'There's a whole lot of money in the bag,' he told Greensleeves. The Chief pawed through it and extracted a wad of wet notes. 'Seems like Mrs Hutchmeyer was going some place with a lot of dollars when she died,' he said. 'So now we've really got ourselves a problem. Mrs Hutchmeyer on that cruiser with her friend, Mr Piper. Both got baggage with them and money. And then 'Bam' their cruiser explodes just like that. I reckon we're going to have send divers down to see if they can find the bodies.'
'Have to start quick,' said the lieutenant. 'The way the tide's running they could be out to sea by now.'
'So we start now,' said Greensleeves and went out into the lobby where some reporters were waiting.
'Got any theory?' they asked.
Greensleeves shook his head. 'We got two people missing presumed drowned. Mrs Baby Hutchmeyer and a Mr Peter Piper. He's a British author. That's all for now.'
'What about this Miss Futtle?' said the lieutenant. 'She's missing too.'
'And what about the house being burnt down?'
'We're waiting for a report on that,' said Greensleeves.
'But you do suspect deliberate arson?'
Greensleeves shrugged. 'You put all these things together and work out what I suspect,' he said and pressed on. Five minutes later the wires were buzzing with the news that Peter Piper, the famous author, was dead in bizarre circumstances.
In the Van der Hoogen mansion the victims of the tragedy listened to the news of their deaths on a transistor in the gloom of a bedroom on the top floor. Part of the gloom resulted from the shutters on the windows and part, from Piper's point of view, from the prospect that his death opened up before him. It was bad enough being an author by proxy, but being a corpse by proxy was awful beyond belief. Baby on the other hand greeted the news gaily.
'We've made it,' she said, 'they're not even going to come looking for us. You heard what they said. With the tide running the skin-divers aren't expecting to find the bodies.'
Piper looked miserably round the bedroom. 'It's all very well you talking,' he said. 'What you don't seem to understand is that I don't have an identity. I've lost my passport and all my work. How on earth am I going to get back to England? I can't go to the Embassy and ask for another passport. And the moment I appear in public I'm going to be arrested for arson and boat-burning and attempted murder. You've landed us in a ghastly mess.'
'I've freed you from the past. You can be anyone you want to be now.'
'All I want to be is myself,' said Piper.
Baby looked at him dubiously. 'From what you told me last night you weren't yourself before,' she said, 'I mean what sort of self were you being the author of a book you didn't write?'
'At least I knew what I wasn't. Now I don't even know that.'
'You're not a dead body. That's one good thing.'
'I might just as well be,' said Piper looking lugubriously at the sheeted forms of the furniture as if they were so many shrouds cloaking those different authors he had so happily aspired to be. The dim light filtering through the shuttered windows added to the impression that he was sitting in a tomb, the sepulchre of his literary ambitions. A sense of profound melancholy settled on him and with it the imagery of The Flying Dutchman doomed to wander the seas until such day...but for Piper there would be no release. He had been party to a crime, a whole number of crimes, and even if he went to the police now they wouldn't believe him. Why should they? Was it likely that a rich woman like Baby would burn down her own home and blow up an expensive cruiser and sink her husband's yacht? And even if she admitted that she was to blame for the whole thing, there would still be a trial and Hutchmeyer's lawyers would want to know why his suitcase had been on the boat. And finally the fact that he hadn't written Pause would come out and then everyone would suspect...not even suspect, they would be certain he was a fraud and
