Angel Death

by Patricia Moyes

  Not seeming to hear Ingham, Henry went on, “But not the Chermar.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “There’s a break in the pattern. The Chermar left St. Mark’s without checking out through Customs and Immigration and then disappeared. Betsy Sprague broke the pattern.”

  Ingham sighed. “That’s for sure,” he said. “The poor old lady stumbled quite by accident onto—”

  “No,” Henry said.

  Ingham looked up, surprised. “How do you mean, sir?”

  “Betsy,” Henry said, “was a remarkable woman. Not only quick-witted, but extremely brave. Of course she recognized Janet Vanduren, and she knew the danger she’d be in if she went on board the Chermar. She had a fearful decision to make, there in the restaurant. If she’d flatly refused to go on board, the pseudo-Rosses could hardly have dragged her by force. She could just have walked away and telephoned you. But would you have believed her story? I’m ashamed to say, we didn’t.”

  Ingham shook his head. “Very unlikely,” he said.

  “In any case,” Henry went on, “by the time she’d managed to get hold of you, Chermar would have sailed and the Rosses would have disappeared forever. The pickup of this particular consignment would have been allocated to some other couple, and Janet Vanduren and her young man would either have been liquidated for inefficiency or transferred to another area. We’d never have found them again. Of course, Betsy would have been able to go quietly back to England and forget the whole thing—but she wasn’t that sort of person. She had spotted Janet, she was being lied to, and she refused to let go—like a small terrier being tossed by a bull. What she did do, though, was leave a trail for us. She must have written those cards right there at the table, under Janet’s nose. Then she gave them to Bob Harrison to post, and if he hadn’t forgotten to do so until Saturday—”

  “Just what was she trying to tell you?” Ingham asked.

  “She’d already spoken to me on the phone,” Henry said, “so she knew I’d understand. She told me, indirectly, that Janet Vanduren was going under the name of Ross. She told me the name of the boat. She told me she was going on board and might never be heard of again. She also dropped one of her souvenir gifts into the harbor, and by great good luck we found it. She also said one other thing, which I can’t quite figure out at the moment.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “She told me to contact Janet’s mother—Betsy’s old pupil. Which is why I have to make a phone call to England, and not in public.” He stretched out his hand for Ingham’s telephone. “May I?”

  “Sure, help yourself. Just ask the switchboard to give you the overseas operator.”

  Henry said, “It’ll be about half-past four in the afternoon in London. Reynolds should still be there, unless he’s out on a job.”

  “Give him my regards, sir,” said Chief Inspector Ingham.

  Inspector Derek Reynolds, Henry’s assistant at Scotland Yard, had already been told about his chief’s assignment in the Seawards and had agreed with characteristic good humor to postpone his summer vacation until such time as Henry returned to England. Consequently, he was neither surprised nor put out by a transatlantic telephone call.

  “Mrs. Celia Vanduren?” he said. “No idea of whereabouts in Shropshire, I suppose, sir?… Well, I daresay we’ll be able to find her. Staying with her mother, you say, elderly lady name of Dobson… Yes, I’ve got that… What do I do when I’ve traced her, sir?”

  Henry said, “First and foremost, let me know. That is, let Inspector Ingham know… Yes, it’s the same chap… Yes, of course I will, and he reciprocates… Police Headquarters, St. Mark’s, that’s right… Well, I want to know whatever you can find out about Mrs. Vanduren without her knowing that you’re investigating…how long she’s been there…her state of mind…in plain language, does she appear to be slightly crazy, and, if so, does anybody know why…if… ” Henry hesitated. It sounded ridiculously melodramatic. “If by any chance I should…meet with an accident or be put out of action… All right, have it your own way, Reynolds, if they get me…go yourself to Mrs. Vanduren and tell her you have reason to believe that her daughter, Janet, is alive and active in drug-smuggling in the Caribbean. Ask her if she’s prepared to cooperate in a case which certainly involves her daughter and maybe her husband as well. Tell her that Betsy Sprague…S-P-R-A-…that’s right…that Betsy Sprague has almost certainly been murdered going after these people, and that Betsy wanted her—Celia Vanduren—to know. But do not—repeat do not tell her all this unless and until you hear from Inspector Ingham that I am either dead or have disappeared. Otherwise, get all the information you can and let me know through Ingham. And another thing.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Try to find out if Mrs. Vanduren has a photograph of her daughter with her in England.”

  “I’ll try, sir.”

  “How’s the weather in London?”

  “Raining, sir.”

  “In that case, I won’t even mention what it’s like here. I expect you remember.”

  “I do, sir. Best of luck, sir. I’ll be in touch.”

  Henry hung up and turned to Inspector Ingham. “Derek Reynolds sends his regards,” he said. “He’ll contact you when he has any news. As for communicating with me, you’d better do that through John Colville at the Anchorage in St. Matthew’s. I can’t risk coming up here or telephoning you all the time.”

  Emmy was back on board when Henry returned to Windflower. She said, “I spoke to the girl again—she must think I’m potty by now. Anyway, all she can remember is that Betsy said something about buying postcards to take back home to show her friends some views of the islands—she picked quite a number, mostly pictures of St. Matthew’s. Then, just as she was leaving, she came back and asked for local stamps for just two of the cards.”

  “Stamps to send them to England?”

  “No. Just within the islands.”

  Henry said, “You can see the restaurant from the door of the gift shop, can’t you?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s right across the courtyard from the bar.”

  Henry sighed. “Betsy was altogether too brave and too ingenious,” he said. “I wish to God she’d left the whole thing alone and saved her own neck.”

  Slowly, Emmy said, “She recognized Janet Vanduren with her hair dyed dark. She went back and bought stamps for two postcards and called you on the telephone. Then she went over to talk to Janet and the young man. O.K. so far. But what made her so suspicious?”

  “Wouldn’t you be suspicious if somebody who was supposed to have been dead for six months turned up with dyed hair and never got in touch with her family?… ”

  The Tibbetts were still discussing Betsy Sprague and her motivations when John Colville arrived. He clambered aboard and produced two rather bent postcards from the pocket of his shorts.

  “Here they are,” he said, without preamble. “Yours and ours. No doubt about it being Betsy’s handwriting—I’ve compared them with the letter she wrote Margaret.”

  “Yes, she wrote the cards all right,” Henry said. “And gave them to Bob Harrison to post as she was going to board the Chermar.”

  John said, “And now the Chermar is missing. It was on the radio.”

  Quickly, Henry brought John up to date on all he had discovered so far. Then he said, “You know these waters, John.”

  “Pretty well,” Colville agreed.

  Emmy said, “I’ll go and get lunch,” and disappeared into the small galley.

  Henry went on, “Well, just think. You are Janet Vanduren, masquerading as Cheryl Ross, on board the Chermar with your accomplice. You have been recognized by Betsy Sprague, and so you have persuaded her to come aboard, ostensibly for lunch before catching her plane to England. You know you have to get rid of her, abort your mission, sink the Chermar, and get yourself picked up by your mother-vessel. How do you set about it?”

  John considered. “Well, I’m certainly not going to murder Betsy in the marina
, so I suggest a spin to one of the uninhabited islands for a picnic. With a powerful motorboat like the Chermar, there’d be plenty of time to get Betsy back for her plane—in theory. Better still—there’s a landing stage right beside the airport. I’d offer to put her ashore after lunch.”

  “Very good,” said Henry. “Now what?”

  “Who do you think you are anyway—Socrates?”

  Henry smiled. “The Socratic method, I agree. I’m interested in leading you from one logical conclusion to another to see if we reach the same final answer. So—now what?”

  “Well, we leave the marina, and as soon as we’re in open waters, I suppose the male half of this charming couple finishes off Betsy. She’s a frail little old lady and shouldn’t take much overpowering.”

  “And then?”

  “Scuttle the ship.”

  “In these waters? In broad daylight?”

  “Oh,” said John. “I see what you mean. No, that would be too noticeable. Sail on into more open waters, out of sight of land, and do the scuttling in the dark.”

  “All this with a body on board?”

  “Well…no, I’ve had a better idea. Knock Betsy out with some sort of drug. Then if by any chance you’re stopped by a Coast Guard cutter or a police launch, you can just say she’s asleep. When you scuttle, leave her to go down with the ship. If the hulk should happen to be found, she’ll be aboard still, but with no signs of violence.”

  Henry nodded. “Very good,” he said. “Now what about you?”

  “Me?”

  “I mean, Janet and her friend. Who’s going to rescue you?”

  “The mother-ship, of course.”

  “How does she know where you’ll be?”

  “We have a—no, we bloody don’t, do we? We don’t have a rendezvous because Chermar is supposed to be on her way to the States with a cargo of drugs.”

  “Exactly,” Henry said. “You have to break the pattern. How do you do that?”

  “I…I communicate with the mother-ship.”

  Henry remembered something that Anderson had said. “By radio,” he said. “Must be. Chermar carried ship-to-shore radio.”

  “That’s right,” John said. “A message must have gone out from the Chermar on Thursday afternoon or evening.”

  “How can we trace it?”

  John said shortly, “You can’t. Nobody keeps a record of every private message broadcast from ship to ship or ship to shore on these short-range sets. Most of them are simply people making dates to meet each other at a certain anchorage or to book a meal at a restaurant ashore.”

  Emmy, emerging from the galley, said, “I remember. There used to be a time called the Children’s Hour, when people could exchange private messages. From one to two, wasn’t it? You had a radio at the Anchorage and took in messages.”

  “That’s all changed now,” John said. “Boats and shore establishments use VHF, Channel Sixteen, and to have a shore-based set you need a license, and you have to keep a continuous daytime listen-out. We couldn’t manage that, so we gave up our set.”

  “Then how do you take bookings from boats?” Emmy asked.

  “By telephone. There are all sorts of people who listen out continuously on Channel Sixteen and will telephone messages through to us. The Coast Guard and Marine Police keep a twenty-four-hour watch. Then there’s WAH—private licensed marine operators who monitor all the time. The various yacht charter firms listen out in daylight hours to keep in touch with their own boats. There’s never any danger that nobody will pick up a Channel Sixteen message.”

  Henry said, “So it’s also the channel used for SOS and Mayday calls?”

  “Oh, yes. But they’re pretty rare, fortunately. As I said, the great majority of messages are private.”

  “Which,” Henry said thoughtfully, “are overheard by a lot of people, but never logged or recorded.”

  “How could they be, old man?” John appealed for reason. “Of course, if a Mayday is picked up, the police and Coast Guard will record it…but private messages... ”

  “What’s the range of these radios?” Henry asked.

  John considered. “Generally about twenty-five miles over sea—that’s to say, without obstacles in the way. Round about here, there’s usually an island to block transmission, so it’s more like twelve or fifteen miles. People doing long trips usually have a booster to give them a better range, and round-the-worlders have a ham radio operator’s license and special equipment—”

  Henry said, “No. Our people wouldn’t have anything like that. The most inconspicuous and ordinary possible. Does this give you any ideas, John?”

  John grinned. “Socrates again? O.K.—yes, it does. For the moment, two. First, if Chermar got a message to her mother-ship, the mother-ship must have been close by. Within ten miles, I’d say. Second, if Chermar could send such a message, quite unexpectedly, and get a reply, it must mean that whenever an operation is being carried out, there must be a mother-ship cruising around nearby, keeping a listening watch.”

  Henry nodded approvingly. “A sensible arrangement,” he said.

  Emmy added, “And the message would have been sent at an inconspicuous time—somewhere around midday, so that it would be lost among all the other private communications. I mean, a private message sent in the middle of the night, when only police and Coast Guard listen out, would attract too much attention, wouldn’t it?”

  “Right again,” Henry said. “Well, I suppose there’s just a very faint chance that somebody listening might remember Chermar’s message.”

  “It’s an unusual name for a boat,” Emmy said. “That might help.”

  “I don’t imagine,” Henry said, “that the name of the boat would be used. There would be a code name for both ships, and the message would sound like something perfectly ordinary. The chances of tracing it are minimal, but we’ll try.”

  John said, “Surely by now this is a matter for the police, isn’t it? I mean, we’re only amateurs—” He broke off, seeing Henry’s widening grin. “Oh, sorry. I’d quite forgotten. Even so, it must be the local police—”

  “This is just between ourselves, John,” Henry said, “but my position is now official. I’m on loan from Scotland Yard, investigating Betsy’s disappearance.”

  “Thank God for that,” John said somberly. And then, “But what can you do? You have no more facilities than the local police.”

  “As Ingham pointed out,” Henry said, “I have the great advantage of being an unknown face and a bona fide tourist. I also have a virtual hot line to C Department in London, which may be helpful.”

  “I wish to God there was something Margaret and I could do.”

  “There is. For one thing, you can provide us with a base on St. Matthew’s, and you can be a channel for passing information to and from Inspector Ingham. I had to go up to the police station today to telephone the Yard, but I don’t want to do it too often. And then there’s another way you can help.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You can make extremely discreet inquiries as to whether any of the local residents of St. Matthew’s has an English or American couple staying with them, as houseguests.”

  John looked surprised. “What good would that do?”

  “Never mind. I just want to know. If such people arrive, let me know at once. I want to know who they are staying with, what their names are, and what they look like. It may be fairly difficult, as they’ll be lying low. Above all, don’t arouse any suspicions. Just keep your eyes and ears open.”

  “O.K., I’ll do my best.”

  Henry went on. “Now, when you get back to the Anchorage, please call Ingham and tell him I want to know whether anybody listening out on Channel Sixteen remembers a message sent out on the Thursday afternoon when Betsy disappeared. The message would sound innocuous, but it would be canceling some sort of arrangement and making a rendezvous. All calls to and from Ingham should be made from the office, where you can’t be overheard. And Margaret should watch
out that nobody in the bar picks up the extension phone to listen in.”

  John said, “It’s incredible—that somebody would actually do away with poor old Betsy. And anyway—isn’t all this a bit elaborate?”

  “Not for the characters we’re after. This is a big operation, John, with big money and organized crime behind it.”

  “Here in the Seawards?”

  “The Seawards are part of it, I’m afraid,” Henry said. “So will you be a good fellow and act as a relay station for me?”

  “Oh, well. If you say so.”

  Then Emmy served lunch, and afterward John Colville made his way back down the landing stage to catch the boat for St. Matthew’s. He was preoccupied with his own thoughts and was certainly unaware that his movements were being carefully watched by the occupants of another boat in the marina.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE NEXT MORNING, Windflower left her berth at nine o’clock. The Harbour Master had been asked not to put another boat in her space, as she was only going for a day sail. It was a typically lovely West Indian day, with only a slight swell and a steady breeze from the northeast. Henry and Emmy had a thoroughly enjoyable sail, picnicked on George Island, and returned late in the afternoon.

  Windflower’s reentry into St. Mark’s marina was not very elegant. Emmy had trouble getting the sails down outside the harbor, and Henry failed several times to start the motor, so by the time the boat was approaching the mooring, considerable shambles had broken out on board. Somehow, the sloop was maneuvered into her berth, but had it not been for assistance from Bob Harrison and the Harbour Master, it seemed unlikely that she would have been successfully moored without damage to herself or another boat. Trying to ignore the smirking faces of expert sailors on other boats, Henry and Emmy went below, changed into fresh clothes, and went ashore to the marina bar for a drink.

  The bar was not crowded, but it began to fill up as more boats came in for the night and their crews came ashore. Henry and Emmy sat at the bar, drinking Daiquiris and discussing how tricky it had been to handle Windflower with just two people aboard. Nobody approached them or tried to speak to them.