The Daffodil Affair Read online

  Mrs Nurse, vaguely apprehending, looked distressed. Hudspith was concealing signs of massive disapprobation. And Appleby looked dubiously at his fish. Did you ever hear of the isle of Capri? She had said that. The Happy Islands. Well, at least the girl had made a break for it. Perhaps it would be well to follow suit.

  ‘I find no consolation in the poor girl’s death.’ Wine was looking sternly at his assistant, and it occurred to Appleby that he was speaking the simple truth. ‘Such talk is vindictive nonsense. Her death is useless to us.’

  ‘At least it means that nothing will be given away.’

  ‘Rubbish. If she got through to the coast she would be judged merely demented. And alive she was valuable – very valuable indeed. She might have been brought round. And she had guts. There was the makings of a Joan of Arc in her – our own sort of Joan of Arc.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said sick Lucy plaintively, ‘about the voices of Joan of Arc.’

  No one replied, and in the brief silence Appleby felt an uncomfortable pricking of the spine. ‘After all,’ he said at random, ‘she mayn’t be dead.’

  ‘I hope not,’ Wine reached for a decanter. ‘Death is sheer waste – useless death.’ For the fraction of a second he looked Appleby straight in the eye. ‘Do you know, I think we’ll all move to Europe Island in the morning?’

  There was murder in the air. And that afternoon Appleby committed two murders. It was time to take the offensive, after all.

  Near the upper end of the island the departed Schlumpf had caused a bathing-pool to be constructed – an elaborate little place, presumably in the Californian style. To this Lucy Rideout – young Lucy Rideout – had betaken herself shortly after luncheon, and here Appleby later found her practising diving with only a modicum of skill. For a time he watched her – watched that which was common to the Lucy Rideouts – flopping into the water and scrambling out. Sometimes she chattered to him, and her chattering was a twelve-year-old child’s. But the body which curved and slid and panted before him was a grown-up woman’s – the body of a grown-up woman and of a woman spontaneously physical. In fact, real Lucy’s body. In that tenement of clay the other Lucys were misfits…

  Lucy Rideout flopped and scrambled and panted; tired and gasping, she lay on warm concrete and closed her eyes against the sun. She opened them, and suddenly they were sick Lucy’s eyes – strained eyes which looked disconsolately down at a bright red bather, at a full and abounding body. She reached for a towel and wrapped it round her shoulders. ‘About Socrates,’ she said, ‘and what he said about being dead–’ She looked up – pathetic, unhealthy, tiresome. And Appleby found that he had murder in his heart.

  There had been such a lot of sick Lucy lately; it was as if real Lucy had miscalculated in her notion of what a change of environment might do. Sick Lucy was winning. And although an interest in Socrates and the Sages is generally accounted highly estimable, Appleby was tired of it. He was tired of it as would be – he believed – a physician by this time. And he would take the responsibility of killing it if he could. This Lucy’s head he would hold under that glittering pool until it breathed no more. Or he would do some equivalent thing. ‘About being dead?’ he repeated. ‘Socrates was interested in what happens after death; in whether anything happens. But he wasn’t like Wine. He wasn’t prepared to kill people in order to find out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Sick Lucy had sat up and was looking at him with dilated eyes, suddenly trembling and deadly pale.

  ‘Wine wonders if there are really ghosts. He has stolen a house where twice in the past the ghosts of murdered men are said to have appeared to friends. He himself is going to have a man killed there in order to find out. I am going to be killed without Hudspith knowing or suspecting – and will Hudspith see my ghost? Or the other way about. It is what Wine calls an experiment.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. I don’t understand it. I don’t wish to hear it or speak of it.’ Sick Lucy was cowering horribly in upon herself. ‘I wish to continue my Latin, to be told about–’

  ‘You didn’t know Wine was like that? You didn’t know the world was like that?’ Appleby had leant forward and was almost whispering into Lucy Rideout’s ear. ‘It is only one of Wine’s experiments. Others will be on you. He teaches you Latin just to keep you about – to keep you alive until he is ready. You understand? He has to keep on encouraging you, or the others would drive you away – drive you into nothing. They are stronger than you. For a long time now you’ve only been kept alive by believing in Wine and the things he teaches you. Well, they are all false. That stuff isn’t even Latin at all. You could never learn Latin – only gibberish. Your mind is too feeble. Your whole life has only been a sick flicker. But it has interested Wine because it is a freak life. What would happen if you died? Would there be three ghosts? He is interested in that sort of thing. You see? And there are other things about the world that I will tell you too. Listen…’

  She had given a last little cry…infinitely horrible. And he looked down on her sprawled body and felt himself faint with compunction and fear. But, ever so faintly, the body was breathing. Perhaps – The breathing was less perceptible, less perceptible still, had surely ceased. Seconds stretched themselves out interminably. He turned away his head in despair.

  ‘Jacko.’

  He looked at her, and she was still pale as a corpse. But her eyes were open; were awed; were full of intelligence and life.

  ‘Jacko – John’ – the voice was faint, excited, alive – ‘something’s happened; something’s happened to the prig.’ Her voice rose in sudden triumph, complete conviction. ‘She’s dead.’ Real Lucy sat up and laughed – happily and exultantly laughed. And then she was weeping uncontrollably – bewildered and bereaved.

  But Appleby sat still and waited, like a fantastic sniper beneath the Tree of Life. Presently young Lucy would appear. She was tougher than sick Lucy had been; it would be less easy to hold her head beneath the glittering pool. He sat still and waited, thinking with what words a child could best be killed.

  ‘Dead?’ said Hudspith and paused, startled, in climbing once more the little hill.

  ‘Dead.’ Appleby looked westwards to where the farther islands were swimming into evening. ‘You remember how I suggested that two of the personalities might be systematically discouraged? That’s slow murder, though it’s an orthodox clinical method. In this case quick murder proved possible. Single lethal doses of discouragement sufficed. And two things are left: an extremely curious moral problem and a valuable ally. Ought I to be hanged? The question will have significance only if the alligators are cheated of their due. As for the ally, there is no doubt of her. Real Lucy – sole Lucy, as one will think of her for a bit – may be a little lacking in modesty. But she has plenty of intelligence and resolution. Wine’s plan pleases her very much.’

  Hudspith puffed as the ascent grew steeper. ‘Then I don’t think much of her taste.’

  ‘I mean that her mind can cope with it. It gives her intellectual satisfaction, just as it does you or me.’

  ‘It’s not likely to give you any other.’

  ‘Be thankful for small mercies.’ To the west the sky was molten, so that the great river seemed to pour from a cauldron of gold. ‘I still keep on remembering things that fit in. I remember how Wine once told me Beaglehole and he were only acquaintances – something of the sort. He wanted to make sure – Cobdogla or not – that you and I were fast pals. Friendship was a prominent element in both the Hawke Square hauntings; it was to a more or less intimate friend that the full manifestations were accorded. The ghost of Colonel Morell spoke only to his friend Captain Bertram, and the ghost of Mr Smart only to his brother-in-law and friend Dr Spettigue. So when Wine saw that we were troublesome policemen and at the same time friends, he took the opportunity of killing two birds with one stone.’

  ‘Or of throwing two birds to one alligator.’ And Hudspith laughed – morosely but at greater length than the witticism justified. ‘Not that one bra
ce of friends would yield sufficient material for the great Hawke Square experiment. I don’t doubt that a whole series of incidents is planned. Come to think of it, what about Mrs Gladigan and Miss Molsher? Perhaps they were really used that way. Perhaps Miss Molsher’s ghost and mine will play hide and seek up and down that staircase.’

  Hudspith, it struck Appleby, was developing quite a vein of fantasy. Doubtless it was the exotic environment at work. They were at the top of the hill now, and the river, still golden to the west, flowed dark and unreal beneath them. Mamey and papaw, castor-oil plants and feathery palm were casting long shadows; the chatter of the chaja and the bien-te-veo was dying; soon it would be night and a universe of fireflies and stars – fireflies multitudinous and fleeting; stars remote and enduring, like the abstract ideas of these, laid up in a heaven of dark deep nocturnal blue. ‘Miss Molsher?’ said Appleby prosaically. ‘But Hawke Square has only just gone up. You and I are guinea pigs one and two.’

  ‘Unless–’

  ‘Unless he can be headed off the whole thing. After all, this geniune experimental side to the man makes only part of the picture. His racket, his Spook Church, his preparing his grotesque instruments of power: the greater part of the man is in that. And all of Beaglehole; he cares wholly for the practical and nothing for the speculative side. He regards it as the boss’ weakness, and so perhaps it is – though it is his fascination too. Now, suppose the major project in some sort of danger–’

  Hudspith shook his head. ‘At the moment it appears to me invulnerable.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure of that. If the major project were imperilled, then Hawke Square, costly though it must have been, would no doubt go by the board for a time.’

  Hudspith sat down and leant his back against the now almost invisible Ñandubay. ‘Would you say,’ he asked dryly, ‘that you and I are making plans?’

  ‘Certainly. And we have a good deal of freedom of action – and shall have as long as we succeed in giving the impression we believe in Radbone. We are unlikely to do anything desperate so long as we think one of us is to be let leave this place to negotiate with him. For instance, here are you and I conspiring together in solitude and nobody trailing us. I have a revolver in my suitcase and nobody has rifled it. We could kill Wine. We could kill both Wine and Beaglehole. Might not that break the back of the whole thing?’

  ‘Not necessarily.’ Faintly Appleby could see his companion shaking his head. ‘We don’t know what able lieutenants, what carefully nominated successors, what absentee directors there may be. But it would certainly be the end of us. There must be a pretty big gang of scoundrels scattered over these islands to control what Wine is pleased to call his material. We’d never shoot our way out.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘Of course we might contrive a revolution and organize the material behind barricades. But for the most part it’s unknown, loopy and unreliable. Except for Lucy – and she’s material no longer, according to you.’

  Appleby said nothing. It was very quiet on the island and the river made no sound. Within scores of miles there might have been stirring nothing but the indefatigable mole. And yet the island was full of noises – the obscure noises of the South American night, seeming to come always from unknown distances, like murmurings indistinguishable whether of hope or fear.

  ‘The sober truth,’ said Hudspith, ‘is that we must hope for something from without. A deus ex machina to wind the thing up happily after all.’

  Again Appleby said nothing. It was dark and, far below, the mole was groping like a spirit perturbed.

  PLOP.

  Perhaps Hudspith shivered. ‘Alligator,’ he said.

  But Appleby put a hand on his arm. ‘Listen.’

  And there was a new sound – a nearby sound from the river below. Silence succeeded and then it came again. There could be no mistaking it.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hudspith soberly. ‘A horse.’

  Part Four

  Everlasting Bonfire

  1

  The horse whinnied in the dark. At the sound, a third time repeated, the tuco-tuco beneath their feet ceased like a demon charmed. Stillness was round them like an unruffled pool – a pool beyond whose margins hovered uncertain presences, the enigmatic murmurings of vagrant winds through distant colonnades of grass. The horse coughed.

  ‘It’s swimming,’ said Hudspith.

  Below – far below, it seemed – lights shone in the late Schlumpf’s residence in the Californian style. One light might be Wine’s and Beaglehole’s; they would be sitting with papers before them, augmenting their strange plot. One might be Mrs Nurse’s – Mrs Nurse feeling nice, feeling all hollow, feeling tired. And one, Appleby knew, was Lucy’s – illiterate real Lucy with a big book before her, spelling out with concentrated intelligence the significant history of 37 Hawke Square. Lights shone on farther islands. Far away a beam of light briefly circled as a launch moved about the upper fringes of the colony – Australia Island, Asia Island, the lord knew what. Something splashed. Something slithered and heavily respired. A single clipped word was spoken by a human voice. Silence fell again and was prolonged.

  ‘A horse and rider.’ Hudspith spoke low. ‘But who would put a horse in that infested river?’

  Against darkness the fireflies flickered, tiny inconsequently roving points of light like a random molecular peppering revealed by some laboratory device.

  ‘Who indeed?’ said Appleby. ‘Or who but a crazed Yorkshire girl!’

  They waited, straining their ears. Somewhere on the island a radio had started disgorging the hollow and bodiless bellowings of an announcer tuned too loud – news from the China Sea, from Samara, from San Francisco ceaselessly circling the world, flooding it at the flick of a switch. The faint and hollow bellowing came up to them like the sound of water aimlessly bumping and bouncing in distant caves, but they listened only for a footfall or the quick clop of hoofs. They heard still the bodiless booming and the distant pampas sounds, and once the tuco-tuco stirred briefly below, and then, startlingly near, they heard in the darkness an intermittent short crisp tearing crunch – a noise baffling for seconds, and then suddenly not misinterpretable; the noise of a graminivorous creature cropping as it moved. And then they smelt horse.

  The creature stood beside them: a presence, a faint whitish cloud – a warm horse-smelling cloud. If it was saddled and bitted it had been wandering with the reins on its neck; if it had a rider the rider was invisible, dark against the night. Appleby’s eye followed the uncertain upper outline of the cloud and rested where the background lacked its powdering of stars. There was indeed a rider, a rider who sat immobile, gazing down on the scattering of lights which marked the headquarters of Emery Wine.

  ‘Good evening,’ Appleby said.

  A faint jingle, as if a hand had tightened on a rein, was the only reply.

  ‘Good evening,’ Appleby repeated. ‘Do you remember the shop in York, where they sold the things from old Hannah Metcalfe’s cottage? It must be nearly four months ago now.’

  Again there was no reply, but the whitish cloud moved. The whitish cloud which was horse elongated itself at the tip and four times dipped in air. The Daffodil of Bodfish and Lady Caroline had not lost his skill.

  ‘And now,’ said Appleby, ‘here we are on the isle of Capri.’

  ‘Mock.’ The voice was husky and deep and not unmusical. ‘Go on mocking. But come no nearer. I am not alone.’

  Hudspith was scrambling to his feet. But Appleby put a restraining hand on his arm. ‘Not alone?’ he said. ‘Well, there’s Daffodil, of course.’

  ‘There are the demons of earth and water and air.’ The girl’s voice was deep, assured, level. ‘You think that in your little room with the cameras and the trembling floor you command the demons. But you are wrong. They are commanded by me.’

  ‘We are not the friends of Wine. And we have no interest in demons. We don’t believe in them. We are going to get you safely away – back to the Haworth you were foolish eno
ugh to leave.’

  The answer was a low laugh, and when the voice spoke again the laughter was in it still – malicious, triumphant. ‘You are the friends of Wine. All here are the friends of Wine – or all except the demons in whom you don’t believe.’

  Obscurely the invisible girl was having it her own way. A spell was forming. Appleby tried to break it. ‘My dear Miss Metcalfe–’

  Her laugh came again. His words broke against it. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Listen to the demons of earth.’ Slightly the patch of starless sky shifted, as if the girl were leaning over the neck of her horse. And Daffodil whinnied. And instantly from far below, from beyond the banks of the yellow invisible river, from round the farther islands came a deep faint throb – a throb so deep as to be less a sound than a mere muscular sensation in the ear. ‘The demons of earth,’ Hannah Metcalfe said. And the throbbing – like the distant beat of many drums – died away.

  It was odd; it was so very odd that Appleby found himself cautiously testing the control of his vocal organs before he spoke again. ‘And the demons of water?’ he asked.

  Once more Daffodil whinnied – and whinnied again. And instantly upon the deepest darkness where the great slow river flowed there floated a hundred streaks of pale fire. The streaks curved to arcs, to circles, to rolling and intersecting wheels of phosphorescent fire. ‘The demons of water,’ said Hannah Metcalfe, ‘and the demons of air.’ As she spoke the dark sky beyond the river became alive as if with meteors, became alive with red and angry smears and shafts of fire. They rose, curved and fell, and the stars were uncertain and pale behind them. For seconds only the thing lasted, and then Night resumed her natural sway. Out of it came Hannah Metcalfe’s voice, graver now. ‘Is one of you Beaglehole?’ it asked.