This Rough Magic (31 page)

‘Here. What shall I tell Adoni?’

‘Don’t tell him what’s happened. Mr Manning may get back to the house, and pick the phone up, you never know. Just say he must come straight back here,
it’s urgent, Miss Lucy says so … He’ll understand. If he doesn’t, tell him anything you like – tell him I’m ill, and you have to have help – anything to get him back here. He’s not to tell Sir Julian. Then you wait for him … Don’t leave the Castello, and don’t open the door to anyone else except Max or the police … or me. If I’m not back by the time he comes, tell him everything that’s happened, and that I’m down here. Okay?’

‘Yes.’ She was an ally in a million. Confused and frightened though she must have been, she obeyed as unquestioningly as before. I heard her say, ‘The Saint be with you, Miss,’ and then she was gone, running at a fair speed along the shore path to the Castello’s bay.

With one more glance up at the lightless headland, and a prayer on my own account, I prodded around the lock with a shamefully shaky key, until at last I got it home.

The catch gave, stiffly, and I slipped inside.

No tongue: all eyes: be silent
.

IV
. 1.

The boat-house was a vast structure with a high roof lost in shadows, where the sea-sounds echoed hollowly, as in a cave. Running round the three walls was a narrow platform of planks set above the water, and along the near side of this lay the sloop. The rapidly dimming light of my torch showed me the lovely, powerful lines, and the name painted along the bows:
Aleister
. It also showed me, propped against the wall by the door, the grapple from the cave.

There was no hiding-place in the boat-house other than the boat itself. I clicked the lock shut behind me, then stepped in over the cockpit coaming, to try the cabin door.

It was unlocked, but I didn’t go straight in. There was a window in the back of the boat-house, facing the cliff, which showed a section of the path, then the black looming mass of cliff and tree, and – at the top – a paler section of sky where stars burned. With eyes now adjusted to the darkness, I could just make out the sharp angle of some part of the Villa Rotha’s roof. So
far, excellent. If Godfrey did come back too soon, I should have the warning of the car or house lights.

Inside the cabin, I let the torchlight move round once, twice …

The layout was much as I remembered in Leo’s boat. Big, curtained windows to either side, under which were settee berths with cushions in bright chintz; between these a fixed drop-leaf table above which swung a lamp. A curtain was drawn over the doorway in the forward bulkhead, but no doubt beyond it I would find another berth, the W. C., and the usual sail bags, ropes, and spare anchor stowed in the bows. Immediately to my right, just inside the door, was the galley, and opposite this the quarter berth – a space-saving berth with half its length in the cabin, and the other half burrowing, as it were, into the space beyond the after bulkhead, under the port cockpit seat. The quarter berth was heaped with blankets, and was separated from the settee berth by a small table with a cupboard underneath.

And everywhere, lockers and cupboards …

I started, methodically, along the starboard side.

Nothing in the galley; the oven empty, the cupboards stocked with cooking equipment so compact as to leave no hiding-place. In the lockers, crockery, photographic stuff, tins of food, cardboard boxes full of an innocent miscellany of gear. In the wardrobe cupboards, coats, oilskins, sweaters and a shelf holding seaboots, and shoes neatly racked, all as well polished and slick as Godfrey himself …

It was the same everywhere; everything was open to
the searcher, all the contents normal and innocent – clothing, spare blankets, photographic equipment, tools. The only place not open to the prying eye was the cupboard at the end of the quarter berth, which was locked. But – from its shallow shape, and my memory of Leo’s boat – I imagined that this was only because it held the liquor; there was none elsewhere, and it was hardly big enough to store the packages I was looking for. I left it, and went on, even prodding the mattresses and feeling under the piled blankets, but all that came to light was a paper-backed copy of
Tropic of Cancer
, which I pushed back, rearranging the blankets as they had been before. Then I started on the floor.

Here there would be, I knew, a couple of ‘traps’, or sections of the flooring which were made to lift out and give access to the bilges. Sure enough, under the table, and set in the boards, my eye caught the gleam of a sunken ring which, when pulled, lifted an eighteen-inch square of the planking, like a small trapdoor. But there was no treasure cave below, only the gleam of bilge-water shifting between the frames with the boat’s motion, and a faint smell of gas. And the same with the trap in the fo’c’sle.

The engine hatchway under the cabin steps was hardly a likely place for a cache; all the same, I looked there, and even lifted the inspection cover off the freshwater tank, to see nothing but the ghostly reflection of the torchlight and my own shadow shivering on the surface of the full forty-gallon complement of water. Not here …

I screwed the cover down with hands that sweated now, and shook, then I put the torch out and fled up the steps and on to the deck.

The window first … No lights showed outside, but I had to make sure. I ran aft, ducked under the boom, and climbed on the stern seat to peer anxiously out.

All was dark and still. I could – I must – allow myself a little longer.

I started over the cockpit, using the torch again, but keeping a wary eye on the boat-house window. Here, too, all seemed innocent. Under the starboard seat was the space occupied by the Calor gas cylinders, and nothing else. Under the stern seat was nothing but folded tarpaulins and skin-diving equipment. The port seat merely hid the end of the quarter berth. Nothing. Nor were there any strange objects fastened overside, or trailing under the
Aleister
in the sea; that bright idea was disposed of in a very few seconds. I straightened up finally from my inspection, and stood there, hovering, miserably undecided, and trying hard to think through the tension that gripped me.

He must have brought the packages here. He had not had time to take them up to his house, and he would hardly have cached them somewhere outside when he had the
Aleister
handy, and, moreover, no idea that he was even suspected. He might, of course, have handed them to some accomplice there and then, and merely have been returning the grapple to the boat-house, but the accomplice would have had to have some means of transport, which meant either a donkey or a boat; if a donkey, Miranda and I must surely have
heard it; we might not have heard a rowing-boat, but why should Godfrey use one, when the
Aleister
and her dinghy lay ready to his own hand? No, it was obvious that there could be no innocent explanation of his use of the hidden cave.

But I had looked everywhere. They were not in the boat, or tied under the boat; they were not on the platform, or on the single shelf above it. Where in the world could he, in this scoured-out space, have hidden those bulky and dripping objects so quickly and effectively?

An answer came then – so obvious as to be insulting. In the water. He had moved them merely from the bottom of the cave to the bottom of the bay. They must be under the
Aleister
, right under, and if I could only see them, there was the grapple ready to hand, with the water still dripping off it to make a pool on the boards.

I was actually up on the cockpit coaming, making for the grapple, when I saw the real answer, the obvious, easy answer which I should have seen straight away; which would have saved me all those precious minutes, and how much more besides; the trail of drops leading in through the boat-house door and along the platform; the trail left by the dripping packages, as obvious to the intelligent eye as footprints in fresh snow. I had no excuse, except fear and haste, and (I thought bitterly) Nemesis armed with a nice, heavy gun had no business to be afraid at all.

And the trail was already drying. I was calling myself names that I hadn’t even known I knew, as I shone the yellow and flickering torchlight over the boards of the platform.

Yes, there they were, the footprints in the snow; the two faint, irregular trails, interweaving like the track of bicycle wheels, leading in through the door, along the platform, over the edge …

But not into the water after all. They went in over the side of the
Aleister
and across her deck and straight in through the cabin door.

I was in after them in a flash. Down the steps, to the table … I had never even glanced at the bare table top, but now I saw on the Formica surface the still damp square where he had laid the packages down.

And there the trail stopped. But this time there was only one answer. The trail had stopped simply because all Godfrey had had to do from there was to open the trap-door under the table, and lift the things straight down.

I had the trap open again in seconds. I laid it aside. The square hole gaped.

I ran back to the steps and peered up at the window. No light showed. I dropped on my knees beside the trap, clicked on the torch and sent the small yellow eye which was all it had left skidding over the greasy water in the
Aleister
’s bilges.

Nothing. No sign. But now I knew they had to be there …

And they were there. I had gone flat down on the floor, and was hanging half inside the trap-door before I saw them, but they were there; not in the bottom, but tucked, as neatly as could be, right up under the floorboards, in what were obviously racks made specially to carry them. They were clear of the water, and
well back from the edges of the hatch, so that you would have had – like me – to be half in the bilges yourself before you saw them.

I ducked back, checked on the window again, then dived once more into the bilges.

Two sweating minutes, and I had it, a big, heavy square package wrapped in polythene. I heaved it out on deck, spreading the skirts of my coat for it so that I in my turn would leave no trail, then turned the light on it.

The torch was shaking now in my hand. The yellow glowworm crawled and prodded over the surface of the package, but the glossy wrapping almost defeated the miserable light, and all I got, in the three seconds’ look I allowed myself, was the impression of a jumble of faint colours, something looking like a picture, a badge, even (Miranda had been right) a couple of words …
LEKE
, I read, and in front of this something that could be – but surely wasn’t –
NJEMIJE
.

Somewhere something slammed, nearly frightening me out of what wits I still had. The torch dropped with a rattle, rolling in a wide semicircle that missed the trap by millimetres. I grabbed it back again, and whirled to look. There was nothing there. Only darkness.

Which was just as well, I thought, recovering my senses rather wryly. Even if I had reacted properly, and grabbed for the gun instead of the torch, I couldn’t have got it. Prospero’s damned book, or whatever the package was, was sitting right on top of it, on the skirts of my coat. I had a long way to go, I reflected bitterly, before I got into the James Bond class.

The wind must be rising fast. The big seaward doors shook again, as if someone was pulling at the padlock, and the other door bumped and rattled. The water ran hissing and lapping along the walls, and shadows, thrown by some faint reflection of starlight, shivered up into the rafters.

The window was still dark, but I had had my warning, and enough was enough. The trap-door went snugly back into place, my torch dropped into my other pocket, and, clasping the package to me with both hands, I clambered carefully out of the
Aleister
.

At the same instant as I gained the platform, I saw the movement on the path outside the window. Only a shadow, but as before there was no mistaking the way he moved. No light, no nothing, but here he was, just above the boat-house, and coming fast.

And here was I, stuck with my arms full of his precious package for which he had almost certainly tried to do double murder. And I couldn’t get out of the place if I tried.

The first thing was to get rid of the package.

I crouched and let the thing slide down between the platform and the boat. The boat was moored close, and for a panic-stricken moment I thought there wasn’t enough room there; the package was tangled in my coat, then it jammed in the gap, and I couldn’t move it either way, and when I tried to grab it back I couldn’t, it was slippery and I couldn’t get a grip on it again …

I flung myself down, got a shoulder to the
Aleister
, and shoved. She moved the inch or so I needed, and
with a brief, sharp struggle I managed to ram the package through and down.

It vanished with a faint splash. And then, like an echo, came the fainter but quite final splash of Leo’s gun slipping from the pocket of my coat, to vanish in its turn under the water.

For one wild, crazy moment of fear I thought of swinging myself down to follow gun and package and hide under the platform, but I couldn’t get down here, and there was no time to run the length of the boat. In any case he would have heard me. He was at the door. His key scraped the lock.

There was only one place big enough to hide, and that was right bang in the target area. The boat itself. It did cross my mind that I could stand still and try to bluff it out, but even had the
Aleister
been innocent, and Godfrey found me here at this hour, inside a locked door, no bluff would have worked. With the boat literally loaded, I hadn’t a hope. It was the cabin or nothing.

I was already over the side, and letting myself as quietly as a ghost into the cabin, as his key went home in the lock and turned with a click. I didn’t hear the door open. I was already, like a hunted mouse, holed up in the covered end of the quarter berth, with the pile of blankets pulled up as best I could to hide me.

The blankets smelt of dust, and carbolic soap. They covered me with a thick, stuffy darkness that at least felt a bit like security. The trouble was that they deprived me of my hearing, the only sense that was left to tell what Godfrey was up to. Strain as I might
through the thudding of my own heart-beats, I could only get the vaguest impression of where he was and what he was doing. All I could do was lie still and pray he wouldn’t come into the cabin.