The Twenty-Third Man

by Gladys Mitchell

  The car tore across the Plaza and on to the coast road. This ran along past the landward end of the Mole, climbed through cultivated land, mostly sugar-cane, and descended to Villa Tendresa in the arm of a beautiful bay.

  ‘Talk first, swim last,’ said Miranda, whose name, in spite of Shakespeare, Dame Beatrice associated immediately with Sunnybrook Farm. ‘The boatman looks dangerous. Do you think you should tell him that the money you pay for the boat-hire is all the money we have?’

  ‘He will not remain with us. He has a little skiff with an outboard engine and will tow our boat out into the bay, anchor us, and abandon us until we wave to him to come out and bring us in.’

  When they were anchored out in the bay, Miranda said:

  ‘Those orchids.’

  ‘I had heard from Mr Peterhouse himself that he collected them, but I should hardly have supposed that an island in this latitude could provide the rare specimens he postulated.’

  ‘It does not. His orchids are sheer boloney, and Emden found it out.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Emden made a pass at me. He does it to every girl, I guess. I saw it coming and played him for a sucker, but Poppa smacked him down. I guess mine is an old-fashioned Poppa, at that, because he has no idea a girl can take care of herself when it comes to wolves. Anyway, near the beginning, Emden told me about how he had always wondered whether Peterhouse really collected orchids, because to say you collected orchids might mean anything, so one day he followed him into the mountains and where does he go, do you suppose?’

  ‘Well, he did admit that twice he had been taken prisoner by bandits.’

  ‘Taken prisoner my foot! He had a rendezvous with them. So Emden said, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t be true. The bandits here are sheer Oklahoma. They couldn’t kidnap a tortoise. No, I figure Emden was right, and Pop Peterhouse had a date with them.’

  ‘And the reason?’

  ‘Ah, there you have me all mixed up. I just sheerly don’t know. And I wasn’t letting on to Emden I was curious. I just said, “Oh, yeah? So what?” Then I slid off the raft – we were sunbathing on the raft way out by Santa Catalina, but I saw to it there were folks all about and around – and swam ashore. I was just crazy to know the answer, of course, but I was not going to let Emden rib me, so I kept quiet, figuring that he sure would spill in the end. He did not.’

  ‘But you believe he was telling the truth?’

  ‘Well, he’s been bumped off.’

  ‘That does not necessarily mean that Mr Peterhouse bumped him off, you know.’

  ‘That is so. Well, I guess that’s all I can tell you. You’ll be kind of disappointed, no doubt, I haven’t got more of the dope. Dope? Say! What do you know! It could be just that little old thing!’

  ‘Not packed in boxes filled with damp moss, or however Mr Peterhouse is supposed to pack his orchids. I am most grateful for your information, however. It remains, I fancy, to find out what Mr Peterhouse does send to Kew Gardens, if he doesn’t send orchids.’

  ‘You think it’s some other kind of plant? Gee, that’s too bad! It ought to be something exciting!’

  ‘It may be. And, don’t you see, if Mr Peterhouse has a partner at Kew – well, the Gardens are so utterly respectable that nobody would think of their being connected in any possible way with illegal and mercenary exploits.’

  ‘What about your British Customs and Excise? Not much that’s illegal gets past them, if some of my friends’ experiences are anything to go by.’

  ‘I know. That’s the point. Mr Peterhouse’s parcels – if he is doing something wrong – must appear to be innocuous enough. Have your swim, dear child, while, to use your own idiom, I figure it all out. Incidentally, if I may say so, your Americanisms remind me of a Mayfair girl trying to speak Cockney.’

  Miranda went in like a seal and swam like a mermaid. Dame Beatrice watched her, but only the surface of her mind was on the graceful, golden body and the rainbow drops cascading from the dipping and flashing arms. Her thoughts were concerned with the murder by a gang of thugs of an unloved husband in England; the hysteria of a young widow on the first expedition to the cave of the dead men; the unwanted attentions of a man who finished by getting an island knife in his back and who had been raised to regal status after his death; the pimps, trulls, and trollops organized – or not – by a watcher of birds; a metamorphosis of orchids; a coward who ran away and left his companion to die; a Spanish hotel-keeper who had a jealously guarded daughter and a South American son; the brigands who might be more bloodthirsty than they seemed; last – and it was very much inclined to be least – she thought of a man who had been in prison for manslaughter (probably with extenuating circumstances). For all his brash manners and reckless face, Dame Beatrice liked Clun.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Lotus Eater of Puerto del Sol

  BY THE TIME that Miranda had climbed back into the boat, Dame Beatrice had done with speculation and had made up her mind. Without more evidence there was nothing else to be done on Hombres Muertos. She therefore sat still and let time pass until the arrival of a liner returning to England put an end to the period of inaction.

  ‘You’re not leaving us!’ exclaimed Peterhouse, when the hotel porter put her luggage in the entrance hall. ‘And with the problem still unsolved!’

  ‘I sail today.’

  ‘But how did you get a stateroom at such short notice?’

  ‘I cabled.’

  ‘But when, dear lady?’

  ‘A fortnight ago.’

  ‘Dear, dear! You had tired of us all as soon as that?’

  ‘Oh, no. But there are matters at home that need attention.’

  ‘Ah, private affairs! I see. Forgive me. I did not intend to appear to be prying.’

  He insisted upon going down to the Mole to see her off, and arrived with his arms full of flowers. Dame Beatrice deduced, without much difficulty, that he was greatly relieved to be able to assure himself that she really did intend to leave the island.

  ‘Good-bye, Mr Peterhouse,’ she said. ‘It is charming of you to bring me bouquets and escort me to the ship. Perhaps we shall meet again one day. The island is quite, quite charming and your society has been most delightful.’

  She was about to board the liner when a taxi skidded to a halt on the cobbled surface of the Mole, and Caroline’s brother Telham came rushing to the end of the gangway.

  ‘Stop! Stop!’ he cried, waving vigorously. Judging, correctly, that the command was directed at her, she turned inquiringly.

  ‘Dear me, Mr Telham,’ she said mildly. ‘Ought you to excite yourself like this on such a very warm afternoon?’

  ‘Just thought you’d like to know’, said Telham, ‘that the murderer Clun is making his getaway. Only waited until your back was turned to take himself off to Puerto del Sol.’

  ‘Not another of our number attempting to become a troglodyte, surely?’

  ‘Our number! Good heavens! Don’t you class me with that swine! He’s booked in at the Hotel Flores. Well, there you are. It’s up to you now.’ He signalled a taxi and took himself off.

  ‘I can’t make that young man out,’ said Peterhouse, who was still standing at the end of the gangway. ‘Have you ever wondered …?’

  ‘Whether he killed Emden? Yes, of course, I have. On the other hand, if he did, there seems to be no motive. Well, good-bye, again, Mr Peterhouse. Remember me to the orchids.’

  With this Parthian shot, she walked up the gangway and went immediately to her stateroom where she found a stewardess and gave her Peterhouse’s bouquet to put in water. The ship called at three more small ports on the island, and travelled leisurely, remaining several hours at each port so that passengers could go ashore. The first of these ports was not more than a seaside resort and was known as Puerto del Sol. In view of the tidings she had received from Caroline’s brother that Clun had journeyed there, Dame Beatrice did not go ashore, but spent the hours that the ship remained in port in annotating her
case-book. It made interesting reading. She considered each case on what appeared to be its merits, occasionally reserving judgement.

  First she thought over the activities attributed to Mrs Angel. They were not incompatible with one another. She made a note, against Mrs Angel’s dossier, of the fact that Señor Ruiz had a son in South America who made what might seem to be a surprising number of visits to his home. This fact might lend colour to Pilar’s dark disclosures of Mrs Angel’s profession; it might also have coloured Pilar’s prurient imagination. In other words, it remained extremely doubtful whether the chambermaid was a reliable witness.

  The case of the attentive and gallant Peterhouse had points of similarity with that of Mrs Angel. Both, having appeared innocent, if not particularly lovable, beings, were accused of what might loosely be defined as subversive activities. But with Peterhouse, as with the reputed procuress, the imagination of the islanders might well have provided him with a nefarious source of income which, in actuality, he did not possess.

  Then there was Clun. She knew, from a vast and lengthy experience, that nothing was more likely than that a killer would be prepared to kill again, and one of her reasons for returning to England was to find out the details of the manslaughter charge which Clun had had to face. On the other hand, between manslaughter and murder there was an unbridgeable gap. She could not see Clun as a murderer.

  The islanders, including Ruiz, she had already dismissed from her mind. Her eyes travelled over the pages of notes she had made respecting Ruiz, his son, and Pepe Casita. Suddenly she made a rapid hieroglyphic which, if anyone else could have deciphered it, would have read: ‘Luisa Ruiz herself?’ She shook her head. She did not believe it. Luisa could take care of herself where men were concerned, and without the help of a knife.

  ‘But we must leave no stone unturned,’ she said to the steward who brought her some coffee. The boy smiled as he set down the tray.

  ‘Certainly not, madam,’ he said soothingly. ‘Will you be going ashore?’

  ‘Not today. Are you on shore leave?’

  ‘Yes, madam. It’s my turn for a make-and-mend. Anything I can do for you?’

  ‘There is. I have a young acquaintance staying at the Hotel Flores. I wonder whether you would call there and leave a message?’

  ‘Certainly, madam. Glad of something to do. It’s quite pretty round and about here, but there’s not much fun. We’re hardly ashore long enough to pick up a girl and, anyway, I’m not much of a one for these island types.’

  Dame Beatrice wrote decipherably on a page of her notebook and tore it out.

  ‘The name is Clun,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter whether you see him personally or not. There’s no answer.’

  She had written, ‘Keep an eye on Peterhouse if you can.’

  The voyage home was soon over. The ship docked at Southampton where Dame Beatrice’s chauffeur, the sober and respectable George, awaited her with the car, her secretary, and her secretary’s baby son.

  ‘Fancy cutting short your holiday like this!’ said Laura reproachfully, when her employer was settled in beside her. ‘I thought, and hoped, that you were going to have a good three months’ rest. Didn’t you like the hotel?’

  Dame Beatrice, who had given no hint of the happenings on Hombres Muertos, said:

  ‘Let the story of my experiences keep until after dinner. Then I will tell a tale to curdle the blood.’

  ‘Not another murder?’ exclaimed Laura. ‘Oh, dear! And I’ve been out of it all because of This!’ She indicated her son, asleep in his travelling cot. ‘I can’t wait to hear all about it. But if there’s been a murder I don’t see why you’ve come home. Have you made the island too hot to hold you?’

  ‘I hardly think so. I have come to England in search of evidence. I have a very strong feeling that the story began over here. If it didn’t, I shall be none the worse off except for the price of my fare.’

  The story was a good one, and Laura thoroughly enjoyed it. If it lost nothing in the telling, neither did it gain anything, for Dame Beatrice was scrupulously accurate. She concluded by saying:

  ‘So you see why I felt I had to come over here. If my ideas are wrong, at least I shall have cleared away some of the undergrowth and can see the problem afresh.’

  ‘It will be a frightful fag devilling through oceans of newsprint to find out about deaths when you don’t even know when they occurred, though, won’t it?’ asked Laura.

  ‘So much so that I propose to get the devilling done for me.’

  ‘Right. I’ll go up to Town first thing tomorrow. I can stay in Kensington, I suppose? I’ll have to take Junior with me because of feeding him, but I can leave him, between feeds, for four hours at a time. Kitty will come and look after him. She does nothing nowadays but rake in the cash from those beauty parlours of hers.’

  ‘You are not going to take him or yourself to Kensington. Why have I a grand-nephew in Fleet Street? Bonamy Lestrange will love to look up the details and will find them twice as easily as either you or I. Tomorrow we will telephone him and set him to work. And now for another matter. How would you like to take the baby for a short holiday to Hombres Muertos? I feel that an eye should be kept on the guests at the Hotel Sombrero and, as you would be there incognito, so to speak – that is to say, having no obvious connexion with me – you would be a very valuable source of information. What do you say? The ship I came back in takes a couple of days only to turn round, so you must make up your mind at once. I have booked a stateroom, so there wouldn’t be any trouble about that. Ring up Robert and see what he thinks. The climate would suit the baby, I am sure.’

  So, three days later, Laura and her infant son found themselves off the Scilly Isles, heading south and west for the Island of Dead Men, and, long before she was tired of the voyage, Laura was ashore at Reales and en route for the Hotel Sombrero, where a room had been booked by cable. At parting, Dame Beatrice’s final instructions had been:

  ‘You have carte blanche to follow your nose. I cannot tell you what to expect, but I think you may need to put in one or two days at Puerto del Sol to see what Mr Clun is doing with himself. Do not rush into any difficult or dangerous situations. If you are undecided at any point, think of your husband and son and do nothing at all.’

  Laura, as Dame Beatrice was aware, was temperamentally incapable of carrying out this particular instruction. For Laura to do nothing was a mental and physical impossibility.

  ‘Jolly nice for you,’ said her husband, when he was apprised of the plan for her to take a holiday on the island of Hombres Muertos. ‘Be good, and please be careful. It’s rather interesting that the bloke Clun should be there. He did in a chap – manslaughter, of course – just over three years ago, and I believe a fellow called Emden and another called Telham came into the case. Witnesses for the prosecution, if I remember. Keep an eye skinned for Telham. He had the name of being a dark horse, I think, but, of course, it wasn’t my case, so I may not be abreast of the facts.’

  ‘I expect you are,’ said Laura. ‘Can you come to see me off?’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  He did, in due course, see her off, and she and the baby arrived at the Mole of Reales less than a fortnight after Dame Beatrice had left it. Laura regretted that the voyage had to end, for she loved the sea and would never travel by air if she could help it, but she was keenly anxious to meet the guests at the hotel and to see how far her estimate of them coincided with that of her employer. Allowing for the considerable difference in their ages, Laura and Dame Beatrice thought alike about people, and Laura already had the feeling that she knew Mrs Angel, Peterhouse, Caroline, Telham, and Clun, and of the Drashleighs and their adopted son she had received such a vivid impression of a cranky couple with the power to experiment on a defenceless child that she looked forward eagerly to entering the lists against them and giving battle. Laura was, theoretically, at least, on the side of little boys and against their adult persecutors.

  ‘And now,’
she confided to her own small son as the taxi took them to the Hotel Sombrero de Miguel Cervantes, ‘we have to keep an eye on things for a bit, so do your stuff.’

  The baby chumbled his fist and smiled at her.

  It proved easy enough to keep an eye on Dame Beatrice’s fellow-guests at the Hotel Sombrero. The sociable Mr Peterhouse and the (possibly) anti-social Mrs Angel appeared to regard the baby as an introduction to Laura. She welcomed their interest as soon as she knew who they were, and, Luisa Ruiz proving to have a way with, as well as a devotion to, Gavin junior, he was often given into her charge. Laura, thus freed, was soon acquainted with Caroline and Telham also, for she went swimming with them and astonished both by her remarkable speed and efficiency in the water.

  She had been wondering how to introduce the subject of Emden’s death without betraying the fact that she knew Dame Beatrice, and had still found no safe way of doing this when Telham set the ball rolling by mentioning the matter himself. He, his sister and Laura one day were lounging on the raft which was anchored out in the bay. He suddenly said:

  ‘You haven’t been to the cave of dead men yet, have you?’

  ‘No. I’ve heard about it, of course. I’m curious about it, naturally. Is it horrid?’

  ‘Caroline and I think it is, but it’s definitely one of the sights and you ought not to miss it. I wonder old Peterhouse hasn’t made up a party to include you. He regards the cave as his own property, I believe. He certainly shows it off as though it is. Still, even with him you need a native guide.’

  ‘Why? Doesn’t he know the way to it?’

  ‘Oh, yes, but there are the bandits, you know.’

  ‘Bandits? How jolly that sounds! What sort of bandits?’

  ‘I don’t really know. If you feel charitable you’d better ask Peterhouse. The old bore claims to have been captured by them twice. He’ll like to tell you all about it. He swears the cave’s haunted now.’

  ‘I should think it most likely, with all those dead men in it!’