Hammond Innes - Solomons Seal

‘Yes, it was all put back, money, gold, everything.’

‘Except that letter.’ He straightened up. The door of the safe was opening slowly to the leverage of his body. Quickly he checked the contents, finally pulling out the envelope marked LEWIS, taking a quick look at the Solomons Seal sheets, then putting it back and turning to me. ‘All except the letter,’ he said, the sunlight glinting off a cracked wall mirror making patterns on his face. ‘Where is it? What’ve you done with it?’ And when I started to tell him I couldn’t remember, he laughed a little wildly and said, ‘Don’t give me that crap. You took it with you and showed it to Perenna. I told you you were lying. I saw you on the tug this morning. But why did you take it? What made you think it so bloody important that you had to show it to Perenna?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, conscious of my tongue on my lips, moistening them nervously. And then I thought, No point in not telling him what puzzled me. ‘It started off Dear Red , so I took it to be addressed to your father, and it’s dated July 1910. In it Lewis says he’s coming to get his share of the ships that were purchased with the gold from the Dog Weary mine. That’s what I didn’t understand.’

‘Because Red Holland didn’t inherit the Line until over a year later?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did Perenna know what it meant?’

‘No, she didn’t understand it either.’ Looking at him, so tense, so wary, a thought suddenly occurred to me. ‘Did Timothy Holland know?’

He didn’t answer.

I got to my feet. ‘Well, did he?’

‘Sit down,’ he shouted, his voice suddenly out of control and the gun in his hand, a heavy revolver, the muzzle pointed straight at my stomach.

‘So it wasn’t an accident. And at Aldeburgh, after months of nursing … ’ I had said too much. At that moment I expected him to fire, and every muscle in my body was tensed in expectation of the bullet’s slam. But then he said in a quieter, more reasonable voice. ‘And McAvoy. What did McAvoy think?’

‘About the letter?’

‘Of course, yes. The letter. What else?’

I hesitated, wondering what he was after. ‘He was just as puzzled as I was,’ I said carefully.

‘But you told me he came ashore here yesterday for the specific purpose of opening the safe and reading the letter. Why? What made him think it that important?’ And when I told him about the wartime raid on Madehas and how Mac had described Colonel Holland as being shattered when he had opened the safe and found the letter, he said in a slow, almost unbelieving voice, ‘So that’s why he attacked Carola and murdered my father. He burned him alive. Did you know that?’

I nodded. ‘But it wasn’t quite like that, not according to Mac.’ I wanted to mitigate the horror of it for a man already under great mental strain. ‘There was a shot, from inside the house. He killed himself before the flames reached him.’

‘Shot himself? My father shot himself.’ He said it reflectively as though the idea were new to him. ‘Yes, of course. He would have had a gun, and outside they would have been waiting for him, like a bunch of hunters round a foxhole.’ He was silent for a moment, thinking about it, his head bent slightly, staring at the gun in his hand. And then slowly he seemed to relax, a conscious, deliberate unwinding of nervous tension. ‘So he doesn’t know. That little drunken bastard doesn’t know. And now …’ He hesitated, seeming to give the matter careful thought. ‘Now nobody knows.’

‘Knows what?’ I asked, wondering if this were a form of madness, his mind wandering.

He shrugged, the gun forgotten, staring into space. I think I could have rushed him then, but I didn’t; I was held in my chair by the look on his face, the way his whole body seemed frozen into immobility. ‘Doesn’t matter now, does it?’ he said slowly. ‘Doesn’t matter how it all started, or what happened to the Holland Trader. Tim knew. Old Colonel Holland knew. Now nobody knows but me and-’ He gave a little laugh. ‘This morning it mattered. Now it doesn’t.’

There was a rattling sound from beyond the windows leading to the veranda, and he crossed the room to stand staring out towards the cove. ‘That’s the LCT just arrived.’ He looked at me, slowly putting the gun back into the waistband of his trousers, his mood altered. Suddenly he seemed in need of companionship. ‘I don’t remember my father, you know. Not really. I was only three when that old bastard moved on Queen Carola and fired burning arrows into the palm thatch of his house. His death didn’t mean anything to me, not then.’

‘But it does now?’ He had fallen silent, pacing slowly.

He stopped and looked straight at me. ‘You thought about death, about what it really means, or’ve you been too busy trying to make something of your life?’

‘You sound like Mac,’ I said. ‘He started thinking about death.’

‘So he should. But I’m not talking about drink and cirrhosis of the liver. That’s something you bring on yourself. I’m talking about external forces, things you can’t control and what it’s like when it all blows up in your face.’ He shook his head, muttering to himself, and then stood quite still, staring at nothing. ‘We destroy people, like Red Holland going off and leaving that poor bugger to die of thirst, without giving a thought to what it means. Bombings, famines, executions — it’s other people, isn’t it? Never ourselves. And life — the fight to exist, the struggle for power — and then suddenly you’ve had it. That’s what I mean by it all blowing up in your face. That’s when you suddenly start wondering what the hell it’s all in aid of. A mine collapses, a ship goes down, somebody shoots somebody, they’re all expendable, all except oneself. That’s right, isn’t it? We form alliances, live in groups, get married, anything to conceal from ourselves the one terrible truth — that we’re alone in this life.’

I got to my feet. ‘You’re being morbid,’ I said, alarmed that in this sort of mood he might be capable of anything. ‘You’d better start thinking about how you’re going to get yourself out of the mess you’re in.’ I couldn’t make up my mind whether his mood was suicidal or if he was now intent on destroying others. ‘Are you staying here or coming back to the ship with me?’ I couldn’t imagine anybody wanting to stay in this empty, abandoned house.

He didn’t answer, pacing slowly.

‘I’ll go back, then.’ I picked up the letter. ‘You wanted this.’

He stared at it, frowning, as I held it out to him. He seemed to have forgotten its existence. Then he suddenly laughed. ‘He’s dead, too, isn’t he? They’re all dead now, just Perenna and Jonathan left.’ He nodded. ‘Okay. You go back. The LCT is right there, waiting to take you to Anewa, where you’ll make long statements to satisfy government officials. But I tell you this, Slingsby.’ He was suddenly leaning forward, the red hair blazing in the slanting sunlight, his eyes staring into mine. ‘You marry Perenna, you marry the Holland Line.’ He came towards me, smiling. ‘You do that, and you marry a curse. It was built on hate and fear and disaster, and it’s done for every one of us — every man that has tried to make his fortune out of it. My father started it, and he died an unnatural death. So did the old Colonel and Perenna’s mother; now Tim’s dying, he’s given up and he’ll die hating me, hating his sister, hating everyone, the whole world.’ He pointed his finger at me. ‘You, too. You try and succeed where I failed, and you’ll never know a minute’s peace. I’ll haunt you, Slingsby. Even as my father has haunted me, I’ll haunt you.’

He was silent a moment, breathing heavily, his eyes almost popping out of his head. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Get out now. Go back to the world of trucks and ships and transistors. I’m taking a different road.’ He walked with me to the door almost in the manner of a host in his own home. ‘But just remember what I said. There’s enough evil in the world without you going looking for it.’