At last he finished. ‘That’s all I know, Mr Kemp.’
From the airstrip came the sudden howl of a jet engine winding up. I said, ‘What’s happening over there?’
‘Les Philips is testing the engines. I’m taking her up this afternoon.’
‘Oh, where are you going?’
‘No place. Just around. There are a lot of moving parts in an airplane, Mr Kemp, and if they’re left alone they get sticky. An airplane needs exercise, same as a man. She’s not been up since … since we came back from the States.’
‘How long will you be gone?’
‘Maybe an hour.’
I said, ‘I wanted to look at the plane. Maybe I’ll come with you.’
He hesitated. ‘That’s all right with me, but maybe I’d better check with Mrs Salton.’ He broke into an embarrassed laugh. ‘It’s her airplane. I’m just the hired driver.’
‘Well, why don’t you ask her if it’s all right?’
‘Sure, I’ll do that.’ He got up and walked towards the house.
Mrs Haslam reached for the jug and refilled her glass. ‘You wanna ask me somethin’?’ She was drinking too fast and her voice was slurred.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘On the day that Mrs Salton came up here to ask if you’d seen her husband, you told her that your husband and Mr Salton had gone into the plane and then the plane took off. Isn’t that what you said?’
She looked at me owlishly. ‘Sure, that’s what I said.’
‘But it wasn’t so. Why did you say it?’
‘It was so, too. You making me a liar, Mr Kemp?’
‘I’m just trying to get things straightened out,’ I said.
‘It happened like I said. Mr Salton got into the airplane with Jim. The plane took off.’ She looked up. ‘But I wasn’t looking at that airplane the whole damn time.’
I said carefully, ‘You mean that Mr Salton might have left the aircraft without you seeing him, before it took off?’
‘Sure.’ She drank from her glass and a dribble of liquid ran from the corner of her mouth down her chin. She dabbed it with the back of a paw.
‘But when it became clear that Mr Salton was missing, didn’t it occur to you to tell someone?’
She shook her head muzzily. ‘I didn’t know David Salton was missing. And if Mrs Salton thought he was, then she kept her troubles to herself.’
That fitted. I couldn’t see Mrs Salton confiding in a woman like this, the addled wife of her husband’s employee. Haslam called from the house. I said, ‘Excuse me,’ to Mrs Haslam and went across.
‘Mrs Salton would like to talk with you,’ he said, and led me inside the house to the telephone.
I picked it up. ‘Kemp here.’
Her voice was cool and pleasant. ‘After your flight would you like to come back to the house and make use of the pool?’
‘That would be very nice.’ I paused. ‘I have no trunks with me.’
She sounded amused. ‘I think we can find something for you. In about an hour, then.’
I put down the telephone and went back to Haslam. ‘Would you like to go right away?’ he asked.
‘If you’re ready,’ I said.
He nodded abruptly and went back to the pool. He had a few words with his wife and then came back. I fell into step with him and we walked across the airstrip towards the distant hangar. He was silent and seemed to be brooding about something. At last he said, ‘Bette … my wife … She’s not usually like that. It’s just that she’s upset.’
‘About Mr Salton?’
He shrugged. ‘In a way. She’s worried about me.’
‘I don’t see that you can be blamed for anything,’ I said.
Haslam stopped in mid-stride and turned to me. ‘It’s not that. She’s worried about my job. Mrs Salton doesn’t use the airplane much – it was his baby – and Bette thinks I may be out of a job pretty soon. She may be right, at that.’
‘Did you like working for Mr Salton?’
‘Hell, yes. He was a real nice guy. Very considerate, not like some bosses I’ve had. Wherever we went – and we went to some weird places – he always saw that the aircrew were okay before he went about his business.’
We began to walk again, and I said, ‘How many in the crew?’
‘There’s me as pilot, and Les Philips. He’s the engineer and does the routine ground servicing but he has his pilot’s ticket too, so he comes along as co-pilot. I do the navigating. House servants are on board as stewards – one or two, depending on the number of passengers. And there was usually Mr Salton’s secretary.’
‘Who was?’
‘Mrs Forsyth.’
‘Is she around here now?’
Haslam shook his head. ‘She used to live here at El Cerco but she’s now working with Mr Idle in San Martin.’
I thought of the rambling house on the island in the lagoon. ‘Does Mrs Salton now live entirely alone in the house? I mean, apart from servants.’
Haslam looked at me consideringly for a moment, then said briefly, ‘I wouldn’t know.’
We’d been walking for several minutes and it suddenly struck me that this was an indecently large airstrip to accommodate a relatively small plane. I asked Haslam about it.
‘I thought the same thing when I first came here. What you have to remember is that it wasn’t built by Mr Salton. The strip predates that lagoon house by many years.’
That surprised me. The northern tip of the island was remote by any standards, and it seemed unlikely that anyone would put a random airstrip – especially one as big as this – so far away from the island’s residential centres.
‘It was actually built by you Brits in the war,’ said Haslam. ‘Transport station for most of the Caribbean. The Yanks had squadrons here too. After they all shipped out, it was used occasionally for local traffic. But then Mr Salton bought it up when he moved back to the island. Now it’s just his plane that flies out of here.’
‘How long is the runway?’
‘Pretty long. Six thousand and two feet, if you want to be exact. They could run commercial flights from here just as easily as from Benning, if ever they decided to develop this end of the island. But I guess with Mr Salton gone, that’s not going to happen any time soon.’
I smiled wryly. ‘Oh, I’m not sure about that. I know a man in London who’s very interested in keeping Mr Salton’s investment plans alive.’
We turned the corner of the hangar and I saw the aircraft: a Lear executive jet, about half a million dollars’ worth of luxurious machinery. Its purpose was to transport a busy man about his empire. But the man was dead and his wife apparently not air-minded. No wonder Haslam looked worried: it was odds-on that Mrs Salton would cash in this white elephant and divert the proceeds to something more useful.
He introduced me to Philips, a short, stocky man