Murder in the Raw

by C. S. Challinor

  “How long had they been married?”

  “Seven years. She was a young thing of twenty-one when they wed. He’s thirty years older.”

  “Something would have had to happen to make him snap enough to kill her after seven years.” Rex crushed the can in his hand. “Do they recycle here?”

  “Good God, you’re a powerful chap. Lost some weight since I saw you, didn’t you? Yes, there’s a recycling bin outside the main building, by the Laundromat, or you can just leave it for maid service.” Winslow hesitated before adding, “I ought to mention that some of us believe Sabine and Brook were having an affair.”

  “Was Vernon aware of it?”

  “Not sure, but he started acting quite frostily toward Brook. If Brook and Sabine were having it away, they were quite discreet about it.”

  “Any suspects other than the husband?”

  Winslow examined the green bottle in his hand. “I don’t want to tell tales out of school—I just want to get to the bottom of this. When Sabine disappeared, my wife thought you might be the man to help. Not to put too fine a point on it, we’re all successful businessmen here, and you can understand what makes us tick. It won’t be too much like having a stranger among us.”

  “You think it was one of the guests?”

  “A guard patrols the beach at night and he didn’t see any non-resorters up at this end. If there was a struggle, as the blood on the pareo fragment suggests, it’s more likely the assailant was a man, don’t you think?”

  “Possibly. Does this security guard work for the resort?”

  “Yes. Another one patrols the gate and walks around the outer perimeter. They’re very unobtrusive, and it gives the guests a sense of security.”

  Rex had noticed a man in a khaki uniform when the driver pulled up in front of reception.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Winslow said. “This is the best time of the day for a dip. The water’s warm and the sun’s not too hot.”

  “What’s the average temperature?”

  “Low eighties, but the trade winds cool things off. I’ll swing by at seven and take you to The Cockatoo to meet the others. David Weeks can’t wait to make your acquaintance.”

  Rex couldn’t wait to meet him either, nor any of the other suspects. “Aye, see you then, Paul. And thanks for your hospitality.”

  “Think nothing of it. You’re not just here to work, you know.” Winslow picked up his baguette from the counter and saluted him with it.

  When he had left, Rex entered the bedroom where Pascal had deposited his bag and briefcase. He hung up his change of clothes in the wall closet and, upon rummaging in his bag, realized he must have foolishly packed his trunks in the missing suitcase.

  Och, the heck with it, he said to himself, stripping out of his clothes.

  Wrapping a white bath towel around his waist, he drew back the mosquito screen in the living room and stepped onto the back porch.

  A sandy trail led through clumps of sea grape to the water. The beach formed a two-mile crescent around the bay where a tri-catamaran and a couple of sailboats bobbed on the blue surface. Beneath lurked darker patches of seaweed. On the sand, yellow umbrellas resembling inverted sunflowers shaded nude bathers on their lounge-chairs. The concession serviced the entire beach, which was open to the public, but the yellow chairs and umbrellas, as Rex had been informed, were free to resort guests.

  A soft contour of hills formed a backdrop to a village of bars and boutiques at the far end of the beach. In the opposite direction, beyond the resort and boat rental shack, lay the promontory where Sabine’s ankle bracelet and pareo fragment had been found.

  Satisfied that no one was paying him the least bit of attention, Rex discarded his towel on a lounge chair by the water and waded into the shallows. The sea, warm and refreshing, washed away the strain of the day spent traveling. He swam out to an anchored sunbathing raft and, hoisting himself up the ladder, surveyed the island at the mouth of the bay and wondered if reef sharks ventured this close to shore. He swam back in a hurry.

  At the beach, he grabbed his towel and covered himself up with lightning speed. Engrossed in books and magazines and in conversation with other nudists, no one so much as looked in his direction. After returning to the cabana, he showered and changed into his spare shirt and lightweight pants. He would join the others for drinks at The Cockatoo, but he’d be damned if he would undress for the occasion.

  Seated on the patio, cold beer in hand, he perused Mrs. Weeks’ statement to see how it compared to her husband’s.

  I last saw Sabine Durand on Tuesday, July 10. We had gone over to the Dutch side of the island for shopping—Sabine, Elizabeth Winslow, Nora O’Sullivan, and myself. Martina von Mueller did not join us on this occasion since she was meeting her daughter at the airport. The Canadian couple had left on a sightseeing trip to St. Barts early that morning. Pam Farley stayed behind at the resort for a massage and facial.

  Philipsburg is a mob scene when the cruise ships dock, so we always avoid Wednesdays. I bought a silk pareo. The Cockatoo is a nudist restaurant, but there is an unvoiced etiquette that requires diners to sit on something, even if it is only one’s towel. And, of course, bringing a beach towel to dinner is hardly appropriate. The men wear wraps. A bit silly if you ask me. It looks like they’re wearing aprons, and you would never catch David wearing an apron at home. He says he spends enough time in one at his school of French cuisine.

  Our daughter bought him a Male Chauvinist Pig apron one Christmas as a joke. She was about eleven at the time and, of course, we all laughed. Anyway, talking of male chauvinist pigs, the men ate out of Sabine’s hand. She had that effect on men. The young French waiters at The Cockatoo were always tripping over each other to serve her. Sabine would just laugh in her childlike way, and everyone would laugh right along with her.

  Going back to the other day in Philipsburg … I bought a Delft china spoon holder and some linen napkins. Sabine, as I recall, treated herself to a tortoiseshell compact in the shape of a scallop. We had lunch in town, and the hotel limo picked us up at four o’clock as arranged. I went back to my cabana to rest. David and the other men from the group had gone on a scuba dive that day. They didn’t get back until six. David had a touch of the sun, so I made him stay in and drink lots of water until it was time to go to The Cockatoo for Paul’s forty-sixth birthday dinner. Sabine never appeared.

  At ten p.m., we called the gendarmes, but they didn’t arrive until the next morning as they were busy with a burglary in Grand Case. The hotel sent two guards out to the rocks. It was dark even with flashlights, but they found a cell phone belonging to Sabine’s husband. We searched all over the resort. I can’t imagine what might have happened to her.

  This, I believe, is an accurate account of everything I know relating to Ms. Durand’s disappearance.

  Antonia (“Toni”) Weeks

  Contrary to her husband’s testimony, which Rex had read on the plane, Toni Weeks’ voluble statement showed no emotion over the loss of a friend. Her husband owned the famous French School of Cordon Bleu in London and, according to Paul Winslow, they had known Sabine Durand before she went on the stage.

  The rest of the guests’ statements were in the same vein. The men tended to wax lyrical while, of the women’s statements, only Elizabeth Winslow’s, written in an elegant hand, indicated any distress over Sabine Durand’s disappearance. He had met Mrs. Winslow at the Swanmere Manor banquet: a tall redhead who must have been a knockout in her youth.

  “Hey,” declared an American voice behind him. “Oh—sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Twisting around in his chair, Rex saw a man in his mid-thirties, good build, average height—and, mercifully, wearing shorts. Dark-haired and devilishly handsome, this couldn’t be other than Brooklyn. Winslow had given him thumbnail descriptions of all the guests at the Plage d’Azur Resort. Rex half stood and, introducing himself, shook hands.

  The newcomer exuded an air of confidence, his smo
ky green eyes appraising Rex with frank interest. “Brooklyn T. Chalmers. Everybody calls me Brook.”

  Did Sabine? Rex decided to defer asking him about the level of intimacy between him and the missing woman. In spite of his easy manner, he was clearly not a man to be trifled with. President of the Brooklyn Trust in Manhattan, Chalmers was a self-made millionaire who had piloted himself to the island in his Malibu Piper and raced cars professionally, with a best finish of third at the Indy 500 last year.

  “Thanks for putting me up.”

  “No problem. Sorry I wasn’t here earlier. Had to fly to Aruba. Can I get you another beer?”

  “No, thanks. It must be amazing to pilot your own plane.”

  Brooklyn sat down with a bottle of mineral water. “I can fly out to the islands whenever I get the time, without the hassle of major airports. We have a branch office in the Bahamas. Once out of New York, I set the plane on autopilot and take a nap. Next thing I know, I’m there.”

  Rex couldn’t imagine anything scarier. “I understand you’re something of a risk-taker.”

  Dusk descended early here, without the spectacle of a leisurely Florida sunset, he noted. Brooklyn lit the citronella candle on the patio table.

  “I couldn’t have gotten where I am today without taking risks. I was born in Brooklyn, but grew up in a trailer in Flint, Michigan. My stepdad worked on the GM assembly line. I painted houses through college. By the time I was twenty-one, I owned my boss’s business and my first home—a real brick and mortar one. I bought one house a year after that, rented or flipped them, and then got into investment in a big way.”

  “Paul Winslow sent me your curriculum vitae. It’s very impressive.”

  Brooklyn proffered a disarming piratical smile. “Sorry if I sounded a bit fierce just now. I didn’t want you to think I was some kind of playboy with an inherited trust fund.”

  “Why would I think that?”

  His host shrugged expansively. “If Winslow gave you my business credentials, I’m sure he mentioned a few other things as well.”

  “There was mention of a special closeness between you and Sabine Durand,” Rex ventured.

  Brooklyn’s strong profile turned toward the silhouetted palm trees. “It’s true I saw a lot of Sabine. We went horseback riding together. There’s a small ranch behind the resort next to the Butterfly Farm. They kept an English saddle for her. She always rode Dancer. I’d take Rocky, the big stallion.

  “We went riding most mornings, just the two of us, usually at Galion Beach. We’d remove the saddles and ride into the sea to cool off the horses. I know there was talk. People assumed because we were younger than the rest of the group that something was going on between us, but if there was I would never say anything.” He sighed impatiently. “Anyway, it’s all nonsense. After our ride that morning, we went our separate ways. I didn’t see her again after that.”

  “When you were with her that morning, did she act as though everything was normal, or did she seem upset?”

  “She seemed fine. We talked about going into Marigot that Saturday for the parade. It was her idea originally. We all discussed it at dinner the night before she disappeared, which would have been July ninth. Sabine, being French, wanted to celebrate the storming of the Bastille. Shame she never lived to enjoy it.” Brooklyn’s hand tightened into a fist.

  “Do you have a photo of her?”

  “You’ve never seen her?”

  “I’m not really into the theatre, and if I ever saw a picture of her somewhere, I’ve forgotten.”

  Brooklyn got up from his chair and returned with a couple of snapshots. Holding one picture up to the porch light, Rex saw a young woman leaning against the withers of a horse, long copper hair flowing about her shoulders, a secretive smile dimpling her delicate face. Svelte in a white open-necked shirt and jodhpurs, she could have been the advertisement for a lily-based English perfume. Goosebumps crept up his arms, and for a brief moment, he fell under her spell.

  “Intoxicating, isn’t she?” Brooklyn said.

  “Interesting you should describe her that way. I was just thinking of a perfume ad.” Rex lifted the second photo to the light. This one showed more of her face—cat-like eyes and chin, a dusting of golden freckles across a finely chiseled nose. Her skin seemed almost translucent, her rosebud mouth a touch petulant.

  “I’ve known a lot of spectacular women,” Brooklyn said. “Most of them I’ve forgotten, but you never forget a woman like Sabine.”

  Rex reverently handed back the photos. “Aye. It’s almost fitting that something mysterious became of her.”

  “It’s mysterious alright,” Brooklyn said in a voice gravelly with emotion. “I won’t ever rest until I find out what happened out there on the rocks.”

  At seven that evening, the Winslows accompanied Rex and Brooklyn to The Cockatoo Restaurant, located just west of the resort. Chinese lanterns swung in the palm trees, lighting their way along the beach. The bay glimmered dark and unfathomable. Ever since Rex could remember, he’d mistrusted water he couldn’t see through.

  Elizabeth wore a flame-colored pareo knotted at her hip, regal in her bearing, in spite of breasts that were beginning to sag. Her husband had donned a wrap. When they reached the deck of the restaurant, Rex saw that the rest of the clientele was dressed in similar attire. Despite the nude torsos, he decided to keep his shirt on as he could not conceive of sitting down to dinner bare-chested.

  “Rex Graves, QC, from Edinburgh,” Paul Winslow announced to the group seated at the large outdoor table strewn with an assortment of drinks.

  A plump teenage girl fed pistachios to a snowy-white cockatoo perched on the wooden balustrade. “What is QC?” she asked with a light Germanic accent.

  “Queen’s Counsel. Mr. Graves is a barrister appointed by the Queen of England.”

  “We’re called advocates in Scotland,” Rex explained to the girl.

  Winslow began introducing the guests. “Age before beauty,” he said, putting a hand on the shoulder of a Kirk Douglas look-alike of military bearing. “Vernon Powell.”

  Rex shook his hand. This was Sabine Durand’s husband. Hard to conceive of the delicate beauty wed to this wooden marionette.

  “Herr Doktor von Mueller,” Winslow then informed him.

  “Nein, nein!” the bespectacled doctor objected affably. “Max. Und may I present my wife Martina und daughter Gaby.”

  The wife and daughter, flaxen-haired and Rubenesque, smiled in fixed beatitude. The von Muellers were not suspects, Rex recalled; they had been in Philipsburg the night of Mademoiselle Durand’s disappearance.

  “My good friends David and Toni Weeks,” Winslow said, continuing the introductions. “Our new chef at Swanmere Manor is a graduate of David’s school of French cuisine.”

  Rex extended his hand, studying the couple whose statements seemed to divulge so much about them. David Weeks, slight in frame like Paul Winslow, and with the legs of a stick insect, had a noticeably weak chin. His wife, Toni, more solidly built, appealed to the eye with her exotic dark looks.

  “Duke Farley,” boomed a broad-shouldered Texan, without waiting for Winslow to introduce him. “And my wife Pam.”

  “Enchanted,” Rex replied, inclining his head politely at the couple seated at the far side of the table, and attempting not to ogle Pam’s breasts, which were the largest he had ever seen while still managing to defy the law of gravity. She reminded him of the full-blown roses he had seen cascading from the walls of a chateau in the Rhône Valley at the peak of their bloom.

  “Dick and Penny Irving from Toronto,” a bodybuilder said, pursuing the self-introductions.

  His wife didn’t look like she carried a spare gram of fat either, her arms toned to perfection.

  Paul Winslow hastened to make the last introduction. “Sean and Nora O’Sullivan from Dublin, owners of the Coolidge Theatre.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” the elderly man said in a cultivated Irish brogue, his mischievous features reminding
Rex of a leprechaun.

  “Likewise,” his petite, gray-haired wife added. “Come sit down.” She indicated a seat by her husband.

  The Winslows took the vacant chairs by David and Toni Weeks, while Brooklyn squeezed in next to the teenager Gaby.

  “What’s everyone drinking?” Paul asked, beckoning a waiter.

  “You should try a Hemingway,” Weeks told Rex.

  “What is that?”

  “A magical drink,” Sean O’Sullivan chimed in. “Ice-cold coconut water, fresh lime, Gordon’s gin, and a dash of bitters.”

  “I’ll try it.”

  “Good man.” The flushed Irishman looked as though he might have had one too many magical drinks already. He draped an arm around the back of Rex’s chair. “A sad errand brings you, sure,” he lamented. “We’ll drink a toast and pray you can solve the mystery of Sabine Durand, God bless her sweet heart.”

  “I read your sworn statement …” Rex began.

  “I had a wee tipple that afternoon, so my memory of events is blurred, I regret to say. But I shall never forget her.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Ah, she was never afraid to try anything. She was Penny’s scuba partner, but sometimes we dove together. What was I saying, Nora?” he asked his wife. “Oh, yes. Sabine grew up with horses. The clearest vision I have of her is galloping down the beach, her hair and the horse’s mane streaming interchangeably in the breeze. One time we bathed in the sea off the moonlit beach. Ah, Sabine inspired me to write poetry. She was my Maud Gonne.”

  Nora sighed with impatience. “Just ignore him,” she told Rex.

  The waiter served his cocktail. Rex took a sip, appreciating the clean taste of the gin, the sharpness of lime, and bite from the Angostura.

  “What’s the verdict, Counselor?” the Irishman asked, an unlit cigarette wedged in his minuscule mouth.

  “Most refreshing.”

  By and by, the gin began to go to Rex’s head, and he was glad when someone mentioned ordering food. A waiter handed him a menu, and Rex opted for a plate of melon and prosciutto, followed by grilled lemon-pepper chicken. Winslow suggested a bottle of Saint-Émilion, but Rex opted for beer.