He had been somewhat taken aback, on arrival at the Cove, to find the Ford parked among the palm trunks, but had decided that it must be Mrs Stock — come to be alone with her shame and sorrow.
Mr Hurridge could observe no lonely figure walking by the sad seashore, but on approaching the bathing-huts with the intention of seating himself on one of the wooden benches that stood outside, he became aware of voices and paused involuntarily. The conversation was hardly edifying:
‘It was all my fault, darling!’
‘No it wasn’t; it was mine, darling!’
‘Oh no, darling! I was horrid!’
‘You weren’t horrid, darling!’
‘Anyway, it was really all that horrid Rosamund’s fault — it just goes to show, doesn’t it?’
‘Then you do forgive me?’
‘Oh George!’
‘Oh Amabel!’
Mr Hurridge averted his head and hurried past. He was profoundly shocked. It seemed — under the circumstances — little short of indelicate that young Amabel Withers and George Beamish should drive out to Corbyn’s Cove with no better object than to indulge in sentimental reconciliations, when after all …
He slowed his steps and made for a patch of shadow where a fallen palm trunk, victim of the recent storm, offered an inviting seat.
It was, alas, already occupied.
‘We’ll be married as soon as I can get home. That’ll be about April. Oh Val, darling — only four months!’
‘Oh Charles! Oh bliss!’
Mr Hurridge felt like an elderly maiden-lady who has discovered a burglar under the bed.
It was indecent! It was outrageous! Was Murder — three murders no less, not to mention one accidental though well-deserved death! — a matter of so little moment that the young people of Ross could thus ebulliently discuss love up and down the Islands?
‘Disgusting!’ said Mr Hurridge, and coughed with loud disapproval.
He decided to pause for meditation and a quick cigar upon the sandbank at the far end of the beach. But it was not to be. Mr Hurridge’s luck was out and Romance was definitely in.
‘There’s still one thing I forgot to ask you. Do you love me, Coppy?’
‘Oh Nick!’
‘Oh damn!’ said Mr Hurridge.
He wheeled about, tripped over a piece of driftwood, dropped his unlighted cigar upon the sand, stooped to retrieve it and was sharply bitten by a crab, and abandoning it, departed blasphemously down the beach — a misogynist for life.
As Amabel would doubtless have said, ‘It just goes to show, doesn’t it?’
ALSO BY M. M. KAYE
FICTION
The Far Pavilions
Shadow of the Moon
Trade Wind
Death in Kenya
Death in Zanzibar
Death in Cyprus
Death in Kashmir
Death in Berlin
The Ordinary Princess (for children)
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The Sun in the Morning
Golden Afternoon
DEATH IN THE ANDAMANS. Copyright © 1960, 1985 by M. M. Kaye. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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[email protected] First published in Great Britain under the title Night on the Island by Longman
eISBN 9781250089267
First eBook edition: May 2015
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M. M. Kaye, Death in the Andamans
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