This Rough Magic (13 page)

‘Thanks a lot. That’s marvellous.’ I laughed a little. ‘At least it puts me in competition again! I wish you didn’t always look as if you’d just got back from Elizabeth Arden, when I feel like a bit of Mr Gale’s
debris. It was probably me he saw floating. If, that is, he saw anything.’

She looked quickly down at me. ‘What does that mean? It sounds loaded.’

‘Not really.’

She sat down beside me. ‘You don’t often make remarks for nothing. What
did
you mean?’

‘I’m not happy about this affair, that’s all.’

‘Well, heavens, who is? But is it an “affair”?’

‘I don’t know. There’s a feeling … a feeling that there’s something going on. I can’t put it better than that, and I’m probably wrong, but I think – I
think
– Godfrey feels it, too. Why don’t he and Mr Gale like one another?’

‘I didn’t know they didn’t. They
were
a bit wary today, weren’t they? I suppose Godfrey’s more upset than he lets on … after all, it’s rather soon after the Spiro business … And Max Gale doesn’t just put himself out to be charming, does he?’

‘He has things on his mind,’ I said.

The remark was intended merely as an evasion, to imply only that his personal worries – over his father – made him difficult to know or like, but she took it to refer specifically to what had just happened. She nodded.

‘I thought so, too … Oh, nothing special, just that he seemed to be thinking about something else. But what did
you
mean?’ She shot me another look. ‘Something’s really worrying you, isn’t it?’

I hesitated. ‘Did it strike you as odd, the way Mr Gale took the news?’

‘Well, no, it didn’t. Perhaps because I know him better than you. He’s never very forthcoming. What sort of “odd” did you mean?’

I hesitated again, then decided not to specify. ‘As if he wasn’t surprised that a body should roll up here.’

‘I don’t suppose he was. He’d be expecting it to be Spiro.’

‘Oh, of course,’ I said. ‘Look they seem to be coming back.’

Mr Gale had finished whatever grisly examination he had been conducting, and had withdrawn his hand. He rinsed it in the salt water; then stood up, drying it on a handkerchief. As far as I could make out, the two men still hadn’t spoken a word. Now Godfrey said something with a gesture towards Phyl and myself, and they turned together and started over to us.

‘Thank goodness,’ I said.

‘You’ll feel better when you’ve had a drink, old dear,’ said my sister.

‘Coffee,’ I said, ‘as hot as love and as sweet as hell.’

‘Godfrey might even run to that, you never know.’

The men scrambled up to the path beside us.

‘Well?’ said Phyl and I, together.

They exchanged a glance, which might even be said to hold complicity. Then Gale said: ‘It should be interesting to hear what the doctor has to say. He seems to have been knocked about the head a bit. I was wondering if the neck was broken, but I don’t think so.’

Godfrey’s eye met mine. I stood up. ‘Well, when the boat’s found, there may be something there to show how it happened.’

‘For all we know,’ said Godfrey, ‘that’s been done, and the hue and cry’s on already. Let’s go, shall we?’

‘Thank goodness!’ I said. ‘But I still want to get dressed. My things—’

‘Good God, I was forgetting. Well, hang on another minute or two, I won’t be long.’

Max Gale said, in that abrupt, rather aggressive way of his: ‘You three start up the path. I’ll go and pick your stuff up and bring it along.’

He had so plainly not been invited to go with us, and just as plainly fully intended to hear all that was said to the police, that I thought Godfrey was going to demur. But Phyllida got eagerly to her feet.

‘Yes, let’s get away from here! It’s giving me the grue. Mr. Gale, if you
would
be an angel … I’ve left some things, too, they’re under the pine trees.’

‘I saw where they were. I won’t be long. Don’t wait for me; I’ll catch you up.’

He went quickly. Godfrey looked after him, the grey eyes curiously cold. Then he caught me watching him, and smiled. ‘Well, this way.’

The path followed the cliff as far as the boat-house, then turned up a steep zigzag through the trees. We toiled up it, grateful for the shade. Godfrey walked between us, in a sort of awkwardly divided solicitude that might at any other time have been amusing; but just now all I could think of was a bit of solitude in his bathroom, then a comfortable chair, and – failing the coffee – a long, cool drink. I hoped Max Gale would hurry with the clothes. I thought he probably would: he wouldn’t want to miss what was said to the police. It
had surprised me that he had risked this by offering to go back.

Godfrey had paused to help Phyl negotiate a dry gully which the winter’s rain had gouged across the path. I was a few paces ahead of them when I came to a corner where a sudden gap in the trees gave a view of the point below.

I might have known there would be a good reason for Max Gale’s offer. He was back at the rock pool, lying flat as before, reaching down into the water. I could just see his head and shoulders. Just as I caught the glimpse of him he withdrew his arm and got quickly to his feet. As he turned, I drew back into the shade of the trees, and just in time, for he glanced up briefly before he vaulted up to the path, and out of sight.

‘Tired?’ asked Godfrey, just behind me.

I started. ‘No, not a bit. Just getting my breath. But I’ll be glad when it’s all over.’

‘So shall we all. I seem to have spent the whole week with the police as it is.’ He added, rather bitterly: ‘At least they know their way here, and most of the question to ask.’

Phyllida touched his arm gently. ‘Poor Godfrey. But we’re terribly grateful. And at least this time it doesn’t touch you … except as a rather ghastly sort of coincidence.’

His eyes met mine. They held the bleak expression I was beginning to know.

‘I don’t believe in coincidence,’ he said.

What have we here, a man, or a fish? dead or alive?

II
. 2.

E
ITHER
she had been more distressed than she had allowed us to see, or else the trip down to the beach in the heat, with the bathe and the climb to the Villa Rotha, had been too much for Phyllida. Though we spent the rest of the day quietly, and she lay down after lunch for a couple of hours, by evening she was tired, fidgety, and more than somewhat out of temper, and very ready to be persuaded to go to bed early.

Maria and Miranda had gone as soon as dinner was over. By ten o’clock the house was very quiet. Even the pines on the hill behind it were still, and once I had shut the windows I could hear no sound from the sea.

I felt tired myself, but restless, with sleep still a long way off, so I went along to the scrubbed and empty kitchen, made myself more coffee, then took it through to the
salotto
, put my feet on a chair, some Mozart on the gramophone, and settled myself for a quiet evening.

But things didn’t quite work out that way. The calm,
beautiful room, even the music, did not manage to keep at bay the thoughts that had been knocking for admission since that morning. In spite of myself, my mind went persistently back to the morning’s incidents; the discovery in the pool, the two men’s raw antagonism, and the long, wearying aftermath of interrogation, with the fresh problems it had brought to light.

The police from Corfu had been civil, thorough, and kind. They had arrived fairly soon after we had reached Godfrey’s house, and had gone straight down with the two men to see the body. Shortly after that a boat had arrived from somewhere, and presently departed with its burden. Another came soon afterwards, and cruised off out to sea – searching, one assumed, for the ‘debris’ which Mr Gale insisted that he had seen. From the terrace of the Villa Rotha Phyl and I had watched it tacking to and fro some way out from land, but with what success it had been impossible – failing Mr Gale’s binoculars – to guess.

Then the men came back. The questions had been searching, but easy enough for my part to answer, because of course nobody imagined that I had ever seen Yanni before in my life, so the only questions I was asked were those touching on my finding of the body.

And when Max Gale reiterated to the police that he had not laid eyes on Yanni Zoulas since a possible glimpse of his boat on Saturday afternoon, I had not said a word.

It was this that bore on me now, heavily, as I sat there
alone in the
salotto
, with darkness thickening outside the windows, and moths thumping against the lighted glass. And if I was beginning to get too clear an idea why, I didn’t want to face that, either. I pushed that line of thought to one side, and concentrated firmly on the facts.

These were, in their own way, comforting. Godfrey had rung up in the late afternoon to give us the latest reports. It appeared that Yanni’s boat had been found drifting, and on the boom were traces of hairs and blood where, as the boat heeled in a sudden squall, it must have struck him and sent him overboard. An almost empty bottle of ouzo, which had rolled away behind a pile of rope and tackle, seemed to provide a clue to the young fisherman’s carelessness. The doctor had given it as his opinion (said Godfrey) that Yanni had been dead when he went into the water. The police did not seem inclined to press the matter further. Of the debris reported by Mr Gale no trace had been found.

Finally – Godfrey was a little cryptic over this part of the message, as the telephone was on a party line – finally, no mention had been made of any illegal activities of the dead man. Presumably his boat had been searched, and nothing had come to light, so the police (who preferred to turn a blind eye to small offences unless action was forced on them) were satisfied that the fatal voyage had been a routine fishing trip, and that Yanni’s death had been accidental. It was obvious that they had no intention of opening any further line of inquiry.

So much for Godfrey’s anxiety. My own went a little further.

It had transpired, from police inquiries, that the last time Yanni’s family had seen him alive was on Sunday: he had spent the day with them, they said, going with them to watch the procession, and returning home in the late afternoon. Yes, he had seemed in good spirits. Yes, he had been drinking a fair amount. He had had a meal, and then had gone out. No, he had not said where he was going, why should he? They had assumed he was going fishing, as usual. He had gone down to the boat. Yes, alone; he usually went alone. That was the last time they had seen him.

It was the last time anyone had seen him, according to the police report. And I had said nothing to make them alter it. Where Godfrey had been worrying about the inquiry’s leading back to Spiro, I was worrying about its involving Julian Gale. That Max Gale was somehow implicated seemed obvious, but I had my own theories about that, and they hardly justified turning the police searchlight on Yanni’s activities, and so wrecking Sir Julian’s precarious peace. With Yanni’s death an accident – and I saw no reason to doubt this – it didn’t matter if he had indeed paid a furtive visit to the Castello before going out last night. So if Max Gale chose to say nothing about it, then it was none of my business. I could stay in my enchanted bubble and keep quiet. It didn’t matter one way or the other …

But I knew quite well that it did, and it was this knowledge that kept me sleepless in my chair, while
one record followed another, unheeded, and the clock crawled on towards midnight. For one thing, I had had information forced on me that I would rather not have owned. For another—

The record stopped. With its slow, deliberate series of robot clicks, the auto-changer dropped another on the turntable, moved a gentle arm down on it, and loosed Gervase de Peyer’s clarinet into the room in a brilliant shower of gold.

I switched my own thoughts back into the groove of facts. One thing at a time. The best way of forgetting how you think you feel is to concentrate on what you know you know …

Godfrey had been sure that Yanni was a smuggler, and that he must have some ‘contact’ who was probably his boss. I was pretty sure now that the contact was Max Gale. It all tied up: it would explain that furtive visit just before Yanni’s voyage, and Gale’s silence on the subject. It would also account for the thing that had so much worried me this morning – Gale’s reaction to the news of Yanni’s death. He had not been surprised at the news that a body was on the rocks, and this was not, as Phyl had assumed, because he thought it was Spiro. To me it was obvious that Spiro had never entered his head. His first question had been ‘Who is it? Do you know?’ though the obvious assumption would have been the one the rest of us had made, that this must be the body of the drowned boy.

If my guess about him was correct, then his actions were perfectly consistent. He had known Yanni was to
make a trip the night before; he must know there was some risk involved. He would obviously not have expected Yanni to meet his death, but, once faced with a drowned body, he had had no doubts as to who it would be. His story of floating debris was nonsense, of that I was sure: what had happened was that he had seen me, and then Godfrey, at the rock-pool, had jumped to conclusions, and had made an excuse to come down to see for himself. There had been that sharp ‘Who is it?’ and then the next, immediate, reaction – to examine the body as closely as he dared, presumably for any evidence of violence. No doubt if such evidence had been there, he would have had to come out with the truth, or part of it. As it was, he held his tongue, and no doubt shared Godfrey’s relief that the matter need not be brought into the open.

Yes, it all tied up, even Gale’s surreptitious return to the pool, presumably to examine the body more closely than he had dared with Godfrey there, and to remove anything Yanni might have been carrying which might link him with his ‘contact’. And it was Gale’s luck that the boat had proved innocent: either poor Yanni had been on his way home when the accident happened, or last night’s trip had, in fact, merely been a routine one to the fishing-grounds. Even the attack on the dolphin took its place with the rest. I was certain, now, that Gale had shot at the creature because he was afraid it would attract the tourist crowds, and destroy his badly-needed privacy. But the anger that this action had roused in me didn’t give me the right, I decided, to open up a field of inquiry that would probably hurt
Spiro’s people, and would certainly hurt Yanni’s. The two bereaved families had already quite enough to bear. No, I would hold my tongue, and be thankful that I had been allowed to stay inside my enchanted bubble with a quiet conscience. And as for Max Gale—