Алистер Маклин - Bear Island

‘I’m beginning to think it may be. Look, I haven’t seen him there but I’m certain as can be that Lonnie is across in the provisions hut.’

‘Where Otto keeps all those elixirs of life?’

‘You wouldn’t expect to find Lonnie in the fuel shed? Diesel and petrol aren’t his tipples. I wonder if you could go across there, seeking liquid solace from this harsh and weary world, from Bear Island, from Olympus Productions, from whatever you like, and engage him in crafty conversation. Touch upon the theme of how you’re missing your family. Anything. Just get him to tell you about his.’

He hesitated. ‘I like Lonnie. I don’t like this job.’

‘I’m past caring now about people’s feelings. I’m just concerned with people’s lives – that they should keep on living, I mean.’

‘Right.’ He nodded and looked at me soberly. ‘Taking a bit of a chance, aren’t you? Enlisting the aid of one of your suspects, I mean.’

‘You’re not on my list of suspects,’ I said. ‘You never were.’

He looked at me for some moments then said: ‘Tell that to Mary dear, will you?’ He turned and made for the outer door. I returned to the oil cooker. Mary Stuart looked at me with her usual grave and remote lack of expression.

I said: ‘Conrad tells me to tell you that I’ve just told him – you’re following me? – that he’s not on my list of suspects and never was.’

‘That’s nice.’ She gave me a little smile but there was a touch of winter in it.

‘Mary,’ I said, ‘you are displeased with me.’

‘Well.’

‘Well what?’

‘Are you a friend of mine?’

‘Of course.’

‘Of course, of course.’ She mimicked my tone very creditably. ‘Dr Marlowe is a friend of all mankind.’

‘Dr Marlowe doesn’t hold all mankind in his arms all night long.’

Another smile. This time there was a touch of spring in it. She said: ‘And Charles Conrad?’

‘I like him. I don’t know what he thinks about me.’

‘And I like him and I know he likes me and so we’re all friends together.’ I thought better of saying ‘of course’ again and just nodded. ‘So why don’t we all share secrets together?’

‘Women are the most curious creatures,’ I said. ‘In every sense of the word “curious”.’

‘Please don’t be clever with me.’

‘Do you always share secrets?’ She frowned a little, as if perplexed, and I went on: ‘Let’s play kiddies’ games, shall we? You tell me a secret and I’ll tell you one.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘This secret assignation you had yesterday morning. In the snow and on the upper deck. When you were being so very affectionate with Heissman.’

I’d expected some very positive reaction from this and was correspondingly disappointed when there was none. She looked at me, silently thoughtful, then said: ‘So you were spying on us.’

‘I just happened to chance by.’

‘I didn’t see you chancing by.’ She bit her lip, but not in any particularly discernible anguish. ‘I wish you hadn’t seen that.’

‘Why?’ It had been briefly in my mind to be heavily ironic but I could hear a little warning bell tinkling in the distance.

‘Because I don’t want people to know.’

‘That’s obvious,’ I said patiently. ‘Why?’

‘Because I’m not very proud of it. I have to make a living, Dr Marlowe. I came to this country only two years ago and I haven’t got any qualifications for anything. I haven’t even got any qualifications for what I’m doing now. I’m a hopeless actress. I know I am. I’ve just got no talent at all. The last two films I was in – well, they were just awful. Are you surprised that people give me the cold shoulder, why they’re wondering out loud why I’m making my third film with Olympus Productions? Well, you can guess now: Johann Heissman is the why.’ She smiled, just a very small smile. ‘You are surprised, Dr Marlowe? Shocked, perhaps?’

‘No.’

The little smile went away. Some of the life went from her face and when she spoke her voice was dull. ‘It is so easy, then, to believe this of me?’

‘Well, no. The point is that I just don’t believe you at all.’

She looked at me, her face a little sad and quite uncomprehending. ‘You don’t believe – you don’t believe this of me?’

‘Not of Mary Stuart. Not of Mary dear.’

Some of the life came back and she said almost wonderingly: ‘That’s the nicest thing anybody’s ever said to me.’ She looked down at her hands, as if hesitating, then said, without looking up: ‘Johann Heissman is my uncle. My mother’s brother.’

‘Your uncle?’ I’d been mentally shuffling all sorts of possibilities through my mind, but this one hadn’t even begun to occur to me.

‘Uncle Johann.’ Again the little, almost secret smile, this time with what could have been an imagined trace of mischief: I wondered what her smile would be like if she ever smiled in pure delight or happiness. ‘You don’t have to believe me. Just go and ask him yourself. But privately, if you please.’

Dinner that night wasn’t much of a social success. The atmosphere of cheerful good fellowship which is required to make such communal get-togethers go with a swing was noticeably lacking. This may have been due, partially, to the fact that most people either ate by their solitary selves or, both sitting and standing, in scattered small groups around the cabin, their attention almost exclusively devoted to the unappetizing goulash in the bowls held in their hands: but it was mainly due to the fact that everybody was clearly and painfully aware that we were experiencing the secular equivalent of our own last supper. For the interest in the food was not all-absorbing: frequently, but very very briefly, a pair of eyes would break off their rapt communion with the stew and beans, glance swiftly around the cabin, then return in an oddly guilty defensiveness to the food as if the person had hoped in that one lightning ocular sortie to discover some unmistakable tell-tale signs that would infallibly identify the traitor in our midst. There were, needless to say, no such overt indications of self-betrayal on display, and the problem of identification was deepened and confused by the fact that most of those present exhibited a measure of abnormality in their behaviour that would ordinarily have given rise to more than a modicum of suspicion anyway: for it is an odd characteristic of human nature that even the most innocent person who knows himself or herself to be under suspicion tends to over-react with an unnatural degree of casual indifference and insouciant concern that serves only to heighten the original suspicion.

Otto, clearly, was not one of those thus afflicted. Whether it was because he knew himself to be one of those who was regarded as being completely in the clear or because, as chairman of the company and producer of the film, he regarded himself as being above and apart from the problems that afflicted the common run of mankind, Otto was remarkably composed and, astonishingly, even forceful and assertive. Unlikely though it had appeared up to that moment, Otto, normally so dithering and indecisive, might well be one of those who only showed of their best in the moments of crisis. There was certainly nothing dithering or indecisive about him when he rose to speak at the end of the meal.

‘We are all aware,’ said Otto briskly, ‘of the dreadful happenings of the past day or two, and I think that we have no alternative to accepting Dr Marlowe’s interpretation of the events. Further, I fear we have to accept as very real the doctor’s warnings as to what may happen in the near future.

‘Those are inescapable facts and entirely conceivable possibilities so please don’t for a moment imagine that I’m trying to minimize the seriousness of the situation. On the contrary, it would be impossible to exaggerate it, impossible to exaggerate an impossible situation. Here we are, marooned in the high Arctic and beyond any reach of help, with the knowledge that there are those of us who have come to a violent end and that this violence may not yet be over.’ He looked unhurriedly around the company and I did the same: I could see that there were quite a number who were as impressed by Otto’s calm assessment of the situation as I was. He went on: ‘It is precisely because the state of affairs in which we find ourselves is so unbelievable and so abnormal that I suggest we comport ourselves in the most rational and normal fashion possible. A descent into hysteria will achieve no reversal of the awful things that have just occurred and can only harm all of us.