The match I’d left jammed between the foot of my cabin door and the sill had no longer been in position when I’d returned to my cabin early in the morning. The Coins I’d left in the linen pockets of the lids of my suitcases had shifted position from the front to the back of the pockets, sure evidence that my cases had been opened in my absence. It says much for my frame of mind that the discovery occasioned me no particular surprise-which was in itself surprising, for although someone aboard was aware that the good doctor had been boning up on aconitine and so had more than a fair idea that the poisoning had not been accidental, that in itself was hardly reason to start examining the doctor’s hand luggage. More than ever, it behooved me to watch my back.
I heard a sound behind my back. My instinctive reaction was to take a couple of rapid steps forward, who knew what hard or sharp implement might be coming at my occiput or shoulder blades, then whirl round, but a simultaneous reasoning told me that it was unlikely that anyone would propose to do me in on the upper deck in daylight under the interested gaze of watchers on the bridge, so I turned round leisurely and saw Charles Conrad moving into what little shelter was offered in the lee of the bulk deck cargo.
“What’s this, then?” I said. “The morning constitutional at all costs? Or don’t you fancy Captain Imrie’s Scotch?”
“Neither.” He smiled. “Curiosity, is all.” He tapped the tarpaulin covered bulk beside us. It was close on ten feetin height, semicylindrical–the base was flat–and was lashed in position by at least a dozen steel cables. “Do you know what this is?”
“Is this a clever question?”
“Yes.”
“Prefabricated Arcticised buts. Or so the word went in Wick. Six of them, designed to fit one inside the other for ease of transportation.”
“That’s it. Made of bonded ply, kapok insulation, asbestos, and aluminium.” He pointed to another bulky item of deck cargo immediately foreword of the one behind which we were sheltering. This peculiarly shaped object appeared to be roughly oval along its length, perhaps six feet high. “And this?”
“Another clever question?”
“Of course.”
.And my answer will be wrong? Again?”
“If you still believe what you were told in Wick, yes. Those aren’t huts because we don’t need huts. We’re heading for an area called the SorHamna-the South Haven-where there already are huts, and perfectly usable ones. Bloke called Lerner came there seventy years ago, prospecting for coal-which he found, by the way: a bit of an odd-ball who painted the rocks on the shore in the German national colours to indicate that this was private property. He built huts-he even built a road across the headland to the nearest bay, the Kvalross Bukta or Walrus Bay. After him a German fishing company based themselves here-and they built huts. More importantly, a Norwegian scientific expedition spent nine months here during the most recent International Geophysical Year and they built huts. Whatever else is lacking at South Haven it’s not accommodation.”
“You’re very well informed.”
“I don’t forget something that I finished reading only half an hour ago. Comin” and Goin’s been making the rounds this morning handing out copies of the prospectus of what’s going to be the greatest film ever made. Didn’t you get one from him?”
“Yes. He forgot to give me a dictionary, though.”
“A dictionary would have helped.” He tapped the tarpaulin “beside us. This is a mock-up of the central section of a submarine-just a shell, nothing inside it. When I say it’s a mock-up, I don’t mean it’s made of cardboard–it’s made of steel and weighs ten tons, including four tons of iron ballast. That other item in front is a conning tower which is to be bolted onto this once it’s in the water.”
“Ah!” I said because I couldn’t think of any other comment. “And those alleged tractors and drums of fuel on the afterdeck–they’ll be tanks and antiaircraft guns?”
“’Tractors and fuel, as stated.” He paused. “Do you know there’s only one copy of the screenplay for this film and that that’s locked up in the Bank of England or some such?”
“I went to sleep about that bit.”
“They haven’t even got a shooting script for the scenes to be shot on the island. Just a series of unrelated incidents which taken together make no sense at all. Sure, there must be connecting links to make sense of it all: but they’re all in the vaults in Threadneedle Street or wherever this damned bank is. No part of it makes sense.”
“Maybe it’s not meant to make sense.” I was conscious that my feet were slowly turning into blocks of ice. “Not at this stage. There may be excellent reasons for the secretiveness. Besides, don’t some producers encourage directors who play it off the cuff, who improvise as they go along and as the mood takes them?”
“Not Neal Divine. He’s never shot an off-the-cuff scene in his life.” Not much of Conrad’s forehead was to be seen beneath the thick brown hair that the snow and wind had brought down almost to eyebrow level, but what little was visible was very heavily corrugated indeed. If a Divine shooting script calls for you to be wearing a bowler hat and doing the can-can in Scene 289, then you’re doing a bowler-hatted can-can in 289. As for Otto, he never moves until everything’s calculated out to the last matchstick and the last penny. Especially the last penny.”
“He has the reputation for being a little careful.”
“Careful!” Conrad shivered. “Doesn’t the whole set-up strike you as being crazy?”
“The entire film world,” I said candidly, “strikes me as being crazy, but as an ordinary human being being exposed to it for the first time I wouldn’t know whether this current particular brand of craziness differs from the norm or not. What do your fellow actors think of it?”
“What fellow actors?” Conrad said glumly. “Judith Haynes is still closeted with those two pooches of hers. Mary Stuart is writing letters in her cabin, at least she says it’s letters, it’s probably her last will and testament. And if Gunther Jungbeck and Jon Heyter have any opinion on everything they’re carefully keeping it to themselves. Anyway, they are a couple of odd-balls themselves.”
“Even for actors?”
“Touche.” He smiled, but he wasn’t trying too hard. “Sea burials bring out the misanthrope in me. No, it’s just that they know so little about the Elm world, at least the British film world, understandable enough I suppose, Heyter’s done all his acting in California, Jungbeck in Germany. They’re not odd, really, it’s just that we have nothing in common to talk about, no points of reference.”
“But you must know of them?”
“Not even that, but that’s not surprising, I like acting but the film world bores me to tears and I don’t mix socially. That makes me an odd-ball too. But Otto vouches for them-in fact, he speaks pretty highly of them, and that’s good enough for me. They’ll both probably act me off the screen when it comes to the bit.” He shivered again. “Conrad’s curiosity remains unsatisfied, but Conrad has had enough. As a doctor wouldn’t you prescribe some of this Scotch which old Imrie is supposed to be dispensing so liberally?”
We found Captain Imrie dispensing the Scotch with so heavy a hand that plainly it came from his own private supplies and not from Otto’s, for Otto, heavily wrapped in a coloured blanket and with his puce complexion still a pale shadow of its former self, was sitting in his accustomed dining chair and raising no objections that I could see. There must have been at least twenty people present, ship’s crew and passengers, and they were very far indeed from being a merry throng. I was surprised to see Judith Haynes there with her husband, Michael Stryker, hovering attentively over her. I was surprised to see Mary Darling there, her sense of duty or what was the done thing must have been greater than her aversion to alcohol, and was even more surprised to note that she had so abandoned all sense of the priorities as to be holding young Allen by the arm in a positively proprietorial fashion: I was not surprised to see that Mary Stuart was absent. So were Heissman and Sandy. The two actors with whom Conrad claimed to have so little in common, Jungbeck and Heyter, were together in one corner and for the first time I looked at them with some degree of real interest. They looked like actors, no question of that, or, more accurately, they looked like what I thought actors ought to look like. Heyter was tall, fair, good-looking, young, and twenty years ago would have been referred to as clean-cut: he had a mobile, expressive, animated face. Jungbeck was at least fifteen years his senior, a thick-set man with heavy shoulders, a five o’clock shadow and dark, curling hair just beginning to grey: he had a ready engaging smile. He was cast, I knew, as the villain in the forthcoming production and despite the appropriate build and blue jowls didn’t look the least bit like one.