Death in the Andamans by M. M. Kaye Read Free Book Online Page B

urged him to accept a position in the administration of the Andamans when that opportunity had offered. And so the Stocks had come to the Islands, and at first all had been more than well with them.
    Here no echo of her past life had penetrated, and Ruby manufactured, with that facility of invention and superfluous falsehood that is so frequently the hallmark of her type, a father who was a retired Lieutenant-Colonel, an ancestral estate in Ireland, and a Spanish great-grandmother. She entertained lavishly, and to her Leonard’s anxious remonstrances over their steadily mounting bills, merely retorted that it was necessary for them to keep up their position if he was ever to get on in the world. And when the four years’ tenure of his post in the Islands was up, she persuaded him to apply for an extension.
    The move was a fatal one, and he knew it. But he was too weak to resist, for Ruby answered his half-hearted protests with tears and temper, and eventually he gave in. With the result that his post in India, to which he could have returned, was filled. Other men moved up to close the gap, and now he must either continue to ask for and obtain extensions, or find himself out of a job. That had been sixteen years ago; and the Stocks were still in the Islands …
    Beautiful, ambitious Ruby, the erstwhile belle of Midnapore, was now a soured and embittered woman who clung to her fading charms with despairing tenacity as being her only defence against the dragging monotony of her existence. And since women were few in the Islands, there had always been some man, often several, tied to her apron-strings. The pursuance of ‘affairs’ had become the sole interest of her shallow, childless life, and as a result of this she looked upon every other woman in the light of a possible rival.
    Until the arrival of Valerie, Mrs Stock had possessed no serious competitor in Port Blair, and she had resented the girl’s youth and distinction with an acid inward bitterness and an outward display of gushing friendliness. But Valerie had not proved the rival she had feared, for her instant annexation by Charles Corbet-Carr had made her impervious to the attentions of all other men. Copper Randal, however, posed a definite threat.
    Ruby had decided on sight to add Nick to the ‘chain-gang’, as Port Blair was wont to refer, ribaldly, to Mrs Stock’s admirers. But from the first it was painfully apparent that the option, if any, on Nick Tarrent’s affections was held by that newly arrived tow-headed chit from Government House. Wherefore Mrs Stock’s greeting of the aforementioned chit was characteristic ____
    â€˜What on earth kept you, darling?’ (Ruby had read somewhere that people in fashionable social circles constantly referred to each other as ‘darling’.) ‘No — don’t tell me, I can guess. You had a puncture! Such a romantic road, isn’t it? I expect John Shilto is completely épris by now! Quite a catch my dear, I assure you. Dear me, how useful punctures are! I wonder how people did without them before there were cars?’
    The tinkling laugh that accompanied this pleasantry was not untinged with malice, and Copper’s smoke-blue eyes widened into an expression of child-like innocence: ‘Well, of course you’d know, Mrs Stock,’ she countered sweetly.
    â€˜ Game, set and match, I think!’ murmured Nick to his immortal soul. Aloud he said briskly: ‘Hullo, Copper. You’re abominably late. I gather you brought the drinks with you — and about time too! I could do with one. And I’m sure Ruby could too. Let’s go and collect them.’ He took Copper firmly by the arm and walked her rapidly away across the lawn before Mrs Stock had time to reply.
    â€˜Oh dear, that was beastly of me,’ said Copper remorsefully. ‘But she did ask for it! All the same, we shouldn’t have just walked off and left