The Far Side of the Sun (40 page)

‘He’s in prison.’

‘So I hear.’

Tilly Latcham was driving the dented Plymouth too fast. Her wide sunhat obscured much of her face, but Dodie saw the grimace she pulled.

‘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, towards 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 grey, it was a strange blue colour 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, bare-headed 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.’

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 harbour 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 harbour 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 realised 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 fundraising 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 touching him. Nearby a crane started to hoist a military lorry and swing it through the air towards 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 rumours out of people who should know better.

‘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 grey 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’ 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 manhaul 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 de 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’ 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’ pyjamas 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.’