Barker was smooth; he had the magistrate entranced as he gave a lecture on the characteristics of fingerprints.
“With the millions of fingerprints that have been examined throughout the world by experts and scientists,” he said with casual authority, “there have never been any two found alike-and from the viewpoint of an expert, I feel justified in saying, none even remotely alike.”
He referred to the fifty million sets of prints on file with the FBI; he explained how fingerprints themselves were formed (“When an individual presses his finger against a surface, small deposits of fatty substances or oil remain on the surface”); he explained the function of fingerprint powder, and the use of tape to lift a print.
On the same easel that had earlier displayed the grisly death-scene blowups, a card with a giant enlargement of a single fingerprint was placed by one of the colored constables. It looked like something out of a modern art museum.
Adderley said, “And whose fingerprint is this, Detective Barker?”
“It’s the little finger of Alfred de Marigny’s right hand-taken from a rolled impression after his arrest. May I step down, sir?”
“By all means.”
Using a crayon and a pointer, Barker identified “the thirteen characteristics of de Marigny’s fingerprints.” The magistrate, the press, the gallery, even de Marigny himself, were caught up by this bravura performance.
When he had marked up the blowup entirely, each of the thirteen points indicated by lines and numbers, he removed the blowup and an almost identical blowup, already so marked, was revealed.
“And what is this, Captain?” Adderley asked.
“This is an enlargement of a latent impression of the little finger of de Marigny’s right hand…taken from the surface of that Chinese screen.”
As murmuring filled the room, with the magistrate too caught up in Barker’s spell even to call order, the lanky detective moved to the screen and pointed to the extreme top of an end panel.
“It was lifted from here,” he said, volunteering the information, not waiting for Adderley’s prompting but seizing instead the correct theatrical moment.
“I marked the place previously,” he continued. “You see, on the morning of the ninth, I raised several dozen impressions of various prints from this screen, nearly all illegible. But there was one print raised which after examination proved conclusively to be the latent impression originating on the number five digit of Alfred de Marigny.”
De Marigny was no longer chewing his matchstick cockily; it hung limp in his lips as he sat forward, his face flushed.
“At what time did you raise this latent impression?”
“Between eleven a.m. and one p.m.”
I glanced over at de Marigny, caught his eye and smiled; he seemed confused momentarily, then his eyes tightened and he smiled back. The matchstick went erect.
We had them. With a little luck-we had them.
Higgs hadn’t made the connection that Freddie and I had. When we met in a small room in the courthouse, before Freddie was to be taken back to jail, the attorney confronted his client.
“You told me you hadn’t been inside Westbourne for months!” Higgs raged, still wearing his black robe, but with his white wig off.
De Marigny sat in a chair, legs crossed nonchalantly; he was chewing his matchstick again. “I hadn’t been. If I did touch that screen, it was in the morning.”
Higgs frowned. “What morning?”
“The morning of the ninth,” Freddie said. “That’s when I was taken upstairs by Melchen for questioning. Around eleven-thirty. I walked right past that screen in the hallway.”
“Could you have touched it?”
“Certainly.”
“But the testimony of not only Barker and Melchen, but those two Nassau police officers, places that time at three-thirty p.m.”
“Yes,” I said, “doesn’t it?”
Higgs looked at me with narrowed eyes. I was sitting on the edge of a desk. “What’s your point, Heller? That all four of these police officers are lying?”
“Yes. Back in Chicago we call it a frame, counselor. Actually, a fucking frame.”
“Mr. Heller is right, Godfrey,” de Marigny said, his prominent lips curled into a self-satisfied smile. “But remember: there were others present when I was taken upstairs-Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Ainslie, to name two. And Colonel Lindop himself! He wouldn’t lie.”
“No he wouldn’t,” I agreed.
Now Higgs’ irritation was gone and the boyish smile was back. “Now isn’t that interesting.”
I held my hand out to Higgs. “Let me see that copy of the fingerprint Adderley provided you.”
He dug it out of his briefcase.
I studied the photo. “I thought so.”
“What?” Higgs asked.
De Marigny’s attention was caught, too; he stood.
“You fellas happen to notice the background of that Chinese screen? It’s a wood-grain pattern-whorls, sort of. Now look at this print…look at the background….”
Higgs took the photo. “It doesn’t resemble a wood-grain pattern at all.”
“It’s more like a pattern of small circles,” de Marigny said.
“What does this mean?” Higgs asked, puzzled.
The presentation I was about to make wasn’t as elaborate as Barker’s, but it was every bit as impressive.
“It means,” I said, “that this print did not come from that screen.”
19
So that’s the infamous Axel Wenner-Gren,” I said. Tall, white-haired, hefty, blandly handsome, with a pink complexion, apple cheeks and a small white smile, the blacklisted billionaire stood leaning against an armchair, gazing at me with pale blue eyes that radiated a cold intensity.
“Yes, that’s the notorious Nazi sympathizer you’ve been hearing about,” Di affirmed in her wryly British way.
The huge oil painting in its glorious gilt frame hung over the fireplace in a round living room otherwise decorated with primitive artifacts of some kind.
Di saw me looking at the grotesque clay masks, garishly decorated pottery and gold-and-turquoise ceremonial daggers, displayed on walls and on shelves, and said, “Inca.”
“Dinka Doo,” I said.
That made her laugh; she put a hand on my shoulder, shook her head, making her shoulder-length silver-blond hair shimmer. “No, seriously. My employer’s avocation is anthropology. He’s made countless expeditions, to the remotest digs in Peru. Simply everything you see here is museum-quality.”
She sure didn’t look like she belonged in a museum: white silk gown with shoulder pads and silver-sequins collar that plunged to the wide matching silver-sequins waistband. She was ready for this evening’s party-a dance to be held here at Shangri La, in my secret honor.
Our absent Swedish host’s estate on Hog Island was a sprawling white limestone hacienda affair set against a lush tropical garden, with enough rooms to give the British Colonial a run for its money. The place was filled with antique mahogany furniture and polished silver pieces, trays, bowls, plaques, platters; the dining room I glimpsed must have been sixty feet long with a twenty-foot mahogany table.
Right now a lot of the mansion was closed off, however; as Di had explained, Wenner-Gren’s staff of thirty servants had been cut to a meager seven, when he had been forced to relocate to Cuernavaca for the duration.
“That’s one of the reasons why we’ll have such a grand turnout,” Di had told me earlier, as she’d helped me settle in at my guest cottage, which was a single room but larger than my entire suite at the Morrison back home.
“Why’s that?”
“Well, I’ve thrown several parties since Axel’s departure, but all of them were at hotels in town. This is the first opportunity Nassau society has had to see Shangri La, post-blacklist. Their curiosity will bring them around.”