Алистер Маклин - When Eight Bells Toll

‘That nineteenth-century late Victorian melodrama act that you and Charlotte put on in the saloon that night had me fooled for all of five seconds. It was inconceivable that any man so devoted to his wife could be vicious towards another obviously nice woman–’

‘Thank you kindly, sir,’ Charlotte murmured.

‘It was inconceivable that he send her for his wife’s photograph, unless he had been ordered to do so. And you had been ordered to do so, by Lavorski and Dollmann. And it was inconceivable that she would have gone – the Charlotte Meiner I knew would have clobbered you over the head with a marline spike. Ergo, if you weren’t what you appeared to be, neither were you, Charlotte.

‘The villains, they thought, were laying a foundation for an excellent reason for your flight from the wicked baron to the Firecrest , where you could become their eyes and ears and keep them informed of all our plans and moves, because they’d no idea how long their secret little transmitter in the engine-room would remain undetected. After they knew we’d found Hunslett – they’d removed the transmitter by that time – it was inevitable that they would try to get you aboard the Firecrest. So they laid a little more groundwork by giving you a bruised eye – the dye is nearly off already – and some wicked weals across your back and dumped you into the water with your little polythene kitbag with the micro-transmitter and gun inside it. Do this, they said, or Mrs Skouras will get it.’

She nodded. ‘They said that.’

‘I have twenty-twenty eyesight. Sir Arthur hasn’t – his eyes were badly damaged in the war. I had a close look at those weals on your back. Genuine weals. Also genuine pinpricks where the hypodermic with the anesthetic had been inserted before the lashes were inflicted. To that degree, at least, someone was humane.’

‘I could stand most things,’ Skouras said heavily. ‘I couldn’t stand the thought of – the thought of–’

‘I guessed you had insisted on the anesthetic, sir. No, I knew. The same way that I knew that you had insisted that the crews of all those small yachts be kept alive or the hell with the consequences. Charlotte, I ran a finger-nail down one of those weals. You should have jumped through the saloon roof. You never batted an eyelid. After submersion in salt water. After that, I knew.

‘I have devious reasons for the things I do. You told us that you had come to warn us of our deadly danger – as if we didn’t know. I told you we were leaving Torbay within the hour, so off you trotted to your little cabin and told them we were going to leave within the hour. So Quinn, Jacques and Kramer came paddling across well in advance of the time you’d told us they would be coming, trusting we would have been lulled into a sense of false security. You must love Mrs Skouras very much, Charlotte. A clear-cut choice, she or us, and you made your choice. But I was waiting for them, so Jacques and Kramer died. I told you we were going to Eilean Oran and Craigmore, so off you trotted down to your little cabin and told them we were going to Eilean Oran and Craigmore, which wouldn’t have worried them at all. Later on I told you we were going to Dubh Sgeir. So off you trotted down to your little cabin again, but before you could tell them anything you passed out on your cabin deck, possibly as a result of a little night-cap I’d put in your coffee. I couldn’t have you telling your friends here that I was going to Dubh Sgeir, could I now? They would have had a reception committee all nicely organised.’

‘You – you were in my cabin? You said I was on the floor?’

‘Don Juan has nothing on me. I flit in and out of ladies’ bedrooms like anything. Ask Susan Kirkside. You were on the floor. I put you to bed. I looked at your arms, incidentally, and the rope marks were gone. They’d used rubber bands, twisted pretty tightly, just before Hunslett and I had arrived?’

She nodded. She looked dazed.

‘I also, of course, found the transmitter and gun. Then, back in Craigmore, you came and pumped me for some more information. And you did try to warn me, you were about torn in half by that time. I gave you that information. It wasn’t the whole truth, I regret, but it was what I wanted you to tell Lavorski and company, which,’ I said approvingly, ‘like a good little girl you did. Off you trotted to your little whitewashed bedroom–’

‘Philip Calvert,’ she said slowly, ‘you are the nastiest, sneakingest, most low-down double-crossing–’

‘There are some of Lavorski’s men aboard the Shangri-la,’ old Skouras interrupted excitedly. He had rejoined the human race. ‘They’ll get away–’

‘They’ll get life,’ I said. ‘They’re in irons, or whatever Captain Rawley’s men here are in the habit of using.’

‘But how did you – how did you know where the Shangri-la was? In the darkness, in the mist, it’s impossible–’

‘How’s the Shangri-la’s tender working?’ I asked.

‘The what? The Shangri-la’s – what the devil–?’ He calmed down. ‘It’s not working. Engines out of order.’

‘Demerara sugar has that effect upon them,’ I explained. ‘Any sugar has, in fact, when dumped in the petrol tanks, but demerara was all I could lay hands on that Wednesday night after Sir Arthur and I had left you but before we took the Firecrest in to the pier. I went aboard the tender with a couple of pounds of the stuff. I’m afraid you’ll find the valves are ruined. I also took with me a homing signal transmitter, a transistorised battery-powered job, which I attached to the inner after bulkhead of the anchor locker, a place that’s not looked at once a year. So, when you hauled the incapacitated tender aboard the Shangri-la – well, we knew where the Shangri-la was.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t follow, Calvert.’

‘Look at Messrs. Dollmann, Lavorski and Imrie. They follow all right. I know the exact frequency that transmitter sends on – after all, it was my transmitter. One of Mr Hutchinson’s skippers was given this frequency and tuned in to it. Like all M.F.V.s it has a loop aerial for direction finding, he just had to keep turning the loop till the signal was at full strength. He couldn’t miss. He didn’t miss.’

‘Mr Hutchinson’s skippers?’ Skouras said carefully. ‘M.F.V.s you said?’

It was as well, I reflected, that I wasn’t overly troubled with self-consciousness, what with Mrs MacEachern on one hand, Charlotte on the other, and every eye, a large proportion of them hostile to a degree, bent upon me, it could have been embarrassing to a degree. ‘Mr Hutchinson has two shark-fishing boats. Before I came to Dubh Sgeir last night I radioed from one of his boats asking for help – the gentlemen you see here. They said they couldn’t send boats or helicopters in this weather, in almost zero visibility. I told them the last thing I wanted was their damned noisy helicopters, secrecy was everything, and not to worry about the sea transport, I knew some men for whom the phrase “zero visibility” was only a joke. Mr Hutchinson’s skippers. They went to the mainland and brought Captain Rawley and his men back here. I didn’t think they’d arrive until late at night, that’s why Sir Arthur and I were afraid to move before midnight. What time did you get here, Captain Rawley?’

‘Nine-thirty.’

‘So early? I must admit it was a bit awkward without a radio. Then ashore in your little rubber boats, through the side door, waited until the diving-boat came back – and waited and waited.’

‘We were getting pretty stiff, sir.’

Lord Kirkside cleared his throat. Maybe he was thinking of my nocturnal assignation with his daughter.