Bear Island

11

"Four bells and all's well," Smithy said, shaking my shoulder. Neither the call nor the shake was necessary, I was by this time, even in my sleep, in so keyed-up a state that his turning of the door handle had been enough to have me instantly awake. "Time to report to the bridge. We've made some fresh coffee."

I followed him into the main cabin, said a greeting to Conrad who was bent over pot and cups at the oil stove and went to the front door. To my surprise the wind, now fully round to the west, had dropped away to something of not more than the order for a Force 3, the snow had thinned to the extent that it promised to cease altogether pretty soon and I even imagined I could see a few faint stars in a clear patch of sky to the south, beyond the entrance of the Sor-Hamna. But the cold, if anything, was even more intense than it had been earlier in the night. I closed the door quickly, turned to Smithy and spoke softly.

"An unlooked for change in the weather. If this improvement maintains itself I can see Otto calling on you-and if he doesn't someone's going to remind him by suggesting it-to carry out your offer of last night and strike out for Tunheim and the law."

"I'm beginning to regret I ever made the offer-but I didn't seem to have much option at the time."

"And you won't have any option if, come the dawn, the sun is shining. No way to pull out now. Watch Heyter, though, watch him very very closely."

Smithy was silent for a considering moment. "You think he bears watching?"

.He's one of thirteen potential murderers and for me those odds are small enough to make them all deserving of as close an eye as the crown jewels. And if, in that thirteen, you were to cut out Conrad, Lonnie, and the Three Apostles-and mentally I've already cut them out-you've brought the odds down to one in eight. Perhaps two in eight-perhaps even a very uncomfortable three in eight."

"You're very encouraging," Smithy said. "What makes you so sure that those five-" He broke off. as Luke, yawning and stretching vastly, entered the main cabin. Luke was a thin, awkward, gangling creature, a towheaded youth urgently in need of the restraining influences of either a barber or a ribbon.

I said: "Do you see him as a gun for hire?"

I could have him up for committing musical atrocities with a guitar, I should think. Otherwise-yes, I agree. Very little threat to life and limb.

And, yes again, that would go for the other four, too." He watched as Conrad went into one of the passages, carrying a cup of coffee. "I'd put my money on our leading man any day."

"Where on earth is he off. to?"

"Bearing sustenance for his lady-love, I should imagine. Miss Stuart spent much of our watch with us."

I was on the point of observing that the alleged lady-love had a remarkable predilection for moving around in the darker watches of the night but thought better of it. That Mary Stuart was involved in matters dark and devious-Heissman's being her uncle didn't even begin to account for the earlier oddity of her behaviour-I didn't for a moment doubt: that she was engaged in any murderous activities I couldn't for a moment believe.

Smithy went on: "It's important that I reach Turtheim?"

"It hardly matters whether you do or not. With Heyter along, only the weather and the terrain can decide that. If you have to turn back, that's fine with me, I'd rather have you here: if you get to Tunheim, just stay there."

"Stay there? How can I stay there? I'm going there for help, am I not?

And Heyter will be shouting to come back."

"I'm sure they'll understand if you explain that you're tired and need a rest. If Heyter makes a noise, have him locked up-I'll give you a letter to the Met. officer in charge."

"You'll do that, will you? And what if the Met. officer point-blank refuses?"

I think you'll find some people up there who'll be only too happy to oblige you."

He looked at me without a great deal of enthusiasm. "Friends of yours, of course?"

"There's a visiting meteorological team from Britain staying there briefly. Five of them. Only, they're not meteorologists."

Naturally not." The lack of enthusiasm deteriorated into a coldness that was just short of outright hostility. "You play your cards mighty close to the chest, don't you, Dr. Marlowe?"

"Don't get angry with me. I'm not asking you that, I'm telling you.

Policy-I obey orders, even if you don't. A secret shared is never a secret halved-even a peck at my cards and who knows who's kibitzing? I'll give you that letter early this morning."

"OK." Smithy was obviously restraining himself with no small difficulty.

He went on morosely: I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised to find even the Morning Rose up there?"

"Let me put it this way," I said. I wouldn't put it beyond the bounds of possibility."

Smithy nodded, turned and walked to the oil stove where Conrad, now returned, was pouring coffee. We sat for ten minutes, drinking and talking about nothing much, then Smithy and Conrad left. The next hour or so passed without event except that after five minutes Luke fell sound asleep and stayed that way. I didn't bother to wake him up, it wasn't necessary, I was in an almost hypernatural state of alertness: unlike Luke, I had things on my mind.

A door in a passage opened and Lonnie appeared. As Lonnie, by his own account, wasn't given to sleeping much and as he wasn't on my list of suspects anyway, this was hardly call for alarm. He came into the cabin and sat heavily in a chair by my side. He looked old and tired and grey and the usual note of badinage was lacking in his tone.

"Once again the kindly healer," he said, "and once again looking after his little flock. I have come, my boy, to share your midnight vigil."

"It's twenty-five to four," I said.

`A figure of speech." He sighed. "I have not slept well. In fact, I have not slept at all. You see before you, Doctor, a troubled old man."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Lonnie."

"No tears for Lonnie. For me, as for most of pitiful mankind, ray troubles are my own making. To be an old man is bad enough. To be a lonely old man, and I have been lonely for many years, makes a man sad for much of the time. But to be a lonely old man who can no longer live with his conscience-ah, that is not to be borne." He sighed again. I am feeling uncommonly sorry for myself tonight."

"What's your conscience doing now?"

It's keeping me awake, that's what it's doing. Ah, my boy, my boy, to cease upon the midnight with no pain. What more could a man want, Then it's evening and time to be gone?"

"This wine shop on the far shore?"

"Not even that." He shook his head mournfully. "No welcoming arms in paradise for the lost Lonnies of this world. Haven't the right entry qualifications, my boy." He smiled and his eyes were sad. "I'll pin my hopes on a small four-ale bar in purgatory."

He lapsed into silence, his eyes closed and I thought he was drifting off. into sleep. But he presently stirred, cleared his throat and said apparently apropos of nothing: "It's always too late. Always."

"What's always too late, Lonnie?"

"Compassion is, or understanding or forgiveness. I fear that Lonnie Gilbert has been less than he should have been. But it's always too late.

Too late to say I like you or I love you or how nice you are or I forgive you. If only, if only, if only. It is difficult to make your peace with someone if you're looking at that person and he's lying there dead. My, my, my." As if with an immense effort he pushed himself to his feel?. "But there's still a little shred of something that can be saved. Lonnie Gilbert is now about to go and do something that he should have done many, many years ago.

But first I must arm myself, some life in the ancient bones, some clarity in the faded mind, in short prepare myself for what I'm ashamed to say I still regard as the ordeal that lies ahead. In brief, my dear fellow, where's the Scotch?"

"I'm afraid Otto has taken it with him."

"A kind fellow, Otto, none kinder, but be has his parsimonious side to him. But no matter, the main source of supply is less than a Sunday's march away." He made for the outer door but I stopped him.

"One of those times, Lonnie, you're going to go out there, sit down there, go to sleep and not come back again because you'll be frozen to death, Besides, there's no need. There's some in my cubicle. Same source of supply, I assure you. I'll fetch it. just keep your eye open in my absence, will you?"

It didn't matter very much whether he kept his eyes open or Dot for I was back inside twenty seconds. Smithy, clearly, was a heavier sleeper than I was for he didn't stir during my brief visit.

Lonnie helped himself copiously, drained his glass in a few gulps, gazed at the bottle longingly then set it firmly aside. "Duty completed, I shall return and enjoy this at my leisure. Meantime, I am sufficiently fortified."

"Where are you going?" It was difficult to imagine what pressing task he had on hand at that time of the night.

"I am in great debt to Miss Haynes. It is my wish-"

"To Judith Haynes?" I know I stared at him. It was my understanding that you could with but difficulty look at her."

In great debt," he said firmly. "It is my wish to discharge it, to clear the books, you might say. You understand,"

"No. What I do understand is that it's only three forty-five. If this business has been outstanding, as you said, for so many years, surely it can wait just another few hours. Besides, Miss Haynes has been sick and shocked and she's under sedatives. As her doctor, and whether she likes it or not, I am her doctor, I can't permit it."

"And as a doctor, my dear fellow, you should understand the necessity for immediacy. I have worked myself up to this, screwed myself, as it were, to the sticking point. Another few hours, as you say, and it may be too late. The Lonnie Gilbert you see before you will almost certainly have reverted to the bad old, cowardly old, selfish old, clay-souled Lonnie of yore, the Lonnie we all know so well. And then it will always be too late."

He paused and switched his argument. "Sedatives, you say. How long do the effects of those last?"

"Varies from person to person. Four hours, six hours, maybe as much as eight."

"Well, there you are, then. Poor girl's probably been lying awake for hours, just longing for some company although not, in all likelihood, that of Lonnie Gilbert. Or has it escaped your attention that close on twelve hours have elapsed since you administered that sedative?"

It had. But what had not escaped my attention was that Lonnie's relationship vis-a-vis Judith Haynes had been intriguing me considerably for some time. It might, I thought, be very helpful and, with regards to a deeper penetration of the fog of mystery surrounding us, more than a little constructive if I could learn something of the burden of what Lonnie had in mind to say to Judith Haynes. I said: "Let me go and see her. If she's awake and I think she's fit to talk, then OK."

He nodded. I went to Judith Haynes's room and entered without knocking. The oil lamp was turned up and she was awake, stretched out under the covers with only her face showing. She looked ghastly, which was the way I had expected her to look, with the Titian hair emphasising the drawn pallor of her face. The usually striking green eyes were glazed and lacklustre and her cheeks were smudged and streaked with tears. She looked at me indifferently as I pulled up a stool, then looked as indifferently away.

"I hope you slept well, Miss Haynes," I said. "How are you feeling?"

"Do you usually come calling on patients in the middle of the night?"

Her voice was as dull as her eyes.

"I don't make a practice of it. But we're taking turns keeping watch tonight, and this happens to be my turn. Is there anything that you want?"

"No. Have you found out who killed my husband?" She was so preternaturally calm, under such seemingly iron control, that I suspected it to be the prelude to another uncontrollable hysterical outburst.

"No. Am I to take it from that, Miss Haynes, that you no longer think that young Allen did?"

I don't think so. I've been lying here for hours, just thinking, and I don't think so." From the lifeless voice and the lifeless face I was pretty sure she was still under the influence of the sedative. "You will get him, won't you? The man who killed Michael. Michael wasn't as bad as people thought, Dr. Marlowe, no he really wasn't." For the first time a trace of expression, just the weary suggestion of a smile. I don't say he was a kind man or a good one or a gentle one, for he wasn't: but he was the man for me."

"I know," I said, as if I understood, which I only partially did. "I hope we get the man responsible. I think we will. Do you have any ideas that could help?"

"My ideas are not worth much, Doctor. My mind doesn't seem to be very clear."

"Do you think you could talk for a bit, Miss Haynes? It wouldn't be too tiring?"

I am talking."

"Not to me. To Lonnie Gilbert. He seems terribly anxious to speak to you.

"Speak to me?" Tired surprise but not outright rejection of the idea.

"Why should Lonnie Gilbert wish to speak to me?"

I don't know. Lonnie doesn't believe in confiding in doctors. All I gather is that he feels that he's done you some great wrong and he wants to say "sorry," I think."

"Lonnie say "sorry" to me!" Astonishment had driven the flat hopelessness from her voice. "Apologise to me? No, not to me." She was silent for a bit, then she said: "Yes, I'd very much like to see him now."

I concealed my own astonishment as best I could, went back to the main cabin, told an equally astonished Lonnie that Judith Haynes was more than prepared to meet him and watched him as he went along the passage, entered her room and closed the door behind him. I glanced at Luke. He appeared, if anything, to be more soundly asleep than ever, absurdly young to be in this situation, a pleased smile on his face: he was probably dreaming of golden discs. I walked quietly along the passage to Judith Haynes's room: there was nothing in the Hippocratic oath against doctors listening at dosed doors.

It was clear that I was going to have to listen very closely indeed for although the door was only made of bonded ply, the voices in the room were being kept low and I could hear little more than a confused murmur. I dropped to my knees and applied my car to the keyhole. The audibility factor improved quite remarkably.

"You!" Judith Haynes said. There was a catch in her voice, I wouldn't have believed her capable of any, of the more kindly emotions. "You! To apologise to me! Of all people, you!"

"Me, my dear, me. All those years, all those years." His voice fell away and I couldn't catch his next few words. Then he said: "Despicable, despicable. For any man to go through life, nurturing the animosity, nay, my dear, the hatred-" He broke off. and there was silence for some moments. He went on: "No forgiveness, no forgiveness. I know he can't! I know he couldn't have been so bad, or even really bad at all, you loved him and no one can love a person who is bad all through, but even if his sins had been black as the midnight shades-'

"Lonnie!" The interruption was sharp, even forceful. I know I wasn't married to any angel, but I wasn't married to any devil, either."

I know that, my dear, I know that. I was merely saying-"

"Will you listen" Lonnie, Michael wasn't in that car that night. Michael was never near that car."

I strained for the answer but none came. Judith Haynes went on: "Neither was I, Lonnie."

There was a prolonged silence, then Lonnie said in a voice so low that it was a barely heard whisper: "That's not what I was told."

"Tra sure it wasn't, Unnic. l\ly car, yes. But I wasn't driving it. Michael wasn't driving it."

"But-you won't deny that my daughters were-well, incapable, that night. And that you were too. And that you made them that way?"

"Ttn not denying anything. We all had too much to drink that night -that's why I've never drunk since, Lonnie. I don't know who was responsible. All I know is that Michael and I never left the house. Good God, do you think I have to tell you this-now, that Michael is dead?"

"No. No, you don't. Then-then who was driving your car?"

"Two other people. Two men."

"Two men? And you've been protecting them all those years." "Protecting? No, I wouldn't use the word "protecting." Except inadvertently. No, I didn't put that well, I mean-well, any protection given was just incidental to something else we really wanted. Our own selfish ends, I suppose you could call it. Everybody knows well enough that Michael and I-well, we weren't criminals but we always had an eye on the main chance."

"Two men." It was almost as if Lonnie hadn't been listening to a word she'd said. "Two men. You must know them."

Another silence, then she said quietly: "Of course."

Once more an infuriating silence, I even stopped breathing in case I were to miss the next few words. But I wasn't given the chance either to miss them or to hear them for a harsh and hostile voice behind me said: "What in the devil do you think you are doing here, sir?"

I refrained from doing what I felt like doing, which was to let loose with a few choice and uninhibited phrases, turned and looked up to find Otto's massively pear-shaped bulk looming massively above me. His fists were clenched, his puce complexion had darkened dangerously, his eyes were glaring and his lips were clamped in a thin line that threatened to disappear at any moment.

"You look upset, Mr. Gerran," I said. "In point of fact, I was eavesdropping." I pushed myself to my feel?, dusted off. the knees of my trousers, straightened and dusted off. my hands. I can explain everything."

"I'm waiting for your explanation." He was fractionally more livid than ever. It should be interesting, Dr. Marlowe."

I only said I can explain everything. Can, Mr. Gerran. That doesn't mean I've got any intention of explaining anything. Come to that, what are you doing here?"

"What am I What am I? He spluttered into outraged speechlessness, the year's top candidate for an instant coronary. "God damn your impudence, sir! I'm about to go on watch! What are you doing at my daughter's door? I'm surprised you're not looking through that keyhole, Marlowe, instead of listening at it!"

I don't have to look through keyholes," I said reasonably. "Miss Haynes is my patient and I'm a doctor. If I want to see her I just open the door and walk in. Well, then, now that you're on watch, I'll be on my way. Bed. I'm tired."

"Bed! Bed! By God, I swear this, Marlowe, you'll regret-who's in there with her?"

"Lonnie Gilbert."

"Lonnie Gilbert! What in the name of hell-stand aside, sir! Let me pass!"

I barred his way-physically. It was like stopping a small tank upholstered in Dunlopillo but I had the advantage of having my back to the wall and he brought up a foot short of the door. I wouldn't, if I were you. They're having a rather painful moment, in there. Lost, one might say, in the far from sweet remembrance of things past."

"What the devil do you mean? What are you trying to tell me, you eavesdropper?"

"I'm not trying to tell you anything. Maybe, though, you'd tell me something? Maybe you would like to tell me something about that car crash-I assume that it must have been in California-in which Lonnie Gilbert's wife and two children were killed a long, long time ago?"

He stopped being livid. He even stopped being his normal puce. Colour drained from his face to leave it ugly and mottled and stained with grey. "Car crash?" He'd a much better control over his voice than he had over his complexion. "What do you mean car crash, sir?"

I don't know what I mean. That's why I'm asking you. I heard Lonnie, just snippets, talking about his family's fatal car crash and as your daughter seemed to know something about it I assumed you would, too."

I don't know what he's talking about. Nor you." Otto, who seemed suddenly to have lost all his inquisitorial predilections, wheeled and walked up the passage to the centre of the cabin. I followed and walked to the outer door. Smithy was in for a hike, I thought, no doubt about it now. Although the cold was as intense as ever, the snow had stopped, the west wind dropped away to no more than an icily gentle breeze-the fact that we were now in the lee of the Antarcticflell might have accounted for that-and there were quite large patches of star-studded sky all around. There was a curious lightness, a luminescence in the atmosphere, too much to be accounted for by the presence of stars alone. I walked out a few paces until I was clear of the main cabin and low to the south I could see a three-quarter moon riding in an empty sky.

I went back inside and as I closed the door I saw Lonnie crossing the main living area, heading, I assumed, for his cubicle. He walked uncertainly, like a man not seeing too well, and as he went by close to me I could see that his eyes were masked in tears: I would have given a lot to know just what it had been that had been responsible for those tears. It was a mark of Lonnie's -emotional upset that he did not so much as glance at the still three-quarter full bottle of Scotch on the small table by which Otto was sitting. He didn't even so much as look at Otto: more extraordinarily still Otto didn't even look up at Lonnie's passing. In the mood he'd been in when he'd accosted me outside his daughter's door I'd have expected him to question Lonnie pretty closely, probably with both hands around the old man's neck: but Otto's mood, clearly, had undergone a considerable sea change.

I was walking towards Luke, bent on rousing the faithful watch dog from his slumbers, when Otto suddenly heaved his bulk upright and made his way down the passage towards his daughter's cubicle. I didn't even hesitate, in for a penny, in for a pound. I followed him and took up my by now accustomed station outside Judith Haynes's door although this time I didn't have to have recourse to the keyhole again as Otto, in what was presumably his agitation, had left the door considerately ajar. Otto was addressing his daughter in a low harsh voice that was noticeably lacking in filial affection.

"What have you been saying, you young she-devil? What have you been saying? Car crash? Car crash? What lies have you been telling Gilbert, you blackmailing little bitch?"

"Get out of here!" Judith Haynes had abandoned the use of her dull and expressionless voice, although probably involuntarily. "Leave me, you horrible, evil, old man. Get out, get out, get out!"

I leaned more closely to the crack between door and jamb. It wasn't every day one had the opportunity to listen to those family tete-e-tetes.

"By God, and I'll not have my own daughter cross me." Otto had forgotten the need to talk in a low voice. "I've put up with more than enough from you and that other idle worthless bastard of a blackmailer. What did you-"

"You dare to talk of Michael like that?" Her voice had gone very quiet and I shivered involuntarily at the sound of it. "You talk of him like that and he's lying dead. Murdered. My husband. Well, Father dear, can I tell you about something you don't know that I know he was blackmailing you with. Shall I, Father dear? And shall I tell it to Johann Heissman, too?"

There was a silence, then Otto said: "You venomous little bitch!" He sounded as if he was trying to choke himself.

Venomous! Venomous!" She laughed, a cracked and chilling sound.

"Coming from you, that's rich. Come now, Daddy dear, surely you remember I938-why, even I can remember it. Poor old Johann, he ran, and ran, and ran, and all the time he ran the wrong way. Poor Uncle Johann.

That's what you taught me to call him then, wasn't it, Daddy dear? Uncle Johann."

I left, not because I had heard all that I wanted to hear but because I thought that this was a conversation that was not going to last very long and I could foresee a degree of awkwardness arising if Otto caught me outside his daughter's door a second time. Besides-I checked the time Jungbeck, Otto's watchmate, was due to make his appearance just at that moment and I didn't want him to find me where I was and, very likely, lose no time in telling his boss about it. So I returned to Luke, decided that there was no point in awakening him only to tell him to go to sleep again, poured myself a sort of morning nightcap and was about to savour it when I heard a feminine voice scream "Get out, get out, get out" and saw Otto emerging hurriedly from his daughter's cubicle and as hurriedly close the door behind him. He waddled swiftly into the middle of the cabin, seized the whisky bottle without as much as by-your-leave-true, it was his own, but he didn't know that-poured himself a brimming measure and downed half of it at a gulp, his shaking hand spilling a fair proportion of it on the way up to his mouth.

"That was very thoughtless of you, Mr. Gerran," I said reproachfully.

Upsetting your daughter like that. She's really a very sick girl and what she needs is tender affection, a measure of taking care."

"Tender affection!" He was on the second half of his glass now and he splattered much of it over his shirt front. "Loving care! Jesus!" He splashed some more Scotch into his glass and gradually subsided a little.

By and by he became calm, almost thoughtful: when he spoke no one would have thought that only a few minutes previously his greatest yearning in life would have been to disembowel me. "Maybe I wasn't as thoughtful as I ought to have been. But an hysterical girl, very hysterical. This actress temperament, you know. I'm afraid your sedatives aren't very effective, Dr. Marlowe."

"People's reactions to sedatives vary greatly, Mr. Gerran. And unpredictably."

I'm not blaming you, not blaming you," he said irritatedly. "Care and attention. Yes, yes. But sonic rest, a damned good sleep is more important, if you ask me. Hem, about another sedative-a more effective one this time?

No danger in that, is there?"

"No. No harm in it. She did sound a bit-what shall we say-worked up. But she's rather a self-willed person. If she refuses-"

"Ha! Self-willed! Try, anyway." He seemed to lose interest in the subject and gazed moodily at the floor. He looked up without any enthusiasm as Jungbeck made a sleepy entrance, turned and shook Luke roughly by the shoulder. "Wake up, man." Luke stirred and opened bleary eyes.

"Bloody fine guard you are. Your watch is over. Go to bed." Luke mumbled some sort of apology, rose stiffly and moved off.

"You might have let him be," I said. "He'll have to get up for the day inside a few hours anyway."

"Too late now. Besides," Otto added inconsequentially, "I'm going to have the lot of them up inside two hours. Weather's cleared, there's a moon to travel by, we can all be where we want to be and ready to shoot as soon as there's enough light in the sky." He glanced along the corridor where his daughter's cubicle was. "Well, aren't you going to try?"

I nodded and left. Ten minutes" time-in the right circumstances which in this case were the wrong ones-can bring about a change in a person's features which lies just within the bounds of credibility. The face that had looked merely drawn so very recently, now looked haggard: she looked her real age and then ten hard and bitter years after that. She wept in a sore and aching silence and the tears flowed steadily down her temples and past the carlobes, the damp marks spreading on the grey rough linen of her pillow. I would not have thought it possible that I could ever feel such deep pity for this person and wish to comfort her: but that was how it was. I said: I think you should sleep now."

"Why?" Her hands were clenched so tightly that the ivory of the knuckles showed. "What does it matter? I'll have to wake up, won't l?"

"Yes, I know." It was the sort of situation where, no matter what I said, the words would sound banal. "But the sleep would do you good, Miss Haynes."

"Well, yes," she said. It was hard for her to speak through the quiet tears. "All right. Make it a long sleep."

So, like a fool, I made it a long sleep. Like an even greater fool I went to my cubicle and lay down. And, like the greatest fool of all, I went to sleep myself.

I slept for over four hours and awoke to an almost deserted cabin. Otto had indeed been as good as his word and had had everyone up and around at what they must have regarded as the most unreasonable crack of dawn.

Understandably enough, neither he nor anyone else had seen fit to wake me: I was one of the few who had no functions to perform that day. Otto and Conrad were the only two people in the main quarter of the cabin. Both were drinking coffee but as both were heavily muffled they were clearly on the point of departure. Conrad said a civil good morning.

Otto didn't bother. He informed me that the Count, Neal. Divine, Allen, Cecil, and Nary Darling had taken off. with the Sno-Cat and cameras along Lerner's Way and that he and Conrad were following immediately.

Hendriks and the Three Apostles were abroad with their sound recording equipment. Smithy and Heyter had left over an hour previously for Tunheim. Initially, I found &s vaguely disturbing, I would have thought that Smithy would have at least woken and spoken to me before leaving. On reflection, however, I found this omission less than disturbing: it was a measure of Smithy's confidence in himself and, by implication, my unspoken confidence in himself, that he had not thought it necessary to seek either advice or reassurance before his departure. Finally, Otto told me, Heissman and his handheld camera, along with Jungbeck, had taken off. on his location reconnaissance in the sixteen-foot work-boat: they had been accompanied by Goin, who had volunteered to stand in for the now absent Heyter.

Otto stood up, drained his cup and said: "About my daughter, Dr. Marlowe."

"She'll be all right." She would never again be all right.

"I'd like to talk to her before I go." I couldn't begin to imagine a reason why he should wish to talk to her or she to him, but I refrained from comment. He went on: "You have no objections? Medical ones, I mean?"

"No. just straightforward commonsense ones. She's under heavy sedation. You couldn't even shake her awake."

"But surely-"

"Two or three hours at the very least. If you don't want my advice, Mr. Gerran, why ask for it?"

"Fair enough, fair enough. Leave her be." He headed towards the outer door. "Your plans for the day, Dr. Marlowe?"

"Who's left here?" I said. "Apart from your daughter and myself?"

He looked at me, his brows levelled in a frown, then said: "Mary Stuart.

Then there's Lonnie, Eddie, and Sandy. Why?"

"They're asleep?"

"As far as I know. Why?"

"Someone has to bury Stryker."

"Ah, yes, of course. Stryker. I hadn't forgotten, you know, but-yes, of course. Yes, yes. You-?"

Yes.

I am in your debt. A ghastly business, ghastly, ghastly, ghastly. Thank you again, Dr. Marlowe." He waddled purposefully towards the door.

"Come, Charles, we are overdue."

They left. I poured myself some coffee but had nothing to eat for it wasn't a morning for eating, went outside into the equipment shed and found myself a spade. The frozen snow was not too deep, not much more than a foot, but the perma-frost had set into the ground and it cost me over an hour and a half and, what is always dangerous in those high latitudes, the loss of much sweat before I'd done what had to be done. I returned the spade and went inside quickly to change: it was a fine clear morning of bitter cold with the sun not yet in the sky, but no morning for an overheated man to linger. Five minutes later, a pair of binoculars slung round my neck, I closed the front door softly behind me. Despite the fact that it was now close on ten o'clock, Eddie, Sandy, Lonnie, and Mary Stuart had not as yet put in an appearance. The presence of the first three would have given me no cause for concern for all were notorious for their aversion to any form of physical activity and it was extremely unlikely that any would have suggested that they accompany me on my outing: Mary Stuart might well have done so, for any number of reasons: curiosity, the wish to explore, because she'd been told to keep an eye on me, even, maybe, because she would have felt safer with me than being left behind at the cabin. But whatever her reasons might have been I most definitely didn't want Mary Stuart keeping an eye on me when I was setting out to keep an eye on Heissman.

But to keep an eye on Heissman I had first of all to find him and Heissman, inconveniently and most annoyingly, was nowhere to be seen. The intention, as I had understood it, was that he, with Jungbeck and Goin, should cruise the Sor-Hamna in the sixteen-footer, in search of likely background material. But there was no trace of their boat anywhere in the Sor-Hamna and from where I stood in the vicinity of the cabin I could take in the whole sweep of the bay at one glance. Against the remote possibility that the boat might have temporarily moved in behind one of the tiny islands on the east side of the bay I kept the glasses on those for a few minutes. Nothing stirred. Heissman, I was sure, had left the Sor-Hamna.

He could have moved out to the open sea to the cast by way of the northern tip of the island of Makehl, but this seemed unlikely. The northerly seas were whitecapped and confused, and apart from the fact that Heissman was as far removed from the popular concept of an intrepid seaman as it was possible to imagine it seemed unlikely that he would have forgotten Smithy's warning the previous day about the dangers inherent in taking an open-pooped boat out in such weather. Much more likely, I thought, he'd moved south out of the Sor-Hamna into the sheltered waters of the next bay to the south, the Eviebukta.

I, too, made my way south. Initially, I moved in a southwesterly direction to give the low cliffs of the bay as wide a berth as possible, not from any vertiginous fear of heights but because Hendriks and the Three Apostles were down there somewhere recording, or hoping to record, the cries of the kittiwake gulls, the fulmars, the black guillernots which were reputed to haunt those parts: I had no reason to fear anything at their hands, I just didn't want to go around arousing too much curiosity.

The going, diagonally upwards across a deceptively easy-looking slope, proved very laborious indeed. Mountaineering ability was not called for, which in view of my lack of expertise or anything resembling specialised equipment, was just as well: what was required was some form of in-built radar to enable me to detect the presence of hidden fissures and sudden dips in the smooth expanse of white, and in this, unfortunately, I was equally lacking, with the result that I fell abruptly and at fairly regular intervals into drifts of newly formed snow that at times reached as high as my shoulders. There was no physical danger in this, the cushioning effect of newly driven snow is almost absolute, but the effort of almost continuously extricating myself from those miniature ravines and struggling back up to something resembling terra firma-which even then had seldom less than twelve or fifteen inches of soft snow-was very wearing indeed. If it were so difficult for me to make progress along such relatively simple ground I wondered how Smithy and Heyter must be faring in the so much more wildly rugged mountainous terrain to the north.

It took me just on an hour and a half to cover less than a mile and arrive at a vantage point of a height of about five hundred feel? that enabled me to see into the next bay-the Evjebukta. This wide U-shaped bay, stretching from Kapp Malmgren in the northeast to Kapp Kolthoff in the southwest, was just over a mile in length and perhaps half of that in width: the entire coastline of the bay consisted of vertical cliffs, a bleak, forbidding, and repellent stretch of grey water and precipitous limestone that offered no haven to those in peril on the sea.

I stretched out gratefully on the snow and, when the thumping of my heart and the rasping of my breathing had quietened sufficiently for me to hold a pair of binoculars steady, I used them to quarter the Evjebukta. It was completely bereft of life. The sun was up now, low over the southeastern horizon, but even although it was in my eyes, visibility was good enough and the resolution of the binoculars such that I could have picked up a seagull floating on the waters. There were some little islands to the north of the bay and, of course, there were the cliffs immediately below me that blocked off. all view of what might be happening at their feel?: but if the boat was concealed either behind an island or under the cliffs, it was most unlikely that Heissman would remain in such positions long for there would he nothing to detain him.

I looked south beyond the tip of Kapp Kolthoff and there, beyond the protection of the headland, the sun glinted off. the broken tops of white water. I was as certain as one could be without absolute proof that they would not have ventured beyond the protection of the point: Heissman's unseamanlike qualities apart, Goin was far too prudent a man to step unheedingly into anything that would even smack of danger. How long I lay there waiting for the boat to appear either from behind an island or out from under the concealment of the nearest cliffs I didn't know: what I did know was that I suddenly became aware of the fact that I was shaking with the cold and that both hands and feel? were almost completely benumbed. And I became aware of something else. For several minutes now I'd had the binoculars trained not on the north end of the bay but at the foot of the cliffs to the south on a spot where, about three hundred yards northwest of the tip of Kapp Kolthoff, there was a peculiar indentation in the cliff walls. Partly because of the fact that it appeared to bear to the right and out of sight behind one of the cliff faces guarding the entrance and partly because, due to the height of the cliffs and the fact that the sun was almost directly behind, the shadows cast were very deep, I was unable to make out any details beyond this narrow entrance. But that it was an entrance to some cove beyond I didn't doubt. Of any place within the reach of my binoculars it was the only one where the boat could have lain concealed: Why anyone should wish to lie there at all was another matter altogether, a reason for which I couldn't even guess at. One thing was for certain, a landward investigation from where I lay was out of the question: even if I didn't break my neck in the minimum of the two-hour journey it would take me to get there, nothing would be achieved by making such a trip anyway for not only did the descent of those beetling black cliffs seem quite suicidal but, even if it were impossibly accomplished, what lay at the end of it removed any uncertainty about the permanency of the awaiting reception: for there was no foreshore whatever, just the precipitous plunge of those limestone walls into the dark and icy seas.

Stiffly, clumsily, I rose and headed back towards the cabin. The trip back was easier than the outwards one for it was downhill and by following my own tracks I was able to avoid most of the involuntary descents into the sunken snowdrifts that had punctuated my climb. Even so, it was nearer one o'clock than noon when I approached the cabin. I was only a few paces distant when the main door opened and Mary Stuart appeared. One look at her and my heart turned over and something cold and leaden seemed to settle in the pit of my stomach. Dishevelled hair, a white and shocked face, eyes wild and full of fear, I'd have had to be blind not to know that somewhere, close, death had walked by again.

"Thank God!" Her voice was husky and full of tears. "Thank God you're here! Please come quickly. Something terrible has happened."

I didn't waste time asking her what, clearly I'd find out soon enough, just followed her running footsteps into the cabin and along the passage to Judith Haynes's opened door. Something terrible had indeed happened but there had been no need for haste. Judith Haynes had fallen from her cot and was lying sideways on the floor, half-covered by her blanket which she'd apparently dragged down along with her. On the bed lay an opened and three-part empty bottle of barbiturate tablets, a few scattered over the bed: on the floor, its neck still clutched in her hand, lay a bottle of gin, also three-parts empty. I stooped and touched the marble forehead: even allowing for the icy atmosphere in the cubicle, she must have been dead for hours. Make it a long sleep, she'd said to me: make it a long sleep.

"Is she-is she-?" The dead make people speak in whispers.

"Can't you tell a dead person when you see one?" It was brutal of me but I felt flooding into me that cold anger that was to remain with me until we'd left the island.

I-I didn't touch her. I-"

"When did you find her?"

"A minute ago. Two. I'd just made some food and coffee and I came to see-"

"Where are the others? Lonnie, Sandy, Eddie?"

"Where are- I don't know. They left a little while ago-said they were going for a walk."

A likely tale. There was only one reason that would make at least two of the three walk as far as the front door. I said: "Get them. You'll End them in the provision shed."

"Provision shed? Why would they be there?"

"Because that's where Otto keeps his Scotch."

She left. I put the gin bottle and barbiturate bottle to one side, then I lifted Judith Haynes onto the bed for no better reason than that it seemed cruel to leave her lying on the wooden floor. I looked quickly around the cubicle, but I could see nothing that could be regarded as untoward or amiss. The window was still screwed in its closed position, the few clothes that she had unpacked neatly folded on a small chair. My eye kept returning to the gin bottle. Stryker had told me and I'd overheard her telling Lonnie that she never drank, had not drunk alcohol for many years: an abstainer does not habitually carry around a bottle of gin just on the offchance that he or she may just suddenly feel thirsty.

Lonnie, Eddie, and Sandy came in, trailing with them the redolence of a Highland distillery, but that was the only evidence of their sojourn in the provision shed, whatever they'd been like when Mary had found them, they were shocked cold sober now. They just stood there, staring at the dead woman and saying nothing: understandably, I suppose, they thought there was nothing they could usefully say.

I said: "Mr. Gerran must be informed that his daughter is dead. He's gone north to the next bay. He'll be easy to find-you've only got to follow the Sno-Cat's tracks. I think you should go together."

"Cod love us all." Lonnie spoke in a hushed and anguished reverence.

"The poor girl. The poor poor lassie. First her man-and now this. Where's it all going to end, Doctor?"

I don't know, Lonnie. Life's not always so kind, is it? No need to kill yourselves looking for Mr. Gerran. A heart attack on top of this we can do without."

"Poor little Judith," Lonnie said. "And what do we tell Otto she died of?

Alcohol and sleeping tablets-it's a pretty lethal combination, isn't it?"

"Frequently."

They looked at each other uncertainly, then turned and left. Mary Stuart said: "What can I do?"

"Stay there." The harshness in my voice surprised me almost as much as it clearly surprised her. I want to talk to you."

I found a towel and a handkerchief, wrapped the gin bottle in the former and the barbiturate bottle in the latter. I had a glimpse of Mary watching me, wide-eyed, in what could have been wonder or fear or both, then crossed to examine the dead woman, to see whether there were any visible marks on her. There wasn't much to examine-although she'd been in bed with blankets over her, she'd been fully clothed in parka and some kind of fur trousers. I didn't have to look long. I beckoned Mary across and pointed to a tiny puncture exposed by pushing back the hair on Judith Haynes's neck. Mary ran the tip of her tongue across dry lips and looked at me with sick eyes.

"Yes," I said. "Murdered. How do you feel about that, Mary dear?" The term was affectionate, the tone not.

"Murdered!" she whispered. "Murdered!" She looked at the wrapped bottles, licked her lips again, made as if to speak and seemingly couldn't.

"There may be some gin inside her," I conceded. Possibly even some barbiturate. I'd doubt it, though-it's very hard to make people swallow anything when they're unconscious. Maybe there are no other fingerprints on the bottles-they could have been wiped off. But if we find only her forefinger and thumb round the neck-well, you don't drink three-quarters of a bottle of gin holding it by the finger and thumb." She stared in fascinated horror at the pinprick in the neck and then I let the hair fall back.

I don't know, but I think an injection of an overdose of morphine killed her. How do you feel about it, Mary dear?"

She looked at me pitifully but I wasn't wasting my pity on the living.

She said: "That's the second time you said that. Why did you say that?"

"Because it's partly your fault-and it may be a very large part-that she's dead. Oh, and very cleverly dead, I assure you. I'm very good at finding those things out-when it's too damn late. Rigged for suicide-only, I know she never drank. Well?"

I didn't kill her! Oh, God, I didn't kill her! I didn't, I didn't, I didn't!"

"And I hope to God you're not responsible for killing Smithy, too," I said savagely. "If he doesn't come back, you're first in line as accessory. After murder."

"Mr. Smith!" Her bewilderment was total and totally pathetic. And I was totally unmoved. She said: "Before God, I don't know what you're talking about."

"Of course not. And you won't know what I'm talking about when I ask you what's going on between Gerran and Heissman. How could you a sweet and innocent child like you? Or you wouldn't know what's going on between you and your dear lovable Uncle Johann?"

She stared at me in a dumb animal-like misery and shook her head. I struck her. Even although I was aware that the anger that was in me was directed more against myself than at her still it could not be contained and I struck her and when she looked at me the way a favourite pet would look at a person who has shot it but not quite killed it I lifted my hand again but this time when she closed her eyes and flinched away turning her head to one side I let my hand drop helplessly to my side then did what I should have done in the first place, I put my arms around her and held her tight. She didn't try to fight or struggle, just stood quite still. She had nothing left to fight with any more.

"Poor Mary dear," I said. "You've got no place left to run to, have you?"

She made no answer, her eyes were still closed. "Uncle Johann is no more your uncle than I am. Your immigration papers state that your father and mother are dead. It is my belief that they are still alive and that Heissman is no more your mother's brother than he is your uncle. It is my belief that he is holding them as hostage for your good conduct and that he is holding you as hostage for theirs. I don't just think that Heissman is up to no good, I know he is, for I just don't think he's a criminal operating on an international scale, I know that too. I know that you're not Latvian but strictly of German ancestry. I know, too, that your father ranked very highly in the Berlin councils of war." I didn't know that at all, but it had become an increasingly safe guess. "And I know, too, that there's a great deal of money involved, not in hard cash but in negotiable securities. All this is true, is it not?"

There was a silence then she said dully: If you know so much, what's the good in pretending any more." She pushed back a little and looked at me through defeated eyes. "You're not a real doctor?"

"I'm real enough, but not in the ordinary way of things, for which any patients I might have had would probably feel very thankful as I haven't practised those past good few years. I'm just a civil servant working for the British Government, nothing glamorous or romantic like Intelligence or Counter-Intelligence, just the Treasury, which is why I'm here because we've been interested in Heissman's shennanigans for quite some time. I didn't expect to run into this other busload of trouble, though."

"What do you mean?"

"Too long to explain, even if I could. I can't, yet. And I've things to do."

"Mr. Smith?" She hesitated. "From the Treasury, too?" I nodded and she went on: "I've been thinking that." She hesitated again. "My father commanded submarine groups during the war. He was also a high Party official, very high, I think. Then he disappeared-"

"Where was his command?"

"For the last year, the north-Tromso, Trondheim, Narvik, places like that, I'm not sure." I was, all of a sudden I was, I knew it had to be true. I said: "Then disappearance. A war criminal?" She nodded. "And now an old man?" Another nod. "And amnestied because of age"

"Yes, just over two years ago. Then he came back to us - Mr. Heissman brought us all together, I don't know how."

I could have explained Heissman's special background qualifications for this very job, but it was hardly the moment. I said: "Your father's not only a war criminal, he's also a civil criminal-probably an embezzler on a grand scale. Yet you do all this for him?"

"For my mother."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry, too. I'm sorry for all the trouble I've given you. Do you think my mother will be all right?"

I think so, ", I said, which, considering my recent disastrous record in keeping people alive, was a pretty rash statement on my part.

"But what can we do? What on earth can we do with all those terrible things happening?"

"It's not what I've can do. I know what to do. It's what you are going to do."

"I'll do anything. Anything you say. I promise."

"Then do nothing. Behave exactly as you've been behaving. Especially towards Uncle Johann. But never a word of our talk to him, never a word to anyone."

"Not even to Charles?"

"Conrad? Least of all to him."

"But I thought you liked-"

"Sure I do. But not half as much as our Charles likes you. He'd just up and clobber Heissman on the spot. I haven't," I said bitterly, "been displaying very much cleverness or finesse to date. Give me this one last chance." I thought a bit about being clever, then said: "One thing you can do. Let me know if you see anyone returning here. I'm going to look around a bit."

Otto had almost as many locks as I had keys. As befitted the chairman of Olympus Productions, the producer of the film and the de facto leader of the expedition he carried a great number of bits and pieces of equipment with him. Most of the belongings were personal and most of these clothes, for although Otto, because of his spherical shape, was automatically excluded from the list of the top ten best-dressed men, his sartorial aspirations were of the most soaring, and he carried at least a dozen suits with him although what he intended to do with them on Bear Island was a matter for conjecture. More interestingly, he had two small squat brown suitcases that served merely as cover for two metal deed-boxes. Those were hasp bound with imposing brass padlocks that a blind and palsied pick-lock could have had opened in under a minute and it didn't take me much longer. The first contained nothing of importance, nothing of importance, that was, to anyone except Otto: they consisted of hundreds of press clippings, no doubt carefully selected for the laudatory nature of their contents, and going back for twenty-odd years, all of them unanimous in extolling Otto's cinematic genius: precisely the sort of ego-feeding nourishment that Otto would carry around with him. The second deed-box contained papers of a purely financial nature, recorded Otto's transactions, incomes and outgoes over a good number of years and would have proved, I felt certain, fascinating reading for any Inland Revenue inspector or law-abiding accountant, if there were any such around, but my interest in them was minimal: what did interest me though, and powerfully, was a collection of cancelled chequebooks and as I couldn't see that those were going to be of any use to Otto in the Arctic I pocketed them, checked that everything was as I had found it and left. Goin, as befitted the firm's accountant, was also much given to keeping things under lock and key but, because the total of his impediments didn't come to much more than a quarter of Otto's, the search took correspondingly less time. Again as befitted an accountant, Goin's main concern was clearly with matters financial and as this Goincided with my own current interest I took with me three items that I judged likely to be handsomely rewarding of more leisured study. Those were the Olympus Productions salary lists, Goin's splendidly padded private bankbook and a morocco diary that was full of items in some sort of private code but was nonetheless clearly concerned with money for Goin hadn't bothered to construct a code for the columns of pounds and pence. There was nothing necessarily sinister about this: concern for privacy, especially other people's privacy, could be an admirable trait in an accountant. In the next half hour I went through four cubicles. In Heissman's I found what I had expected to find, nothing. A man with his background and experience would have discovered many years ago that the only safe place to file his records was inside his head. But he did have some innocuous items-I supposed he had used them in the production of the Olympus manifesto for the film-which were of interest to me, several large-scale charts of Bear Island. One of those I took.

Neal Divine's private papers revealed little of interest except a large number of unpaid bills, I0Us, and a number of letters, all of them menacing in varying degrees, from an assortment of different bankers-a form of correspondence that went well with Divine's nervous, apprehensive, and generally down-trodden mien. At the bottom of an old-fashioned Gladstone in the Count's room I found a small black automatic, loaded, but as an envelope beside it contained a current London licence for the gun this discovery might or might not have significance: the number of law-abiding people in law-abiding Britain who for divers law-abiding reasons consider it prudent to own a gun are, in their total, quite remarkable. In the cubicle shared by Jungbeck and Heyter I found nothing incriminating. But I was intrigued by a small brown paper packet, scaled, that I found in Jungbeck's case. I took this into the main cabin where Mary Stuart was moving from window to window-there were four of them keeping watch.

"Nothing?" I said. She shook her head. "Put on a kettle, will you?"

`There's coffee there. And some food."

"I don't want coffee. A kettle-water-half an inch will do." I handed her the packet. "Steam this open for me, will you?'

"Steam-what's in it?"

If I knew that I wouldn't ask you to open it."

I went into Lonnie's cubicle but it held nothing but Lonnie's dreamsan album full of faded photographs. With few exceptions, they were of his family-clearly Lonnie had taken them himself. The first few showed a dark attractive girl with a wavy shoulder-length I930s hairdo holding two babies who were obviously twins. Later photographs showed that the babies were girls. As the years had passed Lonnie's wife, changing hair styles apart, had changed remarkably little while the girls had grown up from page to page until eventually they had become two rather beautiful youngsters very closely resembling their mother. In the last photograph, about two-thirds of the way through the album, all three were shown in white summer dresses of an unconscionable length leaning against a dark open roadster: the two girls would then have been about eighteen. I closed the album with that guilty and uncomfortable feeling you have when you stumble, however inadvertently, across another man's private dreams.

I was crossing the passage to Eddie's room when Mary called me. She had the package open and was holding the contents in a white handkerchief. I said: "That's clever."

"Two thousand pounds," she said wonderingly. "All in new five-pound notes."

"That's a lot of money." They were not only new, they were in consecutive serial number order. I noted down the first and last numbers, tracing would be automatic and immediate: somebody was being very stupid indeed or very confident indeed. This was one item of what might he useful evidence that I did not appropriate but locked up again, resealed, in Jungbeck's case. Men a man has that much money around he's apt to check on its continued presence pretty frequently. Neither Eddie's nor Hendriks's cubicles revealed any item of interest, while the only thing I learned from a brief glance at Sandy's room was that he was just that modicum less scrupulous in obtaining his illicit supplies than Lonnie: Sandy stocked up on Otto's Scotch by the bottleful. The Three Apostles's quarters I passed up: a search in there would, I was convinced, yield nothing. It never occurred to me to check on Conrad.

It was just after three o'clock, with the light beginning to fade from the sky, when I returned to the main cabin. Lonnie and the other two should have contacted Otto and the others a long time ago, their return, I should have thought, was considerably overdue. Mary, who had eaten-or said she had-gave me steak and chips, both of the frozen and precooked variety, and I could see that she was worried. Heaven knew she had enough reason to be worried about a great number of things but I guessed that her present worry was due to one particular cause.

"Where on earth can they all be?" she said. "I'm sure something must have happened to them."

"He'll be all right. They probably just went farther than they intended, that's all."

"I hope so. It's getting dark and the snow's starting-" She broke off. and looked at me in embarrassed accusation. "You're very clever, aren't you?"

I wish to God I were," I said, and meant it. I pushed my almost uneaten meal away and rose. "Thank you. Sorry, and it's nothing to do with your cooking, but I'm not hungry. I'll be in my room."

"It's getting dark," she repeated inconsequentially.

"I won't be long."

I lay on my cot and looked at my haul from the various cabins. I didn't have to look long and I didn't have to be possessed of any outstanding deductive powers to realise the significance of what I had before me. The salary lists were very instructive but not half so enlightening as the correspondence between Otto's chequebooks and Goin's bankbook. But the map-more precisely the detailed inset of the Evjebukta-was perhaps the most interesting of all. I was gazing at the map and having long, long thoughts about Mary Stuart's father when Mary Stuart herself came into my room.

"There's someone coming!'

"Who?"

I don't know. It's too dark and there's snow falling."

"What direction?"

"That way." She pointed south."

"That'll be Hendriks and the Three Apostles!" I wrapped the papers up into a small towel and handed them to her. "Hide those in your room."

I turned my medical bag upside down, brought a small coach screwdriver from my pocket and began to unscrew the four metal studs that served as floor rests.

"Yes, yes, of course." She hesitated. "Do you mind telling me-"

"There are shameless people around who wouldn't think twice of searching through a man's private possessions. Especially mine. If I'm not here, that's to say." I'd removed the base and now started working free the flat black metal box that had fitted so snugly into the bottom.

"You're going out." She said it mechanically, Eke one who is beyond surprise. "Where?"

"Well, I'm not dropping in at the local, and that's for sure." I took out the black box and handed it to her. "Careful. Heavy. Hide that too-and hide it well."

"But what-"

"Hurry up. I hear them at the door."

She hurried up. I screwed the base of the bag back in position and went into the main cabin. Hendriks and the Three Apostles were there and from the way they clapped their arms together to restore circulation and in between sipped the hot coffee that Mary had left on the stove, they seemed to be more than happy to be back. Their happiness vanished abruptly when I told them briefly of Judith Haynes's death and although, like the rest of the company, none of them had any cause to cherish any tender feelings towards the dead woman, the simple fact of the death of a person they knew and that this fresh death, suicide though it had been, had come so cruelly swiftly after the preceding murders, had the immediate effect of reducing them to a state of speechless shock, a state from which they weren't even beginning to recover when the door opened and Otto lurched in. He was gasping for Mr. and seemed close to exhaustion although such symptoms of physical distress, where Otto was concerned, were not in themselves necessarily indicative of recent and violent exertion : even the minor labour of tying his shoelaces made Otto huff and puff in an alarming fashion. I looked at him with what I hoped was a proper concern.

"Now, now, Mr. Gerran, you must take it easy," I said solicitously. "I know this has been a terrible shock to you-"

"Where is she?" he said hoarsely. "Where's my daughter? How in Coxs name-"

"In her cubicle." He made to brush by me but I barred his way. "In a moment, Mr. Gerran. But I must see first that-well, you understand?"

He stared at me under lowered brows then nodded impatiently to show that he understood, which was more than I did, and said: "Be quick, please."

"Seconds only." I looked at Mary Stuart. "Some brandy for Mr. Gerran."

What I had to do in Judith Haynes's cubicle took only ten seconds. I didn't want Otto asking awkward questions about why I'd so lovingly wrapped up the gin and barbiturate bottles, so, holding them gingerly by the tops of the necks, I unwrapped them, placed them in reasonably conspicuous positions and summoned Otto. He hung around for a bit, looking suitably stricken and making desolate sounds, but offered no resistance when I took his arm, suggested that he was achieving nothing by remaining there and led him outside.

In the passage he said: "Suicide, of course."

"No doubt about that."

He sighed. "God, how I reproach myself for-"

"You've nothing to reproach yourself with, Mr. Gerran. You saw how completely broken she was at the news of her husband's death. just plain, old-fashioned grief."

"It's good to have a man like you around in times like those," Otto murmured. I met this in modest silence, led him back to his brandy and said: "Where are the others?"

"Just a few minutes behind. I ran on ahead."

"How come Lonnie and the other two took so long to find you?"

It was a marvellous day for shooting. All background. We just kept moving on, every shot better than the last one. And then, of course, we had this damned rescue job. My God, if ever a location unit has been plagued with such ill luck-'

"Rescue job?" I hoped I sounded puzzled, that my tone didn't reflect my sudden chill.

"Heyter. Hurt himself." Otto lowered some brandy and shook his head to show the burden of woes he was carrying. "He and Smith were climbing when he fell. Ankle sprained or broken, I don't know. They could see us coming along Lerner's Way, heading more or less the way they'd gone, though they were much higher, of course. Seems Heyter persuaded Smith to carry on, said he'd be all right, he'd attract our attention." Otto shook his head again and drained his brandy. "Fool!"

"I don't understand," I said. I could hear the engine of the approaching Sno-Cat.

Instead of just lying there till we came within shouting distance he tried to hobble down the hill towards us. Of course his blasted ankle gave way-he fell into a gully and knocked himself about pretty badly. God knows how long he was lying there unconscious, it was early afternoon before we heard his shouts for help. A most damnable job getting him down that hill, just damnable. Is that the Sno-Cat out there?"

I nodded. Otto heaved himself to his feel? and we went towards the front door together. I said: "Smithy? Did you see him?"

"Smith?" Otto looked at me in faint surprise. "No, of course not. I told you, he'd gone on ahead."

"Of course," I said. "I'd forgotten."

The door opened from the outside just as we reached it. Conrad and the Count entered, half-carrying a Heyter who could only hop on one leg.

His head hung exhaustedly, his chin on his chest, and his pale face was heavily bruised on both the right cheek and temple. We got him onto a couch and I eased off. his right boot. The ankle was swollen and badly discoloured and bleeding slightly where the skin had been broken in several places. While Mary Stuart was heating some water, I propped him up, gave him some brandy, smiled at him in my most encouraging physician's fashion, commiserated with him on his ill luck and marked him down for death.