Hammond Innes - Solomons Seal

He didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t offer me his hand or say anything more. He just stared at me, his face set in harsh lines, the hair no more than a dull reddish brown in the gloom of the passageway, but the freckles visible against the dark leather of his skin.

The last I saw of him was when I reached the summer house and some compulsion made me turn my head. The house was in shadow, and he was standing in the main entrance, just his face picked out in a shaft of sunlight striking through one of the tall palms so that I saw it as a disembodied face staring after me, the bones picked out in sharp crease shadows so that he looked suddenly older, the skin stretched taut like parchment, a death’s head almost, except for the hair, which shone bright red as though it had been dyed.

The tug was already fetching her anchor as I started down the slope to the cove. The Mortlock islander was leaning over the blunt bows, and framed in the open window of the caboose was the bearded face of the Australian. There was no sign of Perenna. Beyond the tug, looking unnaturally large by comparison, was the rusty boxlike hulk of the LCT. The sun was already falling towards the west so that the two ships and their shadows seemed to fill the tiny cove. The water lay placid between the reefs, and everything wilted in the hot humidity that lay like a haze over the Buka shore. It was enervating but nevertheless comfortingly real after the house with its strange atmosphere, its sense of being entirely remote from the world outside Madehas.

Walking slowly, I tried to recall exactly what he had said. But though I can remember the words, it is not so easy to convey the impression they made on me. It wasn’t only that I was surprised at his need to unburden himself, but at the same time I was conscious of a deep sense of uneasiness, and this uneasiness remained with me all the way down to the half-submerged pontoon. By then the tug was under way, steaming carefully past the LCT’s stern out round the end of the reef. I watched her till she was lost in the haze of the Buka Passage beyond Minon, still thinking about Hans Holland, remembering the words he had used and wondering at their meaning, wondering whether Perenna would be able to make more sense of them than I did.

The silence of the cove was shattered by the busy roar of an outboard, and the rubber dinghy came away from the LCT’s side, swinging in a tight arc, heading for the pontoon. Five minutes later I was climbing the rope ladder and Perenna was standing there, saying, ‘What happened? I was afraid you weren’t coming back.’

‘Would it have mattered?’

‘Yes, of course.’ She said it without any trace of feeling. ‘But why did you go?’ She was frowning, and in that moment I was oddly reminded of Hans, the same vertical crease between eyes that had narrowed.

‘I had to. I thought it was important. But apparently not.’

‘You’re being very mysterious. What has he told you? What did he say?’

‘Nothing.’ But that didn’t satisfy her, so I said, ‘He talked about his father’s death … I don’t know, a lot of things.’ She was still frowning, and though her eyes were looking straight at me, they had a strangely faraway look. At that moment she didn’t seem conscious of me at all, so that I was reminded of what Hans had said about her, about all of them, wondering whether it was true that there was a dark, primitive side to her nature.

She walked with me up to the bridge in a sort of daze. Jona was there. ‘Hans is staying on, is he?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Then there’s nothing to keep us here.’ And he started giving orders to man the foredeck and get the anchor up. They had picked up a brief exchange between one of the Fokker Friendships and Port Moresby. All four had landed safely on the roadway just beyond the Bovo River bridge. Cars had been waiting for them the other side of the bridge, and the first troops were already moving on their objective by the time the planes were airborne again. ‘Hans will have a lot of questions to answer.’

I thought he would, too, but all I said was: ‘What made you come out to Buka with him in the tug?’ He was looking more himself now, which was doubtless the effect of being in command of his own ship again. But he took a long time considering my question, and just as he seemed about to answer it, he was called out to the bridge wing. Luke, on the foredeck to see to the anchor, was pointing to the shore, where the houseboy stood calling for the boat to come in. He was waving what appeared to be a letter in his hand.

So we stayed there in the heavy afternoon heat, and Luke took the rubber dinghy in. Clouds were building up over Bougainville, the sun hazy now, the glare from the water very trying. I was sleepy, too, physically and mentally exhausted. Luke reached the pontoon, and I saw him talking to the houseboy. I was out on the bridge wing with Jona, trying to imagine there was a little breeze and thinking about a cold shower, when there was a sudden shout up for’ard, and then, as heads turned shoreward, a prolonged A-ah. ‘Lukluk, Kepten!’ Somebody was pointing, up beyond the palms and tall ferns, up to the house. For a moment I didn’t see it; my mind just didn’t register. I thought it was haze.

But then Luke yelled from the pontoon. ‘Fire!’

I saw it then for what it was, smoke drifting lazily above the sloping roof. Suddenly there was flame added to the smoke, flames flickering yellow tongues out of an upstairs window. The ship was still and very silent, everybody staring. We could hear the crackle of the flames now. ‘Why?’ Perenna whispered. ‘It’s such a pointless thing to do.’

And then, as though to answer her question, came a shot. It was just one crack of sound, muffled, but very distinct, as though trapped and magnified by the sultriness of the atmosphere. ‘Oh, my God!’ Perenna reached out her hand, gripping mine so hard I could feel her nails biting into my palm. ‘Did he have to do that?’

I didn’t answer, merely put my arm round her shoulders. It was one way out, and I understood now his need of companionship in those last minutes when I had been alone with him in the house, understood the drift of his talk, too, his concern about death. I was just sorry I had told him how his father had really died. But though that might have influenced the method, it wouldn’t have affected the intention. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, feeling Perenna’s hand trembling. ‘Such a waste. A man with such big ideas …’ What else was there to say except that he had been responsible for a number of deaths, including now his own.

The ship had erupted into violent activity, full of shouts and movement, so that I barely caught Perenna’s words as she said, ‘Are we all going to die — violently?’ Her eyes were wide and staring, full of fear — a fear that was inside her, part of her being. ‘Did he say anything about a curse?’ she asked. And then, more urgently: ‘Well, did he?’

‘He wanted the letter, that was all.’ And it was there in my trouser pocket, a crumpled piece of paper that was of no importance to him now he was dead.

Luke came back with the dinghy, loaded men and ferried them ashore. But even in this humid climate a few hours’ sun was enough to bake wood dry as tinder. The house burned with an unnatural fury, and nothing we could do about it with only fire buckets from the LCT and water from a rain cistern. And when the roof and the internal gallery collapsed in a roaring inferno of sparks and flame, that was the end, great billowing clouds of yellow smoke hanging over the north of the island like an enormous bonfire. In less than an hour there was nothing left of the main house but a great heap of grey ash from which a few smouldering beams and bits of buckled iron protruded. All we saved was some of the outhouses. We dampened everything down with countless buckets of water, then searched the debris. The safe was there, standing like a low tide rock in the ash, marking the position where the staircase had once been. The door was still open, everything inside it destroyed by the heat. No sign even of the little gold ingots. We found the gun, a blackened revolver, its barrel and chambers buckled by the heat. But no trace of Hans’s body, which was really what we were looking for, to give him burial.