“Do you live here? Are there servants’ quarters…?”
“I live alone in a cottage…” She pointed. “…’tween the country club and here. Close enough that when Mr. Christie cry out, this mornin’, I could hear. And I came runnin’…but there was no helpin’ Sir Harry.”
“You didn’t see anything last night…”
“No. The storm was high. So much noise from the sea. I didn’t hear or see a thing. Are you goin’ to stay and find out who did this?”
“Well…no. Why did you think I would?”
Her reddened eyes widened. “You’re a detective. You worked for Sir Harry.”
“I’d like to help, Miss Bristol, but the people in charge of the investigation wouldn’t want my help, even if I were to offer it.”
“Well, you should try!”
“No…I’m sorry.”
“You’re goin’ back to America, then?”
“Yes. As soon as they let me. But I won’t soon forget meeting you, Miss Bristol.”
She was pouting, a little; she wasn’t happy that I wasn’t going to stay and crack the murder case. I had disappointed her-which is something I do sooner or later with most every woman in my life, but usually not this early on.
“Why should you remember me?” she asked.
I put a finger under her chin, raised it so she’d look at me. “Because I want to.”
The hallway, which had gotten noisy again, fell into another hush, which meant the Duke was returning from the murder room. Edward was coming down the stairs, with the detectives trailing him like schoolboys hanging on their master’s every precious word; at the bottom he paused, to shake hands with them again, and then turned to go. Several aides-de-camp fell in place behind him, replacing Barker and Melchen.
But just as he reached the door, de Marigny-making his second impressive entrance at Westbourne today-swept in, accompanied by a white, khakied cop.
The moment that followed is one I’ll remember to my dying day. Why? Because it was so goddamned odd….
The Duke froze, like a man confronted with a ghost, and de Marigny stopped in his tracks, too, and looked at the Duke curiously, the way you might pause to view a car wreck as you drove by.
Then the Duke’s expression turned hard and frankly contemptuous, and he moved swiftly on, and outside, his retinue following.
De Marigny, his wide lips hanging open, lending this man of obvious intelligence a remarkably stupid expression, gazed numbly toward where the Duke had exited. Then he sneered, and seemed both irritated and confused.
Was there something personal between these two?
The two Miami cops moved in on the casually dressed Count like he was Dillinger and they were the FBI; of course, nobody did any shooting.
But Melchen did place his hand on de Marigny’s arm and announce, “I’m Captain Melchen of the Miami Police Department-here at the Governor’s request. Would you mind answerin’ a few questions?”
“Certainly not,” de Marigny said suavely, withdrawing his arm from Melchen’s grasp.
They trooped him past me on their way to the billiards room, where they could subject him to dim lighting and dimmer questioning. Just before they went in, Barker motioned to me.
He seemed conciliatory. “You mind stepping inside with us?”
Melchen was already in the billiards room, showing de Marigny to the card table.
“I guess I don’t mind. What for?”
“I want you to see if what the Count says tallies with what you observed yesterday. Okay?”
“Okay.”
I positioned myself in the darkness, with a mounted moose head or some other damn thing with antlers looking over my shoulder.
At first they treated him almost politely. They played standard good cop/bad cop, with the pudgy Melchen, surprisingly, taking the ingratiating, friendly role. They questioned him about his movements last night, and his every answer-and despite his thick French accent, his English was impeccable-fit the facts as I knew them.
Barker came over to me. He whispered, “How’s all that tally?”
“Perfectly.”
“He’s a cunning son of a bitch.”
“Most gigolos are.”
Barker went back to the table and withdrew a magnifying glass from his pocket and set it down with a clunk. Great-now we were playing Sherlock Holmes.
“You don’t object if we have a look at your hands, do you?” Barker asked, casually snide.
“My hands? No. Go ahead.”
Barker took each of the Count’s hands, one at a time, and examined them carefully under the magnifying glass, like a palm reader with bad eyesight.
Then, without asking, he shifted to de Marigny’s face-specifically, his beard. Melchen turned the table lamp up so it would bathe their subject with light. Conducting a scientific examination in the dark was challenging, you know.
Barker turned and glanced at me, his face smug and tight. Then he looked at de Marigny and said, “The hairs on your hands and beard are singed.”
Even now, the house had a scorched smell. The significance of Barker’s discovery needed no explanation.
“Can you account for that?” Barker asked.
De Marigny shrugged. For once his confidence seemed shaken.
Then he pointed a finger at them and said, “Remember-I told you I was plucking chickens yesterday over a boiling drum.”
The cops said nothing.
“Also,” the Count said, “I smoke cigarettes and cigars…the dampness in Nassau requires frequent relighting. Oh! And I had the barber singe my beard, recently!”
The cops looked at each other skeptically.
“He also burned himself lighting a hurricane lamp,” I said. “Entertaining in his garden last night.”
Barker frowned at me. Melchen just looked confused.
“Yes, that’s right!” de Marigny said. And then he said to me, “How did you know that?”
I didn’t answer. He didn’t know who the hell I was, and I saw no reason to tell him.
“We’re going to clip hairs from your head, beard and arms,” Barker said to his suspect. “Any objection?”
“No,” de Marigny shrugged. “Shall I take off my shirt?”
“Yes,” Barker said. “But speaking of shirts…we want to see the clothes you were wearing last night.”
“I have no idea what clothes I was wearing last night.”
“Come on!” Melchen sneered.
“Really! I have an interchangeable wardrobe of white-and cream-colored silk and linen shirts. I think I remember what sport jacket I wore…and the slacks…but not the shirt. What the hell, gentlemen-go to my house, inspect my laundry if you like!”
“We’ll just take you up on that,” Melchen said nastily.
Barker rose and came over to me. He gave me a foul look. “That’s all, Heller.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, and went out.
I tried to find Marjorie Bristol, to say goodbye, but she didn’t seem to be around. So I looked up Lindop, who was in the hallway, amidst an ever-increasing, milling crowd; what a way to run an investigation.
“Can I go, Colonel? Watching those Keystone Kops play in the dark gives me a migraine.”
He smiled faintly. “You’ll need to give the Attorney General a deposition before you leave Nassau.”
“I figured as much, but I meant, right now….”
He touched the brim of his pith helmet, in a tipping-of-the-hat gesture. “As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Heller, you’re free to go. But frankly, I don’t seem to be in charge.”
He had a point; but I found the Bahamian bobbies who’d brought me here and told them they were supposed to take me back to the hotel.
And they did.
Hell-maybe I was in charge….
8
Palms rustled gently in the sultry night breeze. The sky was a clear dark blue, aglitter with stars, like handfuls of diamonds carelessly scattered on a taut satin sheet; the sliver of silver moon hung like a sideways, Cheshire-cat smile. Ice clinked in fruit-bedecked cocktail glasses while the wind whispered warm tropical kisses. It might have been an idyllic evening in the Bahamas, only I was in Coral Gables, Florida, seated at a table for two in the outdoor dance patio of the Miami Biltmore, where Ina Mae Hutton and her “all-girl” Melodears were playing a bouncy instrumental version of “Pistol Packin’ Mama.”