Bear Island

5

I suddenly didn't fancy my cabin very much any more. Not, that was, as a place to sleep in. The eccentric shipping millionaire who'd had the Morning Rose completely stripped and fitted for passenger accommodation had had a powerful aversion to locks on cabin doors and, having had the means and the opportunity to do so, had translated his theories into practice. It may have been just a phobia or it may have stemmed from his assertion that many people had unnecessarily lost their lives at sea through being trapped in locked cabins as their ships went down-which, in fact, I knew to be true. However it was, it was impossible to lock a cabin door in the Morning Rose from the inside: it didn't even have a sliding bolt.

The saloon, I decided, was the place for me. It had, as I recalled, a very comfortable corner bulkhead settee where I could wedge myself and, more importantly, protect my back. The lockers below the settee seats had a splendid assortment of fleecy steamer rugs, another legacy, like the lockless doors, from the previous owner. Best of all, it was a brightly lit and public place, a place where people were liable to come and go even at that late hour, a place where no one could sneak up on you unawares. Not that any of this would offer any bar to anyone so ill-disposed as to take a pot shot at me through the saloon's plate-glass windows. It was, I supposed, some little consolation that the person or persons bent on mayhem had not so far chosen to resort to overt violence, but that hardly constituted a guarantee that they wouldn't: Why the hell couldn't the publishers of reference books emulate the prestigious Encyclopaedia Britannica and do away with bookmarks altogether?

It was then that I recalled that I'd left the board of Olympus Productions in full plenary session up in the saloon. How long ago was that?

Twenty minutes, not more. Another twenty minutes, perhaps, and the coast would be clear. It wasn't that I harboured any particular suspicion towards any of the four: they might just consider it very odd if I were to elect to sleep up there for the night lien I'd a perfectly comfortable cabin down below.

Partly on impulse, partly to kill some of the intervening time, I decided to have a look at the Duke, to check on his condition, to ensure him a restful night by promising he'd be back on full rations come breakfast time and to find out if Sandy had been telling the truth. His was the third door to the left: the second to the right was wide open, the door stayed back at ninety degrees. It was "Mary Stuart's cabin and she was inside but not asleep: she sat in a chair wedged between table and bunk, her eyes wide open, her hands in her lap.

"What's this, then," I said. "You look like someone taking part in a wake."

"I'm not sleepy."

"And the door open. Expecting company?"

I hope not. I can't lock the door."

"You haven't been able to lock the door since you came aboard. It doesn't have a lock."

I know. It didn't matter. Not till tonight."

"You-you're not thinking that someone might sneak up and do you in while you're sleeping?" I said in a tone of a person who could never conceive of such a thing happening to himself.

I don't know what to think. I'm all right. Please."

"Afraid', Still - I shook my head. "Shame on you. Think of your namesake, young Mary darling. She's not scared to sleep alone."

"She's not sleeping alone."

"She isn't? Ah, well, we live in a permissive age."

"She's with Allen. In the recreation room."

"Ah! Then why don't you join them? If it's safety you wrongly imagine you need, why then, there's safety in numbers."

I do not like to play-what do you say-gooseberry."

"…Oh, fiddlesticks!" I said and went to see the Duke. He had colour, not much but enough, in his cheeks and was plainly on the mend. I asked him how he was.

"Rotten," said the Duke. He rubbed his stomach.

"Still pretty sore"

"Hunger pains," he said.

"Nothing tonight. Tomorrow, you're back on the strength-forget the tea and toast. By the way, that wasn't very clever of you to send Sandy up to raid the galley. Haggerty nabbed him in the act."

"Sandy? In the galley?" The surprise was genuine. "I didn't send him up.

"Surely he told you he was going there?"

"Not a word. Look, Doc, you can't pin-"

"Nobody's pinning anything on anybody. I must have taken him up wrong. Maybe he just wanted to surprise you-he said something about you feeling peckish."

I said that all right. But honest to God-"

"It's all right. No harm done. Good night."

I retraced my steps, passing Mary Stuart's open door again. She looked at me but said nothing so I did the same. Back in my cabin I looked at my watch. Five minutes only had elapsed, fifteen to go. I was damned if I was going to wait so long, I was feeling tired again, tired enough to drop off to sleep at any moment, but I had to have a reason to go up there. For the first time I devoted some of my rapidly waning powers of thought to the problem and I had the answer in seconds. I opened my medical bag and extracted three of the most essential items it contained-death certificates.

For some odd reason I checked the number that was left-ten. All told, thirteen. I was glad I wasn't superstitious. The certificates and a few sheets of rather splendidly headed ship's note paper-the previous owner hadn't been a man to do things by half-went into my briefcase.

I opened the cabin door wide so as to have some light to see by, checked that the passage was empty and swiftly unscrewed the deckhead lamp.

This I dropped on the deck from gradually increasing heights starting with about a foot or so until a shake of the lamp dose by my car let me hear the unmistakable tinkle of a broken filament. I screwed the now useless lamp back into its holder, took up my briefcase, closed the door and made for the bridge.

The weather, I observed during my very hurried passage across the upper deck and up the bridge ladder, hadn't improved in the slightest.

I had the vague impression that the seas were moderating slightly but that may have been because of the fact that I was feeling so tired that I was no longer capable of registering impressions accurately. But one aspect of the weather was beyond question: the almost horizontally driving snow had increased to the extent that the masthead light was no more than an intermittent glow in the gloom above.

Allison was at the wheel, spending more time looking at the radarscope than at the compass and, visibility being what it was, I could see his point.

I said: "Do you know where the captain keeps his crew lists? In his cabin?"

"No." He glanced over his shoulder. "In the charthouse there." He hesitated . "Why would you want those, Dr. Marlowe?"

I pulled a death certificate from the briefcase and held it close to the binnacle light. Allison compressed his lips.

"Top drawer, port locker."

I found the lists, entered up the name, address, age, place of birth, religion , and next of kin of each of the three dead men, replaced the book and made my way down to the saloon. Half an hour had elapsed since I'd left Gerran, his three co-directors and the Count sitting there, and there all five still were, seated round a table and studying cardboard covered folders spread on the table before them. A pile of those lay on the table, some more were scattered on the floor where the rolling of the ship had obviously precipitated them. The Count looked at me over the rim of his glass: his capacity for brandy was phenomenal.

"Still abroad, my dear fellow? You do labour on our behalf. Much more of this and I suggest that you be co-opted as one of our directors."

"Here's one cobbler that sticks to his last." I looked at Gerran. "Sorry to interrupt, but I've some forms to fill up. If I'm interrupting some private session-"

"Nothing private going on here, I assure you." It was Goin who answered. "Merely studying our shooting script for the next fortnight. All the cast and crew will have one tomorrow. Like a copy?"

"Thank you. After I've finished this. Afraid my cabin light has gone on the blink and I'm not much good at writing by the light of matches."

"We're just leaving." Otto was still looking grey and very tired but he was mentally tough enough to keep going long after his body had told him to stop. I think we could all do with a good night's sleep."

"It's what I would prescribe. You could postpone your departure for five minutes?"

If necessary, of course."

"We've promised Captain Imrie a guarantee or affidavit or what will you exonerating him from all blame if we have any further outbreaks of mysterious illness. He wants it on his breakfast table, and he wants it signed. And as Captain Imrie will be up at 4 A.m. and I suspect his breakfast will be correspondingly early, I suggest it would be more convenient if you all signed it now."

They nodded agreement. I sat at a nearby table and in my "best handwriting , which was pretty bad, and best legal jargon, which was awful, I drafted a statement of responsibility which I thought would meet the case. The others apparently thought so too or were too tired to care, for they signed with only a cursory glance at what I had written. The Count signed too and I didn't as much as raise an eyebrow. It had never even crossed my mind that the Count belonged to those elevated directorial ranks, I had thought that the more highly regarded cameramen, of which the Count was undoubtedly one, were invariably free-lance and therefore ineligible for election to any film company board. But, at least, it helped to explain his lack of proper respect for Otto.

"And now, to bed." Goin eased back his chair. `You, too, Doctor?"

"After I've filled out the death certificates."

"An unpleasant duty." Goin handed me a folder. "This might help amuse you afterwards."

I took it from him and Gerran heaved himself upright with the usual massive effort. "Those funerals, Dr. Marlowe. The burials at sea. What time do they take place?"

"First light is customary." Otto closed his eyes in suffering. "After what you've been through, Mr. Gerran, I'd advise you to give it a miss. Rest as long as possible tomorrow."

"You really think so?" I nodded and Otto removed his mask of suffering.

`You will stand in for me, John?"

"Of course," Goin said. "Good night, Doctor. Thank you for your cooperation!'

"Yes, yes, thank you, thank you," Otto said.

They trooped off unsteadily and I fished out my death certificate forms and filled them out. I put those in one sealed envelope, the signed affidavit -I just in time remembered to add my own signature-in another, addressed them to Captain Imrie and took them up to the bridge to ask Allison to hand them over to the captain when he came on watch at four in the morning. Allison wasn't there. Instead, Smithy, heavily clad and muffled almost to the eyebrows, was sitting on a high stool before the wheel. He wasn't touching the wheel, which periodically spun clockwise and counterclockwise as of its own accord, and he'd turned up the rheostat. He looked pale and had dark circles under his eyes but he didn't have a sick look about him any more. His recuperative powers were quite remarkable.

"Automatic pilot," he explained, almost cheerfully, "and all the lights of home. Who needs night sight in zero visibility?"

"You ought to be in bed," I said shortly.

"I've just come from there and I'm just going there. First Officer Smith is not yet his old self and he knows it. just come up to check position and give Allison a break for coffee. Also, I thought I might find you here. You weren't in your cabin!'

"I'm here now. What did you want to see me about?"

"Otard-Dupuy," he said. "How does that sound?"

"It sounds fine!" Smithy slid off his stool and headed for the cupboard where Captain Imrie kept his private store of restoratives. "But you weren't hunting the ship to offer me a brandy."

"No. Tell you the truth, I've been trying to figure out some things. No dice with the figuring, if I was bright enough for that I'd be too bright to be where I am now. Thought you could help me." He handed me a glass.

"We should make a great team," I said.

He smiled briefly. "Three-, dead and four half dead. Food poisoning. What poisoning?"

I told him the story about the sporing anaerobes, the one I'd given Haggerty. But Smithy wasn't Haggerty.

"Mighty selective poison, isn't it? Clobbers A and kills him, passes up B, clobbers C and doesn't kill him, passes up D and so on. And we all had the same food to cat."

"Poisons are notoriously unpredictable. Six people at a picnic can cat the same infected food: three can land in hospital while the others don't feel a twinge."

"So, some people get tummy aches and some don't. But that's a bit different from saying that a poison that is deadly enough to kill, and to kill violently and quickly, is going to leave others entirely unaffected. No doctor but I flat out don't believe it."

"I find it a bit odd myself. You have something in mind?"

"Yes. The poisoning was deliberate."

"Deliberate?" I sipped some more of the Otard-Dupuy while I wondered how far to go with Smithy. Not too far, I thought, not yet. I said: "Of course it was deliberate. And so easily done. Take our poisoner. He has this little bag of poison. Also, he has this little magic wand. He waves it and turns himself invisible and then flits around the dining tables. A pinch for Otto, none for me, a pinch for you, a pinch for Oakley, no pinches for, say, Heissman and Stryker, a double pinch for Antonio, none for the girls, a pinch for the Duke, two each for Moxen and Scott, and so on. A wayward and capricious lad, our invisible friend: Or would you call it being selective?"

I don't know what I'd call it," Smithy said soberly. "But I know what I'd call you-devious, off-putting, side-tracking, and altogether protesting too much Without offence, of course."

"Of course."

I wouldn't rate you as anybody's fool. You can't tell me that you haven't had some thoughts along those lines."

I had. But because I've been thinking about it a lot longer than you, I've dismissed them. Motive, opportunity, means-impossible to find any. Don't you know that the first thing a doctor does when he's called in to a case of accidental poisoning is to suspect that it's not accidental?"

"So you're satisfied."

"As can be."

I see." He paused. "Do you know we have a transmitter in the radio office that can reach just about any place in the Northern Hemisphere?

I've got a feeling we're going to have to use it soon."

"What on earth for?"

"Help."

"Help?"

"Yes. You know. The thing you require when you're in trouble. I think we need help now. Any more funny little accidents and I'll be damn certain we need help."

"I'm sorry," I said. "You're way beyond me. Besides, Britain's a long, long way away from us now."

"The NATO Atlantic forces aren't. They're carrying out fleet exercises somewhere off the North Cape."

"You're well informed," I said.

"It pays to be well informed when I'm talking to someone who claims to be as satisfied as can be over three very mysterious deaths when I'm certain that someone would never rest and could never be satisfied until he knew exactly how those three people had died. I've admitted I'm not very bright but don't completely underestimate what little intelligence I have."

I don't. And don't overestimate mine. Thanks for the Otard-Dupuy."

I went to the starboard screen door. The Morning Rose was still rolling and pitching and shaking and shuddering as she battered her way northwards through the wild seas but it was no longer possible to see the windtorn waters below: we were in a world now that was almost completely opaque, a blind and bitter world of driving white, a world of snowy darkness that began and ended at scarcely an arm's-length distance. I looked down at the wing bridge deck and in the pale light of wash from the wheelhouse I could see footprints in the snow. There was only one set of them, sharp and clearly limned as if they had been made only seconds previously. Somebody had been there, for a moment I was certain that someone had been there, listening to Smith and myself talking. Then I realised there was only one set, the set I had made myself and they hadn't been filled in or even blurred because the blizzard driving horizontally across the wind dodger was clearing the deck at my feel?. Sleep, I thought, and sleep now: for with that lack of sleep, the tiring events of the past few hours, the sheer physical exhaustion induced by the violent weather and Smithy's dark forebodings, I was beginning to imagine things. I realised that Smithy was at my shoulder.

"You levelling with me, Dr. Marlowe?"

"Of course. Or do you think Fin the invisible Borgia who's flitting around, a little pinch here, a little pinch there?"

"No, I don't. I don't think you're levelling with me, either." His voice was sombre. "Maybe someday you are going to wish you were."

Someday I was going to wish I had for then I wouldn't have had to leave Smithy behind in Bear Island.

Back in the saloon, I picked up the booklet Goin had given me, went to the corner settee, found myself a steamer blanket, decided I didn't require it yet and wedged myself into the corner, my feel? comfortably on a swivel chair belonging to the nearest table. I picked up, without much interest, the cardboard file and was debating whether to open it when the lee door opened and Mary Stuart came in. There was snow on the tangled corn-coloured hair and she was wearing a heavy weed coat.

"So this is where you are." She banged the door shut and looked at me almost accusingly.

"This," I acknowledged, "is where I am."

"You weren't in your cabin. And your light's gone. Do you know that?"

I know that. I'd some writing to do. That's why I came here. Is there something wrong?"

She lurched across the saloon and sat heavily on the settee opposite me.

"Nothing more than has been wrong." She and Smithy should meet up, they'd get on famously. "Do you mind if I stay here?"

I could have said that it didn't matter whether I minded or not, that the saloon was as much hers as mine, but as she seemed to be a touchy sort of creature I just smiled and said: I would take it as an insult if you left."

She smiled back at me, just an acknowledging flicker, and settled as best she could in her seat, drawing the tweed coat around her and bracing herself against the violent movements of the Morning Rose. She closed her eyes and with the long dark lashes lying along pale wet cheeks her high cheekbones were more pronounced than ever, her Slavonic ancestry unmistakable,

It was no great hardship to look upon Mary Stuart but I still felt an increasing irritation as I watched her. It wasn't so much her fey imaginings and need for company that made me uneasy, it was the obvious discomfort she was experiencing in trying to keep her seated balance while I was wedged so very comfortably in my own place: there is nothing more uncomfortable than being comfortable one's self and watching another in acute discomfort, not unless, of course, one has a feeling of very powerful antagonism towards the other party, in which case a very comfortable feeling can be induced: but I had no such antagonism towards the girl opposite. To compound my feeling of guilt she began to shiver involuntarily.

"Here," I said. "You'd be more comfortable in my scat. And there's a rug here you can have."

She opened her eyes. "No, thank you."

"There are plenty more rugs," I said in something like exasperation.

Nothing brings out the worst in me more quickly than sweetly smiling suffering. I picked up the rug, did my customary two-step across the heaving deck and draped the rug over her. She looked at me gravely and said nothing.

Back in my corner I picked up the booklet again but instead of reading it got to wondering about my cabin and those who might visit it during my absence. Mary Stuart had visited it, but then she'd told me she had and the fact that she was here now confirmed the reason for her visit. At least, it seemed to confirm it. She was scared, she said, she was lonely and so she naturally wanted company. Why my company? Why not that of, say, Charles Conrad who was a whole lot younger, nicer, and better looking than I was? Or even his other two fellow actors, Gunther Jungbeck and ion Heyter, both very personable characters indeed? Maybe she wanted to be with me for all the wrong reasons. Maybe she was watching me, maybe she was virtually guarding me, maybe she was giving someone the opportunity to visit my cabin while-I was suddenly very acutely aware that there were things in my cabin that I'd rather not be seen by others.

I put the book down and headed for the lee door. She opened her eyes and lifted her head.

"Where are you going?"

“Out.”

"I'm sorry. I just-are you coming back?"

"I'm sorry, too. I'm not rude," I lied, "just tired. Below. Back in a minute."

She nodded, her eyes following me until I closed the door behind me.

Once outside I remained still for twenty seconds or so, ignoring the vagrant flurries of snow that even here, on the lee side, seemed bent on getting down my collar and up the trouser cuffs, then walked quickly foreword. I peered through the plate-glass window and she was sitting as I'd left her, only now she had her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands, shaking her head slowly from side to side. Ten years ago I'd have been back in that saloon pretty rapidly, arms round her and telling her that all her troubles were over. That was ten years ago. Now I just looked at her, wondered if she had been expecting me to take a peck at her, then made my way foreword and down to the passenger accommodation.

It was after midnight but not yet closing hours in the lounge bar, for Lonnie Gilbert, with a heroically foolhardy disregard for what would surely be Otto's fearful wrath when the crime was discovered, had both glass doors swung open and latched in position, while he himself was ensconced in some state behind the bar itself, a bottle of malt whisky in one hand, a soda syphon in the other. He beamed paternally at me as I passed through and as it seemed late in the day to point out to Lonnie that the better class malts stood in no need of the anaemic assistance of soda I just nodded and went below.

If anybody had been in my cabin and gone through my belongings, he'd done it in a very circumspect way. As far as I could recall everything was as I had left it and nothing had been disturbed but, then, a practised searcher rarely left any trace of his passing. Both my cases had elasticised linen pockets in the lids and in each pocket in each lid, holding the lids as nearly horizontal as possible, I placed a small Goin just at the entrance to the pocket. Then I locked the cases. In spite of the trawler's wildly erratic behaviour those coins would remain where they were, held in place by the pressure of the clothes inside but as soon as the lid was opened, the pressure released, and the lid then lifted even partway towards the vertical, the Coins would slide down to the feel? of the pockets. I then locked my medical bag-it was considerably larger and heavier than the average medical bag but then it held a considerably greater amount of equipment -and put it out in the passage. I closed the door behind me, carefully wedging a spent book match between the foot of the door and the sill: that door would have to open only a crack and the match would drop clear. Lonnie, unsurprisingly, was still at his station in the lounge when I reached there.

"Aha!" He regarded his empty glass with an air of surprise, then reached out with an unerring hand. "The kindly healer with his bag of tricks.

Hot-foot to the succour of suffering mankind? A new and dreadful epidemic, is it? Your old Uncle Lonnie is proud of you, boy, proud of you. This Hippocratic spirit-" He broke off only to resume almost at once.

"Now that we have touched, inadvertently chanced upon, as one might say, this topic-spirit, the blushful hippocrene-I wonder if by any chance you would care to join me in a thimbleful of the elixir I have here-?'

"Thank you, Lonnie, no. Why don't you get to bed? If you keep it up like this, you won't be able to get up tomorrow."

"And that, my dear boy, is the whole point of the exercise, I don't want to get up tomorrow. The day after tomorrow? Well, yes, if I must, I'll face the day after tomorrow. I don't want to, mind you, for tomorrows, We found, are always distressingly similar to todays. The only good thing you can say about a today is that at any given moment such and such a portion of it is already irrevocably past'-he paused to admire his speech control-"Irrevocably past, as I say, and, with the passing of every moment, so much less of it to come. But all of tomorrow is still to come. Think of it. All of it-the livelong day." He lifted his recharged glass. "Others drink to forget the past. But some of us-very, very few and it would not be right of me to say that we're gifted with a prescience and understanding and intelligence far beyond the normal ken, so I'll just say we're different some of us, I say, drink to forget the future. How, you will ask, can one forget the future? Well, for one thing, it takes practice. And, of course, a little assistance." He drank half his malt in one gulp and intoned: Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable-"

"Lonnie," I said, I don't think you're the least little bit like Macbeth."

"And there you have it in a nutshell. I'm not. A tragic figure, a sad man, fated and laden with doom. Now, me, I'm not like that at all. We Gilberts have the indomitable spirit, the unconquerable soul. Your Shakespeares are all very well, but Walter de la Mare is my boy." He lifted his glass and squinted myopically at it against the light. ---Look your last on all things lovely every hour."'

I don't think he quite meant it in that way, Lonnie. Anyway, doctor's orders and do me a favour-get to hell out of here. Otto will have you drawn and quartered if he finds you here."

"Otto? Do you know something?" Lonnie leaned forward confidentially.

"Otto's really a very kindly man. I like Otto. He's always been good to me, Otto has. Most people are good, my dear chap, don't you know that? Most people are kind. Lots of them very kind. But none so kind as Otto. Why, I remember-"

He broke off as I went round the back of the bar, replaced the bottles, locked the doors, placed the keys in his dressing-gown pocket and took his arm.

"I'm not trying to deprive you of the necessities of life," I explained.

"Neither am I being heavy-handed and moralistic. But I have a sensitive nature and I don't want to be around when you find out that your assessment of Otto is a hundred percent wrong." Lonnie came without a single murmur of protest. Clearly, he had his emergency supplies cached in his cabin. On our stumbling descent of the companionway he said:

"You think I'm headed for the next world with my gas pedal flat on the floor, don't you?"

"As long as you don't hit anybody it's none of my business how you drive, Lonnie."

He stumbled into his cabin, sat heavily on his bed, then moved with remarkable swiftness to one side: I could only conclude that he'd inadvertently sat on a bottle of Scotch. He looked at me, pondering, then said:

"Tell me, my boy, do you think they have bars in heaven?"

"I'm afraid I have no information on that one, Lonnie."

"Quite, quite. It makes a gratifying change to find a doctor who is not the source of all wisdom. You may leave me now, my good fellow."

I looked at Neal Divine, now quietly asleep, and at Lonnie, impatiently and for obvious reasons awaiting my departure, and left them both.

Mary Stuart was sitting where I'd left her, arms straight out on either side and fingers splayed to counteract the now noticeably heavier pitching of the Morning Pose: the rolling effect, on the other hand, was considerably less, so I assumed that the wind was still veering in a northerly direction. She looked at me with the normally big brown eyes now preternaturally huge in a dreadfully tired face, then looked away again.

"I'm sorry," I found myself apologising. "I've been discussing classics and theology with our production manager." I made for my corner seat and sat down gratefully. "Do you know him at all?"

"Everybody knows Lonnie." She tried to smile. "We worked together in the last picture I made." Again she essayed a smile. "Did you see it?"

"No." I'd heard about it though, enough to make me walk five miles out of my way to avoid it.

"It was awful. I was awful. I can't imagine why they gave me another chance."

"You're a very beautiful girl," I said. "You don't have to be able to act. Performance detracts from appearance. Anyway, you may be an excellent actress. I wouldn't know. About Lonnie?"

"Yes. He was there. So was Mr. Gerran and Mr. Heissman." I said nothing so she went on: "This is the third picture we've all made together.

The third since Mr. Heissman-well, since he-"

I know. Mr. Heissman was away for quite a bit."

"Lonnie's such a nice man. He's so helpful and kind and I think he's a very wise man. But he's a funny man. You know that Lonnie likes to take a drink. One day, after twelve hours on the set and all of us dead tired, when we got back to the hotel I asked for a double gin and he became very angry with me. Why should he be like that?"

"Because he's a funny man. So you like him?"

"How could I not like him? He likes everybody so everybody just likes him back. Even Mr. Gerran likes him-they're very close. But, then, they've known each other for years and years."

I didn't know that. Has Lonnie a family? Is he married?"

"I don't know. I think he was. Maybe he's divorced. Why do you ask so many questions about him?"

"Because Fin a typically knowing, prying sawbones and I like to know as much as possible about people who are or may be my patients. For instance, I know enough about Lonnie now never to give him a brandy if he were in need of a restorative for it wouldn't have the slightest effect."

She smiled and closed her eyes. Conversation over. I took another steamer rug from under my seat, wrapped it around me-the temperature in the saloon was noticeably dropping-and picked up the folder that Goin had given me. I turned to page 1, which, apart from being titled B Island, started off without any preamble.

"It is widely maintained," it read, "that Olympus Productions is approaching the making of this, its latest production, in conditions so restrictive as to amount to an aura of almost total secrecy. Allegations to this effect have subsequently made their appearance in popular and trade presses and in light of the absence of production office denials to the contrary those uncorroborated assertions have achieved a considerable degree of substance and credence which one might regard, in the circumstances, as being a psychological inevitability." I read through this rubbish again, a travesty of the Queen's English fit only for the columns of the more learned Sunday papers, and then I got it: they were making a hush-hush picture and didn't care who knew. And very good publicity it was for the film, too, I thought, but, no, I was doing the boys an injustice. Or so the boys said. The article continued:

"Other cinematic productions"-I assumed he meant films-"have been approached and, on occasion, even executed under conditions of similar secrecy but those other and, one is afraid, spurious sub rosa ventures have had for their calculated aim nothing less, regrettably, than the extraction of the maximum free publicity. This, we insist, and with some pride, is not the objective of Olympus Productions." Good old Olympus, this I had to see, a cinema company who didn't want free publicity: next thing we'd have the Bank of England turning its nose up at the sound of the word money." "Our frankly cabalistic approach to this production, which has given rise to so much intrigued and largely ill-informed speculation, has, in fact, been imposed upon us by considerations of the highest importance: the handling of this, a story which in the wrong hands might well generate potentially and dangerously explosive international repercussions, calls for the utmost in delicacy and finesse, essential qualities for the creation of what we confidently expect will be hailed as a cinematic masterpiece, but qualities which even we feel-nay, are certain-would not be able to overcome the immense damage done by-and we are certain of this-the world-wide furore that would immediately and automatically follow the premature leaking of the story we intend to film.

"We are confident, however, that when-there is no "If-this production is made in our own way, in our own time, and under the very strictest security conditions-this is why we have gone to the quite extraordinary lengths of obtaining notarised oaths of secrecy from every member of the cast and crew of the film project under discussion, including the managing director and his co-directors-we will have upon our hands, when this production is presented to a public, which will have been geared by that time to the highest degree of expectancy, a tour de force of so unparalleled an order that the justification for-"

Mary Stuart sneezed and I blessed her, twice, once for her health and once for the heaven-sent interruption of the reading of this modestly phrased manifesto. I glanced at her again just as she sneezed again. She was sitting in a curiously huddled fashion, hands clasped tightly together, her face white and pinched. I laid down the Olympus manifesto, unwrapped my rug, crossed the saloon in a zigzag totter which resulted from the now very pronounced pitching of the Morning Rose, sat beside her and took her hands in mine. They were icily cold.

"You're freezing," I said somewhat unnecessarily.

"I'm all right. I'm just a bit tired."

"Why don't you go below to your cabin? It's at least twenty degrees warmer down there and you'll never sleep up here if you have to keep bracing yourself all the time from falling off your seat."

"No. I don't sleep down there either. I've hardly slept since-" She broke off. "And I don't feel nearly so-so queasy up here. Please."

I don't give up easily. I said: "Then at least take my corner scat, you'll be much more comfortable there."

She took her hands away. "Please. Just leave me!'

I gave up. I left her. I took three wavering steps in the direction of my scat, halted in irritation, turned back to her and hauled her none too gently to her feel?. She looked at me, not speaking, in tired surprise, and continued to say nothing, and to offer no resistance, as I led her across to my corner, brought out another two steamer rugs, cocooned her in those, lifted her feel? onto the settee and sat beside her. She looked up at me for a few seconds, her gaze transferring itself from my right eye to my left and back again, then she turned her face to me, closed her eyes and slid one of her icy hands under my jacket. During all this performance she didn't speak once or permit any expression to appear on her face and I would have been deeply moved by this touching trust in me were it not for the reflection that if it were her purpose or instructions to keep as close an eye as possible on me she could hardly, even in her most optimistic moments , have hoped to arrive at a situation where she could keep an eye within half an inch of my shirt front. I couldn't even take a deep breath without her knowing all about it. On the other hand, if she were as innocent as the driven snow that had now completely obscured the plate glass not six inches from my head, then it was less than likely that any illdisposed citizen or citizens would contemplate taking action of a violent

So and permanent nature against me as long as I had Mary Stuart practically sitting on my lap. It was, I thought, a pretty even trade. I looked down at the half-hidden lovely face and reflected that I was possibly having a shade the better of the deal. I reached for my own rug, draped it round my shoulders in Navaho style, picked up the Olympus manifesto again and continued to read. The next two pages were largely a hyperbolic expansion of what had gone before with the writer-I assumed it was Heissman-harping on at nauseating length on the twin themes of the supreme artistic merit of the production and the necessity for absolute secrecy. After this self-adulatory exercise, the writer got down to facts.

"After long consideration, and the close examination and subsequent rejection of a very considerable number of possible alternatives, we finally decided upon Bear Island as the location for this project. We are aware that all of you, and this includes the entire crew of the Morning Rose from Captain Imrie downwards, believed that we were heading for a destination in the neighbourhood of the Lofoten Islands off northern Norway and it was not exactly, shall we say, through fortuitous circumstance, that this rumour was gaining some currency in certain quarters in London immediately prior to our departure. We make no apologies for what may superficially appear to be an unwarranted deception for it was essential to our purposes and the maintenance of secrecy that this subterfuge be adopted.

"For the following brief description of Bear Island we are indebted to the Royal Geographical Society of Oslo, who have also furnished us with a translation." That was a relief, just as long as the translator wasn't Heissman I might be able to get it on the first reading. "This information, it is perhaps superfluous to add, was obtained for us through the good offices of a third party entirely unconnected with Olympus Productions, a noted ornithologist who must remain entirely incognito. It may be mentioned in the passing that the Norwegian Government has given us permission to film on the island. We understand that it is their understanding that we propose to make a wild life documentary: such an understanding, far less a commitment, was not obtained from us."

I wondered about the last bit-not the cleverer- than-thou smugness of it, that was clearly inseparable from everything Heissman wrote-but the fact that he should say it at all. Heissman, clearly, was not a man much given to hiding his own brilliance-the phrase low cunning" would not have occurred to him-under a bushel but equally he wasn't a man who would permit this particular type of self gratification to lead him into" danger. Almost certainly if the Norwegians did find out they had been deluded there would be nothing in international law they could do about it-Olympus wouldn't have overlooked anything so obvious-other than ban the completed film from their country and as Norway could hardly be regarded as a major market this would cause few sleepless nights. On the other hand, it would be effective in stilling any qualms of conscience -true, this was a world of the cinema but Heissman would be unlikely to overlook even the most remote possibility-that might have arisen had the project been denied even this superficial official blessing, and the very fact that they were being made privy to the secret inner workings of Olympus would tend to bind both cast and crew closer to the company for it is an almost universal law of nature that mankind, which is still in the painful process of growing up, dearly loves its little closed and/or secret societies, whether those be the most remote Masonic Lodge in Saskatchewan or White's of St. James's, and tend to form an intense personal attachment and loyalty to other members of that group while presenting a united front to the world of the unfortunates beyond their doors. I did not overlook the possibility that there might be another, and conceivably sinister , interpretation of Heissman's confidential frankness but as it was now into the early hours of the morning I didn't particularly feel like seeking it out.

"Bear Island," the resume began. "One of the Svalbard group, of which Spitzbergen is much the largest. This group remained neutral and unclaimed until the beginning of the 20th Century when, because of its very considerable investments in the exploitation of mineral resources and the establishment of whaling operation, Norway requested sovereignty of the area, placing her petition before the Conference"-they didn't specify what conference-"at Christiana (Oslo) in 1910, 1912, and again in 1914. On each occasion Russian objections prevented ratification of the proposals. However, in 1919 the Allied Supreme Council granted Norway sovereignty, formal possession being taken on August 14, 1925."

Having established the ownership beyond all doubt the report proceeded: "The (Bear) island, 74'28w, 1913'E., lies some 260 miles N.NW. of North Cape, Norway, and some 140 miles south of Spitzbergen and may be regarded as the meeting point of the Norwegian, Greenland, and Barents seas. In terms of distance from its nearest neighbours , this is the most isolated island in the Arctic."

There followed a long and for me highly uninteresting account of the island's history which seemed to consist mainly of interminable squabbles between Norwegians, Germans, and Russians over whaling and mining rights-although I was mildly intrigued to learn that as recently as the 20S there had been as many as a hundred and eighty Norwegians working the coal mines at Tunheim in the northeast of the island-I would have imagined that even the polar bears, after whom the island was named, would have given this desolation as wide a berth as possible. The mines, it seemed, had been closed down following a geological survey which showed that the purity and thickness of the seams were not sufficient to make it a profitable proposition. The island, however, was not entirely uninhabited even today: it appeared that the Norwegian Government maintained a meteorological and radio station at Tunheim.

Then came articles on the natural resources, vegetation and animal life, all of which I took as read. The references to the climate, however, which might be expected to concern us all, I found much more intriguing and highly discouraging. "The meeting of the Gulf Stream and the Polar Drift," it read, "makes for extremely poor weather conditions, with large rainfall and dense fogs. The average summer temperature rises to not more than five degrees above freezing. Not until mid-July do the lakes become ice-free and the snow melts. The midnight sun lasts for 106 days from April 30th to August 13th: the sun remains below the horizon from November 7th to February 4th." This last item made our presence there, this late in the year, very odd indeed as Otto couldn't expect more than a few hours of daylight at the most: perhaps the script called for the whole story to be shot in darkness.

"Physical and geological," it went on, "Bear Island is triangular in shape with its apex to the south, being approximately twelve miles long on its north-south axis and in width varying from ten miles in the north to two miles in the south at the point where the southernmost peninsula begins.

Generally speaking the north and west consist of a fairly flat plateau at an elevation of about a hundred feel?, while the south and cast is mountainous, the two main complexes being the Misery Fell group in the east and the Antaretiefjell and its associated mountains, the Alfredfjcil, Hambergfiell, and Fuglefiell in the extreme southeast.

"There are no glaciers. The entire area is covered with a network of shallow lakes, none more than a few yards in depth: those account for about one-tenth of the total area of the island: the remainder of the interior of the island consists largely of icy swamps and loose scree which makes it extremely difficult to traverse.

"The coastline of Bear Island is regarded as perhaps the most inhospitably bleak in the world. This is especially true in the south where the island ends in vertical cliffs, the streams entering the sea by waterfalls. A characteristic feature of this area is the detached pillars of rock that stand in the sea close to the foot of the cliffs, remnants from that distant period when the island was considerably larger than it is now. The melting of the snows and ice in June/July, the powerful tidal streams and the massive erosion undermining those coastal hills so that large masses of rock are constantly falling into the sea. The great dolomite cliffs of Hambergfjcil drop sheer for over 1400 feet?: at their base, projecting from the seas are sharp needles of rock as much as 250 feet? high, while the Fuglefiell (Bird Fell) cliffs are almost as high and have at their most southerly point a remarkable series of high stacks, pinnacles, and arches. To the east of this point, between Kapp Bull and Kapp Kolthoff, is a bay surrounded on three sides by vertical cliffs which are nowhere less than 1000 feel? high.

"Those cliffs are the finest bird breeding grounds in the Northern Hemisphere."

It was all very fine for the birds, I supposed. That was the end of the Geographical Society's report-or as much of it as the writer had chosen to include-and I was bracing myself for a return to Heissman's limpid prose when the lee door opened and John Halliday staggered in. Halliday, the unit's highly competent stills photographer, was a dark, swarthy, taciturn, and unsmiling American. Even by his normal cheerless standards Halliday looked uncommonly glum. He caught sight of us and stood there uncertainly, holding the door open.

"I'm sorry." He made as if to go. "I didn't know-"

"Enter, enter," I said. "Things are not as they seem. What you see before you is a strictly doctor-patient relationship." He closed the" door and sat down morosely on the settee that Mary Stuart had so lately occupied.

"Insomnia?" I asked. "A touch of the mal demier?"

"Insomnia." He chewed dispiritedly on the wad of black tobacco that never seemed to leave his mouth. "The mal de mer's all Sandy's." Sandy, I knew, was his cabin-mate. True, Sandy hadn't been looking very bright when last I'd seen him in the galley but I'd attributed this to Haggerty's yearning to eviscerate him: at least it explained why he hadn't called in to see the Duke after he'd left us.

"Bit under the weather, is he?"

"Very much under the weather. Kind of a funny green colour and sick all over the damned carpet." Halliday wrinkled his nose. "The smell-"

"Mary." I shook her gently and she opened sleep-dulled eyes. "Sorry, I've got to go for a moment." She said nothing as I half-helped her to a sitting position, just glanced incuriously at Halliday and closed her eyes again.

I don't think he's all that bad," Halliday said. "Not poisoning or anything like that, I mean. I'm sure of it."

"No harm to take a look," I said. Halliday was probably right: on the other hand Sandy had had the freedom of the galley before Haggerty had caught him and with Sandy's prehensile and sticky fingers anything was conceivable, including the possibility that his appetite was not quite as birdlike as he claimed. I picked up my medical bag and left.

As Halliday had said, Sandy was of a rather peculiar greenish shade and he'd obviously been very sick indeed. He was sitting propped up in his bunk, with both forearms wrapped round his middle: he glared at me balefully as I entered.

"Christ, I'm dying," he wheezed. He swore briefly, pungently, and indiscriminately at life in general and Otto in particular. "Why that crazy bastard wants to drag us aboard this bloody old stinking hell ship-"

I gave him some sleeping sedatives and left. I was beginning to find Sandy a rather less than sympathetic character: more importantly, sufferers from aconitine poisoning couldn't speak far less indulge in the fluent Billingsgate in which Sandy was clearly so proficient. Swaying from side to side and again with her arms stretched out to support herself, Mary Stuart still had her eyes shut: Halliday, dejectedly chewing his wad of tobacco, looked up at me in lackadaisical half-enquiry as if he didn't much care whether Sandy was alive or dead.

"You're right," I said. "Just the weather." I sat down a little way from Mary Stuart and not as much as by a flicker of a closed eyelid did she acknowledge my presence. I shivered involuntarily and drew the steamer rug around me. I said: "It's getting a bit nippy in this saloon. Why don't you take one of these and kip down here?"

"No thanks. I'd no idea it would be so damn cold here. My blankets and pillow and it's me for the lounge." He smiled faintly. "Just as long as Lonnie doesn't trample all over me with his hobnailed boots in the middle watch." It was apparently common knowledge that the liquor in the lounge drew Lonnie like a lodestone. Halliday chewed some more then nodded at the bottle in Captain Imrie's wrought-iron stand. "You're a whisky man, Doe. That's the stuff to warm you up.)

"Agreed. But I'm a very choosy whisky man. What is it?"

Halliday peered. "Black Label."

"None better. But I'm a malt man myself. You're cold, you try some. It's on the house. Stole it from Otto."

"I'm not much of a one for Scotch. Now Bourbon-?'

"Corrodes the digestive tract. I speak as a medical man. Now, one sip of that stuff there and you'll swear off those lethal Kentucky brews forever . Go on. Try it."

Halliday looked at the bottle, as if uncertainly. I said to Mary Stuart: "How about you? just a little? You've no idea how it warms the cockles."

She opened her eyes and gave me that oddly expressionless look. "No thank you. I hardly ever drink." She closed her eyes again.

"The flaw that makes for perfection," I said absently, because my mind was on other things. Halliday wouldn't drink from that bottle, Mary Stuart wouldn't drink from that bottle, but Halliday seemed to think it was a good idea that I should. Had they both remained in their seats during my absence or had they been busy little bees, one keeping guard against my premature return while the other altered the character of the Black Label with ingredients not necessarily made in Scotland? Why else had Halliday come up to the saloon if not to lure me away? Why hadn't he gone direct to the lounge with blankets and pillow instead of wandering aimlessly up here to the saloon where he must have known from mealtimes that the temperature was considerably colder than it was down below?

Because, of course, before Mary Stuart had made her presence known to me here, she'd seen me through the outer windows and had reported to Halliday that a certain problem had arisen that could only be solved by bringing about my temporary absence from the saloon. Sandy's sickness had been a convenient Coincidence-if it had been a Coincidence, I suddenly thought: if Halliday was the person, or was in cahoots with the person who was so handy with poisons, then the introduction of some mildly emetic potion into Sandy's drink would have involved no more problem than that of opportunity. It all added up.

I became aware that Halliday was on his feet? and was lurching unsteadily in my direction, bottle in one hand and glass in the other: the bottle, I noticed almost mechanically, was about one third full. He halted, swaying, in front of me and poured a generous measure into the glass, bowed slightly, offered me the glass and smiled. "Maybe we're both on the hidebound and conservative side, Doe. In the words of the song, I will if you will so will I'

I smiled back. "Your willingness to experiment does you credit. But no thanks. I told you, I just don't like the stuff. I've tried it. Have you?"

"No, but I-"

"Well, how can you tell, then?"

I don't think-"

"You were going to try it anyway. Go on. Drink it."

Mary Stuart opened her eyes. "Do you always make people drink against their will? Is this what doctors do-force alcohol on those who don't want it?"

I felt like scowling and saying, `Why don't you shut up?" but instead I smiled and said: "Teetotal objections overruled."

"So what's the harm?" Halliday said. He had the glass to his lips. I stared at him until I remembered I shouldn't be staring which was all of a fraction of a second, smiled indulgently, glanced at Mary Stuart whose ever so slightly compressed lips registered no more than a trace of prudish disapproval, then looked back in time to see Halliday lowering his half empty glass.

"Not bad," he pronounced. "Not bad at all. Kind of a funny taste, though."

"You could be arrested in Scotland for saying that," I said mechanically. The villain had nonchalantly quaffed the hemlock while his accomplice had looked on with indifference. I felt very considerably diminished, a complete and utter idiot: as a detective, my inductive and deductive powers added up to zero. I even felt like apologising to them except that they wouldn't know what I was talking about.

"You may in fact be right, Doe, one could even get to like this stuff!'

Halliday topped up his glass, drank again, took the bottle across to its wrought-iron rest and resumed his former scat. He sat there silently for perhaps half a minute, finished off the Scotch with a couple of swallows and rose abruptly to his feet?. "With that lot inside me I can even ignore Lonnie's hobnails. Good night, all." He hurried from the saloon.

I looked at the doorway through which he had vanished, my mind thoughtful, my face not. I still didn't understand why he had come to the saloon in the first place: And what thought had so suddenly occurred to him to precipitate so abrupt a departure? An unprofitable line of thinking to pursue, I couldn't even find a starting point to begin theorising.

I looked at Mary Stuart and felt very guilty indeed: murderesses, I knew, came in all shapes, sizes, and guises but if they came in this particular guise then I could never trust my judgement again. I wondered what on earth could have led me to entertain so ludicrous a suspicion: I must be even more tired than I thought.

As if conscious of my gaze she opened her eyes and looked at me. She had this extraordinary ability to assume this still and wholly expressionless face but beneath this remoteness, this distance, this aloofness lay, I thought, a marked degree of vulnerability. Wishful thinking on my part, it was possible: but I was oddly certain it wasn't. Still without speaking, still without altering her expression or lack of it, she half-rose, hobbled awkwardly in her cocoon of steamer rugs and sat close beside me. In my best avuncular fashion I put my arm round her shoulders, but it didn't stay there for long for she took hold of my wrist and deliberately and without haste lifted my arm over the top of her head and pushed it clear of her. Just to show that doctors are superhuman and incapable of being offended by patients who aren't really responsible for their own behaviour I smiled at her. She smiled back at me and her eyes, I saw with an astonishment that I knew was not reflected in my face, were filled with unshed tears: almost as if she were aware of those tears and wished to hide them, she suddenly swung her legs up on the settee, turned towards me and got back to the short-range examination of my shirt front, only this time she put both her arms around me. As far as freedom of mobility was concerned I was as good as handcuffed, which was doubtless what she wanted anyway. That she harboured no lethal intent towards me I was sure: I was equally sure that she was determined not to let me out of her sight and that this was the most effective way she knew of doing just that. How much it cost that proud and lonely person to behave like this I couldn't guess: even less could I imagine what made her do it at all.

I sat there and tried to mull things over in my now thoroughly befogged mind and, predictably, made no progress whatsoever. Besides, my tired eyes were being almost hypnotised by the behaviour of the Scotch inside the Black Label bottle, with the almost metronomic regularity with which the liquid ascended and descended the opposite sides of the bottle in 0l response to the regular pitching of the Morning Rose. One thing led to another and I said: "Mary dear?"

"Yes?" She didn't turn her face up to look at me and I didn't have to be told why: the area around the level of my fourth shirt button was becoming noticeably damp.

I don't want to disturb you but it's time for my nightcap."

'Whisky?"

"Ah! Two hearts that beat as one."

"No." She tightened her arms.

'No?"

I hate the smell of whisky."

"I'm glad," I said sotto voce, "I'm not married to you."

"What was that?"

I said, "Yes, Mary dear."'

Five more minutes passed and I realised that my mind had closed down for the night. Idly I picked up the Olympus manifesto, read some rubbish about the sole completed copy of the screenplay being deposited in the vault of a London bank, and put it down again. Mary Stuart was breathing quietly and evenly and seemed to be asleep. I bent and blew lightly on the left eyelid which was about the only part of her face that I could see. It didn't quiver. She was asleep. I shifted my position experimentally, not much, and her arms automatically tightened round me, she'd clearly left a note to her subconscious before turning in for the night.

I resigned myself to remaining where I was, it wasn't a form of imprisonment that was likely to scar me permanently: I wondered vaguely whether the idea behind this silken incarceration was to prevent me from doing things or from chancing upon some other devilry that might well be afoot. I was too tired to care. I made up my mind just to sit there and keep a sleepless vigil until the morning came: I was asleep within not more than two minutes.

Mary Stuart was not and didn't look as if she was built along the lines of a coal-heaver but she wasn't stuffed with swansdown either for when I woke my left arm was asleep, wholly numb and almost useless, a realisation that was brought home to me when I had to reach across my right hand to lift up my left wrist to see what time the luminous hands of my watch said it was. They said it was 4:15.

It says much for my mental acuity that at least ten seconds elapsed before it occurred to me why it had been necessary for me to consult the luminous hands. Because it was dark, of course, but why was the saloon dark? Every light had been on when I'd gone to sleep. And what "had wakened me? Something had, I knew without knowing why that I hadn't wakened naturally but that there had been some external cause. What and where was the cause? A sound or a physical contact, it couldn't be anything else, and whoever was responsible for whatever it had been was still with me. He had to be, insufficient time had elapsed since I'd waked for him to have left the saloon: more importantly the hairs on the back of my neck told me there was another and inimical presence in the saloon with me.

Gently I took hold of Mary Stuart's wrists to ease her arms away. Again the resistance was automatic, hers was not a subconscious to go to sleep on the job, but I was in no mood to be baulked by any subconscious. I prised her arms free, slid along the settee, lowered her carefully to the horizontal, rose and moved out towards the middle of the saloon. I stood quite still, my hands grasping the edge of a table to brace my self, my breathing almost stopped as I listened intently. I could have spared myself the trouble. I was sure that the weather had moderated, not a great deal but enough to be just noticeable, since I'd gone to sleep, but it hadn't moderated to the extent where any stealthy movements-and I could expect none other-could possibly be heard above the sound of the wind and the seas, the metallic creakings and groanings of the ancient plates and rivets of the Morning Rose.

The nearest set of light switches-there was a duplicate set by the stewards " pantry-was by the lee door. I took one step in the remembered direction then stopped. Did the presence in the room know that I was awake and on my feel? Were his eyes more attuned to the darkness than my newly opened ones? Could he dimly discern my figure? Would he guess that my first move would be towards the switches and was he preparing to block my way? If he were, how would he block my way? Would he be carrying a weapon and what kind of weapon-I was acutely aware that all I had were two hands, the left one still a fairly useless lump of tingling pins and needles. I stopped, irresolute.

I heard the metallic click of a door handle and a gust of icy air struck me: the presence was leaving by the lee door. I reached the door in four steps, stepped outside on to the deck, flung up an instinctively protective right forearm as a bright light abruptly struck my eyes and immediately wished I had used my left forearm instead for then it might have offered me some measure of protection against something hard, heavy, and very solid that connected forcibly and painfully with the left side of my neck. I clung to the outside edge of the door to support myself but I didn't seem to have much strength left in my hands: and I seemed to have none at all in my legs for although I remained quite conscious I sank to the deck as if my legs had been filleted: by the time the momentary paralysis had passed and I was able to use the support of the door to drag myself shakily to my feel?, I was alone on the deck. I had no idea where my assailant had gone and the matter was one of only academic interest, my legs could barely cope with supporting my weight in a static go position: even the thought of running or negotiating ladders and companionways at speed was preposterous.

Still clinging to whatever support was at hand I stepped back into the saloon, fumbled the lights on and pulled the lee door closed behind me.

Mary Stuart was propped on an elbow, the heel of one palm rubbing an eye while the lid of the other was half-open in the fashion of a person just rousing from a very deep or drugged sleep. I looked away, stumbled towards Captain Imrie's table and sat down heavily in his chair. I lifted the bottle of Black Label from its stand. It was half-full. For what seemed quite a long time but could have been no more than seconds I stared at this bottle, not seeing it, then looked away to locate the glass that Halliday had been using. It was nowhere to be seen, it could have fallen and rolled out of sight in a dozen different directions. I selected another glass from the table rack, splashed some Scotch into it, drank it and made my way back to my seat. My neck felt awful. One good shake of my head and it would fall off.

"Don't breathe through your nose," I said, "and you'll hardly smell the demon drink at all." I propped her up to a sitting position, rearranged her rugs and forestalled her by, for a change, putting my arms around her. I said: "There now."

"What was it? What happened?" Her voice was low and had a shake to it.

"Just the door. Wind blew it open. Had to close it, that's all."

"But the lights were off."

I put them off. just after you'd gone to sleep."

She wriggled an arm free from the blankets and gently touched the side of my neck.

"It's colouring already," she whispered. "It's going to be a huge ugly bruise. And it's bleeding." I reached up with my handkerchief and she wasn't making any mistake: I stuffed my handkerchief into my collar and left it there. She went on in the same little voice: "flow did it happen?"

"One of those stupid things. I slipped on the snow and struck my neck on the storm sill of the door. Does ache a bit, I must say."

She didn't answer. She freed her other arm, caught me by both lapels, stared at me with a face full of misery and put her forehead on my shoulder. Now it was my collar's turn to become damp. It was the most extraordinary behaviour for a wardress-that her function was to keep tabs on and effectively immobilise me I was increasingly sure-but, then, she was the most extraordinary wardress I'd ever come across. And the nicest. Dr. Marlowe, I said, the lady is in distress and you are but human. I let my suspicions take five and stroked the tangled yellow hair. I'd been led to believe, I forgot by what or by whom, that nothing was as conducive to the calming of upset feminine feelings as that soothing gesture: only seconds later I was wondering where I'd picked up this piece of obviously blatant misinformation for she suddenly pushed herself upright and struck me twice on the shoulder with the base of her clenched left fist. I was more than ever convinced that she wasn't made of swansdown.

"Don't do that," she said. "Don't do that."

"All right," I said agreeably. I won't do that. I'm sorry."

"No, no, please! I'm sorry. I don't know what made me-I really-" She stopped speaking although her lips kept on moving and stared at me with tear-filled eyes, the no longer beautiful face defenceless and defeated and full of despair: it made me feel acutely uncomfortable for I do not like to see proud and self-contained people thus reduced. There was a quick indrawing of breath then, astonishingly, she had her arms wound round my neck and so tightly that it would appear that she was bent upon my instant asphyxiation. She wept in silence, her shoulders shaking.

Splendidly done, I thought approvingly, quite splendidly done. Irrespective of for whose benefit it might be-'and then I despised myself for my cynicism. Quite apart from the fact that her acknowledged limitations as an actress put such a performance out of the question I was convinced, without knowing why I was convinced, that what I was seeing was genuine uninhibited emotion. And what on earth had she to gain by pretending to lower her defences in front of me?

For whom, then, the tears? Not for me, of that I was certain, why in the world for me: I scarcely knew her, she scarcely knew me, I was only a shoulder to cry on, likely enough I was only a doctor's shoulder to cry on, people have the oddest misconceptions about doctors and maybe their shoulders are regarded as being more reliable and comforting than the average. Or more absorbent. Nor were the tears for herself, I was equally certain of that, to survive, intact, the kind of upbringing shed hinted she'd had, one had to be possessed of an unusual degree of self-reliance and mental toughness that almost automatically excluded considerations of self-pity. So for whom, then, the tears?

I didn't know and, at that moment, I hardly cared. In normal circumstances and with no other matter so significantly important as to engage my attention, so lovely a girl in such obvious distress would have had my complete and undivided concern, but the circumstances were abnormal and my thoughts were elsewhere engaged with an intensity that made Mary Stuart's odd behaviour seem relatively unimportant.

I couldn't keep my eyes from the bottle of Scotch by the captain's table.

When Halliday had had, at my insistence as I now bitterly recalled, his first drink, the bottle had been about a third full: after his second drink it had been about a quarter full: and now it was half full. The quiet and violent man who had so recently switched off the lights and moved through the saloon had switched bottles and, for good measure, had removed the glass that Halliday had used. Mary Stuart said something, her voice so muffled and indistinct that I couldn't make it out: what with salt tears and salt blood this night's work was going to cost me a new shirt. I said: "What?"

She moved her head, enough to enable her to speak more clearly, but not enough to let me see her face.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I was such a fool. Will you forgive me?"

I squeezed her shoulder in what was more or less an automatic gesture, my eyes and my thoughts were still on that bottle, but she seemed to take it as sufficient answer. She said hesitantly: "Are you going to sleep again?" She hadn't stopped being as foolish as she thought: or perhaps she wasn't being foolish at all.

"No, Mary dear, I'm not going to sleep again." Whatever tone of firm resolution my tone carried, it was superfluous: the throbbing pain in my neck was sufficient guarantee of my wakefulness.

"Well, that's all right then." I didn't ask what this cryptic remark was intended to convey. Physically, we couldn't have been closer but mentally I was no longer with her. I was with Halliday, the man whom I had thought had come to kill me, the man I'd practically forced to have a drink, the man who'd drunk what had been intended for me.

I knew I would never see him again. Not alive.