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

forgotten that first meeting, and Coralie’s tentative approach to her, interrupted by Greg’s peremptory cry.

It was the day after the inquest on Miss Izzy’s death. Her body had been released by the police and the funeral would soon follow.

Jemima admitted to herself that she was interested enough in the whole Archer family, and its various branches, to want to attend it, quite apart from the tenderness she felt for the old lady herself, based on that brief meeting. To Megalith Television, in a telex from Bowtown, she had spoken merely of tying up a few loose ends resulting from the cancellation of her program.

There had been an open verdict at the inquest. Tina Archer’s evidence in a sworn statement had not really contributed much that wasn’t known or suspected already. She had been asleep upstairs in one of the many fairly derelict bedrooms kept ostensibly ready for guests. The bedroom chosen for her by Miss Izzy had not faced onto the sea. The chintz curtains in this back room, bearing some dated rosy pattern from a remote era, weren’t quite so bleached and tattered since they had been protected from the sun and salt.

Miss Izzy had gone to bed in good spirits, reassured by the fact that Tina Archer was going to spend the night. She had drunk several more rum punches and had offered to have Henry fetch some of her father’s celebrated champagne from the cellar. As a matter of fact, Miss Izzy often made this offer after a few draughts of punch, but Tina reminded her that Henry was away and the subject was dropped.

In her statement, Tina said she had no clue as to what might have awakened the old lady and induced her to descend the stairs — it was right out of character in her own opinion. Isabella Archer was a lady of independent mind but notoriously frightened of the dark, hence Tina’s presence at the house in the first place. As to her own recollection of the attack, Tina had so far managed to dredge very few of the details from her memory — the blow to the back of the head had temporarily or permanently expunged all the immediate circumstances from her consciousness. She had a vague idea that there had been a bright light, but even that was rather confused and might be part of the blow she had suffered. Basically, she could remember nothing between going to bed in the tattered, rose-patterned four-poster and waking up in hospital.

Coralie’s lip trembled. She bowed her head and sipped at her long drink through a straw — she and Jemima were drinking some exotic mixture of fruit juice, alcohol-free, invented by Matthew, the barman.

There was a wonderful soft breeze coming in from the sea and Coralie was dressed in a loose flowered cotton dress, but she looked hot and angry. “Tina schemed for everything all her life and now she’s got it. That’s what I wanted to warn you about that morning in the churchyard — don’t trust Tina Archer, I wanted to say. Now it’s too late, she’s got it all. When she was married to Greg, I tried to like her, Jemima, honestly I did. Little Tina, so cute and so clever, but always trouble—”

“Joseph Archer feels rather the same way about her, I gather,”

Jemima said. Was it her imagination or did Coralie’s face soften slightly at the sound of Joseph’s name?

“Does he? I’m glad. He fancied her, too, once upon a time. She is quite pretty.” Their eyes met. “Well, not all that pretty, but if you like the type—” Jemima and Coralie both laughed. The fact was that Coralie Harrison was quite appealing, if you liked her type, but Tina Archer was ravishing by any standards.

“Greg absolutely loathes her now, of course,” Coralie continued firmly, “especially since he heard the news about the will. When we met you that morning up at the church he’d just been told. Hence, well, I’m sorry, but he was very rude, wasn’t he?”

“More hostile than rude.” But Jemima had begun to work out the timing. “You mean your brother knew about the will before Miss Izzy was killed?” she exclaimed.

“Oh, yes. Someone from Eddie Thompson’s office told Greg — Daisy Marlow, maybe, he takes her out. Of course, we all knew it was on the cards, except we hoped Joseph had argued Miss Izzy out of it. And he would have argued her out of it given time.

That museum is everything to Joseph.”

“Your brother and Miss Izzy — that wasn’t an easy relationship, I gather.”

Jemima thought she was using her gentlest and most persuasive interviewer’s voice, but Coralie countered with something like defi-ance: “You sound like the police!”

“Why, have they—?”

“Well, of course they have!” Coralie answered the question before Jemima had completed it. “Everyone knows that Greg absolutely hated Miss Izzy — blamed her for breaking up his marriage, for taking little Tina and giving her ideas!”

“Wasn’t it rather the other way around — Tina delving into the family records for the museum and then my program? You said she was a schemer.”

“Oh, I know she was a schemer! But did Greg? He did not. Not then. He was besotted with her at the time, so he had to blame the old lady. They had a frightful row — very publicly. He went round to the house one night, went in by the sea, shouted at her. Hazel and Henry heard, so then everyone knew. That was when Tina told him she was going to get a divorce and throw in her lot with Miss Izzy for the future. I’m afraid my brother is rather an extreme person — his temper is certainly extreme. He made threats—”

“But the police don’t think—” Jemima stopped. It was clear what she meant.

Coralie swung her legs off the bar stool. Jemima handed her the huge straw bag with the archer logo on it and she slung it over her shoulder in proper Bo’lander fashion.

“How pretty,” Jemima commented politely.

“I sell them at the hotel on the North Point. For a living.” The remark sounded pointed. “No,” Coralie went on rapidly before Jemima could say anything more on that subject, “of course the police don’t think, as you put it. Greg might have assaulted Tina — but Greg kill Miss Izzy when he knew perfectly well that by so doing he was handing his ex-wife a fortune? No way. Not even the Bo’lander police would believe that.”

That night Jemima Shore found Joseph Archer again on the beach under the stars. But the moon had waxed since their first encounter.

Now it was beginning to cast a silver pathway on the waters of the night. Nor was this meeting unplanned as that first one had been.

Joseph had sent her a message that he would be free and they had agreed to meet down by the bar.

“What do you say I’ll take you on a night drive round our island, Jemima?”

“No. Let’s be proper Bo’landers and walk along the sands.” Jemima wanted to be alone with him, not driving past the rows of lighted tourist hotels, listening to the eternal beat of the steel bands.

She felt reckless enough not to care how Joseph himself would interpret this change of plan.

They walked for some time along the edge of the sea, in silence except for the gentle lap of the waves. After a while, Jemima took off her sandals and splashed through the warm receding waters, and a little while after that Joseph took her hand and led her back onto the sand. The waves grew conspicuously rougher as they rounded the point of the first wide bay. They stood for a moment together, Joseph and Jemima, he with his arm companionably round her waist.

“Jemima, even without that new moon, I’m going to wish—” Then Joseph stiffened. He dropped the encircling arm, grabbed her shoulder, and swung her around. “Jesus, oh sweet Jesus, do you see that?”

The force of his gesture made Jemima wince. For a moment she was distracted by the flickering moonlit swathe on the dark surface of the water. There were multitudinous white — silver — horses out beyond the land where high waves were breaking over an outcrop of rocks. She thought Joseph was pointing out to sea. Then she saw the lights.

“The Archer house!” she cried. “I thought it was shut up!” It seemed that all the lights of the house were streaming out across the promontory on which it lay. Such was the illumination that you might have supposed some great ball was in progress, a thousand candles lit as in the days of Governor Archer. More somberly, Jemima realized that was how the plantation house must have looked on the night of Miss Izzy’s death. Tina Archer and others had borne witness to the old lady’s insistence on never leaving her house in darkness. The night her murderer had come in from the sea, this is how the house must have looked to him.

“Come on!” said Joseph. The moment of lightness — or loving, perhaps? — had utterly vanished. He sounded both grim and determined.

“To the police?”

“No, to the house. I need to know what’s happening there.”