Rupert’s voice, defending the prestige of his master, broke in against the almost tangible barrier of Johnson’s intention. “She was hard as bloody nails and you know it,” said Rupert, my godlike golden friend Rupert. “As it was, we were afraid, sir, she’d make you her scapegoat. By eavesdropping in the Land Rover, Johnson put paid to that. But that’s not all. She’d have killed Michael Twiss before Ogden did, if she had got to him first, that night on Rum.”
“Michael Twiss? Why Michael Twiss?” Kenneth’s voice was distracted.
“Michael and she were in the blackmail thing together.” Johnson had stepped in, quietly, to break the news to the patient. Dear Johnson. “Selling and photographing papers was her racket solely, however. Twiss didn’t know about it, but she felt it would be convenient to land the blame on his corpse. She had a certain amount of justification in that Twiss had shown distinct signs of wanting to do the same thing to her. She didn’t see the logic of amassing a small fortune to have Michael Twiss walk away with it.”
“She could have had police protection. She could stop him stealing, by law.”
“She could. She tried to safeguard her life, actually, by closing her deposits against him. But the final outcome of any legal case might not have sustained her.”
He paused. He did not, unfortunately, drop dead. He said: “You know the story of how she met Michael Twiss and he became her musical manager? She never told all of it, and neither did he: it would have destroyed the diva’s elegant image. But he made one condition, the far-sighted Michael Twiss, when he first became this young, untried girl’s impresario.
In the greatest possible secrecy, he married her. Michael Twiss and Tina Rossi were husband and wife.”
There was a long silence. I listened, but Kenneth made no response I could hear. He was probably, like Rupert, rolling over the name on his tongue. Tina Twiss. Damn them. Damn them to hell.
I had one other visitor that morning, as I lay sipping my coffee: Victoria. Slipping round the door, dressed in some unsuitable pink chiffon thing of May Bird’s, her hair still uncombed, her feet bare, she stood asking silent permission and then curled up on the chair by my bunk, her hands childishly folded, her gaze childishly direct. She had been crying. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“I’m sorry too. I knew Ogden wouldn’t kill you. It was just a test.”
She said: “He was sick, you know. His people were rotten to him. They set him up with the bare ribs of Seawolf, and just dared him to get on with it. He hated them – and all the people with money to spend . . . He loved his boat,” added Victoria, her voice thickening. “That was the really good part for him. And he got on well with everybody round the coast. They laughed at him, but they liked him. He always had a girl around you know, but he wasn’t interested in us. Just someone he could order around, who would wash his socks and rub his chest when he got his bronchitis . . . He was getting a lot better with me, I thought. You can’t blame him. I don’t blame anyone . . . What are you going to do?” asked Victoria.
I don’t know what I should have answered. No, that is not true. I do. But I didn’t get the chance. For the door opened and Rupert appeared, and said briskly and formally: “Good morning. Victoria, Dr Holmes wants you. Madame Rossi—”
“Rupert?” I said. “Tell me, is there a proper bulkhead between this cabin and the next?”
He looked much older than he had done, sailing Dolly. He said, still formally: “No. It’s just a partition. Johnson thought . . .”
“I know just what Johnson thought. And did you think I was as hard as bloody nails, darling Rupert,” I continued sweetly, “when holding my hand back on Dolly? I’m beginning to think Johnson’s the only ethical person among you – don’t go. There’s one thing I must ask you.”
“Ask Johnson.” He already had one foot out of the door.
“No, I want to ask you. Who won?”
He was careful. “Who won what?”
“Who won the race. The race, you idiot. You had a five thousand bet on with Hennessy.”
“Oh.” He had totally forgotten. “I don’t know. Didn’t we abandon it? Seawolf’s out of it anyway, using her motor and being towed in the end. Dolly didn’t use her engine, except for the bits outside the race at Lochgair and South Rona. It was too damned rough last night: we got way off her, not on – and I don’t think Binkie did. Or Symphonetta.”
“Symphonetta? But we left her at anchor off Rum. Surely you brought Hennessy back with you on Dolly?”
“Yes, we did. But the three boys evidently thought they ought to keep up with the old man. They sailed Symphonetta hell for leather after us, and came in damned nearly . . .”
A curious expression had overspread Captain Glasscock’s tanned face. I said encouragingly: “Yes? You came in this morning, after daybreak? By the way, where are we?”
“Tobermory. On the island of Mull. Yes. We came in, all sort of together. We’d all stayed hove-to more or less during the storm, and then Evergreen had radioed that she’d pick you up—”
“Evergreen? Had she got Dr Holmes’ SOS?”
“Yes, of course,” said Rupert with some praiseworthy reluctance. “The Birds are colleagues of Johnson’s – did nobody tell you? We’ll be taking you off in about an hour – a boat’s coming from Oban. Anyway . . .” He returned to his decimating thought. “So when the storm moderated, we went on rather together. Dolly sailed well: we got in just ahead of Binkie, and Symphonetta a little behind. And . . .
“And I’ve just remembered,” said Rupert simply. “There was a bang as we came into harbour. I thought someone had tripped over a nail in the pier.”
“It was the winning gun,” I offered.
“It must have been,” said the good captain blankly. And a haze of dim, innocent pleasure surrounding him, he went out the door.
I can do this so simply with boys. But then, Johnson wasn’t a boy.
An hour later, dressed in my Ricci suit and sheared beaver jacket sent over from Dolly, I stepped out on deck. Below me was Evergreen’s speedboat, with two discreet plain-clothes men in her, waiting. And over there the ship which would take me to Oban and then to the south for public exhibition and trial.
It need not worry me now, the Suor Angelisa I was to do in November with Tolliati, who will not believe his leading oboe is sharp. I did not have to concern myself about the mosquitoes at the Caracalla baths or the long flight to Sydney next year.
Equally, I should not hear from my audiences that year, or the following year, or perhaps ever again, that silence after the Aushaltung, when I have finished singing and for seconds, worshipping, they withhold the intrusion of their applause.
I should now be famous as any gutter child might contrive to be famous. I had made a fatal mistake.
I looked around me. It was high noon and beautiful; the trees and hills all washed green by the storm. From a blue, empty arch the sun blazed down on the bay, and, like a flock of silver-toed birds, left its track on it. A small class of yachts, at first a thicket of slivers against the deep trees, turned, and became a scatter of slit triangles as they made for their mark. A big steam yacht lay still closed and asleep, with a solitary seaman in overalls swabbing the deck.
There was Symphonetta, with her speedboat gone. Hennessy and the rest would be on shore. The boys had shown their mettle and would be proud of it: he might even be proud, with reluctance, of them. Some of his misconduct he had paid for, in diamonds.
And there was Binkie. Evidence of the Buchanans’ stormy passage was all about: bunk cushions and mattresses drying lay lashed and neatly ranged from back to front of her decking, and strange flags of teacloth and towel flew from her rigging. Her bowspit was broken and I saw a tangle of wire still to be mended on deck. She had not got off lightly after all on her self-imposed mission. No one need ever know, I supposed, how tamely the Navy had considered it. Her scars would speak for themselves.
I stirred, and the single man standing waiting for me by the companionway, far d
own Evergreen’s spotless bow, stirred and straightened as well. I had left this to the last, this encounter with Johnson. He had told me indirectly that morning most of what I wanted to know.
It was a morning, I thought, for Sortilège. I had put my hair up in the way Michael had taught me, when I could not have the help of Janine. It was bleached and sticky with salt, but good enough against the tan of my skin. On my suit was a doctor bird in uncut stones and enamel: I had a pearl and enamel dome ring to match. I wondered, as I walked slowly towards him, if Johnson had begun yet to realise what he had done.
He did not seem to have changed. The black hair, the eyebrows, the thick woolly pullover and the glassed-in verandah of his face, on which the sun shone in two baffling discs of white light: these were the same. I pinned down, fleetingly, my abomination of these ungainly, mirror-like glasses. They were ungentlemanly. As I came up to him, he said: “What is your real name?”
“It is Valentina Lakowski. Or Twiss,” I said, to deny him the pleasure of adding it. “For the charge sheet?”
“For the charge sheet. Don’t hope, Tina,” said Johnson. “There’s too much now piled up against you. Between us, I’m afraid we have silenced your voice.”
“I shall still have my voice. Other people won’t be able to hear it, that’s all,” I said. “It was a Judas kiss, then, that night in Edinburgh?”
He appeared, damn him, to rake his memory. Then: “No,” he said. “That was pure sex and champagne bubbles. I didn’t know you were in the opposite team – not for certain – at least until we got to Lochgair.”
“Why Lochgair?”
“I wirelessed headquarters from Evergreen. They told me a man had been seen leaving the flat just about the time Chigwell’s murderer bolted in Rose Street. They gave me his description. And it didn’t tally with your description at all.”
“So that’s how you traced Gold-tooth to Vallida?” I said. I’d wondered. But of course, someone would have been watching the Rose Street flat all the time. Poor, stupid Kenneth. “I suppose Chigwell was one of your people too?” I said. “I always wondered why that body never appeared in the headlines.”
“He was, but Gold-tooth, as you called him, didn’t know it until he’d killed him, in pure mistake for Holmes, who had left shortly before. It was only while he was tidying up and preparing to fake suicide that Gold-tooth found Chigwell’s papers and photograph, which made it pretty clear who he was. And then, Kenneth’s note pointed pretty clearly to an imminent visit by you.
“Gold-tooth hadn’t meant to compromise you. As soon as you’d gone, he came back and got rid of the body. The hanger, I must admit, I took to Rhu all by myself. I underrated your nerve. And I salute your nerve, Tina. You might have pulled your chestnuts out of the fire right from the start if your husband had been just a little less greedy. If he had restrained himself from blackmailing Dr Holmes without telling you. It was a damned nuisance to me, I may mention. For while Michael was breaking his neck to prevent you and Holmes from getting together, I was breaking mine to bring it about. We had to know whether Holmes was mixed up with you in the spying or not.”
The glasses flashed. “In the event, of course, it was all very clear. What I overheard in the Land Rover settled it, even without the tape recording in Rum.”
“Poor Kenneth,” I said automatically. Through the D’s of his bifocals he was watching not me, but the gulls. “I really tried not to hurt him. I did my best to get hold of that tape.”
“I know you did,” said Johnson mildly. “And you’ll be relieved to know that it’s safe. I loaded the machine at Kinloch Castle that night with a dummy one, in case someone quixotic or criminal made a snatch for it. So the evidence exonerating Kenneth is quite intact. Also the evidence against yourself . . . But it was pretty clear long before that, that you didn’t want Gold-tooth caught, for example, because he was on the same side as yourself. Otherwise you’d have told both Kenneth and me what happened that night on the Vallida. It would have touched Kenneth to know how much you valued him; and we could have had Gold-tooth chased and your diamonds recovered in one piggish stroke. He had another pen bomb and a revolver on board, by the way, as well as his little mine crate, tucked away in the stores. He was a professional, that one.”
“I noticed,” I snapped, “that you didn’t risk touching Kenneth too much by telling him I had tried to buy off his life.”
“No,” Johnson admitted. “It puzzles me yet why you did. After all, your own principals wanted Holmes out of the way, both to take the blame for all the security leakages and to stop his advanced work. Yet you didn’t want him murdered, did you? I wonder why? Because he still had your letters, perhaps. Or because, if you could shift all the blame on to Twiss, and also disperse any of Holmes’ own misgivings, you might contrive to continue your career, with his love and his secrets as well? It was obviously vital to get to him. One fine day he might come to his senses, and think it important to tell someone to whom he gave the second lab key in Nevada.”
I liked Johnson. “Go on,” I invited.
He was looking straight at me, through the long and short focus. “You are enjoying it. I’m not.”
“Why not?” I said. “Another success for you. I don’t want your pity. If I’ve made a mistake, I can pay.” I paused. “Find a nice girl for Kenneth,” I said.
Slowly, Johnson lifted one hand and took off his glasses. Underneath was a tired human face. “Poor Kenneth. But the instinct was right. The instinct that brought you together. He was the fire you needed to warm your hands at. But he was the one who got burnt.”
It was tiresome to have Kenneth talked of as if he were in knickerbockers, but there was no time to wrangle. I said: “We should have had longer on Dolly.”
“Yes. I tend to think so, too,” said Johnson. “For a number of reasons. This among them.” He had replaced his glasses.
“This” was something square, wrapped in brown paper. He slipped the coverings off, and extended it.
It was my portrait, now vividly finished. It was my head and shoulders and clasped hands as I reclined on the tweed cushions of Dolly, a rum and lemon provided by Lenny to hand, while the blue sky and still bluer sea were racing behind. My hair was unpinned and stirred in pale shining folds on my shoulders, my dress was chiffon, my emeralds glowed in the sun.
But it was the face that arrested you. The young bones, the supple sweetness of Gilda had changed with the crisp strokes of paint upon paint. The nose, so deliciously shortened, had gained a shadow hinting at its true length; the eyes were not misty, but liquid and cool; the mouth, beautifully drawn, was the trained mouth of a singer.
It was my own face, the face I was born with. The face I cannot escape.
I looked up at the flashing bifocals, and I smiled, a wide, pretty smile; and I thanked him for his help and his care and his beautiful painting and then, packed, I set off downstairs. I set off downstairs as I had done, over and over in childhood. To the nameless persons waiting below.
Synopses of ‘Johnson Johnson’ Titles
Published by House of Stratus
Ibiza Surprise
Life in Ibiza can be glorious and fast, especially for those who have money. Sarah Cassells is an intelligent girl and has many admirers. Having completed her training as a chef, she hears of her father’s violent death on the island, and refuses to believe it when told it was suicide. She becomes involved with a series of people who might be able to shed some light on events, including her brother who is an engineer for a Dutch firm from whom a secret piece of machinery has been stolen. As Ibiza prepares to celebrate an annual religious festival events become more convoluted and macabre. Sarah has choices to make; none are simple, but fortunately Johnson Johnson, the enigmatic portrait painter and master of mystery sails in on his yacht ‘Dolly’. Together they may get at the truth, but with murder, espionage and theft all entwined within the tale, there are constant surprises for the reader - and for Sarah!
Moroccan Traffic
&
nbsp; The Chairman of Kingsley Conglomerates is conducting negotiations, which are both difficult and somewhat dubious, in Morocco. He is accompanied by executive secretary Wendy Helmann. However, there are soon distractions when unorthodox Rita Geddes appears on the scene. Wendy discovers that there is much more at stake than the supposed negotiations, and finds herself at the centre of kidnappings, murder, and industrial espionage. Explosions, a car chase across the High Atlas out of Marrakesh and much more follows. Of course, the prior arrival of portrait painter Johnson Johnson is in many ways fortuitous, but he has some ghosts of his own to lay.
Operation Nassau
Dr. B. McRannoch is in the Bahamas with her father who has moved there from Scotland because of asthma. She is a savvy and tough young lady who shows much independence of mind and spirit. However, when Sir Bart Edgecombe, a British agent who has been poisoned with arsenic falls ill on his way back from New York, she becomes involved in a series of events beyond her wildest imagination. Drawn into an espionage plot where there are multiple suspects and characters, it is only the inevitable presence of Johnson Johnson that saves the day. As with all of the Johnson series, nothing is quite as straightforward as it at first seems, and there are many complicating factors to grip the reader as well as the added bonus of another exotic location.
Roman Nights
Ruth Russell, an astronomer working at the Maurice Frazer Observatory, is enjoying herself in Rome – that is, until her lover, Charles Digham, a fashion photographer and writer of obituary verses, has his camera stolen. The thief ends up as a headless corpse in the zoo park tolleta. Johnson Johnson, enigmatic portrait painter, spy and sleuth, is in Rome to paint a portrait of the Pope and is therefore on hand to investigate in one of Dunnett’s usual thrilling and convoluted plots that grips the reader from cover to cover. There is something far more deadly at stake than just the secrets of a couture house …
Rum Affair
Rum Affair: Dolly and the Singing Bird; The Photogenic Soprano Page 25