Алистер Маклин - Bear Island

‘Your permission or lack of it is irrelevant,’ I said indifferently. ‘I don’t require permission when I’m talking about something that may affect lives – you know, the difference between living and dying.’

‘I forbid it. I would remind you of what you have just reminded me.’ Otto had forgotten about the need for conducting delicate matters in conspiratorial murmurs and we had the undivided attention of everyone in the cabin. ‘You are an employee of mine, sir!’

‘And I’ll now perform my last act as a dutiful employee.’ I poured myself a measure of Otto’s scotch which, as he and several others were drinking it, I presumed to be safe to drink. ‘Health to one and all,’ I said, ‘and I don’t mean that lightly or in the conventional sense. We’re going to need it all before we leave this island, and let each one of us hope that he or she is not the one who is going to be abandoned by fortune. As for being your employee, Gerran, you can consider my resignation as being effective as from this moment. I do not care to work for fools. More importantly, I do not care to work for those who may be both fools and knaves.’

This, at least, had the effect of reducing Otto to silence for, to judge by the indigo hue his complexion was assuming, he appeared to be having some little difficulty in his breathing. The Count, I observed, had a mildly speculative expression on his face, while Goin’s face held the impassivity of one withholding judgement. I looked round the cabin.

I said: ‘It is, I know, belabouring the obvious to say that this trip of ours, so far, has been singularly luckless and ill-starred. We have been plagued by a series of tragic and extraordinarily strange events. We had Antonio die. This might have been the merest mischance: it might equally well be that he was the victim of a premeditated murder or the hapless victim of a misplaced murder attempt that was aimed at someone else. Exactly the same can be said of the two stewards, Moxen and Scott. Similar attempts may or may not have been aimed at Mr Gerran, Mr Smith, Oakley and young Cecil here: all I can say with certainty is that if I hadn’t been so lucky as to be in the vicinity when they were struck down at least three of those might have died. You may wonder why I make such a fuss about what could have been a simple, if deadly, outbreak of food poisoning: it is because I have reason to believe, without being able to prove it, that a deadly poison called aconitine, which is indistinguishable in appearance from horseradish, was introduced at specific points into the evening meal we had on the occasion when those people were struck down.’

I checked to see if I had the attention of those present and I’ve never made a more superfluous check. They were so stunned that they hadn’t even got to the lengths of looking at each other: Otto’s liquid largesse wholly forgotten, they had eyes only for me, ears only for what I was saying, the average university lecturer would have found it a dream of paradise: but then the average university lecturer rarely had the doubtful fortune to chance upon such wholly absorbing subject-matter as I had to hand.

‘And then we have the mysterious disappearance of Halliday. I have no doubt that the cause of his death could be established beyond doubt if an autopsy could be carried out, but as I’ve equally no doubt that the unfortunate Halliday lies on the floor of the Barents Sea this can never be possible. But it is my belief – and this, again, is but conjecture – that he died not from any form of food poisoning but because he had a nightcap from a poisoned whisky bottle that was intended for me.’ I looked at Mary Stuart: huge eyes and parted lips in a white shocked face, but I was the only one who saw it.

I pulled down the collar of my duffel-coat and showed them the impressively large and impressively multi-coloured bruise on the left-hand side of my neck

‘This, of course, could have been self-inflicted. Or maybe I just slipped somewhere and banged myself. Or take this odd business of the smashed radio. Somebody with an aversion to radios, perhaps, and suchlike outward manifestations of what we choose to call progress, or someone who found the Arctic just too much for him and had to take it out on something – you know, the equivalent of going cafard in the desert.

‘So far, nothing but conjecture. An extraordinary and even more extraordinarily unconnected series of violent and tragic mishaps, one might claim, coincidence is an accepted part of life. But not, surely, coincidence multiplied up to the nth degree like this; that would have to lie at the very farthest bounds of possibility. I think you would admit that if we could prove the existence, beyond any doubt, of a carefully premeditated and carefully executed crime, then the other violent happenings must cease to be regarded as conjectural coincidences and considered as being what they then would be, deliberately executed murders in pursuit of some goal that can’t yet even be guessed at but must be of overwhelming importance.’

They weren’t admitting anything, or, at least, if they were admitting anything to themselves they weren’t saying it out loud, but I think it was really a case of their minds having stopped working, not all their minds, there had to be one exception, probably more.

‘And we have this one proven crime,’ I went on. ‘The rather clumsily executed murder of Michael Stryker which was at the same time an attempt, and not a very clever attempt, to frame young Allen here for something he never did. I don’t think the murderer had any special ill-will towards Allen, well, no more than he seems to have for the general run of mankind: he just wanted to divert any possible suspicion from himself. I think if you’d all had time enough to think about it you’d have come to the eventual conclusion that Allen couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with it: with a doctor in the house, if you’ll excuse the phrase, he hadn’t a hope in hell.

‘Allen says he has no recollection at all about what happened. I believe him absolutely. He’s sustained a severe blow on the back of the head – the scalp is open to the bone. How he escaped a fractured skull, far less concussion, I can’t imagine. It certainly must have rendered him unconscious for a considerable period. Which leads one to assume that this assailant was still in excellent shape after what was clearly his coup de grâce . Are we to assume then that Allen, after having been knocked senseless, immediately leapt up and smote his assailant hip and thigh? That doesn’t make any kind of sense at all. What does make sense, what is the only answer, is that the unknown crept up behind Allen and laid him out, not with his hands but with some heavy and solid object – probably a stone, there’s more than enough lying around. Having done this, he proceeded to cut the unconscious Allen up about the face, ripped his coat and tore off a couple of buttons – all to give the very convincing impression that he’d been in a fight.

‘The same thing, but this time on a lethal scale, happened to Stryker. I’m convinced that it was no accident that Allen was merely knocked unconscious while Stryker was killed – our friend, who must be a bit of an expert in such matters, knew just how much weight to bring to bear in each case, by no means as easy a matter as you might think. Then this ghoul, in a stupid attempt to create the impression that Stryker had been the other party to the fight, proceeded to rough up Stryker’s face as he had done Allen’s: I leave it to you to form your own estimate of just how evil must be the mind of a man who will deliberately set about mutilating the face of a dead man.’

I left them for a little to form their own estimates. For the most part they looked neither sick nor revolted: their reactions were mainly of shock and minds still consciously fighting against comprehension. No glances were exchanged, no eyes moved: their eyes were only for me.