Death in the Caribbean, page 19
One of the nicer things about Sir Edmund Pusey is that he knows when not to interrupt a train of thought. But he had just given me a pleasant dinner, and I couldn’t remain in a brown study for ever. I dragged myself back to his question. What was I going to do? I asked a question in my turn. ‘Is there still a job for me?’
‘My dear Peter! You have covered yourself, and the Department, with glory. It’s a pity that so few people will ever know about it – but the few who do are the people who matter in the world. We employ all sorts and conditions of men. Offhand, I can’t think of any other millionaires at present on the payroll, but I don’t see why I should hold that against you. I was thinking primarily about Ruth.’
‘I’m thinking about her, too. We both made disastrous marriages, hers worse than mine, for Sybil was no worse than thousands of other women who want a good time for themselves, whereas she found herself married to a brilliant psychopath – for Charles undoubtedly was brilliant, for all his warped and twisted personality. You have done a lot to help Ruth already.’
‘No more than she deserves. She is an outstanding mathematician, and with her peculiar knowledge of the mathematics of earthquakes the chief scientists on both sides of the Atlantic are naturally on her doorstep. It was partly to protect her from them that I got her that Readership at Oxford. Only partly, though. Oxford’s damned lucky to have her. Cambridge will be offering her a professorship before we know where we are. You’ll have to stop that. She’ll make Oxford world-famous in her special field of earth-wave mathematics. I was a little sad that she felt she had to go back to that rather third-rate university to serve out her notice.’
‘That was like Ruth. She keeps her bargains. She is due at Oxford tomorrow. She will like Oxford, I think. I shall have to go down to see her there.’
‘Peter, you come near to making me angry sometimes – in fact, you do make me angry. Have you absolutely no concern for her as a woman? Anyone can see that she is devoted to you.’
‘Of course I’m concerned about her as a woman. But I have to be careful, because our relationship is a strange one – already we are almost inextricably linked by our joint ownership of the Caval Estate. I have to see her on business. Sometimes I think there can be no future for either of us until we get rid of the lot. We have talked about this already, and we shall discuss it again.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, take the Nuevan estates. Edward Caval was a kind of Roman patrician on the island. He was born and lived there, his family had been there for centuries. We’re just absentee landlords. We’re thinking of making over most of the land to Nueva, though we’d both rather like to keep that nice old house at Naurataka, to go there sometimes. And of course I’d like to keep the schooner.’
‘That still leaves you millionaires.’
‘I haven’t finished. We thought we might found a new college at Oxford. Caval College. Old Edward would like that.’
‘And this is what you want to talk about when you go to see her in Oxford?’
‘Yes.’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.R.L. Anderson was an author of fourteen mystery stories and numerous works of non-fiction. He was a journalist at the Guardian for many years, before retiring to pursue his career as an author. He had a life-long interest in sailing and adventure, which results in many of his novels (as his original author biography from the 1970s puts it) ending ‘with an exciting sea chase in a small boat’.
If you enjoyed Death in the Caribbean, why not continue reading The Peter Blair Mysteries . . .
Death in the Greenhouse
Old Mr Quenenden seems not to have an enemy in the world: having retired to a cottage in Berkshire, he leads an idyllic life breeding tropical plants. Which is why it comes as a complete shock when his body is discovered in his greenhouse - murdered.
In London, Peter Blair is hard at work on his own investigation into top-level blackmail in the City, but he quickly realises that the two cases have more in common than meets the eye.
A complex botanical clue means Peter must dig deep to stand a chance of solving the crime - but do the answers lie on home soil after all?
Wonderfully crafted yet grippingly tense, Death in the Greenhouse is a vintage J.R.L. Anderson mystery.
Death in a High Latitude
When the deputy chairman of a world-leading oil company gets kidnapped in Hamburg, Peter Blair is urgently called in to lead the rescue mission.
The captured Dr Braunschweig is a wealthy and powerful, and a sizeable ransom demand seems certain. So it seems very strange when all the kidnappers desire in exchange for their hostage is a certain 17th Century Arctic map.
But when the map is suddenly reported missing from its museum in Cambridge, it becomes clear there is much more at stake than a valuable relic. And with news that an oil expert has been murdered in the Arctic, an old map from the past threatens to have global consequences for the future . . .
Death in a High Latitude is the final mystery starring the marvellous Peter Blair – and J.R.L. Anderson has saved his best investigation till last.
First published in Great Britain in 1977 by Victor Gollancz Ltd
This ebook edition published in 2015 by
Zaffre Publishing
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Copyright © J.R.L. Anderson, 1977
The moral right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-7857-6009-9
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Zaffre Publishing is an imprint of Bonnier Publishing Fiction, a Bonnier Publishing company
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JRL Anderson, Death in the Caribbean
