The questions went round and round in circles until her tongue started to stumble and her words wouldn’t come out straight anymore.
“How did you meet Hudson, Miss Wyatt?”
“What do you know about him?”
“Why did he find a house for you after the fire?”
“Was he looking for somewhere to hide?”
“Did he ever talk of Sir Harry Oakes?”
“Did you know about the gold coins?”
“Has he ever mentioned Morrell?”
Then back to the beginning. All over again.
“How did you meet Hudson?”
“Do you know he carries a gun?”
A young officer sat beside Calder taking notes and wearing a pin-sharp suit that shouted his ambitions and made Calder’s look as though he’d slept in it. But it was Calder whose questions felt like sticks poked into her flesh. She kept the lies to a minimum. Stay with the truth, as near as possible. Remember each lie. But her mind was splintering. The room grew hot and his eyes felt like pokers. He offered no water, no respite, no time to regroup her thoughts.
“Hudson said that you know more about Morrell than you are telling us,” Calder said suddenly.
She froze. Flynn wouldn’t. He couldn’t.
“He told us that he believes you stitched the wallet into his mattress. You were the only one, he said, who had the opportunity.”
She banged the flat of her hand on the table. “You are lying to me.”
Calder didn’t flinch. His gray eyes were steady on hers and he sighed dispiritedly, which was worse than the lie.
It had to be a lie. Had to be.
“Please, Detective Calder, may I visit him now in his cell?”
Slowly he shook his head and in a brief flash she saw him again with Ella Sanford, when she caught them together, his broad hand claiming her shoulder.
“No, Miss Wyatt, not yet.”
“When?”
“When I say so. For the moment he sees nobody but his lawyer.”
Dodie lowered her face into her hands. Flynn was alone in a police cell, unable to help himself. His lockpicks and gun stripped from him, along with his stubborn pride in his own strength. He had nothing now. Except what was in his head. In his heart. In the intricate depths of him. Staring legal execution in the face for a crime he didn’t commit. What did that do to you? A single sob escaped her lips, but when she heard the detective push back his chair she lifted her head warily.
Hold on, Flynn. Hold on to me.
Calder was standing at her side, a tall presence right next to her, but his eyes had changed. They were the silvery-gray eyes she had seen in Ella Sanford’s kitchen, a real person’s eyes instead of the ones that seemed to be standard issue to policemen along with their uniforms.
“Go home now, Miss Wyatt.” His tone matched his eyes. “I will let you know when you can visit Mr. Hudson.”
She turned her head away from him and stared at a poster on the wall. It had a picture of an airman with the words KEEP US FLYING. BUY WAR BONDS.
“The landlord is lying,” she stated. He had refused her offer of money point-blank but she had seen the fear in his eyes. He had been threatened. “Question him again.”
“You should not be talking to witnesses.”
“If I don’t, who will?”
“It’s our job to do so,” the young officer said pompously. “Leave it to the police. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“No, I don’t.” Dodie swung round to him. “But at least I’m doing something, which is more than—”
“Miss Wyatt,” Detective Calder interrupted, “you are free to go.”
Without a word, she rose to her feet and left.
Chapter 45
Ella
“You’re not eating. I’m worried about you, my dear.”
Ella looked up from pushing food around her plate. It was a mushroom omelet, one of her favorite dishes. It was something Emerald always cooked for her when she thought Ella was ill. Immediately her fork froze midpush. How long had she been not eating?
“Oh, Reggie, don’t be silly. I’m fine. Just not peckish, that’s all.”
“You didn’t eat anything yesterday either.” His gaze lingered on her cheekbones. “Not sickening, are you, old thing?”
“No, of course not. No appetite, that’s all.”
That wasn’t strictly true. Now that she thought about it, she was ravenous. But she couldn’t bring herself to put food in her mouth because . . . Abruptly she put down her fork and sipped her glass of water. A shiver ran up her spine. She was punishing herself, that’s why she wasn’t eating, she was punishing herself for being so shameful. So sinful. So disloyal. There were other words for it. Depraved, immoral, scandalous. She felt color creep into her cheeks at the images in her head of the things she had done.
Her hands fastened to the brass bedstead. Flat on her back on the crisp white sheet, Dan’s face between her legs, his tongue hot, making her hips buck. Her lips open in a groan that rose to a shriek as she cried out for more. Her whole body shaking with need for him.
“You’re looking flushed, Ella. Are you sure you don’t have a temperature?”
“No, Reggie, honestly, I’m perfectly well. Just shaken by this terrible tragedy. Poor Eleanor.”
Eleanor was the Australian widow of Sir Harry Oakes, half his age when he married her, and at the moment she was still at their house in Maine.
“She’s flying in with Nancy.” Nancy was the Oakeses’ eighteen-year-old daughter, married to Freddie de Marigny.
Ella tried to reach deep within herself to imagine what Eleanor was feeling. She conjured up a picture of Reggie with a bullet wound in his head, a small trickle of blood dripping down on to his clean white collar, and to her horror she started to cry. Instantly Reggie was out of his chair and at her side, just as Emerald sailed into the room with a tray of coffee.
“My dearest,” Reggie crooned, wrapping his arms around Ella, “don’t cry.” He kissed her hair. “Go to bed and rest. You are generous-hearted to a fault and have taken too much on yourself.”
“Mr. Reggie is right, Miss Ella. You gone all queer. I’ll make you some broth and bring it to you in bed.”
Gently but firmly Ella extricated herself from her husband’s embrace. “Thank you both, but no. I’ll have that coffee, Emerald.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Reggie. Now sit down and tell me what is going on. The duke is bound to be out of his mind with concern. You must be inundated with work and worry. Forget about my silliness.” She smiled at him reassuringly and watched him resume his seat, but she felt guilty that she had not noticed earlier the slump of his shoulders and the lines of tension that had crept on to his usually smooth skin while she had been looking elsewhere.
“Freddie de Marigny has been arrested.”
“What?”
“For the murder of his father-in-law.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true.”
“Freddie may be a bit of a wastrel but he’s no murderer. Surely Colonel Lindop knows better than—”
“The duke has removed the case from Lindop’s hands.”
Ella’s jaw dropped open. “He what?”
Reggie ran a tired hand across his forehead. “The duke has taken complete control of the investigation himself. He tried to enforce press censorship but was too late, the news of Sir Harry’s murder was already out. So he has flown in two American detectives from the Miami Police Department to deal with the case, a Captain Melchen and a Captain Barker.”
“Why in heaven’s name would he do that?”
“He says that our local police lack the necessary expertise to investigate such a crime. Normally detectives would come over from London’s Scotland Yard in a case like this but�
�—he sighed discreetly—“it’s impossible for anything to be normal with this wretched war on.”
Ella pushed her coffee aside. “Oh, Reggie, I’m so sorry.”
“Everything has gone haywire because of the duke’s stubbornness, just when we are in the glare of the world’s media. I don’t understand what’s got into him.”
Ella heard Emerald beside her and looked up quickly. The maid stood with a small triangle of buttered toast on a plate in her hand, her wide lips pulled back in a hopeful smile.
“Please, Miss Ella, eat somethin’.” She offered Ella the plate. “Just a little somethin’, just to please old Emmie, huh?”
Ella hesitated. But she saw her husband’s eyes brighten at the prospect, so made herself lift the toast and take a small bite. Both Reggie and Emerald smiled approvingly.
“Isn’t it odd,” she said without chewing, “that the duke would do such a thing—take control of such an important investigation?”
The dull fatigue returned to Reggie’s eyes but he put on his diplomat’s polite smile. “Very odd indeed, but royalty does not play by the same rules as us mere mortals.” He even managed a light laugh.
* * *
It had been forty-eight hours since the murder of Sir Harry Oakes and Ella knew she could put off no longer what she had to do. She picked up her gloves and car keys, and was walking out of the house when the telephone rang. For one foolish moment she thought it might be Dan.
“Hello? Mrs. Sanford speaking.”
“Ella, you sound very down in the dumps this morning.”
“Tilly! Oh, everything is horrible today. I’m worried about Reggie and what on earth the duke is up to that is making my poor husband’s life hell.”
“Oh heavens, come and have coffee with me and tell all.”
“I can’t, I have an errand to run. But I’ll meet you for a drink at the yacht club at noon.”
“Suits me. Oh, Ella, one other thing.”
“I must dash, Tilly. Be quick.”
“I just wanted to ask if you’re still pally with that detective chappie of yours?”
Ella replayed the sentence in her head. She could hear no undercurrent, no innuendo in the tone.
“Not pally exactly,” she answered breezily. “Why?”
“Everyone is being so damn cagey about what exactly went on with this Oakes murder. I wondered whether you could squeeze some information out of him.” She laughed, but it didn’t sound exactly happy. “Use your charms on him.”
“Why are you so interested? You never liked Sir Harry. You were always complaining about him.”
“So were a lot of other people, Ella. You included, sometimes. I’m just wondering whether some extra legal work will be coming Hector’s way. See what you can get out of Mr. Detective.”
“I’ll try. Must go.”
Ella hung up. In her pocket she twisted her fingers around the gold coin Dodie had given her from Morrell. It was burning a hole there.
* * *
“I’m not in the mood, Ella.”
“I think we need to have a talk, ma’am.”
“Not now.”
“I think the sooner the better.”
“Ella, I’m not used to being railroaded in my own house.”
They were in the duchess’s small sitting room. It was every bit as ornate and extravagant as the rest of the refit that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor had lavished on the old Government House at taxpayers’ expense, but here the colors were softer, the gilt-framed mirrors not quite so immense. For the last three years the Windsors had been marooned in the Bahamas, hidden away from all that the duke held dear. It was a decision imposed on them by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and King George VI, backed up by his determined wife. The aim was to keep the Windsors as far away from their Nazi friends in Berlin as decorum would allow, but both had set their sights on somewhere more glamorous in the future.
Ella stood at a respectful distance and asked, “How are you feeling, ma’am?”
“I am well.” The duchess’s eyes were red-rimmed and a vein stood out at her temple. “Please go, Ella. I know you mean well.”
“I saw you, ma’am.”
Wallis frowned. “Where?”
“At Sir Harry’s house. At Westbourne. The night I dropped in to collect funds for the Red Cross. He had a guest there already—Mr. Morrell, the man who was stabbed—but I also saw you there.”
“You are mistaken.”
Ella didn’t argue. “I thought maybe you could use a friend right now. Sir Harry’s death must have come as a blow.”
The duchess sat down heavily on a silk-covered chaise longue. She placed a hand over her eyes, held it there for a moment, and when she took it away they were moist.
“Don’t be too nice to me, Ella, or you’ll have me in tears.”
“It might do you good.”
“No, I can’t afford that.”
“I hear they’ve arrested his son-in-law.”
“Yes, poor Freddie. He must be terrified. Especially as the prosecution has secured the services of our best barrister, Sir Alfred Adderley, so Freddie is using Higgs to lead his defense team.”
“Higgs is very good, ma’am.”
“Good enough to get him off?”
Ella sat down in an armchair that gave her a sweeping view out over the roofs of Nassau to the wharf below, where two destroyers rode at anchor. “I hear talk of Harold Christie being involved that night.”
“Ah yes, Sir Harry’s good friend.” The duchess gave a laugh that seemed to drain the sunlight from the room. “Christie had dinner at Westbourne with Sir Harry that evening and spent the night there in a room only two doors away from Sir Harry’s bedroom.” Her voice was brittle. “Yet he heard nothing. Nothing all night.”
“There was a bad storm,” Ella pointed out. “The wind was howling.”
The duchess gave a sharp shake of her head. “Don’t. Don’t defend him.”
“I’m not defending him. But no one knows enough to decide who is guilty, and Sir Harry could be . . .” She hesitated.
“Difficult? Yes, of course he could.” Wallis surprised Ella with a strong smile. “Of course he could. Harry Oakes had many enemies because he was a powerful man who spoke his mind and chose his own path, and people hated him for that. But he didn’t give a damn.” Her eyes shone pale indigo as she repeated, “He didn’t give a damn.”
“I know. I came here to make sure you’re all right.”
“Oh, Ella! How much exactly did you see at Westbourne,” the duchess asked briskly, “the night you came rattling your Red Cross tin?”
“Nothing really.” But Wallis’s fine eyebrow was raised in a quizzical arch and so she added with a shrug, “Enough.”
Ella had arrived at Westbourne in the evening. She’d decided to call in on the off chance as she was driving past—to beg further funds for the Red Cross. It was for a project to purchase a couple of houses next to the hospital to provide a room for relatives of patients from the Out Islands.
There was no watchman on the gate. She’d parked and walked up the crescent-shaped drive to the house, but a light was on in one of the downstairs rooms which had French windows open on to the terrace. Ella hadn’t bothered with the front door and headed straight toward the French windows instead. But as she passed one of the other rooms her attention was drawn to it by a desk lamp inside. It gave enough light for her to make out two figures in the doorway. One was the familiar bulky outline of Sir Harry, and the other was a woman. Unmistakably the Duchess of Windsor.
He was kissing her. Touching her. His hand was gripping her tiny buttocks with a familiarity that spoke of habit. The figures drew apart and the duchess moved away in one direction while Sir Harry turned in another. Ella started to withdraw silently back across the damp grass, but she caught the sound of Sir Harry’
s bold laugh now issuing from the open French windows and the low rumble of another man’s voice.
Still hopeful of extracting a check, she’d tiptoed forward again, but outside the French windows she hesitated and peered into the room. Inside, Sir Harry and another big man were talking, standing on either side of an inlaid table. Between them lay a small ivory-and-pearl casket open on the table, gleaming in the lamplight. But what the casket contained glowed with a fiery life of its own. It was gold coins.
“Well, Morrell, can I tempt you?” Sir Harry was saying.
She saw the man reach out his hand and touch the casket. “It’s dangerous.”
“Life is dangerous,” Oakes told him.
Morrell didn’t take his gaze from the casket.
“Sometimes,” Sir Harry murmured, “a man gets one chance in life. This could be yours.”
“They’ll kill me.”
“Don’t be a fool. This could buy you a whole new life.”
Ella could sense the man’s reluctance. He withdrew his hand. But Sir Harry was not one to be thwarted. He slotted an arm around his brawny shoulders, a friendly gesture but one that pinned him there, close to the gold. Ella could smell the greed rippling out through the window.
“Look at it, Morrell. That’s the thing about gold, it’s fantastical.” Oakes trailed his fingers through the coins. “It corrupts the soul. It hypnotizes the mind.” He flashed a coin into the air and caught it on his palm. “The coin of the devil. Yet it decorates churches right across the world.”
He tossed the coin to Morrell, who took it and tested it between his teeth. Oakes laughed.
“I promise you this, Morrell, I won’t make a deal with your bosses, but I’ll make a deal with you.”
Ella decided it was time to withdraw, but she caught her ankle on an unseen lounge chair on the terrace and heard it scrape across the stone. Immediately she had the sense to call out.
“Good evening, Sir Harry, are you there?”
He came to the open window, while Morrell pulled off his jacket and dropped it over the casket.
“Mrs. Sanford,” Oakes said, “how kind of you to call.” But his eyes were dark with suspicion.
The Far Side of the Sun Page 29