The Smell of Evil Read online

  Dorothy settled me down and examined my injury, probing gently with firm and experienced fingers. Apparently satisfied, and despite my wincing, she made a compress and bandaged my ankle, declaring that by the morning it would be practically healed and that she saw no call for disturbing Doctor Marreco at this hour, since he was a very busy man. She also treated me to a brief homily, the gist of which was that in her opinion I should not be allowed out on my own without a Nanny. “You city-bred men are all the same,” she said. “As awkward and helpless a lot as ever I laid my eyes on.”

  When she had finished the Varcoes demanded to hear every detail of my evening, and I was forced to admit my folly in having by my rashness permitted the Baron to observe my examination of the pool, which must have confirmed any suspicions which my visit to him might have occasioned.

  Sam was not in total agreement with this. “From that angle,” he argued, “and in those dark clothes, you may have got away with it if you were lying still. But then there’s no knowing how long he was waiting up there. He could have gone with the others to the house and then doubled back.” He rubbed his chin. “He did not call out to you, Mr. Ives, or make any attempt to start down to the shore?”

  I shook my head, and Mrs. Varcoe said: “You could well be right, Sam. Moonlight on those rocks in Angdon Cove can make strange shadow play. It seems to me that Mr. Ives should pay a further call at the house tomorrow and try to contrive another meeting with the girl.” She broke off before she added brusquely: “And the three of you must go with him to the beach at night, whether the girl is able to communicate with him or no.”

  “Might it not,” I said as I lit a cigarette, “be best to take the sketch to the police and let them deal with it?”

  Mrs. Varcoe frowned. “They’d never believe us. Suspicions aren’t enough to get a search warrant, and they’re a canny bunch in these parts, more’s the pity. We do know that something’s wrong, but just what it is we do not rightly know.” As she spoke I could not help but wonder how often it must have been that outsiders hesitated to interfere in what was not their business, when action might have made all the difference. “And now, Mr. Ives,” Dorothy Varcoe turned to me briskly, “it’s bed for you, and if your ankle’s not down by morning I’ll get the doctor to you, but it’s surprised I’ll be if it’s troubling you by then, after you’ve rested it. Luke, help Mr. Ives up the stairs!”

  I took her advice and went to my room, but sleep would not come and, long after the murmur of their voices had ceased, I lay on my back milling over the puzzling circumstances of Sari’s frenzied appeal and the terror that she had shown when our eyes had met. In spite of Mrs. Varcoe’s reasonable objections, if there was something horrible happening at Angdon, if the wretched girl were being victimized, it was not for us to take risks with her health, perhaps even with her life, by postponing the summoning of police action. Finally I took two aspirins, and the next thing I knew it was eight o’clock and Maggie was saying a soft “good morning” and putting my tea on the bedside table. Her mother had been right; during the night my swollen ankle had subsided and the pain had almost gone.

  After breakfast we had another consultation, but the summoning of official assistance had been made, we discovered, far more difficult, for a further disaster had occurred. Sari’s sketch had vanished. The Varcoes had thought that I had taken it up with me, and I had assumed that it was in their possession. Luke must have thrown it inadvertently into the fire together with the cigarette butts and other rubbish when he had been tidying the bar-room and, with our one piece of concrete evidence gone, it was agreed that we wait a little longer to try to strengthen our case before having recourse to the law. For a start it was proposed that I was to gain entry into Angdon upon the same pretext that I had used previously, when I would be able, surely, to discover from my reception if the Baron knew of my activities of the night before.

  The door was again answered by the manservant and once more I was left on the mat to cool my heels before being granted admittance. The Baron lacked all modicum of affability. His eyes were cold and he did not rise when I was shown in, but waited for me to explain the reason for what it was obvious that he regarded as an unwarrantable intrusion. “Mr. Ives,” he said, “I have no wish to appear inhospitable, but we are very occupied as we are leaving here in a few days, and I need hardly explain that we have a great deal to do.”

  I glanced out of the window. The terrace was untenanted. I asked a few questions, but they sounded unconvincing and lame even to my own ears. Baron Lebrun did not extend his hand when I left, but rang for the butler to let me out, and it was evident that he was making no effort to disguise the fact that he was giving me a deliberate brush-off. As well as hostility I sensed a lurking fear in his behavior. Of the Baronne there was no sign. My expedition had not been wasted.

  As I reached the end of the drive some instinct made me look back over my shoulder. The girl, Sari, had propelled the wheel chair up to the window, as she had done when Mrs. Varcoe had been passing by, and through the glass I could see her piteous face as she tried desperately to attract my attention. Her right hand was tracing letters in the air. I stood still, endeavoring to understand them but I could make no sense of her efforts.

  While I was concentrating on the signs that she was making I had the feeling that I myself was being watched, and from the corner of my eye became aware that the Baron had followed me to the door and was now leaning against its jamb. Caught, as it were, red-handed, and cursing myself for my bungling, I shaded my eyes with my hands and tilted my head back, pretending that I was absorbed in the passage of an aeroplane across the soundless sky. When I allowed my gaze to drop the face behind the window had gone and the panes were blank and I turned and walked slowly away.

  Mrs. Varcoe listened to my account with great attention and without interruption and it was decided that her proposal of the previous evening be accepted and that I should go with the three men to the cove. My ankle no longer hurt and we set off early, allowing ample margin for possible mishaps. The night was cloudless and the moon almost full, turning the beach and the lowering bulk of the cliff into a clean-cut etching of dramatic contrasts.

  We were installed in our hiding places by half past nine. The tide was racing in, but it would be another two hours or more before it reached high-water mark. It was very still and quiet and I longed to smoke a cigarette. The rhythmic music of the waves was soporific in its regular beat, and I enjoyed the eerie beauty, although the night had turned chilly.

  I could not see Sam or Jack Varcoe from the eroded spur behind which I was crouching, but I knew approximately where they had concealed themselves, as we were in a rough semi-circle, and Luke, on my left, was within soft calling distance.

  The waiting seemed to be endless. We all, I knew, had our concentration pin-pointed on the twisted cutting in the cliff down which the retinue would have to come, the girl in the wheel chair surrounded by her attendants, bent on a purpose that so far was inexplicable. But nothing happened and the beach remained deserted save for the occasional flitter of a bat from a hole in the granite.

  Once the peace of the night was broken by the whir and chugging of an engine, and a helicopter, its jewelled lights winking, churned over our heads bound for France, a huge may-bug, black and clumsy against the nacreous gray of the sky. Twenty minutes later Luke’s voice said from the far side of a neighboring mass of outcrop near to me: “They’re not coming tonight, are they, Mr. Ives?” His whisper was very clear.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” I said. He left the shadow and we walked forward openly to where Jack Varcoe had stationed himself. He rose at our approach, looming above us in the moonlight. We held a low-voiced conversation and, whistling to Sam to join us, went over in line and squatted down by the pool and leant over it, with our silhouettes reflected darkly on its surface.

  The patch of water was pear shaped and deep, fringed
with thick clumps of winkle encrusted weed and budded with the closed udders of puckered and stranded sea anemones awaiting the liberation of the incoming tide to revitalize them so that they could unfold their tendrils. By daylight there would have been much activity to study in this miniature world, but now all was undisturbed and there was no ripple to distort the mirror.

  Jack Varcoe was wearing faded jeans and a striped singlet and he thrust one muscular bare arm into the water to plumb its depth and his fingers were barely able to touch the bottom. “Nothing there,” he said, “except pebbles and sand.” I don’t know what it was that he had expected to find. He peered up at the cliff. From where we were squatting the gables and upper story of Angdon were just visible. No lights showed. “They’ve gone to bed early tonight,” Jack said. He plunged his arm back into the water and, for something to do, scraped up a handful of sand and broken shell which he let dribble through his fingers on to the rock. We all sat in silence, prying down into the water like a quartet of self-hypnotizing fortune tellers gazing into a crystal. The moonlight glistened on the little mound of damp salvage. I reached forward and picked up a piece of it by way of occupation, thinking it to be a morsel of razor shell, and weighed down by the dull disappointment of anti-climax. I was looking more closely at the object in my palm when I realized that what I had been about to flick away was no broken shell but the greater part of a toe-nail—a human toe-nail.

  I stared at it, comprehending at first only partly what it was. Sam Varcoe saw my attention and stretching out his hand took it from me. We neither of us spoke, unwilling to admit its possible significance. “Take a look at this, Jack,” Sam said at length.

  The young fisherman was peering down again into the water, parting the seaweed, his face intent. “Sam,” he said gruffly, “sit on my legs, will you?” He curved his torso down over the pool until the water covered his arms and welled over his shoulders and the small of his back. I heard him give a grunt of satisfaction. “Got something,” he said. “Come on, Luke, lend us a hand.”

  With great difficulty he pulled up a wicker cage, large and stoutly woven, and in it scrabbled two of the biggest crabs that I have ever seen. The cage had been well hidden, pushed away to the back of a submarine hollow in the rock shelf. The monstrous crabs froze for a moment into immobility before they began to lumber cumbrously round the cage, their gigantic claws clicking in agitation at this rude interruption to their existence.

  An explanation of the toe-nail crossed my horrified mind. Jack Varcoe must have had the same thought for his face was grim as he regarded the loathsome creatures and he shot me a glance of appalled understanding as the truth dawned on him.

  He opened the sliding door of the trap and tipped them out, flipping them over on to their backs. Then, seizing a loose stone he began to pound at them viciously, shattering the silence and battering at their armor, hissing under his breath as he tore off the waving claws. He was attacking them like a maniac and did not desist from his destruction until the crabs had become an oozing pulp of crushed shell and meat.

  He sprang to his feet and, kicking aside the spasmodically twitching fragments, ran towards the foot of the cliff path, the rest of us at his heels. We were wearing rubber shoes but, in any case, there was no longer any reason for concealment. When we reached the top I was panting from the exertion of the climb as we ran diagonally across the lawn.

  The door from the verandah was shuttered and bolted and we skirted the building to the main entrance, the stone chips spurting from beneath our flying feet. There was not a glimmer of light from within. I kept my thumb pressed hard on the bell, hearing the distant ring that had that special tone which makes one know instinctively that there would be no one to answer it.

  Jack’s tread sounded on the gravel. “There’s another door round at the side,” he said, “and a window beside it which I’ve managed to force. You wait there.” He darted away and presently we heard the key of the door, before which we had grouped ourselves, being turned and bolts were shot back.

  The house, as we had expected, was empty. We made a thorough search of every room, but the only sign of the former occupants was the customary debris left behind by departing tenants, screws of paper, cardboard boxes, a used lipstick and forlorn bottles and packets with only a silt of their contents remaining. It was evident that the Baron, his family and his staff had gone.

  Suddenly I remembered the buzzing helicopter bumbling its way across the Channel.

  We went back to Trezarth, Sam Varcoe muttering angrily to himself. “The swine. The filthy swine. There has never been such a smell of evil as there was in that house: It was . . . palpable.” His tongue tripped slightly over the word as if it had been from a foreign tongue. “I’ll get him for this if it means going to Paris myself to do so. And his bloody old bitch, too. The cruel devils. The filthy, filthy swine!” Jack and Luke strode on without speaking, their faces ugly.

  We made straight for the police station. The Sergeant in charge was newly arrived and the Varcoes had not met him. He listened to us attentively and with infinite patience, and during our incoherent and confused story he made copious notes. He was polite and soothing and said that the matter would be looked into; but we had little testimony to back up our theory of the horror that might have taken place.

  Only Mrs. Varcoe was convinced.

  We heard the news the next morning on the B.B.C., and it was later substantiated and elaborated by the newspapers. A helicopter had crashed in the Channel shortly before half past ten on the previous night, to the west of Guernsey, and in deep water. There had been only one casualty. It had made the headlines, for the people concerned had been in the Big Money.

  heiress killed in air disaster.

  gallant effort of baron françois lebrun

  to rescue his crippled niece.

  The Baron and his grief-stricken wife had given their story. Sari had, of course, been trapped in the machine. She had had no chance of survival. The pilot and his four other passengers had all managed to escape and had been picked up by a fishing boat which had most fortuitously been in the vicinity. It had all been very pat, and doubtlessly scrupulously stage managed. With his connections, money and, above all, incentive, for Sari had possessed one of the biggest fortunes in France, the Baron had made good use of the time that we had unwittingly allowed him in which to make his arrangements.

  There were no steps that we could take, for any “evidence” had been destroyed.

  Perhaps Sari had been murdered because she had refused to sign her will, knowing that should she do so she would be signing away even that measure of borrowed time which was being permitted to her, and during which some miracle might bring her salvation from the outside, and that her signature would be the equivalent of her death warrant.

  I thought of her pathetic swathed legs, wrapped to hide the bandages round her lacerated limbs, of her distorted face as her mouth stretched in a noiseless frantic scream from the atrophied vocal cords, and of the fantastic torture which she must have repeatedly endured before she had finally lost consciousness.

  And now she had been sent to keep her final rendezvous with the fellows of the crabs which had been starved and trained to tear at and devour her living flesh while she had been held down on the edge of the pool on that lovely and deserted beach below Angdon; and I grew weak with the fiendishness of it.

  Sometime soon, be the penalty what it may, Sam Varcoe and I are going to hunt down Baron François Lebrun, and when we find him we are going to get him alone and scare his guts out, and then we are going to kill him.

  TEXT FOR TODAY

  (St. Paul to the Corinthians, Chapter 14, Verse 21.)

  The Reverend Herbert Wessel and his wife, May, had lived on Namavava for three years. It was a beautiful island, a near earthly paradise, and lay less than a day’s sail from Misima but, for all the contact which they had with the ot
her and larger land masses of the group, they might just as well have been posted to Pitcairn.

  Not that they minded. So long as May had Herbert, and so long as Herbert had his work among the natives, doing God’s will, they were both of them perfectly content.

  Herbert was the first resident missionary to have been sent to live on Namavava. Formerly it had been treated as an outpost of the D’Entrecasteaux Group, and had been visited on rare occasions by their predecessor, Cecil Oliver, who had been based on Misima, but upon his retirement there had been a reallocation of territory, and the Church of England had increased the numbers of its representatives in order to combat the growing menace of the Church of Rome, which was sending out more and more of their militant priests, although Namavava had so far escaped their attentions.

  Herbert and May Wessel were of the same age. They had been married for twenty-five years, and had seen much of the world, generally in the more remote and unattractive corners of Africa and China, before this Melanesian appointment had been given to them, and a very pleasant one it had turned out to be. The climate was, for the greater part of the year, ideal, the inhabitants were cheerful and easy going, and there were no poisonous snakes or insects. True there was a species of large cockroach of which May had an unreasoning horror, and against which her carefully hoarded supply of Keating’s Powder seemed to have very little effect. Nevertheless they referred to Namavava as their Garden of Eden.