A Moment On the Edge : 100 Years of Crime Stories By Women

old Miss Izzy. We’ll have our National Museum now, that’s for sure, and we’ll remember her with it. It’ll make a good museum for our history. Didn’t they tell you in London, Jemima?” There was pride in his voice as he concluded: “Miss Izzy left everything in her will to the people of Bow Island.”

Jemima swallowed hard. Was it true? Or rather, was it still true?

Had Miss Izzy really signed a new will yesterday? She had been quite circumspect on the subject, mentioning someone called Thompson — her lawyer, no doubt — who thought there would be

“trouble” as a result. “Joseph,” she said, “Tina Archer was up at Archer Plantation House yesterday afternoon, too.”

“Oh, that girl, the trouble she made, tried to make. Tina and her stories and her fine education and her history. And she’s so pretty!”

Joseph’s tone was momentarily violent but he finished more calmly.

“The police are waiting at the hospital. She’s not speaking yet, she’s not even conscious.” Then even more calmly: “She’s not so pretty now, I hear. That robber beat her, you see.”

It was hotter than ever in the Bowtown office and even the papers on the desk were hardly stirring in the waft of the fan. Jemima saw Joseph’s face swimming before her. She absolutely must not faint — she never fainted. She concentrated desperately on what Joseph Archer was telling her, the picture he was recreating of the night of the murder. The shock of learning that Tina Archer had also been present in the house when Miss Izzy was killed was irrational, she realized that. Hadn’t Tina promised the old lady she would stay with her?

Joseph was telling her that Miss Izzy’s body had been found in the drawing room by the cook, Hazel, returning from her sister’s wedding at first light. It was a grisly touch that because Miss Izzy was wearing red-silk pajamas — her daddy’s — and all the furnishings of the drawing room were dark-red as well, poor Hazel had not at first realized the extent of her mistress’s injuries. Not only was there blood everywhere, there was water, too — pools of it.

Whatever — whoever — had killed Miss Izzy had come out of the sea.

Wearing rubber shoes — or flippers — and probably gloves as well.

A moment later, Hazel was in no doubt about what had hit Miss Izzy. The club, still stained with blood, had been left lying on the floor of the front hall. (She herself, deposited by Henry, had originally entered by the kitchen door.) The club, although not of Bo’lander manufacture, belonged to the house. It was a relic, African probably, of Sir John Archer’s travels in other parts of the former British Em-pire, and hung heavy and short-handled on the drawing-room wall.

Possibly Sir John had in mind to wield it against unlawful intruders but to Miss Izzy it had been simply one more family memento. She never touched it. Now it had killed her.

“No prints anywhere,” Joseph said. “So far.”

“And Tina?” asked Jemima with dry lips. The idea of the pools of water stagnant on the floor of the drawing room mingled with Miss Izzy’s blood reminded her only too vividly of the old lady when last seen — soaking wet in her bizarre swimming costume, defiantly sitting down on her own sofa.

“The robber ransacked the house. Even the cellar. The champagne cases Miss Izzy boasted about must have been too heavy, though.

He drank some rum. The police don’t know yet what he took — silver snuff-boxes maybe, there were plenty of those about.” Joseph sighed.

“Then he went upstairs.”

“And found Tina?”

“In one of the bedrooms. He didn’t hit her with the same weapon — lucky for her, as he’d have killed her just like he killed Miss Izzy. He left that downstairs and picked up something a good deal lighter. Probably didn’t reckon on seeing her or anyone there at all. ’Cept for Miss Izzy, that is. Tina must have surprised him.

Maybe she woke up. Robbers — well, all I can say is that robbers here don’t generally go and kill people unless they’re frightened.”

Without warning, Joseph slumped down in front of her and put his head in his hands. He murmured something like: “When we find who did it to Miss Izzy—”

It wasn’t until the next day that Tina Archer was able to speak I even haltingly to the police. Like most of the rest of the Bow Island population, Jemima Shore was informed of the fact almost immediately.

Claudette, manageress of her hotel, a sympathetic if loquacious character, just happened to have a niece who was a nurse. But that was the way information always spread about the island — no need for newspapers or radio, this private telegraph was far more efficient.

Jemima had spent the intervening twenty-four hours swimming rather aimlessly, sunbathing, and making little tours of the island in her Mini. She was wondering at what point she should inform Megalith Television of the brutal way in which her projected program had been terminated and make arrangements to return to London.

After a bit, the investigative instinct, that inveterate curiosity which would not be stilled, came to the fore. She found she was speculating all the time about Miss Izzy’s death. A robber? A robber who had also tried to kill Tina Archer? Or a robber who had merely been surprised by her presence in the house? What connection, if any, had all this with Miss Izzy’s will?

The will again. But that was one thing Jemima didn’t have to speculate about for very long. For Claudette, the manageress, also just happened to be married to the brother of Hazel, Miss Izzy’s cook. In this way, Jemima was apprised — along with the rest of Bow Island, no doubt — that Miss Izzy had indeed signed a new will down in Bowtown on the morning of her death, that Eddie Thompson, the solicitor, had begged her not to do it, that Miss Izzy had done it, that Miss Izzy had still looked after Hazel all right, as she had promised (and Henry who had worked for her even longer), and that some jewelry would go to a cousin in England, “seeing as Miss Izzy’s mother’s jewels were in an English bank anyway since long back.”

But for the rest, well, there would be no National Bo’lander Museum now, that was for sure. Everything else — that fine old Archer Plantation House, Miss Izzy’s fortune, reputedly enormous but who knew for sure? — would go to Tina Archer.

If she recovered, of course. But the latest cautious bulletin from Claudette via the niece-who-was-a-nurse, confirmed by a few other loquacious people on the island, was that Tina Archer was recovering.

The police had already been able to interview her. In a few days she would be able to leave the hospital. And she was determined to attend Miss Izzy’s funeral, which would be held, naturally enough, in that little English- looking church with its incongruous tropical vegetation overlooking the sunny grave. For Miss Izzy had long ago made clear her own determination to be buried in the Archer Tomb along with Governor Sir Valentine and “his only wife, Isabella.”

“As the last of the Archers. But she still had to get permission since it’s a national monument. And of course the government couldn’t do enough for her. So they gave it. Then. Ironic, isn’t it?”

The speaker making absolutely no attempt to conceal her disgust was Coralie Harrison. “And now we learn that she wasn’t the last of the Archers, not officially, and we shall have the so-called Miss Tina Archer as chief mourner. And while the Bo’lander government desperately looks for ways to get round the will and grab the house for their precious museum, nobody quite had the bad taste to go ahead and say no — no burial in the

Archer Tomb for naughty old Miss Izzy. Since she hasn’t, after all, left the people of Bow Island a penny.”

“It should be an interesting occasion,” Jemima murmured. She was sitting with Coralie Harrison under the conical thatched roof of the hotel’s beach bar. This was where she first danced, then sat out with Joseph Archer on the night of the new moon — the night Miss Izzy had been killed. Now the sea sparkled under the sun as though there were crystals scattered on its surface. Today there were no waves at all and the happy water-skiers crossed and recrossed the wide bay with its palm-fringed shore. Enormous brown pelicans perched on some stakes which indicated where rocks lay. Every now and then, one would take off like an unwieldy airplane and fly slowly and inquisitively over the heads of the swimmers. It was a tranquil, even an idyllic scene, but somewhere in the distant peninsula lay Archer Plantation House, not only shuttered but now, she imagined, also sealed by the police.

Coralie had sauntered up to the bar from the beach. She traversed the few yards with seeming casualness — all Bo’landers frequently exercised their right to promenade along the sands unchecked (as in most Caribbean islands, no one owned any portion of the beach in Bow Island, even outside the most stately mansion like Archer Plantation House, except the people). Jemima, however, was in no doubt that this was a planned visit. She had not