Death in the Andamans by M. M. Kaye Page A

shivered, and said: ‘He probably got caught under the boat when it turned over, and never came up at all.’
    Nick shook his head. ‘He came up all right, because he was one of the first people I remember seeing when I came to the surface. He was hanging on to the next boat, and I remember noticing, in the silly way that one does notice unimportant trifles in moments of stress, that he was wearing a clumsy great garnet ring about the size of a sixpence. His boat bumped into ours just before the rain came, and he was holding on to the centre-board with one hand. I thought for a minute that he’d cut himself. And then I saw that it wasn’t blood but a red stone.’
    â€˜What wasn’t blood?’ inquired an interested voice from behind them.
    Nick turned swiftly and smiled into Valerie’s inquiring face: ‘Nothing, Val. Just idle chatter.’
    Valerie said: ‘Then for Pete’s sake come and chatter in the drawing-room! The party is being very sticky, and I can’t imagine why anyone turned up. I know if I’d spent an hour or so being soaked in the bay I’d have insisted on going straight to bed. Even Rosamund is looking a bit on edge, and everyone else is frankly bad-tempered. So come in and pull your weight. Hullo, here’s Dad.’
    â€˜I’m sorry to be so late,’ said Sir Lionel, entering upon Valerie’s words: ‘I’m afraid, Val, that none of your other guests will be able to get here. The ferry can’t run, and Norton has gone back with the forest-launch, so he won’t be here either.’
    â€˜That’s all right,’ said Valerie. ‘I realized that no one else would be able to make it. We were really only waiting for you and Dr Vicarjee and Truda and Frank.’
    Vicarjee was the Bengali doctor, Miss Truda Gidney the matron and only European nurse in the small hospital on Ross, and Frank Benton the Commissioner’s personal assistant.
    â€˜In that case,’ said Sir Lionel, ‘we can go into dinner, because Vicarjee and Benton went out shooting together and are stranded in Aberdeen and can’t get back, and Miss Gidney sent a message to say that both hospital ayahs had leave today and are in the same predicament, so she doesn’t think she should leave.’
    â€˜Poor old Truda,’ said Valerie. ‘I wouldn’t have her conscience for the world. Fancy having to spend a night like this in an empty hospital, without even a patient to keep you company? No one’s sick just now, so she might just as well have come. But I can see her point. Well, if no one else is coming, we may as well go into dinner. Come on, Rosamund, you must be starving.’
    She took Mrs Purvis’s arm and led the way into the dining-room.

8
    Dinner that night was not a cheerful meal. There had not been time to order the removal of the superfluous chairs or to rearrange the seating, and the vacant places lent a gloomy air to the long, gaily-decorated table.
    Valerie had ruefully bidden her guests to disregard the place cards and to sit where they liked, and the depleted Christmas Eve party huddled together at one end of the table, sitting close to each other as though in need of mutual comfort and support. But in spite of the artificial sprays of holly, the glittering strings of tinsel and the mounds of gaily-coloured crackers that lay piled on the white cloth, a proper Christmas spirit was noticeably lacking, and conversation plodded heavily through a bog of social trivialities with frequent halts in miry patches of silence.
    If only, thought Valerie despairingly for at least the fourth time during the meal, Leonard wouldn’t break every silence by saying brightly, ‘It must be twenty past — an angel’s passing!’… I wonder who invented that idiotic saying anyway? If he says it again I shall scream! She sighed heavily, and pushed a piece of plum pudding around her plate with a moody fork,