Shades of Evil

by Cave, Hugh

  "Thanks, Ken," Sam said.

  On the way home, Will steadied him with an arm around his shoulders while Ken drove.

  24

  Sam's Story

  At the house they led Sam to the sofa and, after making him comfortable, looked at his leg. Ima Williams watched wide-eyed. Vicky had not yet returned from her daily session with Sister Merle.

  "He was a rotten shot," Sam said. "At twenty feet this was the best he could do. But it's kept me immobilized all this time."

  Ima said in a near whisper, "Mr. Sam, can I get you some food?"

  He smiled up at her. "When I've had a bath, Ima."

  "I will get the tub ready."

  "Bless you. Then something easy to swallow, like soup, maybe. I haven't done much eating lately."

  Finishing an examination of the leg, Will said, "This isn't infected, Sam." Despite Sam's generally unwashed condition, the leg was clean and the wound in the calf nearly healed.

  "It's a long story," Sam said.

  He told it after soaking in the tub for an hour and downing three bowls of the gungo-pea soup Ima served him. Back on the living-room sofa with an almost comical expression of contentment on his face, he began.

  "When I got there and told Bignall what I wanted to see him about, he invited me in. I suppose you've been there by now, looking for me, so you know what that shack of his is like."

  "We know," Ken Daniels said.

  "I told him we'd heard that Juan Cerrado left the market that day with him and another man, in a yellow Prefect, and I wanted to know where they took him. 'Well, now, I will tell you,' he said, and he pulled that old bed aside and reached behind it and produced a shotgun. There wasn't a thing I could do. He just sat down and aimed the thing at my chest. It was a single shot twelve gauge, pretty old. They use them a lot here to shoot rats."

  "And hawks," Ima Williams said. "The hawks kill our fowl."

  Sam smiled at her and said, "That's right." Then he said, "He was proud of himself, I guess. He kept me there a long time, boasting how he and the others lured Cerrado from the market to his death."

  Suddenly realizing he might have casually said something shocking, he sent a startled look at Ima Williams. "Did you know Juan is dead?"

  "Yes," Will said. "Ken and I found him in Gourie Cave."

  Sam seemed relieved. "It seems Bignall and Nevil Walters approached him in the market and said they wanted to talk to him. They took him outside to Walters's car. Walters was a farmer, they told him, on Juan's side in his fight with Sister Merle, and they just happened to know that Merle was planning to kill him and had already killed another man who dared to challenge her. The other fellow's body was hidden in Gourie Cave, they told him, and why didn't they take him there and show him, to prove it, so he could go to the police and have her arrested."

  "He should have known better," Ken Daniels said, sadly shaking his head.

  "Probably. But he was keen on getting that woman off the farmers' backs, remember. It meant a lot to him. Anyway, he let them drive him to Gourie Forest, and Keith Mowatt was waiting there to guide them into the cave. And when they got him in there where no one would be likely ever to learn what happened, they killed him."

  "At which point," Will said, "Mowatt couldn't resist taking his boots and belt."

  "That's about it."

  "Tell me something, please," Ima Williams said, stepping closer to the couch on which Sam lay. "Was Sister Merle the one who planned this?" Her voice was brittle. Will had a feeling that if she had spoken even a little more loudly, it might have broken into fragments like a thin glass hurled against a wall.

  "She planned it, Ima. Right down to the last detail. All they did was carry out her orders."

  "Thank you. Excuse me, please." Stepping back, Ima turned swiftly and hurried from the room.

  "Did she take it hard when you found Juan?" Sam asked, looking up at Will.

  "Very hard, Sam. I remember thinking no woman would ever grieve that way over me."

  "Tell us how you got away from that house in Silent Hill after Bignall told you these things," Ken Daniels said.

  "I was lucky. I took a chance and it worked. He was so damned proud of himself, he let the sound of his own voice lull him off guard," Sam explained. "I picked what seemed a good time and made a grab for the gun. Didn't get it—he wasn't that much off guard—but I did succeed in knocking it half way across the room. Then I ran.

  "Maybe 1 should have tried to beat him to the gun, but I don't think so. He's a big fellow; he most likely would have clobbered me before I reached it, if he didn't reach it first. Anyway, I ran, and he got a shot off from the doorway before I was out of the clearing. But, as I say, he's a lousy shot. Thank God it wasn't a double-barreled gun."

  "Then what?" Will asked.

  "I made it into a yam field with him after me, and then he made a mistake. He turned back—I think probably to get some shells for the gun. At the end of the field I ran into a wall of candelabra cactus that should have stopped me—you knew the stuff in Haiti, Will—and my luck held. A pig or something had burrowed under it. I went under, too, and pulled some trash in behind me to hide the opening."

  Sam paused to get his breath. "It threw Bignall off. For half an hour I heard him searching the field for me while I lay there on the other side of the cactus expecting to bleed to death."

  "And he finally gave up?" Ken asked.

  "No, but I guess he convinced himself I wasn't in that part of the field. He went charging off out of sight, and I got up and found I could still walk, and walked for at least an hour. That's pretty wild country in there. When I finally came to a house, I'd had it, really had it, and the house was a shack like Bignall’s only worse, and the people were an old fellow at least eighty and his woman even older than he was. I still don't know their names.'

  Will was remembering what Ima Williams had told him after asking her voodoo loa to let her see what had happened. How Sam had been shot but was with two, old people who were helping him. "They took you in?" he said.

  "They took me in. But then I made a damn-fool mistake. I told them who shot me and asked them to go for help."

  Ken Daniels slowly moved his head up and down. "And of course they knew Emmanuel Bignall was an obeah man and were afraid to do that because he might find out about it."

  "That's what happened."

  "But," Ken went on, still nodding, "they were decent people who couldn't force themselves to turn you out, so they looked after you."

  "After I promised never to tell anyone what they'd done," Sam said. "And, as I say, I never did learn their names, so I'm not breaking the promise even now, am I? I just called them Ma'am and Mister."

  As he talked, Sam began shaking his head in wonder at what had happened. "They were such good people. She washed my leg three or four times a day, even though she had to walk half a mile to a spring to get water. They shared their food with me—what they had of it, mostly yams and sweet potatoes and cornmeal porridge. She even wanted to wash my clothes, but I wouldn't let her. I had a horror of being naked and having Bignall or one of his cronies walk in on me."

  "Did they finally let you leave?" Will asked. "Or did you just walk out when you had the chance?"

  "Would you believe they went to a wedding? It was the craziest thing. I was stretched out on the old bed they were letting me use. The lady came in and got down on her knees and fished a hundred-year-old suitcase out from under that bed, and opened it, and took out a long white dress for herself and a white shirt and dark suit for her old man, and she showed them to me as if she were showing me the latest Paris fashions. 'We're going to his granddaughter's wedding in Borobridge,' she said. 'You just stay here nice and quiet now and we'll be back by noon tomorrow. I'll be leaving you some roasted breadfruit and plenty of water, and you won't have a thing to worry yourself about.'"

  "So they left, and you did too," Ken said.

  "Right. But I'm going back there, believe me, with money for those two, and presents. Th
ey're the old, good Jamaica. This new Jamaica can't hold a candle to them."

  "Why did you run into the coffee walk when we came along?" Will asked.

  "I'm not sure. I think because you turned your lights on me."

  "I don't understand."

  "I'd been lying in that shack for days, a prisoner because of my leg. Now I was out of there, trying to get home as quietly as possible, and suddenly there's a car behind me. All right, cars do use that road, and I think 'I would just have stepped off the shoulder and let you go by if you hadn't turned your lights on. That scared me. Bignall is still trying to find me—you can bet on it—and his pal Walters has a car."

  "Bignall and Walters are in the hospital in Spaldings," Will said. "Keith Mowatt is dead." He told Sam about that part of the story.

  As he finished, a taxi stopped at the gate outside, and Vicky came into the house.

  Sam was surprised. A number of things had been left unsaid, Will realized. Sam and Vicky had known each other in Haiti, of course, but had never been fond of each other.

  Vicky touched Sam's outthrust hand now and said she was glad they had found him, glad he was safe. Sam thanked her. An awkward silence followed.

  Vicky broke it by saying, "Can I promote something to eat, do you suppose? It's almost eight o'clock, and I had no lunch today."

  "Ima must have something ready," Will said.

  Vicky went to the kitchen but returned after a moment, looking annoyed. "Where is she? There's some kind of stew being kept warm on the stove, but she isn't there."

  "Try her room," Will suggested.

  "You try her room. I don't know her that well, thank you."

  You didn't hesitate to go there in the middle of the night and threaten her, Will thought, but with a shrug he rose and went to check. Ima's door was ajar. He knocked, and on receiving no answer, pushed it wider. She was not there.

  She walked about the yard sometimes, he remembered. She was the kind of person who, finding a bean or pumpkin seed, or any other seed large enough to be picked up, would carry it home and plant it, even though she might be working elsewhere when it was ready to be harvested. He walked out into the back yard and called her name, but got no answer.

  Strange, with supper on the stove. He walked out to the gate and looked along the road, but of course the road was dark now. Returning to the living room, he said, frowning, "She seems to have gone somewhere. Vicky, you probably need a shower after being at that place all day. I'll put some food on the table. Sam, can we count you in?"

  "I've had mine for now," Sam said. "I'm for bed."

  "Hold on a minute. Let me see if—" Will went into the room he had been using and, yes, Ima had moved his things out of it and put fresh sheets on the bed. She must have done so while Sam was bathing.

  In the kitchen he sampled what Vicky had referred to as "some kind of stew" and found it to be stew peas. Perhaps for Vicky he had better give it some phony exotic name, with a wink at Ken when he did so. He turned the light up under it and went out to set the table.

  Sam, on the way to bed, stopped to put a hand on his shoulder. "Will, old boy, Ken Daniels has just told me some of the things you and he did, trying to find me. Like going into Lower Gourie and nearly being trapped there. Believe me, I'm grateful."

  "I wish we could have found Juan before it was too late, Sam."

  "We tried. When will you be going back to the States?"

  "When will you?"

  "I'd better rest a few days first. But you and Vicky don't have to stay. Ima can look after me."

  "I'll make arrangements, then."

  But it was not to be so simple.

  "I can't go right away," Vicky declared when he brought the subject up after supper. Ken Daniels had eaten and departed. He was alone with her in the living room.

  He wished he were in bed. The evening had turned unusually warm and humid for this high part of the island, and in the yard the whistling frogs sounded like scores of tiny hammers striking crystal anvils. It was a noise he could happily do without at this point. At the same time, he was reluctant to turn in, knowing that Vicky and he would again be sharing a bedroom.

  "What's to keep you here?" he demanded, frowning at her.

  "I have to call on Sister Merle again. Once, at least."

  He was incredulous. "For God's sake, Vicky, you heard what Sam said. That woman definitely planned the murder of Juan Cerrado and—"

  No, she hadn't heard Sam say that, he realized. She had come in too late to hear it. He told her what Sam had learned from Bignall about Cerrado's death. "But I suppose you don't believe it," he concluded angrily. "You don't want to believe it."

  "I still have to see her at least once more," Vicky argued.

  "Why?"

  "She has something of mine that I have to get back."

  "What does she have that's so important?"

  "My ring. The opal you bought me that time in Pachuca."

  "Why in hell did you leave that with her?" Will asked in a fury. "It's one of your most cherished possessions!"

  "She wanted to study it."

  "What do you mean, study it?" He could be losing his mind, he thought wearily. He was so tired, and the damned whistling frogs just wouldn't shut up. "How can you study a ring?"

  "You can if it possesses occult power and you're an obeah woman," Vicky snapped back. "You've studied voodoo objects, haven't you? When I first went there, she noticed it on my finger and asked me where I got it. Later she asked if she could keep it a few days and wear it. What's wrong with that?"

  "All right." He took in a deep breath and noisily let it out as he stood up. What he wanted now was a drink of something. "I'll take you there tomorrow and you can get it back."

  "You don't have to take me. My taxi man—"

  "I'll take you. That damned woman has killed Juan Cerrado and Keith Mowatt, and has two other men dying in the hospital. I'm not trusting this to some taxi man I don't even know."

  "I thought you wanted to be rid of me," Vicky countered.

  "I want a divorce, not a funeral."

  At the sideboard in the dining room he poured himself half a glass of rum and drank it down, remembering, in spite of himself, the body they had found in Upper Gourie. Then, hating Vicky passionately for having made still another trip to that house in the Cockpit necessary, he walked through the kitchen to see whether Ima Williams had returned yet. She could have come in through the back door while Vicky and he were talking.

  Her room was still empty.

  25

  The Opal Again

  Ima's room was still empty when Will went to check it in the morning. He was worried; it wasn't like her to go out without a word to anyone. But then she was still no doubt grieving for Juan and might have felt the need to be alone.

  In any case, Will was determined to take care of the remaining business with Sister Merle. A quick look into Sam Norman's room showed him soundly sleeping, unlikely to wake for some time. Will left a note on the bedside table.

  A few minutes later Vicky and he were on their way to recover her ring.

  "When are we leaving for Florida?" she asked as the Land Rover growled over the Sunday-empty road.

  "I'll phone the airport this afternoon. We should be able to get out tomorrow."

  She shrugged and was silent.

  Beyond Wait-a-Bit he found the red clay road into the Cockpit and turned down it, driving past Sister Merle's to the turnaround. It must have been what her taxi man had been doing, for as soon as he stopped, Vicky got out and began walking back.

  In no hurry to catch up to her, he followed ten yards or more behind, angry with her for so foolishly having made this final visit necessary. He had no desire to confront a woman who had planned the cold-blooded murder of Juan Cerrado. She was Jamaica's problem, not his.

  Knowing the way well, Vicky turned down the steep path to the house and set a fast pace. He refused to be hurried. Like the night before, the morning was sticky hot, and in this all but shadeles
s place he was already soaked in sweat.

  The house came into view below, its aluminum roof glittering in the sunlight. Vicky was in the yard, striding toward the door. The door was open, he noticed as he continued his descent. Strange. Vicky knocked and waited. He saw her go inside.

  Almost at once, in a voice so shrill it was nearly a scream, she called to him. "Oh, my God, Will! Hurry!"

  He ran the rest of the way down the trail and into the house, where he found his wife in a bedroom, on her knees beside a bed. On the bed, clutching Vicky's wrists, lay the obeah woman.

  Blood bubbled from her mouth as she noisily struggled for breath. Blood made a crazy crimson and white patchwork of her nightgown and the bed sheets. Streams of blood had spilled onto the floor to form a dark, shining pool.

  He stepped past the pool to Vicky's side and looked down at Sister Merle's contorted face and knew she was dying. She had to be dying. Her nightgown was pierced in half a dozen places where a knife or some other sharp thing had been plunged through it into her body. Her eyes were bright enough as they stared up at Vicky's hovering face—almost too bright to be real, and they never once blinked—but her grip on Vicky's wrists weakened even as he stood there.

  Suddenly a gale of breath exploded from her lungs, spraying blood over Vicky's face.

  Vicky shot to her feet with a loud cry and stumbled back to the wall, shuddering with revulsion as she frantically rubbed the red spittle from her eyes. The dwarfish body on the bed heaved up to a sitting position. A hand shot out to point at Will, and he saw the opal ring darkly glittering on one of its stubby fingers.

  The woman yelled something. His name was part of it —his full name, Will Platt, screeched out in a blast of venom and hate—but the rest was unintelligible. Perhaps it was not even English. It was full of threat, though; of that he had not the slightest doubt.

  A curse, perhaps. Some grisly obeah curse. Then the woman fell back, heaved and writhed for a moment, and became still.

  He had not run from her as Vicky had. Still standing beside the bed, he leaned over her and satisfied himself that she was dead. Without turning his head, he said, "Do you still want your ring?"