Angel Death

by Patricia Moyes

  “A what?”

  “A conch shell, like these here.”

  The girl pointed to a basket full of huge, beautifully polished seashells. They were a delicate pearly pink, smooth and whorled, and only marred—in Emmy’s eyes—by the fact that somebody had engraved the words ST. MARK’S ISLAND on the satiny inner surface. “People put flowers in them,” the girl added. Sure enough, one stood on the counter, balanced on three ballet-point spikes, holding a bouquet of double pink hibiscus blossoms.

  “They’re beautiful,” Emmy said.

  “They’re eight dollars fifty,” said the girl, more practically. “But happened I remembered we had one going for just two bucks on account it was scratched and had a point broken. So the lady took it. I recall she said her friend didn’t have such good eyes and wouldn’t notice.” The girl laughed attractively.

  Emmy thanked her and then said, “You didn’t see my aunt again after that, did you?”

  “She didn’t come in the shop again, no. But I just see her when I come out at twelve to shut up for lunch. She down there in one of the phone booths, making a call. I went off home then. Never see her again.”

  Feeling compelled to repay the girl’s information with at least a token purchase, Emmy bought a plastic paperweight with a rather unconvincing seahorse embedded in it. The girl put it into a flimsy paper bag with CARIBBEAN TREASURE TROVE printed smudgily across it and bade her a polite good afternoon.

  Bob Harrison had gone back to his office, and Henry was sitting in the cockpit of the Windflower, looking out with great pleasure over the marina—a shiny bright scene of gleaming paintwork and dancing water and fluttering flags, which never failed to enchant him wherever in the world sailing boats were gathered together. He saw Emmy coming down the jetty and got up to help her climb over the coaming of the boat and into the cockpit.

  Windflower did not have a very high freeboard, but even so it was quite a scramble from the unstable floating pontoon up to the deck, and in spite of Henry’s steadying hand, Emmy misjudged her foothold and was caught off balance for a moment—long enough for the flimsy paper bag from the gift shop to hit a stanchion and split. With an almost inaudible plop, the plastic paperweight nosedived into the water.

  “Oh, damn,” said Emmy. “Not that it matters—it’s just a souvenir I felt I had to buy.” She scrambled on board.

  Henry was gazing down into the water, which was crystal-clear and about ten feet deep. “I can see it,” he said. “I’ll dive down and get it when I go for a swim. Well, how did you get on?”

  Emmy told him. “It all checks out with what we already know,” she said. “Betsy took a cab from the harbor to here and went to the shop to buy presents. Coming out, there’s an excellent view of the restaurant, where she thought she saw the Vanduren girl. So she went over to the telephone booths and called you—the gift shop assistant noticed her making the call as she was leaving for lunch.”

  “And Betsy had her baggage with her?”

  “I told you, the girl remarked on it.”

  Henry was thoughtful. “And then she left the telephone to go and speak to the girl she supposed to be Janet Vanduren—and the trail ends.”

  Emmy said, “The next thing is to locate that girl, if we can—but there’s so little to go on. A dark girl having a drink with a dark, bearded young man.” She gestured hopelessly. “There must be fifty couples like that around here every day—either off boats or hotel-based tourists. Anyhow, whoever those people were, they’ve almost certainly left by now—a couple of days can mean a big turnaround in population in a place like this, especially at a weekend. I suppose it might be worth asking the waitresses at the restaurant. One of them might remember something—”

  Henry looked at his watch. “What we have to do now is to go and see Sergeant—sorry—Chief Inspector Ingham. We’ll take a taxi to the police station.”

  “And I’ll buy some provisions in town,” Emmy said. “I rather like housekeeping again, for a change.”

  “Well, just get enough for breakfast,” Henry said. “I thought we’d dine ashore tonight. We obviously won’t be leaving until quite late tomorrow, and I thought we might try the marina restaurant and ask a few questions about Betsy at the same time.”

  Emmy said, “Henry—you’re not going to…I mean, start an inquiry, are you?”

  “Good heavens, no. It’s nothing to do with us. We’re on holiday. It’s a matter for the local police—if anybody.”

  “What does that mean—if anybody?”

  “Well—” Henry paused. “Betsy’s a curious old girl and quite unpredictable. She may well have taken it into her head to go off somewhere, telling nobody.”

  “Margaret and John are very worried,” Emmy said.

  “She’s their friend—Margaret’s, anyhow. We hardly know her. We’ll ask at the restaurant this evening, and we’ll tell the Colvilles about the gift shop. After that, we’ll leave it to Ingham.”

  Emmy smiled. “I shall be delighted to do just that,” she said. “Where shall we go tomorrow? I thought Tortola might be fun.”

  Henry gave her a sharp look. “We’ll see,” he said.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHIEF INSPECTOR INGHAM was pleased to welcome his old friend Chief Superintendent Tibbett. His whitewashed office in the police station on Main Street was shady and cooled by an electric fan, and Ingham himself looked spruce and prosperous in his pale blue, short-sleeved uniform shirt. His shoulders were loaded with the silver epaulets of rank.

  After a brief chat about old times, Henry raised the question of Miss Betsy Sprague. Inspector Ingham smiled broadly. “John Colville was talking to me this morning,” he said. “The lady is a friend of yours?”

  “Not really,” Henry said. “She’s a friend of Margaret’s. We just met her while we were staying at the Anchorage. I wouldn’t worry, except that she’s not young—”

  “But a healthy old lady?” Ingham put in.

  Emmy grinned. “No doubt about that.”

  “And I gather she had been on a long tour of the United States, visiting old pupils, traveling alone from place to place.”

  “You seem to know all about her,” Henry said.

  Ingham smiled. “There are few secrets in these islands,” he said. “A lady with a certain…well, personality…like Miss Sprague is bound to be noticed. She spoke to many people on St. Matthew’s. I find it hard to believe that any harm has come to her.”

  “So do I,” said Henry. “On the other hand, it’s odd that she didn’t tell her friends in England that she had changed her plans.”

  “She lived with friends?”

  “No, no. But there was the question of her cats—”

  This time, Ingham laughed outright. “My dear Mr. Tibbett, you tell me that someone is going to pay to send telegrams to England about cats?”

  “English people—” Henry began.

  Ingham cut him short. “Miss Sprague has changed her mind and prolonged her holiday, you may be sure,” he said. “Nevertheless, to please John Colville, I have already done some checking here. Her Immigration form has not been handed in either at the airport or the marine Customs and Immigration office, so it is virtually certain that she is still in the Seawards.” He made a note on his jotting pad. “It is sure, at least, that she reached St. Mark’s?”

  “Yes. We’ve traced her as far as the marina.”

  “Well, I will contact the only four hotels at which I can imagine an English lady staying. If she is not at any of them, she must have returned to St. Matthew’s on the Pride. She might have taken the afternoon boat to George Island—the third of our group—but there is no hotel there, just a beach bar and restaurant, used by visiting yachts. The most likely thing is that she is staying with friends on one of the islands. Now let us talk of more cheerful matters.”

  “Just one thing,” Henry said. “What do you know of the Isabella?”

  “The—? Oh, you mean the American yacht that went down in January. A very sad accident.
It really had nothing to do with us.”

  “I thought the boat was last seen—”

  “She had cleared British Seaward waters. St. Matthew’s was her last recorded port of call, and she certainly left Priest Town Harbour. The alarm was raised a week later when she failed to show up in Puerto Rico, and it was the U.S. Coast Guard who undertook the search. They are better equipped for that sort of thing than we are,” added Herbert Ingham, in the understatement of the century.

  “And nothing was ever found—no wreckage, no bodies?” Emmy asked.

  “Some wreckage was found. If you’re interested, I can look it up. The U.S. Coast Guard sent us a report.” He got up and ruffled through papers in a big filing cabinet. After a minute or so, he pulled out a document. “Here we are. Report from the Coast Guard… ‘Wreckage picked up by fishing vessel Anna Maria on February 18 in Exuma Sound…strong likelihood that said wreckage formed part of missing yacht Isabella… positive identification impossible owing to deterioration…water damage…’”

  Henry interrupted to say, “How much wreckage was found?”

  Ingham ran his eye down the report. “A couple of planks…remnants of white paint still adhering…part of dinghy transom with letter A still decipherable…severe water damage…traces of fire damage… ”

  “And where is Exuma Sound?” Henry asked.

  There was a big map of the Caribbean area, from Florida to the coast of South America, hanging on the wall. Ingham went over to it and pointed. “Here. In the Bahamas. Between Andros Island and Cat Island, roughly—that’s where the Anna Maria picked up the wreckage.”

  Emmy said, “But that’s miles from St. Matthew’s! And much too far north!”

  Inspector Ingham waved a large black hand. “The north equatorial current—” he began, without too much conviction.

  Henry opened his mouth to speak, but Emmy got her word in first.

  “What you’re really saying is that there’s no proof at all that the wreckage was the Isabella. It was in quite the wrong place and with no positive identification. And anyhow,” she ended triumphantly, “Exuma Sound is inside the Bermuda Triangle!”

  Ingham smiled, with some embarrassment. “Well, now, Mrs. Tibbett, you know it’s often difficult to make an exact identification in cases of shipwreck. Photographs of the wreckage were sent to Dr. Vanduren, and he gave his opinion that the lettering could have been from the transom of Isabella’s dinghy. It does no good for these matters to drag on unresolved. The Coast Guard has to decide on a basis of probability, and as far as they’re concerned, the wreckage was from the Isabella and the case is closed.”

  “Well, it isn’t closed for the Vanduren family,” Emmy said stubbornly.

  “How do you mean, Mrs. Tibbett?”

  “Betsy Sprague was in touch with Dr. Vanduren quite recently, and he said they had no idea of what had happened to their daughter or the boat.”

  Ingham was puzzled. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand. I had no idea that Miss Sprague was in any way connected—”

  “Well, she was. And what’s more—”

  Henry, in a tone of voice which Emmy recognized as a warning, said, “She had no connection, Inspector. She’s a friend of the Vanduren family, that’s all, and she was talking to us about the Isabella—which is why I asked you about it. I’m glad to hear it has been cleared up.”

  “No bodies have been found,” muttered Emmy mulishly.

  “Even though no bodies have been found,” Henry said, with a conspiratorial smile in Ingham’s direction. “Well, it’s been delightful to meet you again. Emmy and I will be setting off from the marina around lunchtime tomorrow, I expect. If there’s any news of Miss Sprague before then, I’d be grateful if you’d let us know. It would set Emmy’s mind at rest. Meanwhile, I hope we’ll see you again while we’re here. Good-bye for now, Inspector Ingham.”

  Outside in the sun-splashed street, Emmy was vehemently indignant.

  “Treating me like an imbecile child! I know very well what’s happened. Just because nobody official is prepared to acknowledge that the Bermuda Triangle may be—”

  Henry took her arm. “My dear Emmy,” he said, “I’m sorry. I just thought that you were going to blurt out that Betsy thought she had seen Janet Vanduren at the marina here.”

  “What do you mean, blurt? I think Inspector Ingham ought to know. If there’s something mysterious… ” She broke off and looked critically at her husband. “Ah, I see it now. You’re afraid of looking like a fool.”

  “I don’t want to get involved,” said Henry. “It’s no business of mine.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Of course it isn’t. I’ll phone John when we get back to the marina and tell him about the gift shop and what Ingham said. Then I intend to go sailing and enjoy myself.”

  “Hm,” said Emmy. Then they caught sight of a shop selling hand-printed cotton in glorious Caribbean colors, and Betsy Sprague was temporarily forgotten.

  They arrived back at Windflower soon after five o’clock, after making the promised phone call to the Colvilles, who reported that they had had no further news. They changed into swimsuits, and as they climbed ashore, with their snorkel masks and fins slung in a string shopping bag, Emmy said, “Oh, Henry. My little paperweight. Can you get it for me?”

  “I think so.” Henry looked down into the limpid water. “Yes, there it is. I’ll dive for it. The water’s obviously perfectly clean—thank God some places are serious about preventing pollution.”

  He put on his mask and fins and slipped into the water from the pontoon. Emmy watched from above as his hand closed around the little plastic globe. However, he did not surface at once, but seemed to be looking at something she could not see in the shadow of the jetty. Then he came up, breaking the water surface with the paperweight in his hand. He said, “Take this, Emmy. I’m going down again.”

  Down he went, into the sunlit water and then into shadow. When he reemerged, he was holding something in his right hand. Emmy drew in a quick breath of surprise. It was a pale pink conch shell of exactly the same kind that she had seen in the gift shop. He handed it up to her.

  “Look at it,” Henry said. He had taken off his mask and was scrambling up onto the pontoon.

  Emmy turned the shell over in her hands. Like the shells in the shop, it had ST. MARK’S ISLAND engraved on its shining whorl, but the engraver’s tool had apparently slipped, because there was a scratch running downward from the “s” of Island: besides this, one of the projecting points on which the shell could be balanced was broken at the tip. Not worth eight dollars fifty, but on sale at two bucks.

  Emmy said, “The conch that Betsy bought.”

  “It certainly looks like it. I would never have spotted it if I hadn’t gone down.”

  “But—why just the shell? Where’s the rest of her luggage? What happened?”

  “I’d say,” said Henry, “that the same thing happened to her as happened to you. She was climbing on board a boat and dropped the shell, just as you dropped your paperweight.”

  Emmy frowned, thinking. “You mean, the young couple did invite her on board for lunch, as John guessed.”

  “It looks like it. Betsy and her luggage and her shopping.”

  “No,” Emmy said. “No, that can’t be right.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Betsy would never have let her present for Miss Pelling drop in the water and stay there. She’d have insisted on somebody going down and getting it for her—just like you fished up my paperweight.”

  Henry said, “Quite right. But I said I’d get it for you later, when we came back from the police station. I daresay the young couple told Betsy that they’d dive for her shell after lunch, or when they got back—”

  “Where from?”

  “Who knows? The fact is that they never got back. Or at least, Betsy didn’t.”

  For a moment, Henry and Emmy looked at each other. Then Emmy said, “Where was the shell, exactly? I mean, which berth do
you think the boat was on?”

  “That empty one opposite ours, on the other side, I would think,” Henry said. And then, “All right. Let’s go and ask the Harbour Master.”

  The Harbour Master’s office was a businesslike room in the marina building, close to the Caribbean Treasure Trove. The walls were covered with charts and there was a big plan of the marina, with small paper flags indicating the occupancy of various berths. The Harbour Master—a tall, thin man with a small mustache and a light, almost brown, complexion—was explaining to a middle-aged American the procedure necessary for yachtsmen arriving from U.S. waters.

  “You have to take a taxi to the town quay, sir, with the ship’s papers and your passports. There you report to Customs and Immigration—”

  “For Pete’s sake, do we all have to go?” demanded the American. “There’re six of us.”

  “No, that’s not necessary, sir. As skipper, you can go alone—but take all the passports for stamping. Then you get your clearance, and that’s all there is to it.”

  Muttering something about a crazy setup, the American left the office. The Harbour Master made an entry in a big ledger and then looked up and smiled at the Tibbetts.

  “Yes, sir…madam. What can I do for you? You’re chartering Windflower for a week, I believe. I’d be grateful if you’d let me know when your berth is going to be vacant overnight—we need space for visiting boats every evening. And don’t forget to check out with Customs and Immigration if you plan to leave Seaward waters.”

  Henry said, “Actually, I’m after a piece of information, if you can help me.”

  “I’ll certainly try. Something about the marina?”

  “In a way. I’m trying to find out the name of the boat that was moored opposite Windflower last Thursday.”

  The Harbour Master looked not unnaturally surprised. For a moment he hesitated, then evidently decided that tourists—even if weak in the head—should be kept happy. He got up and went over to the chart on the wall.