Behold a Fair Woman Read online

  Not a particularly friendly individual. Unless, of course, he had been too startled to collect his thoughts.

  Standing there peering into the darkness Tremaine was suddenly aware of a sense of foreboding. The atmosphere had become charged with evil; malign powers were abroad.

  He turned and set his face determinedly towards the bungalow. It had been somebody with a grudge against the world, that was all. No need to let his imagination get out of hand just because it was dark and lonely and he was in need of a holiday.

  Mark and Janet were waiting for him in the lounge when he got back and talking to them he forgot the brief incident in the gloomy lane.

  It did not, in fact, recur to him again that night. But as he was undressing later something else did come back to his mind.

  He found himself recalling his meeting with Alan Creed and his wife, and before he fell asleep he wondered why Valerie Creed’s face had seemed familiar and where it was he had seen her before.

  2

  DISAPPOINTMENT FOR THE MAJOR

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, whilst Mark and Janet were occupied with the daily routine of the bungalow, Tremaine took the morning newspaper down to the beach and found a seat amongst the rocks.

  There were few people about, although it was a sunny morning with only the lightest of breezes to fan the rock pools. Two small boys were working with determination on a sand castle that was sufficiently mediaeval in design to reflect a recent school lesson on historic fortifications. A middle-aged couple were settling down with the obvious intention of enjoying a placid holiday, the man with a paper-backed novel and the woman with her knitting. A stray dog was dashing in and out of the water.

  Tremaine was returning to his newspaper, disappointed with the lack of any human material upon which to practise his hobby of fitting backgrounds to faces, when he heard voices behind him. He glanced around and saw that four people had appeared on the dunes and were clambering towards the rocks.

  They chose a place not many yards away; bathing wraps were discarded and they stretched out in the sun.

  It did not take him many moments to pair them off. The fair-haired girl was the complement of the wiry young man with the somewhat sharp features who was sprawling face downwards on the towel at her side; the girl with the dark hair was clearly much more interested in the fourth member of the party, the young man who seemed to be preoccupied and who was sitting with his hands clasped around his knees.

  He was near enough to overhear what they were saying without consciously eavesdropping. The dark girl, he learned, was Ruth, and the fair one Nicola. He watched the four of them a few minutes later as they clambered over the rocks and dived in where the water was now quite deep.

  Supple and hard young masculine bodies, the wet gleaming on bronzed skin; the curve of an arm where feminine beauty of form moved smoothly and cleanly against the water and the sky—Tremaine openly laid aside his newspaper to watch the better.

  When they came back Nicola pulled off her bathing cap, shaking her hair free. The sharp-featured young man, whom she had addressed as Geoffrey, picked up a beach-ring and tossed it to her. An energetic game developed as Ruth and her companion joined in.

  A fifth player made an uninvited appearance. The stray dog, after circling disconsolately in the neighbourhood of the two small boys, who showed no desire to welcome him, realized that a fine new opportunity had been opened up. He came bounding hopefully along the beach.

  Nicola, leaping for the ring, missed it by several inches. The dog pounced upon it triumphantly.

  Evading the girl’s outstretched hand he headed for the rocks. Tremaine found himself facing gleaming brown eyes and menacing looking jaws. He leaned forward coaxingly.

  ‘Good dog—here, then!’

  Under the impression that he had found a sympathetic spirit the dog dropped the ring. With a quick movement Tremaine snatched it away and tossed it back to the fair-haired girl.

  ‘Thank you,’ she called. ‘I think he wants to join in.’

  ‘Dogs can’t resist a game on the beach,’ he returned. ‘But they’re rather a nuisance sometimes.’

  Aware that his intervention was unwelcome, the dog did not try to carry off the ring again, but remained careering happily on the fringe of the game until the sight of a canine acquaintance scampering along at the far end of the beach caused him to bark joyously in recognition and rush off to join forces.

  The four young people came back to the rocks to collect their wraps, nodding to Tremaine as they went off.

  A cheerful, pleasant little crowd, he reflected as he watched them go. Clearly on good terms with each other and making the most of their holiday. He hoped he would see more of them.

  In the afternoon Janet and Mark took him for a drive around the island, but he was on the beach again shortly after breakfast on the following morning.

  A spell of fine weather seemed to have settled in and it was very pleasant on the rocks with the sound of the sea as a lazy background. Later in the day it would probably be too hot for comfort, but at this hour the sun was soothing without being scorching.

  The same middle-aged couple made their appearance together with the two small boys, and then the fair-haired girl and her companions came down from the dunes.

  She recognized Tremaine and smiled.

  ‘Good morning.’

  Tremaine adjusted his pince-nez in the habitual gesture that invariably made him seem a good deal more helpless than he was.

  ‘Good morning. Are you going in again today?’

  She nodded, her hands deftly fitting her bathing cap into position.

  ‘Yes. It looks inviting, doesn’t it?’

  She was not as young as he had thought. At close quarters he could see a maturity in her face that added several years to her age. With a sense of shock he glimpsed a plain gold ring on the third finger of her left hand.

  All four of them, indeed, were older than his first impression had suggested. Their light-heartedness, no doubt born of the holiday atmosphere, had given them a youthfulness which had been deceptive.

  Geoffrey appeared to be the senior member of the party. There was a restraint in his enjoyment, as though he felt that to be too exuberant would occasion a loss of dignity.

  He wondered whether it was Geoffrey who was the husband. Somehow he did not think so. The intimacy between Geoffrey and Nicola did not seem to be that of the married state.

  On the other hand the other young man, whom he had heard them call Ivan, was quite evidently far more concerned with the dark-haired Ruth than with the fair-haired Nicola. It posed an intriguing problem.

  More than that, it was challenging. He disliked being unable to put people into their correct compartments. The incident of the dog on the previous day had effected an introduction, but it was difficult to pose the right questions without being so obviously after information as to warrant a snub.

  But fate came to his aid, as it often did, having apparently a warm corner for Mordecai Tremaine and his insatiable curiosity. Mark came unexpectedly down to the beach.

  ‘Thought I might find you here,’ he remarked, as he made his way over the rocks, ‘sunning yourself like an old lizard.’

  ‘I thought Janet intended to keep you running around until lunch-time.’

  ‘She relented,’ Mark said, stretching himself. ‘Thought you might be feeling lonely and sent me off to console you.’ He glanced around. ‘Beach is pretty empty. It usually is, though, except at week-ends.’

  The dark, serious-faced Ivan came running for the beach-ring in their direction. Mark waved a hand in greeting. Tremaine straightened his pince-nez hopefully.

  ‘You know these young people, Mark?’

  ‘They’re from the Rohane hotel. They’re often down here.’

  ‘Do they live on the island?’

  ‘Not all of them, but they seem to be spending quite a long while here this summer.’

  Tremaine sat regarding the lithe figures at the water’s edge.
/>   ‘Who’s the girl with the blonde hair? The one in the blue swim suit.’

  ‘That’s Nicola Paston.’

  ‘She’s married, isn’t she?’

  ‘She was. She’s a widow. Her husband was killed a couple of years ago. His ’plane crashed on the way home from the Middle East.’

  ‘A widow?’ Tremaine pursed his lips. ‘That’s bad. She looks too young to have known that much tragedy.’

  ‘In this current world,’ Belmore observed, ‘tragedy isn’t any respecter of age, let alone persons.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right. It doesn’t seem to have left a permanent scar on her, though. Being young has its compensations. It isn’t too late to start again.’

  ‘You mean Geoffrey Bendall?’

  ‘Is that his name? I’ve only heard him called Geoffrey. I’ve been trying to make out their exact relationship. At first I thought they might be engaged and then I saw her wedding ring and couldn’t fit him into the picture. Her being a widow explains it, of course.’

  ‘Does it?’ Belmore remarked, amused. ‘You make it sound highly intriguing. I suppose your detective instincts just can’t help coming out.’

  Tremaine made no comment. The truth was that it was not so much his detective instincts as his sentimental leanings that were responsible.

  He was not anxious to admit as much. He had refrained from bringing any copies of Romantic Stories to the island; he had not wanted Janet and Mark to discover his weakness for that particular brand of literature.

  ‘What about Ruth?’ he asked. ‘The dark-haired one.’

  ‘She’s Ruth Latinam. Sister of the chap who’s running the Rohane hotel. I mentioned him yesterday.’

  ‘She isn’t married, is she? I haven’t noticed her wearing a ring.’

  ‘No, she isn’t married. Nor is Latinam. At least,’ Belmore added, ‘I suppose he isn’t. He certainly hasn’t a wife living with him at the hotel and I’ve never heard any mention of his having one anywhere else.’

  The beach game broke up. The little party came back to collect bathing wraps and towels.

  ‘You believe in taking your pleasures energetically,’ Belmore remarked.

  ‘Nothing like it,’ Geoffrey Bendall said. ‘Strength through joy, or the English taking their ease.’

  ‘Stop talking like the country’s oldest humorous magazine, Geoff,’ Nicola Paston said. ‘You know quite well we know you’re not the cynic you’re always trying to make yourself out to be.’

  ‘I resent that,’ Bendall said, grinning. ‘You’re trying to rob me of the only thing I have left—my reputation for threadbare wit!’

  Belmore made the casual introductions of the beach. The fourth young man, Tremaine discovered, was Ivan Holt. It was very obvious that he was in love with Ruth Latinam; his eyes rarely left her.

  ‘I hear that you and your brother are at the Rohane hotel, Miss Latinam,’ Tremaine remarked.

  ‘I hope you aren’t going to hold it against us,’ she returned with a smile. ‘I’m afraid it’s a terribly ugly place in some ways, but Hedley—my brother—just couldn’t resist buying it.’

  ‘Miss Latinam’s brother is an irresistible character,’ Geoffrey Bendall said. ‘Once he makes up his mind to go after something the opposition reacts like the walls of Jericho.’

  ‘I sometimes think it’s a pity the walls of the Rohane hotel didn’t fall down flat before we had an opportunity of moving in,’ Ruth Latinam said lightly.

  ‘That would have meant that we shouldn’t have been able to come to it for a holiday,’ Ivan Holt put in, ‘and we might not have met. I’m all for your brother.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re saying, Ivan,’ the girl returned, a little hesitantly.

  ‘Look here,’ Geoffrey Bendall suggested, ‘why don’t you two come along up to the hotel with us and have a drink? That’s if you aren’t doing anything.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Tremaine responded hastily, before Mark Belmore could reject the invitation, ‘we aren’t doing anything.’

  The six of them left the beach and strolled up the road towards the unprepossessing profile of the Rohane hotel. There was a great deal of friendly banter but no serious conversation; Tremaine learned nothing more of his companions beyond the fact that none of them seemed to be troubled by cares of any kind.

  It must, of course, be an illusion. It wasn’t the kind of world in which anybody could be completely carefree. Not, at least, anybody with the usual thinking mechanism; and they were obviously all intelligent people.

  What did they do when they were not on holiday? How did they spend their time when they were removed from this disembodied existence in which there were no backgrounds and in which they were apart from the stresses and strains besetting the ordinary business of keeping alive?

  Ruth Latinam was fairly easily explained. No doubt her chief occupation—at present, anyway—was helping her brother to run the Rohane hotel.

  Evidently she was finding this part of her duties to her liking; a morning on the beach in pleasant company was clearly an enviable way of earning a living.

  At close quarters the hotel seemed less repulsive; the full effect of its ill-assorted exteriors could not be seen.

  The lounge to which Bendall led them already possessed one occupant, an elderly man with a military air, rather threadbare now, as though it was a long while since he had wielded any actual authority and he was finding it increasingly difficult to keep his head above water.

  Tremaine had met his like in the once-fashionable spas, trying pathetically, despite their brusque manner, to retain the shreds of a vanishing social standing with neither an official position nor the necessary financial means to keep up the masquerade effectively.

  ‘’Morning, Major,’ Bendall said with a nod. ‘Care to join us in a drink?’

  There was a faint trace of condescension in his tone, but the military-looking man did not appear to notice it. He reacted with a speed which was all the more embarrassing because he tried so patently to hide it.

  ‘Why, yes, my boy. Be delighted.’ He crossed towards them from the seat he had been occupying at the window in the big bay overlooking the sea. ‘Been down to the beach again, eh?’

  ‘The passion of the English for cleanliness, you know, Major,’ Bendall returned. ‘Dinner-jacket in the jungle and all that.’

  ‘Hrrm.’ The major cleared his throat. ‘Quite so. Wish I could join you.’

  He seemed unaware of the irony which had been in Bendall’s manner. He glanced at Belmore and Tremaine. His grey eyebrows, smoothed down over pale eyes from which the colour seemed to have been bleached by the tropical service that had wrinkled and tanned his face, rose in enquiry.

  ‘You know Belmore, of course,’ Bendall said. ‘This is Mr. Tremaine, a friend of his. Mr. Tremaine, meet Major Ayres, one of our fellow residents.’

  ‘How d’ye do.’ The major held out his hand. ‘Trying the island for a holiday, eh? Couldn’t do better. Good climate, good food, no confounded trippers. Not much more to ask for, what?’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ Tremaine said. He took the major’s hand, wincing at the other’s unexpectedly vigorous grip. ‘You holidaying, too, Major?’

  ‘Dare say you might call it that. Finished with the service now. Just settling down where I want and for as long as I feel like it. Not married. No ties. No one to bother about. Besides, makes a change after a lifetime of soldiering all over the world.’

  ‘I imagine it does. Being able to choose where you’re going instead of having the War Office do it for you must have an appeal for an old soldier, Major.’

  Bendall had obtained the drinks—an elderly man who was evidently a waiter had appeared in response to his ring—and they drifted to the chairs placed in the bay. The door was pushed open and another man came in. He was much younger than the major, and whereas the major was tall, spare, and grizzled, with a vague suggestion of an old tree past its prime and toppling to destruction, the newcomer was short, round of body
and face and with a jovial boisterousness born of a sense of well-being and satisfaction with the world.

  ‘Back already, Bendall?’

  The voice fitted the face. It was rich and full of a hearty approval of the way in which the universe was being conducted. Evidently, Tremaine diagnozed, a fortunate being whose own private universe was doing very nicely.

  ‘Your sister told us you might need her later in the morning,’ Bendall was saying. ‘We didn’t want her to incur any brotherly displeasure on our behalf.’

  Once again there was that faint undercurrent of irony. Major Ayres had made rather too obvious a point of letting it be seen that he hadn’t noticed it; the newcomer simply took it in his stride and metaphorically trampled it underfoot.

  ‘You will have your little joke! The place is going to seem flat when you leave us. You’re fixed up with drinks, I see. Anything else I can do for you?’

  ‘I think you’ve already done enough,’ Nicola Paston said.

  Tremaine gave her a curious glance. Did she really have the air of one who concealed a barb, or was he up to his old tricks again?

  Ruth Latinam touched her brother’s arm.

  ‘This is Mr. Tremaine, Hedley. A friend of Mr. Belmore’s.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Latinam turned on his heel, rather like a well-balanced top. ‘Glad to know you, Mr. Tremaine. Welcome to our little island. I take it you haven’t been over here long?’

  ‘No, I only arrived yesterday.’

  ‘Haven’t had time to get your bearings yet, then. Well, any friend of Mr. Belmore’s is welcome here. Drop in any time.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Mr. Latinam.’

  ‘Not at all. Moulin d’Or’s a pretty compact little place when all’s said and done, and we’re a happy family up here at the Rohane, eh, Ruth?’

  ‘We like our guests to be happy,’ Ruth Latinam said quietly.

  Tremaine pushed up his pince-nez. He studied Hedley Latinam, aware that he had never met the man before and yet conscious of some vaguely familiar atmosphere about him. He belonged in some other setting.