Carnal Hours

“Something wrong, sir?”

“I was supposed to meet him here.”

“Meet him, sir?”

“I’m one of the American detectives working the case. Damn.”

“Well, he’s not here, sir.”

“Hell. Well…I guess I’ll just have to go on in and wait, then.”

He thought about that for a long couple of seconds, then nodded, and swung the gate open. Several more of the spiffy black coppers were standing around inside the front entry. I told them I was meeting Lindop and they seemed to buy it; then I said I needed to have another look at the murder room.

One of them asked me who Gardner was and I said, “My assistant.”

That was explanation enough. Even with Sir Harry dead, security around here stunk.

The air, however, no longer stunk; with the murder a little over a week old, the place was aired out, only the faintest bouquet of the aftermath of fire remained. But Gardner, following me up the curving staircase, was taking in the scorched wood and walls with wide eyes.

The Chinese screen was gone, but the bedroom otherwise seemed the same-the scorched circular area as we stepped into the room, the burnt face of the wardrobe, the blood on the phone book by the French phone on the writing table, wind whispering in the open window, ruffling the frilly curtains.

But as we stepped into the portion of the room where the murder bed waited, we saw an incredible tableau; I couldn’t have been much more surprised-or outraged-if I’d interrupted Sir Harry’s murder itself.

Kneeling on the floor, in their perfect uniforms, wearing their goddamned spiked helmets, were a pair of Bahamian cops who had, between them, a soapy bucket and two sponges.

They were cleaning the blood off the walls.

Specifically, they were removing-erasing-the small, now-dried bloody handprints by the windows overlooking the north porch.

“What the hell are you men doing?” I yelled.

Gardner was frozen, too; he seemed horrified. It was like finding a couple kids with gum erasers removing Da Vinci’s Last Supper off the wall.

They looked at us mildly; we hadn’t even startled them.

“We’re removin’ the bloodstains,” one of them said, even as he was doing so.

“Why, in God’s name?”

The other one said, “Because dey is not de Marigny’s prints…too small.”

He was right, of course; they looked like the palm prints of a woman or an adolescent.

“So?” I asked, numbly.

The first one spoke again. “So de Miami detectives say dese only confuse de evidence. Why get some innocent guy in trouble? Wash down de walls, dey say.”

“Holy Christ,” I said. “Stop it!”

But it was too late.

“Who are you?” one said, standing.

The other said, “He’s not from Miami. He’s dat guy who saw de Marigny. What are you doin’ here, mon?”

“Supposed to meet Colonel Lindop,” I lied.

“He’s not here.”

“I know. But he’s on his way.”

They looked at each other, and the other one got up; their uniforms remained spotless. So, now, were the walls. As they went out, the one carrying the bucket said, “Don’t touch anyt’ing.”

“Right,” I said. “I’d hate for you boys to have to scrub the room down again.”

They gave me blank looks that managed to seem nasty, and left.

“We’d better make this quick,” I told Gardner. “I don’t know how long my story’s going to hold.”

He looked properly astounded. “What the hell’s going on here, Heller? What sort of criminal investigation is this?”

“One of these days you’ll meet Barker and Melchen and find out.”

I began filling him in on what the crime scene had looked like on my previous visit: the Chinese screen, the state of Oakes’ burned and feathered body, including such details as the four wounds behind his ear, and the shreds of blue-striped pajamas hanging down from the scorched flesh….

Gardner was on his knees, looking under the bed, like a husband searching for his wife’s lover. “The cloth covering the box spring is burned away-have a look.”

I got down and did. “You’re right-completely gone….”

We stood.

“Meaning,” Gardner said, his broad face gleeful, “the fire on that bed was blazing, at one point. Those torn pajamas should have incinerated.”

Damn near the entire surface of the bed was burned black, except a small area under where his hips had been, where Oakes’ bladder had put out the fire.

“Notice,” I said, pointing, “there’s no indication anywhere of the outline of Oakes’ body. If his body had been on the bed before the fire was set, the sheet and mattress beneath his body would have been virtually untouched.”

Gardner was right with me, nodding. “The position of the body, and its weight, would have shut the oxygen off from the fire.”

“Add that to the pajama shreds that didn’t burn, and the trickle of blood that moved uphill, and what do you get?”

“Well,” Gardner said archly, “I don’t get Sir Harry asleep in bed, getting shot or bludgeoned and his bed set on fire.”

I paced by the blackened bed, studying it. “I think maybe he was sitting on the edge of the bed. Talking to somebody-maybe arguing….”

I put my finger behind Gardner’s left ear and said, “Then bang, bang, bang, bang…he’s shot…or maybe struck…anyway, he collapses on the floor.”

“And the bed is set on fire, without Harry on it!”

“Sort of.” I frowned. “Look at the ceiling. Right over the bed. What do you see?”

“The charred framework of the mosquito-netting canopy.”

“And the mosquito netting is burned away, right?”

“Right,” he said.

“But what isn’t burned?”

Gardner looked; his tiny eyes popped. “The goddamn ceiling!”

I smiled. “Right. Look at these weird burns on the floor…circular…here and there…and Sir Harry himself was burned like that, too…intermittently.”

“That means a torch. Something homemade?”

“Possibly. I think a blowtorch. Something that could be aimed. Something you could point and scorch this bed, even get a fire going, yet still not even touch the ceiling, when you burned the netting away.”

Now Gardner’s eyes were so slitted they were gone. “You’ve got something, Heller. You’ve got something….”

“This bed was on fire when Sir Harry was tossed on it. He was already dead, or nearly dead, from those wounds behind his ear. The killer…”

“Killers,” Gardner interjected. “With all this going on, there had to be at least two.”

“You’re probably right. The killers then took their time playing voodoo, burning Sir Harry’s body here and there, particularly the eyes and his private parts, tossing those feathers on him.”

He pointed at the fan on the floor by the bed. “What about that? Isn’t that how the feathers got blown around?”

“No,” I said. “There were feathers sticking to him on the side of him away from the fan. Those feathers were sprinkled over him.”

Gardner looked puzzled, now. “Did they mean to burn the place down?”