by Basil Copper
NIGHT FROST
Basil Copper
A Mike Faraday Mystery
© Basil Copper 1966
Basil Copper has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1966 by Robert Hale Ltd
This edition published in 2016 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
A Drink for Colonel Clay
1
2
CHAPTER TWO
On the Beach
1
2
3
CHAPTER THREE
Night Frost
1
3
4
CHAPTER FOUR
Cucumber Cool
1
2
3
CHAPTER FIVE
The Ice-Man Cometh
1
2
3
CHAPTER SIX
Mafia
1
2
3
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mr. Mandrake
1
2
CHAPTER EIGHT
Underwater
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
CHAPTER NINE
Otto Gets Rough
1
2
CHAPTER TEN
The Island
1
2
3
4
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Piranha
1
2
CHAPTER TWELVE
Exit a Blonde
1
2
3
Epilogue
1
2
CHAPTER ONE
A Drink for Colonel Clay
1
I sat back in a cane chair, finished off the tall drink in the ice-cold glass and adjusted my straw hat to a finer angle over my eyes. This was as good as it was ever likely to be, I reflected, peeking at white sand, combing green and white sea and striped sunshades, from beneath my lowered lids. Stella and I had come out for a short vacation that had already lengthened to two weeks. I had got a hire car in Tallahassee and we drove down the Cays, mostly admiring the scenery and loafing here and there, where-ever the fancy took us.
I hadn’t left any forwarding address and put out of my mind the pile of bills that might be mounting up on the mat of my L.A. office. It was Stella who had persuaded us to come on over to the Bahamas. Neither of us had wanted to see the worn-out commercialism of Cape Kennedy, so we skipped out of the U.S. on one of the island short-hop airline companies and set down at Nassau. This was too crowded so we came on down the islands until we got to this place.
There was a plane only about every three days and it suited us, so it was likely we would finish off the vacation here. I didn’t know whether I’d be in any hurry to move even then. A usually impecunious P.I. like me takes easily to unaccustomed leisure and Uncle Sam had been more than generous over my last case.* Way things were going I could loaf on till the fall.
I opened my eyes again as a blonde number, her hair bleached almost white with sun, went by in a polka dot bikini that wouldn’t have covered up a self-respecting squirrel. I hastily closed my eyes again. It was hot enough as it was. Hell, I thought to myself, I could stay on until fall next year at this rate.
Even the squeal of a transistor radio from the tiled terrace over by the marble swim pool couldn’t spoil my pleasure. Why they had to have a swim pool a few yards from the edge of the sea, I didn’t know. It was that kind of place. I closed my eyes again as a tall, coloured waiter in a scarlet jacket and white drill trousers carried another clinking tray of tall iced drinks out to the group next to where I was sitting. The sun was so strong that his shadow etched itself heavily over my closed eyelids.
Everyone looked contented down here. Too contented in fact, but I didn’t blame them. The island was surrounded by a sea that shaded off from deepest blue to green and then to bright yellow where the bottom shallowed to sand. It was only about twelve by eight, but it had a small town, three or four villages, a dozen or so clubs and hotels and even an airstrip. The brochures said nothing about poisonous snakes or insects, but even so it would do until the Pearly Gates loomed up.
Stella had gone off shopping somewhere so I had a couple of hours free time until lunch. I was employing them the best way I knew how. Semi-prostrate and semi-comatose. It was the rule of the islands. Half an hour later I woke up conscious that I was beginning to grill; sweat was dripping off me and soaking in the cane chair which was starting to stripe my back. Time I got moving.
I went down the beach at a run which must have seemed suicidal to the natives in this climate. I hit the sea in a shallow dive, was knocked under by the big comber which followed and came up spluttering and full of salt water. It was good, though the temperature of the sea was like warm milk. The girl in the bikini came down to the water’s edge and made a perfect dive; she didn’t wear a bathing cap and she didn’t need one.
She came up looking as though she had spent three hours in a beauty salon, creamed through the water in a perfect overarm crawl and passed me doing about sixty knots, effortlessly heading out to sea. She gave me a dazzling smile. I tried to give her a casual wave in reply and went to the bottom again. When I surfaced trying to look as though it was intentional, the fast number was half-way to Nassau. I sighed and trod water. I guessed I’d stay inshore and paddle. It was probably safer.
I horsed around in the water for another twenty minutes and then gave up; it was too hot, even in there. When I came out and went up the beach to dry off, one of the waiters in the scarlet coats came hurrying down from the hotel terrace. He met me just as I was making the third pass with the towel over my body; I didn’t need anything more. I was dry by then anyway, in this climate.
“Telephone, sir,” said the redcoat. I guess I must have looked surprised.
“I’m hardly dressed…” I said.
He gave me a pepsodent smile. “That’s all right, sir. I’ve brought it out on the terrace.”
When I got back to my chair there was a mile of white cable leading to a junction box in the hotel patio. The telephone itself, in a rather neat arrangement, was hooked over the back of the chair. It was Stella.
“Sorry to trouble you, Mike.”
“A pleasure,” I said.
“Are you doing anything?” she asked.
“Not so’s you’d notice,” I said. “Get to the point, sweetie.”
“I wondered if you could run out and pick me up,” she said. “I’m at Conch Cay. Mrs. McSwayne ran me over to do some shopping and intended to bring me back, but she met some friends and is staying on for a drink. You sure you don’t mind?”
“Not at all,” I said insincerely. “Be right out.”
Mrs. McSwayne was the wife of the proprietor of our hotel and Conch Cay was the nearest village of any size; it was about four miles to the north, but it seemed about the same distance as Zululand in this heat. I looked at the sea again and sighed heavily. Why these women had to go shopping at all on holiday beat me, especially when there was a small shop in the hotel. But there it was.
2
I put on a blue silk sports shirt over my bathing trunks, scuffed on some sandals and I was ready. I took my hire car keys out of my trousers pocket and left the rest of my stuff on the chair. I had some paper money in the pocket of my shirt. On the way out I asked the porte
r to keep an eye on my things. I hadn’t left any money and this might be British soil and all that, but I’ve had property stolen in better places than this. When I drove around front a couple of minutes later I saw the porter carrying my stuff inside.
I’d hired a Caddy, despite my misgivings, but Stella had so many cases of junk she wanted to bring with her, I figured it was easier to throw everything on the back seat. We used a coupon system from the hire firm, which meant we had an identical Caddy waiting for us wherever we stopped off; on islands where they had cars, that is. We hadn’t bothered in Nassau but a car would help on a place like this; and there would be another waiting for us back in Florida.
Good as the service was I preferred my old Buick and on these narrow roads it didn’t seem possible for any other car to get past us; so far they had, but I’d got my doubts, just the same. There was a little breeze up here on the point as the big black car drifted round the dusty roads hacked out of the solid rock. Lush vegetation brushed against the windows as I slowed to let a yellow station waggon go by; the coloured woman driving it gave me a smile like a sunburst.
As I picked up speed again, a bunch of scarlet flowers cut off by the edge of the open window landed on my lap. I figured I could drive with one hand and pick bananas with the other. Conch Cay was a sliver of dazzling white houses and shops, strung round a halfmoon of emerald water where fishing boats and yachts danced at anchor in a lazy swell. I brought the Caddy to a gentle halt in a feathering of white dust from the roadway. I got out of the driving seat like an old man of eighty with rheumatism. The heat here made L.A. seem like Alaska, and I didn’t aim to bust a gut in this atmosphere.
I nodded to a dark-skinned gentleman whose Palm Beach tan made his face almost invisible. I couldn’t see Stella anywhere around so I went into the Bonefish Inn. Ceiling fans redistributed the hot air and it was only minutely cooler than outside, but even that was something. The floor seemed to be made of black glass, there was a lot of cane furniture, cane blinds, cane shutters at the big windows; they were all latched back now to catch what breeze there was off the sea.
There were quite a few people in the cocktail lounge; a high-voiced blonde woman in a yellow beach outfit which emphasised her Michelin-tyre midriff, a party of visiting Rotarians, a few over-hearty Colonial-type Englishmen, an obvious bar-fly or two. The two white-coated Bahamians at the bar seemed to be busy, so I sat down in a comer and studied the company. While I was doing this a big man in a pearl-grey suit drifted in.
He wore a white panama, yellow socks and beach shoes. He got immediate attention from the bar-tenders. I guessed it was on account of his size. He was about nine feet tall and broad with it. I figured he’d at least ask for a double paraffin but he settled for a whisky. I felt disappointed. I caught the bar-tender’s eye so I edged up behind Camera. I felt like a dinghy alongside a battleship.
“What’ll be your pleasure, sah?” the bar-keep said in that well-modulated low voice they all have in the islands. It’s supposed to sound very English, but I didn’t find it hard to take. I ordered a lime-juice with a dash of something hard in it and plenty of ice. I carried the clinking glass over to one of the big windows and sat sipping and looking out over the blue stretch of sea and sky. This was one of the better days in a P.I.’s life, I decided.
I had been there about fifteen minutes, thinking about nothing in particular and absorbing local colour,—when I saw Stella pass the window. She was with some other people, but I guessed she’d see the car and come on in. I just had time to order a drink for her and sit down again before a group of people came in through the outer door. There were Stella, a middle-aged couple I recognised as Mr. and Mrs. McSwayne and a tallish, military-looking figure in a grey flannel suit I hadn’t seen before.
Stella detached herself and came on over.
“Hi,” she said. I made a suitably inane reply. Stella’s been my secretary for some while now, but I couldn’t get used to seeing her like this. She wore sky-blue shorts that fitted her body like she’d grown up inside them, a matching shirt-top that left four inches of bronzed mid-riff bare, and her long, lazy legs ended up in white cork and leather beach shoes. She had all the usual accessories but it was the way they were distributed on her that kept me interested. Apart from that she was just about the best secretary in the business.
I finished making my inventory and realising it was too hot, I raised my eyes to her face. She wore an amused look, like she knew what I was thinking, which she probably guessed anyway. Her honey-blonde hair was drawn back with a blue ribbon the same colour as her outfit. The coloured bar-tender risked a heat stroke with the rate he trundled Stella’s long drink over. I noticed he didn’t provide the same facilities for the other people in the bar. But I didn’t blame him for that.
“Come over to the bar, Mike,” Stella said. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
We left our drinks on the table. The McSwaynes greeted me with noisy effusiveness and then moved off down the bar to join their friends. The man in the grey flannel suit had just picked up a whisky as we came up behind him. He was around sixty, I should have guessed, well-preserved, with a wiry frame. His tan was deep and even, his grey hair brushed impeccably back from the temples. His grey eyes were clear and a small white moustache was carefully trimmed back from his lips. Even without the regimental tie neatly tucked in under his cream shirt tabs he had British officer stamped all over him.
“This is Colonel Clay,” said Stella, introducing me.
The Colonel smiled. His grip was dry and firm. “Delighted,” he said in that clipped voice which annoys some Americans, but which I find curiously attractive. “Delighted, Mr. Faraday; I’ve been wanting to meet you. Didn’t I read something about that Washington business, the other day? Afraid you’ll find it very dull down here. Not much like your line of country.”
“Suits me,” I said. “We’re on vacation.”
“So the little lady told me,” he said. “I’m in the same line of business myself.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Colonel Clay represents the British Government in these parts,” said Stella, deftly steering the three of us back to our table.
The Colonel shrugged deprecatingly. “I’d hardly put it like that,” he said. “Bit of diplomacy, bit of police work, you know the sort of thing.”
He drank from his glass. “For my sins,” he added, in the short silence which followed. “You must both come to dinner with me, one evening—if you’re staying, that is.”
“We’d like to,” I said. I was partly turned towards the door of the bar and I was studying the big man, who had turned back to the bar-keep for another drink and was now engaging him in conversation. I noticed he kept his eye on the big clock over the main door of the bar. There was something about him which seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
“I was just telling the little lady,” the Colonel was saying, “there’s a regatta and military parade over here on Saturday. Should be worth watching. They’ve got a Highland Regiment coming over. Though perhaps that sort of British function bores you, Mr. Faraday? Bit pompous for some Americans, I daresay?”
“I can take it or leave it,” I said. “I’ve got nothing against England, if that’s what you mean.”
He laughed. “Quite so,” he said. “I didn’t mean to put it like that.”
We talked on for another ten minutes and then he looked at the discreet gold watch at his wrist and said he had to go. He was an engaging old buffer and it had been quite an entertaining quarter of an hour. We all got up together and I promised to take him up on the dinner engagement. He said he’d give us a ring at the hotel.
We all went out of the bar door in a bunch, waving to the McSwaynes over in the corner. Stella picked up a big cane shopping basket from the bartender and gave it to me to carry. I might have made some comment but we had the Colonel with us. As we came out the door, I nearly cannoned into a little man who was hurrying up the steps. He wore a bright red
T-shirt; all I could see clearly of his face was a bald patch on his forehead and a pair of mean, close-set eyes, but it was enough. He muttered an apology with ill grace and went inside, his eyes raking the room.
I stood on the steps for a moment, letting Stella and the Colonel get ahead. I saw red-shirt go up to the big gorilla at the bar and start talking excitedly to him. Then they shifted over to a table in the middle of the room. I went on down the steps and joined the Colonel and Stella. He was sitting at the wheel of a scarlet Alvis, a little English sports job, that looked ideal for these narrow roads with its small build and rakish lines. I noticed he wore wash-leather gloves for driving, even in this heat.
“It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Faraday,” he said to me with a smile. “We really must make that a definite evening.”
He lit a cigarette with a gold motif stencilled on it from a lighter set into the car dashboard. I was disappointed. I thought he was going to get a Meerschaum pipe and a deer-stalker from the glove-locker. He nodded again, gave Stella a long smile of appreciation and was off, the car sliding smoothly from the lot onto the road, with an imperceptible gear-change. He didn’t rev the engine or accentuate the gears and I should have said he was quite a driver. In a second or two he was a scarlet dot in the middle of a dust cloud.
“I bet he was a boy when he was about twenty-five,” I said reflectively.
“He isn’t so bad now,” said Stella with definite appreciation.
“Don’t be disgusting,” I told her puritanically. She chuckled.
We went over to the Caddy. I winced as I eased myself into the driving seat and slung Stella’s basket in the back. The heat of the leather seat seared its way through my thin shirt and raised the perspiration on my bare legs. Stella just sat down and fussed with her handbag. She didn’t seem to notice the heat at all and I noticed there wasn’t a bead of perspiration on her forehead.
I sat on for a few seconds longer, puzzling out something. I looked back at the Inn. The two men who occupied my thoughts were now sitting at the window. I fancied they were looking over in our direction.