The Man Who Died Twice

by The Man Who Died Twice (retail) (epub)

  “I understand the estate might come to between a hundred and a hundred and fifty thousand pounds.”

  “There you are. A half million in West Indian dollars. Say three hundred and fifty thousand American.”

  “But what exactly was your plan?”

  “Why—to tell Jim the truth,” he said impatiently. “Johnny told me about the will. He intended to give Jim half but under the circumstances Jim would certainly have to come and collect it honestly. He should be able to travel within a week. We can explain his appearance and the impersonation by saying he’d been in an auto accident.”

  “And how do you think Johnny would take that?”

  “Well—he’d probably be sore at first. It might be embarrassing but I thought between us Jim and I could think up a story that would straighten things out. After that Jim could stay on, or do as he liked. In any case I simply have to tell him the truth.”

  “And you?”

  “Among other things I could stop being Alma’s cousin.” He stretched backward to put his empty glass on the table. “Do you want to tell Johnny in the morning, or shall I?”

  “I think not.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “I don’t think Johnny should be told.”

  “But—”

  “Not yet, I mean.” She handed him her glass and he put it with the other. “I dare say you’ll have to phone Jim. But until he comes—or at least until you have definite word from him—I think it would be better to go right on with your impersonation. For Johnny’s sake if for no other reason. I think you’re doing very well, Mr. Ward.”

  She rose and moved slowly up to the rail. He could see the line of her strongly boned face silhouetted against the starred sky but he stood where he was until, finally, she turned. When she spoke her oddly accented voice held a quiet sincerity that Ward found difficult to answer.

  “You make a very nice nephew,” she said. “It’s rather a pity you’re not Jim MacQuade.… Good night, Duncan.”

  6

  A PERSISTENT knocking on his door woke Duncan Ward the next morning and the moment he opened his eyes he knew it was fairly late.

  “Yes?” he called. “Come in.”

  Len Osborne pushed the door open and leaned against the casing. He wore khaki shorts and an army shirt, both well faded from countless washings. His sleeves were rolled up, disclosing forearms burned by the sun to the color of old leather, a cigarette hung from one corner of his mouth, and his eyes were amused beneath the thick, black brows.

  “This isn’t my idea,” he said after he’d offered good morning. “Johnny sent me up.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Oh, around half nine. Alma tried to talk him out of it, said you’d been up all the night before, but Johnny thinks anybody who stays in bed after seven is lazy.” He grinned. “He wants to show you the island. You’ll probably get the twelve-dollar tour.”

  Ward threw back the sheet and stood up. He stretched, scratched his head and said he’d be down in ten minutes. He was out of his pajamas before the door closed and when he had shaved in unheated water he stepped under a shower that had but one faucet. Only then did he realize that there were no facilities here for hot running water, and while he turned it on with misgivings he soon learned that it was more tepid than cold and not at all unpleasant to take.

  He had his breakfast—a slice of papaya with lime, eggs, rolls and coffee—on the veranda overlooking the sea while John MacQuade, looking very spruce in his white suit and bowtie, sat in a canvas chair and watched him. His thin gray hair was neatly combed and, while the pallid slackness still dominated the bony face, the skin had a clean, scrubbed look and the dark eyes were impatiently alive.

  “You like to fish?” he said when he had spoken of his plans for the day.

  “Now and then.”

  MacQuade pointed his cane towards a gray cabin-cruiser that was moored two hundred feet from the shore and barely visible over the line of trees.

  “You can use that any time you like,” he said. “Have to carry out your own petrol, though. Natives are pretty clever about siphoning out your tank if you leave much.… Kingfish if you’re lucky,” he said. “Barracuda. Depends on what you’re after.”

  Alma Simmons joined them as Ward finished his coffee. She wore a white skirt and a navy-blue blouse, a jacket over her arm. She gave Ward her nice smile and a pleasant good morning while she put her hand on MacQuade’s shoulder.

  “I thought we’d take my car.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “I’m more used to driving it.”

  “I could drive,” Ward said.

  “I know the roads,” Alma said. “And besides you’ll have to get used to driving on the left and shifting with your left hand. You’d better sit in back with Johnny.”

  “Are we ready?” MacQuade hunched forward to get out of the chair and when Ward noticed that the girl did not help he thought the older man might be sensitive and let him get up alone. “Then let’s get started. When we get down a ways take Deacon’s Road,” he said to the girl. “Let’s go right down Broad Street and show him the metropolis, first.”…

  Ward was not sure just what he had expected of Bridgetown but the impression he got as they rolled slowly along its main street was not particularly inspiring. The pavement was not overly wide and the gutters were deep. The sidewalks were narrow and crowded and, in most cases, were covered by the projecting second floors of the building which lined them, stone buildings mostly, generally two-storied and having one thing in common: a look of antiquity. The side streets opening up on either side were especially narrow and necessarily one-way, and the smartest thing he saw was the blue-trousered, white-jacketed Negro policemen on traffic duty.

  At the end of the street which terminated in a bridge over the final lengths of the Careenage there was a small plaza which MacQuade said was Trafalgar Square. This was dominated by a statue of Lord Nelson but most of the activity surrounding it was commercial—a row of taxis with eagle-eyed drivers, a pottery market, pushcart vendors of both sexes and, farther along the waterfront, huge two-wheeled carts, manpowered, which moved to and from the warehouses and schooners tied up alongside the pavement.

  Crossing the bridge, Ward saw that the Careenage was lined almost solidly along both sides with rugged-looking schooners and sloops which handled much of the interisland shipping, and in the inner basin on the left stood row after row of heavy native-built lighters, which serviced the ships that came to anchor in the roadstead.

  MacQuade made a good guide and it was easy to see he enjoyed it as they rolled along Bay Street. He pointed out the Barbados Yacht Club, the Aquatic Club with its squarish pavilion jutting out over the water; he commented on the yachts moored inshore and named the freighter which was anchored farther out in Carlyle Bay. Finally, after what seemed like miles of traffic, and houses so crowded together that it seemed neighbors could shake hands with each other without leaving their respective porches, the country opened up to the rolling, breeze-swept terrain he had seen from the airport.

  “We’ll stop at The Crane,” MacQuade said a few miles farther on. “Leroy still makes one of the best rum punches on the island.… That’s on the southeast coast,” he said to Ward. “Windy there, rugged, good surf bathing.”

  And when, a little later, they stopped beside an old frame-and-stone structure near the edge of a high bluff, Ward could see the breakers on the white beach, the heat haze that hung over the water farther out where there was nothing but sky and sea and distance.

  “You kids go in,” MacQuade said, “and I’ll wait here. Sort of a nice old bar, Jim.… And Alma,” he added when the girl got out, “tell Leroy to send me out one.”

  “But Johnny—”

  “A pony,” he cut in. “A pony rum punch for a thirsty old man.”

  They went into a low-ceilinged room that was cool and dark. They sat on low stools at a low bar of some native wood that looked hand-hewn and glistened darkly; the chai
rs and tables at the side were low, too, as though everything had been scaled down to fit the beamed ceiling. There were no other customers, and when a round-faced Negro appeared from some shadowed recess Ward asked if he was Leroy.

  “Mr. MacQuade says you make a good rum punch,” he said when the man smiled assent.

  “Just about the best, sah. Just about the best, that’s all.”

  “Let’s try two. And a pony for Mr. MacQuade in the car.”

  They took their time over their drinks, sitting side by side and hunched over with elbows on the bar. In the quiet coolness Ward could smell again the faint fragrance of the girl’s hair and somehow a new impatience began to work on him as he heard her voice explaining the history of The Crane. He was thinking about the telephone call he would have to make and the time it would take before Jim could come and relieve him of the impersonation.

  Yesterday when he thought his secret was safe there had been none of that impatience. He had accepted an assignment and was aware of what he had to do, but now that Kate Royce knew the truth he found himself wishing that he could tell everyone and stop being a phony cousin. He glanced down past the point of his shoulder to watch her face and the movement of her lips, and now the thought of Melvin Tenney and the things MacQuade had said rose up in his mind to bother him.

  He could tell that she liked him; what he couldn’t tell was—how much of this was pure friendliness due to an assumed relationship? What would she think of him when she found out he wasn’t a cousin? And suddenly, realizing that this was important, he tried to reconcile the things MacQuade had told him with the incident he had witnessed the night before. He had thought then that Mike Fabyan had been kissing Alma, but would she do a thing like that if she was in love with Tenney? Or was she the kind that was too damned friendly with every male—and if Fabyan wasn’t kissing her who was he kissing?

  “What does Tenney do?” he asked abruptly.

  “Melvin?” She eyed him curiously. “Well, he has a column three times a week in the Advocate, that’s the daily paper.”

  “What sort of column?”

  “Oh—society, gossip, whatever he happens to think of. And he’s on the local radio once a week.”

  “Is he the current boyfriend?”

  “Current?” She seemed to consider this, studying him with eyes that were no longer amused. “You might call him that. I like him if that’s what you mean. Don’t you?”

  He blinked at her directness. He said he did not know Tenney well enough to say. As an afterthought he added: “I don’t think your uncle does.”

  “No,” she said, “Johnny doesn’t.” She seemed about to continue when the horn sounded outside, and what ever she had in mind was left unfinished. “Oh, dear,” she said. “We’d better run.” She pushed off the stool. “Before he starts tearing the car apart.”

  They lunched at Sam Lord’s Castle a little farther along the coast, a squarish, thick-walled mansion that had been built in 1820 and recently converted into a residential club with plush but limited accommodations. Johnny pointed out the battlements rimming the roof, the black-and-white marble steps, the mahogany columns made from trees grown on the island in years past. When they had finished eating they had their coffee on the rear veranda overlooking the wide lawn which sloped to the edge of the high bluff bordering the beach and the sea beyond.

  Later they drove by back roads to the rockbound coast at Bathsheba; then, backtracking a bit, they came again to the main highway and followed it past Chalky Mount where the local pottery was made, and over the backbone of the island. There were times when the narrow precipitous road gave Ward moments of real uneasiness, but so sure and competent was the girl’s handling of the car that MacQuade chattered on unconcernedly, and they came finally to the coastal plain on the leeward side, to Speightstown, to Holetown, where the English originally landed in 1605, and finally to Highpoint and the tea that was waiting for them.

  So were the Dunhams—Gordon and Judith—and Ward took a special interest in the man because, in the absence of the real Jim MacQuade, Dunham stood to inherit half of the estate. What he saw was a pink-faced, bored-looking man with thinning, sandy hair and pale-blue eyes. In his early thirties, Ward thought, an inch or so above average height, not yet plump but with a look of softness about him and no great personal charm.

  His wife, nearly as tall as her husband, was neither pretty nor ordinary-looking, with her rather long face, high cheekbones, and wide, full mouth. Her print dress looked well used and missed smartness by a considerable margin, but she had a well proportioned, full-blown figure, she carried herself well, and she had an outward air of coolness and reserve, her most striking feature being her thick Titian hair which was straight and pulled to a bun on the back of her neck.

  One thing, however, they had in common: a lack of cordiality in the introduction that followed. They offered no word of welcome to Ward, said nothing about being glad to meet him. They said “How do you do?” pleasantly enough but their smiles were fleeting and perfunctory. They said they understood he’d been touring the island and he said yes, and then Alma took up the burden of the conversation.

  At first Ward was uncomfortably aware of the Dunhams and their guarded inspection as he busied himself with his tea and sandwiches; it was only later that he realized that a change had come over MacQuade. The eagerness with which he had conducted the recent trip was gone. He sat glumly in his chair, speaking only when spoken to and watching the Dunhams with a moodiness that seemed to border on resentment. He acted relieved when the Dunhams left a few minutes later, but he looked tired now and said very little as he sat there, staring out over the water until Len Osborne joined them, a highball in his hand.

  “Well, how was the twelve-dollar tour?” he wanted to know.

  “Swell.” Ward said.

  MacQuade glanced up, studied the younger man, said nothing.

  “Where all did you go?” Osborne listened while Alma told him and then he grinned. “I guess you’ve seen everything then.” He sat down on the arm of a chair and took a swig of his drink. “How would you like to eat a real steak tonight?” he asked.

  “At Morgan’s?” Alma said.

  Osborne nodded and continued to Ward. “Best little nightclub this side of San Juan,” he said. “I phoned Barbara and Tenney and they’re all for it. Tenney’ll meet us there.”

  MacQuade cleared his throat. “I guess the food isn’t good enough for you here.”

  Osborne took another swallow. He gave MacQuade a long and studied look and seemed to be weighing his words.

  “The food, sir, is excellent, as you know. But steaks at Morgan’s are better.”

  The girl glanced from one to the other, spoke solicitously. “But we don’t have to go, Johnny. We can—”

  MacQuade lifted a hand. “Nonsense.”

  “Why not go with us?” Osborne said.

  “No, no.” MacQuade shook his head. “You go along. I’m just tired, I guess. Not used to all that driving.” He pulled himself laboriously out of his chair. “I’ll take a nap,” he said. “Later I can have a tray in the study and let Kate shift for herself. I have some things to do.”

  The Club Morgan was indeed a pleasant surprise to Duncan Ward. Everything about it was attractive: the small bar in the front alcove, the wrought-iron railings and flowerboxes guarding the tables on the upper level, the dance floor set between the two long, airy wings laid out for those who wanted dinner. The construction was the usual coral stone but there were art panels spotted here and there, and recessed in one wall was a vertical glassed-in tank full of small, colorful fish. There was a five-piece local orchestra which was probably the best the island afforded, some calypso singers, and a fill-in piano player who was very good.

  Melvin Tenney was already at the bar and they had a drink there, another at the round table which had been reserved for them. The thin soup was excellent, the steak was perfectly cooked, the French-fried onions crunchily brown, the salad cool and fresh. Between co
urses Ward danced with Alma and with Barbara Connant and he found them both talented but very different. Alma was cool and light in his arms, her following of his movements effortless; the blond Barbara was as expert but she danced with more enthusiasm and there seemed to be more of her to hold, or perhaps it was simply that she made you more conscious of Barbara.

  She was enjoying herself; she said so in her pleasantly husky voice. She said he danced well, and she clung to his hand on the way back to the table where Osborne sat watching them. Later, when it was Ward’s turn to sit one out he watched them on the floor and he could tell from the way the woman clung to Osborne, the way she looked up at him when he was speaking, that she liked him. It made him think of what MacQuade had said the night before about Barbara and Gordon Dunham. He found himself wondering if perhaps Osborne might not be giving Dunham considerable competition.

  The waiter came as they were having coffee. “Mr. Morgan’s compliments,” he said, and put down brandy for the men, B&B’s for the women.

  “He always does that,” Osborne said. “We can buy him one at the bar on the way out.”

  It was Osborne, too, who took the check a half hour later while Tenney lit a cigarette and Ward reached an instant too late.

  “Not tonight,” Osborne said, grinning. “Are we ready?” he added when he had put some bills on the tray. “Then let’s get that drink at the bar and talk to Frank and Helen.”

  Frank and Helen, it developed, meant the Morgans, and Ward mentioned the coincidence of the first names when he was introduced. Morgan, a stocky, powerfully built man with brown hair and an infectious laugh, glanced at his wife.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Some of the clowns accuse us of making up those names.”

  Helen Morgan was a lovely-looking blond woman with blue eyes and a flawless complexion. “Sometimes,” she said, “they even want me to sing.”