The Dangerous Islands

by Ann Bridge

  ‘Yes. She’s coming down by sleeper tonight, and I’ve booked a room for her here—very nice, close to mine.’

  ‘Good. She must have been very troubled,’ he said.

  ‘Do you know, I believe she’s thankful,’ Julia replied. ‘She said—“Well, it’s over at last, and now he’s at rest.” Really I agree,’ the girl added.

  To Philip’s relief the police left them alone that night, except for a telephone call to say that they would be informed of the date of the inquest, and requesting them not to leave before then. So sharp at nine on the following morning Philip was down on the quay—Julia had to stay to meet Mrs. Hathaway.

  ‘What are you after?’ she asked him at breakfast, when he told her of his trip.

  ‘I’ve made a guess, and I want to check on it.’

  ‘About it?’

  ‘Yes, dearest. Give Mrs. H. my love in advance.’

  The wind had lessened again—in the Scillies it blows up and blows down—and the little boat bounced gaily over the green waters to Shipman Head. The tide was still high, and young Hicks had some difficulty in depositing his passenger on the slabs; but Jamieson managed to scramble ashore.

  ‘All right—I’ll come down and shout when I’m ready,’ he called, and set off to hunt for the installation.

  It was a nightmarish task. He made for the second of the two necks which give that end of Bryher the appearance of a sea-serpent; but this one is completely covered with scattered rocks, a quite impossible place. He climbed, stumbled, crawled and slipped over and between vast lumps of granite coated with an extraordinary black-and-white lichen three inches long, trying to make his way round to the further side of the Head; after he crossed the neck the wind, even if less strong than yesterday’s, hit him in the face, and spray too. Philip began to despair; he could never find what he was seeking in this wilderness of rocks—and anyhow with no soil, how could the sort of installation he was familiar with possibly be planted? And then suddenly, barely two hundred yards in front of him, a little aerial mast rose up— only this time it was painted greenish-grey, to match the lichen-covered rocks about it. He hurried forward; he knew the aerial usually stayed up for about five minutes to make its report to Moscow, but it was no good breaking his leg or his ankle, or he would never get back. He was just about on it when the tiny mast sank down again—and on that terrain, two hundred yards in five minutes was quite good going.

  Slowly, carefully, he moved forward. Ah!—there was the socket for the aerial, bedded in some sort of cotton-waste, surrounded by hay, in a cleft between two rocks. He was able to trace his way to the metal box containing the tracking mechanism because the boulders—here much smaller—had been disturbed to lay the connecting cable, and some of them replaced the wrong way up, showing not the long hairy lichen but the bare granite. Yes, here was the shallow plastic cover; but some blasting had been done to make a big enough hole—chips of broken rock lay strewn about. The tracking mechanism had also been bedded in hay and cotton-waste; and more displaced rocks led him to the long-life batteries.

  Enormously relieved by his good luck in having found it, Philip Jamieson sat down and lit a cigarette. He first made some notes in his little book, in his small, neat handwriting; then he got out his prismatic compass to take bearings. The blunt bulk of the Head rose up behind him, but from where he stood it was hard to see which was the highest point. However, the rock-encumbered neck he had crossed gave onto a small bay facing north-west, with headlands enclosing it; he took bearings on these, jotted them down, and made a rough guess at the height of the installation above high-water mark, which he also recorded. Then he sat down and smoked again, and reflected. Probably he would have to come himself and lead the mopping-up party to the spot—but could he be sure of finding it again, even with compass-bearings? After some deliberation he decided to take a chance on leaving signs to mark his route; the Russian trawler was not very likely to return at all soon—if indeed she had not already been intercepted by some patrol-boat. So on his way back across the neck of land he tore off, here and there, a strip of the long-haired lichen from the taller boulders, leaving a small inconspicuous series of ‘blazes’ which would help him, at least, to find his way back.

  He got Hicks to put in at The Town, and went up and paid the Professor’s bill at ‘Suntrap’. The landlady was in great distress. ‘You didn’t tell me he was dead,’ she said reproachfully.

  ‘We had to wait for the doctor to be sure.’

  ‘Well, I’m awfully sorry. He was so nice and quiet—never any trouble.’ She receipted her little bill. ‘Well thank you very much, Sir. But all I did for him was a pleasure.’

  ‘I’m glad to know that,’ Jamieson said—he was thinking that Julia and Mrs. Hathaway would be glad to know it too.

  He found them both when he got in, considerably late for lunch. ‘We’d given you up, so we started,’ Julia said.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry.’ He asked Mrs. Hathaway about her journey, and hoped her room was all right?

  ‘Yes, delightful. But I should like to see him when I can.’

  ‘I’ll try to arrange that,’ Philip said.

  ‘Oh by the way, the police rang up this morning—they want to see you again,’ Julia said. ‘I told them you were out, but I said I thought you could be down by three. That all right?’

  ‘Yes. Just give me time for coffee. Mrs. Hathaway, I’ll see what I can arrange—meanwhile I hope you’ll take a rest.’

  When Philip Jamieson got down to the police-station he found the stand-in police-surgeon as well as the two constables; two revolver-bullets lay on the table, in a small box.

  ‘I found these in the body,’ the surgeon said. ‘I think the constable would like to ask if you can throw any light on how they came there.’

  The elderly constable dutifully gave the usual police warning: ‘Anything you may say may be used in evidence.’

  ‘Thank you; but that’s all right. Go ahead.’

  ‘Have you any idea when and how these bullet-wounds were inflicted?’ the doctor asked, looking rather disapprovingly at Jamieson’s untroubled, sensible face.

  ‘Yes. I saw the man who fired the revolver—about one and a half minutes after the Professor had fallen, I should say.’

  The young constable was taking down his notes; the police-doctor was silent for a moment—he evidently realised the implication of Jamieson’s words.

  ‘Who was this man?’

  ‘I don’t know. He came off a foreign trawler that was anchored close by, and after firing those shots he returned to her in a great hurry, leaving that ladder behind him’—he pointed to the ladder, which was still leaning against the wall. The young policeman looked up, goggling with interest, at this piece of information.

  ‘What happened to the trawler?’

  ‘She steamed off—also in a great hurry; she was weighing anchor while the man with the revolver was running back to the slabs to get on her dinghy.’

  ‘Did you get the number of the boat?’ the elderly constable asked.

  ‘Yes—and I had it communicated to the Admiralty.’

  ‘When?’ the constable asked, looking startled.

  ‘I rang up from Bryher immediately after I had telephoned to you to report the accident, Officer,’ Jamieson said.

  ‘Can you give me the number?’

  ‘Yes.’ He pulled out his diary, in which he had taken the precaution of copying the number from his little notebook; Jamieson was familiar with the police of many nations, and knew their passion for impounding documents—his notebook they must not have. He gave the number, which the young constable took down.

  ‘Could I have that diary, Sir?’ the constable, so predictably, asked.

  ‘Well yes, if you don’t keep it too long. I’d like to have it back after the inquest, because all my engagements are written in it, and when I return to London I shall need it.’

  ‘I’ll see that you get it back,’ the doctor put in. ‘But just one more point, Colonel Jam
ieson. Have you any idea why this man off the trawler should have fired at the deceased—since, as you obviously realise, he had already killed himself by his fall?’

  ‘I can only make a guess,’ Jamieson said carefully. ‘I think the trawler was Russian, and they are people who leave nothing to chance. Anyhow the man who fired the shots could not have known for certain that Professor Burbage was already dead.’

  The elderly constable spoke.

  ‘It’s interesting that you think the trawler was Russian,’ he said. ‘Of course we asked the Penzance police to get on to Scotland Yard to try to find out anything they could on the old gentleman’s background, and it seems he was in Russia at one time. Can you confirm that?’

  ‘Of my own knowledge, no.’ Philip was thinking how best to protect Mrs. Hathaway from police enquiries. ‘But I have heard it mentioned,’ he said.

  ‘Where? And who by?’

  ‘Various sources in London. Professor Burbage was an international figure as an archaeologist.’

  The constable left that for the moment.

  ‘Had you any other reason for thinking that the trawler from which the murderer came was Russian?’

  ‘Some reason, yes. Two days ago, on Tresco, I actually saw that trawler come in and anchor under Shipman Head.’

  ‘Nothing odd about that,’ the constable interrupted—‘there was a terrible gale blowing up that day.’

  ‘Quite so.’ Jamieson quietly ignored the interruption. ‘But I also saw a man down by Cromwell’s Castle semaphoring to this trawler, and getting replies; and I could not understand their signals. I know French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic—but not the Slav languages. So I concluded that the trawler was either Polish or Russian.’

  The constable was rather taken aback by this display of knowledge. His only language was English. He very sensibly concentrated on something verifiable—the man who had been signalling from Tresco.

  ‘Could you identify him?’

  ‘Certainly. We came over from Penzance on the same boat, so I noticed him.’ Jamieson described his fellow-passenger in some detail.

  ‘What was he doing on Tresco?’

  ‘Someone on the Scillonian said he was going as chef to the hotel there.’

  ‘Late in the year for them to be getting a chef—it’s the end of the season; they’re just about to close,’ the constable said. ‘Excuse me a moment’—he used his telephone. The others waited.

  ‘Well, he’s gone—he left on the plane today,’ the constable said. ‘Pity you didn’t tell us this yesterday, Sir.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jamieson replied courteously. ‘We were rather concentrating on the Professor, and I’m afraid I never thought of it.’

  ‘Oh well, we can probably have him traced—his train won’t get into Paddington for a couple of hours yet, if he’s gone by train.’ He used the telephone again; meanwhile the police-surgeon spoke quietly to Philip.

  ‘You realise that there will have to be an inquest? In my opinion death was undoubtedly due to the fractured skull, which you say took place about one and a half minutes before the revolver was fired?’

  ‘About that. He fell, and cried out; it was a minute or more later that the man came from behind the rocks, and fired at him, and ran away.’

  ‘Did you check the exact time?’

  ‘No, Doctor!’ Jamieson said curtly. ‘When I saw a man using a revolver I got down off the sky-line! But there was an appreciable lapse of time, which I put at one and a half minutes.’

  ‘Will you say that on oath?’

  ‘Certainly. Which makes those bullets rather irrelevant,’—he gestured towards the table. ‘It may have been attempted murder, but it wasn’t murder—since the Professor was already dead.’

  The constable had finished his call to the mainland.

  ‘Well if he goes by train he’ll be found,’ he was saying, when the telephone rang.

  ‘Is that the police-station at St. Mary’s? Can Colonel Jamieson take a personal call from London?’ The constable, looking irritated, put his hand over the mouth-piece.

  ‘There’s a call for you from London, Sir.’

  Jamieson took the receiver. ‘Hullo? Jimmy here,’ he said.

  Captain Brown’s familiar voice answered.

  ‘Oh, good! We tried your pub, and were told you were at the police-station. Really these personal calls are something! Look— that trawler was overhauled, but she scuttled herself.’

  ‘No!’ Philip exclaimed.

  ‘Yes. But most of her crew, if not all, have been picked up; they’re being taken into Plymouth or Falmouth—not sure which, yet; anyhow they’ll be sent up to London. When would you be able to come up and identify the type with the revolver?’

  ‘That rather depends on when the inquest here takes place.’

  ‘Oh, there is to be an inquest? I’d better get on to the Home Office. Who’s the Coroner? Someone local?’

  ‘I think so. But you must find out who it is.’

  ‘Right. Any more news?’ Brown then asked.

  ‘Yes. I’ve found what I was looking for. I’ll write tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, why write?’ Captain Brown said. ‘If you can lead our friends to the spot I’ll have a boat with a party sent at once. To St. Mary’s, I suppose? Splendid! Then we can have the Scottish places dealt with simultaneously, and I’ll get something fixed with Dublin. Well done, Jimmy. Ring me when you can come up.’

  The other three men had listened with interest to Jamieson’s end of this conversation, all they could hear; when it was over he apologised for the interruption. ‘Sorry—the office wanted me.’ He reflected for a moment, and decided to pass on at least part of his information. ‘The Navy picked up that Russian trawler,’ he said. ‘She was—er—sinking, but they rescued most of her crew. So presently I shall be wanted in London to identify the man with the revolver.’

  ‘That’s smart work,’ the elderly constable commented. He was both delighted at the prospect of a would-be murderer being brought to justice, and impressed by the fact that this man Jamieson, whom he had hitherto felt bound to regard with a certain suspicion, had been able to lay on the Royal Navy to such purpose, and so fast. He looked at the Colonel with a new respect. After a pause the police-surgeon spoke.

  ‘I take it, Colonel Jamieson, that you would like to know when the inquest will be—since you will be wanted in London?’

  ‘I should, very much.’

  ‘Then I’d better get onto Mr. Robinson—in fact it might be as well if we had a little consultation with him. Trelawny, you’d better go and start typing out your notes.’ Reluctantly, the young constable left the room.

  The Coroner was out—he was expected back at about five-thirty. ‘Tell him to ring me up—Doctor Richards speaking— when he gets in,’ the police-surgeon said, and looked at his watch. ‘Time for a cup of tea,’ he observed. ‘Will you come and have one with me?’ he asked Jamieson.

  ‘You’re very kind, but really I think I ought to get back to my friends. I’ll be down here at five-thirty, if you want me. By the way, will the corpse remain in the hospital mortuary till after the inquest, or can it wait in the little church at Old Town?’

  ‘Oh no,’ the senior constable replied, without the smallest hesitation. ‘Respectable corpses always stay in the hospital mortuary—only the others are put in the church at Old Town.’

  ‘What are un-respectable corpses?’ Jamieson asked, amused and curious at this highly peculiar distinction.

  ‘Very decomposed ones, washed up by the sea, that fish or crabs have nibbled at,’ the constable said bluntly. ‘We get a fair number of those, and they smell much too bad to be on the hospital premises.’

  This gruesome information fascinated the Colonel—the Scillies, as he had already told Brown, were really unlike anywhere else. He went back to the hotel, where he found Julia and Mrs. Hathaway having tea.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure I can arrange for you to see him,’ he said in reply to a question f
rom the old lady. ‘He’s in the hospital mortuary—it’s not far away.’

  ‘Why can’t he be in the old church?’ Julia asked.

  ‘That’s very seldom used now, I find,’ Jamieson said cautiously. Julia, always pretty quick, realised that he did not wish to be pressed on this.

  ‘And when is the inquest to be?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t know, yet—the coroner was out. I’ve got to go back to the police-station at half-past five, when he’s supposed to be showing up. Give me some tea, darling—I see you cleverly got a cup for me.’

  But after tea Philip led Julia aside.

  ‘Who is the Prof.’s next of kin?’

  ‘I never heard of his having any kin,’ the girl replied. ‘Both his parents were only children, so he had no cousins, or nephews and nieces. Why?’

  ‘Oh, they may want to know. Usually it’s a relative who identifies a body.’

  ‘Well I never heard of his having any relatives, except an old 5th cousin in New Zealand, and she died last year.’

  ‘Good enough.’

  Just before five-thirty the Colonel walked down through Hugh Town to the police-station, in the deepening dusk; the street lights shone on the fronts of the pleasant granite-built houses. He found Doctor Richards and the two constables—as he entered the telephone rang. The senior constable handed the receiver to the doctor—‘The Coroner, Sir.’

  ‘Oh, Mr. Robinson, could you possibly come down to the station? I’ve done your post-mortem on that accident, and it’s rather important to fix a date for the inquest pretty quickly. I have the principal witness here.’

  ‘I shall be with you in three minutes,’ Mr. Robinson said— and in precisely three minutes, in he walked. After greeting Doctor Richards and the constable he turned to Philip. ‘Colonel Jamieson?’

  ‘Yes. How do you do?’

  The Coroner was very prompt, and very clever—cleverness is far from being a universal feature among coroners. He first studied the young policeman’s notes, and then asked Jamieson for an account of the accident; he examined the two bullets, and heard the police-doctor’s report on the post-mortem.