by James Philip
Melody had had to explain to the gathering about ‘blue into blue’ never equalling ‘brown’; clearly not everybody was convinced but sometimes it was a complete waste of time trying to be helpful so, she swiftly moved on.
“I do not doubt that many innocent people were duped into helping out, or in some way facilitating the attackers in their plans and preparations. Many of those people will have realised this after the event and been silent for fear of the consequences. Others will honestly not know that they are implicated in those events. In my opinion, short of declaring an unconditional amnesty of some kind very few of these unwitting participants will ever come forward, frustrating our best efforts to drill deeper into the inner workings of the conspiracy. It may well be that everybody, literally everybody who was really ‘in the know’ either perished in the attacks and ‘actions’ they mounted that weekend or departed New York on board one or other of the Spanish warships present at the Fleet Review within days of the attacks. I strongly suspect that only the ‘masterminds’ or ‘guiding hands’, a very small number of people, perhaps, just one man watched the attacks on the 5th Battle Squadron unfold from the bridge of the flagship of the Spanish Squadron, the Nuestra Señora de la Santísima Trinidad. Everybody else involved either piled onto a speedboat – we know several of those boats were carrying over-large crews or a number of extraneous passengers - or into an aeroplane. Just to emphasise that we are dealing with fanatics; at Wallabout Bay it is likely that the bombers actually walled themselves into the underground tunnels where they set their charges. My assumption would be that they waited until they heard HMS Polyphemus sliding down the slipway before blowing themselves up.”
There were any number of outstanding questions, of course.
She freely admitted that she did not have all the answers.
In some cases, one question simply begot another.
“We have no idea what happened to the shooter who fired on His Majesty while he was on the quarterdeck of HMS Lion. And why was Captain Arnold assassinated – presumably, by the same shooter given the calibre of the rifle employed - more than a year after the events we have been discussing took place? It begs the question who else may have been killed, or simply made to ‘disappear’ in the last thirteen months? I must stress that much of the most damning evidence of the involvement of the Spanish in the attacks remains circumstantial. Isaac Fielding cannot be considered a reliable witness and such evidence as can be attested to by his sons is corroborative of things we have deduced rather than prima facie evidence of a type which would hold up in a court of law which we have collected. It has been suggested to me that Brigadier Harrison may return from England with a better understanding of why the Empire of Spain would seek to perpetrate such a provocative ‘incident’, and of precisely which cabals within either the Intelligence Service of the Royal Court, or the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, or one of its colonial counterparts in the Empire of New Spain, or even if another group, say a splinter faction of the Inquisición española, was behind the Empire Day atrocities. Such questions are beyond my competence and I respectfully defer to the many experts in that sphere in this room.”
Melody was thankful to be dismissed.
By then she had been talking for over two hours and she felt totally ‘wrung out’, mentally exhausted. She was still re-ordering her wits some minutes later when Henrietta sought her out, finding her sitting in a wicker chair beneath the shade of one of Government House’s magnificent Walnut trees.
“It’s all right, they haven’t sent me to drag you back in again,” the younger woman assured her quickly. “They probably will, drag you back in I mean but not yet.”
“How did I do?” Melody asked, not really wanting to know.
“They were very impressed with you!”
The women sat quietly in the shade for several minutes; enjoying each other’s company.
Presently, Henrietta De L’Isle ventured, albeit cautiously, to break the silence.
“Oh. Assuming Daddy doesn’t get his marching orders over this thing – which would be really unfair – he’s bound to offer you a post on the Staff of Government House. Sir Henry’s taken a right old shine to you, too.”
Melody smiled, giggled.
“What?” Her friend prompted, a little confused.
“Nothing. I’m afraid I’ve burned my boats in New York. I thought I might like to travel. Return to Europe, perhaps. That’s all…”
“Oh,” Henrietta could not keep the disappointment out of her voice. “I think I’d miss you terribly,” she confessed. “I know that sounds silly: we’ve only just met and all that, but…”
Melody did not know what to make of this.
Or of the emotions roiling through her own head.
Right then she just wanted to fall into Henrietta De L’Isle’s arms…
The women both made as if to speak at once.
Smiled sheepishly, one to the other.
“You first,” the Governor’s daughter blurted.
Melody had no idea what she had meant to say.
Serendipitously, this turned out to be less of a problem than it might have been.
“I say!” A youthful subaltern of the Household Cavalry attired in dress uniform, rather than the fighting fatigues of the Royal Marines, strode out towards the ladies. “His Excellency the Governor presents his compliments. Begging your pardon, might it be convenient for both you ladies to return inside?”
To melody’s relief the grand conference had broken up and the Governor had removed himself to the marginally less palatial setting of his morning room. He half rose and waived for Melody and his daughter to join him in comfortable chairs well away from his desk.
“I’ve just received this from Matthew Harrison in London,” he explained passing two long teleprinter tear-offs to the detective. “He suggests I canvass your views on whether this rings true with what you have discovered in recent days?”
“Me, sir?” Melody queried.
Henrietta’s father grinned.
“My dear Chief Inspector,” he sighed, “the entire constabulary, aided and abetted by the judiciary of the Crown Colony of New York was unable to unravel conundrums that you resolved in less than a fortnight. So, in answer to your implied question: yes, believe me when I say in all sincerity that I and the Head of my Security Service want to know what you think about this!”
Melody tried not to blush too deeply and started reading.
Much of the first page was merely a re-statement of what she already knew; it was as she reached the last sentence and went to the next strip of paper that her eyes began to widen and she inadvertently started to read aloud.
“…conversations with the Imperial Legate to the Court of St James, Cardinal Luis de Santiago, reveal the existence of a quote ‘reactionary group styled los libertadores de las tierras conquistadas de las Américas bajo la cruz de San Sebastián de Santo Domingo,” she looked up, “that’s the liberators of the conquered lands of the Americas under the cross of St Sebastian of Santa Domingo, a soldier-priest executed by the British in the Anglo-Spanish wars of the first part of the last century for torturing several Royal Navy seaman who had been captured in the fighting for the island...”
Melody grimaced, too much information.
She read on.
“The Emperor, His Most Catholic Majesty Ferdinand of Castile and Asturias, etcetera, Protector of the Indies… Wishes it to be known that he considers members of this group to be dissident and heretic beyond the control of his Royal Government. He has declared its members anathema in his kingdom and confiscated the lands and possessions of their ‘households’ and requested the Pope to issue a bull of ex-communication upon them. His Most Catholic Majesty wishes to live in peace with his British friends and as an earnest of his sincerity he extends a gracious invitation to His Majesty King George V to commission his administration to despatch a committee of inquiry to Madrid so that He may be satisfied that the Empire of Spain had no hand in the tr
agic and unforgivable events of July 1976 in New England…”
Melody looked up.
The name of a previously unheard of militant Catholic sect apart there was nothing new in this document; and the despatch of a diplomatic mission to Madrid was not really a thing she had any strong views about.
“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be commenting on, sir,” she confessed.
“You are a fluent Spanish speaker?” De L’Isle asked rhetorically. “In fact, it is alleged that you write and speak the language better than most of the natives?”
“Well, I…”
“Matthew wants you to go to Madrid.”
“Oh…”
“He thinks this nonsense about los libertadores de las tierras conquistadas de las Américas is mumbo jumbo, just like you do, I should imagine. Nevertheless, this is a priceless opportunity for the Intelligence Service – the one in Whitehall, that is – to get somebody inside the Royal Alcazar. To the Spanish you’ll be perfectly acceptable because they’ll assume you’re just a provincial policewoman – a concept they find laughable, more fool them – sent along to make up the numbers. It goes without saying that you’ll need to travel to London to be briefed by the Foreign and Colonial Office. It’ll take several weeks, probably months, truth be known to put together the ‘inquiry commission’, so that’s fine.” The Governor paused to let this sink in. “What do you say?”
“It sounds like fun,” Melody heard herself blurt.
Henrietta yelped with joy.
Her father grimaced ruefully but somehow managed not to bury his head in his hands.
“That’s settled then. Hen will be going along for the ride; representing Government House,” he told Melody.
ACT III – World’s End
Chapter 32
Wednesday 10th August
New Temple Gardens, Albany
As any police officer will attest no plan survives first contact with the legal profession. What seemed straightforward, a no-brainer to the Governor of the Commonwealth of New England, the finest judicial minds at Government House, the Governor of New York, the Acting Chief Magistrate of that colony, the Colonial Security Service and belatedly, the entire – very red-faced – senior detective cadre of the colony’s constabulary did not, it transpired, seem quite so cut and dried to Lord John Ansty Shilton Murray, 13th Earl of Dunmore and 13th Viscount of Fincastle, KCB, KC, PC, acting on behalf of, it seemed to a highly entertained Albany press, practically everybody who had ever been accused of anything remotely associated with the events of Empire Day 1976.
Three solid days of increasingly arcane ‘legal arguments’ had stymied any progress after the relative calm and equanimity of the initial hearing and the formal committal of the four named defendants: Isaac Fielding and his sons Alexander, William and Abraham to stand trial. The niceties having been completed the Crown had planned to ask the court to dismiss the charges against the two elder sons and discharge them forthwith; and in recognition of Abraham Lincoln Fielding’s ‘selfless assistance’ in ‘defining the charges now faced by his father and in seeking to avoid a possible miscarriage of justice’, likewise set him free to commence his period of indentured service to the Commonwealth of New England.
True, all this was a little ‘out of the ordinary’ and judiciaries from time immemorial have struggled to cope with anything not rigidly conforming to time honoured mores of jurisprudential customs and practice. Recent developments certainly placed ‘the Bench’, the elderly President of the New York Bar Association, disconcertingly outside his ‘comfort zone’ and John Murray was just the man to build a mountain out of a molehill.
Even so, Melody Danson really did not see what the problem was!
On the other hand it was an ill wind that blows nobody any good; the interminable legal discourse had granted her several days extra grace to put her affairs in Manhattan in order – including arranging for her West Side apartment to be offered for rent in her absence in Europe, provisionally expected to be for at least three and probably no more than six months - and she had had the opportunity to return to Brooklyn Heights to properly hand over her old case load to her harassed successor. She had also had occasion to ‘debrief’ with Brigadier Matthew Harrison; at his suggestion over a long lunch, which had eventually stretched through and afternoon and an evening meal by the end of which he had adroitly – with old-fashioned Virginian charm - drained every nugget of information from her and examined every conceivable nuance from every imaginable angle, and she had formed a wary, respectful appreciation of his shrewd professionalism and his razor-sharp intellectual acuity.
And, she hoped, gained a new ally.
The Head of the Colonial Security Service was still, understandably, deeply affected by the death of his goddaughter, Captain Sarah Arnold. They had briefly discussed why she might have been assassinated without coming to any conclusions.
Melody had floated the thought that she, not Sarah, might have been the killer’s intended victim.
Matthew Harrison had already considered the possibility.
‘Maybe…’ In the end they concluded that it was much more likely that the ‘guiding hand’ behind last year’s outrages was simply ‘cleaning house’ and that logically, since she had had only a brief walk on part in the subsequent investigation the previous year it was unlikely she was a target. Whereas, Sarah – and he – had both been intimately involved in the whole: ‘Sorry saga…’
That was when Melody had learned more about ‘the Hunter’, the half-breed – she hated that terminology – Blackfoot Indian who had ‘gone rogue’ after service in the Border wars in the 1940s. The man had re-appeared and disappeared again like a wraith over the years, men and women had died and vanished, sometimes for as long as four or five years as he had once done in the 1950s. His calling card was a full metal jacket .303-calibre standard round at longer ranges, or a ‘doctored’ bullet at shorter distances. He was known to have killed ‘up close and personal at least a dozen times’ with a knife.
Tsiokwaris had been maddeningly vague about the man.
Matthew Harrison, who had been carefully paternal without in any way playing the rank card had listened patiently to her account of the interview with the Mohawk Elder.
‘Around this time last year there were rumours the Hunter was holed up in the Catskills in Mohawk country,’ he had confided. ‘Army guys who knew him back in the day talk about a tall, good looking kid, nerveless, a trophy sniper from the moment he picked up a gun. If he’d been a white man he’d have come back from the wars down there with a chest full of medals and a fat pension; back in the day they just paid him off at Indian rates. He took his gun and his kit and slipped away into the mountains.’
‘When did the Hunter resurface in the fifties?’ Melody had asked.
‘Around fifty-seven or eight. One theory says he had a woman in this part of the country, somewhere in the North East, maybe even in Mohawk country but nobody’s ever been able to tie that one down. Heck, for all we know he could have a family out there. The piecemeal enactment of Getrennte Entwicklung in the last few years means that all the territories passed back into the hands of the Iroquois nation are blind spots, yawning black holes in our knowledge, no-go zones if you like. For all we know the Iroquois Confederacy could have its own atomic bomb program hidden in those forests!’
Melody had smiled and gently pointed out that you could not build cyclotrons and reactor piles out of ‘sticks and stones’ and that sort of technology did not come ‘cheap’ if you wanted to buy it in.
‘You know what I mean!’ Harrison had guffawed.
Melody had spent all of Monday and most of yesterday morning in the witness box being forensically ‘assaulted’ by Lord Dunmore in respect of her late insertion into the Empire Day imbroglio before the Judge had finally put an end to the drama.
The trial had been suspended and this morning it was anticipated that the three Fielding brothers would walk free from the court. It was moot whether Isaac Fi
elding’s case would continue, be adjourned, or rescheduled to commence again from scratch in the autumn.
Melody’s bags were already packed down in Manhattan.
She was at a loose end now.
The bedside telephone trilled insistently as she was about to leave for New Temple Gardens that morning. She had been put up in the guest annexe of the Governor’s Mansion where she had had the opportunity to get to know Kate Fielding a little better. The Indian woman had insisted on paying for her keep by working in the mansion’s laundry and kitchen, where she and her baby son – whom she carried everywhere in a large wicker shopping basket – had quickly become a part of the furniture.
Kate Fielding was reconciled to the terms of ‘the deal’ the colonial authorities had negotiated with her husband. He had categorically refused to honour his indenture in New York because its law would have prevented he and Kate living as man and wife in the colony. At the intervention of Government House in Philadelphia, it had been proposed, and Abraham had accepted, a short-service commission at the rank of Surgeon Lieutenant in the Royal Navy (New England Reserve).