“This isn’t a whodunit.”
“Oh, yes, it is. And I’m not a very experienced detective. So I’ve had to take advantage of my privilege because I haven’t had the nerve to come right out with my theory — in case it turned out to be really as crazy as it sounds, and I ended not only with egg on my face but with ham too.”
“Don’t get coy with me,” she said. “I’m Lona Shaw — remember?”
Simon smiled with his lips closed, his blue eyes narrowed against the brilliant blue of the sea and sky as he turned the speedboat southward and tried to get an exact bearing on the island they had to return to.
“You wouldn’t dare to send your editor a story based on my kind of deductions,” he said. “Nearly all my thinking seems to be negative — a process of clearing away the undergrowth so you can find out where the solid ground is. I’ve seldom heard a story that was so fogged up with false clues. For instance, the accent of the guy who talked to you on the phone last night.”
“It sounded very American to me.”
“And to me. In fact, exaggeratedly American. But what we have to remember is that an accent can be faked. Roger Ivalot sounded English. So an American accent cropping up here sounds like an attempt to confuse things — perhaps to suggest that he has accomplices which he hasn’t got at all. But a man who would play those tricks of dialect might very well have done it before. Therefore Ivalot’s English was probably the first fake. A man who’d lived here for several years should be able to do a very passable imitation — even if he was raised in America.”
“Or Canada.”
“I’m glad you brought that up,” he said. “Did you ever notice how in the stories you quoted, Jolly Roger had his uranium interests in South Africa and Australia — but not a word was said about Canada, where some of the biggest uranium strikes of all have been made? That was an omission that stood out like a flat chest at a beauty contest — if I may scramble a metaphor in midstream. Almost from the moment I heard it, I would have liked to bet that Canada was the one place that our boy would turn out to have his deepest roots in.”
“You’re still keeping the riddles going,” she said sulkily. “That’s all very plausible and clever, but you must have a lot more up your sleeve.”
“But the next step takes me out on a limb. I also say that our boy is a lawyer.”
The frown darkened on her brow.
“Last night you were starting to say something—”
“This script is full of lawyers,” he interrupted quickly. “That’s another confusing feature of it. But it set me thinking about human characteristics. Lawyers are cautious. Lawyers make a technique of procrastination. What does any smart lawyer do when he knows he’s got a very shaky case? He uses every dodge and device in the book to keep getting it postponed and continued and adjourned — because until it actually comes to a court and a verdict, he still hasn’t lost it. Your husband disappeared because our boy thought he had to do something fast and drastic; but after that, he didn’t know how to go on with it. That’s why nothing else happened for two days. Perhaps he hadn’t finally worked anything out until last night, when you got the first message. But then I upset him again by showing up in the act. So when he talked to you later, it was to tell you to get me out of here. Another delay. That’s why I was so sure we were safe last night and today. He’s still stalling for time.”
“So are you,” she said angrily. “Will you tell me just one thing straight?”
He grinned, throttling back as they circled around to the lee side of the private island, and switched off the engine to coast to a perfect dead-stick landing at the dock.
“In a few minutes,” he said. “I have to make a phone call first.”
She walked speechlessly beside him up to the house. But now she realized that he was enjoying himself, and she would not give him the satisfaction of making her protest again.
While he was dialing a number, he said, “To give you something to go on with — does anything ring a bell with you about a man who’s excessively self-conscious about names?”
Without a word, she turned and went over to the bar cupboard.
He said to the telephone, “Mr Van Hessen, please. This is Mr Templar.”
He put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Another thing. Weren’t you surprised that a character like our boy, who was so anxious that you shouldn’t talk to anyone, would leave such a melodramatic warning with anyone who answered the phone, like your caretaker?”
The only reply was a heavily restrained clinking of glassware.
He said to the phone, “Oh, Dick. Glad I caught you. Have you gotten to know anyone in the police higher up than a traffic cop?… Good. And do you have one of the Company boats there?… Better still. Will you please call this Inspector, and persuade him to let you pick him up and bring him out to Parker’s island right away — you know, where the Daynes are staying. I mean as quickly as you can get here, I can’t call him myself, because if I gave my name he’d think someone was pulling his leg… No, I don’t want to say any more on the phone, but this is the most serious thing I ever asked you… Okay, feller. Thanks.”
He hung up.
Lona Dayne was standing beside him with a glass in her hand.
“A nice drop of sherry before lunch?” she suggested sweetly.
He took it.
“Is it poisoned?”
“If it was, no jury would convict me.”
He moved to the end of one of the davenports, studied it for a couple of seconds in relation to the doors into the room, and slid a blue-black automatic out of his hip pocket and behind a cushion.
“Tell me one thing,” he said. “If I’m quoting you correctly, you were talking to this caretaker, and his boss had just told him to try and rent the place. But how did you happen to meet him and be talking to him in the first place?”
She raised a glass of her own to her lips, holding it with a tense care that just failed to be completely casual.
“I’ve been waiting for that,” she said. “This house must have something to do with it, of course.”
“How did you meet Bob?”
“He came to see us at the hotel, the same day our story came out in the papers. He said that he once worked for a Mr Rogers here, who threw a lot of wild parties, which he couldn’t forget — you’ve seen what a strait-laced type he is. With that coincidence of names, he wondered if it could be the man we were looking for. But his description didn’t fit anywhere — his Mr Rogers was very tall and thin with a big hooked nose. Then it was after we’d ruled that out that he went on talking about his house and the island… Please,” she said, with her voice suddenly rising a sharp third, “don’t say how half-witted you’re thinking we must have been—”
He was at the telephone again, and did not even seem to have heard her.
“Did you ever see this trick?” he inquired.
He took off the handset, and dialed four numbers, and put the handset back again. Immediately, the telephone began to ring. He let it ring a few times, and then picked up the handset again.
“If you know the right combination, you can make any telephone ring like an incoming call,” he said. “But do you know where all the extensions are in this house? It could be done from any of them.”
He hung the instrument up and turned away.
“Once upon a time,” he said, “there was an attorney in Toronto named Robert Parker Illet. He was born and educated in England, but taken to Canada after his parents died in a flu epidemic and raised there by a maternal uncle. Seven years ago he was hardly middle-aged, but he’d built an inspiring reputation. It was so good, in fact, that he had a wide-open chance to embezzle five million dollars, with no more trouble than writing a few checks. I told you I was looking for him when we first met, but I don’t think you took me seriously.”