“I suppose Stella’s told you about the oil?” Barney began.
“She mentioned it last night, but we had other things on our minds. The fire and all that,” I added hastily to resolve any possible ambiguity because Stella — as women will at the most unsuitable moments — had tittered. “Congratulations.”
“It’s early days for that yet but there may be something in it. The point is that we want to establish the basis of a land-holding company which can deal with the Government, the owners of the mineral rights, and the American based exploration people, who provide the know-how and will form with us a company to operate the oil field, if their forecasts prove to be justified.”
“I thought that you personally held all the land involved already.”
“Everything between the road and the sea, all the land where there has been exploration so far. The possible field may extend inland, but in any case we want to acquire a wide strip on the other side of the road so that we can control ancillary development. I don’t want to see this coastline spoiled, but oil would be a great thing for the whole country — and we could all use the profits, I imagine. Control of both sides of the road might prevent unnecessary unsightliness.”
“What you are suggesting then, I take it, is a moderate investment now and a larger one if and when full scale boring has proved that the oil is really in exploitable quantities.”
“That’s up to you. The owners of the land can just sit back and draw royalties, or take a small loss if the oil doesn’t materialise. The question of a larger gamble can be decided later.” Barney seemed disappointed that I was not more enthusiastic, as I should certainly have been had the severance of our friendship not been so imminent. “For further exploration we need a licence and that means publicity. I just thought you might like the chance of getting in on the ground floor.”
“I like it very much,” I said, “and I’m most grateful. It’s just not the sort of investment that I’m accustomed to. If you think it’s worthwhile I’ll certainly come in — as far as I can.”
“Discuss it with Frank before you make up your mind; he’s the expert. I’m going down to the village to ring up the guards.” He got up, glanced out of the window, said — “Here’s the postman,” and strode out of the room. A moment later he was back with a bundle of letters which he handed to Stella without apparently having looked at them. “Someone may want to have a word with you, Standish, about this witchcraft business,” he said, “though I suppose there are others who can tell them more than you can.”
“There certainly are,” I agreed, but Barney had gone again, this time with more finality.
His departure was like the shutting off of a dynamo. Though Frankie and Stella were far from being negligible personalities, they lacked the nervous energy which made Barney so lively, if at times uncomfortable, a companion. For a minute or two there was silence while the American selected some papers from a sheaf in his brief-case and Stella sorted through the bundle of letters, tossing those for Barney on to his desk and wrinkling her nose in either pleasure or distaste as she made a little pile of those addressed to her. Over the last envelope she raised her eyebrows.
“It’s for you, Standish,” she said. “From one of your girl-friends. Quick work.” She threw it to me, observed that she must go and talk to Mrs. Kealey about dinner, and left the room.
“Maps and reports and an assessment of probabilities.” Frankie laid a small heap of chosen documents on the table in front of me. “You read ’em and you’ll know as much as any of us. The prospectors know their stuff and they’re as honest as they come.”
The words registered in my mind but I was not really paying very much attention. My letter had been redirected by the Chelsea post office and had obviously not made the journey across Ireland by bus. I wondered if Stella had recognised the writing, for it was in a hand that I had not expected to see again though it had once been as familiar as my own.
“Minerals are found by fellas with a nose for them,” Frankie pursued. “I don’t say I’d necessarily back a nose against scientific equipment, but when the two go together and both smell oil I’d say the chances were good.”
He had taken off his dark glasses but that did not make him any more sociable-looking. His eyes were ice-blue and cold, the light in them the glitter of ice rather than the twinkle of benevolence; this was the more odd because he had been quite affable when he rescued me from the ditch and he had the reputation of being a friendly and bonhomous man. I had the unpleasant feeling that my intentions towards Stella, and probably hers towards me, stood before those shrewd eyes in shameful nakedness. My somewhat odd reaction was to shove into my pocket my unopened letter, as if it too were something of which to be ashamed. I picked up the topmost map and stared at it for some seconds before I realised that I was holding it upside-down; after that I concentrated, and the thing began to make some sense to me.
“Isn’t there a bit of ground somewhere in the oil area that Barney sold a little while ago and now would like to get back?” I inquired more for the sake of saying something remotely intelligent than out of any desire for further information. “Stella told me something about it.”
“Yep.” Frankie’s artificial hand clanked as he moved it on the table. “I imagined you’d know about that.”
“I don’t know much. Is it marked here?”
“Not on the Ordnance, on the sketch map. Got a dotted line round it.”
I had a look. “Why that’s bang in the centre of the area where the oil is supposed to be. Five acres isn’t much but it could be a hell of a nuisance. I suppose these signs in red are meant to indicate oil?”
“That’s right.”
“What do you think of his chances of getting the field back?”
“You might say he’d already got it back — or you mightn’t see it that way.” He took a small box of Hoyos de Monterey from his case and tore it to pieces trying to open it. “Stella is the registered owner of that land now.”
I watched him playing hell with the box; two at least of the cigars were damaged beyond use. What he was doing was absurd, but what he had said was utterly fantastic.
“Did you say — Stella?”
“Stella. God damn this bloody thing.” He tore off another strip of wood and reefed the outer leaf of another cigar. “They’re in lousy condition anyway.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“You mean you didn’t know?”
“I mean it isn’t true. She’d have told me.”
He stopped operations on the cigar-box and hurled it with unnecessary violence into a waste-paper basket, then he turned his glare on me. “Yeah,” he observed in a slow drawl, “I expect she would.”
“She didn’t.”
“Didn’t get round to it, I guess.”
“There was plenty of time. She told me the field had been sold — twice.”
“She tell you who bought it?”
“Some girl in the first place, she said, then a solicitor for some anonymous purchaser. I know Stella as well as I know Barney. I know what she’d do and what she wouldn’t do. She’s incapable of the underhand sort of thing that you’re suggesting.”
“I’m not suggesting. I’m telling you.” The glare had given way to a troubled expression and the certainty had gone out of his voice. “We don’t even know what we’re capable of ourselves till the thing is done. I hope to God I’m wrong.”
“You are.”
“The fella who acted for the anonymous buyer happens to be Stella’s attorney.”
“Did he tell you he bought the land for her?”
“Is that likely? If you want the details, a girl who works in the office told her sister and the sister told Joe.”
“The chap who drives you around?”
“That’s right.”
“That sounds like an Irish story all right — and a made-up one. It isn’t true. When did Joe tell you?”
“This morning. He heard it at the party last night.”
/>
“A bit of party bitchery, that’s all. Did they know about the oil?”
“A rumour, maybe. Bound to be a rumour.”
“Some people find it irresistible to embroider on rumours.”
Frankie sighed. “Don’t know that I’d blame her if she had bought it,” he said, “but I thought ——” He broke off in mid-sentence, took a well-rubbed leather cigar-case from his pocket, opened it and peered into it gloomily; obviously he had been only too well aware that it was empty. All the belligerence had gone out of him; he looked old and tired, a frail giant now. With a grunt at the effort of stooping he fished the maltreated box out of the basket and this time with great care and deliberation and a paper-knife set about removing what was left of the cover without further damage to the contents. He sniffed suspiciously and rolled one or two of the cigars between his fingers. “Lying too long on the shelves of a country shop doesn’t do these things any good,” he said, “but they’re all I’ve got. Have one.”
“Thanks.” It was much too early in the morning for me, but he was trying to re-establish a friendly atmosphere and we both needed to be calmed; we smoked for a little in silence. “Tastes all right to me,” I said.
“Stale and too dry — brittle as bedamned. Joe will have to run into Inish for a supply.”
The girl April came to my mind. “Don’t suppose he’ll mind that.”
“Guess not.”
“Why should Stella want to buy her husband’s land back without letting him know?” I asked as one looking for information rather than as one who seeks to provoke argument.
“You’ve been married yourself,” Frankie mumbled through his cigar; he was putting what was left of the undamaged ones into his case. “You know as well as I do that there are times when a wife will do something unreasonable for no other purpose than to annoy her husband — or vice versa.”
“And times when she’ll go to endless trouble to surprise him with something that she knows he wants.”
He took his attention away from what he was doing and looked at me searchingly. “You think this is one of those times?”
“It could well be,” I said.
We went back to the subject of investment without bringing our minds fully to bear on it; we were, I think, each anxious to reach some point at which we might be done with the matter for the time. I told Frankie that I was prepared to come in on the venture up to a stated reasonable amount but that I should have to sell stock to get the requisite cash; I would get in touch with my broker at once and wait for Barney to let me know the number of shares that had been allotted to me and the exact amount of money required. Barney, therefore, need take no positive action at all to end my participation in the business after I had run away with his wife. I felt, not unnaturally, like a skunk, but I knew that the offer of shares had been made to me purely out of friendship and that — however uncertain the project — a man of Barney’s wealth and connections would have no trouble in filling the gap. If, however, I and my little bit of money should by any chance really be needed I and they would still be available. All that I was concerned with at the moment was to avoid getting into a position from which there could be no ready retreat.
“That’s that then.” Frankie gathered up his papers and returned them to his brief-case. He seemed to have reached the opinion that, if there were any hankie-pankie going on, I was not consciously a party to it; he was still worried, though, about something. “Said I’d meet Joe in the village. You care to walk down with me?”
Barney had not returned, Stella was still — presumably — closeted with Mrs. Kealey and I felt that I must know what it was that Frankie wanted to get off his chest; I walked down to the village with him.
The avenue curved between a long screen of evergreens on the one hand and on the other open ground, pasture and meadowland; it was very hot. Frankie Marr moved with easy ground-covering strides, so that I had to hurry to keep up with him. For the first half-mile he said nothing at all, then abruptly he came to the point.
“You remember yet the name that little fairy witch used when he christened the doll last night?”
“I hadn’t forgotten.”
“Didn’t think you had.”
There was no reason why I should not tell him; he was unlikely to blow up as Barney would have done — and Stella was not there to be hurt.
“It was Stella,” I said.
“Stella,” he repeated. “Sure it was.”
“I didn’t actually hear it. Myles told me.”
“It’s what Joe told me.”
“Myles said the queer didn’t mean any harm.”
“Didn’t mean any harm.” Frankie snorted, then he repeated the phrase slowly a couple of times over, as if he were trying to complete some memory of which it had evoked an echo. My mind got to it first but it was he who actually muttered the lines — “Or to be naked with her friend a-bed an hour or more, not meaning any harm?’ ”
Under the circumstances it was not my favourite quotation; I made haste to disown it. “Not entirely apposite,” I said. “Othello was worrying about harm being done; in this case what matters is whether harm was meant.”
“What matters is the choice of the name,” he corrected crisply. “No one does a thing like that without meaning harm.”
With a long blare on its horn a big car came shooting between the gates just as we came in sight of them; at first I took it to be Barney’s wagon but it turned out to be full of guards. Abreast of us it slowed up to allow a sergeant who might have been the one I had met at the fire on the previous evening to give us the once-over; apparently he recognised Frankie, and possibly me, for he gave something between a wave and a salute and the car went hurtling on up the avenue so fast that its tyres sent little spurts of gravel scudding over the grass verges on either side.
“It’s the first time I’ve seen those chaps move so quickly,” I observed. “They must be after something more mobile than a statement.”
“They don’t need to hurry. In a place like this they know their people. If they haven’t got a local face to fit a particular crime, they look for a stranger, and strangers are easily found. It’s as simple as that.”
“They’ve still got to pin it on so it will stick.”
“They can do that too. They’re no fools. No sir!”
I had, I am afraid, been looking on the aftermath of Elly’s murder as a merely academic exercise, and a simple one at that. Everyone said that her husband had done it and everyone was probably right; time could be relied on to provide the proof. I had forgotten that somewhere a desperate man must be hiding — if he were not already dead by his own hand — and that it was as necessary to find him and deal with him as to establish his guilt. Anyone who had come even as close as I had to seeing the body of his victim could have little sympathy for the killer, yet the reminder that the hunt was on for a human quarry did more to shatter the peace of Hazard Point for me than the murder itself had done. Elly’s earthly troubles were over; this other unpleasantness remained. I spoke my thoughts aloud.
“If her husband did kill her, he is probably sorrier for it and will mourn her more sincerely than anyone else.”
“Why not give himself up then?”
“Perhaps he’s gone over the cliffs already — that could be where the guards are heading — or if he’s hiding it’s probably from shame rather than to avoid the consequences.”
“The hell with his troubles,” said Frankie. “We’ve all got enough of our own.”
A hundred yards on the village side of the gates Barney’s old shooting-brake was parked in the shade of some roadside chestnut trees but there was no sign of Barney himself. I stopped beside the car to relight my cigar, which I had allowed to go out in my sudden preoccupation with the murder, so that for a moment we were silent in the shadows and there was no sound of our footfalls. To anyone with the sun in his face the road might appear to be empty, and it was from the sunny side that Barney came, from the other side of a boundary fenc
e irregularly hedged with fuchsia; he jumped down into the road and turned to give his hand to my hostess of the previous evening, Kinky Myles.
CHAPTER V
Kinky appeared not to notice Barney’s hand and leapt lightly down from the fence under her own steam; it was obvious that she had seen us.
“Hallo, darlings,” she called. “We’ve just been to look at the cottage.” She gave a little shiver to show how the sight had affected her. “Mr. Hazard has been telling me all about it.”
Barney gave me the impression that he would like us to believe that he, too, had seen us before he emerged from behind the hedge; he fired a question almost before he had turned round.
“Did you meet the guards?”
“A carful shot past us,” Frankie said. “Didn’t stop.”
“There’s a report Scanlon’s been seen on the cliffs.”
“The mur ——” I corrected myself. “Elly’s husband?”
“Yes. Three parties of guards are converging on the place where he was seen. He’s a dangerous man. Don’t think Mrs. Myles should be wandering about alone.”
“We’re walking down to the village; if she’s going that way ——”
“Very well. I’d better see what’s happening.” He bolted into his car, started the engine, then said in a low tone meant only for me — “I’ve been asking about this witchcraft business. Nasty. Nothing to it, of course — just coincidence, but ——” He wrinkled his nose in disgust and with a parting wave to all three of us shot away down the road. Watching the speed at which he turned in through his gates, I considered it fortunate that no other vehicle — particularly not the police car — was trying to come out at the same time.
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