The tune to “This is my island in the sun” was played and Jemima never once heard the graveyard words in her imagination. Then Joseph Archer, most politely and apparently regretfully, said he had to leave. He had an extremely early appointment — and not with a fish, either, he added with a smile. Jemima felt a pang which she hoped didn’t show. But there was plenty of time, wasn’t there? There would be other nights and other parties, other nights on the beach as the moon waxed to full in the two weeks she had before she must return to England.
Jemima’s personal party stopped, but the rest of the celebration went on late into the night, spilling onto the sands, even into the sea, long after the sliver of the moon had vanished. Jemima, sleeping fitfully and visited by dreams in which Joseph Archer, Tina, and Miss Izzy executed some kind of elaborate dance, not at all like the kind of island jump-up she had recently been enjoying, heard the noise in the distance.
Far away on Archer Plantation’s lonely peninsula, the peace was broken not by a steel band but by the rough sound of the waves bashing against the rocks at its farthest point. A stranger might have been surprised to see that the lights were still on in the great drawing room, the shutters having been drawn back once the sun was gone, but nobody born on Bow Island — a fisherman out to sea, for example — would have found it at all odd. Everyone knew that Miss Izzy Archer was frightened of the dark and liked to go to bed with all her lights blazing. Especially when Hazel had gone to her sister’s wedding and Henry had taken her there — another fact of island life which most Bo’landers would have known.
In her room overlooking the sea, tossing in the big four-poster bed in which she had been born over eighty years ago, Miss Izzy, like Jemima Shore, slept fitfully. After a while, she got out of bed and went to one of the long windows. Jemima would have found her nightclothes, like her swimming costume, bizarre, for Miss Izzy wasn’t wearing the kind of formal Victorian nightdress which might have gone with the house. Rather, she was “using up,” as she quaintly put it, her father’s ancient burgundy-silk pajamas, purchased many aeons ago in Jermyn Street. And as the last Sir John Archer, Baronet, had been several feet taller than his plump little daughter, the long trouser legs trailed on the floor behind her.
Miss Izzy continued to stare out of the window. Her gaze followed the direction of the terrace, which led in a series of parterres, once grandly planted, now overgrown, down to the rocks and the sea.
Although the waters themselves were mostly blackness, the Caribbean night was not entirely dark. Besides, the light from the drawing-room windows streamed out onto the nearest terrace. Miss Izzy rubbed her eyes, then she turned back into the bedroom, where the celebrated oil painting of Sir Valentine hung over the mantelpiece dominated the room. Rather confusedly — she must have drunk far too much of that punch — she decided that her ancestor was trying to encourage her to be valiant in the face of danger for the first time in her life. She, little Isabella Archer, spoilt and petted Izzy, his last legitimate descendant — no, not his last legitimate descendant, but the habits of a lifetime were difficult to break — was being spurred on to something courageous by the hawklike gaze of the fierce old autocrat.
But I’m so old, thought Miss Izzy. Then: But not
She looked out of the window once more. The effects of the punch were wearing off. Now she was quite certain of what she was seeing.
Something dark, darkly clad, dark-skinned — What did it matter, someone dark had come out of the sea and was now proceeding silently in the direction of the house.
I must be brave, thought Miss Izzy. She said aloud: “Then he’ll be proud of me. His brave girl.” Whose brave girl? No, not Sir Valentine’s — Daddy’s brave girl. Her thoughts began to float away again into the past. I wonder if Daddy will take me on a swim with him to celebrate?
Miss Izzy started to go downstairs. She had just reached the door of the drawing room and was standing looking into the decaying red-velvet interior, still brightly illuminated, at the moment when the black-clad intruder stepped into the room through the open window.
Even before the intruder began to move softly toward her, dark-gloved hands outstretched, Miss Izzy Archer knew without doubt in her rapidly beating old heart that Archer Plantation, the house in which she had been born, was also the house in which she was about to die.
“Miss Izzy Archer is dead. Some person went and killed her last night. A robber, maybe.” It was Joseph Archer who broke the news to Jemima the next morning.
He spoke across the broad desk of his formal office in Bowtown.
His voice was hollow and distant, only the Bo’lander sing-song to connect him with Jemima’s handsome dancing partner of the night before. In his short-sleeved but official-looking white shirt and dark trousers, he looked once again completely different from the cheerful ragged fisherman Jemima had first encountered. This was indeed the rising young Bo’lander politician she was seeing: a member of the newly formed government of Bow Island. Even the tragic fact of the death — the murder, as it seemed — of an old lady seemed to strike no chord of emotion in him.
Then Jemima looked again and saw what looked suspiciously like tears in Joseph Archer’s eyes.
“I just heard myself, you know. The Chief of Police, Sandy Marlow, is my cousin.” He didn’t attempt to brush away the tears. If that was what they were. But the words were presumably meant as an explanation. Of what? Of shock? Grief? Shock he must surely have experienced, but grief? Jemima decided at this point that she could at least inquire delicately about his precise relationship to Miss Izzy.
It came back to her that he had visited the old lady the week previously,” if Miss Izzy’s rather vague words concerning “Little Joseph” were to be trusted. She was thinking not so much of a possible blood relationship as some other kind of connection. After all, Joseph Archer himself had dismissed the former idea in the graveyard. His words about Sir Valentine and his numerous progeny came back to her: “Don’t pay too much attention to the stories.
Otherwise, how come we’re not all living in that fine old Archer Plantation House?” At which Greg Harrison had commented with such fury: “Instead of merely my ex-wife.” The exchange made more sense to her now, of course, that she knew of the position of Tina Harrison, now Tina Archer, in Miss Izzy’s will.
The will! Tina would now inherit! And she would inherit in the light of a will signed the very morning of the day of Miss Izzy’s death. Clearly, Joseph had been correct when he dismissed the claim of the many Bo’landers called Archer to be descended in any meaningful fashion from Sir Valentine. There was already a considerable difference between Tina, the allegedly sole legitimate descendant other than Miss Izzy, and the rest of the Bo’lander Archers. In the future, with Tina come into her inheritance, the gap would widen even more.
It was extremely hot in Joseph’s office. It was not so much that Bow Island was an unsophisticated place as that the persistent breeze made air-conditioning generally unnecessary. The North American tourists who were beginning to request air-conditioning in the hotels, reflected Jemima, would only succeed in ruining the most perfect kind of natural ventilation. But a government office in Bowtown was rather different. A huge fan in the ceiling made the papers on Joseph’s desk stir uneasily. Jemima felt a ribbon of sweat trickle down beneath her long loose white T-shirt, which she had belted as a dress to provide some kind of formal attire to call on a Bo’lander minister in working hours.
By this time, Jemima’s disbelieving numbness on the subject of Miss Izzy’s murder was wearing off. She was struck by the frightful poignancy of that last encounter in the decaying grandeur of Archer Plantation House. Worse still, the old lady’s pathetic fear of loneliness was beginning to haunt her. Miss Izzy had been so passionate in her determination not to be abandoned. “Ever since I was a little girl I’ve hated being alone. Everyone knows that. It’s so lonely here by the sea. What happens if someone breaks in?”
Well, someone had broken in. Or so it was presumed. Joseph Archer’s words: “A robber, maybe.” And this robber — maybe — had killed the old lady in the process.
Jemima began hesitantly: “I’m so sorry, Joseph. What a ghastly tragedy! You knew her? Well, I suppose everyone round here must have known her—”
“All the days of my life, since I was a little boy. My mama was one of her maids. Just a little thing herself, and then she died. She’s in that churchyard, you know, in a corner. Miss Izzy was very good to me when my mama died, oh, yes. She was kind. Now you’d think that independence,
“You saw her last week, I believe. Miss Izzy told me that herself.”
Joseph gazed at Jemima steadily — the emotion had vanished. “I went to talk with her, yes. She had some foolish idea of changing her mind about things. Just a fancy, you know. But that’s over. May she rest in peace, little
