Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal and Other Stories by H.E. Bates

is this free drink they give you mornings.’
    â€˜You pay for it,’ Mrs Pickering said. ‘You pay in the end.’
    â€˜I tell you what,’ he said. ‘I forgot my water-goggles. Boy, would you send somebody down with my water-goggles and my flippers—Room 17. Quick as you can, please.’
    â€˜Yessir.’
    When the boy had gone Mr Pickering sat sucking rum through a straw and watching the long, almost phosphorescent lines of breakers spuming on the inner reefs of the bay. They were very beautiful in their pure curling regularity, like waves of bright-brushed hair. Beyond them the sea had the blueness of vitriol, with stripes of acid green, fading to sandy yellow, where the shallows were. Beyond that the thin low rocks of an island seemed like nothing more than a blue-brown floating board except when spray hit them, and leapt like a wild white horse into clear ocean beyond.
    â€˜It’s all over there,’ Mr Pickering said.
    â€˜On the island? How did you find that out?’
    Mr Pickering sucked once more at the straws of his glass and then looked about him to see if anyone was coming. The boy had not come back.
    â€˜You’ve heard of Maxted,’ he said.
    â€˜But that was a long time ago. That’s closed, isn’t it? Everybody’s forgotten about that.’
    â€˜When a man’s murdered nobody forgets about it. Especially the person who did the murder.’
    Mrs Pickering played with sand, letting it run like iridescent mist through her podgy fingers, and said that she didn’t see what the murder of the man named Maxted had to do with gold on Rock Island.
    â€˜Or for that matter with you.’
    â€˜The man had an empire,’ he said. ‘A bit here, a bit there. A fortune here, one over there—God, nobody knows how much he had. This is only one bit of it.’
    â€˜You’re going to try to tell me he left odd fortunes lying around in gold pieces,’ she said. ‘Just for the picking up.’
    â€˜You might call it funk money,’ he said. ‘You might call it insurance. Some would. Dictators do it—a cache here and a cache there. You know—against the evil day.’
    â€˜The boy’s coming with your goggles,’ she said. ‘You know I think I’ll go to the hotel. I find it very nearly too hot to sit in the sun.’
    â€˜Just wait two minutes. While the boy’s gone. Then I’ll have my swim.’
    The boy brought Mr Pickering’s goggles, a pair of rubber frogmen flippers and a telephone message on a tray.
    â€˜That’s all right,’ Mr Pickering said. He reached for his trousers and gave the boy two English shillings. ‘That’s fine. Thank you.’
    The boy went away and Mrs Pickering said: ‘Who is that from?’
    â€˜Man named Torgsen,’ he said. ‘You know the funny little pink house near the harbour? Has shells and sea-fans and goddam porcupine fish hanging up outside? He keeps that. He’s got a motor boat—he’s going to take me across to the island.’
    â€˜This afternoon?’
    â€˜Two o’clock,’ he said. ‘He’s the one who knows all about it.’
    â€˜If he knows all about it why doesn’t he keep it to himself? What’s he have to let you in on it for?’
    â€˜Now you’ve hit it,’ Mr Pickering said.
    He was fitting on his flippers. When both of them were fixed his feet had the appearance of those of a giant green duck.
    â€˜They’re all scared to hell,’ he said. ‘Everybody knows just enough to scare everybody else.’
    â€˜About the murder or about the money?’
    â€˜Both,’ Mr Pickering said. ‘When war broke out Maxted salted away about a quarter of a million in gold coinage on the island. The island belonged to him anyway and he had three motor-boats keeping trespassers away. That’s what I mean about funk money.’
    Mrs Pickering said she