“Notice,” I said, pointing, “there’s no indication anywhere of the outline of Oakes’ body. If his body had been on the bed before the fire was set, the sheet and mattress beneath his body would have been virtually untouched.”
Gardner was right with me, nodding. “The position of the body, and its weight, would have shut the oxygen off from the fire.”
“Add that to the pajama shreds that didn’t burn, and the trickle of blood that moved uphill, and what do you get?”
“Well,” Gardner said archly, “I don’t get Sir Harry asleep in bed, getting shot or bludgeoned and his bed set on fire.”
I paced by the blackened bed, studying it. “I think maybe he was sitting on the edge of the bed. Talking to somebody-maybe arguing….”
I put my finger behind Gardner’s left ear and said, “Then bang, bang, bang, bang…he’s shot…or maybe struck…anyway, he collapses on the floor.”
“And the bed is set on fire, without Harry on it!”
“Sort of.” I frowned. “Look at the ceiling. Right over the bed. What do you see?”
“The charred framework of the mosquito-netting canopy.”
“And the mosquito netting is burned away, right?”
“Right,” he said.
“But what isn’t burned?”
Gardner looked; his tiny eyes popped. “The goddamn ceiling!”
I smiled. “Right. Look at these weird burns on the floor…circular…here and there…and Sir Harry himself was burned like that, too…intermittently.”
“That means a torch. Something homemade?”
“Possibly. I think a blowtorch. Something that could be aimed. Something you could point and scorch this bed, even get a fire going, yet still not even touch the ceiling, when you burned the netting away.”
Now Gardner’s eyes were so slitted they were gone. “You’ve got something, Heller. You’ve got something….”
“This bed was on fire when Sir Harry was tossed on it. He was already dead, or nearly dead, from those wounds behind his ear. The killer…”
“Killers,” Gardner interjected. “With all this going on, there had to be at least two.”
“You’re probably right. The killers then took their time playing voodoo, burning Sir Harry’s body here and there, particularly the eyes and his private parts, tossing those feathers on him.”
He pointed at the fan on the floor by the bed. “What about that? Isn’t that how the feathers got blown around?”
“No,” I said. “There were feathers sticking to him on the side of him away from the fan. Those feathers were sprinkled over him.”
Gardner looked puzzled, now. “Did they mean to burn the place down?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe they just wanted to leave this phony voodoo calling card. Or maybe one of them burned and feathered Harry while the body was still on the floor, the other one getting the fire on the bed going real good, then they both tossed him on….”
“And took a powder while the fire was still blazing, figuring the whole place would burn down!”
I nodded slowly. “Maybe. But the wind put it out. You know, usually when a man kills for money-as de Marigny is accused of-he does it as quickly and simply as possible and makes his getaway.”
“These killers weren’t in a hurry,” Gardner said. “They took their time, either out of hatred for Sir Harry, or in an effort to suggest a ritual killing. Unless it was a ritual killing….”
“Whatever the case,” I said, “it’s no hit-and-run job.”
“Are you gentlemen in need of assistance?” said a voice from the doorway. A familiar voice, actually.
Colonel Lindop entered the room, his face long and dour under the pith helmet, hands behind him.
“You’ve been telling tales to my men,” he said dryly. His smile was thin and not pleased.
“I told them I was meeting you here,” I said. “And here we are-back in the old clubhouse.”
“Don’t underestimate my people,” he said. “Colored or not, they’re good men. They had the sense to call me.”
But not the sense to stop me from waltzing in.
“I’ll admit they do a hell of job destroying evidence,” I said. “They were scrubbing bloody fingerprints off the wall when we got here.”
Lindop blinked at the bare wall, then looked glumly my way.
“Not my doing,” he said softly.
“I didn’t figure it was.”
“But I must admit I didn’t expect to see you in Nassau again so soon,” he said, too curious to throw me the hell out, right away.
“I’m working for the defense,” I said.
The unflappable Lindop seemed flapped. “Really? For Mr. Higgs?”
“Mrs. de Marigny hired me.”
His features froze as he tried to fathom this news. Then he looked at Gardner and said, “And who would this gentleman be?”
“This is Erle Stanley Gardner, the famous writer. He’s an old friend of mine. Giving me his reading of the crime scene.”
“Fascinating, I’m sure,” Lindop said, with the slightest smirk. “You wouldn’t be covering this for the press, would you?”
“Actually,” Gardner said, with a sheepish grin, “I would. Pleased to meet you, Colonel Lindop….”
Lindop ignored the hand the writer offered. He said, “I’ll have to ask you to leave. We’ll be bringing the press out, en masse, one day soon.”
“Swell,” Gardner said.
“Before we go,” I said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d let me take a few evidence samples, for the defense.”
Lindop looked at me, amazed. “Samples? Such as?”
“Pieces of the sheets and blankets and carpet.”
“Why?”
“To conduct experiments about rate of burning.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t know…”
“I’m sure,” I said, “that the Miami dicks wouldn’t want you to allow this.”
He smiled faintly. “I see. Well…why don’t you go ahead, then. Take your samples.”
I did. Lindop watched, then saw us out. He was almost friendly.
“Oh, Colonel,” I said, outside on the front doorstep, “I wonder if you’d mind pointing out the picket fence, from which the murder weapon was supposedly plucked?”
Lindop smirked again. “I suppose you want to take one of the pickets, too,” he said, “for your scientific experiments.”
I exchanged shit-eating grins with Erle Stanley Gardner.
“Now that you mention it,” I said.
11
Brilliant late-morning sunlight careened off the high stone walls of the fortresslike Nassau Jail. The structure-which was at the end of a street called Prison Lane, fittingly enough-was atop a hill in a run-down colored district near the southern border of the city. A formidable iron gate swung open to allow the deep-blue Bentley into a courtyard overseen by placid black officers in towers and on walkways-unlike their counterparts on the streets of Nassau, these bobbies were armed, with rifles.
Godfrey Higgs, counsel for the defense, was driving. I was his passenger. I had spoken with Higgs on the phone the evening before, and we’d met for breakfast on a dining porch at the B.C., overlooking lush gardens and busy tennis courts.
I was sitting sipping orange juice when he strode through the hotel dining room over to where I sat by a window. Despite his three-piece suit, my first impression was that the tall, broad-shouldered attorney moved, and looked, like an athlete-even if it was in some ersatz sport like cricket or polo or something.
His forehead was high under dark, slicked-back, parted-in-the-middle hair; the eyes in his oval face were alert and hazel, smile broad and ready, nose sharp.
“Mr. Heller?”
“Mr Higgs?”
His grip was firm. He sat and ordered breakfast from a black waiter; my food was already on the way.
“One of Sir Harry’s good deeds, you know,” Higgs said.
“What’s that?”
“Giving hotel jobs to the colored population. That’s one of the reasons Sir Harry was so beloved.”