Fred looked out of his kitchen window. The storms that had raged had finally blown themselves out overnight. It was going to be a fine day. It was days like this, he was glad he rented his own boat and could spend his time ferrying people and supplies around. It was a grand job to have, even when you knew the people who hired you were an odd lot and you hadn't even met them.
He made a detour on his way to the harbour and collected the newspapers ordered by the Owens from Tom Perowne's shop.
"Off to the island then, Fred?" Tom asked.
Fred gave a nod as he picked up the box. "I'll be taking them papers and supplies, then hanging around half the morning to ferry them back."
"They do say the Owens never turned up."
"If they did, I didn't ferry them over. Nor was I asked to." Fred had thought it odd at the time but it wasn't his responsibility what the gentry got up to.
"And a bit of a mixed party I heard."
Fred gave a glance around. Though most folks in Sticklehaven were awake for the new day, Tom's shop was empty but for the two of them. He leaned on the counter and was gratified by Tom's bright eyed interest as he promptly abandoned the restocking of a shelf. "A mixed party is what they were. You see that car parked by the inn?" Everyone in Sticklehaven had seen it - a powerful sleek monster of a machine. "That belongs to one of 'em. A young goodlooking chap. Flash and foolish, if you ask me. Then there was an old warhorse type, like the major up at the Grange. Can you imagine trying to entertain a pair like that?"
"Maybe they're related?"
Fred shook his head. "None of 'em seemed acquainted. There was a lady secretary and an old maid. A couple of business men, a doctor, and a judge. And just two servants to do for them all. And then, after all that, Mr. and Mrs. Owen don't even turn up."
Tom gave a snort. "I'd be right mad being stuck on that island for a whole weekend with that lot especially with those storms."
"Ah. I reckon they'll all be glad to go home."
~~~
Fred wasn't surprised to get to the cliff steps and find no one waiting for him. He hadn't taken to Rogers at all, and Mrs. Rogers was undoubtedly run off her feet doing all the cooking and cleaning. As well as taking the occasional backhander from Rogers, if Fred was any judge. Fred shook his head as he began climbing the steps. He didn't hold with hitting women. If a wife couldn't respect her husband without being hit, it said more about the husband than the wife, Fred reckoned.
When he got to the top and saw no one even start to approach him though, Fred breathed heavily through his nose as he hoisted the box of papers higher on his shoulder. Disrespect, that's what it was. As though his time was worth less because he was only the ferryman. Well, without him, they'd be going nowhere and, if Rogers pushed him, Fred would take pleasure in saying so.
It wasn't until he neared the house that Fred started to think it felt a bit weird. All those people and no sign of life. Course, they were probably having breakfast. But, still, he would have expected to see Rogers or Mrs. Rogers somewhere around. Skirting the side of the building to the left, he made for the kitchen door and beat a quick tattoo upon its surface.
After a few minutes with nothing but the sounds of seagulls and the ocean, he pushed the door open and looked in.
The kitchen was empty of people and not what Fred expected. No one had been making breakfast, Fred would have given his word on that. Instead, there was a small pile of tinned goods on the table and dirty plates in the sink. It was a rum go, in Fred's opinion. No cook would leave her kitchen in that state, not unless she'd had to. Fred wasn't an imaginative sort but the silence in the house was, in his opinion, downright creepy. He found himself walking quietly - him, when his Margery always had a comment about the clatter of his boots.
He'd have to call out though. It wouldn't be right to just walk through without calling, though Fred found himself reluctant somehow to break the silence surrounding him. He put his box next to the tinned goods, opened the door to the stairs, and called before he could change his mind, "Mr. Rogers? Mrs. Rogers?"
Fred hadn't expected an answer and he got none. What he didn't expect was the spark of anger. Was this some kind of game? A trick? Fred was only a ferryman but they ought to have more respect for his time than to play silly beggars. Well, Mr. and Mrs. Owen had paid him to ferry people around, not to play the fool with a bunch of...
No, it didn't make sense. That rich young man with the car would be ready for hijinks and silly tricks, but the old maid wouldn't. If she didn't spend half her time lecturing servants, Fred knew nothing about human nature. No, she'd see such games as beneath her. Fred abandoned the train of thought and went up the stairs to the hall. He decided to check the dining room first. There was, after all, a chance they might all be having breakfast and hadn't heard him over the clatter of cups and clinking of cutlery.
The sunshine was streaming in through the windows next to the front door. Fred glanced at it and thought he might as well have entered there after all. There was a hum from the dining room, the buzzing of flies. Fred opened the door and stopped. One of the older gentlemen - the judge, Fred thought - was sitting at the end of the table as if waiting for him.
Fred blinked and thought how annoying it must be for the old gentleman to have flies clustering on his throat and head like that. He stepped back, banged his arm on the doorframe, and jumped. He said later it gave him a right turn, thinking someone had touched him, but, at the time, all he did was back away, then run down the path and the steps to his boat.
He was out in the open water, heading back to Sticklehaven, before he gave a thought to the other guests. Where had they been? Why had the old gentleman been left to sit in judgement in the dining room? And the flies. Flies on his face and crawling through his hair...
Fred reached the harbour and tied up his boat. The policeman's cottage wasn't so far away but what Jim Gardner would make of it was beyond him.
~~~
"You haven't had a touch of the sun, have you, Fred?"
Fred gave him the hardest look he could muster. "I'm telling you. The old gentleman was dead in the dining room. I didn't see no sign of the others."
"There's ten of 'em in that house but no sign of the other nine? Think on, Fred, that don't make sense."
"Sense or no sense, I'll telling you what I saw. Will you come?"
Jim stood and reached a long arm for his policeman's jacket and helmet which were on the back of his kitchen door. "I don't have a choice, Fred Narracott. A member of the public has made a report of a dead body. As a police constable, it's my duty to go and look."
~~~
And look they did, but not alone. Constable Gardner in his uniform making a beeline for Fred Narracott's boat got everyone's attention, and they hadn't got to the harbour before they had a few volunteers to go with them. This time, they hadn't taken but a few steps up the cliff side before Jack, Tom Perowne's eldest lad, was pointing to the left and swearing he could see a body.
They followed his pointing finger and found a dead man being tumbled about in the incoming tide.
Even without the sunglasses, Fred recognised him as the oddest one in a mixed bunch, though the air of danger had disappeared from around him. No, he was no threat to anyone now. They picked him up out of the surf and carried him to above the tide mark. Lying him on his back, the stains on his shirt said there was more than a drowning here.
It was Ben Everett who went down on his knees to examine him. Ben who'd survived the trenches of the Great War and knew exactly what a bullet wound looked like. "'Twas a bullet what killed him." Ben pulled back the torn shirt and pointed to the gaping holes in the flesh. "That one would have killed him. The others would have slowed him down but he couldn't have survived that one."
Jim pushed his helmet back so he could wipe his forehead. "That's two of 'em that were shot then. Him and the old gentleman in the house. What is it, Bill?" This last bit was to Bill who was poking at his shoulder.
Quiet, word-shy Bill - who never used five words where one would do - jerked his head towards the rocks. "There's another."
With exclamations, they scrambled over to where another body lay higher up, half-hidden by the slope of the shale. There were no unexpected bullet holes here. Having lived by the sea all their lives, they recognised the signs of a cliff fall.
"The fall would have killed him, right enough," Jim said. "But he's been here longer than that other chap." He mopped his forehead again. "All right, lads, up to the house."
The front door was still standing open and they entered quietly and gathered in the door of the dining room. The old gentleman was still there, his eyes staring up beneath his seething black cap of flies.
Fred heard Jim swallow hard before he pulled the door to and hid the old gentleman from view.
"I reckon we need to avoid disturbing any evidence," Jim said, turning to face them all. "We'll search the building and then I'll phone through to my Sergeant from Tom Perowne's shop. I reckon they'll call for Scotland Yard and they won't thank us for mucking about with the bodies."
"What about the one with bullet holes?" Jack asked. "We moved him."
"We had to move him," Fred said. "Ain't right to leave a body rolling around in the tide."
Jim nodded. "But we don't touch any more. Unless they're alive, o' course."
They weren't. There weren't none of them found alive. A number of them were found lying in their beds, though Rogers, for one, had definitely not died there. The worst, in Fred's opinion, was when they opened a bedroom door to find the lady secretary hanging from the ceiling with her face all blue. Not even finding one of the gentleman half hidden under a bear rug with a knife in his chest had horrified them half as much.
No, in Fred's nightmares, it was her and the old gentleman who appeared the most. The judge with his hanging cap of flies and the young lady being hanged from a hook in the ceiling. Though why was a complete mystery, even to the nonsensical logic found in dreams.
Even Scotland Yard had drawn a blank. The unknown Owens who'd never appeared to meet their guests were never found. There were ten people taken to the island and ten corpses removed from the island. How those ten people became corpses was a mystery to them all.
The end.