The Dangerous Islands

by Ann Bridge

  ‘Jimmy here,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, good. How are you doing?’

  ‘I think I’ve got the place—I haven’t actually inspected it yet. But there’s going to be a bit of a hold-up. The old boy—you know who I mean?’—a sound of assent came down the line—‘has gone and fallen over a cliff and killed himself. So there’ll have to be an inquest, and all sorts of bother. Of course I’ve had to tell the police my name, as I saw the accident.’

  ‘Obviously. Well never mind. How soon can you do your inspection? We’re in rather a hurry over this, you know.’

  ‘I do know. Perhaps tomorrow, anyhow as quickly as I can. This isn’t like anywhere else, you know,’ Philip said rather impatiently. ‘We’re miles out in the Atlantic—I don’t even know if there’s a coroner here, or if one has to come from the mainland. Anyhow I shall have to attend the inquest, whenever that is. Now take down this number, will you?’ He gave the number of the Russian trawler. ‘You might tell our naval friends and let them look out for her.’

  ‘Same lot as before?’ the Captain asked.

  ‘Yes, but a trawler this time. They didn’t kill him, but I saw them try to. They might pick her up on her way home.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I must ring off; the police here will be ringing me back.’

  ‘All right. Call me when you know any more.’

  He had barely rung off when the call from the police on St. Mary’s came through. The police-doctor and a constable were coming out at once.

  ‘Good,’ Jamieson said. ‘Now you know where to come?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He wondered whether to ring up Mrs. Hathaway, but decided against it; Julia had better do that. Then he thought of food. It was now after half-past twelve. He asked Mrs. Hicks if she could possibly produce some bread-and-cheese? The admirable woman made up a parcel of sandwiches, with a screw of salt and a whole fresh lettuce. Armed with these, Philip went down to the sand-spit, and was rowed out to the small launch. Young Hicks asked where he wanted to go? Philip explained.

  ‘That’s an awkward place to land—it’s much easier over on the slabs under the Head.’

  Philip already knew this, thanks to the Russians, but kept his knowledge to himself.

  ‘Yes, but when the police come they will have to get a body on board somehow—there’s been an accident.’

  ‘A body!’ Hicks exclaimed. ‘And are the police coming?’

  ‘Yes—I hope they’re on their way now. They had to get hold of their surgeon first.’

  Jamieson was greatly pleased by the islander’s reaction to this news. Of course young Hicks was excited and curious, but he showed a quiet sympathy as well.

  ‘I hope it wasn’t a friend of yours,’ he said first.

  ‘Not of mine, but a great friend of the lady I am engaged to.’ Hicks’s niceness moved him to this frankness. ‘It’s that old Professor who was staying at “Suntrap”,’ he added.

  ‘Oh, I am sorry. He was such a pleasant old gentleman—I took him over to Samson several times, for his digging. An archaeologist, wasn’t he? But what happened to him?’

  ‘He slipped as he was going down the further side of Bad Place Hill, and pitched over that little cliff and cracked his skull.’

  ‘What a shame! I know the place you mean—if the swell isn’t too strong I might get into the little channel; it’ll just take this boat nicely. Then you and the police could lower the body down to me.’

  Jamieson, still chilly in his damp clothes, soaked by the spray at the entrance to the channel more than an hour before, doubted privately whether this scheme would work; but all he said was: ‘We’ll see when we get there.’

  Chapter 14

  When Hicks’s small motor-boat nosed in towards the mouth of the channel another big wave came surging through, and pushed the metal ladder still further out along the rocks.

  ‘Could we get in near enough to catch that thing with the boat-hook?’ Jamieson asked.

  ‘We’ll try. You take the boat-hook into the bows, and have a go-’

  The Scillonians are geniuses at handling their little motor-boats in difficult water. After two or three shots, each thwarted by the strong swell coming through, Hicks got his boat close enough in to the mouth of the channel for Jamieson to grab one end of the ladder with the boat-hook; the moment he did so Hicks backed expertly away into calm water, switched off his engine, and came for’ard to help his passenger to pull the object on board—he examined it with deep interest.

  ‘Well I never saw anything like that before,’ he said. ‘Is it aluminium?—it doesn’t weigh much. And it’s collapsible—see?’ He slid the two sections, each about thirteen feet long, together. ‘Clever! I wonder how on earth it got here.’

  ‘Someone who wanted to cross the gulley brought it, I expect,’ Jamieson said. ‘Anyhow it may come in useful for us to get across.’

  Hicks, increasingly excited by this strange find, put on his engine again and motored over to the slabs under Shipman Head; there he cast anchor and they rowed ashore, taking the ladder with them in the dinghy. They carried it across the neck to that curious chasm, where Jamieson expanded it slightly, till it stretched from one rock wall to the other.

  ‘Handy!’ Hicks exclaimed. ‘But will it hold?’

  ‘We’ll try. Keep it steady.’ Jamieson ran lightly across the silvery rungs. ‘Come on,’ he called to Hicks, who crossed more gingerly, on hands and knees; they pulled the ladder across after them.

  Julia was still sitting beside Professor Burbage’s body. Jamieson asked young Hicks if he would like some lunch? ‘No thanks—I had my dinner early today.’ He sat down on a rock a little distance away, while Philip went over to Julia.

  ‘You’ve been rather quick,’ she said.

  ‘I tried to be. Now I think you’d better eat something’—he pulled their lunch out of his pockets. She looked pale and chilly— to his pleasure and admiration she agreed to eat, and munched away at Mrs. Hicks’s sandwiches and lettuce.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ she asked.

  ‘From his mother.’ He nodded in Hicks’s direction. ‘She put it up while I was telephoning to the police.’

  Julia looked vexed.

  ‘Why on earth the police?’

  ‘Darling, one has to report any accident to the police, and we saw this one happen.’

  ‘Oh. Well I think that’s all very horrid and unnecessary. Why can’t he just be buried?’ But to his relief she took a second sandwich. He touched her other hand.

  ‘Dearest, you’re icy! Are you very cold?’

  ‘Well not exactly warm, with this hellish wind. But I’m all right.’

  ‘Get up and move about,’ he urged her. But at that moment Hicks called out. ‘Here’s the boat! But it’s a strange doctor.’

  The boat bringing the police-surgeon had just appeared. Hicks shouted to tell them where to land, and went down and held the ladder steady for them to cross the small gulf; Philip took Julia by the arm.

  ‘Do go up and finish your lunch under those rocks on the ledge,’ he urged her. ‘It will embarrass them to have you here.’

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘By the way, did you notice those bullet-holes in his jacket? He can’t have made them himself—he hasn’t got a revolver, that I can see. I searched him, and there isn’t one lying about.’

  ‘Let the police worry about that.’

  ‘But I told you I heard those shots.’

  ‘I know. I saw the man who fired them; and I’ve given London the trawler’s number already. But they didn’t kill him.’

  Police investigations usually follow a familiar pattern—but on this occasion the doctor was a stand-in for the local man, who was on holiday; he was rather startled at having to cross a chasm on a ladder to get to his corpse, to say nothing of the previous chilly trip by boat. The police-constable at once tackled Hicks about the ladder—‘Where did this come from?’

  ‘The gentleman saw it in the gulley, and fished it out with the boat-hook.’
>
  ‘This chap that telephoned?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jamieson let the doctor remove the burberry himself to make his examination.

  ‘Who last saw him alive?’ he asked presently. ‘I did.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘At the top of the hill—I came up just as he was running down the slope, and saw him pitch over that cliff behind us.’

  The surgeon looked at the cliff; the constable measured it. ‘Only seventeen feet,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but if you fall seventeen feet and hit your head on a rock, you do to your skull what he’s done to his,’ the doctor said. ‘No doubt about the cause of death.’ Much to Jamieson’s surprise he replaced the burberry over the body without any reference to the two bullet-holes; they were not very obvious, it was true.

  The policeman was less easily satisfied.

  ‘Why was he running?’ he asked. ‘A silly place to run.’

  ‘I simply don’t know,’ Jamieson replied, half-truthfully.

  ‘And what were you doing here?’

  The regular police question—in this case, not easy to answer prudently. Philip chose his words carefully.

  ‘My fiancée was a great friend of this gentleman’s; we heard he was staying on Bryher, so we came over to look him up. That is how we came to be here.’

  The constable was starting on a further question, but the doctor cut him short.

  ‘Trelawny, all this can be dealt with later on. Let’s get the body on board and back to St. Mary’s.’

  ‘Ah, you’d better—the tide’ll soon be rising, and the wind’s getting up again,’ Hicks put in.

  The small grisly procession trailed across the neck. Getting the poor body over the gulley was something of a problem. Hicks ran to his dinghy and produced a length of rope, which was looped round the shoulders of the corpse; one man went ahead and pulled from the further side, while another kept the feet in position—so that at no point were more than one and a half human beings resting their weight on the light metal alloy of the ladder.

  ‘I’m taking this,’ the constable said, when the job was done.

  ‘Well let my passenger use it first!’ Hicks retorted. ‘He got it, after all.’

  ‘That’s just what I want to know—where it came from,’ the policeman said suspiciously; he was not an islander, but a man from the mainland doing his two years’ spell of duty on St. Mary’s. Jamieson overheard.

  ‘Officer, would you be helpful and get the—er—corpse on board your boat first? As I’ve told you, he was a friend of the lady who is with me; I’d rather not upset her. We’ll take the ladder to St. Mary’s in Mr. Hicks’s boat, and bring it straight up to the police-station.’

  ‘Where’s this lady now?’ the policeman asked, rather sharply.

  ‘I asked her to wait up behind the rocks while the doctor was examining the body.’

  ‘Quite right,’ the doctor said. ‘Come on, Trelawny—give Thomson a hand with the corpse, and let’s get going.’

  ‘Just one moment, Sir. I must get the names and addresses of these witnesses. Did the lady see the accident too?’ he asked Jamieson.

  ‘Yes. And we are both staying at the Zennor Hotel; my name, as you already know, is Colonel Jamieson; hers is Miss Probyn. If you telephone we will come down at any time, and give you all the help we can.’

  ‘Can you identify the body? We haven’t even got his name yet,’ the policeman said.

  ‘Yes. He is—was—a Professor Alfred Burbage, an archaeologist; a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.’

  Trelawny took this down in his little book. ‘Are you his next of kin?’ he then asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you can swear to his identity?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘That’s quite enough,’ the police-surgeon said. ‘For pity’s sake let’s get off—this wind gets right into one’s bones.’

  It was getting into Philip Jamieson’s bones too. ‘Have you anything on the boat to cover the body with?’ he asked. ‘If so I’d like my burberry back.’

  ‘Is this your burberry?’ the policeman asked, looking suspicious again.

  ‘Yes. I’ll come over and take it; then we’ll follow.’

  ‘Right,’ the policeman said rather grudgingly.

  But young Hicks went and helped to embark what was left of Professor Burbage, and brought back Jamieson’s burberry. ‘There’s very little blood on it, Sir, and that’s on the inside,’ the young man said, as he spoke giving the collar of the garment a wipe with his handkerchief. Once again Philip was touched by this sympathy and courtesy. He went up to where Julia still sat behind the rocks; when he took her hand it was warmer.

  ‘All right—we can go back now,’ he said.

  ‘What have you done with him?’

  ‘The police have taken him away.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘To their mortuary, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh—can’t he wait in that little church you talked about?’ ‘We can only see about that when we get back. Come on, darling.’

  They too crossed the cut on the Russians’ ladder, pulled it over after them, and chugged off to St. Mary’s. When they arrived Philip urged Julia to have a hot bath and go straight to bed.

  ‘I must ring Mrs. H.’ she said.

  ‘I should do that later—have a rest first.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Help to carry this ladder to the police-station—they want it.’

  ‘Well do find out where the precious Prof. is. Get him some flowers if you can.’ She went off to the hotel.

  Carrying one end of the ladder along to the police-station in Hugh Town, as the main centre of St. Mary’s is so delightfully called, Jamieson asked young Hicks if his boat would be free next day? Yes—and it was booked for 9 a.m. the following morning.

  ‘I want to land on Shipman Head and have a look round, before we get too tied up with the inquest and all that,’ he said. Young Hicks, with a discreet laugh, agreed—‘Once they start they take their time,’ he said. The day’s events had been so unusual and exciting, compared with the quiet daily flow of island life, that the young man was delighted to keep in touch with one of the principals.

  ‘Oh by the way,’ Philip added, ‘could you go up and see the landlady at “Suntrap” and get the old gentleman’s bill? Then I can settle it when I come over tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘Thank you.’ At the police-station Jamieson said ‘I’ll take this thing in; you’ll want to be getting back’—and Hicks went off.

  In the station he found an older constable, who had been on St. Mary’s longer, taking down notes from the young man who had come with the doctor to Bryher.

  ‘Ah, that’s what I wanted to see,’ he exclaimed, as Jamieson propped the ladder against the wall. ‘Now where did you get that, Sir?’

  ‘Pulled it out of the water with a boat-hook from that little gulch between Bad Place Hill and Shipman Head.’

  ‘How did it get there?’

  ‘I don’t really know.’

  ‘You didn’t take it there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you any proof of that?’ The ladder, such an unwonted object, had obviously become a focal point in their investigations in the minds of the St. Mary’s police.

  ‘Yes. Young Hicks took us over to Bryher this morning—the first time I ever set foot on that island—and he knows we hadn’t got it with us then; also he saw me fish it out of the water.’

  ‘Ah. Where is young Hicks, by the way?’

  ‘Gone back to Bryher.’

  ‘That’s a pity,’ the elderly constable said. ‘But we can always get hold of him. And where is the young lady?’

  ‘She’s gone to rest; she is very much upset. I should be grateful if you don’t need to trouble her today. But I am entirely at your disposal to answer any questions as fully as I can,’ Jamieson said rather formally.

  These followed t
he usual routine. His home address?—and his profession? Philip gave the curious official reply, now regrettably current: ‘I belong to a department under the Foreign Office.’ Julia was easier—‘A lady of independent means.’ And what did he know about the deceased? An archaeologist, who had come to the Islands to dig—‘You can check that with the Duchy Office; they gave him a permit.’ The policeman was just in time to do this, and was satisfied with the reply he got.

  ‘Well that’s all quite straightforward,’ he said. ‘Do you know where he was staying?’

  Jamieson told him about ‘Suntrap’.

  ‘And can you or the lady identify the body?’

  ‘Goodness, we’d done that long before I even telephoned to you!’ the Colonel said rather impatiently. ‘And I gave full details to the constable. By the way, what have you done with him?’

  ‘He was taken to the hospital. I rang up the Coroner and reported, and he told me to direct the doctor to do a post-mortem. I suppose he’s doing it now,’ the elderly constable said. ‘In this small place I act as the Coroner’s officer,’ he explained.

  ‘Where will the body be put after the post-mortem?’ Jamieson asked.

  ‘In the hospital mortuary.’

  ‘Could one take flowers there?’

  ‘I don’t see why not—only there aren’t many flowers here at this time of year—it’s too early,’ the elderly constable said. In Scilly ‘flowers’ mean primarily daffodils, and little else; but Philip, after leaving the police-station, took a walk through the outskirts of the town, and persuaded a woman with a pretty garden to cut him a bunch of chrysanthemums for a small sum; these he left at the hospital, with instructions that they were to be placed on the corpse in the mortuary.

  ‘Which one?’ the girl who answered his ring at the door-bell asked—‘The old woman who died of a stroke, or the old gent that the police have brought in?’

  ‘The old gentleman,’ Jamieson said, and hurried away. He very much wished to avoid a further encounter with the doctor. If he had been carrying out a post-mortem he must have found the bullet-holes in the body, and more interrogations might hold up his own trip tomorrow to Shipman Head. He managed to pacify Julia by telling her that he had taken flowers, and then asked if she had told Mrs. Hathaway?