Complete works of peter.., p.406
Complete Works of Peter Cheyney. Illustrated, page 406
Cherchez la femme! Isles grinned. Well, if it was a woman who had got him into the gaol, another one had got him out. He had cried quits on that job. But, he thought, he had been lucky to get out.
He wondered what life would have been like with the girl he had married if she had gone on living; if the bomb that had killed her three weeks after their marriage had fallen somewhere else. That was bad luck, thought Isles. They had hardly had time enough to know each other. The devil with life was, he ruminated, that you were never certain as to whether any incident was lucky or unlucky. You never knew until you had gone the whole way.
The telephone bell jangled. Isles, the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, picked up the receiver.
He said: "Yes?"
He was answered by a peculiar voice—so peculiar that he was both amazed and intrigued. It might have been the voice of an old man or an old woman, and it might have been the voice of a young woman. Isles thought it might have been anybody's voice.
The voice said: "Mr. Isles, perhaps you were expecting a telephone call. Perhaps you'd heard something about the possibility of a telephone call?"
Isles said: "Yes. I'm all ears!"
The voice said: "Are you on foot or have you a car?"
"I have a car on the other side of the road," said Isles.
"Very well.... If you drive back the way you came from the hotel and carry on straight past it, you'll come to a fork in the road. Your right-hand fork runs straight down the front of the island through the town. Your left-hand fork leads towards the middle of the island. You take the left-hand fork. If you watch the mileage register on your car and drive for two miles, you'll come to a small dirt road leading off at an angle. Not a very attractive road at first. It runs through a plantation, but if you drive down it for half a mile through a clearing you'll find a small road leading to wooden gates. Open the gates and drive down the carriage drive. It's a long carriage drive. You'll find the house at the end—a white, two-storeyed building with a veranda right around it. I'd say it would take you a quarter of an hour to get there. When you arrive ring the door bell which is at the side of the house. I'll be waiting for you. You understand?"
"Perfectly," said Isles. "You wouldn't by any chance like to tell me your name?"
The voice said: "Mr. Isles, at the moment I don't see that that would help, and I don't want to say more than I'm forced to—well, not on this telephone."
"Very well." Isles hung up; went outside; started the car; turned it. He drove away.
In a quarter of an hour he found himself before the wide double gates of the house. Inside, he could make out the vague shape of a carriage drive curving into the blackness.
As he opened the gates the rain began to slacken off. He got back into the car; drove along the carriage drive. On each side of him was thick plantation, palm trees, foliage, shrubbery. The air smelt fresh and clean, but Isles had an idea in his head that he didn't like the place. He didn't know why. He told himself that he didn't like the island very much. A lovely place—Dark Bahama—but there was something—some odd thing which he couldn't quite place. He grinned. He thought maybe he was getting a little fastidious; getting to the time of life when one began to imagine things.
He stopped the car in the clearing in front of the house. The wide, paved paths that ran round it were neat and tidy. The small lawn which he could see on one side where the trees had been cleared was well kept. He switched off his lights; got out of the car; went round to the side of the house, up the six wooden steps—white painted—that bisected the veranda and led to the front door.
He put his finger on the bell-push and waited. He continued to wait. Five minutes went by. Nothing happened. Isles put his hand on the door knob; twisted it and pushed. The door opened. He went inside; stood in the hallway.
The hall was square, well carpeted, furnished after the Colonial style. There was a lamp on a small table in the far corner which illuminated the hall. In the left-hand corner, farthest away from him, was a wide staircase with an off-white carpet and wide, enamelled banister rails. On the right of the staircase was a wide passage leading towards the back of the house.
Farther towards him on the right-hand side of the hall were double doors. He tried the doors; went into the room. There was an electric light switch by the door. He switched it on. The room was a dining-room. It was spacious, cool, distinguished. There was a long table down the centre of the room. The table-lamps on the table which had sprung to life when he had turned the main switch shone on the polished wood.
Isles sighed; closed the doors; went back into the hallway. He thought it was peculiar. He thought that if this situation had been written into some romantic novel it would have seemed mysterious. To him, for some reason which he could not understand, it seemed almost normal.
He moved along into the entrance of the passage leading towards the rear of the house; found a light switch; turned it on. He walked down the passage. There was a door facing him at the end; two doors on his right and one on the left which would lie approximately under the turn of the stairway above it. He walked down to the end of the passage; opened the door; switched on the light. The room was a wide drawing-room, furnished in off-white furniture and rugs, with a cherry-coloured frieze at the top of the cream-painted walls. There were two big chairs—one on each side of the old Colonial fireplace—and by the side of one of the chairs was a cigarette ash-tray supported on a bronze stand. Isles walked across the room; looked into the ash-tray. There were two half-smoked cigarettes in it. He picked them up. One of them, he thought, was a trifle warmer than the other, but that could be imagination.
He came out of the room; turned to his right; went through the smaller door—the one under the stairway. Strangely enough, this led into a small passage with a door at the end so that the passage ran under the stairway, but the room was beyond it. He went in; switched on the light. He stood with his back to the door, looking into the room. It might have been a library, a study or a small sitting-room. It had a large desk in one corner of the room, long bookshelves on the opposite wall. There was a settee set at an angle before french windows opposite him. The curtains were not drawn. A white fur rug lay across the settee.
Lying in front of the settee, with his head towards Isles, was the figure of a man. Isles thought the figure didn't look so good. Because the light-green carpet underneath the head was thickly stained with blood. Isles sighed once more; thought to himself: Here it is again. Always you start some quite sweet, innocent-looking job and before you get well into it you encounter something like this. This was the sort of thing that happened to him.
He walked across the room; stood looking downwards at the man. The lower part of the face was intact, but above the bridge of the nose from the line of the eyes the sight wasn't pretty. Isles thought that he had been shot at close range with a fairly heavy-calibred pistol or automatic. The bullet had smashed through the forehead; taken off the back of the head. Isles thought it must have been at very close range.
The bottom of the face was youthful. Incongruously, one side of it was shaven, the other not. Isles thought that was a little odd, because the man had certainly not been interrupted whilst he was shaving—not unless he was shaving fully dressed. He was wearing an ivory silk shirt and a blue tie, with a cream alpacca jacket, slacks, white shoes, white silk socks. There was a lawn handkerchief of very good quality in his left-hand pocket. When he knelt down he realised that the handkerchief was scented with a man's scent—made in Paris—called "Moustachio."
He got up; looked round the room. There was a telephone on the table in the corner. There was an ash-tray with three unsmoked cigarettes. Isles looked at these; opened the silver cigarette box on one table; found the brands were identical. In the corner of the room opposite the door was a drink wagon filled with bottles.
Isles went over to it. No glasses had been used. He took out his handkerchief; picked up an open bottle of brandy; poured a slug into a glass; added some soda; took the glass to an armchair; sat down. He noticed there was no ice bucket on the drink wagon, which was strange in a place like Dark Bahama, where everybody used ice all the time.
Isles sat there, sipping his drink, thinking about Mrs. Thelma Lyon, the peculiar voice that had telephoned him at the call-box and the scene in front of him. One or two things were quite obvious. It was Mrs. Lyon who had informed him that he might receive a telephone call. Therefore, there must be a connection between her and the voice that had spoken to him. But Mrs. Lyon could easily deny she had ever said this would happen, and the voice could deny that it had made the telephone call. Isles thought it might easily be a frame-up. Why shouldn't it be?"
Another thing that was obvious was that somebody had been waiting for him to arrive on the island. Because the message telephoned through to the hotel whilst he was out walking in the grounds had been telephoned a few hours after his arrival.
He finished the drink; went over to the drink wagon; poured himself another. He recorked the bottle; cleaned it with his handkerchief and, when he had finished the drink, cleaned the glass. He went back to his chair. He wondered exactly what he was supposed to do. He wondered, supposing Mrs. Lyon were in the room, what she would advise him to do. He wondered what had happened to the voice; whether the voice had really intended to meet him or not. Isles had an idea that this wasn't so. This, he thought, was a frame-up. Because he was going to do one of two things. He was either going to get in touch with the police or he was going to get out. But supposing he did get out—well, Dark Bahama was a small place. There weren't an awful lot of telephone calls. Any intelligent telephone operator would think it peculiar that a call should be put through to a call-box on a deserted road on the island. Any intelligent operator would have made a mental note of that call, and maybe heard what had been said, in which case if he got out he would probably be for it. Everybody knew who the new arrivals were and there were only seven people on his plane. Isles thought it might be amusing to try and have it both ways, not for any particular reason but that to do something incongruous invariably made things happen. Of course you didn't know what things would happen, but something would turn up.
He got up; walked over to the telephone. When the operator answered he said: "I want to talk to the police—someone important."
She said: "Do you want the Chief Commissioner's office at the Police Barracks?"
"Why not?" asked Isles politely.
"Hold on a minute, please. I take it this is an urgent call?"
Isles agreed. Two minutes afterwards he heard the click of the connection.
A voice said: "This is Bahamas Constabulary—Dark Bahama Police Barracks."
Isles asked: "Who is that speaking?"
"This is the Inspector on duty."
Isles said: "There's been a murder. I'm sitting with the corpse now. I don't know what the name of the house is because I'm a stranger here, but I'll describe it to you, and tell you where it is. Would you like to make a note?"
"Very good," said the Inspector.
Isles began to describe his route to the house.
The Inspector interrupted: "It's all right.... Ah know the house. So it's there?"
Isles said: "Yes, it's here. I'm sitting in something that looks like a secondary sitting-room in the house. A man's been murdered. What do I do now?"
The Inspector said: "Ah shouldn't do anything, sir, except stay where you are. Don't touch anything, please. In five minutes' time I'll send a wagon with a police officer. Just wait till he comes, will you?"
Isles said: "Very well." He hung up. He had another look at the corpse. He thought it was rather a pity that a young man with such a long, slender, straight body should meet such a sticky end—literally sticky.
Then he went back to the drinks wagon; poured himself another brandy and soda. He sat down in the armchair and waited.
He thought it was nice that the drinks were free.
IV
Isles heard a clock strike somewhere in the upper regions of the house. That, he thought, would be eleven-thirty. He sat down in the chair; looked at the amber fluid in the glass in his hand. He wondered why it was that he had not even gone over the house. For all he knew there might be someone on the upper storey. His lips twisted into a smile. There might be some more bodies. You never knew.
There was a sound from the front of the house; then footsteps. The door opened. An Inspector came into the room. He advanced a few steps; looked almost casually at the body on the floor; then looked at Isles.
He said: "Good evening, sir."
Isles was vaguely surprised. He thought he was going to meet a white Inspector of Police, but this one was not white. This one was a negro. He was short and thin. His khaki drill uniform was immaculate. He was a middle-coloured negro. Isles thought that the tint of his skin was rather attractive. His head was covered with short black and grey curls. His face was thin and the cheek bones were high. His lips were not the usual negroid type. They were inclined to be thin. His mouth was well shaped. Isles thought he looked very efficient. He suddenly realised that he was in a place where most of the policemen and junior ranks were negroes.
The Inspector spoke again. He asked: "You are the gentleman who rang up, sir?"
Isles said: "Yes."
"Ah'm sorry I took a little time getting round here. There was another call out."
Isles said coolly: "Don't tell me that somebody else has been murdered?"
The Inspector shook his head. "No, we don't have a lot of murders on this island—just now and again. And even then we seem to get more than they have on the other islands."
Isles asked: "Why?"
"Ah'm not suah, sir." The Inspector put his hand into one of the breast pockets of his tunic; produced a notebook. "Ah wonder would you like to tell me all about it."
Isles said: "Certainly. I'll tell you all I know, and that's not a great deal. By the way, I don't know who this whisky belongs to but it's very good. I suppose you wouldn't like some?"
The Inspector said: "No, sir. Ah've been taught not to drink when on duty. It's a bad thing. You don't think properly when you are drinking. Your brain's not quite clear."
Isles said: "I wish I were you. My brain's never been quite clear since I was born—or has it?"
The Inspector looked vaguely shocked. He went over and sat down on the edge of the settee close to the white rug that was thrown casually across it. He did not even look at the corpse. Isles thought that the Inspector had been taught to concentrate on certain lines of duty; that the teaching had become part of him. He watched him whilst he opened the notebook; took out the pencil from its individual pocket by the side of the book.
The Inspector said: "Ah'd like to have your name, sir."
"My name is Julian Isles—I-s-l-e-s." He spelt it. "Julian Gervase Horatio Isles. There's a name for you. I think Horatio stinks, don't you? I never did like Horatio."
The Inspector wrote down the name. "Now, if you'd tell me all about this, sir."
Isles said: "Certainly. Where do I start?"
The police officer looked at him. His eyes, Isles thought, were very kindly. "Ah think it might be a good idea if you went on from the time you arrived on Dark Bahama. We have a list at headquarters of the passengers on each plane, and your name was among those who arrived off the Clipper late this afternoon."
Isles nodded. "I went straight to the Leonard Hotel," he said. "I arranged to hire a car while I am on the island. Then I went upstairs to my room. I was there some time. I had a drink up there. Then I went for a walk in the grounds. Then I went into the bar and was given a message that somebody was going to ring me up. Then I got into the hired car and drove off."
The Inspector asked: "Where did you go, Mr. Isles?"
"I went to get the telephone message. I drove out because I was told the message was coming through at a call-box."
The Inspector said: "Ah know. That's the call-box on the main road leading west of the island—about a quarter of a mile from the Leonard Hotel."
Isles nodded. "I went into the call-box and I waited. The message came through. I was asked to come down to this house to meet somebody, and I was given the directions to get to the house. Well, I came here. This is what I found."
The Inspector asked: "Do you know what time that would be, sir?"
"I can make a guess," said Isles. "I left the call-box at about ten o'clock. I imagine it would take a quarter of an hour to drive here. So I think I arrived at a quarter past ten. I stopped for a few minutes outside, because nobody answered the door bell. Then I put my hand on the door handle and found it wasn't locked. So I came in. I thought it was rather odd, you know, Inspector. There seemed to be no one in the house. I had a look round on the ground floor; looked into one or two rooms. This was the last room I came into. I found what you can see."
"Yes, sir," said the Inspector. "What did you do then?"
Isles said: "I didn't do anything for a few minutes. I was slightly shocked." He smiled at the Inspector. "I expect you understand that I'm not used to meeting corpses at this time of night."
The police officer permitted himself a small smile. "Well, sir, if you're not used to meeting up with corpses you seem to take it pretty good an' easy."
Isles said: "Exactly. When I was a little boy they taught me at my school not to get too excited about anything. It wouldn't have done any good, anyway. So," he went on, "I gave myself a drink. Then I got on the telephone to the police."
The Inspector made some notes; then: "Ah'd like you to tell me, sir, who was the person who rang you up at the call-box?"
Isles said: "I couldn't tell you. All I can tell you is that it was a rather peculiar voice—one of those voices. It might have been a man with a high voice or a woman with a low one."
The police officer asked: "Was it a white person's accent, Mr. Isles? Or do you think it might have been some coloured person?"
