Solitaire

by Graham Masterton

  Now, with the landscape thick with shadows, she made her most foolish mistake. She decided to keep on riding until it was too dark to go on. Refolding the horse’s blanket, she mounted up again, and keeping the fading light of the sun on her left, and slightly behind her, she continued north-east. The heavy pouch around her neck walloped regularly against her breastbone as she rode.

  There was still a chance for her to find her way: but she crossed a tributary that joined the Tugela from the north-west, believing it to be the Tugela, and carried on riding north-east by the light of the thumbnail moon, trying desperately to find the tributary that she had just forded. Exhausted, hungry, and panicky, she crossed the Newcastle-to-Durban road in the darkness, without realising it.

  She was last seen alive on the following morning, a considerable distance away, through the binoculars of a scouting party of the 17th Lancers. They could do nothing else but return to their encampment with a dismayed report that a European woman had been seen riding at the gallop through the bushy ravines close to the Buffalo River, a few miles south-east of Rorke’s Drift. She had appeared to have no weapons, no provisions, and no guide; and either she had not heard the three rifle shots that the scouts had fired into the air to attract her attention, or else she had ignored them.

  Five days later, scouts of the Natal Native Contingent found the body of a brown-haired white woman by the side of the waggon road which led south-eastwards from Isandhlwana to the Inkanhlda Bush. She had been disembowelled by assegais, the short stabbing spears of the Zulu warriors, and badly mutilated. Around her neck was an empty leather pouch; and in her right hand, clenched so tightly that the scouts had been unable to remove it before they buried her, had been a large jagged pebble. A label in her riding-dress had identified her as Sara Sutter, of Durban.

  Joel, Hunt and Nareez arrived in Durban on a humid, irritating day when it seemed as if the only thing worth doing was having a bath and then getting gradually drunk on gin-and-bitters on a cool verandah somewhere. At first, Joel was reluctant to let Nareez go; but when Hunt pointed out that all the amah wanted to do was scurry off back to Khotso and rejoin her mistress, who had probably arrived there by now, tearful and tired and not one penny the richer, Joel at last agreed to pay for a hackney carriage to take her out there, and good riddance.

  Joel’s sense of irony did not leave him, even though he had escaped with the diamond as far as Durban. Remembering his first visit here, with a crushed pelvis and broken legs, he booked rooms for himself and Hunt at the Natalia Hotel, signing his name ‘Blitz’ on the register with an aggressive flourish. If Barney ever followed him here, the evidence that he had come and gone would be bombastically obvious. He swung his way upstairs on his crutches, and was able at last to lie back on a soft bed, with his shoes off, and close his eyes; while the jumbled sounds of street-peddlers and trotting horses and carriage-wheels wafted in through the slats of his half-open jalousie like noises from a half-forgotten dream.

  Joel slept, and then woke. There was a salty taste in his mouth, and he had dribbled a little on to the pillow. He heaved himself up into a sitting position, and then dragged the cheap linen coaster off the bedside table, so that he could wipe his mouth with it, and mop his forehead. He sat still for a while, thinking about Barney, and Sara, and the diamond, and then he seized his crutches from beside the bed, and hopped his way over to the bathroom, so that he could draw himself a deep tubful of hot water.

  The bath was running, and steam was drifting idly out of the open window, when there was a sharp knock at the door. Joel said warily, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Blitz?’ asked an unfamiliar voice.

  ‘Who is that?’ Joel demanded.

  ‘It’s the manager, Mr Blitz. Charles Pope. Would you mind if I had a word with you, just for a moment?’

  ‘Come on in,’ said Joel.

  The manager unlocked the door with his pass-key, and stepped into the room with the stiff, mannered movements of an old soldier. He was a short round-headed man, with a clipped moustache, and cheeks that were bright with broken veins, both from sun and brandy. He stood to attention in his black suit and his boiled shirt and his startingly-elevated white tie, and faced Joel with flustered boldness.

  ‘I saw your name in the register, Mr Blitz, and I was alarmed.’

  Joel was sitting on the side of the bed, leaning on his crutches. ‘Alarmed?’ he asked, with a grin of surprise. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, sir, it’s an inheritance, sir; some years old; but an inheritance that I can’t really afford to ignore. Not for my own sake, sir; nor for the sake of my family.’

  ‘Why don’t you get to the point?’ asked Joel.

  ‘Well, sir, the point is that before I took over the management of this hotel, sir – that was when I retired from the Army, sir, Royal Engineers –’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Joel, impatiently.

  ‘Well, sir, the point is that someone called Mr Blitz stayed here before, some years ago.’

  ‘That’s right. It was me, and my brother Barney. What of it?’

  Charles Pope clenched his bright yellow false teeth together and managed to look even more embarrassed than he had before. ‘It was the way you settled the bill, sir, apparently.’

  ‘You mean we didn’t settle it? You’re asking for money?’

  ‘Oh, no, sir. The bill was settled quite satisfactory. Well, as far as I know, anyway. The difficulty was that it was paid in five-pound notes of awkward origin, sir.’

  ‘Forged?’

  ‘No, sir, not forged. But one was later passed in change to a particular gentleman from the Durban commercial community, sir, when he came to dine here one evening, or at least that’s what I’m told. And this particular gentleman from the commercial community was able to identify the serial numbers on the note, for the reason that he was making concerted efforts to trace a certain quantity of notes that had gone missing, so to speak, from a merchant bank in Portugal.’

  Joel nodded towards the bathroom. ‘Would you mind turning those taps off? I’d hate to flood your lovely hotel.’

  Charles Pope went next door, and turned off the water. When he returned, he said, ‘You do follow my drift, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not sure that I do. You’re trying to tell me that the money we used to pay our hotel bill, nearly eight years ago, was stolen?’

  ‘That’s the drift of it, yes.’

  Joel shook his head dismissively. ‘You’re going to have a difficult time proving it, my friend. And anyway, the bank has probably written the money off by now.’

  Charles Pope clapped his hands together, louder than he had obviously meant to. ‘That’s the problem, sir! The bank probably has. But the gentlemen who were looking for the money most certainly have not. They are gentlemen of unusual persistence.’

  ‘I think you’d better tell me about this straight,’ said Joel.

  ‘Well …’ said Charles Pope, ‘I can only give it to you second-hand, because when you first stayed here, I was still manager of the old Muharrik Hotel in Cairo. But the manager who was here at the time, he told me that a bank in La Coruna, in Portugal, had been swindled some years ago of hundreds of thousands of pounds. It had been done by a whole gang of people, this swindle. Accountants, lawyers, bank officials, registrars. It cost the bank every last penny it had, and it almost brought down the Portuguese government.’

  ‘So what does any of this have to do with me?’ asked Joel.

  Charles Pope pulled a series of rubbery faces, as if he could not quite decide which expression suited this explanation the best. But then he said, ‘It has practically everything to do with you, sir; because the five-pound notes with which you paid your hotel bill were part of the haul of notes which were taken from the bank during this swindle. And the only way in which you could possibly have acquired them was from the one man in the whole gang of swindlers who double-crossed his associates and disappeared with everything, at the crucial moment. Six of the gang were caught and sent to gaol for lif
e. Two more were shot while trying to escape from police custody. There were eight more, who are now living under false names in different parts of the world. Five of them run an export business in Lourenço Marques, in the Portuguese Territory; and one of them acts as an agent for his colleagues here in Durban. It was he who came to the hotel for dinner just after you and your brother had stayed here, and identified one of the stolen notes.’

  ‘Well, this is all very interesting,’ said Joel. ‘But you have no form proof whatsoever of what you are saying, and for all I know you are lying through those artificial teeth of yours just to frighten me. I don’t know anything at all about any stolen money, or any Portuguese swindlers, or anything at all. I’m an ignoramus, and you can’t hold a man responsible for that.’

  ‘Mr Blitz,’ said Charles Pope, patiently, ‘you and your brother paid over hundreds of pounds to this hotel, all in the same five-pound notes. Mr Salgadas will be most interested to know that you are here.’

  Joel thought about this for a moment, blowing his cheeks in and out reflectively. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell him that I’m here? Is that it?’

  ‘It would be my duty, sir. For the sake of my family. If Mr Salgadas were to find out that you had visited, sir, and that I had omitted to inform him …’

  ‘I see,’ said Joel. ‘It’s extortion, is it? How much do you want?’

  Charles Pope made a self-deprecatory face. ‘Five hundred pounds, sir, should do it easily. Five hundred pounds for two weeks of silence, that’s a fair rate.’

  ‘How much does that work out per minute?’ Joel demanded.

  Charles Pope pressed one finger against his forehead and closed his eyes. ‘Almost sixpence, sir,’ he said, after a while, and then exposed all of his grotesquely artificial teeth in a wide grin. ‘I used to be an accountant, sir, before I went into the hotel trade.’

  Joel gathered up his crutches, and swung himself across to the window. ‘Open these shutters for me, will you?’ he told Pope, and Pope came across and unlatched them for him, so that he could look out over the tiled and corrugated-iron rooftops.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Joel, ‘I’ll make a deal with you. But the problem is that you’re going to have to take me on trust.’

  Charles Pope took out a handkerchief, and solemnly stared at Joel while he explored the inside of his nose.

  ‘The man who double-crossed the Portuguese swindle gang was called Monsaraz,’ said Joel. ‘I knew him very well. In fact, I used to run a farm with him out at Oranjerivier, in the north colony. The problem was, he was dying of lung disease. Consumption, probably, that he’d picked up in Portugal. You know what a filthy lot they are there.’

  Charles Pope scrutinised his handkerchief. Then he said, ‘Go on. I’m listening.’

  Joel smiled. ‘Before Monsaraz died, he entrusted all of his swindled money to me, and to my brother Barney. He told us to send most of it out of the country, back to Portugal, for his relatives. We disguised it as parcels of dried fruit. In return, he gave us fifty thousand pounds each. You might be interested to know that I invested most of mine in the Sutter Shipping Company, and that I have today almost seventy thousand pounds, just lying in the bank, waiting to be spent.’

  Charles Pope said huskily, ‘What are you proposing? You’re not proposing that I should get myself involved in this, too?’

  ‘I’m not proposing anything of the kind. I’m simply trying to put it to you that if Mr Salgadas were to get hold of the wrong end of the stick – if Mr Salgadas were to take his revenge on somebody in the sincere belief that he was finally getting even for the Monsaraz double-cross, even though that somebody may not be exactly the right somebody, then all of my problems would be over; and yours would be over, too, because I would pay you twenty thousand pounds in untraceable banknotes to help me.’

  Outside, in the streets of Durban, a water-seller was calling out his high-pitched song in a voice that reminded Joel strangely of the way in which Simon de Koker had encouraged his horses. ‘Yip! Yip! Yip!’ Beside him, Charles Pope slowly stuffed his handkerchief back into the pocket of his tight hotel-manager’s trousers and frowned at the far corner of the room, as if he expected a prompt-card to appear there, and tell him what to do.

  After a long ruminative silence, he said, ‘What do you mean when you say “that somebody may not exactly be the right somebody?” ’

  The following morning, at eight, Hunt was taking breakfast in the dining-room of the Natalia Hotel – toast and Oxford marmalade, with the morning newspaper propped up against the silver marmalade pot – when two men in off-white tropical suits and dark moustaches hurried through the swing doors, hustled a waitress to one side, and produced revolvers.

  Hunt did not even see them. He was too engrossed in a gossipy paragraph in the paper about Lieutenant Kenneth Ogilvy of the 2/24th, and how he had delayed his engagement to Miss Patricia Penrose, of Marianhill. He was still munching toast when the two men rushed up to his table, went down on to one knee, and aimed their revolvers at his face. Unlike Lieutenant Ogilvy they looked as if they were about to propose.

  There were five shots, four more than necessary, and a lot of blue smoke, and broken glass, and blood. Then the men hurried out again. One of them even raised his hat in apology to the waitress he had jostled on the way in. Nobody screamed, or cried out, or even moved. Hunt bent over his newspaper, as if he were examining it from only a quarter of an inch away, and then he flopped back his head and rolled on to the floor.

  At the same time, on board the London cargo ship Wallasey, which was two miles out from Port Natal off Umlazi, and still visible from the front lawn of Khotso, Joel was drinking whiskey from a flask, and leaning against the windy rail like a seasoned one-legged mariner.

  The first mate passed him by, and said, ‘Fine morning, sir. Make sure you don’t fall in.’

  Joel gave him a vague smile, and screwed the top back on his flask again. He had other things on his mind, apart from the sharpness of the morning and the smoothness of the sea. He was thinking of Hunt; and of Sara; and of Charles Pope. It was the thought of Charles Pope that he savoured in particular – and how Pope must have knocked on the door of his room with a tray of tea and a morning paper, only to find that his bed was unslept in, and that even his single bedroom slipper had gone.

  The extortionist gets what the extortionist deserves, he thought; and that’s nothing.

  Barney did not get to hear of Sara’s death until 5 July, the day after Lord Chelmsford had advanced on the Zulu capital of Ulundi with an impenetrable square of British troops, mowing down 1000 natives with rifles and Garling guns, and finally setting a torch to the royal kraal.

  The letter from Gerald Sutter had been sent mistakenly to Oranjerivier, and from the brown circles on the envelope it looked as if someone had left it on their mantelshelf for a week or two, and rested their tea-cups on it. It had been re-addressed twice, once to Colesberg and then to Kimberley.

  Barney opened it in the drawing-room where he was having coffee with Harold. They had been working since seven o’clock on a deal to buy out three important claims from the Standard Diamond Mining Company, and he was still wearing his blue silk bathrobe. There were papers all over the floor, and even papers propped up against the coffee-pot. Harold had just taken out his tobacco-pouch to light his first pipe of the day.

  ‘It’s from Durban,’ said Barney, turning the envelope over. On the back flap, embossed into the vellum paper, was the crest of the Sutter family, a ship flanked by pelicans. He tore the envelope open with his thumb, and opened the letter. He was silent for two whole minutes while he read it.

  ‘Is that news about Sara?’ asked Harold, thumbing tobacco into his pipe.

  Barney folded the letter up, and laid it carefully on the birdcage coffee-tray, on top of all the other papers. It had been a sorrowful letter, perplexed, and gentle. Nareez had arrived at Khotso to say that she and Sara had been on their way to visit the Sutters in the company of a Boer guide and
a friend of Barney’s. There had been trouble on the way, and the guide had accidentally been killed. Sara had ridden off on her own to get help, and had never been seen alive again.

  Three days after Nareez had reached Knotso, the Sutters had advised the British Army garrison that Sara was missing in the area between Colenso and Tugela Ferry. The Army had made enquiries, and ten days later had turned up the report from the Natal Native Contingent that they had buried the mutilated body of a white woman not far south of Isandhlwana.

  ‘I cannot think that she did not die without dignity, or grace, or without opening her heart to the God who understands the Essential Rightness of being English,’ wrote her father.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Harold asked Barney.

  Barney nodded. ‘That was from Sara’s father,’ he said, with a catch in his voice. He cleared his throat. ‘She’s dead. Or, at least, they found a body who answered to her description.’

  ‘What happened? Oh, Barney, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Here,’ said Barney, and handed Harold the letter to read. Harold put on his bifocals, and scanned it carefully, his lips moving as he read, his hand trembling slightly. ‘This is a shock,’ he said, at last, putting the letter down. ‘I don’t know what to say to you.’

  ‘You don’t have to say anything,’ Barney told him. ‘I think I began to get over my love for Sara the day after we came back here to Kimberley. I don’t think either of us ever found out what it was that we actually wanted from each other. We were better off apart. I’m just sorry that we had to part the way we did, and I’m sorry that she’s dead.’

  Harold folded up his spectacles and sat back. ‘It seems as if they were making for the east coast after all,’ he said. ‘And from what Mr Sutter says in his letter, it seems as if your friend what-was-his-name, the Boer, was also unfortunate enough not to survive the journey.’

  Barney was pouring them each a small brandy from the drinks table by the window. ‘You make that sound as if his death wasn’t accidental.’