by Ray Connolly
At midnight the CVs began to drift away from the tennis courts in twos and threes, back to their own rooms. Life in a Club Village begins very early, and those who like to stay up late usually don’t last very long.
“You coming?” asked Henry as he pulled himself unsteadily off the mattress and began to tag along behind the others.
“No,” said Sacha, without looking up. “I think maybe I’ll just hang out here for a while. See you later.”
As the tennis courts cleared of people, Sacha stretched back on the mattress and lay down and faced the stars. Every star in the sky seemed magnified. There was absolutely no wind. The stillness was total.
It was marginally cooler on the beach as Beta walked along the water’s edge, side by side with Scorcese. By now both had doffed their masks and watched them float away in the swell of the Atlantic’s receding tide.
“Do you want to tell me what you were crying about?” asked Scorcese.
“It was something that Ernst said,” replied Beta. “He called me a tart … which I suppose means a whore or a hooker.”
“I can see he has a way with words.”
“He can be blunt, all right,” said Beta.
“Is it true?” asked Scorcese.
There was a long silence. It was on the tip of Beta’s tongue to deny it, but she didn’t. What was the point? It was true, and she knew it. She hadn’t been crying because Ronay had insulted her, but because he had so accurately described her.
“Is it true?” repeated Scorcese.
“Yes,” replied Beta at last. “I suppose it’s true.”
“I see,” said Scorcese and began to walk on down the beach.
For a moment Beta thought that he was walking away from her, but after about ten yards or so he turned to her and shouted, “Well, are you coming, or aren’t you?”
She went, and together they walked the whole length of the two-mile beach, arm in arm. They did not speak.
Quatre Bras’ insistence that no business be spoken that evening suited Ernst Ronay admirably. The next day he would make it clear to both Quatre Bras and Scorcese that he would do all in his power, both publicly and privately, to stop the American adventure, but in the meantime he was determined to enjoy the evening. His tiff with Beta that afternoon had been unfortunate but inevitable. While one side of him was fond of her, another part of his conscience waved an admonishing finger at him for allowing himself to become involved with a girl who, despite all her protestations of love, was almost certainly besotted by his wealth and position.
Florinda and Chloe, on the other hand, were without ambition in his direction. For reasons known only to themselves, they appeared to be in a high, almost giddy mood, which suited Ronay admirably. Earlier in the evening he had wondered how he might best split the two, and which one he should make his most open bid for. But as the hours passed and the three of them drank, danced, and even sang together, it began to occur to him that he might be able to sample both.
At eleven o’clock he found himself sitting at a poolside table, with one arm thrown casually around Florinda, while Chloe knelt at his feet.
“Did either of you girls ever play that game we have in England where you’re given the names of three people of the opposite sex and you have to decide which one you would marry, which to have a dirty weekend with, and which to tip over a cliff?”
Both girls shook their heads.
“Ah, then you’ve missed a great deal,” said Ronay. “Let me give you an example, Florinda. Suppose I said to you Monsieur Quatre Bras, James Hardin … and, just for the sake of the game … me. What do you think your reply would be? Who would you tip over a cliff out of those three?”
Florinda laughed. “That’s hardly fair. Why should I wish to waste any of you?” Florinda’s Brazilian accent added a certain romantic flavor to her words.
“But those are the rules.”
“Well, in that case, I think Quatre Bras would have to go over the cliff,” laughed Florinda, immediately to be joined by Chloe. “He’s the oldest, so he should go first. “I think I’d probably go for a dirty weekend with James Hardin, and marriage … well, that leaves only you, doesn’t it?”
Ronay smiled. “And you, Chloe?”
“Again, Quatre Bras goes over the cliff. But I think I’d probably marry James Hardin … which means that you get the dirty weekend.”
Ronay grinned. “What a lucky man I am. One to marry, and one with whom to spend a naughty weekend. Tell me, Chloe, what qualities do you think James Hardin possesses that would make him preferable to me as a husband?”
Chloe stuck her tongue in the corner of her mouth cockily, as though having to think deeply about this. “Let’s put it another way,” she answered tactfully. “To me the very best weekends … dirty weekends, as you called them … have always been extremely dirty.”
At this there was more giggling from Florinda.
Chloe continued. “And I suspect that to enjoy one to its fullest then it would have to be very, very naughty. And somehow I rather think that you might make a naughtier companion than our chef de village, sweet though he is.”
Ronay laughed heartily at this. He wished now that he had insisted on taking Hardin’s bungalow. To invite these two girls back to his little room was hardly his style. He lit a cigar and ordered another drink.
At twelve-thirty Hardin whispered something quietly into Cassandra’s ear. They had been dancing, and then sitting together, for some hours now. Sadly Cassandra smiled and slowly shook her head. Hardin grinned philosophically and, bending forward, kissed her gently on the forehead. And with that they made separate ways back to their individual rooms.
At twelve thirty-five Ronay made his move. “Perhaps we could continue this conversation somewhere more comfortable,” he suggested jokingly. “I understand that you room together.” As he said this he grinned broadly. There was no way he could lose. If they refused him, he could pretend it had been a joke.
The two girls looked at each other before answering, and then, almost telepathically, reached the same conclusion. Stretching out their arms, they each took one of Ronay’s hands and led him back toward the room they shared. Not for the first time, Ronay thanked God that he had been born rich, charming, and, most of all, handsome.
“You know the trouble with this place, Karen,” said Hamlet Yablans as he and Karen Sorensen watched the departing trio. “There’s too many people doing things they oughta be ashamed of. You know, sometimes the whole thing sickens me. All that screwing and, you know, the other things that go on here. I hope you aren’t that sort of girl. If I thought you were that kind of girl, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you. There’s a lot of sick people here, you know that?”
“I don’t think it’s sick for people to want to enjoy themselves while on vacation,” said Karen. She actually doubted whether there was much more screwing going on in Club Village than there was on the campus of the University of Colorado. But then, Hamlet was from another generation.
“Maybe not,” said Hamlet. Then he grinned. “You want to come to my room?”
“What?” asked Karen. Hamlet was the least likely man in the village to be making propositions.
Hamlet recognized his mistake immediately. He shook his head and pulled a funny face. “The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve; Lovers, to bed; ‘tis almost fairy time,” he said.
“I think I’d better go. Good night,” said Karen, and getting up walked quickly away from the lonely, black-clad brooding figure of the forever rejected comic.
Florinda and Chloe shared a room in C Block, a ground-floor room that, because it was on the corner of the building overlooking the sea, had its own separate entrance and a small secluded garden. Had Ernst Ronay not had quite a lot to drink over dinner, and then several glasses of Bacardi since, he might have been more reticent in allowing himself to be led so eagerly into the room of two employees. But the combination of alcohol and a hot Caribbean night had taken its toll upon his common sense and propriety and,
singing quietly to himself the one reggae Jimmy Cliff song he knew, he entered their room. “The harder they come, the harder they fall,” he hummed.
It was the same as every other room in the village, comprising two single beds, a closet, a small bathroom with a shower, and a view through the pines toward the open sea. But because it was the permanent home of Chloe and Florinda it had developed a warmth of its own, a fragrance of femininity. The two single beds had been pushed together, presumably, thought Ronay, to give the girls more floor space. A single large hand-woven Indian blanket covered both beds.
“That’s a very pretty print,” Ronay commented as he admired a David Hamilton soft-focus picture taped to the wall directly above the two beds. It showed two naked young girls admiring each other in a large gilt-edged oval mirror.
Florinda smiled and, going into the bathroom, returned with three glasses, into which Chloe poured generous measures of Bacardi and Coke, which she had produced from a box in the bottom of the closet.
Ronay sank down on the edge of the bed and swung his feet up, kicking off his white Gucci shoes as he did. The room was lit by a single bedside lamp. To soften its glow Chloe tossed a red shawl over it, and the three of them were washed in a rosy glow. Florinda sank down beside him, lying full-length diagonally across the two beds. She was wearing a pareo, tied so that it hung over one shoulder and split deep up her thigh, a revelation that increased drastically as she pushed her knee up into the air and the pareo fell limply across her hips.
“You have beautiful legs, Florinda,” said Ronay.
Florinda accepted the compliment graciously, but smiled at Chloe, who was calmly untying the knot that held her pareo together. Ronay followed Florinda’s eyes to the short-haired, razor-cropped French girl, turning just in time to see Chloe allow the silken square of pareo to fall from her body onto the rug at the foot of the bed. She was naked, with a young, smooth, and supple body, shining with a perfectly even tan that showed no telltale swimsuit marks.
Even Ronay, a man of the world in all its sweetest surprises, had not been expecting anything quite so instantly provocative.
“What’s the matter? Don’t you like what you see?” asked Chloe.
Ronay could feel Florinda stiffen with interest as the two of them gazed at Chloe’s body.
“I like it very much,” said Ronay in a whisper which got caught at the back of his throat. Then, reaching out his arms, he put his hands around the tops of Chloe’s thighs and gently pulled her toward him until he was able to bury his face in her taut, brown belly. Above him, unknown to him, the two girls exchanged glances of mutual amusement.
“Let me help you,” murmured Florinda from behind, as she slipped her fingers around his neck and down his chest, gently and expertly opening the buttons of his silk shirt, and unfastening the buckle on his trouser belt.
Tantalizingly, Florinda ran her hands across his stomach, sending electric shocks of excitement, and causing him to convulse involuntarily. His head burrowed deeper into the perfumed body of Chloe. Then, quickly and efficiently, the two girls slipped his clothing from him and, pinioning him across the two beds, began to lavish him with kisses and caresses, Chloe performing an elaborate body massage while Ronay tore at the knot holding Florinda’s pareo together. It fell away, and she too was naked, taller and leaner than her friend and with curtains of long dark hair which rained across his body. She joined Chloe and tied her limbs around both of them in willful and delicious carnality.
Though Ronay had enjoyed some bizarre trysts in his time, he found himself having to suffocate his groans of pleasure as his companions sought out his secret, private areas, forever taking him to little peaks of excitement before deftly moving their attentions to other parts. And as they explored him, he nestled in the warmth of their bodies, anxious that they too should be pleased. By and by he found himself making love to first one, and then, as their tempting started again, to the other. By this time the effect of the Bacardi and their mingled perfumes had driven him quite heady with confusion. At last, more sated than he could ever remember, he fell into a sort of sleep, spread across the beds, his body drained.
He did not sleep long. A vicious indigestion, occasioned by the combination of his advancing years, the exertions of the evening, and the amount of wine and rum he had consumed, soon stabbed at his ribs angrily, and acute heartburn forced him to drag his buckled body to a sitting position. At first his eyes were bleary, and the room was dark, the shawl-covered light having been extinguished during his sleep.
Pulling his feet off the bed, he pulled on his clothes and, carrying his shoes, headed for the door. As he opened it, a shaft of moonlight fell across the beds. There, lying still naked, but now mouth to mouth, were the sleeping forms of Chloe and Florinda, their bodies intertwined in an embrace of mutual adoration.
Now he understood why the beds had been pushed together. Now he understood the poster on the wall. Now he understood their secret jokes, their telepathy, and their beautiful female arrogance. They had merely been servicing him as the managing director of Club Village. He would never know whether they had even enjoyed the experience.
Chloe and Florinda were complete in themselves. And suddenly he felt a dreadful embarrassment at his own redundancy. Closing the door softly behind him, Ronay looked around to find his bearings. It was still dark. Setting off through the gardens, he stole silently through the sleeping, humid village, back to his own room.
Part VII
Forty-Nine
The weather broke just before two in the morning. All the guidebooks to the Bahamas state categorically that hurricanes can be expected only between July and November, but climatology is a capricious science, and freak storms, with their attendant hurricane-scale winds and mountainous seas, do occasionally occur out of season.
The storm which hit Elixir in the early hours had been expected for some hours by the Nassau weather watchers, as a depression and attendant cold front had gone bowling down the eastern coast of the United States bringing gales and blizzards and finally rainstorms all the way down to Florida. When it reached the Bahamas, which had been sweltering in another weakening trough blown up from the tropics along the path of the North Equatorial Current, the result was a full-scale climatic war between the very hot air from the south and the cold from the north.
At one fifty-four precisely, the advance guards of the two systems met, lightning tongued across the sky, and a draft of air whistled ominously through the village. A paper cup, tossed into the air by a sudden gust of wind, danced across the gardens.
Ingrid, Karen Sorensen’s roommate, hurriedly climbed the steps to her second-floor room. Already the first drops of rain were bombarding her, great heavy globules of ice water. The moon had disappeared behind a thick bank of scudding clouds, and Ingrid wished she had stayed with Girardot.
Small nightlights led the way along the balcony to her room, C25. She reached her door and, turning the handle, stepped inside away from the storm. The room was pitch black. She had no desire to waken Karen, so she moved carefully around the edge of the bed, to the bathroom and switched on the light. It was at that moment, just as she closed the bathroom door, that she caught a glimpse of Karen. For a second, she thought Karen must have fallen asleep on top of the bed, having spilled a bottle of wine on her pillow.
Ingrid opened the door just a fraction more, peering into the room.
It was at that moment that she began to scream.
Karen was indeed lying on top of her bed, but her head hung at a puzzling angle. What Ingrid had mistaken for wine stains on the pillows and sheets was in fact the still-warm blood which had gushed out when Karen’s throat had been cut from ear to ear.
It was Sharon Kennedy who heard the screams and got to the room first. She switched on the bedside light and stared in horror at the congealing blood which had sprayed across the room and splattered all over the floor, and had then run freely and thickly down the naked breasts and stomach of the dead girl, until it had soaked
into the starched white Club Village monogrammed sheets.
Homer Wolford took the news of Karen Sorensen’s death to Hardin. It was, Hardin would recall later, the moment he had subconsciously dreaded ever since arriving at Elixir. Now there could be no doubt that Dick Pagett had been murdered.
Dressing within seconds, he gave Homer one simple order: The entire village was to be assembled in the restaurant immediately. If the CVs had to drag the guests out of their beds, then so be it. There had to be an immediate roll call. He took it upon himself to inform Quatre Bras.
Outside, in the village, the storm was growing. The palm trees, which normally dipped and bowed so gracefully, were permanently bowed before the increasing gale. From the beach Hardin could hear great breakers racing up the shallow beach. Untethered shutters crashed against window frames.
Hardin raced through the swinging, howling pines to the dormitory area. Before facing Quatre Bras, Hardin had to see the body of Karen Sorensen.
On the third-floor balcony of C Block there was pandemonium. Sharon Kennedy had already posted a couple of CVs by the door, but panic was already gripping the guests who had heard the news.
Inside the room Hardin found Sarojine, the Indian girl doctor, crouched over the corpse. Hardin gulped back the bile which bubbled into his throat. He had no idea that so much blood could flow from one wound. He tried to look into the face of the dead girl, but his eyes were riveted on the gaping neck wound and the blood-soaked hair.
“Did you touch anything?” he asked.
Sarojine shook her head.
“How long …?” He hesitated. “How long ago do you think it happened?” he asked, not even knowing whether it mattered.
Sarojine shook her head. She was a scuba doctor, not a pathologist. “Maybe an hour,” she said. “It’s very recent.”
“Okay,” said Hardin. “There’s nothing you can do here. I think you’re going to be needed out there calming people. I hope to God you’ve got a big supply of Valium, because you’re going to need it. In the meantime, let’s keep the room clear until we can get the police up here.”