Dennis Wheatley - The Rape Of Venice

Regarding himself as still upon a honeymoon, Roger spared no expense and took the best suite available. It was on the ground floor on the garden side, and had a wide private veranda. They had supper in their private sitting-​room and, after seven weeks, during nearly all of which they had had to spend their nights in the narrow confines of cabins, they derived a special joy from being able to sleep together in a great mosquito-​curtained double bed.

Next morning. Roger sent for mercers, haberdashers, tailors, dressmakers, boot makers, milliners and hatters; so that they might again fit themselves out with fashionable European wardrobes. At a little before midday Clarissa went into their bedroom with an attendant little crowd of women to be measured for various garments. Roger remained out on the veranda looking at silks and satins for his own clothes.

He had just settled on a rich cherry colour for a coat when one of the hotel's English speaking servants came up to him, put the tips of his fingers to his forehead, salaamed almost to the ground, and said:

'Sahib, a gentleman is outside. He asks urgently that you receive him. He is the merchant Mr. Winters.'

Chapter 14

A Lie Comes Home to Roost

Roger dropped the piece of cherry coloured silk he' was fingering. Had the Archangel Gabriel been announced he could not have been more astonished and confounded. In fact he was, for once, as shocked out of his wits as would have been a revivalist preacher, extorting his flock to prepare for Judgment, had the Last Trump suddenly sounded.

The last he had seen of Winters was as the red-​coat pulled him from his hold on the stack of chairs. For some minutes afterwards he had been fully engaged driving off the two soldiers, so he had not actually seen Winters go down. At the time, in the immediate vicinity there had been scores of men splashing about in the sea and endeavouring to clamber onto rafts from which they had been swept when the Minerva sucked them under. At a distance of more than a few yards, one bobbing head looked very like another; so it was possible that, unnoticed by Roger or Clarissa while they were striving to keep the stack of chairs from turning over, Winters had succeeded in getting onto one of the rafts, and later been rescued. That, indeed, seemed the only explanation for his reappearance in Calcutta.

The implications of his survival made Roger go white to the lips. Far from familiarity having bred contempt, he was now a desperately in love with Clarissa as she was with him. But she was Mrs. Winters. Without a doubt, her husband would reclaim her. What would he say, though, when he learned that she had arrived in Calcutta as Mrs. Brook? There could be no concealing that. Yet, worse, for her to have taken Roger's name as a protection from being forced to become a concubine in an Arab's harem was justifiable; for her to have shared a cabin with her 'uncle' in a ship might, at a pinch, be excused on the grounds that it was the only accommodation available; but the whole hotel staff knew that they had spent the previous night in a double bed together, and to explain that away was beyond even Roger's ingenuity.

On one point he was determined. Nothing would now induce him to give up Clarissa. In any case, a frightful scandal was inevitable and Winters would, no doubt, sue him for enticement. But that must be faced, and they would leave Calcutta as soon as possible. If Winters started legal proceedings, though, would they be allowed to?

His mind teeming with a dozen unpleasant possibilities, Roger dismissed the mercer and the tailor till the afternoon, and told the servant to show Mr. Winters in.

Two minutes later a stocky young man of about twenty-​three entered the sitting-​room. Roger gave him one glance, gasped and, instead of returning his bow, suddenly began to laugh. Those rather close-​set eyes under sandy eyebrows were a family resemblance too clear to be mistaken; this could only be Sidney Winter’s son by his first marriage. That it might be had never occurred to Roger because, as far as he knew, Winter’s son had never even heard of him, and how he had done so was still a mystery.

Drawing himself up, the young man said stiffly, 'I am at a loss, Sir, to understand your mirth.'

'Forgive me!' Roger spluttered. 'I was laughing at a joke against myself.' That, in a sense was true; as he had rarely been taken in by such groundless fears. With unutterable relief he swiftly proceeded to do the courtesies for his visitor, bowing him to a chair and offering him a glass of claret from a bottle that stood open on the table.

Winters shook his head. 'I thank you, no. I come, Sir, as you will have guessed, to speak of my father. I am informed that you were seen with him when the Minerva went down. Your arrival in Calcutta gave me the hope-​although I admit a slender hope-​that he too may have been saved and that you can give me news of him.'

'Alas, I cannot,' Roger replied gravely. 'We went under together holding to a float of chairs; but he lost his hold while I was engaged in helping another person. As you may be aware, your father could not swim and, when I turned to see what had become of him, he had disappeared. I fear there can be no doubt at all that he was drowned.'

'You tell only what I expected,' Winters nodded. 'In fact, for some weeks past I have resigned myself to the loss of my excellent parent.'

'From what you say, it seemed that other survivors from the Minerva arrived here some time ago, and informed you of her sinking.'

'Yes, six weeks back.'

Roger was surprised at that. He had assumed, with some reason, that anyone else saved from the wreck would also have been washed up on the east coast of Africa and that, not having heard of any such parties while in Zanzibar, either there were none or that later they had died in the jungle or fallen victims to the savages. Having expressed his pleasure at this news, he added, 'I wonder that no one in Madras informed me of this when I described to the Governor and others there the sad fate which had befallen the Minerva.'

With a shrug, Winters said, 'A month or more sometimes goes by without an exchange of news between the two Presidencies. If a favourable wind was carrying the convoy up the Carnatic coast, it would not have put in to Madras; so there is nothing strange about people there not having heard details of the tragedy.'

'It was then the other ships of the convoy that picked up the survivors?'

'Yes. Some of them heard the Minerva's distress signals and, as soon as the tempest abated, turned back to search for her. They picked up nearly a hundred people, mostly soldiers; but among those saved was the fourth mate, Mr. Bellamy. It was he who told me of my father's marriage in Cape Town to your Miss Marsham.'

Roger noted the inelegant way in which the young merchant referred to Clarissa as your Miss Marsham. That it had a vague flavour of accusation could for the moment be overlooked; but the thing that could not was that it spelled the death-​knell of Clarissa's reputation. His sudden elation at finding it was only Sidney Winter’s son with whom he had to deal collapsed like a pricked bubble.

With so many people who knew the facts now in Calcutta he could not deny that she had married Winters or that here and now she was living as his mistress. And although social conventions in Calcutta might be lax, those people saved from the Minerva had known Clarissa as his niece. That meant that, instead of the pleasant time to which they had been looking forward, they would certainly be ostracised and, perhaps, hounded out of the city. They might well be asked to leave the hotel, yet have difficulty in finding a Captain who would provide them with accommodation in a ship to take them elsewhere.

As these intensely worrying thoughts rushed through Roger's mind, Winters was going on in a suavely offensive tone that showed he had sized up the situation: 'I gather, Sir, that you arrived in Calcutta yesterday with a strikingly beautiful young woman, who is occupying this apartment with you as your wife. Her description fits that given to me of the young lady who in Cape Town became Mrs. Winters; and at that time, I understand, you were unmarried. You will appreciate that I have a right to enquire what has become of my step-​mother. Was she also drowned or-​or can it be that the two are one and the same?'