Read Online Rum Affair by Dorothy Dunnett - Free Book Online
Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
Tags: Rum Affair
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you’ve sailed, to have a ball socially; entertaining co-respondents or clients, or dancing on deck all night to a record player, or horsing up a burn with a splash net like one of the natives . . .”
“Johnson doesn’t approve,” said Rupert, turning over to toast his stomach and chest. The smell of warm turpentine lingered inside the cockpit.
“Not at all,” said Johnson. His glasses flashed up and down. “Why be immoral in a flat in a fug, when you can do it at sea and be healthy?”
All the canvas was covered, and I could no longer see what he was doing. “Rupert,” I said, “why does Johnson go to sea?”
Rupert Glasscock turned his big heifer’s head to contemplate Johnson, and Johnson looked back through his bifocals. “Because he hasn’t got a flat,” said Rupert after some thought, and failed to prevent a brush loaded with vermilion from completing a crude cartoon on his spine.
Then there was a call from Lenny and both Rupert and Johnson jumped to their feet. Far across the blue, glassy water there was a smudge, like a finger mark in wet paint. In a second the palette, the brushes were stowed, the canvas was flung, with apology, into my cabin, and all three men were busy with ropes. There was wind, I deduced, on the way.
After a while I got up and went into my cabin, where Johnson’s painting lay, right side up, on the bunk.
Thinly suffused with sweet colour; flat and soft as a painting on silk, my own face lay mistily there. Made-up for Gilda, I looked like that.
I was entranced. Handling it lightly by the edges, I picked the wet canvas up, and stared at the arrangement of earth and soil and mineral pigments which the mind behind those bifocal glasses had transformed into my face. Beneath my feet, the deck tilted as the sails far above me, touched with wind, started to pull. My door swung open and sunlight filled all the cabin, bringing with it the smell of leaves, and flowers, and the salt tang of the sea. Dazzling with sun, the fresh-laundered curtains over my porthole filmed and fluttered against the blue sea beyond, and the sea itself glittered, coarse blue and white in the hearty young wind.
Dolly leaned over with sudden decision, and something tipped, with a clack, from the other end of my bed. I laid the painting down, wedging it flat with my jewel case, and went to retrieve and secure what had fallen.
It was a coat hanger.
I hadn’t left a coat hanger there. I had it in my hand, vaguely wondering whose it was, when suddenly, without question, I knew. That powerful hanger, with the riveted hook, the hook which had never come out despite the dead weight it carried, was none of mine or Johnson’s ownership.
It was the hanger on which the dead body of Chigwell had been suspended, by his own large and well-fitting overcoat, in the wardrobe in Rose Street that night.
Johnson, when I called him, did not come at once. When the incredible nautical crisis, whatever it was, had been resolved and he finally entered, I had pulled myself together; although I could not bring myself, yet, to pick up the thing from where I had dropped it again, on his plushy blue rug by the bunk. Johnson’s eye, travelling past both it and me, lit upon his painting, still jammed on the bed, and saying: “Oh, that. Thanks,” he picked it up and disappeared, carrying it to the slotted overhead fitment where he kept his unfinished work in the saloon. I heard him come back to the tiller.
By that time I was out in the cockpit. “It wasn’t that. Will you leave the bloody boat and listen, you fool?” I spat at his moony bifocals. He handed the tiller to Rupert and followed me into my cabin.
Johnson did not share my distaste. As I told him what had happened he sat with the thing in his hands, turning it over and over. “There was no hanger like this on the boat,” he said. “It’s certainly Chigwell’s.”
“But how could it be?” I do not smoke. There are times when I wish that I did. “The police
“Johnson doesn’t approve,” said Rupert, turning over to toast his stomach and chest. The smell of warm turpentine lingered inside the cockpit.
“Not at all,” said Johnson. His glasses flashed up and down. “Why be immoral in a flat in a fug, when you can do it at sea and be healthy?”
All the canvas was covered, and I could no longer see what he was doing. “Rupert,” I said, “why does Johnson go to sea?”
Rupert Glasscock turned his big heifer’s head to contemplate Johnson, and Johnson looked back through his bifocals. “Because he hasn’t got a flat,” said Rupert after some thought, and failed to prevent a brush loaded with vermilion from completing a crude cartoon on his spine.
Then there was a call from Lenny and both Rupert and Johnson jumped to their feet. Far across the blue, glassy water there was a smudge, like a finger mark in wet paint. In a second the palette, the brushes were stowed, the canvas was flung, with apology, into my cabin, and all three men were busy with ropes. There was wind, I deduced, on the way.
After a while I got up and went into my cabin, where Johnson’s painting lay, right side up, on the bunk.
Thinly suffused with sweet colour; flat and soft as a painting on silk, my own face lay mistily there. Made-up for Gilda, I looked like that.
I was entranced. Handling it lightly by the edges, I picked the wet canvas up, and stared at the arrangement of earth and soil and mineral pigments which the mind behind those bifocal glasses had transformed into my face. Beneath my feet, the deck tilted as the sails far above me, touched with wind, started to pull. My door swung open and sunlight filled all the cabin, bringing with it the smell of leaves, and flowers, and the salt tang of the sea. Dazzling with sun, the fresh-laundered curtains over my porthole filmed and fluttered against the blue sea beyond, and the sea itself glittered, coarse blue and white in the hearty young wind.
Dolly leaned over with sudden decision, and something tipped, with a clack, from the other end of my bed. I laid the painting down, wedging it flat with my jewel case, and went to retrieve and secure what had fallen.
It was a coat hanger.
I hadn’t left a coat hanger there. I had it in my hand, vaguely wondering whose it was, when suddenly, without question, I knew. That powerful hanger, with the riveted hook, the hook which had never come out despite the dead weight it carried, was none of mine or Johnson’s ownership.
It was the hanger on which the dead body of Chigwell had been suspended, by his own large and well-fitting overcoat, in the wardrobe in Rose Street that night.
Johnson, when I called him, did not come at once. When the incredible nautical crisis, whatever it was, had been resolved and he finally entered, I had pulled myself together; although I could not bring myself, yet, to pick up the thing from where I had dropped it again, on his plushy blue rug by the bunk. Johnson’s eye, travelling past both it and me, lit upon his painting, still jammed on the bed, and saying: “Oh, that. Thanks,” he picked it up and disappeared, carrying it to the slotted overhead fitment where he kept his unfinished work in the saloon. I heard him come back to the tiller.
By that time I was out in the cockpit. “It wasn’t that. Will you leave the bloody boat and listen, you fool?” I spat at his moony bifocals. He handed the tiller to Rupert and followed me into my cabin.
Johnson did not share my distaste. As I told him what had happened he sat with the thing in his hands, turning it over and over. “There was no hanger like this on the boat,” he said. “It’s certainly Chigwell’s.”
“But how could it be?” I do not smoke. There are times when I wish that I did. “The police
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