I leaned more closely to the crack between door and jamb. It wasn’t every day one had the opportunity to listen to those family tete-e-tetes.
“By God, and I’ll not have my own daughter cross me.” Otto had forgotten the need to talk in a low voice. “I’ve put up with more than enough from you and that other idle worthless bastard of a blackmailer. What did you–”
“You dare to talk of Michael like that?” Her voice had gone very quiet and I shivered involuntarily at the sound of it. “You talk of him like that and he’s lying dead. Murdered. My husband. Well, Father dear. can I tell you about something you don’t know that I know he was blackmailing you with. Shall I, Father dear? And shall I tell it to Johann Heissman, too?”
There was a silence, then Otto said: “You venomous little bitch!” He sounded as if he was trying to choke himself.
“Wenomous! Venomous!” She laughed, a cracked and chilling sound. “Coming from you, that’s rich. Come now, Daddy dear, surely you remember I938-why, even I can remember it. Poor old Johann, he ran, and ran, and ran, and all the time he ran the wrong way. Poor Uncle Johann. That’s what you taught me to call him then, wasn’t it, Daddy dear? Uncle Johann.”
I left, not because I had heard all that I wanted to hear but because I thought that this was a conversation that was not going to last very long and I could foresee a degree of awkwardness arising if Otto caught me outside his daughter’s door a second time. Besides-I checked the timeJungbeck, Otto’s watchmate, was due to make his appearance just at that moment and I didn’t want him to find me where I was and, very likely, lose no time in telling his boss about it. So I returned to Luke, decided that there was no point in awakening him only to tell him to go to sleep again, poured myself a sort of morning nightcap and was about to savour it when I heard a feminine voice scream “Get out, get out, get out” and saw Otto emerging hurriedly from his daughter’s cubicle and as hurriedly close the door behind him. He waddled swiftly into the middle of the cabin, seized the whisky bottle without as much as by-your-leave-true, it was his own, but he didn’t know tbat-poured himself a brimming measure and downed half of it at a gulp, his shaking hand spilling a fair proportion of it on the way up to his mouth.
“That was very thoughtless of you, Mr. Gerran,” I said reproachfully. Upsetting your daughter like that. She’s really a very sick girl and what she needs is tender affection, a measure of loving care.”
“Tender affection!” He was on the second half of his glass now and he splattered much of it over his shirt front. “Loving care! Jesus!” He splashed some more Scotch into his glass and gradually subsided a little. By and by he became calm, almost thoughtful: when he spoke no one would have thought that only a few minutes previously his greatest yearning in life would have been to disembowel me. “Maybe I wasn’t as thoughtful as I ought to have been. But an hysterical girl, very hysterical. This actress temperament, you know. I’m afraid your sedatives aren’t very effective, Dr. Marlowe.”
“People’s reactions to sedatives vary greatly, Mr. Gerran. And unpredictably.”
“I’m not blaming you, not blaming you,” he said irritatedly. “Care and attention. Yes, yes. But sonic rest, a damned good sleep is more important, if you ask me. Hem, about another sedative-a more effective one this time? No danger in that, is there?”
“No. No harm in it. She did sound a bit-what shall we say-worked up. But she’s rather a self-willed person. If she refuses-”
“Ha! Self-willed! Try anyway.” He seemed to lose interest in the subject and gazed moodily at the floor. He looked up without any enthusiasm as Jungbeck made a sleepy entrance, turned and shook Luke roughly by the shoulder. “Wake up, man.” Luke stirred and opened bleary eyes. “Bloody fine guard you are. Your watch is over. Go to bed.” Luke mumbled some sort of apology, rose stiffly and moved off.
“You might have let him be,” I said. “He’ll have to get up for the day inside a few hours anyway.”
“Too late now. Besides,” Otto added inconsequentially, “I’m going to have the lot of them up inside two hours. Weather’s cleared, there’s a moon to travel by, we can all be where we want to be and ready to shoot as soon as there’s enough light in the sky.” He glanced along the corridor where his daughter’s cubicle was. “Well, aren’t you going to try?”
I nodded and left. Ten minutes” time-in the right circumstances which in this case were the wrong ones-can bring about a change in a person’s features which lies just within the bounds of credibility. The face that had looked merely drawn so very recently, now looked haggard: she looked her real age and then ten hard and bitter years after that. She wept in a sore and aching silence and the tears flowed steadily down her temples and past the carlobes, the damp marks spreading on the grey rough linen of her pillow. I would not have thought it possible that I could ever feel such deep pity for this person and wish to comfort her: but that was how it was. I said: I think you should sleep now.”
“Why?” Her hands were clenched so tightly that the ivory of the knuckles showed. “What does it matter? I’ll have to wake up, won’t l?”
“Yes, I know.” It was the sort of situation where, no matter what I said, the words would sound banal. “But the sleep would do you good, Miss Haynes.”
“Well, yes,” she said. It was hard for her to speak through the quiet tears. “All right. Make it a long sleep.”
So, like a fool, I made it a long sleep. Like an even greater fool I went to my cubicle and lay down. And, like the greatest fool of all, I went to sleep myself.
#
I slept for over four hours and awoke to an almost deserted cabin. Otto had indeed been as good as his word and had had everyone up and around at what they must have regarded as the most unreasonable crack of dawn. Understandably enough, neither he nor anyone else had seen fit to wake me: I was one of the few who had no functions to perform that day.
Otto and Conrad were the only two people in the main quarter of the cabin. Both were drinking coffee but as both were heavily muffled they were clearly on the point of departure. Conrad said a civil good morning. Otto didn’t bother. He informed me that the Count, Neal. Divine, Allen, Cecil, and Nary Darling had taken off. with the Sno-Cat and cameras along Lerner’s Way and that he and Conrad were following immediately. Hendriks and the Three Apostles were abroad with their sound recording equipment. Smithy and Heyter had left over an hour previously for Tunheim. Initially, I found &s vaguely disturbing, I would have thought that Smithy would have at least woken and spoken to me before leaving. On reflection, however, I found this omission less than disturbing: it was a measure of Smithy’s confidence in himself and, by implication, my unspoken confidence in himself, that he had not thought it necessary to seek either advice or reassurance before his departure. Finally, Otto told me, Heissman and his hand^held camera, along with Jungbeck, had taken off. on his location reconnaissance in the sixteen-foot work-boat: they had been accompanied by Goin, who had volunteered to stand in for the now absent Heyter.
Otto stood up, drained his cup and said: “About my daughter, Dr. Marlowe.”
“She’ll be all right.” She would never again be all right. “I’d like to talk to her before I go.” I couldn’t begin to imagine a reason why he should wish to talk to her or she to him, but I refrained from comment. He went on: “You have no objections? Medical ones, I mean?”
“No. just straightforward commonsense ones. She’s under heavy sedation. You couldn’t even shake her awake.”
“But surely-”
“Two or three hours at the very least. If you don’t want my advice, Mr. Gerran, why ask for it?”
“Fair enough, fair enough. Leave her be.” He headed towards the outer door. “Your plans for the day, Dr. Marlowe?”
“Who’s left here?” I said. “Apart from your daughter and myself?”
He looked at me, his brows levelled in a frown, then said: “Mary Stuart. Then there’s Lonnie, Eddie, and Sandy. Why?”
“They’re asleep?”
“As far as I know. Why?”
“Someone has to bury Stryker.”
“Ah, yes, of course. Stryker. I hadn’t forgotten, you know, but-yes, of course. Yes, yes. You–”
“Yes.”