Алистер Маклин - The Golden Rendezvous

“Why tell anyone?” Bullen wasn’t amused. “It doesn’t show where you have been coshed, that wound is just above the temple and inside the hairline, and could be pretty well camouflaged. Agreed?”

“No, sir. Someone knows I had an accident – the character responsible for it, and he’s going to regard is as damned queer if I make no reference to it at all: but if I do mention it and pass it off as a lady-like swoon, there’s an even chance he may accept it, and if he does we’re still going to have the advantage of being in the position of knowing that there’s murder and mayhem abroad, while they will have no suspicion we know anything of the kind.”

“Your mind,” said Captain Bullen unsympathetically, “is beginning to clear at last.”

When I awoke in the morning the already hot sun was streaming in through my uncurtained window. My cabin, immediately abaft the captain’s was on the starboard side, and the sun was coming from for’ard, which meant that we were still steaming north-east. I raised myself on my elbow to have a look at the sea conditions, for the Campari had developed a definite if gentle pitching movement, and it was then that I discovered that my neck was rigidly bound in a plaster cast. At least, it felt exactly like it. I could move it about an inch to either side and then a pair of clamps took hold. A dull steady ache, but no pain worth mentioning. I tried to force my head beyond the limits of the clamps, but I only tried once. I waited till the cabin stopped swaying around and the red-hot wires in my neck had cooled off to a tolerable temperature, then climbed stiffly out of my bunk. Let them call me stiff-neck Carter if they wanted. That was enough of that lot.

I crossed to the window. Still a cloudless sky with the sun, white, glaring, already high above the horizon, striking a glittering blinding path across the blueness of the sea. The swell was deeper, longer, heavier than I had expected, and coming up from the starboard quarter. I wound down the window and there was no wind I could notice, which meant that there was a fair breeze pushing up from astern, but not enough to whiten the smoothly roiled surface of the sea.

I showered, shaved, – I’d never before appreciated how difficult it was to shave when the turning motion of your head is limited to an arc of two inches – then examined the wound. Seen in daylight it looked bad, much worse than it had in the night: above and behind the left temple, it was a two-inch gash, wide and very deep. And it throbbed heavily in a way I didn’t much care for. I picked up the phone and asked for Doc Marston. He was still in bed but, yes, he would see me right away, an early-bird Hippocratic willingness that was very much out of character, but maybe his conscience was bothering him about his wrong diagnosis of the previous night. I dressed, put on my hat, adjusted it to a suitably rakish angle till the band just missed the wound and went down to see him.

Dr. Marston, fresh, rested, and unusually clear of eye – no doubt due to Bullen’s warning to lay off the rum – didn’t look like a conscience-stricken man who’d tossed and turned the sleepless night long. He didn’t even seem unduly worried about the fact that we carried aboard a passenger who, if he’d truthfully listed his occupation, would have put down the word “murderer.” All he seemed concerned about was the entry in last night’s log, and when I told him no entry about Brownell had been made nor would be made until we arrived in Nassau and that when it was no mention of my name would appear in connection with the diagnosis of Brownell’s death, he became positively jovial. He shaved off a few square inches of hair, jabbed in a local anæsthetic, cleaned and sutured the wound, covered it with a sticking-plaster pad and wished me good morning. He was through for the day.

It was quarter to eight. I dropped down the series of accommodation ladders that led to the fo’c’sle and made my way for’ard to the carpenter’s store. The fo’c’sle was unusually crowded for that time of the morning. There must have been close on forty members of the ship’s company gathered there, deck staff, engine-room staff, cooks and stewards, all waiting to pay their last respects to Brownell. Nor were these all the spectators. I looked up and saw that the promenade deck, which curved right round the for’ard superstructure of the Campari , was dotted with passengers, eleven or twelve in all: not many, but they represented close on the total male passenger compliment aboard – I could see no women there – with the exception of old Cerdan and possibly one or two others. Bad news travelled fast and even for millionaires the chance of seeing a burial at sea didn’t come along too often. Right in the middle of them was the Duke of Hartwell, looking nautical as anything in his carefully-adjusted Royal Yachting Club cap, silk scarf and brass-buttoned navy doeskin jacket.

I skirted number one hold and thought grimly that there might indeed be something in the old superstitions: the dead cried out for company, the old salts said, and the dead men loaded only yesterday afternoon and now lying in the bottom of number four hold hadn’t been slow to get their company. Two others gone in the space of a few hours, near as a toucher three: only, I’d fallen sideways instead of toppling over the rail. I felt those ice-cold fingers on the back of my neck again, and shivered: then passed into the comparative gloom of the carpenter’s store, right up in the forepeak.

Everything was ready. The bier – a hastily nailed together platform of boards, seven feet by two – lay on the deck: and the Red Ensign, tied to two corners of the handles at the top of the bier but free at the other end, covered the canvas-swathed mound beneath. Only the bo’sun and carpenter were there. To look at MacDonald you would never have guessed that he hadn’t slept the previous night. He had volunteered to remain on guard outside the wireless office until dawn: it had also been his idea that, though the chances of any trouble in daylight were remote, two men should be detailed for holystoning the deck outside the wireless office after breakfast, for the entire day if necessary. Meantime, the radio office was closed – and heavily padlocked – to allow Peters and Jenkins to attend the funeral of their colleague. There was no difficulty about this: as was common, there was a standard arrangement whereby a bell rang either on the bridge or in the chief wireless operator’s cabin whenever a call came through on the distress frequency or on the Campari ’s call-sign.

The slight vibration of the Campari ’s engines died away as the engines slowed and the revs dropped until we had just enough speed to give us steerage-way in that heavy swell. The captain came down the companionway, carrying a heavy brass-bound bible under his arm. The heavy steel door in the port hand fo’c’sle side was swung open and back till it secured with a clang in its retaining latch. A long wooden box was slid into position, one end level with the opening in the side of the ship. Then MacDonald and the carpenter, bareheaded, appeared, carrying bier and burden and laid them on the box.

The service was very brief, very simple. Captain Bullen said a few words about Brownell, about as true as words usually are in those circumstances, led the tattered singing of “Abide With Me,” read the burial service and nodded to the bo’sun. The Royal Navy did this sort of thing better, but we didn’t carry any bugles aboard the Campari . MacDonald lifted the inboard end of the bier, the canvas swathed mound slid out slowly from beneath the Red Ensign and was gone with only the faintest of splashings to mark its departure. I glanced up at the promenade deck and saw the Duke of Hartwell there standing stiffly at attention, right arm bent up to his peaked cap in rigid salute. Even allowing for the natural disadvantages lent him by his face, I had seldom seen a more ludicrous sight. No doubt to the unbiased observer he was putting up a more fitting show than myself but I find it hard to be at my reverent best when I know that all I’m committing to the deep is a length of canvas, large quantities of engine-room waste and a hundred and fifty pounds of rusty chain to give the necessary negative buoyancy.