Hannah, Parker, Bannister, and the four Bahamian officers were met by Lieutenant Haverstock and Inspector Jones, the former in a cream tropical suit and the latter immaculate in his uniform. On the off-chance of earning some dollars, both of Port Plaisance’s taxis and two small vans had also appeared. All were snapped up.
By the time formalities were completed and the cavalcade had descended on the Quarter Deck Hotel, darkness had fallen. Hannah decreed there was no point in beginning investigations by flashlight, but he asked that the guard on Government House be continued through the night. Inspector Jones, much impressed to be working with a real Detective Chief Superintendent from Scotland Yard, barked out the orders.
Hannah was tired. It might be just after six in the islands, but it was eleven P.M. on his body clock, and he had been up since four A.M. He dined alone with Parker and Lieutenant Haverstock, which enabled him to get a firsthand account of what had actually happened the previous evening. Then he turned in.
The press found the bar with unerring and practiced speed. Rounds were ordered and consumed. The usual jocular banter of the press corps on a foreign assignment grew louder. No one noticed a man in a rumpled tropical suit drinking alone at the end of the bar and listening to their chatter.
“Where did he go after he left here?” Eddie Favaro asked Mrs. Macdonald. He was seated at her kitchen table while the good lady served up some of her conch chowder.
“He went over to the Quarter Deck for a beer,” she said.
“Was he in a cheerful mood?”
Her lilting singsong voice filled the room. “Bless you, Mr. Favaro, he was a happy man. A fine fish for supper, I was preparing him. He said he would be back at eight o’clock. I told him not to be late, or the dorado spoil and go dry. He laughed and said he would be on time.”
“And was he?”
“No, man. He was an hour and more late. The fish done spoil. And him talking nonsense.”
“What did he say? This ... nonsense.”
“He didn’t say much. Seemed worried bad. Then he said he seen a scorpion. Now you finish this soup up. That one bowl of God’s goodness in there.”
Favaro stiffened, his spoon halfway to his lips. “Did he say a scorpion, or the scorpion?”
She frowned at the effort of recollection.
“I thought he said a. But he mighta said the,” she admitted.
Favaro finished his soup, thanked her, and went back to the hotel. The bar was rowdy. He found a place near the far end, away from the press crowd. The end stool was occupied by the Englishman from the airstrip, who raised his glass in salute but said nothing.
“Thank God for that,” thought Favaro. The crumpled limey seemed at least to have the gift of silence.
Eddie Favaro needed to think. He knew how his friend and partner had died, and he thought he knew why. In some mysterious manner, here in these paradise islands, Julio Gomez had seen—or thought he had seen—the coldest killer either of them had ever met.
Chapter 3
Desmond Hannah began work the following morning just after seven, while the cool of dawn still lay on the land. His starting place was Government House.
He had a long interview with the butler, Jefferson, who related to him the Governor’s unswerving habit of retiring to his walled garden about five each afternoon, to take a whiskey and soda before the sun went down. He asked how many people would have known of this ritual. Jefferson frowned in concentration.
“Many people, sir. Lady Moberley, Lieutenant Haverstock, myself, Miss Myrtle the secretary—but she away with her parents on Tortola. Visitors to the house who had seen him there. Many people.”
Jefferson described exactly where he had found the body, but he averred that he had not heard the shot. Later, this use of the word shot would convince Hannah that the butler was telling the truth. But he did not yet know how many shots there had been.
The forensic team from Nassau was working with Parker on the grass, looking for spent cartridges ejected from the killer’s gun. They searched deep, for careless feet might have trodden the small brass case or cases into the earth. The feet of Lieutenant Haverstock, Inspector Jones, and his uncle Dr. Jones had walked all over the grass on the night of the killing, erasing all chances of useful footprints.
Hannah examined the steel gate in the garden wall as the Bahamian fingerprint man dusted the steel for possible prints. There were none. Hannah estimated that if the killer had entered by the gate, as seemed to be the case, and fired immediately, the Governor would have been standing between the gate and the coral wall below the steps that led to his reception area above. If any bullet had passed through him, it should have hit that wall.
Hannah switched the attention of the team crawling about the lawn to the path of crushed conch shells that ran along the base of the wall. Then he went back to the house to talk to Lady Moberley.
The Governor’s widow awaited him in the drawing room where Sir Marston had received the protest delegation from the Committee for Concerned Citizens. She was a thin, pale woman with mousy hair and skin that had been yellowed by years in the tropics.
Jefferson appeared with a chilled lager beer on a tray. Hannah hesitated, then took it. It was, after all, a very hot morning.
Lady Moberley took a grapefruit juice. She looked at the beer with raw hunger. Oh dear, thought Hannah.
There was nothing really that she could contribute. So far as she knew, her husband had no enemies. Political crime was unheard of in the islands. Yes, the election campaigns had caused some small controversy, but all within the ambit of the democratic process. She thought.
She herself had been five miles away at the time of the shooting, visiting a small mission hospital on the slopes of Spyglass Hill. It had been endowed by Mr. Marcus Johnson, a very fine man and a great philanthropist, after his return to his native Barclays six months ago. She had agreed to become patroness of the facility. She had been in the official Jaguar, being driven by the Governor’s chauffeur, Stone.
Hannah thanked her and rose. Parker was outside tapping at the window. Hannah went out to the terrace. Parker was in a state of great excitement.
“You were right, sir! Here it is.”
He held out his right hand. In the palm, badly distorted, was the flattened remnant of what had once been a lead bullet. Hannah stared at him bleakly.
“Thanks for handling it,” he said. “Next time, shall we try tweezers and a plastic bag?”
Parker went pale, then scuttled down to the garden, put the bullet back on the conch-shell gravel, opened his murder bag, and took out a pair of tweezers. Several of the Bahamians grinned.
Parker laboriously lifted the crushed bullet with the tweezers and dropped it into a small clear bag.
“Now, wrap the bag in cotton wool and place it inside a glass jar with a screw top,” said Hannah.
Parker did as he was told.
“Thank you. Now put it in the murder bag until we can send it to Ballistics,” said Hannah. He sighed. This was going to be a hard slog. He was beginning to think he would have done better alone.
Dr. Caractacus Jones arrived, as requested. Hannah was glad to be able to talk to a fellow professional. Dr. Jones explained how he had been summoned from his home and surgery just after six the evening before last by Jefferson, who had been sent by Lieutenant Haverstock. Jefferson had told him he should come at once, as the Governor had been shot. The butler had not mentioned that the shooting was fatal, so Dr. Jones had brought his bag and driven over to see what he could do. As it turned out, the answer was, nothing.
Hannah led Dr. Jones into the late Sir Marston’s office and asked him, in his capacity as the island’s coroner, to sign a release for the body to be removed that afternoon to Nassau for a post-mortem.
In British jurisdiction, the court with the highest of all authorities is actually not the House of Lords but a coroner’s court. It takes precedence over every other kind of court. To remove the body from the island of Sunshine to the
territory of the Bahamas, a coroner’s order was required. Dr. Jones signed without demur, and then it was legal. Bannister, the junior staffer from the Nassau High Commission who had accompanied them to Barclay’s, typed the release on Government House notepaper. He had just installed the new communications system and was prepared to transmit.
Hannah then asked Dr. Jones to show him the body. Down at the dockside, the ice house was opened, and two of Inspector Jones’s police constables slid the cadaver of their former Governor, now like a frozen log, out from between the fish and carried him to the shade of the nearby warehouse, where they laid him on a door supported by two trestles.
For the press—now joined by a team from CNN out of Atlanta who had tailed Hannah all morning—this was wonderful stuff. They photographed it all. Even the Governor’s bed companion of the previous thirty-six hours, the marlin, got a spot on CNN’s Headline News.
Hannah ordered the warehouse doors closed to keep them out, and he made as thorough an examination of the rigid body beneath the layer of ice as he could. Dr. Jones stood by his side.
After peering at the frozen hole in the Governor’s chest, Hannah noticed a neat, circular tear in the sleeve of the left arm. Slowly he kneaded the fabric between his finger and thumb until his own hand’s warmth made the material more pliable. The frost melted. There were two such holes in the shirt sleeve, one in and one out. But the skin was not marked. He turned to Parker.
“Two bullets, minimum,” he said quietly. “We are missing a second bullet.”
“Probably still in the body,” said Dr. Jones.
“No doubt,” said Hannah. “But damned if I can see any sign of entry or exit holes. The flesh is too puckered up by the cold. Still, Parker, I want the area behind where the Governor was standing or sitting gone over again. And again. Just in case it’s there.”
He ordered the dead Governor replaced in the ice house. The cameras whirred again. The questions rained in. He nodded and smiled and said, “All in good time, ladies and gentlemen. It’s the early days yet.”
“But we’ve recovered a bullet,” Parker said proudly. The cameras all swiveled toward him.
Hannah began to think the assassin had shot the wrong man. This was turning into a press conference. He did not want one yet. “There’ll be a full statement this evening,” he said. “For the moment, it’s back to work. Thank you.”
He hustled Parker into the police Land-Rover, and they went back to Government House. Hannah asked Bannister to call Nassau over the new system and ask for a plane with stretcher, trolley, body bag, and two attendants by midafternoon. Then he accompanied Dr. Jones to his car. They were alone.
“Tell me, doctor, is there anyone on this island who really knows everything that goes on and everyone who lives here?”
Dr. Caractacus Jones grinned. “There’s me,” he said. “But no, I couldn’t hazard a guess as to’ who did this. Anyway, I only returned from Barbados ten years ago. For the real history of these islands, you should visit Missy Coltrane. She’s like ... the grandmother of the Barclays. If you want someone to guess who done this, she might.”
The doctor drove off in his battered Austin Mayflower. Hannah walked over to the doctor’s nephew, Chief Inspector Jones, who stood beside the Land-Rover still.
“I’d like you to do something, Chief Inspector,” Hannah said politely. “Would you go to the airstrip and check with the passport officer? Has anyone left the island since the killing? Anyone at all? Except the pilots of aircraft who arrived, turned around, and flew away without leaving the airstrip.”
Inspector Jones threw up a salute and left.
The Governor’s Jaguar was in the forecourt, and Oscar Stone, the chauffeur, was polishing it. Parker and the rest of the team were behind the house looking for the missing bullet.
“Oscar?” Hannah asked. “Do you know Missy Coltrane?”
“Oh yes, sah. She fine lady.”
“Do you know where she lives?”
“Yessah. Flamingo House, top of Spyglass Hill.”
Hannah checked his watch. It was half-past eleven, and the heat lay heavy. “Will she be in at this hour?” Oscar looked puzzled. “Of course, sah.”
“Take me to see her, will you?”
The Jaguar wound its way out of town, then began to climb the lower slopes of Spyglass Hill, six miles west of Port Plaisance. It was an old Mark IX model, a classic by now, made the old-fashioned way, redolent of aromatic leather and burnished walnut. Hannah sat back and watched the landscape drift by.
The lowland scrub gave way to the greener vegetation of the upland slopes, and they passed small plots of maize, mangoes, and papayas. Wooden shacks stood back from the road, fronted by dusty yards where chickens scratched. Small brown children heard the car coming and scampered to the roadside to wave frantically. Hannah waved back.
They passed the neat white children’s hospital that had been endowed by Marcus Johnson. Hannah glanced back and saw Port Plaisance sleeping in the heat. He could make out the red-roofed warehouse on the docks and the ice house next to it where the frozen Governor slept, the gritty sprawl of Parliament Square, the spire of the Anglican church, and the shingles of the Quarter Deck Hotel. Beyond, on the other side of town, shimmering in the haze, was the walled enclosure of Government House. Why on earth, he wondered, would anyone want to shoot the Governor?
They passed a neat bungalow that had once belonged to the late Mr. Barney Klinger, rounded two further curves, and emerged on the top of the hill. There stood a pink villa, Flamingo House.
Hannah pulled the wrought-iron bell chain by the door, and somewhere there was a low tinkle. A teenage girl answered the door, bare black legs emerging from a simple cotton frock.
“I’d like to see Missy Coltrane,” said Hannah.
She nodded and admitted him, showing him into a large and airy sitting room. Open double doors led to a balcony with spectacular views over the island and the glittering blue sea that stretched away to Andros in the Bahamas, far off below the horizon.
The room was cool despite having no air conditioning. Hannah noticed it had no electricity at all. Three burnished brass oil lamps stood on low tables. Cooling breezes wafted from the open balcony doors through to the open windows on the other side. The array of memorabilia indicated it was the home of an elderly person. Hannah sauntered around the room as he waited.
There were pictures on the wall, scores of them, and all of birds of the Caribbean, skillfully painted in delicate watercolors. The only portrait that was not of a bird was of a man in the full white uniform of a British Colonial Governor. He stood staring out at the room, gray-haired and gray-moustached, with a tanned, lined, and kindly face. Two rows of miniature medals covered the left breast of his tunic. Hannah peered to see the small label beneath the oil painting. It said, SIR ROBERT COLTRANE, K.B.E., GOVERNOR OF THE BARCLAY ISLANDS, 1945-1953. He held his white helmet, adorned with white cockerel feathers, in the crook of his right arm; his left hand rested on the pommel of his sword.
Hannah smiled ruefully. “Missy” Coltrane must in fact be Lady Coltrane, the former Governor’s widow. He moved farther round the wall to a display cabinet. Behind the glass, pinned to the hessian board, were the former Governor’s military trophies, collected and displayed by his widow. There was the deep purple ribbon of the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for gallantry in the field, and the date of its award, 1917. It was flanked by the Distinguished Service Cross and the Military Cross. Other items the warrior had carried on his campaigns were pinned to the board around the medals.
“He was a very brave man,” said a clear voice behind him.
Hannah spun around, embarrassed.
She had entered silently, the rubber tires of her wheelchair making no sound on the tiles. She was small and frail, with a cap of shining white curls and bright blue eyes.
Behind her stood the manservant who had pushed her in from the garden, a giant of awe-inspiring size. She turned to him.
??
?Thank you, Firestone. I’ll be all right now.”
He nodded and withdrew. She propelled herself a few feet farther into the room and gestured for Hannah to be seated. She smiled.
“The name? He was a foundling, discovered on a rubbish dump, in a Firestone tire. Now, you must be Detective Chief Superintendent Hannah from Scotland Yard. That’s a very high rank for these poor islands. What can I do for you?”
“I must apologize for calling you Missy Coltrane to your housemaid,” he said. “No one told me you were Lady Coltrane.”
“No more,” she said. “Here I am just Missy. They all call me that. I prefer it that way. Old habits die hard. As you may detect, I was not born British, but in South Carolina.”
“Your late husband”—Hannah nodded toward the portrait—“was Governor here once.”
“Yes. We met in the war. Robert had been through the First War. He didn’t have to come back for a second dose, but he did. He got wounded again. I was a nurse. We fell in love, married in 1943, and had ten glorious years until he died. There were twenty-five years between our ages, but it didn’t matter a damn. After the war, the British Government made him Governor here. After he died, I stayed on. He was only fifty-six when he died. Delayed war wounds.”
Hannah calculated. Sir Robert would have been born in 1897, got his Victoria Cross at twenty. She would be sixty-eight, too young for a wheelchair. She seemed to read his mind with those bright blue eyes.
“I slipped and fell,” she said. “Ten years ago. Broke my back. But you didn’t come four thousand miles to discuss an old woman in a wheelchair. How can I help you?”
Hannah explained.
“The fact is, I cannot perceive a motive. Whoever shot Sir Marston must have hated him enough to do it. But among these islanders, I cannot perceive a motive. You know these people. Who would want to do it, and why?”