I leaned toward the open window and gulped fresh air; muggy though it was, it helped.
“Are you all right, Mr. Heller?”
Lindop looked genuinely concerned.
I stood. Thank God I hadn’t eaten any breakfast.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just that I know what that smell is. I recognize it from overseas.”
Charred grinning Jap corpses by a wrecked tank on the Matanikau, a foul sweet wind blowing through the kunai grass.…
“Where did you serve?”
I told him.
“I see,” he said.
“Colonel, I’m an ex-Chicago cop-I’m not squeamish about much of anything. But…being back in the tropics is proving a real stroll down memory lane.”
He nodded toward the doorway. “We can leave.”
“No.” I swallowed thickly. “Show me what’s beyond the Chinese screen….”
Colonel Lindop nodded curtly and stepped around it, following the scorched path, leading me to my final audience with Sir Harry Oakes, who was not at all his usual lively self this morning.
He was on the twin bed nearer the dressing screen, which apparently had been positioned to protect the sleeper from the open window’s Bahamas breeze, though it had not protected him otherwise.
His squat, heavyset body lay face up, one arm dangling over the bedside, his skin blackened from flame, interrupted by occasional raw red wounds, head and neck caked with dried blood. He was naked, but shreds of blue-striped pajamas indicated his nightwear had been burned off him. His eyes and groin seemed to have taken extra heat; those areas were blistered and charred.
Over the bed was an umbrellalike wooden framework that had held mosquito netting, most of which was burned away. Strangely, this side of the nearby dressing screen was unblemished by smoke or fire. The most bizarre touch in this ghastly tableau was the feathers from a pillow which had been scattered over the blackened corpse, where they clung to the burned blistery flesh.
“Jesus,” I said. It was almost a prayer.
“His friend Harold Christie found him, this morning,” Lindop said. “About seven.”
“Poor old bastard.” I shook my head and said it again. I tried to breathe only through my mouth, so the smell wouldn’t get to me.
Then I said, “Cantankerous old rich guy like him couldn’t have been short on enemies.”
“Apparently not.”
It was one messy murder scene. Red palm prints, like a child’s finger-painting, stood out on the wall by the window across from the other, unslept-in twin bed; somebody with wet hands had looked out. I didn’t imagine they’d been wet with catsup. More red prints were visible on the wall kitty-corner from the bed.
All of these prints looked damp-the humidity had kept them from drying.
Blood glistened on both knobs of the open, connecting door between this and another, smaller bedroom, opposite the unoccupied bed. I peeked in-that bedroom, which looked unused, was about sixteen feet across. Sir Harry’s was twice that, and the other way ran the full width of the house, looking out on porches on both the south and north sides.
“Well,” I said, “there’s not exactly a shortage of clues. The trail of fire…bloody fingerprints…”
He pointed. “That fan by the foot of his bed seems to be what blew the feathers all over him.”
“What do you make of the feathers, Colonel? Some sort of voodoo ritual?”
“Obeah,” the Colonel said.
“Pardon?”
“That’s what the practice of native magic is called here: obeah.”
“And the feathers could mean that-or anyway, somebody wanted it to seem to mean that…”
“Indeed.” Lindop’s features tightened in thought; hands locked behind him. “After all, Sir Harry was quite popular with the native population, here.”
There was a spray gun on the floor near the door to the adjacent bedroom. “Bug spray?”
Lindop nodded. “Insecticide. Highly flammable….”
“Was he doused with that?” I laughed glumly. “Quick, Sir Harry, the Flit.”
I was looking out the ajar door to the northside porch-which gave access to an outside stairwell-when Lindop commented, “That door was unlocked.”
“So was the front door yesterday, when I showed up. Security here was pretty damn loose. Have you talked to the night watchmen?”
“I wasn’t aware there were any.”
“There are two. One’s named Samuel. Sir Harry’s household head, Marjorie Bristol, can fill you in.”
He nodded again, eyes on the corpse. “She’s downstairs. Taking it hard, I’m afraid. Haven’t been able to properly question her.”
I went over to have a better look at Sir Harry. I was well past the nausea; cop instincts had long since kicked in. I leaned close. Something behind Sir Harry’s left ear explained a lot.
“I didn’t figure he was burned to death,” I said. “Not with all this blood around.
Lindop said nothing.
Four small wounds, fingertip-size, roundish but slightly triangular, were punched in the man’s head, closely grouped; if you were to connect the dots, you’d have a square.
“Bullet wounds?” I asked. I wasn’t sure: there were no powder burns.
“That’s the doctor’s initial opinion. And Christie called it in that way, too. I would tend to agree.”
“The body was moved,” I said. “At the very least, turned over.” I indicated lines of dried blood running from the ear wounds across the bridge of Sir Harry’s nose. “Gravity only works one way, you know.”
Lindop grunted noncommittally.
A nightstand between the beds had a lamp whose celluloid shade was unblistered by heat, thermos jug, drinking glass, set of false teeth and a pair of reading glasses-undisturbed, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred in this bedchamber the night before.
“It’s wet under his hips,” I said, pointing. “Bladder released on death, probably. Has your photographer been here yet? There’s a newspaper Sir Harry’s lying on you might want to note.”
“We have no departmental photographer. I sent for two RAF photographers, who are developing their photos now, and a draftsman, who drew a floor plan.”
“Jolly good.” I moved away from the bed, gestured around us. “But you’d better seal off this crime scene before you compromise all this evidence.”
Lindop moved his mouth as if tasting something-something unpleasant. “Mr. Heller-much as I might appreciate your insights…I did not ask you to Westbourne as a police consultant.”
“What, then? A suspect? I hardly knew the guy!”
He cocked his head back again. “You were one of the last persons to see Sir Harry alive. I wish to know the nature of your business with him.”
I glanced over at my employer; he was staring at the ceiling with his eyes burned out. He seemed to have no objection.
“His business with me was to have me shadow his son-in-law, which I did yesterday afternoon and evening.”
That perked up the Colonel; he took a step forward. “For what reason?”
I shrugged. “Suspected marital infidelity on the part of the Count. Sir Harry wasn’t fond of him, you know.”
“Damnit, man-give me the details!”
I gave him the details. From picking up the Count’s tail at the Yacht Club, to driving the RAF wives home after the party.
“Hubbard’s Cottages,” Lindop said, narrowing his eyes. “That’s near here….”
“Almost next door.”
“Then de Marigny drove right past Westbourne!”
“So did I. Around one, one-thirty.”
Now his eyes widened. “You didn’t follow him back home to his house on Victoria Street?”
“No. I figured he wasn’t getting laid, so my night was over.”
Lindop heaved a disgusted sigh. “Perhaps it would have been better for all concerned if you’d kept Count de Marigny in your sights a while longer.”
I shrugged again. “Yeah, and I should’ve bought U.S. Steel at a nickel a share.”
A voice from the entry area called, “Sir!”