by William Boyd
‘At least we still have friends, powerful friends who won’t desert you. Even Winston will do his best for you, darling, you know he will. We can always call on them if it’s a real emergency.’ There was something in her eyes as she said this that rang true: the power and influence of even an ex-king must be substantial, must reach into the very heart of the establishment. I sensed her ruthless, her absolute determination.
As we left the Duchess drew me aside and, putting her face close to mine, said, ‘Logan, we would like you to think of yourself as un ami de la maison.’ Some kind of honour, I suppose. She does exude a strange sexual attraction, given that she’s not physically beautiful or alluring: the ideal dorninatrix—if one were that way inclined.
Monday, 17 May
The Duke and Duchess are away in the USA, due back in June sometime, and a kind of lethargy has settled on the colony that is highly contagious. I cabled to NID asking for a recall but was told it was out of the question. Even my letters to Freya are becoming boring, I sense, as very little changes the rhythms of my life. Once a week I report on all the gossip and innuendo (Does someone find this useful? Who, exactly, wants to know all this tittle-tattle?). I golf with Snow and other acquaintances from the base; I go to moderately interesting dinner parties; twice a week McStay and I take the 1122 out on a run and McStay puts the men through their paces. Meanwhile, round the world, the war staggers on day by day.
Thursday, 27 May
Yesterday was one of our days out in the 1122. It was unseasonably clear and there was almost a sense of crispness in the air at first light. I enjoy these brief voyages more and more—maybe there is something intrinsically naval in me after all. We chug slowly out of the harbour—I stand on the bridge with McStay—and all the dockworkers and idlers stop to watch us pass by. The 1122 doe’s look exemplary, flags and pennants cracking in the breeze, the men on deck in their tropical whites: Everyone instinctively waves at us. And then as we reach the harbour mouth McStay gives the order to increase speed and beneath your feet you feel the latent power of the twin engines thrum into life. The angle of the boat tilts as the stern goes down, the screws biting, and we grab the handrail around the bridge. Suddenly there’s a spumy white bow wave and we surge into the blue Atlantic, cheers from the quayside echoing distantly.
Sometimes we go up to Grand Bahama, sometimes to Andros or Abaco, but our favourite run is down the chain of the Exumas—tiny, scrubby, low-lying islands with small bays and crescent beaches of pure white sand. We know there are no submarines but we pretend to look for them. At midday we’ anchor off some islet and have lunch. The men swim or sunbathe. Occasionally we let off a depth charge or fire the Lewis guns at an empty oil drum we set floating, just to remind ourselves that there’s a war on and that we are a small component in the struggle to defeat Nazi Germany.
Yesterday, because it was so still and clear, I decided to have a swim after our lunch. I stripped off and dived in from the prow and swam the 150 yards from the 1122 to the small island. The water was cool and astonishingly translucent. I waded ashore and wandered along the small beach, picking up the odd shell or piece of driftwood, pleasurably conscious of my nakedness on this uninhabited island, thinking—as one inevitably does—of castaways, Robinson Crusoe, unaccommodated man.
The highest part of this island couldn’t have been more than ten feet above sea level and the vegetation that covered it was a form of succulent scrub, low gnarled bushes with fat olive green leaves, a few cacti here and there and some patches of blond marram grass.
Then I became aware of a commotion on the 1122 and looked round to see men running about the deck and heard the grating, dunking sound of the anchor being weighed. ‘Hoy!’ I shouted. ‘What’s going on?’ But no notice was taken of me. I waded into the water and was waist high, about to start swimming back, when, with a roar of diesel engine and a puff of exhaust smoke, the launch surged off and within seconds was lost to sight around a headland.
I waded back on shore, cursing, wondering what the emergency was, what signal had been received and what the hell McStay was playing at, forgetting I was no longer on board. I wasn’t worried: I knew I would be missed eventually and at some stage they’d be back for me. Mind you, I thought, it depended what the urgency was. It might be some hours…And then I heard a rustling, a small commotion in the bushes a few yards from me and slowly, hesitantly, a lizard, an iguana about three feet long waddled on to the beach and, tongue flicking, headed towards me. Within seconds, it was joined by four or five others. I moved down the beach away from them, instinctively and stupidly cupping my hand over my genitals. The afternoon sun felt hot on my salty shoulders. I threw some shells and pebbles at the advancing lizards and they stopped. As soon as I showed no sign of aggression they began to plod towards me again. Then some more iguanas appeared at the other end of the beach. I charged at these, shouting, and they backed off clumsily, in some disarray, before regrouping and advancing again.
Within a few minutes there were twenty or thirty iguanas on the beach, tongues flicking, looking at me with their dead eyes, as if they expected something of me. I stood there, a stick in each hand, wondering what I would do if I wasn’t rescued by nightfall. They weren’t frightening; they seemed no real threat; this was merely a form of temporary enforced coexistence. Naked man and three dozen primeval lizards on a deserted island. How were we going to get along?
And then the 1122 roared back into the little bay and I felt my heart lift. She chugged in as dose as she could and a small ladder was let down the side. I waded out and swam the few strokes necessary to reach it, leaving my non-swimming friends behind. McStay helped me aboard, trying to keep the grin off his face, and handed me a towel.
‘Very funny, McStay,’ I said.
‘It’s great you have a sense of humour, sir.’
We headed back to Nassau, everyone in good spirits, induding me. I wasn’t in the least put out by McStay’s prank. Images of myself alone on the island with the iguanas dominated my mind (and what will I dream about tonight, I wonder?). It was one of those moments that you recognize, after the event, as epiphanic—charged, numinous in some way. I think McStay was bemused at how easygoing and benign I was about it all.
Monday, 28 June
Real, humid, enervating heat. A day of prickly irritability. McStay put in for a posting in the morning, I accepted, and he withdrew the request in the afternoon. I cabled NID: ‘See nothing to gain from my staying on. Banking problems non-existent. Please advise future course of action.’ The reply came: ‘Most useful your presence there. Carry on.’
Tuesday, 6 July
The D&D are back. Govt House reception tonight for some Foreign Office grandee touring the Caribbean. Even the Duke couldn’t disguise his low spirits, which is unusual for him—no one ‘puts on a face’ better. The Duchess said that he’d been very cast down by a meeting with Churchill in Washington DC. ‘They want us to rot out here for the duration,’ she said with some bitterness. ‘We had some hope that after three years…David tried everything. They won’t budge.’
Thursday, 8 July
I went down to the harbour at about 10.00 this morning and McStay said at once, ‘Sir Harry Oakes has been murdered.’ My God, I thought, alarm bells ringing. But who would want to kill Sir Harry? McStay didn’t need to be asked. ‘Everyone says it was Harold Christie.’ I suppose McStay must have got this from his sailing chums. I only know Christie by reputation: big in real estate, here in the House of Assembly, an unattractive blunt-looking man, reputedly an ex-bootlegger. A political power and a close friend of Sir Harry. In a Bahamian context, Christie murdering Sir Harry is akin to Lord Halifax [Foreign Secretary] murdering Bendor [the Duke of Westminster].
I’ve met Oakes a few times: a small chunky boorish man with a surly expression, the corners of his mouth permanently turned down. A self-appointed ‘rough diamond’, calls a spade a spade. Fabulously wealthy too, by all accounts, but one of those men whose grotesque excess of money only seems
to make them more troubled and tormented, rather than the reverse. He hated paying tax in Canada, which is why he moved here. Now that there are rumours of introducing an income tax in the Bahamas, he was planning a move to Mexico. Funny how Mexico keeps cropping up.
At lunch I went to the Prince George and the place was humming like a hive. It was a voodoo murder; Oakes’s genitals had been burned off; it was robbers looking for the gold he kept in his house; and so on. Now the prime suspect is his son-in-law, de Marigny. Christie had actually spent the night in Oakes’s house and had slept through everything. Oh yes: the Duchess had been having an affair with Oakes and the British secret service had killed him to protect the Duke’s honour (this was as outlandish as it got).
I was walking back to the British Colonial when a car pulled up and one of the Duke’s equerries, Wood, asked me to meet the Duke in his cabana , at Cable Beach at 5.00 this afternoon.
§
Later. I met the Duke. We were alone; he smoked constantly and seemed very worried. He told me he had been profoundly, utterly shocked by Sir Harry’s death. At first he had been led to believe it was suicide but afterwards news that it had been a murder emerged. A blow to the head with some sort of blunt instrument, then there was an attempt to set the body and the house on fire, which had failed.
‘I’ve asked the Miami police to send two of their detectives,’ he said. ‘They arrived this afternoon. They’re taking over the investigation.’
‘But why, sir?’ I said spontaneously. ‘What about Erskine-Lindop?’ Erskine-Lindop is Chief of Police in the Bahamas.
‘He’s entirely in agreement with me,’ the Duke said, a little’ snappily. ‘This is too big for the local force. I don’t think you realize the consequences of Sir Harry’s death—the ramifications. It’s a disaster. We have to have experts. Real experts. And this has to be wound up, solved, as quickly as possible. Minimize damage to the colony. Complete disaster.’
‘I understand.’ I didn’t really.
The Duke lit another cigarette. ‘It’s become clear—crystal clear—that the murderer was de Marigny. Do you know him?’
De Marigny, the good-looking son-in-law. I said I’d lunched at his house once and occasionally bumped into him at the Prince George. McStay knew him well.
‘Good,’ the Duke said, allowing himself a quick smile. ‘That’s very good.’ I was now more in the dark but let it ride. Then he said: ‘I want you to meet the two detectives from Miami—Melchen and Barker—tonight. Could you manage that?’
‘Of course, sir. My pleasure.’
§
Later. I must write all this down. Melchen and Barker have just left my room. Melchen is fat and bespectacled, untidy. Barker is lean with crdpped grey hair, tough, fit-looking. They had just come from de Marigny’s house (with evidence, they said) and there was absolutely no doubt at all that de Marigny had murdered Oakes. Oakes and de Marigny loathed each other, de Marigny had threatened violence in the past. Oakes had never forgiven de Marigny for eloping with his daughter, Nancy (Nancy was eighteen, de Marigny thirty-six). De Marigny was broke and with Oakes dead he would inherit Nancy’s share of the fortune. De Marigny had given a dinner party last night (Wednesday) and had no alibi between 11.30 when he drove two guests home—near Oakes’s house, Westbourne—and 3.00 a.m. Between these times the murder was committed. He had both motive and means and no alibi.
I said: ‘He gave a dinner party and then went out and murdered his father-in-law?’
‘It happens,’ Barker said. ‘Believe me.’
‘What about Christie?’ I said.
‘Slept through it all.’
‘I thought they set the place on fire.’
‘It was a small fire. It didn’t take.’
‘He didn’t hear anything? Smell anything burning?’
‘No.’
I told them I thought de Marigny wasn’t the murdering kind. I said he was one of those hugely self-satisfied narcissists whose main interest in life is figuring out who might next sleep with him.
‘You can never tell a killer,’ Barker said patronizingly.
Then Melchen said: ‘The Duke speaks very highly of you, Commander Mountstuart.’
I said I was gratified to learn that this was so.
§
‘We need someone to get dose to de Marigny and the Duke said you would be ideal.’
‘Get dose?’ I said.
Barker said: ‘We’d like you to have a drink with de Marigny, some time tomorrow.’
‘Why?’
‘And, you know, just slip anything he touches into your pocket—a glass, book of matches, ashtray. Then bring it to us—we’re in the hotel here.’
I stood up and told them to get out. They looked at each other wearily.
‘The Duke is going to be very disappointed,’ Barker said.
I said: ‘Wait till he learns what you just asked me to do. I’d book your seats on tomorrow’s plane back to Miami, if I were you.’
They sauntered out, unperturbed. And I sat down and wrote all this up.
Friday, 9 July
I am sitting in the back of a taxi outside Government House scribbling this on a piece of paper [later transcribed in journal]. It is 9.13 in the morning. I had urgently requested an interview with the Duke and had been ushered into his study. He was standing stiffly in front of the bookcases.
‘Thank you for seeing me, sir,’ I said. ‘Those two inept fools from Miami have actually—‘ .
‘They told me you’d been most unhelpful.’
’
‘Unhelpful?’ Do you know what they asked me to do?’ And then he seemed to go a little mad. His voice became a high, semi-throttled scream and his face flushed red.
‘If I cannot ask a friend and a British officer to be of assistance in the worst crisis this island has ever seen!…I told them they could count on you, Mountstuart. They said we need a trustworthy man and I said, instantly, Commander Mountstuart. And this is what you do to me! This is how you let me down! I’m deeply hurt and disappointed in you.’
‘Just one second, sir. They were asking me to incriminate—’
They are highly professional police investigators who know exactly what they’re doing and exactly what they have to do to bring this sordid affair to a rapid and proper conclusion. De Marigny killed Sir Harry Oakes—full stop. The sooner that man is behind bars the happier this island will be.’
‘With great respect, sir, you’re mistaken. Those men are utterly cynical and corrupt. They’re not what you think.’
‘Don’t you dare tell me what I think! Get out! Get out! You’re useless to me.’
And so I left. These are, verbatim, the words we exchanged.
§
Friday night. The news is all around Nassau. De Marigny was arrested this evening for the murder of Sir Harry Oakes. His fingerprints were found in the murder room. Barker and Melchen have got their man.
Saturday, 10 July
Still a bit stunned by all that has taken place. I can’t quite piece it together yet, but all is not well. Today there was a Red Cross fund-raising drive in Victoria Square. The crew of the 1122 had laid on lucky dip, skittles, a coconut shy and all manner of games, so I went down to see how they were coping.
The Duchess, who is patron of the Bahamian Red Cross, had opened the fete and was wandering around meeting people and examining the stalls and exhibits, being her usual gracious and friendly self. As she approached the 1122 stall she saw me and checked her stride momentarily. She avoided my eye but could hardly ignore us. She shook my hand and gave me a thin smile. ‘How wonderful you British sailors are,’ she said and was about to move on.
‘Your Grace,’ I said quietly, ‘how is the Duke?’
Then I saw the depthless lake of hatred in her eyes.
‘Judas,’ she whispered, and turned her back on me.
[NOTE IN RETROSPECT. December 1943. These notes have been compiled with help from Sq. Leader Snow—who sent me newspaper accounts of de
Marigny’s trial (in October)—and from Sub-Lt Crawford McStay, who visited de Marigny in gaol in July and August.]
§
Some time in the early hours of Thursday, 8 July 1943, Sir Harry Oakes was murdered in his bedroom in his house ‘Westbourne’ as he slept. He was hit on the head with some sort of spiked instrument that caused four deep puncture wounds, triangular in shape, in front of and behind his left ear. His skull was badly fractured. Then his body was significantly burned, most of his pyjamas being consumed by flame, as was the mosquito netting above his head. There was further scorching on the mattress, on a folding Chinese screen near his bed and on the carpet. Feathers from a ripped pillow were scattered over his body. On the walls of the room, low down, were blood stains and bloody handprints.
Harold Christie, a friend and business associate, who was sleeping in a guest bedroom two doors away, found the body in the morning and summoned help. The local police and other interested parties moved more or less unchecked through the house and the murder scene.
De Marigny, informed of the death of Sir Harry, turned up at the house on the Thursday morning but was not allowed admittance to the upper floor and did not see the body.
In the early afternoon the two detectives, Captains Melchen and Barker, summoned from Miami by the Duke, arrived and began their investigation. Barker did not dust for fingerprints, as he regarded the conditions in the murder room as being too humid. Sir Harry’s body was moved to the Nassau morgue for autopsy at around 4.00 p.m.
At dinner time de Marigny was instructed to go to Westbourne, where he was interrogated and physically examined by the two detectives. Clippings of singed hair were taken from his beard and arms. Then Melchen and Barker, accompanied by local police, went with de Marigny to his house, where the clothes he had been wearing the previous night were taken away as evidence (it was after this that the detectives visited me in the British Colonial Hotel). During that night a local detective stayed with de Marigny.