Rum Affair (7 page)

“Or one’s president or one’s floor polish,” said Johnson, watching the mainsheet reel out. “It’s my first name as well. Parents palsied, mentally and physically, by the happy event.”

“Johnson Johnson?” I really did not believe it.

“You’ll get used to it,” he replied.

The start of the race I am sure was exciting, but lunch (out of a tin, as Rupert said with disgust) consisted of partridge stuffed with Périgord truffles, preceded by a good Amontillado, and the Sauterne which followed put an end to my interest in nautical things. Assured that we had crossed the starting line, in the end, in reasonably good order, I retired to my cabin and slept.

I came out of sleep a long time later, very slowly. It was warm. I was lying on my back, being rocked softly from side to side, as if in a cradle. There was a sound of lapping water, like notes of music,
pizzicato,
with small agitated runs between. There was, all about and above, a stirring, a bumping, a minuscule groaning. I rolled over and out of the cabin and into the cockpit. We were becalmed.

We were all becalmed. Between green coast and distant green coast; from the far hills of Arran and the nearer hills of Cowal and Argyll to the Renfrewshire coast and the sandy beaches of the Cumbraes, the estuary lay deep as a mirror, scattered with the goose wings of yachts. Here were the red sails of
Binkie,
the patched striped spinnaker of
Seawolf,
the vast china blue genoa, like some minatory, chiffon-draped Turandot, of
Symphonetta,
languishing with the larger sisters behind. We were all made equal by the absolute calm, and there was nothing to do.

“Hullo,” said Johnson’s voice. Rupert, at the tiller, was stripped to the waist and lying face down on the decking beside it, three-quarters asleep. Lenny, I could see forward, his back propped by the coachhouse while he made buggy-winkles. (That is what he said later.) Johnson, I now located, as he spoke, above my head on the roof of my cabin. He was half-hidden by a small canvas, held erect on a strange device like a piano rack, which projected upwards from above my cabin door. On the deck beside him was a palette carrying paint and two pots of liquid, and beside him was a pile of white hogshair brushes. He was wearing his usual bifocal glasses and an open-necked shirt, and I noted that at least there was hair on his chest, unless it was a wig. I have known, since I began filming, wigs of every variety.

“Hullo,” said Johnson. “Happy days at the races. Christian, lock up the water.”

“Lock up the water if you like,” said Rupert’s voice, muffled. “So long as you don’t lock up anything else.”

“I got the last hint,” said Johnson. “But I still won’t ask a man to drink and drive. Lenny, an iced beer for Madame Rossi.”

“Not unless everyone joins me,” I said definitely. Rupert stirred.

“Rupert on iced beer is a sex maniac,” said Johnson.

“I like sex maniacs,” said I.

“In that case,” said Johnson, briskly, “we’ll all have one. Lenny . . . ?”

And suddenly it happened that while I lay drinking my beer, he was painting me. He was talking about
Dolly;
and about what he called the therapy of small-boating.

Through the rough white stuff of the canvas, I could see large scrabbled areas of tone taking shape. “No one sails then because they just like it?” I asked. He had not asked me to keep still, and I did not.

“Oh, you’ll find plenty of people attached to the sea for its own sake: ex-Navy types, or characters with shipping or shipbuilding interests; or people who are just good at it; rowing Blues and middle-aged peers whose grandfathers sailed their steam yachts in Oban Regatta. There’s the Farex-and-potty brigade, who want to toughen their toddlers, and small, decent blokes, like the Buchanans, who enjoy mastering the thing and risking a bit of small-scale adventure as they go. Of course—” he uncapped a fat tube of raw sienna and squeezed a heap on the polished mahogany “—plenty of others sail as you’ve sailed, to have a ball socially; entertaining co-respondents or clients, or dancing on deck all night to a record player, or horsing up a burn with a splash net like one of the natives . . .”

“Johnson doesn’t approve,” said Rupert, turning over to toast his stomach and chest. The smell of warm turpentine lingered inside the cockpit.

“Not at all,” said Johnson. His glasses flashed up and down. “Why be immoral in a flat in a fug, when you can do it at sea and be healthy?”

All the canvas was covered, and I could no longer see what he was doing. “Rupert,” I said, “why does Johnson go to sea?”

Rupert Glasscock turned his big heifer’s head to contemplate Johnson, and Johnson looked back through his bifocals. “Because he hasn’t got a flat,” said Rupert after some thought, and failed to prevent a brush loaded with vermilion from completing a crude cartoon on his spine.

Then there was a call from Lenny and both Rupert and Johnson jumped to their feet. Far across the blue, glassy water there was a smudge, like a finger mark in wet paint. In a second the palette, the brushes were stowed, the canvas was flung, with apology, into my cabin, and all three men were busy with ropes. There was wind, I deduced, on the way.

After a while I got up and went into my cabin, where Johnson’s painting lay, right side up, on the bunk.

Thinly suffused with sweet colour; flat and soft as a painting on silk, my own face lay mistily there. Made-up for Gilda, I looked like that.

I was entranced. Handling it lightly by the edges, I picked the wet canvas up, and stared at the arrangement of earth and soil and mineral pigments which the mind behind those bifocal glasses had transformed into my face. Beneath my feet, the deck tilted as the sails far above me, touched with wind, started to pull. My door swung open and sunlight filled all the cabin, bringing with it the smell of leaves, and flowers, and the salt tang of the sea. Dazzling with sun, the fresh-laundered curtains over my porthole filmed and fluttered against the blue sea beyond, and the sea itself glittered, coarse blue and white in the hearty young wind.

Dolly
leaned over with sudden decision, and something tipped, with a clack, from the other end of my bed. I laid the painting down, wedging it flat with my jewel case, and went to retrieve and secure what had fallen.

It was a coat hanger.

I hadn’t left a coat hanger there. I had it in my hand, vaguely wondering whose it was, when suddenly, without question, I knew. That powerful hanger, with the riveted hook, the hook which had never come out despite the dead weight it carried, was none of mine or Johnson’s ownership.

It was the hanger on which the dead body of Chigwell had been suspended, by his own large and well-fitting overcoat, in the wardrobe in Rose Street that night.

Johnson, when I called him, did not come at once. When the incredible nautical crisis, whatever it was, had been resolved and he finally entered, I had pulled myself together; although I could not bring myself, yet, to pick up the thing from where I had dropped it again, on his plushy blue rug by the bunk. Johnson’s eye, travelling past both it and me, lit upon his painting, still jammed on the bed, and saying: “Oh, that. Thanks,” he picked it up and disappeared, carrying it to the slotted overhead fitment where he kept his unfinished work in the saloon. I heard him come back to the tiller.

By that time I was out in the cockpit. “It wasn’t that.
Will you leave the bloody boat and listen, you fool?”
I spat at his moony bifocals. He handed the tiller to Rupert and followed me into my cabin.

Johnson did not share my distaste. As I told him what had happened he sat with the thing in his hands, turning it over and over. “There was no hanger like this on the boat,” he said. “It’s certainly Chigwell’s.”

“But how could it be?” I do not smoke. There are times when I wish that I did. “The police know you were involved. But if they’ve found the body, they wouldn’t do this. Neither would Kenneth. And apart from the police and Kenneth, the only person who could connect either of us with Chigwell’s body is—”

“The murderer,” said Johnson. He was silent, his hands quiet on the wood. “Not the nicest of thoughts, is it? We had him saving his skin, or else intent on pursuing your friend Dr Holmes. It seems he’s not doing either. He’s following you.”

“Could he be on board?” I asked. It was a sensible question. I tried to sound sensible asking it.

“No,” said Johnson. “There’s no doubt about that. But it would have been easy to put the hanger aboard while we were sitting in the thick of the traffic at Rhu. It’s been there all day, I expect, but you haven’t noticed it. Probably Lenny picked it up and shoved it onto your bunk, thinking it yours . . . That’s
how
it was done.
Why
it was done is another matter. I think—” he hesitated.

“What?” Now we had facts, or near possibilities, I felt suddenly better. Dead men cannot swim.

“I think you should go back and get police protection. Hang the scandal. A two-day tabloid headline is better than losing your life.”

“No.”

“Look,” said Johnson patiently. “I’m sure your friend Holmes would be the first to agree. After all, he’s none too safe either, is he? I should think the chief of security would do his nut if he thought Holmes’ life was in danger.”

“No,” I repeated. “You say the man who planted the hanger isn’t on
Dolly.
Right. That’s more than you can say of any piece of ground in this kingdom. I’m staying on
Dolly.”

It looked pig-headed, no doubt. Almost I confessed about my plan to meet Kenneth on Rum. But not quite. Not yet. Not until I knew from Kenneth what had been happening. For Johnson or no Johnson, the kind of work Kenneth was doing was no topic for loose conversation. There were research laboratories on Rum: Nature Conservancy laboratories, pursuing all kinds of eclectic problems to do with ecology and red deer.

There were other laboratories, too. And in South Rona, not far to the north, was the base of the atomic submarine
Lysander,
just now undergoing some of her instrument trials. If Kenneth was on Rum, he was not there for tagging red deer.

There was a long silence. Then, unexpectedly, Johnson said: “Right. What you need is a stiff whisky. Give me five minutes to check course and you shall have it. Next, tonight we’re due in at Ardrishaig, and just north of Ardrishaig is Lochgair where friends of mine have a bloody great liner called
Evergreen,
with the most powerful radio receiver on the west coast of Scotland. After we check in, I’ll motor
Dolly
up to Lochgair and we’ll telephone everyone we can think of for news of any scandals in Rose Street. For all we know, by this time, the police might have found the body and murderer both. In any case, you won’t set foot ashore, and you ought to be safe. Done?”

“Done,” I agreed. A surprising man, Johnson. It took a bit of believing that he could paint too, as well as all this.

I am a stubborn woman: Have been all my life. Someone was trying to frighten me. Someone, too, was doing his level best to prevent me from connecting with Kenneth. The someone didn’t know Tina Rossi; that was all.

We arrived at Ardrishaig at night, after a brisk sail during which we had no contact with the outside world whatever. There, Rupert checked in; discovered to his alarm that both
Symphonetta
and
Binkie
had arrived ahead of us on corrected as well as actual time, and came aboard having sunk, I should judge, about four double whiskies. Then Lenny started the engine and we swung away from the yellow street lamps, the flashing light and dark strip of the breakwater, and the red and green lights of other yachts like ourselves, moving slowly about waiting to enter the sea lock and find a berth in the basin of the Crinan Canal for the night.

Except that we wouldn’t stay, that night, in the canal, where any passing stranger might step aboard. There are no locks on a cockpit. Tonight, free to use our engine, since we were no longer racing, we should move north to Lochgair, and anchor there beside Johnson’s imposing friend
Evergreen
until morning, when we should rejoin the rest of the club as they chugged through the canal. Then on Thursday, the open sea again, and surely, comparative safety?

I had assumed that we should be alone in making that hour’s extra journey north to Lochgair. Certainly Stanley Hennessy, triumphant in
Symphonetta,
was already safe in the basin, although I could see no sign of the Buchanans in
Binkie.
I watched, the wind in my hair, as the small lights diminished and the waterfall sound of the lock was lost in the hammer of
Dolly’s
powerful engine.

The sound of our engine concealed at first the hiccoughing eruption of another diesel quite near us. Then, unexpectedly, the pea-green, ill-painted quarter of
Seawolf
loomed up behind us, the mainsail taped to the boom like a comic umbrella. Rupert rushed to the gunwales to hail her. “Cecil!
VICTORIA!
Follow Daddy, my sweetie! Who wants a Ber-loody Mary on
Evergreen?”

They understood. Victoria waved in assent, and
Seawolf
picked up and moved into line just behind us. Rupert sat down firmly beside me. Johnson, his hands bent, was lighting a pipe.
Dolly’s
sail suit, glimmering in semi-darkness, was neat as a pipe cleaner, and her sheets coiled on deck were like optical puzzles. I enquired who
Evergreen’s
owners might be. Rupert took my hand casually to help him reply.

It was not what I had expected. “The name is Bird. Retired show business, darling. May knits and Billy plays poker, and they have a sing-song after dinner and a few drinks, and tell smoking concert stories –
vulgar
smoking stories. Rather good ones, in fact.” He squeezed my hand.

“Their bloody Marys must be spectacular,” I said. The emerald was bruising my fingers. I withdrew them, attracting a flash of bifocals.

“Don’t worry: it’s all show,” said Johnson kindly. His pipe glowed a soothing red in the soft windy dark against the smooth gloss of Loch Fyne. “Put a bookmark in, Rupert; and go and be sick.”