Uninvited Guest Read online

  UNINVITED GUEST

  GEORGE HARMON COXE

  Table of Contents

  UNINVITED GUEST

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 1953 by George Harmon Coxe.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

  CHAPTER 1

  TROUBLE struck the schooner Griselda at 9:40 on an April evening. It was not the fault of the weather or the sea or the soundness of her hull; for the sea was flat, the weather calm, and the Griselda was moored a hundred-odd yards off the Royal Barbados Yacht Club and about an equal distance diagonally from the Aquatic Club pier.

  The trouble was human. A woman. Her name was Julia Parks, though in the beginning she insisted it was Lambert.

  The British West Indies Airways plane which brought her from San Juan touched down at Seawell Airport at 6:20, and she remained in her seat until her fellow passengers had cleared the aisle. Then she stood up on the sloping floor, tucking her yellow-blond hair under her close-fitting hat and pulling her suit skirt round on her hips until it hung straight. She buttoned her jacket, tugged it down, picked up her vanity case and took a last look at the rack overhead. At the door the hostess handed over her coat and then she was going down the steps and feeling again the soft warm breeze that swept in so constantly from the sea.

  She stood a moment on the concrete ramp, breathing deeply and letting the breeze cool her hot moist face. Down the coast at South Point the lighthouse winked at her in the gathering dusk, and as she walked towards the coral-stone terminal building she could see the parked cars and hear the welcoming shouts directed at others who had preceded her. Approaching the door marked Incoming, someone called her name. When she glanced up Howard Crane waved to her from the embankment beyond the wire enclosure.

  The interior of the lighted building was almost bare of furniture and, at the moment, crowded. There were two or three raised desks, temporarily presided over by uniformed officials, a couple of benches, a long customs counter bisecting the room. A tall Negro sergeant, immaculate in blue-black trousers with red stripes, white jacket, white pith helmet, and polished Sam Browne belt, served as a walking information bureau to the milling passengers but Julia had been through this before and knew exactly what to do.

  A line had already formed at the immigration desk and she shoved in ahead of an elderly man who was fumbling in his wallet for some identification. The uniformed official gave her a questioning look but silently accepted the identity card the airline had given her in New York, and her driver’s license.

  “Where will you be staying?” he asked when he had checked her name on the manifest.

  “At the Carib.”

  “And how long do you plan to be with us?”

  “Oh, probably only a few days.”

  “You have your reservation on a return flight?”

  “A ticket, but no reservation. I’ll see about it tomorrow.”

  “Is someone meeting you?”

  The heat had begun to work on her again. She could feel the perspiration coming and the soft-voiced but persistent questioning annoyed her.

  “Mr. Howard Crane,” she said impatiently.

  “Very good.” The man returned her card and license and waved her towards the customs counter.

  The bags had been trucked in from the plane and Julia quickly identified her own. She gave her name to the customs man and he found her declaration, glanced at it, asked her to sign it. When she did so he gave her another form on which she wrote down the amount of currency she was carrying.

  “No English pounds?” he asked when she had estimated her cash.

  “None.”

  He gave her the form after he had torn off a voucher at the bottom, explaining that she must turn the form in when she left the island. Then, not bothering to open her bags, he chalk-marked them, signaled to a porter, and presently she was outside in the street where a mixed crowd—white, brown, and black—waited for relatives and friends.

  Howard Crane, who had been watching her progress through an open window, tipped the porter and told him where to put the bags, and now Julia gave him both her hands, coming up on tiptoe to give him a perfunctory kiss, hearing him say something about her looking fit and that he had engaged a room for her at the Carib Hotel.

  She said that was fine. She said she was glad to be here and it was sweet of him to meet her. But even as she spoke her glance slid beyond him to the low frame building across the street that served as the airport bar and restaurant. At the moment she felt hot, tired, and dirty. She’d been in her clothes ever since the evening before and she wanted very much to have a bath as quickly as she could. Yet, in spite of the fact that she’d had two whisky and sodas on the flight down from the last stop in Antigua, she felt the need of another even more than she needed the bath.

  For now that she was actually in Barbados the tension which had been building slowly ever since she left New York was making itself felt. She was nerved-up, jittery, and impatient, and it annoyed her that she should feel this way. She was well aware that this trip might be the biggest gamble she had ever taken, but she had assessed the odds before she started. She understood the difficulties of her scheme as well as its importance to her, and having flown all night and most of the day she was determined to carry on, secure in the knowledge that if she were successful she would have more money in her hands than she’d ever had in her life.

  Crane was at once agreeable when she suggested the drink, and so they climbed the steps and found a corner table in the bare and uninviting building. The order given, she took off her hat and began to work on her hair.

  “Good trip?” Crane asked.

  “Horrible.”

  “Rough?”

  “No, not that. Just leaving New York before midnight and getting into San Juan at some ungodly hour in the morning when nothing’s open but the immigration and customs.”

  She spoke past the bobby-pin in her mouth, tucked it in place and surveyed the result in her compact mirror. She patted the shine off her cheeks and, screwing her mouth up, began to work on it with her lipstick, her words distorted as she continued.

  “Check your bags and it’s too early to shop and there’s no place to go for breakfast but the Hilton, and then sit around dying on the vine until it’s two o’clock and you can get the plane out.”

  Crane grinned. He said there was a nice bar in the San Juan airport.

  “Once it finally opens, yes.”

  Julia put her make-up things away and snapped her bag shut. When the drinks came and she’d had a large swallow she gave Crane her attention.

  “Your wife away again?”

  “Jamaica.”

  “For long?”

  “Another fortnight.”

  “Having fun?”

  Crane tipped one hand. “I always have fun.”

  Julia pushed a stray wisp of blond hair back from her forehead and watched him with heavy-lidded eyes, speculating, knowing that what Crane said was true. Seeing again his tanned, blunt-jawed face with its gray eyes and thinning gray-brown hair, the deep wrinkles that creased his forehead laterally and came from scowling
against the sun, she knew that he had made something of a career of fun for quite some years. As her mind went on she remembered other things as well.

  The Crane family had been on the island for generations, first as planters and later, when hard times took most of their property, as proprietors of a small grocery store on Roebuck Street. Howard, now in his early forties, still had an inactive interest in the store but mostly he attended to a variety of small enterprises, the principal one being a modern and rather exclusive residential club on the leeward coast. He kept a few horses and raced them at the tri-yearly meets. He had a small sloop which he sailed occasionally, and he was one of the best tennis players on the island. But the important thing, Julia knew, was that all this was possible because of Crane’s wife, an English girl ten years his junior, who happened to be not only attractive, but wealthy.

  Julia understood that when Mrs. Crane was in town Howard paid attention. When she was away it was different. Last summer for instance, when Mrs. Crane had been in England and Julia’s own marriage had foundered. Howard had been fun then. He liked a good time, was attractive to women and was always ready to go to a party or give one. There was, she remembered, a word for people like Howard. She thought it was gregarious. But this time it would be different. Such things as parties could wait. This trip was strictly business and again she gave the matter her attention.

  “And what’s my husband doing with his new inheritance?”

  “You mean your ex-husband, don’t you?” Crane hesitated and Julia did not correct him. “Spending it,” he said, and chuckled, though his eyes were no longer at ease.

  “On what?”

  “Various things.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “As a matter of fact, if you’d come a day later you would have missed him.”

  “Missed him?” Julia frowned. “How?” “You remember the Farrows?”

  “I remember her. Vivian. A tall, black-haired number. Married to some Englishman, isn’t she?” She paused while an undertone of scorn grew in her voice. “The ex-show girl pretending she’s a lady. Sure I remember. What about them?”

  “They’ve chartered a schooner. They’re off on a ten-day cruise in the morning. Keith is going along.”

  Julia reached for her glass and found it empty. Wanting another drink but not wanting to show it, she pushed it aside and gathered her things, a little panicky in spite of herself as the thought of failure struck at her and she considered the penalty of any such miscalculation. Suppose Keith had gone. Suppose— She dismissed the thought angrily, her painted mouth a tight unpleasant line. She shook her head and concentrated on her smile.

  Keith was still here and that was what mattered. There was money to be had here and there in Barbados and she was going to get some of it, one way or another. If she had to resort to threats and be generally obnoxious in the process she was prepared to act accordingly. If other means were necessary she would make them up as she went along.

  “A cruise?” she said. “That’s interesting.”

  She paused again, thinking, aware that he was watching her. When she looked at him he seemed to be relaxed and at ease, all except the gray eyes. The half smile on his mouth did not seem to touch his gaze and deep down there was a certain nervousness and uncertainty, as though he was not entirely happy in her company. Or was the impression only a product of her imagination? She shrugged the thought aside by telling herself she did not particularly care whether he was happy or not. Howard Crane had a place in her plans and there were many things he could tell her. For the moment, however, all that could wait.

  “Have you any plans?”

  “Plans?”

  “I mean now,” she said. “Or for this evening?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’l1 tell you what we might do. When I get straightened out at the Carib we could have a couple of drinks, and dinner, and”—she touched his hand—”maybe a brandy. Then I’d like to take a look at this schooner.”

  CHAPTER 2

  ABOARD the Griselda, Alan Scott busied himself in the main cabin, making sure there was plenty of liquid refreshment on the sideboard when the party who had chartered the schooner came back from dinner at the Club Morgan for a nightcap. A lanky, easy-moving man in his late twenties, he had a longish, angular face, wide in the mouth but with a stubborn slant to the bony jaw. His hair was dark brown, with a cowlick in its straight-ness unless he plastered it down, and in his immaculate white ducks and blue blazer he did not look much like a schooner captain. He looked more like the owner, which he was; at least he currently held title to the craft.

  Actually, by virtue of a recent inheritance from an uncle he scarcely remembered, he was part owner, his partner being one of the local banks which held a sizable lien. This lien did not disturb him greatly, since he had never hoped to own a schooner of such size. Even so it had been one of his ambitions to cruise a boat of his own some day and for a young man who was about to realize that ambition he felt singularly dissatisfied without knowing why.

  This mood had nothing to do with the schooner, which would presently earn him a neat profit. There was even a potential buyer lined up. If things went well the bank could be paid off and there would be a surplus to take back to New York when his leave of absence ended. The dissatisfaction, had he been able to analyze it, stemmed from a girl whose name was Sally Reeves. Sally bothered him when he allowed himself to think of her. To offset such inclinations he tried to keep his mind busy with other things. Now, hearing the hail from outside, he assumed it was the people he was expecting. Instead there was only this small bumboat from the Aquatic Club, a Negro resting on the oars while Howard Crane clung to the rigging and helped a woman to her feet.

  “The others back yet?” Crane said, and then, not waiting for an answer: “All right to come aboard? I’ve brought a guest.”

  “Sure,” Scott said. “Certainly.”

  The woman’s grip was hot and moist as he helped her on deck, and she clung to his hand as Crane followed and made introductions.

  “Julia, this is Alan Scott . . . Julia Parks.”

  “Lambert, darling,” the woman said. “Julia. Lambert, Mr. Scott . . . My,” she said, “quite a boat we have.”

  The night was starlit but there was no moon and Scott could not tell much about Julia except that she wore a low-backed dress and carried a pocketbook. But he was aware that the smell of liquor on her breath was even stronger than the odor of perfume which enveloped her, that her voice was throaty and a little coarse, her accents American and suggestive of the city.

  “Julia just flew in from New York,” Crane said as they went below.

  The woman did not seem to hear. She shook out her yellow-blond hair and glanced interestedly about the cabin, blinking a little against its brightness. When she had finished her inspection her glance came back to the well-stocked sideboard; then she looked right at Scott and smiled. “Howard thought we might get a drink,” she said.

  By that time Alan Scott was a mildly confused young man. And although he was not unduly imaginative nor given to the whispering of premonitions, he had one now as he made the drinks, and it was all bad. He was not sure why yet; he only knew that nothing must happen to spoil the ten-day charter he had arranged at three hundred dollars a day. With a two-man native crew and a party of five which did not demand deluxe service, he figured to clear better than two thousand dollars. The lockers were stocked, there were fresh fruit and vegetables aboard, a baked ham and a roast turkey in the icebox.

  He had a chance to study the woman when she attacked her gin-and-tonic, aware now that she was somewhat drunk and likely to get more so. Her print dress with the square-cut neckline had style and she wore it well, but here where the light was good he saw that she was thirtyish and, though not tall, she had a voluptuous, full-blown figure that would one day be fat. Her eyes were heavy-lidded and expertly shadowed; her small mouth was vivid but there was a suggestion of petulant selfishness in the thin upper lip that cos
metics could not hide.

  But what bothered him most was her name. Keith Lambert had recently inherited some two million dollars and in many ways he was the most important person taking the trip. It was because of him that the Farrows had arranged the charter.

  “Is it—Mrs. Lambert?” he asked finally.

  “Mrs. Keith Lambert.”

  Scott said, “Oh,” and swallowed, the consternation growing in him and his blue eyes somber. “Oh,” he said again. “I thought he was divorced.”

  “Not quite,” Julia said, handing him her empty glass. “Not quite . . . Howard tells me you’re taking a cruise.”

  Scott did not know what to say. He sensed that for some reason the woman intended to make trouble and he glanced at Crane, wondering how he happened to be involved. He understood that Crane was a native Barbadian—called “Bajans” on the island—who was one of the social elite and knew everyone. Right now he looked very natty in his white flannels, blue linen jacket, and knotted scarf, but it was at once apparent that he was not at ease.

  His tanned, blunt-jawed face was grave and perspiring and his gray glance was concerned as he watched the woman. When he looked at Scott he seemed to understand the situation because he shrugged slightly, as though to say he was sorry about what was happening but helpless under the circumstances.

  Scott turned back to fix Julia’s drink. He handed it to her. He said yes. He said the Farrows had chartered the boat.

  “The Farrows,” Julia said. “Mark and Vivian. And my husband will be going, which will mean his chiseling little pal, Freddie Gardner will be tagging along. Anyone else I know?”

  “A girl named Sally Reeves,” Scott said. “She’s Mrs. Farrow’s step-sister.”

  Julia had moved forward to glance into the galley and down the alley-way beyond. Now she came back. She asked how many the Griselda could sleep.

  “If you use these berths”—Scott gestured to indicate the main cabin—”ten.”

  “Ten. And only five are going?” Julia smiled, her veiled eyes busy. “Mmm,” she said. “How cozy.” She inspected her glass and then, without lifting her head, her glance came up. “In a way it’s a shame.”