Reckoning in Ice, page 17
Good luck
Basil
I tore up the letter, then, on second thoughts, I burnt it and put the ashes down the dust-chute. Basil Trefusis, I reflected, was a very clever man, and one day he’d make a very good doctor – if he wasn’t one already.
I got a full set of Mediterranean charts. They took up a horrible amount of room, but I could abandon them in Scotland. I also ordered, on impulse, a set of charts for Greenland, and the Greenland volumes of The Arctic Pilot. These would not be ready until Friday. I went down to the Wild Duck again on Wednesday afternoon, worked with Peter on the boat, and drove back to town on Thursday. Gudrid was stored and ready for sea, and we left her lying at her mooring. I planned to sleep at the flat on Thursday night, spend the day on Friday collecting charts and last-minute things, sleep at the flat again on Friday night and leave early on Saturday morning, to sail around midday.
I had just about finished packing on Friday night and was contemplating going out for a drink when the telephone rang.
‘Richard Garston here,’ I said.
The caller was a woman, but with a voice so high-pitched and hysterical that I couldn’t possibly identify it.
‘Thank God,’ she said. Then, ‘Don’t drink the coffee, don’t drink the coffee.’ That was all. My telephone reverted to the dialling tone.
VIII
CRISIS
THERE WAS NO food in the flat, because I’d cleared and tidied up the larder in readiness for going away. I’d decided not to bother with breakfast in the morning, but to have an early lunch at the Wild Duck before sailing. I’d left myself just enough coffee, though, for a cup before starting. I had a small electric coffee grinder, and kept the beans in a glass jar. There were about two spoonfuls of beans in the jar. I looked at them, smelt them – they seemed perfectly all right. To be on the safe side I threw them away and washed out the jar.
All the way down to the boat I puzzled over the coffee. I went on board before calling at the Wild Duck, to have a quick look round. I contemplated my stores. I had not ordered a lot because I was only going to Scotland, and there was no point in cluttering up the boat. I reckoned to make Peterhead in about a week, so I’d stocked Gudrid for a fortnight, an ample margin of safety. Peter had got the stores on board but he had not attempted to stow them – it is better to do your own stowing, so that you know where everything is. The small pile of groceries stood neatly on the cabin sole. There were two sealed half-pound tins of ground coffee. They bore no signs of interference, and I did not see how anybody could interfere with the contents of an unopened tin.
On the top shelf of the food locker were my standby supplies, in containers marked by my red ring. Coffee on board, first with Paula and then with Caroline, had almost finished what I’d had in the Tupperware container – there was about one day’s supply. I examined it closely – nothing seemed in the least wrong. Also on the shelf was one unopened tin, ringed, because this was next in line for use. Again, I did not see what could have been done to an unopened tin. But I had learned not to underrate the enemy. I packed the ringed tin and the Tupperware container in a parcel, put in a note to Paula, and addressed the parcel to her. My note said,
Dear Paula,
I have some reason to believe that there may be something odd about this coffee. Can you get your father to analyse it? Do be very careful with it, because it may be nasty. Leaving today. ETA Peterhead, today week.
I punched holes in the two tins in Peter’s pile of groceries and threw them over the side.
Then I went ashore and drove into Burnham, where I posted the parcel to Paula and bought three fresh tins of coffee. I had that pleasant sense of having nearly finished with the land. All I had left to do was to go to the Wild Duck to leave my car, to have a quick meal and to say goodbye to Peter and Angela. This did not take long. A quarter of an hour before midday I cast off and stood down river towards the estuary and the sea. The wind was fair, about Force 4, and Gudrid’s blue Terylene sails filled happily.
I decided on Peterhead partly because I knew the entrance – I had been there some years before on a cruise to the Orkneys in a boat that Basil Trefusis had then had – but mainly because it could have no possible connection with Hee House. Inverness would have been more convenient, but Inverness was on the route to Hee House, and I was taking no chances – I was supposed to be on my way to Greece.
It was now March – not an ideal time for cruising in the North Sea, but I doubt if there is an ideal time for North Sea cruising. I had no self-steering on Gudrid, but she was a beautifully balanced boat, and with the wind almost anywhere abeam I could generally get her to steer herself for quite long periods. But this was not an ocean passage, and I should have to be on watch for as many of the twenty-four hours of each day as I could manage – the North Sea has plenty of shipping, and the additional hazards of oil rigs. I have found, however, that I can manage with relatively little sleep – for a week or so, at any rate – if I have fairly frequent cat naps of twenty minutes to half an hour. I carried an extra loud alarm clock, and Gudrid had as good navigation lights as can be contrived for a boat of her size, and a good radar-reflector. I kept about fifty miles offshore, and only twice on the passage did I have to heave-to for eight hours or so to get a full stretch of sleep.
I was off Peterhead by the small hours of Saturday morning, but I stood around to enter in daylight. I saw Paula standing on the quay, and she indicated that I should come alongside a drifter already made fast to it. I turned into the wind and brought up – not quite as neatly as I could have wished, for I stopped a few feet short of the drifter and had to throw a line to the quay, but tolerably well for my first manoeuvre in Gudrid under Paula’s eyes. I dropped Gudrid’s sails, secured to the drifter and clambered across to a short iron ladder on the quayside. Paula was waiting at the top of the ladder, and to my astonishment she put her arms round me and clung to me, saying nothing but, ‘Richard. Oh, Richard’. There was nothing cousinly about this.
Then I saw her father, standing a few yards away. He looked exceedingly grave, but his face lightened as he came over to us. ‘It is as well you did not drink that coffee, Richard,’ he said. ‘It had been most liberally treated with finely powdered cyanide of potassium.’
Paula said, ‘Caroline is dead.’
Mr Villeneuve saw that the situation needed handling. He turned to practical things and said, ‘Gudrid will be all right where she is for the present – the drifter is not sailing until tonight. The harbourmaster has found a place for you inside. Now I expect you need some breakfast. We’ve been here since yesterday, and there’s a pleasant small hotel. There’s a room for you tonight.’
Paula held my arm as we walked to the hotel. With the self-discipline that seemed to come naturally to the Villeneuves, and which I felt that I was acquiring, we talked at breakfast of nothing but my passage. I was hungry, there were splendid real kippers and freshly made bannocks. After breakfast I suggested that they should come back with me to Gudrid, help me to move her and that we then discuss things in privacy on board.
Harbourmasters are not always well disposed to small boats. The Peterhead man was exceptional. He could not have been more friendly, and he made me feel as if his harbour existed for the benefit of stray yachtsmen who arrive out of the blue. I blessed him then, and do so still. Gudrid’s move was soon accomplished. The Villeneuves sat on the cabin settee while I tidied up.
‘That coffee,’ said Mr Villeneuve, ‘was fiendishly well done. The coffee in the plastic container was innocent – it was not adulterated in any way at all. I then turned to the unopened tin. It seemed improbable that the contents of a vacuum-sealed tin should be other than they had been when they left the factory, but naturally we took your note seriously. I opened the tin and the first thing that struck me was that it didn’t make the little hiss that a sealed tin ought to make. Then I examined the coffee. It contained enough cyanide to kill at least thirty people. A detailed inspection of the tin at last showed me how it had been done. Close to the bond at the rim of the tin a small hole had been drilled, just large enough to take the tip of a fine syringe of some sort, through which the powder could have been forced into the tin. The hole had been sealed very delicately with solder. It was quite unnoticeable, and I found it only because I was looking for it, and knew that something of the sort must be there. There was an added refinement – the tin had been well-shaken so that the poison was distributed throughout the coffee. This could have occurred to some extent by chance shaking in the post, but I doubt if that would have been enough. I was puzzled for a time to know why so much trouble had been taken with the tin instead of the much simpler treatment of the coffee in the container. Paula gave me the answer.’
‘That was simply because Daddy did not know your boat or your system,’ said Paula. ‘Cyanide is a quickly acting poison. Had the coffee in the container been treated you would have drunk it too soon – you might even have made coffee before leaving the mooring. Reasoning that you would use the container coffee first, you would have been well out to sea before starting on the tin. It would be days, perhaps weeks, before you were found – if you ever were. Gudrid, with no one at her helm, might have been run down at night, or have broached to and filled.’
‘He didn’t know Gudrid,’ I said.
‘Who did know of your system?’ asked Mr Villeneuve.
I thought about this. ‘Peter, at the Wild Duck,’ I said, ‘a few people who have sailed with me, but not many, because I’ve sailed mostly alone, Paula – and Caroline.’ I told them about the woman’s hysterical voice on the telephone. ‘I wonder – I wonder –’ I said slowly.
‘You think Caroline may have been killed because she warned you?’ Paula said. ‘It would fit in, I think it would fit in. If so, we owe her a lot.’
‘You haven’t told me how she was killed.’
‘We don’t know,’ said Mr Villeneuve. ‘At least, it is known that she was strangled, apparently some time on Sunday, but no more is known than that. She did not turn up at the office on Monday or Tuesday. Morgan-Jones was worried about her. He telephoned her flat several times, but could get no reply. It was unlike Caroline to stay away without saying anything. On Wednesday he was considering asking the police to break into the flat, but he was forestalled by other news.
‘On Tuesday the body of a young woman, possibly thrown from a car, was found in a ditch on the outskirts of Savernake Forest, near Marlborough. It was not identified at once, because her handbag had been taken. A shop label had been ripped off her dress, but she was wearing an unusual pair of tights which, it seems, are made specially for one shop in Chelsea. The police went there with the dress, and it turned out that the dress had been bought there, too. They were lucky, because the dress had required some slight alteration and it had been delivered by one of the assistants to International Metals. It was a fairly expensive dress and Caroline seems to have been a regular customer at the shop. She had wanted the dress particularly, and therefore it had been sent to the office for her. Thus by Wednesday afternoon the police had not only identified Caroline, but discovered where she worked. The inquest opened yesterday, but only formal evidence was taken. It has been adjourned indefinitely for the police to continue their investigation. The funeral is on Monday. I shall attend it – I have chartered an aircraft to fly from Aberdeen tomorrow. I hope to come back on the night train on Monday. Paula is not going with me. She has had little to do with the office, and we both feel that it would look almost ghoulish for her to attend. I, however, feel that I must be present. The office is considerably shaken, and although I can’t do anything, this is the sort of thing a chairman has to do.’
‘You can say a prayer for her, for us,’ Paula said.
My own thoughts were a bewildering mixture. Had I again played into the enemy’s hand? Had Caroline been much cleverer than I had realised? Had she deliberately angled an opportunity to study my boat, as Morgan-Jones had arranged an opportunity to see the mileage reading in my car? Had she been instructed to have a look at my boat? And yet – somebody had telephoned to warn me of the coffee. It could only have been Caroline. Did she balk at murder at the last moment? And did she have to be killed because she balked at murder? Poor, silly little Caroline. I could not see her as evil, though somehow she had got herself mixed up in evil things. She wore the wrong shoes for the wrong occasions, she was, perhaps, a little vulgar, she could certainly be catty towards other women in the office – but evil, no. And when it had come to the point – she had jibbed at killing. Perhaps she had not understood until then what a cold, vile business she was lending a hand in. Rhys Jenkins again? It bore the marks of his work. I could not see Morgan-Jones strangling Caroline. The thought of the strangler made me myself want to kill. A weekend in the country, and then – on the way home – I tried to push the thought from my mind.
‘The question is,’ I said, ‘do we now have to go to the police?’
‘God knows,’ said Paula.
Mr Villeneuve put the tips of his fingers together in what I had come to think of as his lecturing gesture. When he spoke it was judicially. ‘I considered the police as soon as I found the cyanide,’ he said. ‘Here was another clear attempt at murder – I felt that the situation was no longer one we should try to handle by ourselves. But then I thought –as we have thought so often before – What have we to tell the police? You had simply sent the coffee to us. Paula, seeing the red ring on the tin, told me that it had come from your boat. You go to the police and say, “I have found this tin of poisoned coffee on my boat”. What are they expected to do? I decided to wait until we could talk over things together.
‘I did not then know what you have now told us about the woman’s voice on the telephone warning you about the coffee. We must assume, I think, that the voice was Caroline’s. The police are investigating Caroline’s murder – they are already involved, at least to that extent. Should your evidence be given them? Yes, I think it should. But what is your evidence? You can say that a woman telephoned a warning to you – you told us that you could not identify the voice, and you would have to say the same to the police. Can you say anything without disclosing all the suspicions for which, at present, we have so little evidence in a legal sense? Disclose those suspicions before we can prove them, and we simply warn the enemy, giving him or them a chance to formulate plans to meet them – we make it more rather than less likely for Caroline’s murderer to escape. I feel that we should continue with our plan to place the Agdalite advertisement, and see what happens. Caroline is dead. It is better for justice on her killer to be delayed than defeated.’ He went on in a much gentler voice. ‘It is very hard on you, Richard. There have been two attempts on your own life. For the moment you are fairly safely out of the way, but you may have to be in touch with the murderer again. I can’t advise you what to do.’
‘I’m still with you,’ I said. ‘But I’ve had a seven-day passage and I need to catch up with some sleep.’
Mr Villeneuve hired a car to take him to Aberdeen on Sunday, leaving the Bentley with Paula. She proposed to stay at Peterhead over Sunday night and drive to Inverness on Monday, to stay there on Monday night to be ready to meet her father when his train got in on Tuesday morning. As we had done that other Sunday on the Crouch, Paula and I did our best to put detection out of our heads. She helped me to snug down Gudrid. I paid the harbourmaster enough to cover her dues for several weeks and he promised to keep an eye on her. Peterhead in March is scarcely a holiday resort, but with Paula for companion it held all that I could ask.
I decided to drive with her to Inverness on Monday and to make my way from there to Manchester. The Financial Chronicle had an advertisement office there, and I thought that I would hand in the Agdalite notice to be published with a Box Number, and ask for replies to be sent to the Haymarket Hotel in Manchester. I could stay there either until something came, or until it was reasonably clear that nothing was going to come. I returned to being Richard Grainger. When I got to Manchester I went into an optician’s shop and managed to buy a pair of spectacles with plain glass lenses, saying that I wanted them for an amateur dramatic society.
After much consideration I settled the wording of my advertisement thus:
AGDALITE. Advertiser with substantial Agdalite interests invites offers for mutual advantage. Please write Box Number –
I took it to the Financial Chronicle office, paid for three insertions and asked for replies to be sent to Richard Grainger at the Haymarket Hotel. I booked at the hotel for a week, told the reception desk that I was expecting some mail and asked that anything that came should be kept for me. To test the system I addressed some envelopes to myself, put bits of newspaper in them to give them reasonable bulk and posted them. I was relieved to find them safely in the pigeon-hole below my room number next day. I ordered The Times and the Financial Chronicle to be sent up to me each morning. Remembering that I was in Manchester I added the Guardian, and reflecting that a popular paper was more likely to give me news of Caroline, I added the Daily Mirror.
On the day after I had taken my advertisement to the newspaper office it was duly in the paper. I went down in intense excitement next morning to discover with a thud of disappointment that there was nothing in my pigeon-hole. Then it struck me that there couldn’t possibly be anything – replies would go first to the Financial Chronicle and would then have to be forwarded.
