was at the presbytery of the Roman Catholic church. Here she was far more sympathetically received, particularly when she gave her reasons for approaching the priest. He was unable to help. He would surely have noticed the boy, he said. He made a point of having a word at the church door with all newcomers, unless, as, for instance, during the peak holiday periods, this proved impossible owing to weight of numbers. In a slack time such as the present, visitors were so few and far between that little Manoel could not possibly have escaped notice.

  “Of course,” said Lilian, “if this church lark is going to pay off, you have to be pretty sure the kid came on his own and in order to attend Mass. If he’s been kidnapped, either by this Ferrars or somebody else, the last place he’d be taken to is a church, where the priest (and probably others at this dead and alive time of year) would be sure to remember him.”

  These reasonable words did nothing to help matters. They returned to the Pronax, had supper and the drinks brought aboard by her owner, and then turned in.

  “Another snag,” said Thorvald, as they breakfasted on the following morning, “is that there’s a very poor chance of running him to earth if his companion (supposing he’s been abducted) had his own boat. I don’t suppose I’m the only yachtsman from the other side who knows these waters. I always was in sail until our marriage, and, believe me, you’ve got to know an awful lot about these coasts if you don’t want to run into trouble. The tides can rise forty feet in some places, and there are rocks everywhere. All the same, it’s possible, if you know your way around, to lie up in little anchorages that the island fishermen use. There are lots of caves, too. You’d never explore them all, even if you could get to them—and I’m not risking my boat, let me tell you. Personally, Laura, I think you’re on a wild-goose chase. If I were you, I’d cut my losses and decide I’d only come for the ride.”

  “I don’t leave avenues unexplored,” said Laura. “I’m going on with the search for a bit. There’s somewhere called Smugglers’ Lane over in the direction of Moulin Huet and Saints Bay.”

  “I don’t see what you’re going to gain. I agree with Thorvald,” said Lilian. “The kid would be dead by now if he’s been trying to sleep rough at this time of year.”

  There was no cave. Laura, who had purchased a guide book, did not expect one, but she though
t that the name “Smugglers’ Lane” might have proved an attraction to the child. She rode on a bus part of the way, and then walked. She had a reward, although it was not the one she sought. At St. Martin’s Church one of the gate-posts to the churchyard was formed by a statue of the Earth Mother, possibly of Bronze Age origin, representing an old woman, hooded, it seemed, and distinguished, apart from her crudely carved, surprisingly life-like face, by two cannonball bosoms placed each to each to solve the problem of carving them separately in the harsh, unyielding stone. The rest of her was a menhir with a large crack going from the left hipbone diagonally across the stomach. She was impressive and Laura loved her. The islanders called her La Grandmère de Chimquière and at one time had offered flowers to her until, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, this pleasant pagan custom was written off as being idolatrous.

  “At least, to make her acquaintance is something,” thought Laura. Apart from La Grandmère and some magnificent coast scenery, the quest was of no value. Laura found a road past La Fosse Chapel which continued as the winding, hedge-protected Smugglers’ Lane, but it ended only in a gate, a turning on to the cliff-top, and a view of the small inlet called Saints Bay.

  “So much for Guernsey, for the time being,” she said, upon her return to Pronax. “It was worth a trial, but I think I’m more likely to be successful in Jersey.” They slept on board again that night and set off, as soon as the tide was right, on the following day.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Les Ecrehous

  “There was a great, smooth swell upon the sea. The wind blowing steady and gentle from the south, there was no contrariety between this and the current, and the billows rose and fell unbroken.”

  At St. Helier Laura obtained the first clue—if clue it could be called, for at first she was inclined to dismiss it for reasons which appeared to her to be obvious.