For answer, she turned her head to one side and shouted, “You out there with the rifle, what are you doing? We’re just here for a walk. Nothing more. There’s no reason to shoot at us.”
“You’re trespassing.” His voice was big and rolled through the trees like a bulldozer.
Flynn opened his mouth to respond but Dodie flattened her palm over it.
“I’m sorry,” she shouted out to the trees. “We didn’t know it was private. We meant no harm. No reason to shoot at us.”
“Show yourselves.”
“How do I know you won’t shoot us?”
“If I wanted to shoot you, you’d be dead by now, missy. I was just warning you to clear off.”
There was a rustle of bushes and the harsh alarm cry of a parrot.
“He’s circling us,” Flynn whispered.
“Stay here.”
She stepped out into a bright patch of sunlight that had fallen through the canopy of trees. She listened hard but heard nothing more, and before she could open her mouth to shout again, Flynn was at her side, his body shielding hers. The gun had vanished.
“You see?” Dodie shouted to the man.
Flynn said nothing but held out empty hands.
A figure stepped into view from behind a pine tree, a heavily built man of mixed race with curly hair greased back from his face, and a dark shirt and tie. His hands were great knots of muscle wrapped around the rifle, the tip of its barrel aimed purposefully at Flynn’s chest.
“What you doing here?” he demanded.
“I told you,” Dodie answered. “Just walking.”
“It’s a long way to walk.”
“We like getting away from everybody to quiet places.”
The man laughed, a dirty raucous sound that in other circumstances would have fanned a blush to Dodie’s cheeks. “I bet you do.”
Flynn smiled amiably. “Know any other quiet places that don’t have guards?”
“You want to go down to the south coast, man, where it’s real quiet. Plenty places down there and no one to bother you. Just you and the mangroves and the mosquitoes.” He chuckled to himself.
“So why shoot at us?”
The man dropped the smile. “I got my orders.”
“What’s here that needs guarding?”
“Nothing. Just sand and scrub. But it belongs to someone and that someone don’t want nobody trespassing on it.”
“Who owns it?”
The rifle, which had been drifting downward, jerked abruptly back to Flynn’s chest. “Man, you ask too many questions.”
“We’re curious,” Dodie said. “Wouldn’t you be if you’d been shot at? Scared us half to death, you did.”
The man scrutinized them in silence for a moment, trying to decide what to do next, and then he waved the rifle in the direction of the road.
“Go on, beat it.” He scowled at them, as though suddenly remembering how a guard was supposed to behave. “And don’t let me see you round here again or next time I’ll put a bullet in you.”
Dodie could feel Flynn beside her, eager to get his hands on the man and extract every last scrap of information out of him. But it was unlikely that he knew anything at all about the people who paid his wages and in the process someone would get hurt. She couldn’t bear it to be Flynn.
“We’re going,” she said quickly, took a grip on Flynn’s wrist, and marched him away.
Chapter 41
Ella
“You’ll be hot in that blouse.”
Ella glanced up. She was seated at her dressing table and in its large oval mirror the elegant bedroom was reflected with its pale bird’s-eye maple modern furniture and its soft feminine colors. All of which she had chosen. All of which were tasteful. But for the first time they struck her as grossly pallid. She felt a gut-deep yearning for bold stripes and vivid colors.
Is that what Reggie thinks but never says?
He was lying in bed, hands behind his head, hair tousled, regarding her in the mirror with curious eyes.
“You’re up early,” he commented.
“I was restless. Couldn’t sleep.”
“I noticed. Why is that?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She gave a light laugh and shrugged her shoulders. “The time of the month, fretting over the children at the hospital or when to get my hair cut and what to wear tonight. You know, the usual things.”
He smiled at her, an indulgent contented smile that normally would have pleased her but today felt like a sliver of glass in her skin.
“You should wear something else. You’ll be too hot.”
She looked at her reflection in the mirror, at the blouse she was wearing. Purchased at Macy’s in New York, a subtle shade of eau de nile that flattered her skin, with long sleeves buttoned tight at her wrists.
“You’re probably right.”
She picked up her silver-backed hairbrush and was just lifting it to her head when her husband said, “Sir Harry has invited us over for lunch today.”
Her hand froze. She looked round at him sharply. “Both of us?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Reggie, I can’t make it, I’m afraid. I’m working with Tilly at the clinic.” She was speaking too fast. Slow down.
He pulled a face. “He won’t like it. He made a point of asking for you to be there. I think he likes you . . . and who can blame him?”
“I don’t think he does.” She turned back to the mirror and brushed the nighttime knots out of her hair with hard punishing strokes, forcing her long blond waves to behave themselves. “I’m sorry, Reggie.”
“That’s all right, my dear. Another time will do. At least you’ll be able to drive yourself today, now that Detective Calder has been recalled to normal duties.”
The brush didn’t stop despite the fact that her fingers had become numb.
“You’ll like that, won’t you, Ella? To have him out from under your feet.”
“Yes.”
The word felt as dead as a stone in her mouth.
* * *
Ella hung up the telephone in the ward sister’s small office in the hospital. She looked at her hand. It was no longer shaking. She was back in control, but it frightened her how easily she had lost it. She had dialed the police station.
“I wish to speak to Detective Calder, please.”
“Who’s calling?”
“Mrs. Sanford. It’s urgent.”
“One moment, please.”
A click. A silence. Then his voice.
“Good morning, Mrs. Sanford.”
She hated what it did to her. That something melted inside her. That muscles she had no control of clenched with need.
“Good morning, Detective. I wish to speak to you. About the Morrell case.”
She was acutely aware that a telephonist could be listening.
“Can you come into the station?”
“I would prefer not to.”
“I am busy all day but I could see you this evening.”
“No, this evening is not suitable.”
She heard him shuffling papers. Imagined his hands flicking through a diary.
“I can see you at two o’clock, Mrs. Sanford, if that is convenient.”
“Thank you.”
“Good day to you, Mrs. Sanford.”
He hung up. Neither had mentioned where they would meet. They didn’t need to. Slowly, as if the telephone receiver would shatter and destroy the arrangement if handled roughly, she replaced it and a current of happiness rippled through her. That’s all it took. She looked at her hands. Rock steady.
The door opened and Tilly breezed in. “Have you seen this place?” She was smiling broadly in her Red Cross uniform as she peered over a gigantic bundle of freshly laundered toweling nappies that were clutched in her
arms. “My darling, it is positively swarming with Yanks out there. They’ve come over from the airfield, pockets bulging with sweets for the kids. And”—her grin widened—“delicious nylon stockings galore for the rest of us.” She dumped the haphazard pile of nappies on the desk and flashed a pack at Ella. “You’d better go and claim your American booty before it all disappears. You know what gannets nurses are when . . .” She broke off abruptly and stared at Ella. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You look”—Tilly pursed her crimson lips, trying to pinpoint what it was about her friend that had caught her attention—“different.”
“Really?”
“Definitely.”
How could it show? So fast. As if love changed the structure of your face.
“I’ve just been gardening too much. Caught the sun.”
Tilly prided herself on her bone-white complexion and scowled at Ella. “You’ll turn into a pickaninny if you’re not more careful.”
“I’ll be careful.”
Very careful.
Ella walked over to the nappies and started folding them into neat white squares. With studied casualness she asked, “How’s Hector?”
“Oh, don’t ask. He’s being a frightful bore today. He planned to go sailing this morning but has the most beastly headache, so is stuck doing paperwork at the office instead, which makes him so grouchy he could spit.”
Ella couldn’t imagine Hector grouchy. “Has he heard anything more about that ghastly murder case?”
“The stabbing?” Tilly shuddered. “Not much. He did mention last night that he thinks they will arrest the girl. Apparently she has a reputation for trouble. Some little trollop on the make, I expect. Overstepped the mark this time, though.”
“What? Surely not. I thought they were laying it at the door of black workers taking their spite out on the white colonials.”
“It seems they’ve dropped that idea. Hector thinks it’s for the best.”
“As a lawyer, he should know.”
“Oh heavens, no.” Tilly gave a hoot of laughter. “Hector’s only really interested in boats. Anyway, my darling, I must dash.” She started to pat her dark waves and primp her fringe. “I’m off to the docks.”
“Not another parade.”
“The very same.”
“Tilly, you are a glutton for punishment.”
Tilly took out her compact and powdered her nose. “It’s the least I can do for our boys. New recruits this time.”
“Poor chaps. Give them a wave from me.”
Raw recruits would be disembarking from a troop ship and parading in front of the Duke of Windsor as governor of the Bahamas. But Ella wasn’t fooled. She knew that the real reason Tilly went to all the parades was to have the chance to see His Royal Highness in action in full dress uniform. She’d once confessed to Ella it gave her goose bumps each time. Ella couldn’t understand it herself. But who was she of all people to lay down rules?
“Go on.” She smiled. “Go and . . .”
At that moment the Duchess of Windsor walked in, brisk as ever in her movements, her central hair parting straight and precise.
“Good morning, ladies.”
“Good morning, Your Highness,” Tilly responded, but excused herself quickly, closing the door behind her. She had a habit of doing that.
The duchess’s strong-boned face took on a crease of irritation, but she shook it off and turned to Ella with a smile.
“Ella, my dear girl, you’re looking mighty happy about something.”
Ella reacted with an expression of innocence. “I heard today that little Gussie will be going home to his mother next week. It’s wonderful news for him.”
“He’s the polio boy you’ve been doing all the exercises with, isn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
The duchess nodded, fitted a cigarette into her ebony holder, and drew in a lungful of smoke before tipping her head back slightly, as though wanting a better view as she regarded Ella through narrow eyes.
“I’m not a fool, Ella. The one thing I’m good at is people.”
Ella returned to folding the pile of nappies.
But the duchess was not a woman to be sidetracked. “You don’t shine like someone has stuck a lightbulb inside you just because some kid you’re fond of is going to get out of this antiseptic cage.”
Ella stopped folding.
The duchess laughed, an amused affectionate sound. “There’s only one thing that does that. And we both know what it is, don’t we, Mrs. Sanford.”
Mrs. Sanford. A reminder.
“Don’t,” Ella murmured. “Don’t spoil it.”
“We are all in this colonial cage together, myself included.” Her thin neck tightened, tendons suddenly showing the strain. “We all like to be let out now and again. To see what freedom tastes like.” She waved her cigarette through the air, as though indicating the way out of the cage, but suddenly paused, strode across to Ella’s side, and took hold of her arm. For a small woman she had large hands and a man’s grip.
“What’s this?”
Ella glanced down at the marks peeking out beneath her own sleeve, at the raw scrapes across the pale skin of her wrist. “It’s nothing. I scratched it while winding wire around a fence post for my hens.”
The duchess nodded as if she knew exactly what made such marks, but she passed no comment and moved away to sit down on the desk, smoking hard. “I regard everyone in the Bahamas as my business, Ella, and I want the best for each of them. But don’t worry.” Her angular face seemed to grow older, her eyes sadder, and there was a loneliness inside them that suddenly spilled over into the room. “We each have a right to choose our own life. I wouldn’t dream of denying you yours.”
“Thank you. You can be certain I won’t ever disgrace Reggie.”
The duchess smiled softly. “Any more than I would disgrace the duke.”
For a long moment their eyes remained fixed on each other, then the duchess headed for the door, her pin-thin shoulders tense as she stepped out to greet the hospital troops.
Chapter 42
Dodie
Dodie had not realized. What it means to be in love.
She hadn’t realized that it is like a beach when the tide comes in. What before was still and static, motionless while the world tramped over it, is suddenly full of movement. That’s what it felt like. Everything in motion within her, a swirling, tumbling, trembling motion.
She hadn’t realized. It would be like this.
Her skin prickled and smarted, burning one moment, freezing the next. Her eyes were permanently wide open as if they couldn’t get enough of the world, yet at times her eyelashes felt so heavy they could crush her. Her eyes gained a brilliance, her hands a softness. And inside she felt strong.
She hadn’t realized. That love makes you strong.
So when Flynn slid out of her bed just before midnight in a raging storm, she didn’t put her hand out. Didn’t hold him back, didn’t pin him to her mattress. She didn’t even open her eyes or break the rhythm of her night breathing or ask for one last kiss. One last kiss. That was her fear. That he would not come back. But she let him go without adding even a feather’s weight to whatever burden he was carrying on his back, and all the time she could feel the strong steady beat of his heart inside her own.
* * *
He didn’t return. Hour after hour, Dodie willed Flynn to burst through the door, wet and windblown, battered by the violence of the storm, but in one piece. She imagined herself peeling off his drenched clothes, stretching him out on her bed, and toweling his body dry. Warming it with hers.
The rain beat down like hammers hell-bent on destroying the roof, which leaked in so many places that Dodie had to keep moving the mattress. For long periods she stood in front of the door in darkness, gripp
ing it fiercely, listening to the wind as it howled outside, threatening to wrench it off its hinges. But she was ready to throw the door open the moment his hand touched it.
Just before dawn he came. Except he wasn’t the same Flynn Hudson who had made love to her earlier that night with such wildness of spirit. The Flynn Hudson who returned was damaged. He staggered through the door straight into her arms, clinging to her while the wind sought to tear him apart. She slammed and bolted the door, sat him on the mattress, and lit a candle that leaped and guttered in the damp air but cast enough light on Flynn.
“I’m all right,” he said. His voice was thick.
“You’re not.”
“Just sit with me.”
She sat and wrapped her arms around him. He was drenched and the side of his head was bleeding, but she just held him close, her cheek pressed against his wet one. She could hear the sounds of him—his breath coming fast, his teeth clenched hard, the crack opening up somewhere deep in his chest.
* * *
“What happened?”
“Sir Harry Oakes is dead.”
Shock made Dodie’s fingers falter. She was bathing the wound on his head, a gash that was spilling blood faster than she could stem it, and she had removed his clothes. He was draped in the sheet and staring at the door, but not for a moment did she think he was seeing it.
“Tell me,” she said. When she touched the wound he seemed not to notice.
“I went to Westbourne House to speak with Oakes. I hung around in the grounds as usual, waiting for him to appear down the outside stairs around midnight, and when he didn’t come I figured it was because of the storm.” Flynn rubbed a hand across his eyes. “After a while I searched the grounds of the estate. Just past the swimming pool I found him.”
Dodie sat still. “Was he dead?”
“Dead as a mackerel.”
“Are you certain?”
He turned to her, his eyes glassy. “I’ve seen my fill of dead bodies, Dodie. I found his flashlight lying on the grass, switched off. I checked him over. Just four small-caliber bullet holes in the side of his head. Probably a Colt .22. Someone got real close to him.”
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