“Hideous place.” Tilly switched her gaze from the sun-drenched road ahead of them to Dodie’s face. She frowned, spoiling the neatness of her smooth skin. “I’m worried about Ella.”
“Mrs. Sanford?”
“Yes. How well do you know her?”
“Not well at all.”
“She and I have been good friends for years.”
“What’s wrong with Mrs. Sanford?”
“She’s scaring me.”
Dodie’s mouth went dry. “Why’s that?”
“Because something bad is going on inside her, I’m sure of it.”
* * *
The doorbell of Bradenham House rang and rang. No one answered.
“Mrs. Sanford must be out.” Dodie frowned.
“So where is Emerald?”
As Dodie stood on the wide, pillared porch, squinting at the sunlight on the windows, the air seemed to vibrate with the faintest of noises. She took a step back from the house and quickly scanned its elegant colonial frontage but nothing seemed out of place.
“What is it, Dodie?”
“I don’t know. Something . . .”
She stopped. Listened hard. The faint sound was high-pitched and made the skin of her arms prickle. She started to run to the back of the house, toward the garden. The sound was growing steadily louder and turning into a kind of keening, when an arm smacked into her chest.
“Get out!” a woman’s voice boomed at her. “Leave her alone.”
“I heard—”
“Leave her! She don’t need you.”
Dodie saw before her the big maid who worked for Ella Sanford. Her huge angry eyes glared at Dodie. Tears were careening down her cheeks.
Tilly Latcham’s sharp voice demanded, “Emerald, what has happened?”
All Emerald could do was sway from side to side. “Leave her be,” she growled. “This is private.”
“Nonsense, Emerald.” Tilly started to march past her. “What is that hellish sound?”
Dodie hurried forward, aware now that the sound was a woman’s voice.
* * *
Dodie didn’t know which was worse. The terrible keening that tore something loose within her or the numbing silence when Ella Sanford suddenly ceased the noise. She stood frozen inside the chicken pen, staring around her with a stricken, bemused expression on her face.
The gate to the pen stood wide open. There was no need to shut it. Not now. Dodie counted the hens. More than a hundred of them, sprawled dead on the tufted grass like small mounds of autumn leaves. Golds and browns, warm russets and vibrant butter yellows. Some with their necks wrenched over at odd angles, others with their heads sliced clean off and discarded on the ground. Flies were thick, gathering into black shrouds that glistened in the sun.
Dodie went to Ella, but the maid was already there, standing shoulder to shoulder with her mistress, her hand hitched into the back of Ella’s collar as though holding her up on her feet. Ella didn’t shake, didn’t cry. Her face wasn’t white or even gray, it was a strange blue color that frightened Dodie, with one small speck of crimson on each cheek.
“Whoever did this,” Ella hissed through her teeth, “deserves to be boiled in oil.”
It was an oddly biblical pronouncement.
This was the start, Dodie could sense it. The start of something worse.
* * *
They dug a large pit, Dodie and the gardener, and when it was finished, the mass grave was sealed up. Ella stood beside it, bareheaded under the sun. Tilly had drifted up to the house in search of a drink, while Emerald started stripping out the henhouses with loud bursts of “Oh Lordy, oh Lordy, this world ain’t fit for decent souls to live in.” So they were standing alone by the grave when Ella said, “Who would do this, Dodie?”
“It’s a warning, Ella.”
“A warning? Against what?”
“Against going to tell the police what went on that evening you called in at Westbourne collecting for the Red Cross. Now that Sir Harry is dead, they think you might be tempted.”
Ella shook her head. “But I saw very little.”
“You saw Morrell.”
“Yes. And I saw a box of gold coins.”
They looked at each other in silence.
“Is that enough,” Ella said in a low voice, “to cause”—her gaze swept over the empty enclosure—“. . . this?”
“I believe it’s enough to cause far worse than this.”
Ella’s attention snapped back to her. “Your Mr. Hudson arrested on a trumped-up murder charge, you mean?”
Dodie nodded. “Ella, we need to know whether the box of coins is back in Sir Harry’s house somewhere.”
The crimson smudges on Ella’s cheeks contracted. “I know the man to ask.”
Chapter 48
Ella
Dan smelled of ink. A good sensible down-to-earth smell. It made Ella think of school. Sometimes when she was with him she had to remind herself that he wasn’t even born when she was at school and already playing lacrosse. When they lay panting, exhausted and finally sated on his bed, he would often study her face, tenderly touching parts of it, and she would wonder what he was seeing. Today, out in the harsh and unforgiving glare of sunlight, she didn’t want him to look at her and see the ravages that she knew had made her face suddenly older in the last hour.
“Oh, my poor Ella, I’m sorry.”
She stepped back, detaching herself from him, and looked up into his face. “I don’t want your sympathy, Dan, I want your help.”
“Of course, let’s fill out an incident form at the police station and—”
“No. That’s not what I mean.”
“What then?”
They were standing on the wharf in the shade of a stack of crates that was waiting to be loaded on board one of the military ships that nudged into the harbor each day. Ahead of them lay the Sponge Exchange building and off to one side the fishing boats bobbed like noisy children alongside the quay, with Hog Island lying just offshore behind them in the shape of a great beached whale. Gulls shrieked and men hauled ropes and shouted to one another. There were five heavy bombers losing height as they came in to land. A seemingly normal day in the busy life of the harbor of New Providence Island. But today was anything but normal.
“Dan, how much of you is Dan Calder and how much is Detective Sergeant Calder?”
He was surprised by the question. “I don’t divide myself up, Ella. If you have something to tell me, go ahead.”
“Can I trust you?”
He marched her deeper into an L-shaped corner of shade among the crates and she could feel heat rising off him the same way it did in his bed. But she realized that she had offended him. He was waiting for more from her, and so she told him.
Everything. Ella held nothing back. Because she wanted everything he had. So she gave him herself, everything inside her, until there was nothing left to give and she felt purged of a poison deep in her bowels that had stemmed from the day that Sir Harry had waved the smell of gold under Morrell’s nose. “It corrupts the soul,” he’d said. And from that day something had gone bad inside her. She gave him everything, so that he would know how much she needed his help.
She took him, step-by-step, through the fund-raising visit to Westbourne and the arrival of Dodie Wyatt on her doorstep with a gold coin from Morrell. Was it a warning not to trust Oakes? Or a sign that she needed his help because she was in danger? She told him of her fears for Dodie and of her suspicions about the duchess having an affair with Oakes.
Dan leaned his head back against the tall stack of crates at that. “The Duchess of Windsor and Sir Harry Oakes? You’ve got that wrong, surely?”
He ran the palm of his hand along his jaw and she heard the sandpaper scratch of his stubble. She had to tie her fingers together in knots to stop herself touc
hing him. Nearby a crane started to hoist a military lorry and swing it through the air toward a transport ship’s hold, but they didn’t even notice. Their patch of shade had swallowed them. She told him how she had asked discreet questions. Plied a banker with drinks at a party. Coaxed whispers and rumors out of people who should know better than to spread them.
“And what did you discover?” he asked. He lit two cigarettes and handed her one.
“That Sir Harry was moving money around. Large amounts of it, millions into foreign accounts in neutral countries.”
“That’s illegal.”
“Of course.”
Since the start of the war, financial restrictions were in place to prevent funds being transferred out of the country’s coffers at a time when it needed every penny it could lay its hands on.
“Sir Harry would know that,” Dan said, drawing hard on his cigarette, “yet he took the risk. If it’s true.” He had his policeman’s eyes in place now. Had she got it wrong? If she scratched him with her nails now, would he bleed policeman’s ink? Yet she didn’t stop.
“That’s not all.”
“Go on, Ella. I’m listening.”
She wondered, as she stared at his shrewd gray eyes. Are you, Dan? Are you really listening to me?
“He’s not the only one moving money around,” she told him. “The duke owes him two million pounds.”
Dan exhaled a perfect smoke ring. It popped out with no sound but it was like a small explosion between them. He reached for her without a word and for one inappropriate moment she thought he was going to take her here hidden among the crates, and a pulse kicked into life at her groin. But he pulled her close against his chest, so tight that she had to tip back her head to look up at his face when he finally spoke softly.
“Ella, I’m going to tell you things that will get me fired if they ever come out.”
She felt her ribs fuse with his under the dampness of his shirt. He was listening.
* * *
“The duke is destroying the investigation into Sir Harry Oakes’s death.”
They had moved away from the crates. A group of Bahamian dockers had sauntered over, laughing and slapping their thighs to a calypso rhythm, to man-haul the boxes onto the back of a truck, but they eyed Dan warily. They could smell police on him. Instead Ella and Dan found an open warehouse stacked with crates of slatted wood containing lemons and limes. The air was fragrant with the warm scent of them and the tang of citrus caught at the back of Ella’s throat, but here they could be private. A balmy Bahamian breeze rustled up from the water’s edge and slipped into the warehouse, chasing cobwebs into the corners.
“Colonel Erskine Lindop, our commissioner of police, has been removed from his position and is to be posted to Trinidad.”
Ella rocked back on her heels.
“It’s true,” Dan assured her. “Not only that, the prison doctor, Dr. Oberwarth, who examined Marigny for singed hairs on the day of the arrest—and didn’t find any—has been relieved of his duties at the prison. And the two American detectives the duke brought in from Miami are either incompetent or deliberately destructive because they are sabotaging the scene of the crime, washing away evidence such as the bloody handprints on Sir Harry’s bedroom wall, and . . .”
His voice trailed away when he saw her face.
“Are you sure of this?” she asked aghast.
“Yes.”
“Do others know?”
“Of course. Including”—he hesitated over the word—“your husband.”
It was inconceivable.
“What’s going on, Dan?”
“You tell me.”
A chill passed over Ella’s skin and she shivered. She reached out and laid her fingertips on his shirtfront.
“The question is,” she said intently, “is the duke covering for himself or for someone else?”
“Or for the island?”
“What do you mean?”
“As governor of the Bahamas, he doesn’t want the island’s name dragged through the mud, all its secrets raked over, all its bank accounts sifted through. It’s well known that Oakes and his son-in-law didn’t get on, so Marigny’s arrest provides a quick and easy answer to the problem.”
“Dan, we’re talking about a man’s life here. If Marigny is innocent, the duke—”
“It will be up to a jury, Ella, not the duke.”
“I know.” She shook her head. “I know.” She twitched a hand through her hair, as if she could tear out the thoughts inside. “Tell me what happened. To Sir Harry.”
He cupped his hand behind her neck and drew her closer.
“It’s not pleasant, I warn you. Harold Christie discovered Oakes’s body at seven o’clock in the morning, though we believe the murder took place around midnight. The bed had been doused with an inflammable mosquito spray that was in the room and set alight. It was a terrible sight. The bedding, mosquito net, and Oakes’s pajamas were incinerated and his body badly burned and blackened, his eyes gone. Feathers from the pillow were strewn over him, though God only knows why. It appears that whoever did it intended to torch the whole house to destroy evidence, but the storm came at the wrong time. Oakes had left his window open, so the wind and rain put out the flames.”
“And Christie slept through this in a nearby bedroom?”
“So he claims. But . . .”
“What?”
“He was seen in a car in town. At one o’clock in the morning. He denies it, of course.”
“Oh God, Dan, it just gets worse.”
With no warning he released her and strode out of the warehouse into the brilliant sunshine outside, drawing in great lungfuls of the sparkling air. Ella didn’t follow. She let him have his moment alone. To flush out the images of the crime scene from his head and the squalid taste of corruption from his mouth. A warehouseman in uniform approached him to move him on, but backtracked rapidly when the police badge was flashed. Dan had told her he loved his work, but how do you deal with something like this? How do you stop it eating into you?
She waited in the stillness of the warehouse with the lemons and eventually Dan turned, a tall and imposing figure silhouetted against the blue waters of the harbor. She couldn’t see a difference in his walk as he came toward her or in the line of his shoulders, but she had a sense of a decision being made.
“Ella, I want you to go home and stay there. The slaughter of your chickens was a warning to you. Heed it. Go home. Keep away from me. And above all, keep away from Dodie Wyatt and Flynn Hudson. Ella, are you listening to me?”
No, she wasn’t listening.
She wasn’t breathing.
She wasn’t thinking.
All she could hear was this—Keep away from me. The words were gnawing at her. Keep away from me.
Don’t you know that when I am away from you, I die?
“Don’t look like that, Ella.”
She hooked two fingers between the buttons of his shirt, finding the warmth of his flesh.
“Why can’t I stay with you? You’re a policeman, I’d be safe.”
His hand closed over her wrist. “Oh, Ella, it’s precisely because I am a policeman that you must get away from me. Listen now.” He held her wrist tight. “Sir Harry Oakes was shot four times behind his left ear. We believe he was killed somewhere else, because there was blood all over the stairs and doorknobs, as well as the fact that the dried blood showed a flow from his ear up over the bridge of his nose, which indicates that he was moved. If your chickens were killed as a warning, someone could be watching you and getting jumpy when they see you with a policeman.”
“No, I—”
“That someone is not playing games here, Ella. This is deadly serious. I don’t want you involved.”
“I’m already involved.”
“Damn the Red Cross. To hell with
your blasted fund-raising. If only you hadn’t gone there the night Morrell was at Westbourne—with all that gold on show.”
“Too late for that.”
“But not too late to keep you safe.”
“What about the wallet and coins in Flynn Hudson’s room? Don’t they give you any clues?”
He gripped her hand. “You say Hudson is American Mafia, so get it into your head that the odds are that he probably committed both murders and that it’s his lot who killed your chickens.”
Ella clamped her fingers on his shirt and couldn’t let go.
Chapter 49
Dodie
Dodie was loitering in a shop doorway. It sold handbags. That was as much as she noticed. The point was that it stood next to the Bay Street entrance to Harold Christie’s real-estate office and she had already spotted a handful of men in seersucker suits trying to make themselves invisible in various shop doorways and across the street. One was wearing a green plastic eyeshade as if he’d just stepped away from his newspaper’s typewriter and forgotten to take it off.
As the hours passed, several of them drifted together and huddled into small groups, reporters from all parts of the world, hillocks of cigarette butts emerging at their feet. The street was busy and a man with a camera and a hard nasal accent took over a piece of her doorway. He told her he was from Boston, but she didn’t listen to his chatter, because already she’d heard the click of the door that bore the brass plaque that declared MR. H CHRISTIE. REALTOR. The back entrance through the alleyway was also well covered by newspapermen, so Dodie guessed he would head for a car right outside his door on the wide main street. And she guessed right.
It was over fast. Two big Bahamians shouldered a path to a waiting car, its motor running, while reporters pushed and shoved each other worse than feeding sharks, shouting questions to the small crumpled figure, thrusting microphones under his nose.
“Did you see anything that night, Mr. Christie?”
“Why didn’t you smell the fire?”
“What was your relationship with Sir Harry?”
“Look this way.”
The Far Side of the Sun Page 31