The Tropical Issue (20 page)

We went to the airport first.

They confirmed that Mr van Diemen had lost an afternoon flight to Lisbon, and had rebooked for the following morning.

They confirmed that on the second occasion, the booking had been taken up.

They agreed that they knew Mr van Diemen well by sight. He came through all the time.

They couldn’t confirm that the man who actually flew was Mr van Diemen. It had been a very full plane. The most they could say was that no one remembered speaking to him. It would take some time to trace the steward and hostesses on that particular plane, never mind find out when they might land again in Madeira. If it was important, perhaps Mrs Sheridan would write a letter? Or was this a police enquiry ?

They had been pretty helpful, considering, and Ferdy had been brilliant but he had to sheer off at that.

What was clear was that there was no proof, at the moment, that Roger van Diemen had actually flown out the second time, and not someone else using his ticket.

The Coombe Banana Company’s office were helpful as well.

As far as they knew, Mr van Diemen had left when he said. They hadn’t heard from him since. They didn’t expect to, until his next visit. Yes, he travelled regularly between all parts of the Coombe empire. If he had completed his business in Europe, he would probably be in South America or the Caribbean by now. The Liverpool office might be able to supply us with his movements.

‘He doesn’t sound crazy,’ said Ferdy. ‘At least, they’re still entrusting all their bananas to him. I suppose in a firm of that size, someone would notice if the Financial Director had gone off his rocker. Maybe it’s just lust for Natalie that does him in. Do I look crazy?’

‘I thought Natalie was lusting for you,’ I said.

I looked at him. He was frowning. I said, ‘If that guy didn’t fly out, he’s still here.’

‘Point taken,’ said Ferdy shortly.

He was still frowning. I made an effort. ‘So,’ I said, ‘if you make it with Natalie, for God’s sake keep it quiet. You want to finish the flower book.’

‘What do you mean,
if
I make it with Natalie?’ Ferdy said. The frown had disappeared. He whooped. ‘Rita! You care!’

The car turned off the coast road and began climbing again into the mountains. The sun went in. We passed another shower of dangling trumpets and then plunged into pine trees.

‘Don’t worry,’ Ferdy said. I could see songs from Prince Eager climbing up inside his neck. The thought of sex always cheers him up and he’s not the sort, anyway, to mope about anything much.

‘Don’t worry. From now on, I shall confine my practices entirely to flowers. Madeira, the Island of Sin. All the bloody bees’ll come off with V.D.’

It didn’t snow, but we ran into mist higher up, and it was no joke rounding the bends, with trucks and taxis and things looming up with their lights on. At one point we were held up for five minutes by a flock of sheep on the road, and then later on by a skidded lorry trying to get out of a ditch.

There was no mist around Eduardo’s mother-in-law’s house, and you could see the boiler boiling in the back yard with no trouble. I thought the sight of Ferdy getting out of the car and walking up to the front door was worth the Vicarage Cross, and told him later.

At the time, I couldn’t get a word in edgeways because of the great welcome he was getting, and invitations to come in and see the baby the Senhor had blessed with so many escudos, and drink a glass of wine to his health.

We did, too. We walked through about every room in the house on our way to that baby, and met all its relatives, young and old through four generations, ending up with the baby’s mother parked in bed like a double airship, cheerfully feeding the baby, and not from a bottle, I can tell you.

Ferdy’s eyes glistened with sorrow from not having his camera. Then they stopped glistening as I noticed who was sitting next to the bed and dug him in the ribs.

‘That,’ I said, ‘is Eduardo.’

It was, too, although he didn’t have his hat on. He got up, wearing the same grin that went from ear to ear under this huge Pancho Villa moustache and said, ‘But Senhora! So generous, so kind over the hat! And this is the Senhora’s husband?’

I believe in attack.

‘Eduardo,’ I said. ‘Where is Mr van Diemen?’

The smile met round the back of his neck. ‘The Senhora knows Senhor van Diemen! But naturally, the Senhora and her husband know all of importance on Madeira. Eduardo is glad to have served her.’

‘Where?’ I said. ‘We want to speak to Mr van Diemen. Urgently. Is he here? Was he here yesterday?’ I waited, and then said, ‘Eduardo, it would be worth a lot to me to know just what Mr van Diemen has been doing. An
awful
lot.’

Eduardo exchanged dimpling smiles with his mother-in-law and turned back, all attention.

‘Mr van Diemen? This visit, alas, I have not seen him. Since we met, the Senhora and I, have I not been here, to look after my wife’s family? They will tell you. Not a step have I stirred from the house these three days, except to go for the priest and the doctor.

‘Mr van Diemen? No. But why come to me? There is an office in town, a big office. There you will get your answer.’

He produced this great smile, and held it. I gazed at him, and so did Ferdy, and so did everyone else in the room except the baby, who suddenly got filled to the brim and fell off the slopes.

A jet of milk hit the ceiling and fell like a tennis-court marker along and down Ferdy’s tanned head and fawn whiskers.

Ferdy said, ‘Rita?’

I knew it was awful and they were all lying and everything, and I was heartsick myself underneath it all, but I’d never seen anything so brilliant as the horror of Ferdy’s face at that moment. Even though I shut my eyes and dug my teeth in my lip, I could feel the tears of laughter hanging on to all my lashes.

By the time I opened my eyes, Ferdy was laughing too, politely, along with everyone else, and wiping his head with his hankie.

We thanked Eduardo, drank our wine, and got out, leaving another pittance on the bed for the baby. In the car, I said I was sorry.

‘It is the first time,’ said Ferdy, ‘I have been zonked in the eye by a Portuguese baby. You realise we can’t prove anything?’

‘I know. But we haven’t proved they couldn’t have done it,’ I said. ‘Van Diemen could have got Eduardo to do things for him. He must have, or Eduardo would have shopped him. They could have planned the sledge bit between them. They could even have planned—’

‘Rita,’ said Ferdy. The mist had cleared. He was driving quite carefully down back to the coast again, honking at bad corners and thinking. He said, ‘Even if van Diemen and Eduardo were both seen outside the villa the night Kim-Jim died, how could they possibly have killed him? That’s the real facer.’

‘I know,’ I said.

After a bit, he said, ‘Then what next? Say the word. I’ll do anything you want. You could try to get Eduardo alone, if you want to see what a really big bribe could do. If you think it’s worth it.’

I said, ‘I don’t think he’d take it, even if the family weren’t there. He’s sort of a family man. I don’t think he’d think twice about fixing that sledge trip. Or any other kind of stupid, dangerous trick. The thing is . . .’

‘You liked him,’ said Ferdy. ‘And you don’t think he would deliberately set out to murder.’

I thought that was very decent, considering how, one way or another, they had soaked him. I said, ‘I did like him.’

‘I could tell,’ said Ferdy. ‘He’s got your sense of humour. Well, what? What do we do next?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. I really didn’t. And it wasn’t fair to keep Ferdy dangling. He had his own work to do. I said, ‘Natalie wants to get back to London.’

She had some meetings to set up for the film. Since Kim-Jim died, she hadn’t asked me again if I wanted the contract, and I hadn’t told her.

Ferdy said, ‘Will you stay with her? With that money, I suppose you can do anything you like.’

‘It’s too soon. I don’t know that either,’ I said. ‘But if she wants me, at least I’ll go back to England with her. By the time she’s ready for the next trip, I’ll know what I want to do.’

‘Plenty of work in London just now,’ Ferdy said. ‘The Princess’s wedding. And they’re doing a telly film drama series of that American book. Nice work there, if you want it.’

‘I know,’ I said.

We were nearly back at the villa. Ferdy drew in, and stopped the car, and turned and looked at me.

‘Poor Rita. You bloody miss him, don’t you?’ he said. ‘I’m not going to pry, but you know the questions everyone is asking. Sugar daddy? Future husband? Real daddy, even?’

The idea of Kim-Jim as my father made me snort, which I suppose was the idea.

All the same, in a way Ferdy deserved an answer. And Kim-Jim deserved that folk thought of him decently, as he had been.

I said, ‘Of course he wasn’t my father. And I didn’t go to bed with him either. Ferdy, we’d only
met
once before.’

Ferdy’s round eyes were gazing at me quite seriously between the earrings, and I tried to explain.

‘He was just a nice, lonely man who needed to talk shop with a pal. I don’t know why he picked me to leave his money to, except that he didn’t have anyone else. I was sort of his cats’ home.’

Ferdy didn’t speak. I went on sitting, and he went on looking at me. Then he took a spike of my hair on either side and turned my face round, and grinned at me.

‘What’s this cats’ home?’ he said. ‘Who named you the Scotch Bird of Paradise? King Ferdy, the world’s best photographer. Who’s going to take London by storm, and to hell with Madeira and the rest of the world’s sweaty islands? Rita Geddes, the world’s best make-up artist. Check?’

Ferdy can get very sentimental. Singing ‘The Song of the Flea’ really suits him much better. But he means well.

He started the car again then, and we topped this little rise, and we saw this long, good-looking ship, big as a liner, moving slowly out of Funchal harbour.

Flying above it, nastily, brazenly, jauntily, was the blue and yellow flag of the Coombe Banana Company.

We had had a fruitful morning. We had been very clever. I had got to like Eduardo even, once I’d seen him again.

But if Roger van Diemen had been on the island when Kim-Jim died, he was surely off it now.

Next day, the Curtises arrived at Reid’s, nursed their jet lag, and then turned up for lunch at Natalie’s for a sort of doom party, with everyone who had coped with Kim-Jim’s death.

Ferdy said he wasn’t going. Carl Thomassen, his Sexy Flower Book botanist, had flown in with the text, and he and a young friend planned to work on the diagrams. Underneath, Ferdy was being quite serious. The book was important, and he liked what he did to be perfect. As his assistants all knew.

Maggie said she wasn’t going either, and then changed her mind as soon as she heard Johnson had accepted.

I didn’t want to lunch, but Natalie said it was only fair to Kim-Jim’s own flesh and blood. They might be, as she and I knew, among the wealthiest in the American entertainment industry, but still must feel a natural interest (she said) in anyone who had meant so much to Kim-Jim.

That was the nearest she had ever come to a jab over that will. Even then, there was nothing personal about it.

Kim-Jim’s death had upset her. But she’d have shown the same kind of shock, I now saw, if Dodo had died. The services Kim-Jim supplied were, in her eyes, all part of the job.

And he in his turn had been the perfect servant-companion. He admired her. Instead of fighting his way to the top in the real world, he did it all at second hand, by smoothing the way for Natalie. And later, out of sheer kindness, for me.

I should have expected that will, if I’d understood their relationship better. He didn’t want to remember his family. And he knew that to bequeath his worldly goods to the great Natalie was out of the question. Image-building, after all, was his business.

I didn’t want to be stuck with his family either, but I went down to join the lunch-party in the end. On my own terms. Image-building is my business as well.

It didn’t go as I’d planned.

They were having drinks when I came downstairs to the sitting-room and everyone looked up: the shining Mr Kazimierz and Maggie on a footstool beside Johnson and Natalie and two new guys accepting double martinis in basins from Aurelio.

Natalie looked at the stripes on my face for a moment, and then simply introduced me, smiling a little, in the quiet voice she was using to the newly bereaved.

She said, ‘We never know what to expect when Rita comes in. She’s the most exotic thing in Madeira. Rita Geddes, Kim-Jim’s great friend . . . Rita, this is Kim-Jim’s brother, Clive, and Porter, his nephew.’

It didn’t go as I’d planned, because they were fantastic.

Clive was tall, like in his picture in Kim-Jim’s room, and carried himself well; but not like a guy who’d gone to ballet classes. From the set of his shoulders and his handshake, I guessed that he spent a lot of time in pools as well as posing beside them, and probably played a hell of a lot of tennis as well. His Californian tan was quite something.

It was possible that, as I’d wondered, the black hair was tinted, and the red moustache was certainly touched up.

It didn’t matter. What looks tarted-up on a middle-aged piece of flab looked fine on a fit, active man who seemed ten years younger than he must be. His eyes crinkled, sending lines to his ears like a protractor, and he had a small mouth, like Kim-Jim’s, with the teeth dentally weeded out to make a nice smile.

He said, ‘I guess you and I have a lot to say to one another, about Kim-Jim and everything. Back there in L.A., we know your work, Rita. We know the kind of artist you are. I’m real sad at what brings us together but I wanted you to know that we have a lot in common, and the Curtis family respect you.’

‘I’ll say,’ said the nephew. ‘Natalie, you didn’t tell us.’

I didn’t even stop to see if Natalie winced when Porter used her first name, I was so bowled over.

As I’ve said, Sharon Proost, nay Curtis, was a smart woman, as her videos show. Her son, Porter, wasn’t just smart, he was gorgeous.