Angel Death

by Patricia Moyes

  “Nothing sensible. He mentioned a number—eighty-something. Nothing else.”

  “Goddamnit,” said Dr. Vanduren succinctly. “Do you think he talked about this urgent message to anybody else?”

  “I’m sure he didn’t,” Emmy said. “For one thing, I was the first person to see him after he woke up. And second, he wouldn’t have given such an important message to somebody he didn’t trust completely. He was pretty dubious about giving it to me,” she added ruefully. “He still had the remnants of a hostile attitude towards me. In fact, a bit of it showed up again even today.”

  Vanduren said, “It is a very great nuisance. It is unlikely that he will remember any more now. If only we had some way of jerking his subconscious memory into action—but we’ve nothing to go on.”

  Emmy said, “Dr. Vanduren, do the names Blackstone or Carstairs mean anything to you?”

  “Blackstone? Carstairs?” The doctor thought for a moment. “No, I don’t recall either of them. Should I?”

  “No. It was just a vague hope.” Emmy hesitated and then said, “I may as well tell you. The Blackstones and the Carstairs are two young couples who were on Windflower with Henry. The Carstairs have since turned up—it appears that Henry and the Blackstones quarreled with them and put them ashore on St. Thomas in the dinghy, shortly before the storm. The Blackstones then disappeared, leaving Henry and Windflower to battle out the hurricane. I think,” Emmy added, “that your daughter, Janet, may have been the so-called Mrs. Blackstone.”

  “You saw them?”

  “Yes. They came on board for coffee. And I caught a glimpse of them the same night at the Buccaneer disco.”

  “Can you describe the girl?”

  “Redhead,” said Emmy. “Very fair skin to match. Freckles.”

  Vanduren sighed. “Doesn’t sound like Jan,” he said, “except for the fair skin. But most things can be faked these days.”

  There was a pause, full of depression. Then Emmy remembered some happier news. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Miss Betsy Sprague is alive and well and home in England.”

  Dr. Vanduren’s face broke into a big smile. “Well, for Lord’s sakes,” he said. “How did that happen?”

  Emmy told him. “I think she may have been fed the same drug,” she added. “What do you think?”

  “Very likely. Very likely. Amnesia is a typical symptom. I’m puzzled, though. Why wouldn’t they have killed her? They killed the Rosses.”

  “When people are a little mad,” said Emmy, with feeling, “who knows what they’ll do?”

  Then, having accepted the doctor’s invitation to dine with him at the hotel that evening, Emmy finished her coffee and took a taxi back to the hospital. It left her with twenty dollars in cash.

  Henry was sleeping when she arrived, so Emmy pulled up the rickety wooden chair, sat down, and tried to read a paperback thriller that she had bought in the hotel lobby. Her thoughts, however, were more occupied with the weather bulletin, also posted in the lobby, which advised guests that Hurricane Beatrice was now only one hundred miles east of the Seawards, moving at a brisk fourteen knots in a westerly direction. Hotel residents were asked to be inside the hotel by nine P.M. at the latest. They would be told by the hotel staff what precautions to take for their safety. Emmy hoped that the hospital staff would be equally efficient. She looked out of the window, and with a sickening feeling of déjà vu, she recognized the brassy sunshine and the cloud formations on the horizon. In the narrow bed, Henry stirred and opened his eyes.

  “Ah, there you are. Must have dropped off.”

  “Yes, you did. I went to lunch. How do you feel now?”

  “I feel O.K.” There was a strange note in Henry’s voice, a puzzled tone. “You were telling me…Windflower was wrecked… ”

  “That’s right. There was a storm—a hurricane, in fact.”

  “Christ,” said Henry. Then, “Where are the others?” Suddenly agitated, he began to struggle up in bed. Emmy put out a hand to soothe him.

  “The others? What others? You were alone on board.”

  “No, I wasn’t. The others…Harvey and Jill. Where are Harvey and Jill?”

  “Nobody knows,” said Emmy.

  “But—”

  “They weren’t on Windflower when the hurricane hit, or they’d have still been there when we found you,” Emmy said firmly. “Darling—do you feel strong enough to let me tell you a few things?”

  “Of course I do.”

  Emmy smiled at him. “All right. The best news first. Betsy Sprague is alive and well. She’s back in England, and John has spoken to her on the telephone.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Wait a moment.” Emmy put out a restraining hand. “Listen. Betsy had much the same experience as you did. She lost two whole days.”

  “She did what?”

  “She remembers nothing between arriving on St. Mark’s on Thursday and waking up in San Juan on Saturday. Her phone call to you…going on board Chermar…it’s all gone. Just a blank.”

  Henry said, “They killed her.”

  “They didn’t, Henry. We thought they had, but—”

  “They did. He said… ” Henry buried his face in his hands. “Damn, damn, damn. Why can’t I remember? I catch a glimpse of something, and then it’s gone. Like trying to remember a dream. What did I just say?”

  “You said you were certain Betsy had been killed because he said… ”

  “He said what?”

  “I don’t know. That’s as far as you got.”

  “Who is ‘he’?”

  “Henry, I don’t know. I’m just repeating what you said.”

  Henry leaned back, exhausted. He said, “All right. Go on. Tell me some more.”

  “Well, you’ve been behaving pretty oddly over the past few days.”

  Henry smiled broadly. “I’ve had fun,” he said.

  “Maybe you have. You’ve also caused a lot of trouble and nearly got yourself killed. Never mind. Try to concentrate. What about the Carstairs?”

  “Who?”

  “The other couple who were on the boat with you, along with the Blackstones. You pointed them out to me at the Buccaneer Bar the night before you…left.”

  Henry shook his head. “Sorry. Doesn’t mean anything.”

  “O.K. What about a message from Anemone to Starfish?”

  “Starfish. I remember Starfish. That was the code name in the message that Pearletta heard. But that was before…”

  Emmy said, “There was another message, while you were away. It was from Anemone to Starfish, and Pearletta thought she recognized your voice sending it. It came the day before the hurricane hit us. There was also mention of somebody with the initial E, and of course the Governor thinks that’s me.” She smiled and squeezed Henry’s hand. “It would help if you could remember something. Anything.”

  Henry shook his head hopelessly. “Not a thing.”

  “Yesterday,” said Emmy, “when you regained consciousness at the Golf Club, you were desperately trying to get some message to the Governor. Can you remember anything about what it was?”

  “So that’s why you… ” Henry lay back on the pillows. “It’s no good, Emmy. It’s all gone.”

  “The only thing you said was a number. Eighty-something.”

  “Eighty-two,” said Henry, promptly.

  “So you do remember!”

  “I…what did I just say?”

  “You said eighty-two. What does it mean? Eighty-two what?”

  Henry put a hand to his forehead. He said, “It’s gone again. What could it be?”

  “A radio wavelength?” Emmy was guessing. “A location…eighty-two degrees longitude…where would that be?”

  “I’ve no idea. You could look it up. At this latitude, somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, I should think.” Henry sighed. “Sorry, darling, to be such a washout.”

  “You’re not a washout at all,” said Emmy warmly. “It’s just that—well, you seemed to think that you had
something tremendously important to tell Sir Alfred and Inspector Ingham, and you’ve obviously stumbled on something pretty big and nasty concerning drugs—”

  Suddenly Henry said, “Nobody’ll believe me…nobody, ever again…that’s what he said. Nobody…ever…whatever I say…in any case, won’t remember…you won’t remember…will remember…eighty-two… ” His voice, which had been growing more slurred and indistinct with every syllable, finally petered out. His head lolled.

  Emmy ran out of the ward and almost collided with Dr. Harlow in the corridor. She said, “Doctor, please go and look at my husband. I think the drug is affecting him again, and he may be in a coma.”

  “Wait here,” said Harlow, and he went into the ward.

  A couple of minutes later, he came out again. “No cause for alarm,” he said. “He’s just sleeping normally. Better leave him for a bit—mustn’t overtire him. Oh, by the way, those tests were negative.”

  “Oh,” said Emmy.

  “However, as I said, that doesn’t prove anything, one way or the other.” The doctor gave Emmy a brisk nod of farewell and went off down the corridor.

  Emmy went downstairs and asked the receptionist if she might use the telephone. The receptionist was very sorry—but the hospital had only one outside line, and it was not allowed to be used for private calls. Emmy would find a public telephone at the post office in town.

  At that moment, a taxi drove up bringing visitors to the hospital. Emmy hailed it and further depleted her small supply of dollars by getting the driver to take her to Government House.

  The Governor was busy, but not too busy to see Mrs. Tibbett. Within minutes, Emmy was in his office, recounting Henry’s amnesia and his occasional bursts of apparent partial recall. She said, “The best explanation I can think of is that eighty-two refers to a location of some sort—maybe a degree of longitude.”

  There was a large map of the Caribbean area hanging on the wall of the office, and her eyes went instinctively to it. Sir Alfred was already on his feet, and they examined the map together. Eighty-two degrees west ran down the center of the so-called Florida panhandle—the peninsula jutting out into the Gulf of Mexico and terminating in Miami and the Florida Keys. Southward, the line of longitude crossed the island of Cuba.

  Sir Alfred said, “It’s quite interesting—as degrees of longitude go.” Emmy sensed a smile in his voice, and her heart lifted a little. She said, “Inspector Ingham tells me that these people called Carstairs have contacted him.”

  “Yes. Making a great fuss, I understand. They don’t really interest me, Mrs. Tibbett. However, I would like to know what has become of the other young people.”

  “The Blackstones?”

  “That’s right. They arrived illegally, from nowhere, and they seem to have gone the same way. Our only line on them is through Anderson, the Harbour Master, and all he knows is that his son picked them up on the beach.” The Governor paused. “Frankly, Mrs. Tibbett, now that we know that Miss Sprague was not murdered nor even harmed, but is safely home, I think the moment has come—well, to concentrate on getting through our imminent hurricane and forget the rest.” Another pause. “I am sure your husband meant well, and I am perfectly aware that we have a drug problem on the islands—but apart from the fact that some young people were picked up smoking marijuana at a fish fry last week, there seems very little to go on. Two boats, the Isabella and the Chermar, have been lost at sea with their crews, which is very sad but not, I fear, unusual. We’ll go on looking for the Blackstones, but I’m afraid that if they were on the Windflower, they were probably victims of Hurricane Alfred. When the photograph of Janet Vanduren arrives from England—and heaven knows when that will be, in present weather conditions—we will circulate it and keep a lookout for the young lady, should she be alive.” Sir Alfred’s tone of voice made it clear that he considered this a very remote possibility. “Meanwhile, as soon as the doctors pronounce Mr. Tibbett to be fit, and communications are restored, I think your best plan is to take him quietly home. He has undoubtedly had a breakdown of some sort, from whatever cause, and he needs a period of rest and quiet. I think he can safely leave us to cope with our own problems here in the Seawards.” Sir Alfred smiled. “I am trying to be as fair as I can. You can forget any question of arrest. Just…leave us alone, please, Mrs. Tibbett. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Sir Alfred,” said Emmy.

  The Harbour Prospect Hotel seemed to be keeping its cool admirably, even under the threat of Hurricane Beatrice. The dining room was not crowded, but neither was it deserted.

  The only obvious precautions were some taped-up plate-glass windows. As Emmy and Dr. Vanduren sat down to dinner at eight o’clock, the wind had not even started to blow hard. But the island was holding its breath.

  “Well, Mrs. Tibbett?”

  “Well, nothing. The Governor has decided that Henry has had a mental breakdown and should go home to England and have a nice long rest—thus leaving the British Seawards with nothing to worry about. As I told you, Betsy Sprague is alive and well, and since Henry was staying on here to investigate her disappearance—” Emmy suddenly looked up from her delicious dish of local baked fish and said, “Dr. Vanduren, am I perhaps going mad myself?”

  The doctor gave her a big grin. “No, Mrs. Tibbett. But you are beginning to see what we’re up against. Very clever people, with almost limitless financial resources and a great flair for…what can I call it? Public relations, I suppose. Making everything appear perfectly normal and—even if they are caught out—trivial at the worst. A little marijuana or cocaine carried in a small private sailing boat. Nothing to make a great fuss about.”

  “But—”

  “But multiply that sailing boat by a few thousands, and you get a different picture. Enlist a few reputable doctors, like myself…get a whole generation of young islanders involved…you see how it goes. Each incident is small in itself—that’s what makes it so smart.”

  “Well,” Emmy said, “one thing’s for sure—nothing much can happen until Hurricane Beatrice has been and gone. Alfred was bad enough, but in a curious way I’m almost ready to welcome Beatrice.”

  “I know what you mean,” said the doctor.

  “You do?”

  “Better the devil you know than the one you know you’re going to have to face,” said Vanduren. “Will she hit us tonight, do you think?”

  “More likely early tomorrow,” Emmy said.

  “Best get some rest while we can, then,” said Vanduren. He finished his meal and stood up. “I’ll be off to bed, if you’ll excuse me. Plenty to do. Room twenty-two.” He pulled a big key with a hotel tag on it out of his pocket. “Twenty-two, plenty to do. Do you ever use mnemonics? I find rhymes are useful.”

  Emmy hardly noticed him go. Something was stirring at the back of her mind. Mnemonics. Henry used them, too—made a rhyming phrase which would keep a number or a name in his mind. Or made a number…eighty-two…eighty-two…something was there, but Emmy couldn’t find it. She reviewed mentally all the conversations she had had since Henry’s breakdown. With Inspector Ingham, with Dr. Vanduren, with the Colvilles, with the Governor, with the Harbour Master, with the Golf Club Secretary…Eighty-two… And suddenly she got it. She jumped up from the table, ran to the front desk, and asked if she could order a taxi to take her to the hospital.

  The front desk, in the form of a bored-looking young black man, was surprised. The hurricane was imminent, and guests had been asked to stay indoors.

  “I know that, but I have to get to the hospital. My husband is ill.”

  Convinced by this argument, the young man agreed to call a cab, and a few minutes later Emmy was climbing the now-familiar steps up to St. Mark’s General. She hoped that visitors really were welcome at any hour.

  She need not have worried. The hospital was ablaze with lights and noisy with voices. It seemed to be quite a social center, and a small matter like a hurricane was not going to discourage the gregarious instincts of British Seawarder
s.

  The screens around Henry’s bed had been removed, and Emmy was relieved to see that he was awake and sitting up, looking much better and reading a three-year-old New Yorker magazine, which was the best in the way of reading material that the General had been able to dredge up. He looked up and beamed as Emmy came in.

  “Darling! What a splendid surprise. I thought you’d be barricaded in your hurricane shelter by now. Isn’t this a marvelous hospital?”

  “Henry, I—”

  “Where else in the world would you get live guitar music in a public ward at this time of night—let alone a pretty nurse dancing to it as she takes your temperature?”

  “Henry—”

  “Much as I dislike being ill, I’d sooner do it here than anywhere. Do you know what the nurse who brought my dinner said?”

  “No, and I don’t care!” Emmy was shouting, but failing to make any great impression against the competition of the guitar-player and his friends.

  Henry, suddenly serious, said, “Sorry, love. I was a bit carried away. What’s the problem?”

  “Eighty-two,” Emmy said.

  “Eighty-two? What about it?”

  “You mean—you’ve forgotten again? Or already?”

  Henry said, “I’m sorry, you’re talking in riddles. What’s eighty-two?”

  Patiently, Emmy explained. “When we first got you ashore from Windflower, you were trying to get a message to the Governor.”

  Henry looked puzzled. “Yes, you told me that, but I can’t remember—”

  “This afternoon, you remembered that part of the message had to do with the number eighty-two.”

  “Did I?” Henry’s brow wrinkled. “Isn’t it awful? I just can’t remember—”

  “Eighty-two,” said Emmy, “was a rhyming phrase to help you remember something else.”

  “It was? What, for heaven’s sake?”

  “I think I know,” Emmy said, “but if you could remember it on your own, that would really clinch it.”

  “Give me a clue, then.”

  “The name of a boat.”

  “Of a boat? Eighty-two?”

  “Rhyming with eighty-two. What rhymes with eighty?”