“Forgive the intrusion,” she apologized brightly. “I’m just here to empty your pockets again.” She laughed. “But I see you have a guest. I’ll come back another time.”
“No intrusion, I assure you. Do come in, dear lady.” He took hold of her arm and drew her in. “I’m just finishing a spot of business here with my associate.” He avoided giving a name.
She’d stayed no more than ten minutes and left with a generous check from Sir Harry and a handful of dollar bills from Morrell’s wallet. She refused a drink and was just departing through the French windows when Sir Harry laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Ella, it’s been a pleasure to see you, but”—his fingers tightened imperceptibly—“sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” He drew out the word “dangerous” till it stretched into the future. “Sometimes it is better to forget what you think you’ve seen or heard. Safer for everyone.”
Ella slipped her shoulder out of his grasp. “Good night, Sir Harry.”
She strode away at a rapid pace into the night without looking back.
Yes, she’d seen enough.
“The island will miss him,” she said truthfully to Wallis.
“Not just the island.”
It was a sad statement. A lonely expression of grief.
“Did you ever see Sir Harry’s gold coins?”
Wallis smiled softly. “Yes, he liked to show them off to me.”
“Do you think he would ever have given them away?”
“Hell no.” The southern smile deepened. “Not unless he was planning to get them back by some devious means.” She glanced across at the French ormolu clock on the mantelpiece. “I know it’s early, Ella, but the yardarm has shifted for me today. Go pour me a martini and one for yourself.” She gestured toward a cabinet and lit herself a cigarette.
When Ella had mixed the drinks and handed one to her, the duchess rose to her feet, raised her glass, and said with a flourish, “To Sir Harry Oakes! God rest his pirate soul.”
“To Sir Harry.”
Chapter 46
Dodie
Nassau Jail was designed to rob anyone of hope. It was a grim stone fortress set on a street called Prison Lane on the southern edge of town, with high walls that kept out the sun. Gordon Parfury—Flynn’s lawyer appointed by Hector—had prepared Dodie. He had warned her about the dank air inside, about the gloomy corridors and the smell, about the harsh lights in the cells that were never extinguished. She had nodded. Yes, all she wanted was to get there. But when the heavy metal door to the cell swung open, she was not prepared for the sense of isolation that hit her, the despair that coated the walls like slime.
The moment she crossed the threshold Dodie stepped straight into Flynn’s arms. She had not expected that. She’d thought a warder would keep them apart, but no. As soon as she and Parfury were in the cell, the door slammed shut and locked behind them, and for the first time since the police came for him in the house with the purple front door, she was able to breathe.
“So,” Parfury said with cheerful concern, “how are you today, Mr. Hudson?”
“Couldn’t be better.”
Parfury gave a wry smile. Dodie wanted him to stand in a corner and say nothing.
“I’ve brought you cigarettes,” she said. She held out a pack of Lucky Strike to Flynn.
“Thank you. Won’t you sit down?”
“Don’t be polite, Flynn. Not with me.”
But she sat down on the narrow bed against the wall and looked around because if she looked at Flynn too long she might forget there was someone else in the room. The cell was about twelve foot by eight, larger than she thought it might be, and was redeemed by the open barred window set high in the wall opposite the door, which let in an ocean breeze that cooled her cheeks. The contents were basic—a bed, a stool, an enamel basin, and a galvanized bucket that stank.
Flynn settled himself on the bed a foot away from her. He didn’t touch her, not after that first moment when he had kissed her, held her hard against his chest, and inhaled the scent of her hair.
“I knew you’d come,” he said quietly. “But you shouldn’t. You should leave now.”
“I’ve only just arrived.”
“I mean you should leave the island.”
“No, Flynn.”
His gaze remained on her face and the only sound in the cell was Parfury perching on the stool and rustling through his papers. Dodie wanted to tell Flynn what leaving would do to her but not in front of the lawyer, so she shook her head at him instead and saw his eyes follow the movement of her hair over her shoulders. She wanted to ask him how he was, to look at the gash on his head to see that it was healing, to touch him, to take his hand between hers. But she did none of these things.
He moved closer to her. “Okay, tell me what you know.”
“I’ve spoken to your landlord.”
“And?” She caught the faintest hint of hope.
“He and his wife are saying nothing. He claims that the house is locked and that no one came in. That’s what he told the police.”
Flynn looked away toward the small window too high to see out of. “He’s lying,” he said.
“Of course. The question is, Flynn, who paid him to lie? Who wants you dead but with no blood on their hands? Someone made an anonymous telephone call to the police to tell them where to look.”
He nodded but made no comment.
“Tell me who would do that? Who should I go after?”
He stared blankly at the wall opposite. “You should go after no one.”
“Flynn . . .”
She touched his hand on the rough blanket, but he removed it and took his time lighting a cigarette from the new pack. Neither looked at the lawyer.
Dodie sat on her hands. Made her voice businesslike. “Let me tell you what I’ve discovered so far about Sir Harry’s death.”
She didn’t say the word killing. It was too big for this tiny cell.
Instantly he swung to face her.
“Sir Harry’s body was found in his own bed,” she told him. “They’re saying he was shot in the head. Christie found him. He had dinner with Sir Harry the evening before and stayed at Westbourne overnight. He heard nothing all night because of the storm and found him at seven o’clock in the morning when he went into his bedroom to wake him.”
Flynn was listening intently, watching her mouth. She had no idea how much Parfury had already told him, but she could see the color of his eyes turn drab when she mentioned Sir Harry’s name.
She lowered her voice. “His body and the room were set on fire.”
That hit him hard. His eyes leaped to hers. “Burned?” he whispered.
“I’m sorry, Flynn.”
She glanced in the direction of the lawyer, who had his head bent over papers and was pretending not to listen.
“Burned?” Flynn repeated.
Dodie placed her hand silently over his mouth. She was frightened that in his despair he would say too much.
“There’s more.”
“Tell me.”
“Someone slit his pillow and threw its feathers all over him before setting fire to it.”
His eyes widened. “Obeah?”
Dodie nodded.
“Someone is trying to make it look like an obeah ritual killing.” He uttered a sharp bark of scorn that made the lawyer lift his head. “That is just dumb. Everyone knows the Bahamians love him.”
“That same someone is working hard to confuse the police and cover his tracks.”
Flynn’s face looked pale and exhausted. “What now?”
“They’ve arrested his son-in-law, Count de Marigny.”
Anger sparked in his eyes. “An easy target,” he jeered. “Convenient too.”
“He’s here. In this prison.”
“Poor bastard.
He doesn’t have a chance in hell. Any more than I do. The big boys are throwing us into the lion’s den.”
In the corner Parfury cleared his throat. “Mr. Hudson, I will be doing everything I can for your defense and Count de Marigny is being defended ably by Mr. Higgs. You will both receive a fair trial, I assure you of that.”
Flynn laughed, a harsh sound. “You are betting on a fair trial for this Marigny guy, Mr. Parfury, even though a more likely suspect was in the next-door room and is supposed to have slept through a murder, a fire, and a storm?” He tipped two fingers in a salute to the lawyer. “Hell, Mr. Parfury, you’re a braver man than I am.”
Flynn stood up abruptly, walked over to the door, and banged his fist on it. With a jolt Dodie realized what he was doing. She leaped to her feet and seized his sleeve.
“No, Flynn, please.”
He turned and took both her hands in his own. “Dodie,” he said fiercely, “I am headed straight for the noose.”
“No! What about the four coins in your jacket? Where could they have come from? I’ll try—”
“Forget the coins.” He released her hands and stepped back. “Forget me.”
“No, Flynn, you are—”
“Leave now, Dodie.” His eyes were implacable. “I want you to leave.”
* * *
Dodie walked hard and fast. Above her the blue sky stretched pure and clean and limitless after the dank confines of the prison and she drew in lungfuls of the crystal-clear air. She realized why Flynn did what he did, of course she did, but it didn’t make it any easier. Didn’t he know it was too late? That she was there in that grimy cell with him, whether he wanted it or not.
Her body ached and she was glad of the ache. It distracted her mind from the real pain. She knew she had to work out a plan of attack. To formulate her strategy, her tactics, her maneuvers. All military terms. That was how she thought of it now, because make no mistake: This was her war. Not in Europe. Not in Guadalcanal. But right here in Nassau, her own battle for the truth.
First she had to speak to the detective. She needed to find out more about the telephone call to the police and about Morrell’s wallet. She wanted to know what kind of coins the ones found in his jacket were—whether they were napoleons too.
She set off back toward the Arcadia. But she knew she was going to have to go out to Bradenham House again because her best way to get to Detective Calder was through Ella Sanford. But she was conscious of a change in Ella, a new element in her that was unsettling. Dodie saw it every time the name Detective Calder passed her lips. A wildness. A glimpse of a storm. Is that what Ella meant? Is that what she saw in her too, that “something” of herself?
A car door slammed somewhere behind her and she looked around. She was in Silver Street with its quaint little curio shops that the colonials loved so much. It was lazing in the sun, its shutters bleached, its narrow pavement almost empty at this time of day when people took to their midday meals or their noon siestas. A woman riding a donkey plodded past and then it was quiet again.
“Miss Wyatt!”
The man’s voice came from behind her. Dodie didn’t even turn. Her heart thumped but her legs bounded forward in immediate panic. She knew that voice, knew whose fists it belonged to. Before her mind worked out what was happening, she was running, but she could hear right behind her the heavy feet that had kicked her before, the ones that belonged to the person who liked to use her back as a punching bag.
This time he was ready for her and he was fast. He grasped her hair and yanked her back. She screamed and lashed out at his face but a black sedan swerved to a halt beside her. Its rear door burst open and she was thrown inside, her attacker jammed tight beside her, twisting an arm painfully behind her back and chuckling to himself as though he were playing with a puppy.
It was broad daylight. No one was kidnapped in broad daylight on a pleasant Nassau street. No one.
As the car drove on, pedestrians were going about their business, cars were passing. This was not possible. She screamed at the window. The driver turned casually in his seat and slapped her across the face so hard that she felt part of a tooth break loose.
“Shut it, lady.”
A knife appeared in the meaty hand of her companion on the backseat, and before she could start to reason with him, its blade had slid along the underside of her arm from her wrist all the way to her elbow. She watched in horror as a snake of crimson leaped into life and rippled down her pale flesh. It wasn’t deep, little more than a scratch, just a warning, but she had to fight back the anger that was absurdly for the fact that the blood was ruining her Arcadia Hotel dress.
“Let me out.”
“Shut up, bitch.” One hand gripped her while the other held the knife.
“Let me out or I’ll—”
“Or you’ll what, you bloody whore?”
“Fuck you, girl,” the driver shouted, and glanced over his shoulder.
She tried for the door handle with her free hand but was smacked in the middle of her back by a fist. She crumpled, terror gripping her lungs, but she found the strength to scream and curse at them, throwing them off balance, filling the car with noise, and she wiped her hand in her own blood, then smeared it on the window.
“Shut the bitch up!”
The driver lost concentration. The car swerved and its brakes squealed. It bounced off the front wing of a pale convertible that was turning out of a side street, and in one brief second the shocked eyes of its woman driver saw what was going on behind the bloody window.
Before Dodie could draw breath, she was hurled out of the car onto the road.
* * *
The woman picked Dodie up off the tarmac.
She drove her to the police station, stayed with her through the pointless questioning by a young officer—pointless because they all knew the men would never be found. They would fade from sight. Disappear to one of the hundreds of Out Islands.
“Can’t you at least look for a dented black Plymouth sedan?” the woman demanded.
“We will make inquiries, madam, and put out a description. But we are hard-pressed for manpower right now.”
Two murders.
An attempted kidnapping.
The world’s press breathing down their necks.
The Bahamas was out of its depth.
Chapter 47
Dodie
It wasn’t until Dodie walked into the police station alongside the woman in the elegant linen suit that she recalled seeing her before. In the same police station. That first time when she came to report the murder of Johnnie Morrell, Ella Sanford had burst in through the door, drenched in scarlet, and been fussed over first by Detective Calder and then by Colonel Lindop. There had been a dark-haired woman with her, the one who had left bloody handprints over Detective Calder’s sleeve. The one whose voice had been loud and panicked.
Dodie recognized her now. This was that woman, but groomed and sleek and happy to scold a policeman for spelling her name wrong.
Matilda Latcham.
Hector Latcham’s wife.
What a small town Nassau could be when it tried.
* * *
“Dearest girl, you can’t possibly go back to work today in your state. Just look at you.”
“I’m better now. Really I am.” Dodie put down her glass. “I have to get back to work at the Arcadia.”
Tilly waved her painted nails in the air, as though flicking away a mosquito. “Forget about that, Dodie. I’ll telephone Olive and explain what happened and that you are in a state of shock.” She shook her dark head in the manner of one well accustomed to making decisions for others. “Don’t be foolish. You were nearly killed. Those awful hoodlums!” She gave a shudder. “I’m furious that the police are doing so little. They are such dunces.”
“I’m sorry about your car. Is the damage bad?”
“No, just a dent. Don’t worry about that, it wasn’t your fault. Here, have another drink.” Tilly had already drained her own glass and advanced on Dodie’s.
“No, thank you, Mrs. Latcham. I am really grateful for all your help—without you I could be dead now.”
They looked at each other and Dodie felt an odd connection to this bright brittle woman who hid behind her flagrant disdain for the banality of her days. Was it always like this? If someone saves your life, how much do you owe them? How big a part of you do they own?
Dodie rose to her feet and it took her by surprise when the room briefly danced around her. It was a pleasant enough room but nowhere near as stylish as Ella’s, with heavy mahogany pieces that were somewhat the worse for wear.
“If you would let me have my dress back . . .”
“Oh, Dodie, don’t rush off. Stay for another drink.”
“No, thank you. You’ve been so kind but I really must go.”
“Then stay and watch me drink mine.” She had refilled her glass from the cocktail shaker and took a neat bite out of an olive. “I want to hear the gory details about your dead man.”
Dodie felt her stomach lurch. What had this woman’s husband been telling her? Surely lawyer confidentiality was as strict as doctor confidentiality?
Nevertheless she smiled at Tilly Latcham. “Another time. I have to go to Bradenham House to see Mrs. Sanford.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Tilly said cheerfully. She knocked back the rest of her drink, ran a hand over her precise silky waves, and added, “I’ll drive you over.”
“No, really, that’s not necessary.”
“I insist.” She patted Dodie’s cheek and gave her a bright red smile, but behind the careful powder and mascara Dodie caught a glimpse of a loneliness that tugged at something in her. “It will be a pleasure.”
* * *
“How’s your young man?”
“He’s in prison.”
“So I hear.”
Tilly Latcham was driving the dented Plymouth too fast. Her wide sun hat obscured much of her face, but Dodie saw the grimace she pulled.
The Far Side of the Sun Page 30