“Here’s another one I took just before that.” Rita continued remorselessly. “It shows you bent down, catching hold of her legs. Don’t worry, they weren’t processed on the ship. I had them done overnight in Kuala Lumpur. The people who did them wouldn’t have understood what was going on even if they bothered to try. They’re dark exposures. I wasn’t using flash, just special film. The detail’s all there, though. The police wouldn’t hesitate with these.”
“You’re not going to—”
“I am. Right now, if you’re backing out of the bag. Play ball, though, and you can have the prints and the negatives after we’re through Customs in London. God’s honor.”
“But they hang you here for smuggling drugs,” he whispered desperately.
“Not always, love. Only if they catch you, which they won’t. On the other hand, they’d definitely hang you for murder.”
Percy drew in an agonized breath. “But you only get prison in England for — for either.”
“But you’re out here, darling. So you don’t really have a choice, do you?” She watched the look of mute acceptance growing. “So off we go, then. And keep away from me till we’re through. Oh, and if they do ask questions, don’t try involving me or Kirsty, will you? If you do, we’ll tell on you about Sybil straight off, understand?” She closed her bag and walked away firmly.
He stood there trying to collect his thoughts and dully watching her disappear into the crowd heading for the check-in. When he moved in the same direction, he tried to pull himself together, wishing Sybil was with him, needing to ask her what he should do.
“Your things are over there, Mr. Crickle.” Miss Mold never used Christian names. “All right, are you?” she added with concern. She was in front of him at the check-in desk.
“All right, yes.” He must be looking as guilty as he felt. He wiped his forehead, feeling the sweat streaming all over his body.
They were his bags all right, lying on the floor with some others still waiting to be claimed. Now the airline girl was holding her hand out for his ticket. He was just about to lift the bags onto the scales when the armed, uniformed Customs official came over and stood behind them.
“With the cruise group, are you?”
“Yes. We’re in transit,” Percy said.
“These three yours?” Now the dark-skinned officer was leaning down, reading the labels.
Percy hesitated. He knew he shouldn’t have, but he couldn’t help himself. “Yes — they’re mine.”
“British?” Without waiting for an answer, the man selected a large printed card from a pack of them under his arm. The big printed words were in English, constituting a list of dutiable or prohibited items. “You know the regulations?”
The list appeared as a blur before Percy’s eyes. He swallowed. “Yes.”
“Do you have anything to declare?” The small Malaysian looked bored, not suspicious.
“No, nothing.”
“Could you open this one, please?” He was pointing to the holdall.
Percy’s knees nearly gave out under him. “Actually, that one’s not mine.”
“You said it was yours.”
“I made a mistake. I’m — I’m mixed up at the moment. I lost my wife, you see. She fell overboard. From the ship. Just a few days ago.” He was blurting out words desperately, knowing he was entitled to sympathy: the First Secretary had said so.
The Customs officer was totally unmoved by the news of the tragedy. “This bag, please. Open it.”
Percy shook his head. “I don’t have a key. I mean, that proves it’s not mine, doesn’t it?”
His expression unchanged, the man produced a big bunch of keys from his pocket.
“Mr. Crickle has just gone through a very terrible experience,” Miss Mold offered from behind in the imperious tone of a senior ward sister protecting a defenseless patient.
“You want to unzip your bag?” the official interrupted. He had already opened the lock.
“It’s not mine.” But slowly Percy undid the zip, his hand brushing the label inscribed with his name in his own handwriting.
Inside the bag, a transparent envelope containing a photographic enlargement lay on top of a bright-red cashmere wrap. The print that showed through the envelope was a colored closeup of Percy and Sybil, posed smiling in deck chairs. In the photograph she was wearing the wrap, and also the chunky necklace that was half showing beside it in the bag.
The official looked at the print, then at Percy, then at the wrap and the necklace, and finally again at the label. Pushing aside the other items, his hands burrowed deeper into the confines of the bag.
At that point, it all became too much for Percy. He started sobbing uncontrollably.
“Fancy going all the way and hanging him,” said Kirsty.
It was six months since Percy’s arrest at the Kuala Lumpur airport. She and the others were relaxing over drinks in a Los Angeles hotel room. They had reached California by different routes and already disposed of the drugs they had been carrying. The evening paper carried the report of Percy’s execution following the failure of a last-minute appeal.
“He deserved it,” said Rita.
“Have a heart — it wasn’t his own powder, it was ours.”
“I mean for doing in Sybil. And for stupidity. He’s properly spoiled the cruise ship into Malaysia ploy. We can’t do a pickup again that way in KL for years.”
Kirsty sniffed. “But it still wasn’t Sybil he was done for. That was different. I’d have shopped him straight off for that, on the boat. It was your idea to use him instead — to carry an extra load. I was never sure. Neither was Gertrude. Were you, Gert?”
“Not of him, no. Only that he should have been looked after at the airport. By someone from the High Commission. Anyone bereaved like that should have been given VIP treatment, diplomatic immunity, escorted through Customs—”
“Anyway, you did your best for him.”
“Trying to protect our interests, that’s all. It was a shame we lost the extra package. But he did take the heat off the rest of us. Even so, it shouldn’t have been that way. He should have been escorted. I don’t know what the British foreign service is coming to, really I don’t.” Pausing to sniff, Miss Gertrude Mold then went back to her knitting.
The Jury Box
by Allen J. Hubin
© 1988 by Allen J. Hubin.
It’s said that there are only a few basic plots in the world — perhaps seven — which are endlessly retold. I’ve no basis for quarrel with that, and if it’s true of all fiction it’s certainly applicable to the corner of storytelling of particular interest to us.
Thomas Maxwell’s The Saberdene Variations (Mysterious Press, $16.95) clearly retells one of the ancient stories. I won’t identify precisely which one — that’s something you should discover for yourself, for this is fresh, polished, and wholly absorbing. Charlie Nichols and Victor Saberdene, friends at college, kept in contact over the years as Nichols became a successful writer, Saberdene a renowned New York defense attorney. In due course, Victor married — married Caro, sister of a murder victim whose killer Caro’s testimony assured of a very long jail sentence. Now Carl Varada is out of prison, unexpectedly proved innocent, and psychopathically bent on revenge. Victor asks Charlie’s help to save his supremely beautiful wife. For Charlie and others, deep and deadly traps await. I read this one straight through. It would make a remarkable film as well.
Mignon F. Ballard’s second novel is Cry at Dusk (Dodd Mead, $15.95), a good tale of the sort that would have been called gothic in the 1960s. Laura Graham was very close to her cousin Laney — until Laney drowned near her home in South Carolina. Accident, of course, because Laney had much — including a baby son — to live for, though some of the circumstances of her death are troubling. When summer relieves Laura of her teaching responsibilities, she goes to Redpath, to a high-school reunion, to see why Laney was so absorbed in an earlier death, that of a child decades before. Effective romantic suspense.