No Mask for Murder

by Andrew Garve

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered!

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

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  Contents

  Andrew Garve

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Andrew Garve

  No Mask for Murder

  Andrew Garve

  Andrew Garve was the pen name of Paul Winterton (1908–2001). He was born in Leicester and educated at the Hulme Grammar School, Manchester and Purley County School, Surrey, after which he took a degree in Economics at London University. He was on the staff of The Economist for four years, and then worked for fourteen years for the London News Chronicle as reporter, leader writer and foreign correspondent. He was assigned to Moscow from 1942/ 5, where he was also the correspondent of the BBC’s Overseas Service.

  After the war he turned to full-time writing of detective and adventure novels and produced more than forty-five books. His work was serialized, televised, broadcast, filmed and translated into some twenty languages. He was noted for his varied and unusual backgrounds – including Russia, newspaper offices, the West Indies, ocean sailing, the Australian outback, politics, mountaineering and forestry – and for never repeating a plot.

  Andrew Garve was a founding member and first joint secretary of the Crime Writers’ Association.

  Author’s Note

  Fontego is a fictional place. It may appear to have certain resemblances, topographical or institutional, to any one of a number of British Colonies. Any attempt to identify it with an actual place, however, can only result in wrong conclusions.

  Certain British Colonies have island leper settlements in their vicinity, but Tacri is fictional and is not intended to be a portrayal of any one of them or to reflect upon the management of any actual settlement. All the events described in connection with Tacri, including the contract for its rebuilding, and all the persons associated with it, are purely imaginary and have no foundation in fact.

  In a story of this kind, it is unavoidable that certain characters should hold public office. There has, for instance, to be a Colonial Secretary, a Health Secretary, a Secretary of Education, a Superintendent of Police, and so forth. All the characters filling these and other posts are entirely fictional, and none is based on any actual person in any British Colony.

  Chapter One

  The launch from Fontego had been chugging through the forget-me-not blue sea for more than an hour before the last headland was rounded and the leper island came into view. The Negro boatman grunted and pointed ahead through the shimmering heat, and Martin West turned his binoculars on the jagged pile of salmon-pink rock which he would soon have to think of as “home.”

  In spite of all his misgivings, the appearance of the place excited him. At that distance it had an enchanted beauty of form and colour, like a wizard’s grotto in a child’s picture-book. A travel folder could have made it sound superlatively attractive—“bathed in tropical sunshine,” “lapped by translucent water,” “one of Nature’s gems.” As a tourist resort it might have earned badly needed dollars for the Colony. Or was it too parched? It certainly seemed to be almost bare of foliage. The dry pink rock shaded everywhere into dry grey cactus.

  Martin swept the shore line with the glasses, and an expression of incredulity crossed his face. There seemed to be no flat ground at all. From the water the island rose steeply to two or three narrow terraces, on each of which was a scattering of wooden huts. Beaten earth tracks linked the terraces—there appeared to be no road. The long straggling building at the foot of the cliff must be the convent, and the wooden house at the far end of the bay would be his own residence. So there it was—that was the leprosarium. Somehow, five hundred leper patients and a staff contrived to live on this sloping shelf of barren ground a mile long.

  A white-clad, sun-helmeted figure was waiting on the jetty: an elderly coloured man with greying hair, steel-rimmed spectacles and a sardonically drooping mouth. That must be Carnegie. As the launch sputtered to a stop he came slowly forward, smiling as though it hurt him.

  “Welcome to Tacri, Dr. West.” He shook hands. The irony in his tone and in his glance was unmistakable. “But where is your luggage?” he asked, peering into the empty launch. “Aren’t you staying?”

  “Not this trip,” said Martin. “I’ve still things to do in Fontego. This is just a preliminary inspection. I thought I’d like to see the place before I talked to Dr. Garland. He’s up country, I’m told, but he’s expected back to-day.”

  “Oh.” The old doctor’s voice sounded disappointed. “I was hoping to hand over to you at once. When do you expect to take up residence?”

  “In a couple of days, I suppose. Are you eager to get away?”

  “Indeed I am,” said Carnegie. “More than eager. I’m not a leprologist, you know. I’m not an administrator, either. I’m a surgeon. I’ve never understood why I was sent here, even as a stopgap. I suppose it was because everyone else refused to come.” His tired eyes rested for a moment upon Martin, taking in the tall, loosely built figure, the shock of fair brown hair, the frank grey eyes framed in heavy horn-rimmed glasses. “You’re younger than I expected,” he said. “That’s a good thing. There are too many weary old men in this Colony. I’m one of them.”

  “It’s an exacting job, running a place like this,” said Martin sympathetically, “particularly when you’ve no special interest in it. Have you been here long?”

  “Six months, but it has seemed like sixty.” They strolled slowly along the jetty. “Is there anything special you’d like to see? You can get a fair impression of the layout from here.” Carnegie pointed with his sun helmet. “This shed here is the administrative office. If you’re not careful you’ll spend most of your time at a desk—there’s far too much paper work. The two long buildings over there on the left are the male and female infirmaries. The smaller shacks scattered all over the place are the dwelling quarters. The hut with the new tin roof is alleged to be a hospital. Behind it there are a couple of storehouses, but as you’ll see we have to store most things out of doors. Over on the right is the dining-room. How long have you got, by the way?”

  “Two or three hours.”

  “W
ell, it’s enough to get an impression. It takes quite a while to make a thorough round of the place because, as you see, there are no roads. To get about quickly you’d need to be a goat.”

  “How does one reach the house?” asked Martin.

  “By launch, when it’s not under repair. And we have also one small donkey.”

  “Is this really all there is of the place—just what we can see?” Martin indicated the narrow coastal strip.

  “That’s all. The rest of the island is just virgin rock, no good for anything.”

  Martin gazed at the leprosarium in growing dismay. It no longer seemed to have any beauty. At close quarters it looked what it was—a squalid slum, a concentration of untidy shacks with rusty corrugated iron roofs. The hard glare of the pink rock made him blink. “Do you ever get any rain?” he asked.

  “Usually very little,” said Carnegie. “The hills of the mainland take most of it. When there is a storm the place gets almost washed away, so I’m told, but it’s a rare event. We’re nearly always short of water.”

  “That’s not very satisfactory, is it? Have they tried drilling?”

  “They’ve tried everything, but there isn’t any water. The idea now is to erect some very large rainwater tanks. There are going to be great changes here, as I expect you know.”

  Martin nodded. “I got a document this morning from the Assistant Health Secretary—what’s his name?—Dubois. I’ve only glanced at the plans so far. They seem to be very ambitious.”

  “They are certainly far-reaching,” said Carnegie, with a little warmth creeping into his voice. “It was a great personal triumph for Dr. Garland when the Legislative Council approved the proposals last week. It was a very close thing. Nobody could have pushed them through except him—he’s been the life and soul of the scheme. He’s the best Health Secretary we’ve had in my time. I’m sure you’ll be impressed by him.”

  “I’m very much looking forward to meeting him,” said Martin.

  “Not everyone likes him, of course,” Carnegie went on. “He doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and he can be very ruthless. But he gets things done. As a matter of fact he’s one of the very few men in the Colony who can get things done. He’s almost stamped out malaria around Fontego City; he’s got V.D. back under control in the towns, and he’s just organising a big campaign against hookworm. He has immense energy, and when he’s set on something he usually gets his way. It was he who persuaded me to come here.” The old man quickened his steps. “Well, we’d better make a start. Do you want to see the Mother Superior?”

  “Ought I to?”

  Carnegie’s eyes twinkled. “I think it will do next time. If you see her, you won’t see much of the leprosarium. She’s a very worthy woman, of course. In fact, all the sisters are very worthy women. It’s a pity so many of them are inadequately trained.”

  Martin nodded. “I’ve come across that problem before.”

  “Ah well, then you probably know how to deal with it. The nuns have a lot of influence in the Colony, and it’s best not to quarrel with them. Personally, I think their attitude to leprosy is sometimes old-fashioned and unscientific, but they’re not bad housekeepers.”

  “I take it there are some trained nurses?” said Martin a shade anxiously.

  “A few,” answered Carnegie, “but not nearly enough. And many of them are quite the wrong type—we’ve had some unpleasant incidents. I believe things were better before the war, but everything was upset when the Military Base was built on the mainland. The rates of pay were so high during construction that most of the staff here left, and the leprosarium had to fill their places with anyone it could get.” Carnegie’s disapproving little cough spoke volumes. “We got the dregs, and for some reason they were allowed to become established civil servants, so now it’s very difficult to sack them.”

  “I suppose trained nurses don’t want to bury themselves in a place like this,” said Martin.

  “Of course they don’t. And I for one don’t blame them,” said Carnegie with feeling.

  They climbed a steep path and turned in among the shacks. The heat was fierce. The hillside afforded almost no natural cover, and knots of patients were grouped in the shade of every hut, sitting or sleeping on the dusty earth. All of them were coloured, and most of them were Negroes. On the whole, they showed few signs of their disease. Some of them smiled and called out to Martin as he passed, guessing he was the new Superintendent they had heard about. A lad of eighteen or twenty, with a bright face and sparkling teeth, cried, “Sah! Sah!” and leapt eagerly up the rocks. “Sah, ah wanna leave dis place. It ain’t no place fo’ me. Ah bin here two year—ah’s tired—ah wanna go, sah.”

  Martin gave him a friendly smile, noting with practised eye the characteristic depressions in the back of the hand held out to him. “I’ll talk to you about it in a few days,” he said. “I’ll be back. We shall have to see.” The boy grinned broadly and rejoined the chattering group.

  “He’s a nice lad, Green,” said Carnegie. “He takes it very hard being here. A lot of them do, I’m afraid.” They climbed to one of the larger wooden huts. “This is the male infirmary,” he said.

  Martin surveyed the structure in silence. The walls were rotten from age and termites and had been patched in many places with sheets of cardboard and beaten-out tin cans. As Carnegie pushed open the door a wave of fetid air greeted them. Along each wall beds were packed so close together that it was barely possible to move between them. Old men and young boys lay side by side—a hutful of human wreckage, with quivering nerves and eroded faces and crumbling extremities swathed in bandages that looked far from clean. These were the patients who had been too far gone for effective treatment by the time they were discovered. This was what the disease could do, neglected and unchecked.

  Sharp condemnation of the overcrowding, the bad ventilation and the dirt hovered on Martin’s lips, but he restrained himself. His critical glance travelled to the roof.

  “Hurricane lamps, eh?”

  Carnegie nodded. “It’s like Dante’s Inferno after dark,” he said. “You can imagine.” He led the way through the ward. “Of course,” he said over his shoulder, “under the new scheme we shall have electricity. A plant of our own.”

  “I wonder how long it’ll take to install,” said Martin. He looked curiously round the ward. “Shouldn’t there be a nurse on duty here?”

  “Why, yes, indeed there should be.” Carnegie stopped by one of the beds, where a grizzled old man was holding a newspaper between his bandaged stumps. “Where is Edwards?” he asked.

  “He jes’ step out,” said the old Negro.

  Carnegie gave a gesture of helplessness. “That’s what they do—‘step out.’ There’s no discipline here.” His tone of resignation seemed to disclaim any personal responsibility in the matter.

  Martin walked on through the block and peered into the wash house and latrines. “Appalling!” he said, rejoining Carnegie. “My God, this is worse than anything I’d imagined.”

  The old doctor took off his spectacles and mopped his face. “I agree entirely, but what can one do? We have dry-pit latrines— everybody knows they’re unsatisfactory. What with the habits, and the heat, and the shortage of staff, I’m surprised we haven’t had serious trouble. It’s the same old problem—lack of water. Now, under the new plan——” He saw the scepticism on Martin’s face and broke off. “Do you want to see the women’s infirmary?”

  “Is it like this?”

  “It’s even worse, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, it’s a damned disgrace,” Martin said with heat. His thoughts travelled back to the little room in the Colonial Office where his appointment had first been discussed, and he could hear again the suave cultured voice of remote officialdom saying, “Conditions at Tacri are not perhaps ideal.” Not perhaps ideal! He would have liked to have the fellow here now.

  Carnegie said, “Are you surprised?”

  “Frankly, yes,” answered Martin. “I’ve seen some bad
places, but this is unspeakable. Nothing in the reports I’ve read hinted at anything like this.”

  “The facts rarely get into the reports,”’ said Carnegie. “Most civil servants in Fontego prefer to take the easy path and gloss over defects. Only Dr. Garland is outspoken. For years he has been condemning Tacri. You’ll find him a kindred spirit. But improvements cost money, and the conscience of this Colony is not easily aroused if it means more expenditure.”

  “I’m astonished that there hasn’t been a major scandal.”

  The look of resignation settled on Carnegie’s face again. “People are not interested in this place. Out of sight, out of mind, you know. That, after all, was one of the chief reasons for putting the leprosarium on the island in the first place. There have been visitors, of course, but mostly medical men, who don’t seem to have much political influence, unfortunately. A politician did come once, I believe. He shook hands with the less repulsive of the patients, to show how brave he was, and he said he thought the leprosarium was well run! At least, that’s what your predecessor told me.”

  “You mean Stockford? Tell me, what did he think of it all?”

  “Oh, I don’t think Stockford had any illusions. He was a good man in many ways, but he made enemies, and so—he was persuaded to retire. I don’t know the details. He was an idealist, I’m afraid, and Fontego is no place for idealists. The people who get on best here are the realists. You’ll meet them. ‘It is true,’ they say, ‘that conditions at Tacri are bad, but then they are also bad in the slums of Fontego City.’ So they do nothing about either problem. The business men, Dr. West. They have the souls of pawnbrokers.”

  Martin made no comment. He knew the universal itch to find a scapegoat. “Let’s have a look at the living quarters,” he said.

  Once again Carnegie led the way between the huts. “This is one of the standard dormitories,” he explained. “Ten beds to a block, no sitting-rooms. The patients spend most of their time out of doors, of course.”