He was pushing the plunger in and I held a burning match to the mist of alcohol and it caught, burning a dull blue.
“Watch this,” he said, grinning like a kid.
The harder he pumped the thing, the bigger, the longer, the blue flame; it was like a homemade acetylene torch!
“You can direct this anywhere you like,” he said, “as long as you keeping pumping.”
When he finally stopped pumping, tiny puddles of the still-burning alcohol fell from the nose of the thing and landed on the table and made circular scorches, the flames burning briefly, then winking out.
“I’ll be damned,” I said.
“There’s your blowtorch,” Keeler said, placing the spray gun on the table.
I took a look at it. The tip was a little blackened; I took out a handkerchief and wiped it off, clean. You’d never know it had been spitting fire moments before.
“Just screw the alcohol jar off,” Keeler said, “and screw the bug spray can back on, and you have a seemingly unused flit gun.”
I hefted the spray gun. “Weren’t you lucky that the threads of both were the same?”
“Maybe. But if they don’t fit, you can just hold on to the glass jar with one hand and work the plunger with the other. It’s a little awkward, but a child could do it.”
Gardner was watching with amazement.
“Erle,” I said, “not a word of this in your column, now….”
He nodded. Then he lifted a cautionary finger and said, “Keep this one in your pocket, too.”
Keeler looked at me and nodded. We’d tell Higgs, but Gardner was right: the more the prosecution got wrong about the details of the murder, the easier Higgs could land an appeal, if he ended up needing one. On the other hand, straightening out those details in this trial wouldn’t help de Marigny at all….
“I have to go, gentlemen,” I said. “Len, when Di and Nancy get back from Paradise Beach, tell them I should be back around seven-thirty. Erle, you want to take the launch over with me?”
“I wouldn’t mind staying and chatting with Professor Keeler awhile, Heller. You mind?”
“Not at all.”
Gardner turned to Keeler. “Is that okay with you, Professor?”
“As long as I get to ask some of the questions,” he said. “You see, I’m a big Perry Mason fan. Nate, where are you off to, anyway?”
I was already leaving. Over my shoulder, I said, “I need to drop by Colonel Lindop’s office before his shift ends at six. Even with the doubt you can cast on their fingerprint evidence, Len, I think we need Lindop’s statement about seeing Freddie questioned in the morning, not the afternoon….”
Within the hour I was on the second floor of the police station, where at the door of Lindop’s office, I found a native painter in cap and coveralls applying the finishing touches to the name major herbert pemberton on the pebbled glass.
“Excuse me,” I said, “isn’t this Colonel Lindop’s office?”
“Not anymore, mon,” he said. “He been transfer.”
“What?”
The guy shrugged, and went back to finishing the final N.
I stopped by Captain Sears’ office, but he wasn’t in, either. I asked the captain’s male secretary about Lindop, and his answer was chilling.
“Colonel Lindop has been transferred to Trinidad,” the man said, a skinny white guy with a skinny black mustache and insolent eyes.
“Trinidad? When?”
“As of the first of this week.”
“Well…what in hell for?”
“For now and forever,” he said with quiet sarcasm, “as far as I know.”
Minutes later I was at the top of George Street, bolting up the long stone stairs, above which Government House sat like a big stale pink-and-white wedding cake; halfway up the stairs was a landing where the statue of Christopher Columbus, one hand on his sword, one hand on his hip, kept swishy watch. At the top of the stairs, across a cement drive, a black sentinel in white standing before the front door’s archway asked me my business. I said I had an appointment with the Colonial Secretary, and was allowed to pass.
When I opened the door with its elaborate E and royal crest inset in the heavy glass, I practically fell over a pile of suitcases, bags and trunks.
I heard footsteps echoing in the high-ceilinged foyer with its marbled wallpaper and pastel drapes (the Duchess’ touch, no doubt), and the man I’d lied about having an appointment with-Colonial Secretary Leslie Heape-was striding over to me, dragging one leg as he did. A First World War injury, I’d been told.
“How did you get past the sentry, Heller?” Heape demanded loudly, frowning.
“He asked me who Babe Ruth is,” I said, “and I knew.”
This humor was lost on Heape, a colorless career soldier in his mid-forties whose white uniform was far sharper than its wearer.
“If you still have the deluded notion that you’ll be granted an interview with His Royal Highness,” Heape said, “you’re wasting my time, and yours.”
“I’ll talk to you, then. What the hell happened to Colonel Lindop?”
“Nothing happened to Colonel Lindop. He’s had a request in for a transfer for some time; the Governor put it through.”
“But he’ll be back for the de Marigny trial, surely.”
“I sincerely doubt it-what with wartime transport difficulties, and the extent of Erskine Lindop’s new duties as Commissioner of Police in Trinidad.”
I sneered. “That’s convenient-right before the trial opens, a key defense witness is suddenly transferred off the island onto the moon.”
Heape’s jaw was as stiff as his leg. “Colonel Lindop was a prosecution witness, and my understanding is that he’s given a signed deposition detailing his knowledge of the case. His replacement, Major Pemberton, will be available for testimony.”
I didn’t know Pemberton, whose name I’d just seen wetly on Lindop’s door; if he’d been in on the investigation, it could only have been on the fringes.
“Who’s leaving?” I asked, jerking a thumb toward the pile of luggage.
He smiled faintly. “Other than yourself? His Royal Highness and Her Grace.”
“What? Don’t tell me they’ve been transferred to Trinidad!”
“It’s their American tour.”
Then I remembered the Duchess making a seemingly offhand comment at the dance at Shangri La: New York will be a relief….
Feeling a little dazed, I said, “So, then, His Royal Highness won’t be around for the de Marigny dog-and-pony show?”
“No,” Heape said. “Why should he be?”
And he escorted me to the door.
21
Under a nighttime sky that seemed a deeper blue than usual, with few stars and no moon, on an otherwise lonely stretch of beach, around a sparking, crackling bonfire glowing orange and yellow and red, swayed forty or fifty natives, arms and legs pumping as they danced around the blazing driftwood, to the beat of crude congalike drums and plaintive tuneless tunes blown on twisted conch-shell horns. Though the women wore white sarongs and white bandannas, and the men wore colorless tattered shirts and trousers, the reflected shades of flame mingling with the shadows of night made of them a living, colorful design.
From a respectful distance on the sidelines, where the coconut palms began, Lady Diane Medcalf and I watched. Like the native women, she wore white-a man’s shirt and ladies’ trousers; I was in white too, a linen suit under which the bulge of my nine-millimeter Browning was both uncomfortable and obvious.
This excursion to one of the out islands, Eleuthera-where at night, white men were seldom seen outside the large settlements-represented the first time I’d dug my automatic and shoulder harness out of my suitcase on either of my Bahamas trips. Maybe it meant I was a coward, or a bigot, or maybe a bigoted coward.