The Dangerous Islands

by Ann Bridge

  ‘Oh what blah!’ Julia exclaimed, vexed.

  ‘No, those are the rules. She was quite within her rights.’

  ‘Yes, but here. It isn’t like London. How tiresome. Well tomorrow we must just go to Bryher and ferret him out. I bet we can, on the spot.’

  After dinner, they went down again to the Mermaid. Julia felt unaccountably tired—in fact a strong gale, with its accompanying very low pressure, does of itself create fatigue in many people; she opted for sitting on one of the wooden settles to drink her beer. Presently a young woman, modestly dressed and modest in manner, came up to them.

  ‘I beg your pardon, but I wonder if I might speak to you?’ she said, addressing herself to Julia.

  ‘Oh yes, by all means. Won’t you sit?’

  ‘No thank you—I’m with a friend. But I’ve seen you here before, and I happened to be in the Post Office this afternoon when the gentleman came in asking about an old Professor that’s staying on Bryher. I come from Bryher, though I’m working here till the end of the season—I went home last Sunday, and I know where he’s putting up.’

  ‘Oh, how good! Where?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Right at the top of The Town—a house called “Suntrap”.’

  ‘How kind you are. Thank you so very much. Won’t you have a drink?’

  The modest young woman refused a drink, repeating that she was with a friend, and melted into the crowd along the bar. ‘Well that’s a piece of luck,’ Philip said.

  ‘I can’t think why she didn’t tell you in the Post Office—she couldn’t be sure of seeing us here tonight.’

  ‘Oh, dislike of officialdom! Here she could talk on the quiet.’

  ‘Why did she speak to me and not to you?’ Julia pondered.

  ‘Your face, my dear, and your ensemble. She said she’d seen you here before; I expect she’s been longing for an excuse to have actual speech with a woman in a Hartnell dress.’

  ‘This isn’t Hartnell—it’s Hardy Amies.’

  ‘Never mind—it’s done its stuff. I’ll just go over and check with some of those Boatmen’s Association types about the earliest boat to Bryher.’

  Julia sat beside her half-emptied glass of beer, worrying about the Professor. Was he now clear, or wasn’t he? Philip must think he was, or he wouldn’t be so desperately anxious to get him away before the Russians ‘did the dirty’ on him. But there was that Russian trawler anchored under Shipman Head at this very moment—it was unlikely that she would have moved out during such a gale; the barman had told them that it was now Force 9. But the men on board might manage to get ashore, and find the poor old man in ‘Suntrap’— what a silly name! Oh, pray God she and Philip might be in time to get him safely away.

  She lit a cigarette, trying to pull herself together. Presently Jamieson came back to their table. The launch for Bryher only left at 10.15; he had telephoned to Hicks and arranged for him to come over and pick them up at 9.30. ‘Save at least an hour—we shall go direct. Drink up, dearest; I think you’d better get to bed. You look tired.’

  Punctually at 9.30 next morning they found Hicks and his launch at the quay, went on board, and shot across past Samson, leaving Tresco on their right, to Bryher, where they pulled in below The Town. This is a rather grandiose appellation for the main centre of an island whose total population is under ninety souls, but so it is called. The tide was high enough for them to land at the small quay—when it is low one lands by dinghy on a sandy spit—and they made their way through a small loose agglomeration of houses set among gardens, glass-houses, and daffodil-fields. Their boatman had told them where to find ‘Suntrap’: they should follow the small track which leads uphill and round through The Town till it descends again towards the sand-spit; ‘near the top’ they would find the house they wanted.

  ‘What a nice place,’ Julia said, looking about her at the neat white houses, the well-kept gardens, and the high hedges of purple Veronica or Pittosporum sheltering the fields of bulbs. As they approached a house near the top of the road, Jamieson paused—‘That may be it.’ At that moment an open front window on the ground floor was slammed down, a sharp sound in that quiet place, and a curtain was drawn across it. Jamieson took Julia’s arm.

  ‘Wait—he may have seen us. We don’t want to startle the old boy.’

  But it was too late. The door of the little house opened suddenly and out dashed the Professor, hatless; he raced away downhill along the further track.

  ‘Prof.! Prof. darling, wait,’ Julia called to him. ‘Everything’s all right.’ He paid no attention, but ran on.

  ‘He has still got the wind up,’ Jamieson said. ‘Come on—for all we know those devils are still at the far end. Can you run, with your leg?’

  Julia said she could, and did; but the Professor showed a surprising turn of speed. Beside the spit the track became deep in sand, with marram-grass growing on the ridges, and old car-tyres and dead ironmongery about; Julia tripped on something and fell—they lost ground. The Professor gained on them still more where the sandy track emerges through a hedge onto the open hill; the gate is not very obvious, he knew it, and they didn’t. By the time they got through onto the turfy slope, covered with bracken, brambles, and outcrops of rock, he was more than four hundred yards ahead of them, and close to the summit.

  ‘Call again,’ Jamieson said. Julia called with all her might, but the wind from the ocean carried any sounds away towards Tresco—the Professor still ran on.

  ‘Hurry!’ Jamieson exclaimed. Julia did her best, but her leg was now beginning to hurt her. They ran up the slope, and paused for a second on the summit of the hill. Ahead of them stretched the long deadly curve of Hell Bay; the gale had slackened during the night, but huge green rollers were still coming in to burst in clouds of spray a hundred feet high on the dark sharp-toothed rocks; far out to the left, other mountains of white foam denoted the presence of the Scilly Rock.

  ‘God, what a hideous place!’ the man exclaimed. ‘But there he is—can you run a bit faster?’

  In front of them the land dipped down into a long wide depression, rising again to a much lower hill, very rocky—halfway across the dip they could see the Professor; he was now walking, but very fast—he glanced back over his shoulder, and when he saw them began to run again, but more slowly.

  ‘Goodness, he is a mover! Whatever age is he?’ Philip asked.

  ‘Seventy.’

  ‘Well I hope I’ll be able to do as much when I’m seventy! But come on—that trawler is probably just over the next hill. Why on earth won’t he stop?’

  They raced down into the long depression, and ran across it. Driftwood had been flung up by the sea onto the pale turf, and in one place a sawing-horse showed that the inhabitants of Bryher cut it up for fuel; the sea had presented them with yet more fuel in the shape of lumps of the shallow skin of peat under the turf, ripped off by erosion, and flung ashore by the waves.

  Over this easier ground they gained on the Professor. They passed through some curious rough megalithic walls, crossing the headland from West to East, and coated with silvery-green lichen—‘Must come back and look at those sometime,’ Philip panted; he too was getting out of breath. When the old man, his silvery hair standing up in the wind, crossed the summit of the hill they were less than a hundred yards behind him—-Julia tried to shout again, but she had no breath left, and now she began to fall behind.

  To understand what followed one needs to know the lie of the land between Bryher and Shipman Head. They appear to be connected by a narrow neck of rock; in fact a sheer-sided channel four yards in width and nearly twenty feet deep cuts clean through this, which is why the swarming tourists never get out onto Shipman Head—it is the one place in the Scillies where an installation could be planted, completely unobserved. From the top of the small hill above the neck, which the inhabitants call ‘Bad Place Hill’, two tiny ill-defined paths lead steeply down over damp turf and patches of decomposed granite (one of the most slippery substances in the world) to a
small rock-face sixteen feet or more high; this can be climbed down on the left by good hand- and foot-holds, or circumvented on the right by another minute path. But the descent from Bad Place Hill is very steep, and a person in a panic, running down those awkward little paths, might lose his head or lose his balance, and fail to take either of the safe, but slower, routes down to the neck itself.

  The Professor must have done one or the other. When Jamieson topped the hill he was just in time to see the poor old man pitch headlong over the rock-face—as he fell he gave a loud cry. But Jamieson saw other things as well. The Russian trawler was still lying close in under Shipman Head, and a dinghy was drawn up by some sloping sea-weedy slabs a short distance beyond the further end of the neck. As Julia, slipping and slithering, tore past him down one of the little paths, some instinct, or his long training, caused him to move down off the sky-line and crouch close to the ground; even as he did so he saw a figure emerge from behind a group of lichen-covered rocks which mask the channel on the Bryher side, a revolver in his hand.

  ‘Julia, lie down!—and don’t speak,’ he hissed at her. ‘Get behind that rock.’ Two or three large lumps of granite are perched at the lip of the little declivity—protesting, Julia nevertheless took cover behind one of these. From his position higher up Jamieson saw the figure with the revolver take aim and fire, deliberately, two shots towards the foot of the rock-face, where Burbage had fallen; then he turned round and ran away across the neck.

  Not for the first time, Philip Jamieson wished passionately that it was not the normal tradition of his Service to go about unarmed. He remained still, urging Julia to keep quiet; the two of them could not, barehanded, take on the whole crew of a trawler, and a revolver might not be the only weapon carried by the Russians. In a few moments the man with the revolver reappeared; a light metallic clanging rose after him as he hurried away across the further side of the neck, and over to the slabs where the dinghy waited—as he got into it Jamieson heard the sound of the anchor being raised and the trawler’s engine put on. Now he went down to Julia—she greeted him angrily.

  ‘What is all this? Why must I hide? I’m sure the Prof.’s hurt himself, and I want to go to him. And what was that noise? It sounded like revolver-shots.’

  ‘We’ll go to him now,’ the man said. He moved out from behind the lump of granite and peered over the edge of the rock-face. Immediately below them lay the Professor, his body slack and motionless; blood was spreading slowly, in a dark stain, over a slab of rock on which his silvery head lay. Philip glanced round, and promptly spotted the little path which circumvented the declivity on the right.

  ‘I’ll go and see to him—you wait here,’ he said, guessing what he would find.

  ‘Nonsense! I must come.’

  He realised that at this moment argument was useless, but he was faster than Julia over rough ground, and reached the body well ahead of her. Very gently and carefully he raised the head a little; the skull had cracked wide open when it hit the rock, and brains were mingling with the blood which spread so slowly over the granite. Whatever the man with the revolver might have done, it was the Professor’s fall that had killed him—the Russians were merely leaving nothing to chance. Jamieson took off his burberry; he had laid it over the corpse when Julia came up with him.

  ‘Let me see him! Why do you do that?’ she asked imperiously.

  ‘My dear, he’s dead—he fractured his skull on that rock.’

  ‘Are you sure? Oh please let me see.’

  ‘It won’t help you,’ he said gently. ‘He is dead—and it is rather horrid.’ But when she insisted he raised the burberry, and let her see what lay underneath.

  ‘Oh, the poor love!’ She knelt down and kissed the old face, still warm. ‘Why wouldn’t he listen?—why wouldn’t he wait?’ she asked miserably. ‘And why did he want to come here?’

  Philip was wondering that himself. Had Professor Burbage been, at last, less afraid of his Russian tormentors than of his own country’s Secret Service? Had he indeed known that the Soviet trawler was there? Probably—but they would never find out, now. Suddenly he looked at the trawler, which was getting under way and moving out to sea past Shipman Head—he pulled out his notebook and jotted down her number. They hadn’t killed the Professor, he had done that for himself—but it wasn’t for lack of trying! While Julia still knelt, now murmuring prayers, beside the old man’s body, her hands over her eyes, he looked at the clothing. Yes—two bullet-holes; but they were not very conspicuous; he hoped she wouldn’t notice them. Leaving the girl to her prayers he walked along the neck of land, and now for the first time came on the sheer-sided channel which separates the Head from the main island; leaning against the further side, half in and half out of the water, was a light metal ladder. Ah—that was how the man with the revolver had got across. Why had he left it behind? Presumably he had spotted himself and Julia, most inconvenient witnesses to a quite unnecessary crime, and had abandoned it in his flight.

  Instinctively Jamieson moved over to the western side of the group of rocks which masked the small chasm from the south, out of sight of the trawler, and took out his field-glasses to study Shipman Head—a place which, he now realised, was unapproachable except by water, and hence relatively tourist-free. The south-eastern side, facing him, was coated with deep soil, and full of sea-birds; he could see the puffins’ burrows in the peaty turf, though at this season they were absent in the Southern Hemisphere—but gulls perched, floated on the wind, and wailed. His binoculars showed no sign of any digging—he didn’t expect them to; this face of the headland was too visible. But on the farther side of Shipman Head, if anywhere, he would find what he had come to look for—and thanks to the Russian trawler’s dinghy he knew exactly where one could land in sheltered water. At that moment an extra large wave broke on the rocky shore, drenching him with spray; it surged through the chasm, sweeping the metal ladder onto a slant against the further wall. Dash!— he would rather have liked to have a look at that ladder; but it was out of reach. Shaking himself like a dog, he wiped and put away his field-glasses, and went back to Julia.

  She had replaced the burberry over the body, and was sitting on a rock, her hands loosely clasped in front of her.

  ‘What are we to do with him?’ she asked at once. ‘We can’t leave him here. Gould we carry him to that little church in The Town? I’d like him to wait in a church till something is settled about the funeral.’

  ‘No, we can’t possibly carry him so far. I think we’d better go and get the boat round, and take him to St. Mary’s. There’s a charming churchyard at Old Town, where most of the Scilly casualties are buried,’ he said—‘and I daresay he could wait in the little old church there; I don’t think it’s used for services now.’ He was speculating, worriedly, whether there would have to be an inquest, and if so whether there was a coroner nearer than the mainland? All this would have to be coped with—and meanwhile his most urgent wish was to land on Shipman Head and find the installation as quickly as possible. ‘Come on,’ he said, and reached out to take Julia’s hand and draw her to her feet.

  ‘I’ll stay with him,’ she said quietly. ‘You go and get the boat.’

  ‘You’re sure? Why not come?’

  ‘Look at those bloody Greater Blackbacks!’ the girl exclaimed. ‘I’m not going to have his eyes pecked out! They’re just waiting, like vultures.’

  Indeed several of the hateful birds were circling and yelping in the sky overhead. Jamieson saw them, and then looked seawards—the Russian trawler had disappeared.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’ He stooped and kissed her. ‘My love, I am so sorry,’ he said.

  Hurrying back towards The Town, Philip Jamieson thought hard about the next step. As on Clare Island, his instinct would have been to avoid involving the police, if at all possible. But obviously in this case it wasn’t possible; they would have to go through with it. When he reached The Town he called in at ‘Suntrap’ and told the w
oman of the house that her lodger had had an accident—‘I want to get Hicks’s boat and take him over to St. Mary’s.’

  ‘Is it serious?’ the good woman asked.

  ‘Very serious, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh, I am sorry. He’s such a nice, quiet person.’

  She showed him the way to Vernon Hicks’s house. There he first asked for the boat to be got ready; luckily it was free, but the tide had gone down, and it would be necessary to embark from the sand-spit. Then he asked if he might use the telephone? The Hicks’s house was less public than the Post Office.

  ‘There has been a fatal accident on Bryher; an old gentleman has fallen and killed himself,’ he told the police. ‘Could you send someone over?—if you have a police-surgeon he should come too, if possible, to establish the cause of death on the spot.’

  ‘The policeman at St. Mary’s was very spry.

  ‘You’re speaking from Bryher?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you see this accident yourself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When did it happen?’

  ‘Just over an hour ago.’

  ‘And who is speaking?’

  There was now nothing for it but the truth. ‘Colonel Jamieson. Look,’ Jamieson said firmly, ‘have you got a pencil and paper? Then take down the place. You know the neck between Bryher and Shipman Head? Well that’s the spot.’

  ‘You mean Bad Place Hill?’

  ‘Precisely. How soon can your people be there?’

  ‘I’ll have to ring up the police-doctor. Where can I ring you back?’

  ‘At Vernon Hicks’s, if it’s within the next ten minutes.’ ‘Okay. Don’t touch the body.’

  Mrs. Hicks, in and out of her kitchen, was troubled by what she overheard.

  ‘Is it that nice old gentleman up at “Suntrap”? Oh, I am sorry. What happened to him?’

  ‘He slipped,’ Jamieson said. ‘Bad Place Hill is really a bad place. But now I want to make a call to London.’

  ‘London!’ Mrs. Hicks exclaimed. Jamieson gave the number of his office, asked for a personal call to Captain Brown, and in an astonishingly short time was put through, and heard a voice he recognised saying ‘Hullo?’