Free Dolly and the Singing Bird by Dorothy Dunnett Page B

side, Ogden had shown no inclination to board Johnson’s liner friend
Evergreen;
and had stayed on his own yacht to towel and change. Later, he was supposed to motor
Dolly
’s dinghy over to
Dolly
, trailing his own recovered small boat; and I wouldn’t trust him to do even that, but that he wanted to collect a pair of substitute oars Johnson had offered him. Like Lenny, I found riling the permissive atmosphere concerning Ogden. As for Victoria, she would learn too late that in this world one must look out for oneself.
    Johnson sat down beside me.
    “Well?” I said. There are some things which are beneath me, and I do not mind delegating those. I disliked having had to abandon this particular enquiry to Johnson, but it was necessary. Perhaps Johnson was as well known as I was. But he had an excuse through his burglar for making it, and I had no excuse at all.
    So I said, “Well?” in a tone no doubt less than patient; and Johnson stared down thoughtfully at the pitcher of Scotch in his hands, glass to glass, and said, “Would you like to know why Michael Twiss is actually here?”
    There was a short silence, broken by a distant rendering of “Any Old Iron.”
    “I can guess,” I said gloomily.
    “Quite. Why didn’t you tell me,” said Johnson pleasantly, through both parts of the bifocals at once, “that Dr. Kenneth Holmes was on Rum?”
    Damn
. “Because I wanted to find out for myself first what really happened in Rose Street,” I said sulkily. “How did you hear about Kenneth?”
    The owl-like glasses inclined. “If Kenneth Holmes really killed Chigwell, what on earth do you imagine you could do anyway? Although I must admit he’s still in the running. The police have found no trace of my burglar or your small, warty friend. Nor, I deduce, have they yet found the late Mr. Chigwell, with coat hanger or without. Lastly, if you wish to know, I learned of Dr. Holmes’s whereabouts in the same way that Michael Twiss did: from the radio news.”
    “He’s dead,” I said blankly.
    “He’s not dead. He’s the Ministry’s chief explosives engineer, now doing prototype instrument work for the Nature Conservancy on Rum, and he has been called in to advise after the bomb outrage on the submarine
Lysander
.”
    “The nuclear submarine? The one undergoing trials somewhere up here?”
    “Correct. She was returning to her base in South Rona and had passed outside Raasay when the explosion occurred. It could have sunk her, and the damage to instrumentation was considerable, I quote, but she was able to return under her own power. A navigating officer, a naval scientist and a leading mechanic in the affected compartment lost their lives. You are not alone in suffering tribulations at sea.”
    He was pipped. “You’re angry because I came with you under false pretences,” I said gently. “I’m sorry.”
    “Goodness me. Dear girl,” said Johnson, and rapped his pipe smartly on a big onyx dish with a chromium model of
Evergreen
stuck on its rim, “I want your face, that’s all. I don’t want your confidences.”
    He was a cool customer. Perhaps he and I had more in common than I thought. A man who knows his own mind, under some circumstances, can make a very good ally.
     
    The idea sustained me, or nearly, through an evening of nerve-wracking ennui. We were shown over the boat, not missing a deep freeze or a centrifugal windscreen wiper, by May Bird, who then put on a frilly apron over the pink cloqué and served a large, expensive meal which she had cooked herself, no doubt by radar. After this, having sung comic songs to each other without cease over the radio telephone, the neighbours arrived from the floating trattorias all around, each boatload slightly plastered but prepared to sink its trayful of vodka and remain to join in the good, clean, innocent fun. A little complex of cigars and emba minks settled down to high-stake poker in one corner, but I did not join them. I never gamble.
    Halfway