“Well, there were no signs of robbery. It was a natural omission.”
I could only think of one person who could help me confirm or rebut these rumors. But I didn’t dare call in advance. I took a chance….
The beach didn’t have the ivory cast I remembered; it was more a washed-out gray under a sickle moon. I knocked at the cottage door and she seemed stunned to see me. The lustily lashed dark eyes were a little hurt.
“Nathan…I asked you not to come here.”
My straw fedora was in hand. “I know, Marjorie. I apologize. But you’re the only person I can think of who can help me….”
She began to close the door. “I told you before, I can’t be helpin’ you.”
Like the Fuller Brush man, I put my foot in the door. “Please. I’ll only stay a little while.”
“If Lady Eunice sees you…”
“She and her daughter are having dinner this evening, at the British Colonial. A sort of meeting of truce.”
She looked doubtful. “How do you know?”
I risked a smile. “I arranged it.”
Her smile seemed both wary and weary. She shook her head. “All right, Nathan. Come in. But don’t sit down.”
I stood in the neat-as-a-pin cottage, taking in the familiar sight of fresh flowers in a bowl at the round table, where a paper-covered book was open, facedown: Lost Horizon.
“I need to ask you a couple of things.”
She stood with arms folded, chin up, slightly; she wore the blue maid’s uniform. “All right.”
“Do you know anything about Sir Harry having a gold coin collection?”
She blinked, cocked her head. “Sir Harry had some gold coins, yes.”
“A lot of them?”
“Well…he had a little strongbox.”
“Like a pirate’s chest?”
She nodded. “But smaller.”
“Did he keep it locked away? In a…wall safe or something?”
She shook her head no. “He had a padlock on the chest, but Sir Harry, he kept it right out in the open; it was in his study, sittin’ on a bookshelf.”
“How do you know there were gold coins in that chest?”
She shrugged, almost casually. “I saw him once, counting them in his study.”
“Counting them?”
“Yes…he’d been drinkin’. Drinkin’ too much. Gold coins, they was scattered all over his desk. He was makin’ little stacks of them. Little strongbox open at his feet.”
“That’s the only time you ever saw any coins.”
“Yes.”
It was possible other servants had, from time to time, seen that chest of gold, open; or that Harry, in his cups, had opened it to show, to friends. So word about his cache of coins could easily have spread….
“Has Lady Oakes said anything about the chest being missing?”
“No. Come to think, I…I don’t remember seein’ it on the bookshelf, though.”
“I don’t suppose you could ask her….”
“No.”
Well-I could have Nancy check on that.
“Marjorie-do you think that Sir Harry could have been the victim of voodoo? Or…what is the other term?”
“Obeah,” she said.
“Right. Or a victim of that.”
She motioned me to the table, where I sat. She went to the stove and got me a cup of tea.
“Obeah is not voodoo,” she said. “It’s the practice of Bahamian magic.”
“That sounds like voodoo to me.”
She put the cup before me, then got herself one. “Obeah is part African, part Christian-a mixture.”
“That also sounds like voodoo.”
“But it’s not a religion, Nathan.” She sat across from me. “It’s a way to cure sickness, or for a farmer to protect his crop from theft or the bad weather, a way to get success in business, or love…”
“I could use some of this stuff.”
She smiled faintly and looked into her own cup of tea. “It’s not a religion…obeah is somethin’ one person, a shaman, sells to another.”
“Like somebody who wants somebody else dead, you mean?”
She frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t think so. Obeah doesn’t kill by hittin’ a man in the head and settin’ him on fire. Obeah kills from a distance.”
“Like with a spell, or potion, you mean.”
She nodded gravely. “And what motive would any black man have for killin’ Sir Harry? Sir Harry, he was good to us. And only a black man would think to use obeah.”
“What if Sir Harry had been fooling around with a black man’s woman?”
“Foolin’ around?”
“Sexually, I mean.”
She looked puzzled. “Sir Harry? He loved my Lady Eunice.”
“He never had other women at Westbourne? When your Lady was away, perhaps?”
“Never!”
I sipped my tea. “This is good. How’d you sweeten it?”
“Honey.”
I smiled. “I wish you were calling me that.”
That embarrassed her. “You should go now.”
“All right.” I stood. “Thank you, Marjorie. I won’t bother you again-you have my word.”
She nodded her thanks. “Has Curtis Thompson had any luck findin’ Samuel or that other boy?”
“No. You were right, Marjorie. They’re long gone.”
She shook her head sadly. “Some people, some things, you just can’t get back again.”
I don’t think she knew what she’d said till she said it, then she looked away and her eyes were moist and so were mine, and I just slipped out of there.
Now, a day later, I was standing with another beautiful woman, an unlikely escort considering, at the fringes of a native, voodoo-tinged ceremony or party or some damn thing, called a fish chop. Right now, they had stopped the music, and the musicians were holding their drums close to the flames, I guess tightening the skins that were their drumheads. As the other merrymakers swayed gently, almost sleepily, waiting for the music to start up again, a figure broke away and, trudging slowly across the sand, approached us.
He was perhaps fifty years of age, his hair and eyebrows and mustache snow-white, his skin still smooth, shirt open to the waist, trousers rolled up; he’d been one of the fishermen, but he had, thankfully, left his machete behind.
He stood a few feet away, respectfully. “I am Edmund. Do I have de priv’lege of speakin’ to my Lady Diane?”
“You do,” she said with a smile. “This is my friend Mr. Heller.”
“Mist’ Heller,” he said, nodding. He had sleepy eyes.
I held my hand out and he seemed a little surprised, but shook it.
“Do you know why we’re here?” she asked.
“Yes-Daniel say you’re interested in de gold coin.”
“That’s right,” she said.
“Follow me, please,” he said.
Even under a moonless sky, the garish painted colors of the village huts-green, blue, purple-were obvious; the windowless, precarious-looking shacks of wood and/or corrugated metal had dried palm-frond roofs and doors made of packing-crate panels or large tin advertising signs-here Typhoo Tea, there Pratts High Test Petrol. It was a tropical Hooverville.
Edmund opened the door for us, a red Coca-Cola sign loose on its leather hinges; it was hot within, filled with the staleness of no ventilation, and I could make out the sweet stench of muggles in the air. What was it they called it here? Ganja.
But Edmund’s shack was not filthy-there was a hammock, several wooden crates and cardboard boxes serving as furniture; the dirt floor was as hard as a wooden one.
“Sorry dere’s no real place for a lady to sit,” he said.
“That’s all right,” Di said. “What about the coins?”
“Just one coin,” he said. “A fella from Abaco give it to me for some work I done on his boat.”
“Could we see the coin?” I asked.
He went to one of the packing crates and lifted back a piece of frayed white cloth, rustled around and came back with a gold sovereign.
I had a look at it and so did Di.
“This isn’t pirate’s treasure, is it?” she said to me.
“Not dated 1907, it isn’t,” I said.
“Is dat coin worth somethin’?”
“Twenty shillings,” Di said, “but I’ll give you twenty dollars American for it.”