The Twenty-Third Man Read online

  ‘I am interested in all wild life,’ Dame Beatrice cautiously replied.

  ‘Field-glasses?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Do you possess field-glasses?’

  ‘Certainly I do.’

  ‘Oh, good. Then you won’t need to borrow the club ones. I like to lend those to the natives. You would be surprised at the interest they take.’

  ‘In watching birds?’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘David watched Bathsheba, you know.’

  ‘Really!’ said the fanatic. ‘What an idea!’ Dame Beatrice gazed at her retreating, upright, narrow back with an indulgent leer.

  Just as she was finishing her coffee, a rotund man, with china-blue eyes and the complexion of mahogany furniture, put a tall glass and a bottle of tonic-water on her table and seated himself beside her.

  ‘Introducing Daniel Nathaniel Snodgrass,’ he said jovially. ‘A poor pseudonym, madam, but mine own. Actually, my name is Peterhouse, and my motto is that we British should stick together.’

  ‘Laudable, but unfortunately I am not British,’ said Dame Beatrice, summing him up as mentally unsound.

  ‘But – the hotel register?’

  ‘Oh, that!’ She dismissed it with a wave of her yellow claw. ‘I mean, I am not British in the matter of sticking together. I am, to borrow a word, an isolationist.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Mr Peterhouse, conceding the point almost contemptuously, ‘so am I, in my own way, of course. That is to say, I am a botanist.’

  ‘This island surely must give you scope.’

  ‘Oh, it does! Orchids, for instance. I have sent to Kew Gardens several specimens for which they themselves have had to find names.’

  ‘That is indeed a wonderful achievement, but is not an exploration of the island fraught with danger to life and limb?’

  ‘To both, I can assure you. Ravines, crevasses, caverns, mountain fastnesses – I have explored them all. The trouble, of course, is Tio Caballo.’

  ‘A local landowner?’ (Not that ‘Uncle Horse’ sounded a likely name for a feudal lord, she thought.)

  ‘A local brigand, madam. Twice have I lighted upon his hide-outs. Once, when I was in pursuit of Cavernus epiglottis, whose antecedents are found only in New Mexico, as you probably know, I stumbled upon Caballo and his band and was held to ransom. The fact that I had no money but was carrying a case of rather strong cigars of local manufacture won me my freedom. I also had to promise to pray for Caballo’s soul. He is a deeply religious man and risks getting into trouble by sneaking into the Cathedral to hear Mass. I was able to redeem my promise by proxy. A small donation secured the services of Brother Pedro-Maria, a fellow botanist, who lives in the monastery at Puerto Santo, a few miles up the coast, and he took care of the matter for me.’

  Dame Beatrice nodded genially.

  ‘And your second adventure?’ she asked.

  ‘Not quite so happy. Caballo and half the band – they number eight or nine men – were off on some, no doubt, illegal errand, and I rounded a bluff high up in the mountains to run into his lieutenant, José el Lupe. José, not a bad fellow in his way, had need of a disguise so that he could visit his girl friend here in Reales. When he is rich enough they will marry. He took my clothes and lent me some of his, not that we are anything of the same build, but I would not have offered any criticism of the arrangement except that his garments were verminous. I ventured to point this out. The Spanish for lice is piojos. José was most amused.’

  ‘I begin to see what your motto involves. All Britons on this island should stick together. With a posse of clean-limbed Englishmen at your back you could penetrate the territory of Tio Caballo without fear of reprisals or the necessity for prayers. What about forming a club and lending the members field-glasses so that they could espy the bandits from afar?’

  ‘That woman is mad,’ said Mr Peterhouse solemnly. ‘I hope she hasn’t been pestering you? She always waylays people who are fresh to the hotel. She’s a menace. Of course,’ he added hurriedly, as he caught Dame Beatrice’s eye, ‘we do lead rather a dull life here, in a way, so far as the hotel is concerned. One does rather like to see new faces. Are you staying here long?’

  ‘A month at least – until the next ship calls, you know. Longer than that if I like it.’

  ‘Do you play bridge?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I advise you to begin. There’s nothing to do here in the evening except to play bridge.’

  ‘Then I shall do nothing in the evenings.’ She nodded, put down her cup and strolled out. ‘Cavernus epiglottis?’ she thought. ‘How ridiculous!’

  By three o’clock in the afternoon she was sitting in brilliant sunshine watching the lizards. The heat was intense, but, like the lizards themselves, Dame Beatrice appeared to thrive on it. She saw several saurians, some of European-Mediterranean, some of North African type, and there was one fine creature, twenty inches long, who lay sunning himself for half an hour or more, his throat pulsating and his reptilian eyes fixed (she felt certain) on her own.

  ‘Locerta simonyi,’ said Dame Beatrice, addressing him affectionately, ‘I wonder what brought you to the Island of Dead Men? You are not indigenous here.’

  ‘Not what. Who,’ stated a voice behind her; and a very handsome man, wearing the kind of linen shirt, shapeless drawers and thin, worn blanket which the island peasants affected, seated himself beside her. ‘It was I, Karl Emden, who introduced Locerta simonyi to this island. He, like Beelzebub, is the Lord of Flies. You are staying with us at the Sombrero, I believe?’

  ‘Yes, I am spending a holiday here.’

  ‘I have lived here for two months. Delightful place! I saw you sitting in the lounge drinking coffee. I wouldn’t encourage Mrs Bluetit Angel, if I were you. She’s mad. Did she talk about birds? It’s her only subject, so she’s certain to have got on it. Charlie Peterhouse, too, the silly old pest. He collects plants. Did he try to get you to play bridge? He’s the biggest cheat on the island. You don’t want to get into any set where he manipulates the cards. Have you met Ruiz yet? If not, you will. He’s a bit of a bore, actually. Got a son doing well in South America. Ruiz is all right, I suppose, but to listen to him you’d think he was lord of this island. Oh, you’ll find them all out in time. Luisa, now, his daughter. She acts as book-keeper, so watch your bill when you get it. Are many people staying off for a holiday? I wasn’t in to lunch. Amaryllis – the current issue, don’t you know – kept me busy, so we had a snack and a drink at Puerto del Sol, down the coast. Pretty little place. You ought to go and see it while you’re here.’

  ‘I expect I shall, if it is worth a visit. I am here for a rest as much as anything.’

  He surveyed her spare, upright figure quizzically.

  ‘You don’t look like one who has much use for rest,’ he said. ‘You look very much on the alert. I suppose you’ve been a professional woman of some sort?’

  ‘I still am, I hope. I am a psychiatrist.’

  ‘Good Lord! Just the woman! I could do with a check-up. Do you care to have a patient? I don’t think I’m bats, or have suicidal tendencies, or a split personality, but I’m exercised in my mind and I’d like to confide in the right sort of person. The right sort of person would seem to be an elderly lady – men don’t like me, for some reason. Don Juan is seldom popular with his own sex. Jealousy, I suppose.’

  ‘I must interrupt you,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I am here on holiday. Your complexes and difficulties must be taken elsewhere.’

  ‘Yes, but you don’t know what my difficulties are. I’ve only one, actually. It’s concerned with murder.’

  ‘Have you committed murder?’

  ‘No, of course not. Never mind. Tell me about the other people who are stopping off. I’m told that we generally get half a dozen or more at this time of year.’

  ‘I know only of three, apart from myself.’

  ‘Are they all three together?’ His voice was strangely eager.
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  ‘I hardly think so. There is a young man named Clun who seems to have been released from prison very recently.’

  ‘Prison? What had he done?’

  ‘He had slaughtered a man.’

  ‘Murdered him? My God!’

  ‘No. He “hit him a bit too hard”, to employ his own euphemism. Then there are a brother and sister. He is in a highly nervous state, it seems, and she is recently widowed. A very beautiful young woman, passionate, if I judge aright, but apparently self-controlled. It is a self-control which could easily snap, I feel. Her name is Lockerby.’

  ‘And nobody else stopped off?’

  ‘I think there is nobody else.’

  ‘My God!’ said the young man again. ‘What a collection! And you’re all staying at least a month, until the next ship calls, of course?’

  ‘There is an airfield, is there not, on the island?’

  ‘Yes, a tiny one. There’s not much flat land here, as you can imagine. So you think you might fly home, do you? And what about the other three, I wonder?’

  ‘I have no idea. My plan was to stay a month at least. I do not much care for flying. I greatly prefer the sea.’

  ‘I’ve no money. That’s my trouble,’ said the young man. ‘If I had, I’d leave here tomorrow. You’re not thinking of coming back to the hotel yet, I suppose?’

  ‘I am thinking of logger-headed turtles, skinks, geckos, and eels,’ responded Dame Beatrice, transferring her attention to an attractive, bright-green lizard some seven inches long which was flicking its tongue in and out and appeared to be smiling. ‘I think I’ll go down to the beach.’

  The path was a broad walk broken every twenty yards or so by flights of steps. After the tropical luxuriance of the hotel gardens, where grew date palms and oranges, flowering shrubs, and ferns as tall as trees, the path, which was bordered by castor-oil plants, aloes, and the prickly pear, was arid and very dusty. At one of the hairpin bends a primitive sort of man came into view. He was watering the path from a goatskin, but when she reached the beach she might have been on the Riviera. She found a chair which was not shaded by a striped umbrella, and sat in the sun for an hour watching the bathers and the sun-bathers, until Caroline Lockerby, in a short, elegant wrap of orange and white towelling, open down the front to show the briefest of bathing costumes, came and sat on the sand beside her.

  ‘I can’t get Telham to come out of the water,’ she said, ‘and I’m dying for a cup of tea. Do come back to the hotel and let’s have it on the terrace. I’m sorry about lunch,’ she went on, as they climbed towards the shady gardens, ‘but, if I tell you the circumstances, you’ll probably understand. What have you been doing with yourself?’

  ‘I met one of the hotel inhabitants who appears to have gone native,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘He was asking all about the new arrivals at the hotel. I don’t think he found my descriptions interesting.’

  They climbed to the terrace and sat down. Below them the mountainous coast, bent like a friendly arm around the bay, stretched to the shadowy distance. To the right the Mole, the shape of a dog’s hind leg, separated Puerto de Reales from the tree-lined Avenida Maritima, a newly constructed road which had become a favourite promenade for the townspeople when the heat of the day was over. Far away, but easily distinguishable because of its height and the everlasting snow on its mountain summit, towered Santa Maria de Nieves. It had always been regarded as sacred by the natives of Hombres Muertos and had been dedicated by the Spaniards to Our Lady of Snows. From where they sat, Monte Negro, with its cave of dead men, was not visible.

  ‘It is a beautiful place,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I’m very sorry Laura couldn’t come.’

  ‘Laura? Your daughter?’

  ‘My secretary. I am the personification of Macbeth’s wish for Lady Macbeth – I bring forth men children only. Laura is no luckier. She has just had a boy. I remained in England long enough to stand godmother and then I came here to muse upon the mutability of secretaries and the tendency of young women to substitute husband and baby for the services of morbid psychology.’

  ‘Morbid psychology?’ Caroline suddenly stiffened. ‘Could you cure Telham?’ she asked.

  ‘Cure him?’

  ‘Take him out of himself. You saw what he was like at lunch. He was there when Ian was killed. He doesn’t get over it. That’s why I want to talk to you. What happened was fairly beastly. Ian was my husband. Well, they were out together one night, coming home from a rather vulgar pub-crawl. They got mixed up with some louts in a street fight. I don’t know how it began. Telham ran away, but Ian, who was always hot-tempered, stood his ground. Telham felt ashamed after a bit, and went back. Ian was dead. Somebody had – what they call “attended to” him. I wasn’t allowed to see the body. His father identified him at the inquest. The police couldn’t find any evidence. There were no witnesses – at least, no one came forward, and Telham wasn’t able to describe any of the youths well enough to be much help. I ought to tell you that I was almost through with Ian, but, all the same, it was a rotten way for him to finish up. Telham can’t forgive himself. That’s why he reacted as he did when that awful young man talked about hitting too hard and not knowing his own strength. Telham’s quite raw inside. It’s driving him mad to think he ran away and left Ian to face it all.’

  ‘Remorse acts like that,’ said Dame Beatrice. There was a pause. ‘I couldn’t treat him without his consent and cooperation, you know,’ she added in a tone of finality.

  ‘It’s not as though he could have done anything if he had stuck by Ian,’ said Caroline angrily. ‘He’d have been killed, too – or maimed for life – and where’s the sense in that?’

  There was another short pause. Caroline looked defiant, as though she sensed disapproval in the air. But Dame Beatrice expressed nothing of that kind. She said:

  ‘But isn’t he maimed for life now? I don’t think any treatment could restore his peace of mind. A woman may be able to forgive herself for cowardice, but I do not believe it of a man.’

  ‘But think of all the people who have shown fear, and then gone back and won the V.C. and things like that!’

  Dame Beatrice looked at her with sharp interest.

  ‘Um – yes,’ she said, very doubtfully.

  ‘But Telham went back!’ said Caroline wildly. ‘I tell you he did go back to help Ian!’

  ‘I can do nothing to help him.’

  ‘But why not?’

  ‘I should find out all the wrong things.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean!’

  ‘Neither do I, my dear. You are very fond of your brother, are you not?’

  ‘We’re very fond of one another. I almost brought him up, although there are only four years between us. I was fourteen when my mother died. Telham was too young to lose his mother at ten years old.’

  ‘I agree. I also see a waiter who is coming to provide us with tea.’

  The waiter, a thin young man with melancholy eyes, came up and solicited their order.

  ‘China tea. Nothing more,’ said Dame Beatrice. Caroline involved herself in a lengthy speech in Castilian Spanish. The waiter looked perplexed and returned with the usual set tea.

  ‘I don’t want it,’ said Caroline, when the waiter had left them. ‘Oh, dear! What on earth am I going to do?’

  ‘Don’t eat it,’ said Dame Beatrice; she spoke lightly, knowing perfectly well that Caroline was not referring to the over-sweet cakes and poisonous-looking sandwiches, but to the morbid preoccupations of Telham. ‘Please believe me’, she went on in a different tone, ‘when I insist that there is nothing I can do for your brother.’

  ‘You mean his case is hopeless?’ Caroline poured out tea for them both and avoided Dame Beatrice’s eye.

  ‘I do not regard him as a case, otherwise I would do as you wish.’

  ‘He’s in hell,’ said Caroline, ‘and you refuse to do anything to help him!’

  ‘It does not seem to me a task for laymen. Tell him to go to a priest.’r />
  ‘We have no religion, I’m thankful to say!’

  With this, Caroline got up abruptly and went into the hotel. Dame Beatrice poured herself out a second cup of tea, and added a thin slice of lemon. She had just taken a refreshing sip – it was very good tea, for Ruiz understood his English guests – when she was joined by a young American girl who was visiting the island with her father.

  ‘I have never’, said the new arrival, ‘gotten around to the English theory that tea is a social vehicle. No, sir. I guess the Boston Tea Party settled for me in this respect.’

  ‘Speak English, sit down, and help me dispose of these revolting sandwiches,’ said Dame Beatrice.

  ‘Sure. I guess you are the Dame Beatrice Bradley. I’ve read your books. I’m just mad about psychiatry. Could I trouble you to sign my book? I’d appreciate it very much if you would.’

  ‘With pleasure. Tell me, what do you make of a man staying in the hotel who wears peasant costume and is extremely handsome?’

  ‘He’s a wolf.’

  ‘By that I am to understand –?’

  ‘Nobody’s safe when that guy Karl Emden is around. He’s as fresh as they come. Ask me; ask Luisa Ruiz; ask Pilar, the room-maid. One thing: he’s quitting the hotel pretty soon, or so I hear.’

  ‘Quitting the hotel?’

  ‘Going to get him an apartment in a cave. There’s a big troglodyte community in the foothills of Santa Maria de Nieves. He’s going there to get local colour, and I sure hope it’s a black eye.’

  ‘Dear me! You sound very vindictive!’

  ‘Sure am. Not that I can’t take care of myself, but it does make me real sore when these heels take it for granted every girl they meet is going to fall for them. As I say, he’s even dunked a doughnut with Luisa Ruiz, and she’s no film star. I guess old Papa Ruiz has chucked him out of the hotel, and that’s why he says he’s leaving.’