He's not out working his site in weather like this, Callum told himself. I'd have seen him. Not likely anyhow! Trust him to have found some dry little cave to hole up in, and I'll be freezing my bum off going in search of him.
He decided to look at the tent first, to see if Owen had left his tools or his food there. It might give him a better idea of on them for warmth and thrust them into the pockets of his anorak. They'd be cold again soon enough; he'd have to use his hands for balance to clamber up the rocks to the tent. The rain made everything slick as glass.
Callum took his time negotiating the jutting rocks, losing his footing more than once and thinking what a nuisance it was going to be to carry the gear down to the boat. Perhaps they could pitch the unbreakable stuff off the rock onto the beach. He didn't fancy making half a dozen trips of it.
"Hallo! Owen!" he shouted, as he neared the tent. "Are you in there, man? I've come to fetch you."
Callum eased open one of the tent flaps, and in the shadow of the light from outside he saw Owen lying peacefully in his sleeping bag. "What a time for kipping! Have you not heard me yelling myself hoarse for you?" He reached down to shake him awake, but the shoulder was stiff to the touch. "Owen, damn you, man—"
Then he saw Owen's face, bluish in the storm's gray light. The swollen tongue pushed its way through bared teeth, and Owen's eyes stared through Callum at nothing. Callum did not know how long he had been dead. The cold eased the smell of sickness. The body would lose heat quickly here. He did not want to touch it anyway. He turned away from the ugly sight of the corpse, without any conscious thought except some vague instinct to summon help. The bagpipes lay cast off in one corner of the tent. Callum, who had been a piper in Scouts, crawled out of the tent, dragging the instrument behind him.
Outside in the cold, clean rain, he lifted the mouthpiece to his lips and played taps as hard as he could. The effort eased the tightness in his chest and emptied his lungs of the urge to scream and go on screaming.
He had no sensation of time or rain or coldness on the trip back to the larger island. His mind was filled with questions about Owen and with wondering if he had done the right thing. He was scrambling up the rocks toward the Nissen hut before he realized that the others would not have understood his signal. He had told Owen to play taps as a sign that he wanted to come back, and of course they would think that it had been an impatient Owen who had sent out the message by bagpipes. He wondered if anyone would want to see the body. If so, they could go without him.
He thought he must look like the ghost of a drowned sailor as he flung open the door of the hut and stood staring at the cozy scene inside. Four people were seated at the wooden table playing cards, with steaming cups of tea in front of them.
Elizabeth looked up and smiled. "Good!'' she said. "Now I can start dinner. Where's Owen?"
Callum shrugged off his wet rain gear and left it where it fell. "He's back on the other island," he told her. "He's dead."
The others looked not at him but at each other, as if trying to decide what to make of this announcement. If anyone laughed, then it would be understood as a grisly joke. No one laughed.
Finally, Derek Marchand motioned for Callum to sit down at the table and pushed his own cup of tea in front of the young man. "Tell us exactly what has happened," he said quietly.
Callum recounted his trip over and his annoyance when Owen did not answer his shouts. He described his slippery climb up the rocks to the tent, and—in halting tones—he told diem what he found inside.
"But we heard him playing the bagpipes," Denny said.
"No. That was me," Callum said. "I just ... I was thinking about it, I suppose, and I just did it without knowing why. I suppose I thought you would understand it as a signal, but, of course, you didn't. . . I put the bagpipes back in the tent with him, and I came back."
"And you left him there?" Elizabeth demanded, her face pale except for two spots of color on her cheeks.
Derek Marchand nodded. "That was wise of you, Callum."
Tom Leath spoke up. "I quite agree," he said. "We've no idea what he died of. Pneumonia, perhaps. Drugs, for all we know. But we must take precautions. The authorities can deal with all that when they get here in a few hours." He slid off the bench and knelt in front of the radio, now sitting on two wooden crates in the corner.
"Yes, do call for help now, Tom," said Marchand. "We seem to be having more man our share of bad luck."
Elizabeth and Denny looked at each other with raised eyebrows. Luck?
"Right," Leath said. "I won't go into too much detail on the radio. Just that mere's been a suspicious death, and ..." His voice trailed off into silence. He frowned at the radio and began adjusting knobs, but the usual crackle of static from the instrument never sounded. "What the hell ..."
Dennv went over to the radio. "Need some help?"
"The thing acts as if it were dead, but it was switched off just now. I can't understand . . . Help me get the casing off.''
For several silent minutes, the two of them worked at the screws on the front of the radio. Elizabeth stared into her mug of tea, trying not to look frightened. Cameron is going to come and get me tonight, she thought to herself over and over. Derek Marchand did not seem to realize that he was drumming his fingers against the wooden table, but no one seemed to notice. Callum was staring at the wall, the tea still untouched between his hands.
Two voices swore in unison, and the others looked up sharply.
"It has been tampered with," Tom Leath said grimly. "Somebody has disconnected the wire to the off-switch, so that even when the radio is turned to the exposition, it continues to run."
"The batteries are dead," said Denny.
"I'll get the spares," said Leath. He pulled the supply crate toward him and began to rummage inside it among the tools, boxes of chalk, rolls of film. "Where did we put the batteries?"
"In there," Denny insisted. "Let me look."
They all looked, handing the items round one at a time and even looking inside the chalk boxes. The batteries were gone. Nor were they in the food boxes or the medical kit.
"Why has somebody stranded us here on this island?" Denny wondered aloud.
Elizabeth shivered. "What if somebody is killing us off one by one?"
"Nonsense!" Marchand said. "Alasdair's fall was an accident, and we don't even know what killed young Gilchrist!"
"Hadn't we ought to try to find out?" Denny asked.
"No!" said Leath. "That could be much more dangerous than not knowing. I say we get off this island as soon as possible and let the authorities sort it out.''
"We won't get far in that boat," Callum said. "Not in this storm. It would take us quite a long time anyway, even in good weather. There's only one pair of oars, and navigation might be tricky."
Leath shrugged. "Head east. You're bound to hit land soon enough."
Elizabeth sipped her tea with a thoughtful expression. Marchand could be right, of course. Alasdair most probably slipped and fell on his own, and Owen might have died of the flu. But the sabotaged radio told her otherwise. And if she were right about there being a connection between the deaths, then one of the people in the hut was very dangerous indeed. She wished that she could confide in Denny and ask him what he thought of it all. Surely, he was not the killer.
CHAPTER
14
On Tuesday the storm did not lessen, and the five people in the Nissen hut said very little to each other. They had lost interest in bridge. Elizabeth sat huddled at the wooden table writing in her traveler's diary, and Derek Marchand made notes about the stone circle to accompany his diagram. Leath had abandoned his earlier discretion about his private stock of alcohol, and he sat sipping straight Scotch out of his china tea mug. Even Denny seemed more subdued than usual.