Bear Island

6

Dawn, in those high latitudes and at that time of year, did not come until half-past ten in the morning, and it was then that we buried the three dead men, Antonio and Moxen and Scott, and surely their shades would have forgiven us for the almost indecent dispatch with which their funerals were carried out, for that driving blizzard was still at its height, the wind was full of razored knives and struck through both clothes and flesh and laid its icy fingers on the marrow. Captain Imrie, a large and brassbound Bible in his mittened hands, read swiftly through the burial service or at least I assumed he did, he could have been reading the Sermon on the Mount for all I could tell, the wind just plucked the inaudible words from his mouth and carried them out over the grey-white desolation of waters. Three times a canvas-wrapped bundle slid smoothly out from beneath the Morning Rose's only Union flag, three times a bundle vanished soundlessly beneath the surface of the sea: we could see the splashes but not hear them for our cars were full of the high and lonely lament of the wind's requiem in the frozen rigging.

On land, mourners customarily find it difficult to tear themselves away from a newly filled grave, but here there was no grave, there was nothing to look at and the bitter cold was sufficient to drive from every mind any thought other than that of immediate shelter and warmth: besides, Captain Imrie had said that it was an old fisherman's custom to drink a toast to the dead. Whether it was or not I had no idea, it could well have been a custom that Imrie had invented himself, and certainly the deceased had been no fisherman: but whatever its origin I'm sure that it made its contributory effect towards the extremely rapid clearing of the decks. I remained where I was. I felt inhibited from joining the others not because I found Captain Imrie's proposal distasteful or ethically objectionable-only the most hypocritical could find in the Christian ethic a bar to wishing bon voyage to the departed-but because, in crowded surroundings, it could be very difficult to see who was filling my glass and what he was filling it with. Moreover, I'd had no more than three hours' sleep the previous night, my mind was tired and a bit fuzzy round the edges and it was my hope that the admittedly heroic treatment of exposure to an Arctic blizzard might help to blow some of the cobwebs away. I took a firm hold on one of the numerous lifelines that were rigged on deck, edged my way out to the largest of one of the numerous deck cargoes we were carrying, took what illusory shelter was offered in its lee and waited for the cobwebs to fly away.

Halliday was dead. I hadn't found his body, I'd searched, casually and unobtrusively, every likely and most of the unlikely places of concealment on the Morning Rose: he had vanished and left no trace. Halliday, I knew, was lying in the black depths of the Barents Sea. How he'd got there I didn't know and it didn't seem to be important: it could be that someone had helped him over the side but it was even more probable that he had required no assistance. He'd left the saloon as abruptly as he had because the poison in his Scotch-my Scotch-had been as fast acting as it had been deadly. He had felt the urgent need to be sick and the obvious place to be sick was over the side: a slip on the snow or ice, one of the hundreds of trough-seeking lurches that the trawler had experienced during the night and in what must have been by that time his ill, weakened, and dazed state, he would have been quite unable to prevent himself from pitching over the low guardrails. The only consolation, if consolation it was, was that he had probably succumbed from poison before his lungs had filled with water. I did not subscribe to the popular belief that death from drowning was a relatively easy and painless way to go if for no other reason than that it was a theory that in the nature of things lacked positive documentation.

I was as certain as could be that Halliday's absence had so far gone unnoticed by everyone except myself and the person responsible for his death and there was not even certainty about that last point, it was quite possible that he knew nothing of Halliday's brief visit to the saloon. True, Halliday had not appeared for breakfast but as a few others had done the same and those who had come had done so intermittently over the best part of a couple of hours, his absence had gone unremarked. His cabin-mate, Sandy, was still feeling under the weather to the extent that Halliday's presence or absence was a matter of total indifference to him: and as Halliday had been very much a solitary there was no one who would be sufficiently concerned to enquire anxiously as to his whereabouts'. I hoped that his absence remained undiscovered as long as possible: although the signed guarantee given to Captain Imrie that morning had contained no specific reference as to the action to be taken in the event of someone going missing he was quite capable of seizing upon this as a pretext to abandon the trip and make with all speed for Hammerfest.

The match I'd left jammed between the foot of my cabin door and the sill had no longer been in position when I'd returned to my cabin early in the morning. The Coins I'd left in the linen pockets of the lids of my suitcases had shifted position from the front to the back of the pockets, sure evidence that my cases had been opened in my absence. It says much for my frame of mind that the discovery occasioned me no particular surprise-which was in itself surprising, for although someone aboard was aware that the good doctor had been boning up on aconitine and so had more than a fair idea that the poisoning had not been accidental, that in itself was hardly reason to start examining the doctor's hand luggage. More than ever, it behooved me to watch my back.

I heard a sound behind my back. My instinctive reaction was to take a couple of rapid steps forward, who knew what hard or sharp implement might be coming at my occiput or shoulder blades, then whirl round, but a simultaneous reasoning told me that it was unlikely that anyone would propose to do me in on the upper deck in daylight under the interested gaze of watchers on the bridge, so I turned round leisurely and saw Charles Conrad moving into what little shelter was offered in the lee of the bulk deck cargo.

"What's this, then?" I said. "The morning constitutional at all costs?

Or don't you fancy Captain Imrie's Scotch?"

"Neither." He smiled. "Curiosity, is all." He tapped the tarpaulin covered bulk beside us. It was close on ten feel? in height, semicylindrical-the base was flat-and was lashed in position by at least a dozen steel cables. "Do you know what this is?"

Is this a clever question?"

"Yes."

"Prefabricated Arcticised buts. Or so the word went in Wick. Six of them, designed to fit one inside the other for ease of transportation."

"That's it. Made of bonded ply, kapok insulation, asbestos, and aluminium." He pointed to another bulky item of deck cargo immediately foreword of the one behind which we were sheltering. This peculiarly shaped object appeared to be roughly oval along its length, perhaps six feel? high.

"And this?"

"Another clever question?"

"Of course."

.And my answer will be wrong? Again?"

"If you still believe what you were told in Wick, yes. Those aren't huts because we don't need huts. We're heading for an area called the Sor-Hamna- the South Haven -where there already are huts, and perfectly usable ones. Bloke called Lerner came there seventy years ago, prospecting for coal-which he found, by the way: a bit of an odd-ball who painted the rocks on the shore in the German national colours to indicate that this was private property. He built huts-he even built a road across the headland to the nearest bay, the Kvalross Bukta or Walrus Bay. After him a German fishing company based themselves here-and they built huts. More importantly, a Norwegian scientific expedition spent nine months here during the most recent International Geophysical Year and they built huts. Whatever else is lacking at South Haven it's not accommodation."

"You're very well informed."

I don't forget something that I finished reading only half an hour ago.

Comin" and Goin's been making the rounds this morning handing out copies of the prospectus of what's going to be the greatest film ever made. Didn't you get one from him?"

"Yes. He forgot to give me a dictionary, though."

"A dictionary would have helped." He tapped the tarpaulin "beside us.

"This is a mock-up of the central section of a submarine-just a shell, nothing inside it. When I say it's a mock-up, I don't mean its made of cardboard-it's made of steel and weighs ten tons, including four tons of iron ballast. That other item in front is a conning tower which is to be bolted onto this once it's in the water."

"Ah!" I said because I couldn't think of any other comment. "And those alleged tractors and drums of fuel on the afterdeck-they'll be tanks and antiaircraft guns?"

'Tractors and fuel, as stated." He paused. "Do you know there's only one copy of the screenplay for this film and that that's locked up in the Bank of England or some such?"

I went to sleep about that bit."

"They haven't even got a shooting script for the scenes to be shot on the island. Just a series of unrelated incidents which taken together make no sense at all. Sure, there must be connecting links to make sense of it all: but they're all in the vaults in Threadneedle Street or wherever this damned bank is. No part of it makes sense."

"Maybe it's not meant to make sense." I was conscious that my feelings were slowly turning into blocks of ice. "Not at this stage. There may be excellent reasons for the secretiveness. Besides, don't some producers encourage directors who play it off the cuff, who improvise as they go along and as the mood takes them?"

"Not Neal Divine. He's never shot an off-the-cuff scene in his life."

Not much of Conrad's forehead was to be seen beneath the thick brown hair that the snow and wind had brought down almost to eyebrow level, but what little was visible was very heavily corrugated indeed. If a Divine shooting script calls for you to be wearing a bowler hat and doing the can-can in Scene 289, then you're doing a bowler-hatted can-can in 289.

As for Otto, he never moves until everything's calculated out to the last matchstick and the last penny. Especially the last penny."

"He has the reputation for being a little careful."

"Careful!" Conrad shivered. "Doesn't the whole set-up strike you as being crazy?"

"The entire film world," I said candidly, "strikes me as being crazy, but as an ordinary human being exposed to it for the first time I wouldn't know whether this current particular brand of craziness differs from the norm or not. What do your fellow actors think of it?"

'What fellow actors':" Conrad said glumly. "Judith Haynes is still closeted with those two pooches of hers. Mary Stuart is writing letters in her cabin, at least she says it's letters, it's probably her last will and testament.

And if Gunther Jungbeck and Jon Heyter have any opinion on everything they're carefully keeping it to themselves. Anyway, they are a couple of odd-balls themselves."

"Even for actors?"

"Touche." He smiled, but he wasn't trying too hard. "Sea burials bring out the misanthrope in me. No, it's just that they know so little about the Elm world, at least the British film world, understandable enough I suppose, Heyter's done all his acting in California, Jungbeck in Germany.

They're not odd, really, it's just that we have nothing in common to talk about, no points of reference."

"But you must know of them?"

"Not even that, but that's not surprising, I like acting but the film world bores me to tears and I don't mix socially. That makes me an odd-ball too. But Otto vouches for them-in fact, he speaks pretty highly of them, and that's good enough for me. They'll both probably act me off the screen when it comes to the bit." He shivered again. "Conrad's curiosity remains unsatisfied, but Conrad has had enough. As a doctor wouldn't you prescribe some of this Scotch which old Imrie is supposed to be dispensing so liberally?"

We found Captain Imrie dispensing the Scotch with so heavy a hand that plainly it came from his own private supplies and not from Otto's, for Otto, heavily wrapped in a coloured blanket and with his puce complexion still a pale shadow of its former self, was sitting in his accustomed dining chair and raising no objections that I could see. There must have been at least twenty people present, ship's crew and passengers, and they were very far indeed from being a merry throng. I was surprised to see Judith Haynes there with her husband, Michael Stryker, hovering attentively over her. I was surprised to see Mary Darling there, her sense of duty or what was the done thing must have been greater than her aversion to alcohol, and was even more surprised to note that she had so abandoned all sense of the priorities as to be holding young Allen by the arm in a positively proprietorial fashion: I was not surprised to see that Mary Stuart was absent. So were Heissman and Sandy. The two actors with whom Conrad claimed to have so little in common, Jungbeck and Heyter, were together in one corner and for the first time I looked at them with some degree of real interest. They looked like actors, no question of that, or, more accurately, they looked like what I thought actors ought to look like. Heyter was tall, fair, good-looking, young, and twenty years ago would have been referred to as clean-cut: he had a mobile, expressive, animated face. Jungbeck was at least fifteen years his senior, a thick-set man with heavy shoulders, a five o'clock shadow and dark, curling hair just beginning to grey: he had a ready engaging smile. He was cast, I knew, as the villain in the forthcoming production and despite the appropriate build and blue jowls didn't look the least bit like one.

The almost complete silence in the saloon, I soon realised, didn't stem entirely from the solemnity of the occasion, although that element must have been there: Captain Imrie had been holding the floor and had only broken off to acknowledge our entrance and to take the opportunity of dispensing some more liquor, which I refused. And now, it was clear, Captain Imrie was taking up where he had left off.

"Yes," he said heavily, `fitting, "tis fitting. They have gone today, sadly, tragically gone, three of Britain's sons"-I was almost glad, for the moment, that Antonio was no longer around-"but it comes to us all, sooner or later the hour strikes, and if they must rest where better to lie than in those honoured waters of Bear Island where ten thousand of their countrymen sleep?" I wondered, uncharitably, what hour struck when Captain Imrie poured himself his first restorative of the morning but then recalled that as he had been up since 4 a.m. he was no doubt now rightly regarding the day as being pretty far advanced, a supposition which he proceeded to prove correct by replenishing his glass without, however, interrupting the smooth flow of his monologue. His audience, I noted with regret, had about them the look of men and women who wished themselves elsewhere.

"I wonder what Bear Island means to you people," he went on.

"Nothing, I suppose, why should it? It's just a name, Bear Island, just a name. Like the Isle of Wight or what's yon place in America, Coney Island: just a name. But for people like Mr. Stokes here and myself and thousands of others it's a wee bit more than that. It was a kind of turning point, a dividing point in our lives, what those geography or geology fellows would call a watershed: when -,We came to know the name we knew that no name had ever meant so much to us before-and no name would ever mean so much again. And we knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

Bear Island was the place where boys grew up, just over the night, as it were: Bear Island was the place where middle-aged men like myself grew old." This was a different Captain Imrie speaking now, quietly reminiscent, sad without bitterness, and the captive audience was now voluntarily so, no longer glancing longingly at the saloon exits.

'We called it "The Gate," he went on. "The gate to the Barents Sea and the White Sea and those places in Russia where we took those convoys through all the long years of the war, all those long years ago. If you passed the gate and came back again, you were a lucky man: if you did it half-a-dozen times you'd used up all your luck for a lifetime. How many times did we pass the gate, Mr. Stokes?"

"Twenty-two times." For once, Mr. Stokes had no need for deliberation.

'Twenty-two times. I am not saying it because I was there but people on those convoys to Murmansk suffered more terribly than people have ever suffered in war before or will ever suffer in war again, and it was here, in those waters, at the gate, that they suffered most of all for it was here that the enemy waited by night and by day and it was here that the enemy struck us down. The fine ships and the fine boys, our boys and the German boys, more of them lie in those waters than anywhere in the world, but the waters run clean now and the blood is washed away. But not in our minds, not in our minds: thirty years have passed now and I cannot hear the words "Bear Island," not even when I say them myself, but my blood runs cold. The graveyard of the Arctic and we hope they are at peace now, but still my blood runs cold." He shivered, as if he felt a physical chill, then smiled slightly. "The old talk too much, a blether talks too much, so you know now how terrible it is to have an old blether stand before you. All I'd really meant to say is that our shipmates are in good company." He raised his glass. "Bon voyage."

Bon voyage. But not the last goodbye, not the last time we would be saying goodbye, I felt it deep in my bones and I knew that Captain Imrie felt it also. I knew that it was some sort of foreknowledge or premonition that had made him talk as he had done, that had been responsible for a rambling reminiscence as uncalled for as it was irrelevant-or appeared to be. I wondered if Captain Imrie was even dimly aware of this thought transference process, of the substitution of the fearful things, the dreadful things of long ago for the unrealised awareness that such things were not confined to the actions of overt warfare, that violent death acknowledged no restrictions in time and space, that the bleak and barren waters of the Barents Sea were its habitat and its home. I wondered how many others of those present felt this atavistic fear, this oddly nameless dread so often encountered in the loneliest and most desolate places on earth, a dread that reaches back over the aeons to primitive man who as yet knew not fire, to those unthinkably distant ancestors who crouched in terror in their lightless caves while the forces of evil and darkness walked abroad in the night: a fear that, here and now, was all too readily reinforced and compounded by the sudden, violent, and inexplicable deaths of three of their company the previous night. It was hard to tell, I thought, just who was feeling affected by such primeval stirrings of foreboding for mankind does not readily acknowledge even to itself, far less show or discuss, the existence of such irrationally childlike superstitions. Captain Imrie and Mr. Stokes, without a doubt: they had gone into a corner by themselves and were staring down, unseeingly, I was sure, and certainly without speaking, at the glasses in their hands, and as the two of them rarely if ever sat together without discussing, at great length, matters of the gravest import, this was highly significant in itself. Neal Divine, more hollow-checked than ever but apparently slightly recovered from his very low state of the previous evening, sat by himself, continuously twirling the empty glass in his hand, his usual nervous preoccupied self, but whether he was preoccupied with mal de nter, the thought that he was about to begin his directorial duties and so consequently be exposed to the lash of Gerran's tongue or whether he, too, was feeling fingers from the dead past reach deep into him was impossible to say.

Comin" and Goin" was seated by Otto at the head of the table and they, too, were silent. I wondered just what the relationship between the two men was. They seemed to he on cordial enough terms but they only sought each other out, I had observed, when questions of business were to be discussed. It could well have been that, personally, they had little in common, but the fact that Comin" and Goin" had recently been made vice-president and heir-apparent to Olympus Productions seemed to speak highly enough of Otto's regard for him. And as they were together now and not talking I assumed that they were pondering over matters similar to those that were engaging the attention of Imrie and myself.

The Three Apostles weren't talking, but that meant nothing, when they were deprived of their instruments, their music magazines and their garishly primary-coloured comics, the presence of all of which they had probably deemed as being inappropriate in the present circumstances, they were habitually bereft of speech. Stryker, still in solicitously close attendance upon his wife, was talking quietly to the Count, while the Duke was conspicuously not talking to his cabin-mate Eddie, but as they were rarely on speaking terms anyway, this was hardly significant. I became aware that Lonnie Gilbert was at my elbow and I wondered what degree, if any, of the underlying significance of Captain Imrie's words had penetrated his befuddled mind. Lonnie was clutching a glass of Scotch, both container and contents of genuine family size, a marked contrast to the relatively small portions he'd been pouring himself in the lounge bar about midnight: I could only assume that somewhere in the remoter recesses of Lonnie's mind there lurked some vestigial traces of conscience which permitted him only modest amounts of hooch not honestly come by.

Trivy and calumny and hate and pain and that unrest which men miscall delight shall touch them not and torture not again," Lonnie intoned. He tilted his glass, lowered the liquid level by two fingers and smacked his lips. Trom the contagion-"

"Lonnie." I nodded at the glass. "When did you start this morning?"

"Start. My dear fellow, I never stopped. A sleepless night. From the contagion of the world's slow stain they are secure and now can never mourn the heart grown cold, the head grown grey-"

Aware that he had lost his audience, Lonnie broke off and followed my line of sight. Mary Darling and Allen, proprieties observed, were leaving. Mary hesitated, stopped in front of Judith Haynes's chair, smiled and said: "Good morning, Miss Haynes. I hope you're feeling better today?"

Judith Haynes smiled, a fractionally glimpsed set of perfect teeth, then looked away: a false smile meant to be seen and understood as a false smile, followed by a complete and contemptuous dismissal. I saw colour stain Mary Darling's cheeks and she made as if to speak but Allen, his lips tight, took her arm and urged her gently towards the lee door.

"Well, well," I said. I wonder what all that was about. A clearly offended Miss Haynes but I can't conceive of our little Mary giving offence to anybody."

Tut she has done, my boy, she has done. Our Judith is one of those sad and unfortunate females who can't abide any other female who is younger, better looking or more intelligent than she is. Our little Mary offends on at least two of those counts."

"You disappoint me," I said. "Here I was, manfully trying to discount -or at least ignore-what appears to be the universally held opinion that Judith Haynes is a complete and utter bitch and now-'

"And you were right." Lonnie regarded his empty glass with an expression of faint astonishment. "She isn't a bitch, at least she doesn't make a career out of it, except inadvertently. To those who offer no threat or competition, little children or pets, she is capable of generous impulses, even affection. But that apart, a poor poor creature, incapable of loving or inspiring love in others, to wit and in short, a loveless soul, perverse but pitiable, a person who having once seen herself and not liking what she has seen, turns away from reality and takes refuge in misanthropic fantasy." Lonnie executed a swift sideways scuttle in the direction of an unattended Scotch bottle, replenished his glass with the speed and expertise born of a lifetime of practice, returned happily and warmed to his theme.

"Sick, sick, sick and it is the sick, not the whole, who require our help and sympathy." Lonnie could, on occasion, sound very pontifical indeed.

"She's one of the hapless band of the world's willing walking wounded -how's that, four was and never a stutter-who take a positive delight in being hurt, in being affronted, and if the hurt is not really there, why, then, all the better, they can imagine one even closer to the heart's desire.

For those unfortunates who love only themselves the loving embrace of self-pity, close hugged like an old and dear friend, is the supreme, the most precious luxury in life. I can assure you, my dear fellow, that no hippo ever wallowed in his African mud bath with half the relish-'

"I'm sure you're right, Lonnie," I said, "and a very apt analogy that is, too." I wasn't listening to him any more, my attention had been caught and held by the fleeting glimpse I'd had of a figure hurrying by on the deck outside. Heissman, I was almost sure it was Heissman, and if it were I'd three immediate questions that asked for equally immediate answers.

Heissman was rarely observed to move at any but the most deliberate and leisurely speed so why the uncharacteristic haste? Why, if he were moving aft, did he choose the weather instead of the lee side of the superstructure unless he hoped to avoid being observed through the largely snow-obscured windows on the weather side of the saloon? And what, in view of his well-known and almost pathological aversion to cold-an inevitable legacy, one supposed, of his long years in Siberia-was he doing on the upper deck anyway? I clapped Lonnie on the shoulder. "Tack, as the saying goes, in a trice. I have to visit the sick."

I left, not hurriedly, through the lee door, then paused to see if anyone was interested enough in my departure to follow me out. And someone did follow me, almost immediately, but if he had any interest in my movements he wasn't letting me see it. Gunther Jungbeck smiled at me briefly, indifferently, and hurried forward to the entrance to the passenger accommodation. I waited a few more seconds then climbed up the vertical steel ladder to the boat deck, immediately abaft the bridge and radio office.

I circled the funnel and engine intake fans casing and found no one there. I hadn't expected to, even a polar bear wouldn't have hung around that bitter and totally exposed boat deck without a very compelling reason. I moved aft by one of our two motorised lifeboats, took what illusory shelter I could find beside a ventilator and peered out over the afterdeck.

For the first few moments I could see nothing, nothing, that was, that was likely to be of any interest to me, not so much because of the driving snow as the fact that all objects crowding the afterdeck-and there were well over a score of them, ranging from fuel drums to a sixteen-foot work boat on a special cradle-were so deeply shrouded in their shapeless cocoons of snow that, in most cases, it was virtually impossible to decide upon not only their identity but whether they were inanimate or not. Not until any of them might move.

One of the cocoons stirred, a slender ghostly form detaching itself from the shelter of a square bulky object which I knew to be the cabin for a Sno-Cat. The figure half-turned in my direction and although the face was almost entirely hidden by a hand that held both sides of the parka hood closed against the snow, enough of straw-coloured hair showed to let me identify the only person aboard with that colour of hair. Almost at once she was joined by a person moving into my line of vision from behind the break of the boat deck and I didn't even have to see the thin ascetic face to know that this was Heissman.

He approached the girl directly, took her arm without, as far as I could see, any kind of opposition being offered, and said something to her. I sank to my knees, partly to reduce the risk of detection if either chanced to look up, partly to try and make out what was being said. The concealment part worked but the eavesdropping failed, partly because the wind was in the wrong direction but chiefly because they had their heads very close together either because they regarded suitably low and conspiratorial conversation as being appropriate to the occasion or because they were affording each other's faces protection from the snow. I inched forwards to the very end of the boat deck and squatted back on my heels with my head bent forward but this was of no help either.

Heissman now had an arm around Mary Stuart's shoulders and this time the gesture of intimacy did produce a reaction although scarcely the expected one for she reached up an arm around his neck and put her head on his shoulder. At least another two minutes were spent in this highly confidential tete-a-tete, then they walked slowly away towards the living accommodation, Heissman still with his arm around the girl's shoulders. I made no move to follow them, for such a move would not only have almost certainly resulted in quick detection but it would have been pointless: whatever personal they'd had to say had already been said.

"Yoga in the Barents Sea," a voice said behind me. "That's dedication for you."

'Fanatics always carry everything to excess," I said. I rose awkwardly but without too much haste before turning round for I knew I had nothing to fear from Smithy. Clad in a hooded duffle coat and looking a great deal fitter than he had been doing just before midnight, he was looking at me with what might have been an expression of quizzical amusement except that his eyes didn't seem to find anything humorous in what they saw. "You have to be regular in these things," I explained.

"Of course." He walked past me, looked over the boat deck guardrail and examined the deep tracks left in the snow by Mary and Heissman.

"Bird-watching?"

"The haunts of coot and tern."

"Yes, indeed. But an oddly assorted pair of love birds, wouldn't you say?"

"It's this film world, Smithy. It seems to be full of very oddly assorted birds."

"Odd birds, period." He nodded foreword, towards the charthouse.

"Warmth and cheer, Doe, just the place for some more ornithological research."

There wasn't a great deal of warmth owing to the fact that Smithy had left the side door open after he'd looked out through the window and observed me moving cautiously along the boat deck but there was a certain amount of cheer in the shape of a bottle he produced from a cupboard. He said: "Shall we send for the king's taster?"

I looked at the unbroken lead seal. "Not unless you think someone has brought his own bottling plant aboard."

"I've checked." Smithy broke the seal. "We talked last night. At least, I did. You may or may not have listened. I was worried last night. I thought you might not be levelling with me. I'm worried stiff now. Because I know you're not."

"Because I've taken up ornithology?" I said mildly.

"That among other things. This wholesale poisoning, now. I've had time to think, just a bit. Of course you couldn't have had any idea who the poisoner was-it's hardly conceivable that if you knew the person who had done in that Italian boy that you'd have let him do the same to six others, two of whom were to die. In fact you couldn't even have been sure that the whole thing wasn't accidental, the poisoning was on so apparently haphazard a basis."

"Thank You kindly," I said. My opinion of Smithy had fallen sharply.

"Except that it wasn't on an apparently haphazard basis. It was haphazard That was last night." It was as if he hadn't heard me. "Then you couldn't have had any idea. Now you can. Things have happened, haven't they?"

"What things?" My opinion of Smithy had risen sharply. He was sure that there was mayhem afoot, but why? Was he making a mental short list, guessing as to who might be the handy lad with the aconite-not that he could possibly know the poison used was aconite-wondering where he had got it, where he kept it now, where he had learned to prepare it so skilfully that it could indetectably be introduced into food? And not only who was the poisoner but why was the poisoner acting as he did? And why the random nature of the poisoning? Was he basing his guesses just on my stealthy behaviour?

"Lots of things, not all of which have necessarily lately happened, just things that have come to light or seem odd in view of what we might call recent developments. For instance, why have Captain Imrie and Mr. Stokes been chosen for the job instead of any two young and efficient yacht and charter skippers and engineers who usually find themselves unemployed at this time of year? Because they're so old and so soaked in Scotch and rum that they can't tell the time of day twenty hours out of the twenty-four. They just don't see what goes on and even if they were to they'd probably attach no significance to it anyway."

I didn't put down my glass, look keenly at Smithy or in any other way indicate that I was not listening with undivided attention. But I was. This thought had never occurred to me.

Smithy continued. I said last night that I thought the presence of Mr. Gerran and his company up here at this time in the year was a bit odd. I don't think so any more. I think it's damned peculiar and calls for some sort of rational explanation from your friend Otto, which we're not likely to get."

"He's not my friend," I said.

"And this." He pulled out a copy of the Olympus Productions manifesto. "A load of meaningless rubbish that old smoothie Goin has been inflicting on everybody in sight. Have you-"

"Goin? A smoothie?"

"An untrustworthy, time-serving, money-grubbing smoothie with his two hands never on speaking terms and I'd say that even if he weren't a professional accountant."

"Maybe he'd better not be my friend either," I said.

"All this ridiculous secrecy they harp on in this clap-trap. To protect the importance of their damned screenplay. A hundred gets one it's a screen to protect something an awful lot more important than their screenplay. Another hundred gets one that there's no screenplay in the bank vaults they speak of for the reason that there is no screenplay. And their shooting schedule for Bear Island. Have you read that? It's not even comic. Just a lot of unrelated incidents about caves, and mysterious motorboats and shooting dummy submarines and climbing cliffs and falling into the sea and dying in Arctic snows that any Eve-year-old could have dreamed up.

"You've got a very suspicious mind, Smithy," I said.

"Have I not? And this young Polish actress, the blonde one-"

"Latvian. Mary Stuart. What of her?"

"A strange one. Aloof and alone. Never mixes. But -when there's illness on the bridge, or in Otto's cabin or in the cabin of that young lad they call the Duke, who's there? Who but our friend Mary Stuart."

"She's a kind of Samaritan. Would you be so conspicuous if you wanted to avoid attention?"

"Might be the very best way to achieve it. But if that's not the case why make a point of being so damned inconspicuous just now when meeting Heissman in a blizzard on the afterdeck?"

I would very much rather, I thought, have Smith for me than against me. I said: "A romantic assignation, perhaps?"

"With Heissman?"

"You're not a girl, Smithy."

"No." He grinned briefly. "But I've met "em, Why are all the big nobs on the management side so pally with Otto in public and so critical in private? Why is a cameraman a director? Why-"

"flow did you know that?"

"Uh-huh. So you knew too. Because Captain Imrie showed me this guarantee thing that you and the directors of Olympus had signed: the Count had signed as one of them. Why is the director, this Divine fellow who is supposed to be so good at his job so scared of Otto, while Lonnie, who is not only a permanent alcoholic layabout but latches on to Otto's private hooch supplies with impunity, doesn't give a damn about him?"

"Tell me, Smithy," I said, "Just how much time have you been devoting lately to steering and navigating this boat?"

"Hard to say. just about as much time, I would say, as you have been to the practice of medicine."

I didn't say "Touche" or anything like that, I just let Smithy pour some more of the aconite-free drink into my glass and looked out the window at the grey swirling icy world beyond. So many whys, Smithy, so many whys. Why had Mary been foregathering clandestinely with Heissman when the Heissman I'd observed last night had been so clearly unwell as to be unable to indulge in any skullduggery-not that this ruled out the chilling possibility that Heissman might be one of two or more who held life so lightly and might easily be either a principal or a go-between?

Why had Otto, though himself a poisoning victim, reacted so violently including having been violently ill-when he'd heard that Antonio had been a poisoning victim? Had Cecil's larder raid been as innocuous as he had claimed? Had Sandy's? Who had checked on the aconitine article, disposed of the leftovers in the galley, been in my cabin during the night and searched my baggage? Why had he searched my baggage? This extremely active poisoner, the same man, perhaps, who had doctored the Scotch bottle, clobbered me and been responsible for Halliday's death?

Again, was there more than one of them? And if Halliday had died accidentally, as I was sure he had, then why had he come to the saloon, where his visit, I was equally sure, had not been accidental?

It was all so full of "ifs" and "buts" that I was beginning to clutch at ridiculous straws rather than fight my way through the impenetrable fog.

What accounted for Lonnie's diatribe-for it had amounted to no less against Judith Haynes to the effect that she detested all mankind, especially when they were womankind. No doubt Miss Haynes was as capable of being catty and jealous as many other otherwise likeable females are but one would have thought that she had too much going for her in the way of wealth, success, fame, position, and looks to have to bother too much about despising every woman she met. But if that were so, why had she cold-shouldered Mary darling?

But what could that have to do with murder? I didn't know, but nothing the slightest bit odd, I thought gloomily, could be dismissed out of hand as having nothing to do with the very odd goings-on aboard the Morning Rose. Were Jungbeck and Heyter, for instance, to be considered as being possibly under suspicion because one had recently followed me from the saloon-especially as Conrad had earlier thrown a degree of suspicion on them by disclaiming all knowledge of them as actors? Or did this factor of apparently throwing suspicion bring Conrad himself under just the tiniest cloud? Dammit to hell, I thought wearily, if I keep on thinking like this I'll he casting young Allen as the master poisoner just because he'd told me that he'd once studied chemistry, briefly, at university.

"A penny for your thoughts, Dr. Marlowe." Smithy wasn't very much of a one for letting his face act as a front man for his mind.

"Don't throw your money away. What thoughts?"

"Two thoughts. Two kinds of thoughts. All the thoughts you're having about all the things you're not telling me and all the guilty thoughts you're having about not telling me them."

"It's like a rule of nature," I said. "Some people are always more liable to have injustices done to them than others."

"So you've told me all your thoughts?"

"No. But the ones I haven't told aren't worth the telling. Now, if I had some facts-'

"So you admit something is pretty far wrong?"

"Of course."

"And you've told me everything you know, just not everything you think?"

"Of course."

I speak in sorrow," Smithy said, "for my lost illusions about the medical profession." He reached up under the hood of my parka, pulled down the scarf around my neck and stared at what was by now the great multicoloured and blood-encrusted weal on my neck. "Jesus! That is something.

What happened to you?"

I fell."

"The Marlowes of this world don't fall. They're pushed. Where did you fall?" I didn't much care for the all but imperceptible accent on the word "fall."

"Upper deck. Port side. I struck my neck on the storm sill of the saloon door."

"Did you now? I would say that this was caused by what the criminologists call a solid object. A very solid object about half-an-inch wide and sharp-edged. The saloon door sill is three inches wide and made of sorborubber. All the storm doors on the Morning Rose are-it's to make them totally windproof and waterproof. Or perhaps you hadn't noticed? The way you perhaps haven't noticed that John Halliday, the unit's still photographer, is missing?"

"How do you know?" He'd shaken me this time, not just a little, or my face would have shown it, but so much that I knew my features stayed rigidly fixed in the same expression.

"You don't deny it?"

I don't know. How do you?"

I went down to see the props man, this elderly lad they call Sandy. I'd heard he was sick and-"

"Why did you go?"

"If it matters, because he's not the sort of person that people visit very much. He doesn't seem liked. Seems a bit hard to be sick and unpopular at the same time." I nodded, this would be in character with Smithy. I asked him where his roommate Halliday was as I hadn't seen him at breakfast. Sandy said he'd gone for breakfast. I didn't say anything to Sandy but this made me a bit curious so I had a look in the recreation room. He wasn't there either, so I got curiouser and curiouser until I'd searched the Morning Rose twice from end to end. I think I covered every nook and cranny in the vessel where even a stray seagull could be hiding and you can take my word for it, Halliday's not in the Morning Rose."

"Reported this to the captain?"

"Well, well, what an awful lot of reaction. No, I haven't reported it to the captain."

"Why not?"

"Same reason as you haven't. If I know my Captain Imrie, he'd at once declare that there was no clause in that agreement you signed that was binding on this particular case, that saying that foul play wasn't involved in this case also would be altogether too much of a good thing and turn the Morning Rose straight for Hammerfest!" Smithy looked at me deadpan over the rim of his glass. "I'm rather curious to see what does happen when we get to Bear Island."

"It might be interesting."

Very noncommittal. It might, says he thoughtfully, be equally interesting to provoke some kind of reaction in Dr. Marlowe. just once. Just for the record-my own private record. I wonder if I could do it. Do you remember I said on the bridge in the very early hours of this morning that we might just possibly have to call for help and that if we had to we had a transmitter here that could reach almost anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. Not, perhaps, my exact words, but the gist is accurate!'

"The gist is accurate." Even to myself the repetition of the words sounded mechanical and I had to make a conscious effort not to shiver as an ice-shod centipede started up a fandango between my shoulder blades.

"Well, we can call for help till we're blue in the face, this transmitter here can no longer reach as far as the galley." For once, almost unbelievably, Smithy's face was registering an emotion other than amusement. His face tight with anger, he produced a screwdriver from his pocket and turned to the big steel-blue receiver-transmitter on the inner bulkhead.

"Do you always carry a screwdriver about with you?" The sheer banality of the question made it apposite in the circumstances.

"Only when I call up the radio station at Tunheim in northeast Bear Island and get no reply. And that's no ordinary radio station, it's an official Norwegian Government base." Smithy set to work on the faceplate screws. "I've already had this damned thing off about an hour ago. You'll see in a jiffy why I put it back on again."

While I was waiting for this jiffy to pass I recalled our conversation on the bridge in the very early hours of the morning, the time he'd referred to the radio and the relative closeness-and, by inference, the availability -of the NATO Atlantic forces. It had been immediately afterwards that I'd looked through the starboard screen door and seen the sharp fresh footprints in the snow, footprints, I'd been immediately certain, that had been made by an eavesdropper, a preposterous idea I'd almost as quickly put out of my mind when I'd appreciated that there had been only one set of footprints there, those which I'd made myself. For some now inexplicable reason it had never occurred to me that any person clever enough to have been responsible for the series of undetected crimes that had taken place aboard the Morning Rose would have been far too clever to have overlooked the blinding obviousness of the advantage that lay in using footsteps already there. The footsteps had, indeed, been newly made, our ubiquitous friend had been abroad again.

Smithy removed the last of the screws and, not without some effort, removed the face-plate. I looked at the revealed interior for about ten seconds then said: I see now why you put the face-plate back on. The only thing that puzzles me is that that cabinet looks a bit small for a man to get inside it with a fourteen-pound sledgehammer."

"Looks just like it, doesn't it?" The tangled mess of wreckage inside was, literally, indescribable, the vandal who had been at work had seen to it that, irrespective of how vast a range of spares were carried, the receiver-transmitter could never be made operable again. "You've seen enough?"

I think so He started to replace the cover and I said: `You've radios in the lifeboats?"

"Yes. Hand-cranked. They'll reach farther than the galley but a megaphone would be about as good."

"You'll have to report this to the captain, of course."

"Of course."

"Then it's heigh-ho for Hammerfest?"

"Twenty-four hours from now and he can heigh-ho for Tahiti as far as I'm concerned." Smithy tightened the last screw. "That's when I'm going to tell him. Twenty-four hours from now. Maybe twenty-six."

"Your outside limit for dropping anchor in Sor-Hamna?"

"Tying up. Yes."

"You're a very deceitful man, Smithy."

"It's the company I keep. And the life I lead."

"You're not to blame yourself, Smithy," I said kindly. "We live in vexed and troubled times."