Алистер Маклин - Bear Island

He approached the girl directly, took her arm without, as far as I could see, any kind of opposition being offered, and said something to her. I sank to my knees, partly to reduce the risk of detection if either chanced to look up, partly to try and make out what was being said. The concealment part worked but the eavesdropping failed, partly because the wind was in the wrong direction but chiefly because they had their heads very close together either because they regarded suitably low and conspiratorial conversation as being appropriate to the occasion or because they were affording each other’s faces protection from the snow. I inched forward to the very end of the boat deck and squatted back on my heels with my head bent forward but this was of no help either.

Heissman now had an arm around Mary Stuart’s shoulders and this time the gesture of intimacy did produce a reaction although scarcely the expected one for she reached up an arm around his neck and put her head on his shoulder. At least another two minutes were spent in this highly confidential tête-à-tête, then they walked slowly away towards the living accommodation, Heissman still with his arm around the girl’s shoulders. I made no move to follow them, for such a move would not only have almost certainly resulted in quick detection but it would have been pointless: whatever personal they’d had to say had already been said.

‘Yoga in the Barents Sea,’ a voice said behind me. ‘That’s dedication for you.’

‘Fanatics always carry everything to excess,’ I said. I rose awkwardly but without too much haste before turning round for I knew I had nothing to fear from Smithy. Clad in a hooded duffel-coat and looking a great deal fitter than he had been doing just before midnight, he was looking at me with what might have been an expression of quizzical amusement except that his eyes didn’t seem to find anything humorous in what they saw. ‘You have to be regular in these things,’ I explained.

‘Of course.’ He walked past me, looked over the boat deck guard-rail and examined the deep tracks left in the snow by Mary and Heissman. ‘Bird-watching?’

‘The haunts of coot and hern.’

‘Yes, indeed. But an oddly assorted pair of lovebirds, wouldn’t you say?’

‘It’s this film world, Smithy. It seems to be full of very oddly assorted birds.’

‘Odd birds, period.’ He nodded for’ard, towards the chart-house. ‘Warmth and cheer, Doc, just the place for some more ornithological research.’

There wasn’t a great deal of warmth owing to the fact that Smithy had left the side door open after he’d looked out through the window and observed me moving cautiously along the boat deck but there was a certain amount of cheer in the shape of a bottle he produced from a cupboard. He said: ‘Shall we send for the king’s taster?’

I looked at the unbroken lead seal. ‘Not unless you think someone has brought his own bottling plant aboard.’

‘I’ve checked.’ Smithy broke the seal. ‘We talked last night. At least, I did. You may or may not have listened. I was worried last night. I thought you might not be levelling with me. I’m worried stiff now. Because I know you’re not.’

‘Because I’ve taken up ornithology?’ I said mildly.

‘That among other things. This wholesome poisoning, now. I’ve had time to think, just a bit. Of course you couldn’t have had any idea who the poisoner was – it’s hardly conceivable that if you knew the person who had done in that Italian boy that you’d have let him do the same to six others, two of whom were to die. In fact you couldn’t even have been sure that the whole thing wasn’t accidental, the poisoning was on so apparently haphazard a basis.’

‘Thank you kindly,’ I said. My opinion of Smithy had fallen sharply. ‘Except that it wasn’t on an apparently haphazard basis. It was haphazard.’

‘That was last night.’ It was as if he hadn’t heard me. ‘Then you couldn’t have had any idea. Now you can. Things have happened, haven’t they?’

‘What things?’ My opinion of Smithy had risen sharply. He was sure that there was mayhem afoot, but why? Was he making a mental short list, guessing as to who might be the handy lad with the aconite – not that he could possibly know the poison used was aconite – wondering where he had got it, where he kept it now, where he had learned to prepare it so skilfully that it could indetectably be introduced into food? And not only who was the poisoner but why was the poisoner acting as he did? And why the random nature of the poisoning? Was he basing his guesses just on my stealthy behaviour?

‘Lots of things, not all of which have necessarily lately happened, just things that have come to light or seem odd in view of what we might call recent developments. For instance, why have Captain Imrie and Mr Stokes been chosen for the job instead of any two young and efficient yacht and charter skippers and engineers who usually find themselves unemployed at this time of year? Because they’re so old and so soaked in scotch and rum that they can’t tell the time of day twenty hours out of the twenty-four. They just don’t see what goes on and even if they were to they’d probably attach no significance to it anyway.’

I didn’t put down my glass, look keenly at Smithy or in any other way indicate that I was listening with undivided attention. But I was. This thought had never occurred to me.

Smithy continued. ‘I said last night that I thought the presence of Mr Gerran and his company up here at this time in the year was a bit odd. I don’t think so any more. I think it’s damned peculiar and calls for some sort of rational explanation from your friend Otto, which we’re not likely to get.’

‘He’s not my friend,’ I said.

‘And this.’ He pulled out a copy of the Olympus Productions manifesto. ‘A load of meaningless rubbish that old smoothie Goin has been inflicting on everybody in sight. Have you–’

‘Goin? A smoothie?’

‘An untrustworthy, time-serving, money-grubbing smoothie with his two hands never on speaking terms, and I’d say that even if he weren’t a professional accountant.’

‘Maybe he’d better not be my friend either,’ I said.

‘All this ridiculous secrecy they harp on in this clap-trap. To protect the importance of their damned screen-play. A hundred gets one it’s a screen to protect something an awful lot more important than their screen-play. Another hundred gets one that there’s no screen-play in the bank vaults they speak of for the reason that there is no screen-play. And their shooting schedule for Bear Island. Have you read that? It’s not even comic. Just a lot of unrelated incidents about caves, and mysterious motor-boats and shooting dummy submarines and climbing cliffs and falling into the sea and dying in Arctic snows that any five-year-old could have dreamed up.’

‘You’ve got a very suspicious mind, Smithy,’ I said.

‘Have I not? And this young Polish actress, the blonde one–’

‘Latvian. Mary Stuart. What of her?’

‘A strange one. Aloof and alone. Never mixes. But when there’s illness on the bridge, or in Otto’s cabin or in the cabin of that young lad they call the Duke, who’s there? Who but our friend Mary Stuart.’

‘She’s a kind of Samaritan. Would you be so conspicuous if you wanted to avoid attention?’

‘Might be the very best way to achieve it. But if that’s not the case, why make a point of being so damned inconspicuous just now when meeting Heissman in a blizzard on the after-deck?’

I would very much rather, I thought, have Smith for me than against me. I said: ‘A romantic assignation, perhaps?’

‘With Heissman ?’

‘You’re not a girl, Smithy.’