But it still didn’t give her a clue to who had bumped him off. That was the biggest mystery of them all. Granted, she had uncovered a few other mysteries this afternoon, but this was the biggest puzzle that, at the moment, she didn’t have a hope of solving.
Returning to the things she had found in the waste-paper bins in number six, she looked around to locate the three women who were staying there, but there was no sign of guilt on any of their faces. If one of them was a smuggler, maybe they had been in on it together, although what he would need an accomplice for she couldn’t think.
Finally, Windy clapped her hands and yelled for silence and, given her former position of power over them, she was instantly obeyed. ‘This has given us a lot of food for thought,’ she said in a carrying voice. ‘Thank God his poor Mother isn’t alive to witness all this scandal.’ A murmur of agreement went round, and she continued, ‘I think that, after we’ve all had a bite of something to eat, we should meet outside number two and take a stroll down to the Beach Bar, where we can discuss this over a drink or two. We won’t be overheard if we sit outside.’
Chapter Twelve
It was a subdued group of elderly women that gathered on the shore side of Coconut Corner an hour or so later, with the addition, of course, of Hugo and Beep-Beep. They were Beauchamp-less at the moment, as the couple had taken a rather cosy siesta after the exertions of house-viewing, and they were only just leaving number eight as the group moved the short distance to Old Uncle Obediah’s Rum Keg Landing Beach Bar.
As they neared, a terrible sight met their eyes. There was no Short John Silver, but a pair of legs protruded on the sand from behind the bar itself. There were several squeals of dismay, and the old elderly party began to move as swiftly as they could towards the legs to see what had happened to the bar’s proprietor.
Now, old people aren’t very fast runners, and before they reached the scene of what they believed to be another dastardly deed, a short figure shuffling on its knees appeared from behind the counter, picked up the legs, and made off swifter than his visitors inside the shack that comprised the indoor area of the establishment.
Even as Beauchamp and Enid caught up with them and overtook them, Short John had been inside for a minute or two, the sand hampering what agility the others may still have possessed. As they all arrived, forming a clump round the entrance and peering into the gloom of the interior, they spotted the owner sitting on the floor, just beginning to strap on his prosthetic legs.
‘Whatever were you doing with your legs left outside like that in the sun?’ asked Windy, quite shrill with the apprehension she had felt at the sight.
‘Ah just put dem out dere for dem to get a bit of colour. Dey’re very pale, or hadn’t you noticed?’ he replied, with a straight face.
‘Don’t be so ridiculous. How could false legs ever catch the sun?’
‘De magic of de tropics, of course.’
‘That’s just not good enough. You’ll have to do better than that, John,’ retorted Windy to this ridiculous claim.
For a moment there was complete silence, then the man finished fastening the last buckle and said, ‘Look sometimes mah stumps get red raw wid the friction, and Ah need a bit of a rest from dem. Dat do you?’
Another second or two of silence ensued, before Windy said, ‘I’m so sorry, John. I didn’t mean to embarrass you, and you probably weren’t expecting customers this early.’
‘You right dere, Missus.’ Short John hauled himself to his feet with the help of a chair. ‘But how was you expected to know?’
‘I should have thought about it more. They must become very uncomfortable in the heat. Please accept my sincere apologies.’
‘No worries. Now, what can I get you delightful people to drink?’
‘Blue Lagoons?’ said Beep-Beep, interrogatively, and there was a murmur of agreement. ‘We’re going to sit out here to catch the last of the sun, if you don’t mind,’ adding silently, ‘where you can’t eavesdrop on our conversation.’
Short John didn’t mind where they sat, as long as they purchased plenty of drinks, and he started to pull bottles and glasses from one of the shelves behind the bar. ‘You heard about dat autopsy? That man’s gut was stuffed with gemstones.’
They all turned his way to see if he had any further information. ‘Ah knowed he was up to no good. Ah seen him once, goin’ out in a little dinghy to meet a boat. He was a bad one, dat Huddlestone-Black.’
‘When was that?’ asked Lady A with great interest.
‘Can’t remember. Sorry, lady, but all days is de same to me.’
Now she was confused. She’d seen a man looking, with binoculars, she thought, watching Adonis’ activities the night she went out for a late walk, but it couldn’t have been Short John. He wasn’t very tall with his legs on, and even shorter with them off. Who else had been watching, and was it even the same night she was thinking of? And, come to that, who else was tall enough to have been that suspicious person? Surely it couldn’t have been Horseface? She’d already dismissed this possibility, as the woman had been at the lagoon with the rest of them the day the figure had disappeared furtively into the undergrowth? She was certainly the right height, though. Bother!
‘You’re very quiet, Manda,’ commented Hugo.
She gave him a blank stare, then collected her scattered wits and replied, ‘Just thinking about things, that’s all, old stick. Nothing to worry about.’ He seemed content with this, and returned to the slim straw in his glass, sucking at it with obvious enjoyment.
Lady Amanda returned to her deep thought. Very recently she had seen something that was out of kilter, but she couldn’t for the life of her think what it was. Like crossword puzzle answers, though, she was sure it would come to her, but she was impatient to retrieve it from her memory.
She kept out of the conversation as the others discussed who might have been the murderer of dear old Adonis, and was still very quiet as they walked back to the villas in the dying rays of the sun, but Hugo was bursting with news. Back at the bar, he had been bursting with something quite different, and made his way out through the back of the shack to the primitive lavatories. In the back lobby he had come across Short John in earnest conversation with the tall figure of Horseface, and he happened, quite by accident to hear the tail-end of their conversation.
‘But why have we got to wait till tomorrow night? Why not now?’ the subdued, but still carrying, deep tones of Horseface asked.
‘Because I’m just not ready yet. Don’t rush me,’ replied Short John, then broke off as he became aware of Hugo’s presence.
As tall as Horseface was, they made an ill-matched couple, as Short John had those stubby prosthetic legs and so their height difference was quite noticeable. It was only as they left the bar that Hugo began to wonder about those two. They seemed very friendly. He remembered them slipping away when they had last been here, to have a private chat. Was there anything in this strange relationship? He’d have to tell Manda as soon as they got back.
Just before they entered the close, Windy announced plans for them to visit one of the adjacent islands the next day for a jeep tour round it. She had decided it would be good to show them just how tatty and unkempt – uncivilised, she thought it – some of the other islands were, compared to Caribbaya. She’d done her best to sell the idea of buying a villa for either permanent or holiday enjoyment. Now she had to reinforce just how beautiful this island actually was.
The next morning, Winstone turned up in his rickety old bus to take them to the ferry landing stage just south of the cruise terminal, and they wandered out of the villas to board, some of them quite excited to get the chance to visit an adjacent island with which to compare Caribbaya. Hugo and Lady Amanda went right to the back of the bus, because they could talk more privately there, and Hugo had remembered that he still hadn’t told Manda about what he’d overheard the previous evening, when he was on his way to the little boys’ room at Old Uncle Obediah’s Rum Keg Landing Beach Bar.
/> After regaling her with his little bit of gossip, he ended with, ‘Do you really think they had an assignation for a bit of … er … hanky-panky?’ Even the thought of it made Hugo flush pink.
‘It easily could have been,’ she replied thoughtfully, ‘but it could be something quite different.’
At that point in their cogitations, Wuffles shuffled unsteadily along the, thankfully empty, aisle of the bus and plonked herself down in the seat in front of them. ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she apologised, ‘but Windy said it was alright to confide in you, as I did in her.’
This sounded very interesting, and the two occupants of the long back seat went completely quiet, and assumed interested expressions. Wuffles continued, now she could see she had their full attention, but kept her voice low, to that it would not carry to the front of the bus, even though it was unlikely to be heard there, as the other girls had started singing ‘Ten Green Bottles’ very lustily.
‘I need to tell you that I’m actually on the island undercover. ‘I used to work for HM Customs and Excise, and they called me out of retirement when I confided to a friend who still works there that I was coming out here.’
Lady Amanda and Hugo gave discreet gasps of surprise, and something fell into place in Lady A’s brain. ‘I thought you might be a smuggler yourself,’ she admitted.
‘Why on earth should you come to that conclusion?’ Wuffles’ canine face looked more hang-dog than they thought possible.
‘Because of a certain piece of paper screwed up into a ball with the department’s name at the top, and a screwed up note that was arranging a midnight meeting with someone, although not the date or place,’ admitted Lady Amanda.
‘You’ve been going round hunting through bins and waste-paper baskets, haven’t you?’
‘You bet, but that’s enough of that for the moment. Tell us more.’
‘The Department already had its suspicions about our Darling Douglas for a variety of reasons, and I was asked to keep an eye on him while I was out here, and to report on him if I had anything concrete. Well, of course, that’s all up the spout now …’
‘But I don’t think you know everything that we know,’ Lady A interrupted, and told Wuffles about her suspicions about Adonis and what he had actually done to his cabin steward. Also she told her about seeing him sneaking out of a shop in the jewellery district looking very furtive when he was supposed to be back at his villa.
‘I’ll certainly pass that on and get the steward’s name checked out. What was he called? I knew someone was going on about having a different cabin steward, but I didn’t think anything of it.’
‘Sam, as far as I can remember. He also did one of the girl’s cabins. It may have been Fflageolet’s. You’ll just have to ask.’
‘I won’t need to as I can give them the date of sailing, the name of the ship, and the first name of the steward, and that he had been responsible for Adonis’s cabin. That should be enough to identify him, although what good it will do now, I don’t know, except, perhaps to wrap up the case – sort of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Now, whoever is in on this gem-smuggling lark will just have to wait until someone else is appointed to take his place.
‘If I follow my instincts, though, there’s something else going on here, and that’s why I decided not to go back just yet. I don’t know who that note you found was to or from, but as I found it on the edge of our lawn, I shall presume it’s one of the other two in my house. I shall be on guard every night, now, to see if either of them goes out just before the witching hour. There’s something afoot, and I wouldn’t mind betting it’s something to do with smuggling. Did you smell that hashish the night we did the conga?’
‘Sure did,’ agreed Hugo, who was the one of the pair to identify it, much to Lady A’s amazement.
‘That was proof positive that it was getting on to the island, and I’m damned sure it’s getting off it again for distribution in Europe. The only thing I don’t know is how, and with whom. Will you keep your eyes peeled for me, and pass on anything you think suspicious?’
‘Of course we will, Wuffles,’ confirmed Lady A. ‘By the way, where did you get hold of that midnight meeting letter, if it wasn’t sent to you?’ She’d said nothing about any of the other finds she had made at number seven. She liked to keep something up her sleeve.
‘I told you just now. I found it crumpled up on the ground outside in the close, as if someone had pulled it out of their pocket by accident. Senior moment, or what?’
‘And you’re doing all this after you’ve officially retired, even though you’ve got a phobia about insects?’
‘I’m just passionately anti-smuggling, and anyway, I was getting a bit bored.’
When she had gone, Lady Amanda confirmed with Hugo that he actually believed her story, then said very quietly to him, ‘I’m sure if Windy had told her about the anonymous letter she would have mentioned it. I’m certainly going to say nothing about that angle of what’s going on here until she says something, or Windy gives me permission to spill the beans, as it were.’
‘Discretion is our watchword,’ said Hugo in agreement.
When the bus disgorged the flow of chattering old ladies at the south landing stage – plus Hugo and Beauchamp, as Beep-Beep had elected to stay behind and catch up with paperwork today – they were dismayed to find that the ferry was as rickety as the island’s bus and taxi.
‘Just how long are we going to be aboard this old tub?’ Lady A didn’t bother with polite niceties. She just got straight to the nub of the matter.
‘The trip’s about forty-five minutes there, and the same back,’ replied Windy, indignantly. She could not encourage negative remarks of this kind, or she’d never shift those villas.
‘Do you think it can stay afloat that long?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous: of course it can. It’s perfectly seaworthy, if in need of a lick of paint,’ she said, with a glower.
‘And Ah plans to do just dat ting next week, Miz Windy,’ called a musical voice from aboard the vessel, and a head of tightly curled hair looked out at them standing at the end of the landing stage. It was the kind of thing he always said when he had no real intention of doing something. The rest of the man followed, and he disembarked and came over to meet them.
Windy shot him a dazzling smile of welcome, and announced, ‘Everybody, this is our ferryman for today, and he rejoices in the name Goodluck Johnston.’ With little squeaks of amusement, the boating-party members shook hands and introduced themselves, as he helped them on to the ancient ferry.
‘This should be a real hoot,’ said Lady A, landing rather heavily in the ferry, and needing both Goodluck Johnston’s hand and that of Beauchamp to help her to one of the bench seats that went round the sides of the craft. The weather was on the change, and there was a discernible swell on the way over, resulting in quite a few green faces and very little conversation. Those that were affected on the small craft shrunk in on themselves, entering their own private world of internal misery.
It was a relief when the ferry docked at the next island, as those who hadn’t been upset by the sea’s movement had been unsettled by the obvious suffering of those who had. They were met by a guide who was in charge of two jeeps with bench seating along the sides of the open back – the same as had been used for their previous trip through the jungly bit of Caribbaya, but these two vehicles looked like they were also on their last legs, and the bench seats felt unstable. The wood which had been used to make them was now splintered and split in its old age, so that there were quite a few complaints about getting either scratched or stabbed before the trip even began.
The jeeps set off with both drivers pointing out things of interest, which proved to be few and far between. After a few hundred metres, the metalled road leading from the dock turned into a dirt track, deeply rutted from the traffic that regularly used it. As there had been no rain for some time, the journey was doubly uncomfortable, as they were thrown around as we
ll as being attacked by the spikiness of their rickety seats.
There were dilapidated gatherings of wooden buildings, outside which scrawny chickens scratched for food, and once a goat, which lunged as they approached, but was fortunately tethered and so just unable to deliver either a bite or a butt to those merely passing through.
Scantily-clad children ran outside of these ramshackle homes to wave at them and call out cheerful hellos, but the main township, when they reached it, was in poor condition too, and the lunch they stopped for at a makeshift restaurant offered only goat or chicken stew, which were cooked as well as they could be with limited ingredients. Lady Amanda whispered to Hugo that she thought this place hardly ever had many customers, and the cook simply didn’t have the experience for what their group represented – mass catering.
‘It’s certainly not as pretty as where we’re staying, although everyone seems friendly enough,’ replied Hugo, smiling at the woman who was delivering large chunks of bread, torn by hand, from a much larger loaf made with a strong wholemeal flour.
After lunch, they were served with cold, weak coffee in enamel mugs, whereafter they re-joined the jeeps for the rest of their tour. As it was after noon, and heading for the hottest part of the day, the insects were out in force, and as soon as the jeeps returned beneath the canopy of trees, its occupants were attacked and bitten mercilessly.
It was Wuffles whose phobia of all insects finally broke her. ‘I can’t stand this anymore,’ she shouted, waving her hands around in the air to disperse a cloud of little flying beasties that had surrounded her for a feast. ‘I can practically see their bibs and cruet sets.’ As this cry rang out, there was a chorus of screams from many of the others in the jeeps, as Horseface pointed out the long cylindrical body of a snake that was dangling from a tree under which they had just passed.
‘Stop!’ shouted Windy, managing to make herself heard by both jeep drivers – she really had retained a stentorian voice since her schooldays – and advised both men that there was a problem. ‘What do you want to do?’ she asked in general, but of Wuffles in particular.
Caribbean Sunset with a Yellow Parrot (The Belchester Chronicles Book 5) Page 13