We were silent again, once more studying each other.
She was taller even than I had thought at first, reaching to my shoulder, with long legs clad in dark blue pants and the tops thrust into black leather boots. Now I could see the narrow waist and the Promise of good breasts beneath the thick jersey.
At first I had thought her plain, ten seconds later I had reckoned her handsome, now I doubted I had ever seen a more beautiful woman. It took time for the full effect to sink in.
“You have me at a disadvantage,” I said at last. “I don’t know your name.”
“I’m Sherry North,” she answered, and I stared at her for a moment before I recovered from the shock. She was a very different person from the other Sherry North I had known.
“Did you know that there is a whole tribe of you? I asked at last.
“I don’t understand.” She frowned at me. Her eyes were enchantingly blue under the lowered lashes.
“It’s a long story , , .
“I’m sorry.” For the first time she seemed to become aware that we were standing facing each other in the centre of the kitchen. “Won’t you sit down. Can I get you a beer?”
Sherry took a couple of cans of Carlsberg lager from the cupboard and sat opposite me across the kitchen table.
“You were going to tell me a long story.” She popped the tabs on the cans, and slid one across to me, then looked at me expectantly.
I began to tell her the carefully edited version of my experiences since Jimmy North arrived at St. Mary’s. She was very easy to talk to, like being with an old and interested friend. suddenly I wanted to tell her everything, the entire unblemished truth. It was important that from the very beginning it should be right, with no reservations.
She was a complete stranger, and yet I was placing trust in her beyond any person I had ever known. I told her everything exactly as it had happened.
She fed me after dark had fallen, a savoury casserole out of an earthenware pot which we ate with home- made bread and farm butter. I was still talking but no longer about the recent events on St. Mary’s, and she listened quietly. At last I had found another human being with whom I could talk without reserve.
I went back in my life, in a complete catharsis I told her of the early days, even of the dubious manner in which I had earned the money to buy Wave Dancer, and how my good resolutions since then had wavered.
It was after midnight when at last she said: “I can hardly believe all you’ve told me. You don’t look like that - you look so,” she seemed to search for the word, “wholesome.” But you could see it was not the word she wanted.
“I work hard at being that. But sometimes my halo falls over my eyes. You see, appearances are deceptive,” I said, and she nodded.
“Yes, they are,” and there was a. significance in the way she said it, a warning perhaps. “Why have you told me all this? It is not really very wise, you know.”
“it was just time that somebody knew about me, I suppose. Sorry, you were elected.” She smiled. “You can sleep in. Jimmy’s room tonight,” she said.
“I can’t risk you rushing out and telling anybody else.”
I hadn’t slept the night before and suddenly I was exhausted. I felt as though I did not have the strength to climb the stairs to the bedroom - but I had one question still to ask.
“Why did Jimmy come to St. Marys! What was he looking for?” I asked. “Do you know who he was working with, who they were?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head, and I knew it was the truth.
She wouldn’t lie to me now, not after I had placed such trust in her.
“Will you help me find out? Will you help me find them?”
“Yes, I’ll help you,” she said, and stood up from the table.
“We’ll talk again in the morning.”
Jimmy’s room was under the eaves, the pitch of the roof giving it an irregular shape. The walls were lined with photographs and packed bookshelves, silver sporting trophies and the treasured brica-brac of boyhood.
“Me bed was high and the mattress soft.
I went to fetch my bag from the Chrysler while Sherry put clean sheets upon the bed. Then she showed me the bathroom and left me.
I lay and listened to the rain on the roof for only a few minutes before I slept. I woke in the night and heard the soft whisper of her voice somewhere in the quiet house.
Barefooted and in my underpants I opened the bedroom door and crept silently down the passage to the stairs. I looked down into the hall. There was a light burning and Sherry North stood at the wall-hung telephone. She was speaking so quietly into the receiver, cupping her hands to her mouth, that I could not catch the words. The light was behind her. She wore. a flimsy nightdress, and her body showed through the thin stuff as though she was naked.
I found myself staring like a peeping Tom. The lamps light glowed on the ivory sheen of her skin, and there were intriguing secret hollows and shadows beneath the transparent cloth.
With an effort I pulled my eyes off her and went back to my bed.
I thought about Sherry’s telephone call and felt a vague disquiet, but soon sleep overtook me once more.
In the morning the rain had stopped but the ground was slushy and the grass heavy and wet when I went out for a breath of cold morning air.
I expected to feel awkward with Sherry after the previous night’s outpourings of the soul, but it was not so. We talked easily at breakfast, and afterwards she said, “I promised I’d help you; what can I do?”
“Answer a few questions.”
“All right, ask me.”
Jimmy North had been very secretive, she did not know he was going to St. Mary’s. He had told her he had a contract to install some electronic underwater equipment at the Cabora-Bossa. Dam in Portuguese Mozambique. She had taken him up to the airport with all his equipment. As far as she knew he was travelling alone. The police had come to the shop in Brighton to tell her of his murder. She had read the newspaper reports, and that was all.
“No letters from Jimmy?”
“No, nothing.” I nodded, the wolf pack must have intercepted his mail. The letter I had been shown by Sherry’s impostor was certainly genuine.
“I don’t understand anything about this. Am I being stupid?”
No.” I took out a cheroot, and almost lit it before I stopped myself. Okay if I smoke one of these?”
“It doesn’t bother me,” she said, and I was glad, for it would have been hell giving them up. I lit it and drew in the fragrant smoke.
“It looks as though Jimmy stumbled on something big. He needed backing and he went to the wrong people. As soon as they thought they knew where it was, they killed him and tried to kill me. When that didn’t work they sent out someone impersonating you. When she thought she knew the location of this object, she set a trap for me and went home. Their next move will be a return to the area off Big Gull Island, where they are due for another disappointment.”
She refilled the coffee cups, and I noticed that she had applied make-up this morning - but so lightly that the freckles still showed. I reconsidered the previous night’s judgement - and confirmed that she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever met, even in the early morning.
She was frowning thoughtfully, staring into her coffee cup and I wanted to touch one of her slim strong- looking hands that lay on the tablecloth near my own.
“What were they after, Harry? And who are these people who killed him? she asked at Last.
“Two excellent questions. I have leads to both - but we will tackle the questions in the order you asked them. Firstly, what was Jimmy after? When we know that we can go after his murderers.”
“I have no idea at all what it could be.” She looked up at me.
The blue of, her eyes was lighter than it had been last night, it was the colour of a good sapphire. “What clues have you?”
