Fletcher and Joby pushed their way through the crowd, Fletcher carrying his camera and part of the skin-diving gear, Joby carrying the rest. Joby’s bungalow was about a quarter of a mile from the jetty. There was a drainage ditch in front of it, and you had to go over a footbridge made of two planks and then along ten yards of pathway with bushes growing on each side. There was a bit of garden at the back with a rough fence round it, and there were yams and sweet corn and melons, some small orange trees and a couple of coconut palms with a hammock slung between them. The bungalow was nothing much; it had been built with sections of an old army hut, and it had a tarred felt roof which Joby had to keep patching because the rain would find a way in. But even at that it was better than most of the dwellings in Port Morgan, and it had running water and electricity, besides being large enough to provide a room for Fletcher without overcrowding the family.
Joby’s children, Willie and Millie, who were four-year-old twins, came running to meet him, and they had to be picked up and made a fuss of both by Joby and Fletcher before either of the men could go into the house. Paulina was in the kitchen preparing a meal. She was really beautiful, and Fletcher had told Joby so on more than one occasion. It pleased Joby to hear compliments about his wife, and Fletcher believed that he had relayed the remarks to Paulina herself: it could have been why she was always so pleasant towards him; or maybe that was just her nature.
Joby took two cans of beer out of the refrigerator, which was one of the few luxuries in the house. At least Joby called it a luxury, though in that climate it might have been considered a necessity. He opened the cans and handed one to Fletcher.
“You could have glasses,” Paulina said. “They’re free.”
“No need,” Joby said. “Tastes better from the can.”
She looked at Fletcher. “You find what you were looking for out there?”
“Yes,” Fletcher said; “we found it.”
“Found somethin’ else besides,” Joby said.
Fletcher remembered Vincent’s warning not to talk about it, but what the hell; Joby was bound to tell Paulina anyway. The twins had gone out into the garden and were playing with the hammock; he could see them from the kitchen window.
“There was a boat,” he said.
Paulina listened to the story and he could see that she was worried by it.
“I wish you hadn’t found it,” she said.
Joby gave a laugh, making light of the matter. “Now you’re goin’ to say it’s unlucky. I know.”
“It could be. A thing like that; it’s best not to get mixed up in it.”
“We’re not mixed up in it,” Fletcher said. But he knew they were.
She knew it too. “You have to be mixed up in it if you found the bodies. And who killed them? Who were they? Why were they killed?”
“That’s for the police to find out.”
The mention of the police hardly seemed to reassure her. “I wish you hadn’t told them. Nobody need have known. Nobody saw you diving, did they?”
“No.”
“Then you didn’t have to tell anybody. Who would have known?”
“That’s what I told him,” Joby said.
Paulina shot a swift glance at him. “So you think he shouldn’t have gone to the police? You think that, too?”
Joby looked uncomfortable. “Well, I’m not sayin’ that.”
“You don’t have to. I know.”
“Anyway,” Fletcher told her, “there’s no need for you to worry about it. If there’s going to be any trouble, I’m the one who’ll be involved. I’m the one who found the boat. But why should there be trouble? All I’ve done is report a crime. I’m in the clear.”
“Maybe it’s not enough to be in the clear. Not when you’re standing so close. I still say I wish you hadn’t found the boat.”
“Well, it’s done now.”
“Yes,” she said; “it’s done now. All we can do is hope nothing bad comes from it.”
“Nothing will,” Fletcher said. But he was not feeling very confident about it; in fact he was not feeling confident at all.
In the evening he went to see Dharam Singh. Dharam Singh and his family, which consisted of his wife, his five children, his sister and his widowed mother-in-law, occupied the ground floor of a house in what might have been described as the main street of Port Morgan. It was an old house and had been built in more prosperous times. It had a shabby grandeur, like an aristocrat who had come down in the world; there were chipped Doric pillars supporting the porch, rusty iron balconies attached to the upper windows and cracked stucco on the walls. If you looked closely at the roof you could see where one or two tiles were missing and the guttering had fallen away.
The upper floor was let to three sisters who earned a living in ways that Dharam Singh chose not to mention. It was a condition of the agreement, so Fletcher gathered from what Singh had told him, that the sisters should never use the front door, but should gain access to their rooms by way of a back staircase which came down into the kitchen. The result of this arrangement was that, especially in the evening, there was a fairly constant stream of male visitors passing through the kitchen and up the back stairs. Mrs. Singh ignored them; if she had work to do in the kitchen she got on with it and responded to any friendly greeting on the part of a visitor with nothing more than a frigid glance, as if to indicate that she had no connection whatever with the ladies overhead.
Dharam Singh was a photographer, a small thin man with liquid brown eyes and an ingratiating smile. He did a small amount of business in Port Morgan, but earned more as a roving cameraman and freelance contributor to newspapers and magazines in various countries. He seemed to have a nose for the newsworthy event and an undoubted eye for a good picture. With his professional earnings and the rent for the upper floor, which was always promptly paid, he appeared to be managing very nicely in spite of the size of the family he had to support.
It was about eight o’clock when Fletcher arrived at Dharam Singh’s house, and the street was only poorly lighted by an electric standard lamp here and there. As Fletcher stood under the porch and gave a pull on the iron handle that operated a bell inside the house he caught a glimpse of a man slipping down the alleyway which led to the back door. The upper windows were brightly outlined against the darkness of the wall and he could hear the sound of music of the pop variety, from which he gathered that the sisters’ tastes in that line were strictly non-classical.
The door was opened by Dharam Singh himself, and immediately he recognised Fletcher his face creased into a smile of welcome.
“Mr. Fletcher. Ah, do step inside. So happy to see you, my dear sir.”
Fletcher walked in and Dharam Singh closed the door. There was a large tiled hall from which rose the staircase that was never used, and one small electric bulb burned in the centre of an ornate glass chandelier suspended from the high ceiling. Dharam Singh stood rubbing his hands together, the thin brown fingers making a faint rasping sound like dry twigs which might at any moment burst into flame.
“And what, Mr. Fletcher sir, can I do for you?”
Fletcher pulled from his pocket the exposed film he had taken from the underwater camera.
“I should like to have this developed.”
Dharam Singh took the film. “Of course. At once. All else shall wait.”
“And three prints of each negative.”
Dharam Singh gave a small bow. “Certainly.”
Fletcher wondered whether to advise Dharam Singh to be discreet, but decided that it was unnecessary. The photographer was not likely to talk about work he did for a customer; that was hardly the way to attract further business. And Singh was above all else a businessman.