Josephine Tey - The Singing Sands

‘ Avec moi. ’

‘Yes. About that. Why?’

‘I just wondered. It looks as if he planned to spend a night somewhere.’

‘In Scotland, you mean?’

‘Yes. The Testament and the French novel. And yet he didn’t speak French.’

‘Perhaps the Scotch party didn’t either.’

‘No. Scotch parties usually don’t. But if he planned to spend a night somewhere he couldn’t meet you that day in Paris.’

‘Oh, being a day late wouldn’t worry Bill. He could have sent me a wire on the 4th.’

‘Yes…I wish I could think of his reason for blacking himself all over.’

‘Blacking himself?’

‘Yes. Dressing the part so completely. Why did he want someone to think that he was French?’

‘I can’t think why anyone would want anyone to think they were French,’ Mr Cullen said. ‘What are you hoping from this Lloyd guy?’

‘I’m hoping that it was Lloyd who saw him away at Euston. They were talking about the Rub’al-Khali, remember. What sounded to Old Yughourt’s ear—quite typically—as “rob the Caley”.’

‘Does this Lloyd live in London?’

‘Yes. In Chelsea.’

‘I hope he is at home.’

‘I hope so indeed. Now I am going to have a last hour with the Turlie, and if you can bear just to sit and think the problem over for a little, then perhaps you would come back to supper at Clune and meet the Rankin family?’

‘That would be fine,’ Tad said. ‘I haven’t said goodbye to the Countess. I’m a convert to Countesses. Would you say that the Countess is typical of your aristocracy, Mr Grant?’

‘In the sense of having all the qualities of the type, she is indeed typical,’ Grant said, picking his way down the bank to the water.

He fished until the level light warned him that it was evening, but he caught nothing. This was a result that neither surprised nor disappointed him. His thoughts were elsewhere. He no longer saw Bill Kenrick’s dead face in the swirling water, but Bill Kenrick’s personality was all round him. Bill Kenrick possessed his mind.

He reeled in for the last time with a sigh, not for his empty bag or his farewell to the Turlie, but because he was no nearer to finding a reason why Bill Kenrick should have blacked himself all over.

‘I’m glad I had this chance of seeing this island,’ Tad said as they walked up to Clune. ‘It’s not a bit the way I imagined it.’

From his tone Grant deduced that he had imagined it as a sort of Wabar; inhabited by monkeys and jinns.

‘I wish it had been a happier way of seeing it,’ he said. ‘You must come back some day and fish in peace.’

Tad grinned a little shamefacedly and rubbed his tumbled hair. ‘Oh, I guess it will always be Paris for me. Or Vienna, maybe. When you spend your days in godforsaken little towns you look forward to the bright lights.’

‘Well, we do have bright lights in London.’

‘Yes. Maybe I’ll have another smack at London. London’s all right.’

Laura came to the door as they arrived and said: ‘Alan, what’s this I hear about—’ and then noticed his companion. ‘Oh. You must be Tad. Pat says you don’t believe that there are any fish in the Turlie. How d’you do. I’m so glad you’ve come up. Go in and Pat will show you where to wash, and then come and join us in a drink before supper.’ She summoned Pat, who was hovering, and passed the visitor into his charge, blocking the way firmly on any advance by her cousin. When she had got rid of Mr Cullen she turned again to her charge. ‘Alan, you’re not going back to town tomorrow?’

‘But I’m cured, Lalla,’ he said, thinking that that was what disturbed her.

‘Well, what if you are? There is still more than a week of your leave, and the Turlie better than it has been for seasons. You can’t give up all that just to get some young man out of some hole that he’s got himself into.’

‘Tad Cullen’s not in any hole. I’m not being quixotic, if that is what you’re thinking. I’m going away tomorrow because that is the thing I want to do.’ He was going to add, ‘I just can’t wait to get away’, but even with an intimate like Laura that might lead to misunderstanding.

‘But we are all so happy, and things were—’ she broke off. ‘Oh, well. Nothing I can say will make you change your mind. I ought to know that. Nothing has ever made you deviate by a hair’s breadth from any line that you once set your mind on. You’ve always been a damned Juggernaut.’

‘A damned horrible metaphor,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t you make it a bullet or a bee-line or something equally undeviating but less destructive?’

She put her arm through his, friendly and a little amused. ‘But you are destructive, darling.’ And as he began a protest: ‘All in the very kindest and most lethal way imaginable. Come and have a drink. You look as if you could do with one.’

Even the undeviating Grant, of course, had his unsure moments.

‘You fool!’ said that inner voice, as he was climbing into the London plane at Scoone. ‘Giving up even a day of your precious leave to hunt will-o’-the-wisps.’

‘I’m not hunting any will-o’-the-wisps. I just want to know what happened to Bill Kenrick.’

‘And what is Bill Kenrick to you that you should give up even an hour of your free time for him?’

‘I’m interested in him. If you want to know, I like him.’

‘You don’t know a thing about him. You have made a god in your own image, and are busy worshipping it.’

‘I know quite a lot about him. I’ve listened to Tad Cullen.’

‘A prejudiced witness.’

‘A nice boy, which is more important. The Cullen boy had a wide choice of friends in an organisation like OCAL and he chose Bill Kenrick.’

‘Lots of nice boys have chosen criminal friends.’

‘Come to that, I’ve known some nice criminals.’

‘Yeah? How many? And how many minutes of your leave would you give up to a criminal type?’

‘Not thirty seconds. But the Kenrick boy is no criminal.’

‘A complete set of another man’s papers isn’t a particularly law-abiding thing to be carrying round, is it?’

‘I’ll find out about that presently. Meanwhile shut up and leave me alone.’

‘Huh! Stumped, aren’t you!’

‘Go away.’

‘Sticking your neck out for an unknown boy at your age!’

‘Who’s sticking his neck out?’

‘You didn’t have to do this plane journey at all. You could have gone back by train or by road. But no, you had to arrange to have yourself shut into a box. A box without a window or a door that will open. A box you can’t escape from. A tight, silent, enclosed, sealed—’

‘ Shut up! ’

‘Huh! You’re breathing short already! In about ten minutes the thing will hit you for six. You ought to have your head examined, Alan Grant, you certainly ought to have your head examined.’

‘There is one part of my cranial equipment that is still in admirable working order.’

‘What is that?’

‘My teeth.’

‘You planning to chew something? That’s no cure.’

‘No. I plan to grit them.’

And whether it was because he had thumbed his nose at the devil or whether it was that Bill Kenrick stood beside him all the way, Grant made that journey in peace. Tad Cullen slumped into the seat beside him and fell instantly asleep. Grant closed his eyes and let the patterns form in his mind and dissolve and fade and form anew.

Why had Bill Kenrick blacked himself all over?

Whom was he trying to fool?

Why had it been necessary to fool anyone?

As they were circling to land Tad woke up and without looking out of the window began to pull up his tie and smooth his hair. Apparently some sixth sense in a flyer’s brain kept tally of speed, distance and angle, even when he was unconscious.