He shrugged. “But poor men can’t afford to wait, Kay. That’s the tragedy. It was different with Ivor who was a rich man. I don’t suppose he even knew that things were hanging fire. He didn’t have a moment’s worry, whereas I was risking everything, plowing in money I couldn’t afford to protect my investment. Then—everything was still unsettled when my health broke down.”
He hesitated, smoothing the light quilt with his fingers. “Last time he was here in Bermuda Ivor thanked me for putting his funds into that particular investment. The merger had gone through and he had made an even larger profit than I had promised him. Whereas I—for all I knew—had lost not only my original purchase but also most of my collateral, Maud’s securities.”
“Well?” Kay was trying to keep the annoyance and uneasiness out of her voice.
“I finally told Ivor my predicament. I hated having to do it. But he was very kind and asked me why on earth I hadn’t mentioned it earlier. This time when he flew to New York he promised he’d do his best to rescue Maud’s securities and my own collateral. In fact, he said that if they hadn’t sold me out I might find I’d made a killing myself. That is, we’d have enough from that one deal for the family to live on.”
“And you have made money? Everything’s all right now?”
“I don’t know if I’ve made any money. I do know that Ivor got back all the collateral. He was to bring the certificates down with him this time. We didn’t have a chance to talk business last night but he did tell me that he’d got them and I wasn’t to worry. He had a nice wedding present for me, he said.”
“But those stocks are your own—and Maud’s. They’re not a present.”
“Certainly they are ours.” Gilbert gave a little shrug. “That is, they would be ours if I had them.”
“If you had them! You said Ivor brought them yesterday.”
“Exactly, my dear. But he didn’t happen to give them to me.”
“Then—then where are they?”
“Somewhere in his baggage, I imagine. Don took it all over to the playhouse last night, didn’t he?” Gilbert was looking at her, the awkward flush still on his face. “Now perhaps you see how you could help, Kay. Ivor’s dead and Major Clifford is making a police jamboree out of it. If he finds my stocks among Ivor’s personal belongings he’s liable to impound them along with everything else. It may be a long time before we could get them again and even then it might be difficult to prove they were ours.” He added hesitantly: “Besides, it would bring the whole thing out into the open and Maud would have to know that I used her securities without asking her permission. Maybe you think I deserve having her know that. That’s not the point. The point is that those securities represent virtually all our capital. We can’t afford to run the risk of losing them.”
“You mean you want to try to get them back—out of Ivor’s baggage?”
“Exactly.” Gilbert leaned forward, his hands resting on the quilt. “The police haven’t gone to the playhouse yet. If only the securities could be gotten out before they arrive this morning, everything would be all right. I’m a cripple. It isn’t possible for me to do it myself. I can’t ask Maud or the children. But I thought perhaps that you…”
“But last night the Major ordered us not to go to the island.”
“I know. But he hasn’t arrived yet. If the policeman is still there at the swimming beach, you could slip over to the island from Simon’s house, the next house down the bay. You wouldn’t be seen from there.”
“But… Gilbert, you’d have to tell me what to look for.”
“Look for a folder. There’ll be security certificates, stocks, bonds, and probably business papers and things too. Somewhere in his baggage. I would like to have everything there is in the folder. Apart from getting our own property back, as Ivor’s lawyer it’s my responsibility to go through his papers before the police start meddling with them. And I don’t want anyone to know.” He grimaced. “Particularly not Maud.”
“Of course.” Kay hesitated a moment; then, with a gesture of resignation, she said: “All right, Gilbert. I’ll do my best.”
“Thank you.” His hand moved to hers, touching if gently. “You’re being particularly kind not to scold me.” He smiled. “And don’t look so criminal, my dear. I’m not asking you to break the law. We’re only skirting around a petty regulation laid down by an over scrupulous policeman.” His face was grave again and little lines around his eyes gave away his anxiety. “But do try to get them. It is very important for all of us.”
“Of course, Gilbert. I’d better go right away. Major Clifford might arrive any moment.”
She hurried out of the room.
There had been no need for Gilbert to stress the urgency of the situation. Whatever he had done, however foolish or ill-advised he had been—that didn’t matter now. Maud’s small capital, the very mainstay of the Chiltern family, was at stake. That, more than any of the other ever-accumulating dangers, was the one to be eliminated as quickly as possible.
The living room, bathed in a fresh early sunlight, was still empty. The others hadn’t come down yet. Nor was there any sign of Major Clifford. Her watch showed her that it wasn’t eight-thirty yet. She ought to have plenty of time to get to the island, open the bags…
Open the bags. With sudden uneasiness she realized that Ivor had never gone to the playhouse the night before. That meant his bags would still be locked. That problem seemed insoluble until there slipped back the memory of that tense moment after dinner when Ivor had interrupted her scene with Don. He had given Don his keys then, had told him to unpack. She was sure of it.
Don would know.
She hurried onto the terrace and across the lawn to the slave cottage which gleamed vivid white in the dark-green cedars above the swimming beach.
Remembering the young boatman’s indignation when she burst without warning into his cottage the night before, Kay knocked cautiously at the half-open door. At his curt “come in” she entered the little living room. Don Baird was sitting moodily in front of a table piled with law books. Beneath the crew haircut his blunt, aggressive face was gaunt and pale. He didn’t look as if he’d been doing much studying.
Kay said quickly: “Don, you’ve got to help me. I have to get something that was in Ivor’s baggage over on the island. Last night he told you to unpack. Did you?”
“Unpack!” He snorted. “He hired me as a boatman, not a valet. Certainly I didn’t unpack. I dumped all the bags in the bedroom.”
“And the keys?”
“On the dressing table. A whole bunch of them.” He watched her curiously. “What’s the idea anyway? What are you trying to get?”
“I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anyone.” Then, because the curiosity in his eyes had turned to suspicion, she added: “It’s nothing to do with—with the murder. But it’s very important.”
“Important enough for you to go to the island when the Major vetoed it?”
She nodded. “I thought I’d go round to the Morley house and paddle over from there. With any luck, the man on guard here at the swimming beach won’t see me,”
“He certainly won’t see you because he’s gone.” Don’s lips moved ironically. “What a break for you. About ten minutes ago I saw him come up from the swimming beach, dash for his bike, and pedal away. It looked as if he’d found something down there— something important.” He added: “If you make it quickly, you could get there and back before the cop returns. You better go from the Morley place anyway, though. It’s safer. Can you ride a bike?”
“I could three years ago.”
“O.K. I’ll get you Elaine’s. It’ll save time.”
He gripped her elbow and guided her purposefully out of the cottage, across the lawn to a little coral bicycle shed at the corner of the carriage drive. Then he went into its shadowy interior and eased one of the bicycles out of the stand, swinging it around.
Abruptly he looked at her over the glistening handle bars. With a casualness that ran
g very false, he said: “By the way, have you had a chance to talk to Elaine?”
Kay nodded. “I talked to her last night.”
His eyes flickered, no longer able to conceal his burning anxiety. “What—what did she say?”
Though no time should be wasted from her trip to the island, this chance to check on Elaine’s confused story could not be missed. Trying to meet the challenge in his eyes, she said: “Among other things, she said she was with you in the cottage.”
“Sure. She was—for a while.”
“And you quarreled?”
“Quarreled?” He leaned over the bicycle, looking very strong and arrogant. “What makes you think we quarreled?”
“Didn’t you?”
“We certainly didn’t.” An unexpected smile lightened his face, softening its ruggedness, giving it a fleeting, vivid attractiveness. “She came across. I told you she would. She admitted the whole thing with Ivor was a mistake, that she loved me, that she’d realized what a fool she’d been.” He paused, adding with a rather naive pride: “Don’t tell the others. But after this darn mess is cleared up we’re going to be married.”
Kay stared incredulously, remembering Elaine last night in the kitchen; Elaine saying passionately: “Don told you I love him? It’s crazy. It’s Ivor I loved. I—I hate Don.”
The smile had drained from the boy’s face. “What are you staring at me like that for?”
“You said Elaine promised to marry you last night?”
“Sure.”
“Do you know what she told me. She told me she only went to the cottage because you kept on pestering her; she said you tried to make love to her against her will, that she struggled to get away. That was how she tore her dress and scratched her cheek.”
He jerked his head back as if she’d struck him. Then with a lightning change to anger he flared: “You’re lying.”
“That’s what she said.”
“But it’s a filthy lie. She never struggled with me. Her dress never got torn when she was with me. She…”
His voice trailed off. For a long moment they stood there in the little shed, staring at each other. She was almost sure, as she watched him, that he was the one who was telling the truth, that Elaine had lied about the meeting in the slave cottage just as she had lied about so many other things. But the bare fact itself was not so dreadful as the expression on Don’s face. It gave away so completely what he was thinking— the torturing dread of suspicion in him.
He looked down at his bronzed, big-knuckled hands and then up again at her. There was no attempt now to keep her from guessing his thoughts.
“Last night,” he said huskily, “when I found the dress, when you—you pointed out that bloodstain, I wondered. All night I’ve been fighting against it, trying not to think. But I guess we’ve got to face it now. She lied about me. She couldn’t have lied about me unless…” The muscles in his throat were working. “Do you think—do you think she did it?”
Kay thought suddenly of those white pajama pants Elaine had been ironing. If they were Don’s he might easily know much, much more than she about who killed Ivor. Much more than he had any intention of telling her.
She said: “And you, Don? Do you think she did it? Don’t you know anything?”
“Me?” His lips tightened. “I was over at Dr. Thorne’s. You know that. I don’t know a thing.”
“Then why don’t you go to Elaine, try and make her confide in you. You’re the one person who has any chance of getting her to tell the truth. Take her the dress.”
“The dress!” he broke in sharply. “I can’t take her the dress. Last night I destroyed it, burnt it in the cottage fireplace.”
“You—you burnt it?”
“What else could I do? What do you suppose the police would have thought if they found it?” He squared his jaw. “But I will talk to Elaine. I’ll make her realize I’m ready to see her through whatever happens.”
That phrase had a familiar ring. Terry had used almost exactly the same words last night. Terry, Don—both of them suspecting the worst about Elaine, both of them ready unquestioningly to protect her.
Don was still gazing at her. “And you—you’ll stick by us too, won’t you?”
She nodded. What else was she doing except sticking by all of them—sticking by them in a way that was becoming terrifyingly wholesale?
He took her hand, crushing it in clumsy fingers. “I knew you had the stuff. Thanks, Kay.” Then, as if the thought of being able to do something definite had steadied him, his voice took on its normal brusqueness. “Listen, if you want to get to that island, you better make it snappy.”
He pushed the bicycle out onto the lawn. Tamarisks and a thick banana patch screened them from the house, but he looked around to make sure they were not observed.
“O.K. Go straight down the bay road. The Morley house is the first one you come to. Pink with white shutters. You can’t miss it. Good hunting,” he said, “whatever it is you’re hunting. But don’t let anyone see you unless you’re prepared for a duel with Major Clifford.”
As she started off he waved almost jauntily. And he was smiling again—his wide, self-confident smile.
Chapter Eleven
KAY WOBBLED DOWN the carriage drive and swung shakily out into the white coral road. It was harder to recover the knack of cycling than she had imagined. Doubly hard now that she had to keep her eyes skinned against possible observers.
The road, hedged in on both sides by cascading pink oleanders, curved sharply, following the line of the bay. Fortunately it was deserted. Once through a gap in the bushes she caught a glimpse of a young colored man lazily stabbing at a melon patch with a hoe. He did not look up, and, apart from him, the whole radiant morning scene was empty.
Soon she reached a low-lying bungalow with white shutters which lay back from the road behind a vine-patterned stone wall. Dimly Kay recognized it as the house in which, three years ago, Rosemary Powell had lived with her mother. It was very different now. A luxurious new wing and a general air of easy opulence had dispelled the former atmosphere of decayed charm.
Kay swayed off the bicycle, propped it against the oleanders, and stepped uncertainly through a circular coral moon gate into the garden. From the far side of the house came the indolent drone of a lawn mower. She looked around anxiously but the gardener was not in sight. Slipping across a lawn where flamboyant orchids hung in baskets from spreading cedars, she skirted the deserted house and found the dock. Moored there were several gaily painted canoes.
Ahead across the dazzling blue of the bay loomed the rocky back of Ivor’s island. It cut off from view all but one corner of Hurricane House roof. Certainly no one over there would be able to see her. Behind her the sound of the lawn mower was still audible, but a tangle of tamarisk made her invisible from the Morley house.
She dropped into a scarlet canoe, freed the painter, sending a flurry of little yellow and black fish scuttering, and pushed away from the dock. Not a ripple stirred the shining surface of the water as the red canoe slid onward toward the island. Soon she reached it and steered into a little inlet where the water crept in a narrow gully between gray coral rocks. She moored the canoe to a stunted cedar, scrambled ashore, and started up the sloping ground with its sparse underbrush of orange and pink lantana.
When she reached the crest of the rise, the playhouse was visible below and, beyond it, a bright vista of the bay, framed in cedars. She hurried down through the trees and reached the playhouse. The blue Dutch door was open as she and Simon had left it the night before.
Cautiously she stepped into the living room.
Once inside the cottage she began to feel taut, on edge. She glanced around. Everything in that comfortable, summery room seemed the same as it had been last night. Don had said the bags were in the bedroom. She moved to a door, opened it, and found herself in a small, sunlit bedroom.
This was the room where Ivor was to have slept last night. The sight of the smooth, unused be
d under its thick white woolen spread made the reality of his death strangely more vivid. So did the gaily striped airplane-fabric suitcases, heaped untidily on the floor where Don had left them.
Kay felt as if Ivor were a faint, sardonic ghost at her elbow, but she moved resolutely to the dressing table and picked up the bunch of keys that was lying there. It was very quiet. She dropped to her knees in front of the suitcases. She chose one at random and tried key after key until the locks slipped back.
She opened the lid to be confronted by a smooth array of shirts, underwear, and bright summer ties. She felt a queer reluctance to touch them, as if by doing so she would be rifling a tomb.
But she shook off the fancy and started gingerly feeling around the shirts and down into the bottom of the bag. Obviously Gilbert’s folder was not there. Smoothing the contents back to their former neatness, she closed and locked the bag and chose another.
The instant she opened it her eyes fell on a thick cardboard folder, fastened with rubber bands, lying on top of meticulously packed suits. Her fingers rather unsteady, she took it out, slipped the bands off, opened it. Inside were typewritten letters, documents, stock and bond certificates. On several of them she read the name: Maud Archer Winyard.
With a tingling sensation of relief she snapped the rubber bands back on the folder and put it under her arm. Now she had got what she had come for, she felt calm, almost leisurely again. Locking the second bag, she took out a handkerchief and carefully wiped off any fingerprints she might have left on the metal fittings. All she had to do now was to paddle back to the Morleys and cycle home to Hurricane House. With the folder safe in Gilbert’s possession, this small drama inside the much larger, more dangerous one would be concluded.
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