Angel Death

by Patricia Moyes

  Under cover of casual conversation with his wife, Henry was taking careful note of the other drinkers in the bar. Bob Harrison was there, chatting to a good-looking, middle-aged American couple. From the snippets of talk that he could overhear, it seemed to Henry that they were discussing the possibility of chartering a yacht for a few days. They mentioned the name of their hotel and asked Bob to call them there.

  At the far end of the bar was a large party of young people of mixed nationalities—Henry caught snatches of French and Italian as well as Puerto Rican-accented Spanish. They were obviously all off the same boat—either a large charter or a small cruise ship—and seemed innocent of anything except making a lot of noise. More interesting were the half-dozen or so other couples who sat at tables and talked about the day’s sailing. They all appeared to be American, all in varying stages of suntan, ranging in age from teens to forties. None of them seemed either sinister or interested in the Tibbetts. Henry wondered, and was still wondering, when the waitress came up to tell them their table for dinner was ready.

  It was when they were halfway through their meal that the waitress approached.

  “You are Mr. Tibbett?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Telephone call for you. You can take it at the desk.”

  “Thank you,” said Henry. He stood up. “You go ahead, darling. Don’t wait for me.”

  Several heads turned, from other tables and from the bar, as Henry made his way to the reception desk.

  “Henry? This is John.”

  “Ah, hello, John. What’s new?”

  “I’ve had a word with Herbert. He’s found out more about that radio set you were interested in.”

  “Oh.” Henry sounded doubtful. “I’m not sure that I want to buy it, you know. I told him so.”

  “I know, but he wants you to look at it just the same.”

  “Oh, all right. Where and when?”

  “Buccaneer Bar, half-past nine this evening.”

  “O.K. Thanks a lot, John.” Back at the table, Emmy raised her eyebrows slightly. Henry, gathering up his table napkin, said, “That was Colville from the Anchorage. About that radio we were thinking of getting for the boat.”

  “Oh, yes? Any good?”

  “I don’t know, but he says he’s located one. We’ll go and see it this evening.”

  After dinner, Henry and Emmy went back to the bar. A local calypso band had assembled and its members were tuning up, laughing, and engaging in youthful banter and horseplay. Soon, they launched into some spirited reggae, and the polyglot young people began to dance. Henry and Emmy joined them, and Henry was about to suggest that they should leave for the Buccaneer when a tall, graying man with a small mustache came up to the bar. Standing beside Henry, he ordered two rum punches.

  As they were being prepared, he said, without looking directly at Henry, “Saw you had a spot of trouble getting in today.” He spoke with an exaggeratedly English accent.

  “Yes, I’m afraid we didn’t do very well,” Henry admitted.

  “Big boat for two people to handle,” remarked the newcomer. “Need a third hand at least.”

  “We’re beginning to realize that,” Henry said.

  The tall man turned and looked Henry full in the face from shrewd, bright blue eyes. “British, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Yes, we are.”

  “Thought so. Can’t mistake the accent. Not many of us in these parts. Taking a vacation?”

  “Yes. We’re just here for another week.” Henry hesitated. “And you? You sound as though you might live here.”

  “Here?” The man laughed. “No, not here. Not on this island. Just in these parts, as you might say. Thank you, dear,” he added to the barmaid, who had appeared with the rum punches. He pushed some dollar bills over the counter. “Keep the change. Yes, my wife and I are expatriates—what you might call Caribbean beachcombers—since I retired. Live on our boat.”

  “That must be a wonderful life,” Emmy said.

  “Oh.” Henry was a little flustered. “Please allow me to introduce my wife, Emmy. My name’s Henry. Henry Tibbett.”

  “Delighted to meet you, sir...ma’am. I’m Colonel Montgomery, known to my pals as Bill. That’s my wife, Martha, over at the corner table. Won’t you join us for a drink?”

  “It’s very kind of you,” Henry said, “but I’m afraid we’re just leaving.”

  “Making an early start tomorrow, eh?” asked Montgomery. He added, with a booming laugh, “Early to bed, early to rise…,” as though it were a witticism that he had just invented. “Well, another time, perhaps. You’ll be coming back to St. Mark’s?”

  “Oh, yes. We’re based here. We’re really only doing day sailing.”

  “Then we shall certainly meet again. Our boat’s the Ocean Rover. Look forward to seeing you.”

  Montgomery picked up his drinks and threaded his way back between the tables to the corner where his wife, a stately lady in white trousers and a magenta overblouse, was sitting. Henry took Emmy’s arm and led her out of the bar into the scented night.

  As they crossed the marina gardens to the taxi stand, Emmy whispered, “A nibble, do you think?”

  Henry squeezed her arm. “Too soon to say. Maybe.”

  The Buccaneer Bar was a very different proposition from the marina bar—small, dark, crowded with people and noise and the strident beat of canned disco music. It was, in fact, a part of the big Harbour Prospect Hotel, but coming in from Main Street and going down pink-lit stairs toward the din, one might imagine that one was entering an independent and certainly popular discotheque.

  Henry and Emmy struggled to the bar, ordered drinks, and waited. There was no sign of Herbert Ingham—nor, indeed, of anybody they knew. The crowd was mixed, black and white, mostly young, all informally dressed. Despite a halfhearted attempt at air conditioning, it was extremely hot.

  Looking around it occurred to Henry that this was a curious place for Inspector Ingham to have suggested for a rendezvous. The Inspector would surely be a most conspicuous figure in this place, and many of the young people looked as though they might well have been victims of the recent big bust at the fish fry. However, Henry knew Ingham well enough to trust that he knew what he was doing.

  It was at about ten minutes to ten that a tiny, very pretty black girl came up to the bar. She smiled enchantingly and said, “Mr. and Mrs. Tibbett?” Henry had to lip-read the words over the blanket of sound.

  He nodded. She smiled again. “My name is Festina. Festina Ingham. My father is expecting you. Please come. Follow a little behind me.”

  She turned and made her way across the small dance floor to the far side, where she disappeared behind a heavy red plush curtain. Henry and Emmy paid for their drinks and followed her. They pushed their way around the curtain and found themselves at the foot of a flight of stairs. This obviously led up toward the foyer of the hotel proper, which was built on the landward side of the steep hill that sloped down to the harbor. They rounded a carpeted bend to see Festina standing awaiting them. She was on a small landing where the staircase took a turn to the right, and she had her hand on the bar of a big door marked EXIT. She smiled again.

  “Come. This way.”

  A moment later they were out on the grounds of the Harbour Prospect Hotel. Without a word, Festina led the way up winding paths between sweet-smelling tropical shrubs until they reached a parking area. It was empty except for a small, dark sedan.

  “This is the lowest of the parking lots,” she said. “It is used very little. Please get in.”

  She opened the back door and the Tibbetts got in. Festina then installed herself in the driver’s seat, started the car, and maneuvered expertly out of the parking lot. She said, “Father thought it would be best like this. He knows you do not want to go to the police station, but he thinks you should talk to Pearletta.”

  “Who is Pearletta?” Henry asked.

  “He will explain.” Festina swung the little car out of the
big main gates of the hotel and began to climb the precipitous hillside away from the sea.

  Emmy said, “Where are we going?”

  “To Pearletta’s house,” said Festina. They drove on in silence.

  About ten minutes later, when the harbor looked like a glittering toy far below them and the temperature had dropped several degrees because of the altitude, the little car swung off the road and headed up a dark driveway. It rounded a bend, and there was a small, brightly lit house perched on the edge of a giddy height—on an outcrop of rock jutting out from the hillside, with a fantastic view over the sea and down to the lights of the town.

  Festina parked the car, and as the engine died, the door of the house opened, and Henry recognized the massive silhouette of Inspector Ingham framed against the light.

  Festina said, “Hi, Papa. I have them.”

  “Good.” Ingham came up to the car. “Come in, please. Sorry I had to do this in a roundabout way.”

  “Very sensible.” Henry climbed out of the car, following Emmy, who was already at the balustrade, looking down at the panorama below. “You think you have something?”

  “I hope so. Please come in.”

  The house was small and cheerfully furnished, evincing a very West Indian taste for brilliant colors and a certain amount of clutter. Henry noticed with appreciation some pen-and-ink sketches, roughly filled in with bright watercolor, of local scenes—of boats and flowers and fishes. Not the work of a great artist, perhaps, but of a very talented amateur.

  A girl got up from the sofa to greet the Tibbetts. She was plump and coffee-colored—not beautiful, but made attractive by the merriment and good humor in her dark eyes and round face.

  Ingham said, “This is Pearletta Terry, Mr. and Mrs. Tibbett. Pearletta is one of our two women police constables.”

  Pearletta beamed, and Henry and Emmy shook her hand and professed themselves delighted to meet her.

  Ingham went on. “Pearletta was listening out on Channel Sixteen at the police station last Thursday afternoon, and…well, you tell them, Pearletta.”

  “First, come and sit down and I bring you a drink,” said Pearletta. “Beer or rum and Coke?”

  Henry and Emmy accepted a beer apiece, Festina opted for rum and Coke, and Inspector Ingham specified a Heineken from the bottle. “Keeps it cooler,” he explained to Henry. “No sense pouring cold beer in a warm glass.”

  When the drinks had been served, Pearletta said, “Well, Chief Superintendent, the Inspector came and axed me if I remember any of the private messages that afternoon, and I told him no. There was no SOS or Mayday, so I only listen with half my ears, like. Then the Inspector says could he see my logbook for that day—so I got it out, and here it is.”

  With something of a sense of drama, she picked up a desk diary that had been lying facedown and open on the coffee table and handed it to Henry. It was open at Thursday, June 19. Apart from a couple of entries recording routine checks with the Coast Guard, there were no entries. What there was, however, was a drawing—half-doodle and half-comic-strip. It showed a stylized starfish with an anthropomorphic face, gazing apprehensively skyward. One tentacle was clasping the handle of an open umbrella, and fine sloping lines indicated rain falling.

  Henry studied it with an appreciative grin while Emmy peered over his shoulder. Then he looked up and said, “Well?”

  Pearletta twinkled at him. “You see my starfish?”

  “Yours?” Henry said.

  Emmy said, “So you did all these lovely drawings, Pearletta?”

  Proudly, Ingham said, “Pearletta is a local artist as well as a policewoman. Several of the souvenir shops are selling her pictures.”

  Pearletta showed no false modesty. “I like to draw,” she said. “I draw what I see on the island. And sometimes I draw for my own fancy…fantastic.” She laughed.

  Henry said, “But what—?”

  Pearletta cut him short. “When I show the Inspector my book, he ax me, ‘Why you draw this starfish T’ursday afternoon, Pearletta?’ ‘Why not?’ I tell him. And then I remember.”

  “Remember what?”

  “T’ere was one message I had forgotten, but the starfish make me remember. I t’ought it funny. This is a lady from a boat, and she talk to a next boat, and she is saying t’ey must cancel plans for picnic today because of the weather. And I t’ink—weather is fine today. Why change plans—that’s silly.”

  Henry was leaning forward, deeply interested. “Did the other boat answer?” he asked.

  “Sure. A man’s voice. Something like O.K., too bad, meet in usual place this evening. That’s all.”

  “And why draw a starfish?”

  “Because,” Pearletta said, “that was the name of the boat the lady call. ‘Calling Starfish, calling Starfish,’ she keep saying. And then the message about the picnic. And I t’ink it’s funny, and I make drawing of starfish in the rain. But t’ere’s no rain T’ursday.”

  Henry said, “What was the name of the boat that sent the message?”

  Pearletta shrugged. “I never remember. Just the starfish.”

  Ingham said, “As soon as Pearletta brought me her notebook and told me this, I started making inquiries.” He stopped, and although Henry had not spoken, he added in parenthesis, “Don’t worry, I trust Pearletta completely.” He smiled at her. “I have told her that we may be on the track of smugglers.”

  “Good,” said Henry. “Go on.”

  “Well, I have made sure that there was no boat called Starfish checked in either here or in St. Matthew’s—and if the message came from a normal yacht radio, it wouldn’t have had a range outside the Seawards. So it looks, Mr. Tibbett, as though by great good luck—and Pearletta’s weakness for doodling—we’ve probably traced the message. Starfish would seem to be the code name for the mother-ship.”

  “Have you taken any other action?” Henry asked.

  “Not yet. I wanted to consult you first. My idea is to circulate the Coast Guard and WAH, asking them to listen out for any Starfish messages and report at once—”

  “No,” Henry said.

  “No? But—”

  “Too many people,” Henry said succinctly. “Too many chances that the smugglers will hear we are interested in Starfish.” He noticed Ingham’s indignant expression and added, “I don’t mean to say that any of these people is indiscreet, but such a request would be written down, and pieces of paper can be left lying about. You must see, Inspector, that it’s too big a risk.”

  “Then what do you suggest?” Ingham sounded slightly huffy.

  Henry grinned. “I suggest you put out a highly unpopular order to your own station,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “That for a test period of say, one week, all Channel Sixteen messages should be logged.”

  “But we never—”

  Henry said, “We’re agreed that these messages will go out in the daytime so as to be inconspicuous, so you needn’t worry about listening out at night. You can simply say it’s an exercise in case it ever had to be done in an emergency. I daresay there will be grumbling, but at least there won’t be any indication of which messages you’re interested in. What sort of a watch system do you have?”

  “We don’t,” Ingham said. “The radio is in the police station, and it’s kept switched on. Whoever is there listens out in case of Mayday calls.”

  “All right. Don’t change that. Just make sure every message is logged, and have the log submitted to you every day at noon and seven in the evening.”

  “Suppose the message comes through early in the morning,” Ingham objected. “By the time I saw the log, the transmitting boat would be miles away—”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Henry said. “The important thing is the gist of the message. Of course,” he added with a smile, “if Pearletta is on duty herself, she can let you know right away if she gets a Starfish.”

  “Sure.” Pearletta’s eyes were twinkling with excitement.

  “What wil
l the others think about this logging?” Henry asked her.

  “Oh, there’ll be some sour faces,” said Pearletta airily. “Do them good. All most of them t’ink about is limin’ all day.”

  “Liming?”

  “Having a good time,” translated Inspector Ingham. “O.K., Mr. Tibbett. I’ll do as you say.”

  The Tibbetts said good night to Pearletta and walked with Ingham out into the starry night. Henry said, “What do you know about a Colonel and Mrs. William Montgomery, middle-aged, living on board a boat called Ocean Rover? Based somewhere in the Caribbean, but not here. Possibly British.”

  “Possibly?” It was Emmy who broke in. “He definitely said he was British, Henry.”

  Ingham said, “I’ve never met them, but the Ocean Rover’s often in St. Mark’s. I don’t know where she’s based—want me to check with Cranstone?”

  “Might as well,” Henry said. “But you don’t know anything against the Montgomerys?”

  “Nothing. They’re well liked, I understand.”

  Festina drove the Tibbetts back to town and dropped them at the front entrance of the Harbour Prospect Hotel. From there, they made their way back down through the gardens and finally into the Buccaneer Bar, where they had a drink and emerged again onto Main Street to find a taxi back to the marina. As far as Henry could judge, their visit to Pearletta’s house had been unobserved. To all intents and purposes, they had dined at the marina, gone into town for some disco dancing, and come back by taxi at half-past eleven.

  The marina was dark and quiet. The band had packed up and gone off to play at a livelier spot in town. The yachtsmen had either followed it for further merrymaking or had gone back on board for an early night in preparation for dawn sailing. The moon, on the wane but still brilliant, shamed the harbor lights and laid a pathway of shimmering silver over the water. The sky was dark and velvety, and the stars seemed within arm’s reach.

  Walking down the jetty to Windflower, Emmy suddenly felt a surge of emotional and personal resentment against the people who were polluting these islands. The waters might be pristine and the air pure and sweet—but greed and corruption and even murder were worse than smog, and just as insidious.