“I’m Colonel Erskine Lindop, Superintendent of Police,” he said, extending a hand which I took, and shook.
“What crime has been committed here, that would bring brass like you around, Colonel?”
His hound-dog face twitched a smile, and he responded with a question. “I understand you’re a private investigator-from Chicago?”
“That’s right.”
He cocked his head back so he could look down at me, even though I had a couple inches on him. “Might I ask you to detail your business meeting with Sir Harry Oakes yesterday afternoon?”
“Not without my client’s permission.”
Lifting his eyebrows in a facial shrug, Lindop strode toward the stairs, saying, “Best come with me, then, Mr. Heller.”
He paused to curl a finger as if summoning a child.
And I followed him, like a good little boy.
“How did these stairs get scorched?” I asked.
“That’s one of the things I’m here to try to determine.”
There was mud and some sand on the steps, as well. I said, “If this is a crime scene, we’re walking right over somebody’s footprints, you know.”
He just kept climbing; our footsteps were echoing. “Unfortunately, these stairs were already well traversed by the time I got here.” He smiled back at me politely. “But your conscientiousness is appreciated.”
Was that sarcasm? With British “blokes,” I can never tell.
At the top of the stairs, there was a closed door to the right, a window straight ahead, and a short hallway to the left. The lower walls were scorched here and there. Smoke tainted the air, even more pungent than below. Lindop glanced back, nodding at me to follow him into a room down the hall. Right before you entered, fairly low on the white-painted plaster walls, were more sooty smudges. The inside of the open door had its lower white surface burn-blotched as well, and the carpet just inside the door was baked black, a welcome mat to hell.
Once inside, a six-foot, six-paneled cream-color dressing screen with an elaborate, hand-painted oriental design blocked us from seeing the rest of the large room. The Chinese screen had a large scorched area on the lower right, like a dragon’s shadow; a wardrobe next to the screen, at left, was similarly scorched. So was the plush carpeting, but oddly-circular blobs of black, some large, some small, as if black paint had been slopped there.
In here, the smell of smoke was stronger; but another odor overpowered it: the sickly-sweet smell of cooked human flesh.
It made me double over, and I fell into the soft armchair where wind was rustling lacy curtains nearby; a writing table next to me had a phone and a phone book on it-both had reddish smears.
I leaned toward the open window and gulped fresh air; muggy though it was, it helped.
“Are you all right, Mr. Heller?”
Lindop looked genuinely concerned.
I stood. Thank God I hadn’t eaten any breakfast.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just that I know what that smell is. I recognize it from overseas.”
“Where did you serve?”
I told him.
“I see,” he said.
“Colonel, I’m an ex-Chicago cop-I’m not squeamish about much of anything. But…being back in the tropics is proving a real stroll down memory lane.”
He nodded toward the doorway. “We can leave.”
“No.” I swallowed thickly. “Show me what’s beyond the Chinese screen….”
Colonel Lindop nodded curtly and stepped around it, following the scorched path, leading me to my final audience with Sir Harry Oakes, who was not at all his usual lively self this morning.
He was on the twin bed nearer the dressing screen, which apparently had been positioned to protect the sleeper from the open window’s Bahamas breeze, though it had not protected him otherwise.
His squat, heavyset body lay face up, one arm dangling over the bedside, his skin blackened from flame, interrupted by occasional raw red wounds, head and neck caked with dried blood. He was naked, but shreds of blue-striped pajamas indicated his nightwear had been burned off him. His eyes and groin seemed to have taken extra heat; those areas were blistered and charred.
Over the bed was an umbrellalike wooden framework that had held mosquito netting, most of which was burned away. Strangely, this side of the nearby dressing screen was unblemished by smoke or fire. The most bizarre touch in this ghastly tableau was the feathers from a pillow which had been scattered over the blackened corpse, where they clung to the burned blistery flesh.
“Jesus,” I said. It was almost a prayer.
“His friend Harold Christie found him, this morning,” Lindop said. “About seven.”
“Poor old bastard.” I shook my head and said it again. I tried to breathe only through my mouth, so the smell wouldn’t get to me.
Then I said, “Cantankerous old rich guy like him couldn’t have been short on enemies.”
“Apparently not.”
It was one messy murder scene. Red palm prints, like a child’s finger-painting, stood out on the wall by the window across from the other, unslept-in twin bed; somebody with wet hands had looked out. I didn’t imagine they’d been wet with catsup. More red prints were visible on the wall kitty-corner from the bed.
All of these prints looked damp-the humidity had kept them from drying.
Blood glistened on both knobs of the open, connecting door between this and another, smaller bedroom, opposite the unoccupied bed. I peeked in-that bedroom, which looked unused, was about sixteen feet across. Sir Harry’s was twice that, and the other way ran the full width of the house, looking out on porches on both the south and north sides.
“Well,” I said, “there’s not exactly a shortage of clues. The trail of fire…bloody fingerprints…”
He pointed. “That fan by the foot of his bed seems to be what blew the feathers all over him.”
“What do you
“Obeah,” the Colonel said.
“Pardon?”
“That’s what the practice of native magic is called here: obeah.”
“And the feathers could mean that-or anyway, somebody wanted it to
“Indeed.” Lindop’s features tightened in thought; hands locked behind him. “After all, Sir Harry was quite popular with the native population, here.”
There was a spray gun on the floor near the door to the adjacent bedroom. “Bug spray?”
Lindop nodded. “Insecticide. Highly flammable….”
“Was he doused with that?” I laughed glumly. “Quick, Sir Harry, the Flit.”
I was looking out the ajar door to the northside porch-which gave access to an outside stairwell-when Lindop commented, “That door was unlocked.”
“So was the front door yesterday, when I showed up. Security here was pretty damn loose. Have you talked to the night watchmen?”
“I wasn’t aware there were any.”
“There are two. One’s named Samuel. Sir Harry’s household head, Marjorie Bristol, can fill you in.”
He nodded again, eyes on the corpse. “She’s downstairs. Taking it hard, I’m afraid. Haven’t been able to properly question her.”
I went over to have a better look at Sir Harry. I was well past the nausea; cop instincts had long since kicked in. I leaned close. Something behind Sir Harry’s left ear explained a lot.
“I didn’t figure he was burned to death,” I said. “Not with all this blood around.
Lindop said nothing.
Four small wounds, fingertip-size, roundish but slightly triangular, were punched in the man’s head, closely
