get writer’s cramp quickly.”
“Go ahead. Right, my dad came from somewhere up north before I was born,
and my mother’s lived in Vancouver all her life. She’s half Jamaican on her father’s
side. Wilhelmina. She’s a lovely woman.” There was some defiance in her voice and
he guessed she’d had a few unhappy encounters with bigots. “And there’s not much I
need tell you about my childhood because it was like any other city kid. School and
helping out at home. Small corner stores don’t make much money; there’s too much
competition from the big boys. You scratch a living, and you rely a lot on customer lo yalty.
So guess what, I never traveled outside the Lower Mainland until last year.”
“Never?” This was astonishing. “You never went on holiday, camping or anything?”
“There wasn’t time. Then last year Dad got sick and had to sell the shop.
Nothing serious, more of a mental thing. Exhaustion, I guess. He and Mom bought a
house and gave me some money and told me it was time I saw the world. Well, I saw
Vancouver Island, anyway. Have you ever tried to live by yourself with no job?
Money goes pretty quick. So I had to find work.”
“The massage parlor.”
There was a silence. He heard the telephone ring in the kitchen, then stop as
Bill lifted the receiver. He turned round from the computer to see the blue eyes had
narrowed with anger. “I expected better from you, somehow, but you’re like all the
rest. It wasn’t a massage parlor; it was a health spa. There was no funny business
there. None at all. And even if there had been, what goddamned business it is of yours
anyway?”
“You mentioned funny business, not me.”
Another silence. Then a quiet: “Sorry. I guess I’m overly sensitive. Right. So
I got my taste of freedom on the Island and it was like heaven after twenty years in
Vancouver. But even Victoria can be… claustrophobic after a while. You can take a
bus to Nanaimo; I did that a couple of times, but Nanaimo’s just another city, and not
even a big one. I met plenty of people at the health spa, but have you any idea how old
and fat people are, who use health spas? I mean, I was hardly likely to meet a goodlooking
young guy there, was I?
“But there was another way out. I used to walk from the health spa to the park
in my lunch hour, and I’d see ships going down the Sound and out to sea. Big ships,
cruise ships, tankers, container ships. And little boats. Sailboats, with young guys on
board, girls too. People my own age, setting off on long voyages. I started hanging
around the marinas. And you know the rest. I met Lionel.”
She paused. Devoran said quietly, “Care to tell me about Lionel?”
“He seemed a nice man. I kept going back to the marina where he was, and I
began to take him serious, I guess. The deal was, I’d help him fit the boat out in return
for food and accommodation aboard. If it all worked out, I’d sail away with him. So I
quit my job after Christmas, and soon he gave up his apartment and moved aboard too,
and we brought the boat to Noss in December because moorage was a lot cheaper
Foul Play at Duffy’s Marina – Michael Coney 66
here. Now neither of us was working, so we needed to be thrifty. Then things started
to go wrong.”
He heard the door open and turned around. Bill’s face poked into the room,
alive with curiosity. “Have you pounced yet, Dad?”
“This is serious police business, Bill.”
“Hogwash. You’re just shooting the breeze. Have you boasted about the
Spackman case yet?” He sat on the sofa next to Susi. “Dad cracked the Spackman
case. He’s famous because of it. Is that secondhand smoke I can smell? ”
“Don’t listen to him, Susi.” To Devoran’s annoyance the girl clearly welcomed
the interruption, managing a tentative grin in Bill’s direction. “The Spackman case is ancient
history. What’s important is that we help Susi sort out her affairs.”
“You’ve finished the interrogation, then?”
“There never was an interrogation. We don’t even know if there’s been a
crime.”
“Gran was on the phone just now. She said you were investigating a diabolical
murder.”
“Murder?” Susi exclaimed.
“Just my mother-in-law’s fertile imagination. As I said, I’m not considering foul
play at present. At least,” Devoran added, being a stickler for honesty, “not unless the
autopsy comes up with something unexpected. And not until we raise the boat and find
out what caused the explosion.”
“Did Mr. Slade have any enemies, Susi?” Bill asked.
“For God’s sake, Bill! Stay out of this or leave the room. Now, Susi, what
about your clothes and other stuff? I suppose they’re on the boat?”
“And the strong box I told you about.”
“A sea chest?” Bill asked eagerly. “Brass bound?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. It’s like a miniature sea chest, about two foot long
and a foot wide and high. It’s an antique. Li waterproofed it with a rubber seal around
the lid and a plug for the keyhole. We keep everything important in it. Passports, cash,
a bit of jewelry, odd papers we don’t want lying about the boat, computer back-up
discs, that kind of thing.” She hesitated. “Li often paid the boat craftsmen in cash. They
liked it better that way. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to lose the box.”
“Is it likely to float away?”
“No. We kept it in a locker up forward, under the vee berth. Unless the explosion
blew the locker apart.”
“The explosion was further aft,” Devoran said carefully. “It blew the after end of
the cabin roof off. The box will be safe. And I’ve placed a guard on the dock for tonight.”
“A scuba diver could sneak in there,” Bill suggested, “under cover of darkness.
He could be there as we speak, in the Stygian depths of the cabin, armed with a pry
bar. And meanwhile the uniformed man stands stolidly on the dock above, all unknowing.”
“There’d be bubbles,” Devoran objected.
Foul Play at Duffy’s Marina – Michael Coney 67
“The unimaginative constable would assume it’s methane gas produced by the
decay of eons-worth of tiny creatures in the primeval ooze of the ocean floor.”
“Bill, why don’t you go to bed?”
“Actually I’m meeting Maeve in a minute or two.”
“I absolutely forbid you to borrow the car.”
He looked aggrieved. “There’s no harm in my using it within the confines of
Noss, is there? I mean, there’s no police here.”
“There’s me, for God’s sake!”
“You’re saying you’d shop me? Whatever happened to good old family lo yalty,
Dad?”
“Dead and buried, because I have evidence that you drove the car to Peterville,
perhaps as recently as last night.”
His face was a mask of skepticism. “What evidence?”
“The nearest McDonald’s is in Peterville, I believe?”
It was a fair cop. “See you later then, Dad.” He couldn’t resist a lascivious
smirk. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” The door slammed behind him.
MONDAY MORNING: AT THELMA DROST’S
The low gray clouds accorded well with Devoran’s mood, but at least he was back in
plain clothes. There was no need for him to leave the house by the back door, but for
some reason he did; and he stood for a long moment regarding the garden which had
once been Veronica’s pride and joy. The shrubs still showed their heads, bare and
spindly at this time of year, but the perennials were lost in a green-brown mass of
weeds. It was a large yard by Noss standards, extending to an old wall at the far end,
flanked on either side by neighbors who lacked the time or energy to match the horticultural
standards Veronica had achieved.
Once, close to the house, she had cultivated a neat lawn bordered by neat beds
of colorful annuals. Now a number of five-foot posts, green with preservative, supported
sagging chicken wire and enclosed two rectangular compounds, each about
twenty feet by ten. This was the site of Bill’s erstwhile rabbitry. Devoran stepped over
the wire into the left-hand compound. The rabbits had been gone for a couple of years
but the soil was still bare. They’d possessed voracious appetites and once the grass
had gone they’d consumed alfalfa pellets by the sackload, the cost of which had been a
matter of dispute between Devoran and his son and had probably been a material factor
in the eventual annihilation of the flock.
He sighed. Brown rabbits this side, gray rabbits that, hutches for shelter and a
plywood maze at the far end where Bill tested their intelligence. They were cute little
fellows and he’d been quite sorry when they were gone. He’d helped Bill build the
compound not long after Veronica’s death, maybe thinking the rabbits would in some
way compensate the lad for the loss of his mother.
Nothing had compensated him, Eric Devoran, and now he was on his way to
visit a woman whom he found disturbingly attractive. And she could turn out to be a
Foul Play at Duffy’s Marina – Michael Coney 68
suspect in a murder case. A double whammy of guilt. He took a deep breath, told
himself that only one thing mattered — he was a policeman on duty — and made his
way to the trail that ran along the back of the yards, trampling over the perennials as he
went.
Miss Drost’s door cracked open, halted by a heavy chain. Her thin face appeared
in the gap.
“Is Miss Sutcliffe up yet?”
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Devoran.” The look of fear disappeared from her eyes.
Some of the elderly inhabitants respond to a knock at the door as though Noss Cove
were a totalitarian state, thought Devoran. And Miss Drost hadn’t even attended his
talk on home invasion. “Miss Sutcliffe? I haven’t seen her yet. But I’ve called her
twice.” She began to gather force. “Really, it’s too bad. I made it quite clear to her last
night. Breakfast is served at eight-thirty sharp. We must have rules, you see, otherwise
people take advantage. We did say fifty dollars, didn’t we?”
He opened his wallet and pushed a bill through the crack. She snatched it and
stuffed it in her apron pocket. Another fifty dollars the tax man would never hear of.
“Can I come in?”
She relented and closed the door. He heard the rattle of the chain being detached,
then the door opened in rather more welcoming fashion and she led him into the
breakfast room. One of three tables had been laid. “Coffee, Mr. Devoran?”
“Thanks.”
Susi arrived ten minutes later, looking heavy-eyed.
“Sleep all right?”
“What do you think?” She sat down and stared gloomily at the boxes of cereals
on the sideboard. “Miss Drost won’t let me smoke.”
It had not been an auspicious start to the day. Devoran was at his worst in the
mornings and relied heavily on Bill to cheer him up, but the young rogue had failed him.
He’d been loitering about in aimless fashion, resulting in an angry exchange that still rankled.
“Isn’t it time you went to school?”
“What? Oh, not much going on there today. I thought I’d give it a miss.”
“Bill, you’ll collect up your stuff and go to school right now!”
“Education is a precious thing, eh, Dad?”
“It comes out of my Property Tax and I’m going to make damned sure I get my
moneys-worth. Now get going!”
His son’s casual attitude toward life infuriated Devoran. Now he found himself
regarding Susi despondently as Miss Drost thumped a plate of dried-up bacon, egg,
sausage and tomato before her. Susi stared after the retreating, affronted figure resentfully.
Even the brightest of blue eyes couldn’t compensate for the aura of deathly despair
that permeated the kitchen like carbon monoxide.
Foul Play at Duffy’s Marina – Michael Coney 69
“Last night you said things started to go wrong,” Devoran said, pouring her a
coffee. “Before the uh, the explosion.” If the floodgates had to be opened, he might as
well spin the valve.
“You wouldn’t believe the things that’ve been happening to us.” She ignored
the hot breakfast and tipped a measure of Corn Flakes into her bowl, wrinkling her
nose in disgust. “Are you aware there’s an acceptable level of rat hairs and droppings in
breakfast cereals? I read it in the consumer guide. It’s a disgrace.”
“But that affects us all. It’s not aimed at you personally.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about; I got sidetracked. What I was getting at
was: it’s almost as though we were never meant to get the boat finished. It’s been one
disaster after another. It’s been so bad that I was beginning to wonder if there was
somebody behind the things that have been happening.”
Devoran mentally offered thanks that Bill was not there. The boy’s imagination
would have taken wing on hearing that remark. “Are you saying there’s been a history
of disasters kind of… culminating in Lionel Slade’s death?”
“It didn’t occur to me yesterday; I mean it wouldn’t, would it? I couldn’t think
about anything but Li’ s… accident. But last night I started thinking. You know how
you wake up and start turning things over in your mind? And last night it did seem to
me there was, uh, a pattern, I guess you’d call it.”
“You’d better tell me about it.”
She began to spoon down cereal and rat debris, getting her thoughts in order.
Eventually she swallowed and said, “There were lots of little things, but maybe they
were the kind of things that always happen when you’re fitting a boat out. But there
were two big things. The first one happened soon after we arrived at the marina, about
two months ago. We’d had the boat hauled out onto the ways on the Sunday and we’d
had the bottom power-washed. Next morning everything was dry and Li started to
paint the keel with antifouling while I drove to Peterville to pick up a parcel from the
post office. When I got back, the boat was lying on its side and Li was white as a
sheet. It seemed it had fallen over and he’d only just got out of the way in time.”
“Yes, I was there soon afterwards. It seemed there’d been a problem with the
lashings meant to hold the boat upright.”
“God only knows how it happened.”
“Lionel Slade said it was his own fault. A stupid oversight.”
“Only to avoid publicity. Li hated publicity. I think he had good reason.”
This put a new complexion on things. “You’d better run through the haul-out
procedure for me.”
“They lift the boat out of the water on an elevator with a kind of railroad trolley
under the keel. Then they wheel it on rails to a traverser. This takes it sideways until
they find an empty siding to push it into. So while it’s on the ways, the keel’s resting on
the trolley, which has two uprights on the port side. The uprights are tied to cleats on
the boat, so it can’t fall over. To make really sure, they wedge a wooden strut under
the starboard side, too. You’d think it’d be impossible for anything to go wrong.”
“So how did it happen?”
Foul Play at Duffy’s Marina – Michael Coney 70
“According to Li, he’d finished the painting all except the little square bit you
can’t get at because it’s under the starboard wedge. So he knocked the wedge away,
and the next thing he knew the boat was coming down on top of him. The knots had
come undone.”
This tallied with what he’d been told at the time. But now, with Slade dead, it
had a sinister ring indeed. If Bill had been present, he’d have said the plot had thickened.
“Who tied the knots in the first place?”
“Li did. You do it while the boat’s still in the water, so that by the time the elevator
lifts it clear, it’s firmly held. But Li doesn’t… didn’t make mistakes with knots.
When he tied a knot, it stayed tied.”
“So what do you think happened?”
“Li reckoned kids got into the marina at night, fooling around among the boats
on the ways. Security in the marina is just a joke; people leave the gate propped open
all the time. Li tackled Red Duffy about it. Duffy said Li should have checked the
knots before he took the starboard support away. He was right, of course, but you
don’t expect to find someone’s been fooling around with your safety ropes.” The blue
eyes regarded him over the coffee cup. “But now I’m wondering if it was kids at all.”
No, Devoran didn’t like the sound of this. Coupled with the subsequent death
of Slade, this incident gave grounds for suspicion. His heart sank. In the knowledge
that a large proportion of murders go unsolved, he’d been riding high on his success
with the Spackman case. The last thing he needed was a death in suspicious circumstances
with its attendant interviews by the press. ‘Are you close to an arrest, Sergeant?’
‘Well, I don’t know about close, exactly.’ ‘When do you expect to have
some positive news, then?’ ‘Well, to tell the truth, I’ve no goddamned idea. I
have no suspects, no murder weapon, no motive, nothing. I’m baffled. Maybe
I’m no good at my job. Maybe I’d be better teaching little old ladies how to handle
burglars.’
“You said there were two big things that went wrong. What was the other?”
“The next one happened a month later, one Sunday night. The boat was in the
water by then, and Li and I were sleeping aboard. Well, in the middle of the night I
woke up and stepped out of the berth into a couple feet of water. It was horrible. We
couldn’t open the main hatch to get out; it seemed to be jammed. We were shouting
but nobody heard. We tried the fore hatch but that was jammed too. By this time we
were really panicking. The water was rising and I thought we were dead meat.
“Then Li found a heavy hammer and began to smash away at the main hatch.
It’s a big beamy boat and he had plenty of room to take a good swing. And in the end,
well, we smashed our way out and climbed onto the dock. Wet and near naked,” she
grinned ruefully, “but undrowned.”
“So why did the boat sink?”
“Well, Duffy’s man took a look at it, and guess what, he found one of the sea
cocks open.”
“But don’t sea cocks have pipes connected to them, going to places on the
boat?”
Foul Play at Duffy’s Marina – Michael Coney 71
“Not this one. Li had disconnected it while he was working on the engine. It
was for cooling water or something. It was open and water was gushing in as the tide
rose, so he turned it off and in the morning we bailed the boat out. It took us forever to
get everything dry, I can tell you.”
“But…. Are you saying Lionel forgot to shut the sea cock when he disconnected
the pipe?”
“No, he couldn’t have forgotten. Water would have come gushing in the moment
he took the clip off the pipe.”
Like the incident on the ways, the whole thing stank. “So you’re saying someone
got aboard and opened the sea cock while you were sleeping?”
“No, they couldn’t have. They’d have had to come right into the cabin and
open the door to the engine room. We’d have heard them.”
“Could they have opened the cock while you were away, earlier in the evening?”
“No…. All right, we’d dropped into the Globe for a couple of hours, but after
we got back we stayed up talking for ages. The floor would have been awash long before
we went to bed. We’d have noticed.”
Devoran hesitated, pondering, visualizing what little he knew of the layout of the
Ocean Dream. “Could a string have been attached to the sea cock handle and led
through an open porthole to the outside?”
“No. It was an old-type sea cock. It had a wheel, not a handle.”
He gave up. “So what did you conclude?”
“It was just a mystery. Maybe Li had forgotten to shut off the sea cock but it
was partly clogged. Then in the middle of the night the obstruction suddenly cleared
itself. The only thing wrong with that theory is that Li was positive he’d shut the cock.
So in the end we returned an open verdict on the whole thing.”
“Weird, though. And the hatches were jammed? Did you find out why?”
“There were piles of equipment on the fore hatch and it hadn’t been opened
since last year. I guess it had warped a bit. And the main hatch hasp had fallen over
the staple; you can’t open the doors until the hatch has been slid back a bit. It’s happened
before; you can open it from inside by sliding a knife through the crack and pushing.
In the panic of the moment that didn’t occur to us.”
“Could the hasp have been dropped over the staple deliberately, while you
were asleep?”
“I guess so. But it’s a pretty roundabout way of trying to murder people, if
that’s what you mean. And it doesn’t explain how the sea cock was opened.”
Taken all together, it seemed that Slade and Susi had had more than their normal
share of bad luck. The memory of a thickset figure slipped into his mind. “Have
you seen any strangers wandering around the dock lately?”
She’d finished her cereal; she toyed with her bacon and egg. “This time of year
people start thinking about buying boats. Red Duffy would know better than me. I’ve
seen one or two strangers, yes.”
“I’ll be seeing Red Duffy this morning,” he told her. “I’ll talk to him about it.”
Foul Play at Duffy’s Marina – Michael Coney 72
“Maybe he’ll cooperate with the police better than he did with us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh…. I don’t know. Li and Red Duffy didn’t get along. They had a hellish
fight a while back. I happened to pass the marina office and I heard them shouting.
Afterwards I asked Li and he said they were arguing about the cost of repairs to the
boat after it fell over. From then on, it was obvious Duffy wanted us out of the marina.”
MONDAY MORNING: A GAME OF MASTERMIND
As Bill pushed open the door of his Gran’s cottage he heard an enraged shout.
“Damn that woman all to hell!”
He was quite used to Gran’s tantrums. They were just a part of what she was,
and they blew over as quickly as a tropical storm, which can take several days in the
rainy season. He coughed to indicate she had an audience. The glassy eyes of a leopard’s
head goggled at him from the wall. Did the Rooke-Challengers really shoot all
those animals? Or were they plastic replicas mounted on the walls to create an ambiance?
And why did Gran always sit directly beneath the warthog, giving one’s aesthetic
sensibilities no rest? Her cottage resembled a zoo frozen in an instant of time. Some of
the heads were so unpleasantly lifelike that Bill could easily imagine the rest of the animal
hanging on the other side of the wall, legs bicycling uselessly.
“Yes, what the devil do you want? Oh, it’s you, Wilberforce. You’ve come at
a bad time.”
“The dog’s thrown up again?”
“Colonel is in perfect health for his age, thank you very much. No. I have just
been involved in a most unpleasant telephone conversation with that woman who throws
her weight around in the village, May Vinge. I ask you, Wilberforce! Admittedly she
once sold one of her watercolors to a half-witted tourist with defective vision, but does
that give her the right to behave like the local Michelangelo?”
“Wasn’t Michelangelo, uh, a homosexual?”
“Nothing would surprise me where May Vinge is concerned. She is a woman
of peculiar tastes, and I speak from personal experience. You may have heard she rejected
the canvas I intended to hang at the Noss Cove Art Exhibition. And now she
has turned down a most accomplished little tapestry by my dear friend Thelma Drost.
Thelma is in tears. I called Vinge to remonstrate and she was positively insulting. Can
you believe it?”
“I didn’t know you still painted, Gran.”
“My hand has not lost its touch, I’m happy to say.” The old lady lifted a panga
from the wall and absently tested the edge with her thumb. “Painting is not normally one
of my indulgences, as you know. I consider painters effete, with the honorable exception
of the late Sir Winston Churchill. It was out of pure public-spiritedness that I spent
several hours producing a work in oils. I am sick and tired of the garbage that is paraded
as art at our annual exhibition. It gives Noss Cove a bad name. I asked May
Vinge to explain one of her daubs last month. She couldn’t. She said what counted
Foul Play at Duffy’s Marina – Michael Coney 73
was the emotions it aroused in the beholder. I am nothing if not honest, so I told her the
emotions it aroused in me. She became offensive, as is her wont.”
Bill’s interest was aroused. “Can I see your picture?”
“Certainly!” She marched to the easel and whipped off a paint-stained cover.
Badly startled, he regarded the riot of crimson and green, among the swirls and
spatters of which could be discerned dark and savagely twisted shapes and a peculiar
feature, somewhere toward the bottom right corner, that looked like nothing so much as
a frenzied eye.
He recovered the power of speech. “Uh, what is it?”
“I call it Wildebeest Pulled Down by African Hunting Dogs. ”
He regarded the work with a new respect. “It’s good. I see it now. I like the
eye.”
“So…. Is this merely a social call, young Wilberforce? You’ll take coffee?
Shouldn’t you be at school?”
“I have a lifetime for education. There are sinister happenings in the village,
Gran. I thought we should have a chat about them.”
She bared her teeth at him in what he recognized as a friendly smile. He was
her favorite and only grandson and he could read her mind like a book. What a fine
young fellow he is, she was thinking. What a contrast to his wretched father! And
how like him to cast aside selfish thoughts of school in favor of public-spirited endeavor.
It was one of his life’s sorrows that she and Dad didn’t get along. Another sorrow
was that Maeve kept saying she was saving herself for marriage. And another
again was that he didn’t have a driving license. Sorrows? He was awash in them. But
that was beside the point. Gran hurried into the kitchen to put the kettle on. “You refer
to the brutal murder at Duffy’s marina, I take it,” she called over her shoulder.
“To tell the truth, Gran,” he called back, “I’m a bit worried about Dad’s ability
to handle it. He’s kind of got off on the wrong tack and he keeps refusing to talk about
murder. He should be considering all possibilities, surely? I think we might offer a bit of
help here and there. This Susi woman’s got him all distracted.”
“Susi would be the victim’s doxy, I take it. I caught a glimpse of her at the marina.
She could do with covering herself up a bit, shameless hussy. Avoid her, Wilberforce.”
“It’s not too easy to avo id Susi, Gran. She’s staying with Miss Drost.”
“What!” The old lady came scuttling back out of the kitchen, eyes bulging with
outrage. “I was just talking to Thelma and she didn’t tell me. That son-in-law of mine
needs a lesson in diplomacy! Billeting the prime suspect in a murder investigation with a
frail and elderly gentlewoman? I shall speak to his superiors about this!”
The old girl had got the bit between her teeth. She had to be reined in, and
quickly. “Actually Susi’s not too bad. And Miss Drost seems quite happy with her.”
“I should hope so! Although I do wonder why she concealed the tenancy from
me. I must have a word with her. I like to be straightforward with my friends.”
Foul Play at Duffy’s Marina – Michael Coney 74
“And I don’t think Susi’s a suspect. She was shopping in Peterville at the time
of the explosion and Dad says when he told her about the tragic loss of her lover, she
was fairly broken up.”
“A consummate actress. We must remember that. I like to cast a wide net,
and I don’t like to rule out suspects before the investigation is properly under way. And
it’s always possible she has an accomplice.”
“I thought you suspected the man who took Mr. Duffy to get changed out of his
wet things.”
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