Murder Takes No Holiday by Brett Halliday Read Free Book Online

dealings with a man named Luis Alvarez?” She shook her head, and he tried another name: “Paul Slater?”
    He was watching her closely. She started. “Surely you don’t think that nice good-looking Paul Slater could have any connection with—”
    “Just a shot in the dark,” Shayne said. “He and your husband knew each other?”
    “Superficially. We saw the Slaters sometimes at the Yacht Haven dances, or at fireworks displays, that kind of semi-public occasion. Mr. Slater was once kind enough to fetch me an ice at a dance. A most agreeable young man, for an American. I don’t mean to imply,” she said hastily, “but the Americans one sees on St. Albans—”
    “You aren’t hurting my feelings,” Shayne said.
    He put down his cup on the lee of the teapot, so she couldn’t see how little he had drunk.
    “More tea, Mr. Shayne?”
    “No, thanks,” he said, standing up. “You’ve been very helpful, Mrs. Watts, and I’ll let you know if I find out anything.”
    “Do have one of my little cakes, at least,” she said. “Dear me, they seem to be all gone. Mr. Shayne, you’re so abstemious you quite put me to shame.”
    She struggled forward, but soon gave up the attempt to rise. “I’m going to be most discourteous and let you find your own way out. I feel a little faint. I don’t think of myself as a demonstrative person, but when I speak of Albert, the tears have a way of coming.”
    She touched her eyes again. The cross little dog let Shayne leave without barking at him. It seemed to the American that the eyes of Albert Watts’ portrait followed him as he made his way to the door.
    Outside, he mopped his forehead and let out his breath in a long, soundless whistle.

 
4
     
    Michael Shayne spent the next day like any other tourist. He left a call with Miss Trivers to be awakened early. After breakfast, he phoned for a cab. One of Miss Trivers’ other guests came up to him as he was waiting on the Lodge steps.
    This was a tall, sad-faced Englishman named Cecil Powys. He wore a battered tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows. Heavy-rimmed glasses gave him a somewhat owlish look. “I say,” he said hesitantly, taking his pipe out of his mouth, “Miss Trivers tells me you plan to go bone-fishing on the flats. Would you mind frightfully if I come along?”
    “Glad to have you,” Shayne said.
    “The price of a charter’s too steep for me to manage single-handed,” the Englishman said. “Divided in two, it becomes possible. Divided in three or four would be even better. I’ll get my impedimenta. Back in a sec.”
    “They provide the tackle,” Shayne said.
    “I’m not going out to fish. My forte is spear-fishing, actually. Underwater, you know? I’ll explain.”
    He was back in a moment with what looked to Shayne like a battery-powered tape recorder.
    “The whole thing’s a trifle ridiculous, when you come right down to it,” he said. “I’m reading for a doctor’s degree at Oxford in anthropology. Beastly subject, really. I’m writing my dissertation on Folk Beliefs of the Caribbean. It’s not going too well.” He put the pipe in his mouth and struck a match. “I thought I’d drift around the islands and let the natives tell me stories. But I’m having the devil’s own time getting them to talk. I’m after fishing material at the moment, but it’s like pulling teeth. Perhaps they’ll open up more when we’re out on the water.”
    The taxi arrived. It proved to be a little British Hillman. Powys slid in with the ease of long experience. Shayne jack-knifed his long legs awkwardly into the back seat and told the driver to take them to the charter-boat dock at the Yacht Haven.
    They divided the charter with two other Americans, a man and wife from Chicago. The native captain quickly showed that he knew his business. He took his boat to the far side of an offshore island, cut his motor and let the current move them quietly forward. He tested the wind, peered into the