Death in the Andamans Read Online Free PDF Page A

‘clean-limbed’, possessed a pair of startlingly blue eyes and a sense of humour that was at present prompting him to model his conversation upon the only reading provided by the Calvert Library: an institution that would appear to have been last stocked during the frivolous twenties by a fervent admirer of such characters as Bertie Wooster, Berry and Co., and ‘Bones of the River’.
    Apart from this temporary aberration, Copper had no fault to find with him, and she grinned at him affectionately as he came quickly down the Club steps, kissed his betrothed, and spoke in an urgent undertone: ‘There is a slug in our salad, honey. John Shilto, no less. He came over on the lumber boat this morning. I gather he’s staying with old Hurridge for Christmas and wasn’t expected until this evening, but as his host and everyone else is off on this picnic I more or less had to ask the old basket to come along too. You don’t mind, do you? I couldn’t very well leave him here “alone and palely loitering” for the entire day — Christmas Eve and all.’
    â€˜No, of course not, darling. I can bear it. But he’ll have to sit in the back among all the bottles and ____ Hello, Mr Shilto.’ She went into the Club ahead of them to greet a heavily built hulk of a man who rose out of a wicker chair at her approach, and Copper, recognizing what she termed ‘Val’s Social-Poise Voice’, realized that Valerie did not like Mr Shilto. Well, she needn’t worry, thought Copper bleakly, I’m the one who will have to sit in the back of the car and make polite conversation with him …
    Valerie was saying: ‘It’s been a long time since you were last over here. We never seem to see you at the Club these days. You won’t have met Miss Randal … Copper, this is Mr Shilto. He owns one of the largest coconut plantations in the Islands. You must get him to take you over it one day.’
    â€˜I shall be delighted,’ said Mr Shilto extending a damp, fleshy hand. ‘I hope you mean to make a long stay, Miss Randal? What do you think of our Islands?’
    Why must people always ask that question? thought Copper with a touch of exasperation: like reporters! Aloud she said: ‘I think they are beautiful.’
    Charles ordered lemon squashes which arrived in tall, frosted glasses, clinking with ice and borne by a slant-eyed Burmese ‘boy’ who wore a wide length of vivid cerise cloth wound closely about his body, a short white jacket and a headscarf of salmon pink into the folds of which he had tucked a white frangipani flower. But while the others talked, Copper sat silent; sipping her drink and gazing out of the Club windows at the sunlight sparkling and splintering against the glassy surface of the bay, and thinking that she had never before understood the true meaning of colour. Where the water was deepest it was ultramarine, shading to a pure, vivid emerald in the shallows, with bars of lilac and lavender betraying the hidden reefs. And across the bay Mount Harriet rose up from the ranks of coconut palms in a riot of green, every shade of it — rich, tangled, tropical — against a sky like a sapphire shield …
    A ship’s hooter sounded twice from the Ross jetty, and Charles said: ‘There goes the five-minutes signal,’ and reached for his sun-helmet. Copper gulped down the icy contents of her glass and stood up, and they went out into the hot, blinding sunlight across the baked lawns under the gold mohur trees and past the little summer-house that is built out from the sea wall of the Club, and whose floor covers half the deep, dim tank where the turtles intended (though seldom used) for Government House dinner parties swim languidly in the gloom, to the small wooden jetty where the little steam-ferry jerked at her moorings as though impatient to be off. But with her foot on the gangplank, Copper checked and