Henneage, who described herself as “an English evacuee with two children.” I would describe her as a pretty blonde in her late twenties, looking shapely despite her conservative suit and hat; if this was Harold Christie’s mistress, he was a lucky man.
But her story of playing afternoon tennis with Charles Hubbard, Harold Christie and Sir Harry Oakes, and later having dinner at Westbourne, shed no particular light on the case. She seemed to have been called simply to help establish a chronology.
The local beauty pageant continued with blond Dorothy Clark and brunette Jean Ainslie, the RAF wives Freddie had escorted home in the rain; like Mrs. Henneage, they looked very proper in their new suits and hats and with nervous precision established Freddie’s presence in the neighborhood of Westbourne on the murder night.
I had not been subpoenaed by the prosecution; now that I was in Freddie’s camp, it began to seem unlikely I’d be asked to back up the girls’ story at the trial. More likely, I’d testify for the defense, showing that de Marigny’s activities on July 7 didn’t seem to be those of a man preparing to end his day with a premeditated murder.
The RAF girls really hadn’t done Freddie any damage; after all, everything they said tallied with his own story. More troubling was the testimony of Constable Wendell Parker, who told of de Marigny stopping at the police station to register a new truck purchased for his chicken farm, at seven-thirty a.m. on July 8.
“He appeared excited,” the constable said. “His eyes were…
Over in his cage, de Marigny’s eyes were bulging now, at the apparent stupidity of this testimony, but I knew a jury could well interpret his dropping by the police station the morning after the murder as anxiety over whether or not Sir Harry’s body had been discovered yet.
The next witness was all too familiar: Marjorie Bristol, looking crisp and beautiful in a red-and-white floral dress as she stood (as all the witnesses did, in the British style) in the witness box, without leaning on the rail. She told her story simply and well: of setting out Sir Harry’s nightclothes, arranging his mosquito netting; of answering Christie’s cries for help, the next morning.
Higgs rose to cross-examine, briefly, breaking Gardner’s rule for limey lawyers.
“Miss Bristol,” he asked, smiling affably, “I believe you said you ‘flitted’ the room with the insecticide spray gun?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What did you do with it then?”
“I left the spray gun in the room, because Sir Harry, he always told me to leave it there.”
“How much insecticide was left in the spray gun, would you say?”
“Well, sir…I filled it the night before.”
“So you had used it once?”
“That’s right. I would say, it felt about half full.”
“Thank you. No further questions.”
She walked right by me, and we made the briefest eye contact. I smiled, but she looked away, raising her chin.
Two ceiling fans were slicing the stale air; smaller electrical fans sat here and there, whirring futilely. My shirt under my suitcoat was sticking to me like flypaper. But the next two witnesses-native police officers in full regalia, except for the bayonets-took the stand looking cooler than a milk shake.
Both men told painfully similar stories of their various duties at Westbourne the morning and afternoon of the body’s discovery. They spoke in a curious mixture of Caribbean and British inflection; neither man seemed nervous, but their stony demeanor underscored the coached nature of their testimony.
“I saw de Marigny upstairs with Captain Melchen at three-thirty p.m.,” they both said.
This was on July 9; that morning, the scorched Chinese screen had been moved from Sir Harry’s bedchamber out into the hall, where Miami’s finest had done some fingerprint work.
“Captain Barker had finished his fingerprint processing by that time,” they both said.
Over at the press table, Gardner glanced at me and frowned; I did the same to him. We both knew something was up. So did Freddie: behind the bars of his cage, he was frowning, shaking his head slowly.
Nancy de Marigny shook her head the same way, hearing my account of the Tweedledum and Tweedledee testimony of the officers. We were meeting over the lunch break in the dining room of the British Colonial, sharing a table with her friend Lady Diane Medcalf.
“What are they up to?” Nancy wondered aloud. She looked as charming as a lovely child in her plain white sports dress and widebrimmed straw hat tied in place by a white silk scarf.
“No good,” Di said needlessly, arching a brow as she lifted a gin and tonic to her bruised red lips. She did not look like a lovely child, in her vivid-blue clingy crepe dress, big silver medallion buttons like a row of medals in a vertical ribbon between her full breasts. She wore white gloves and a white turban, which hid most of her blondness.
Between steaming spoonfuls of conch chowder, I said, “My guess is that the fingerprint evidence we’ve been hearing about comes from that screen.”
“So what if it does?” Nancy asked, almost petulantly.
“So,” I said, “they have to establish that Freddie couldn’t have touched that screen while he was in the house being questioned.”
Di frowned with interest. “What time does Freddie say he was taken upstairs for questioning?”
I got my notebook out and checked it. “More like eleven-thirty that morning.”
Nancy sat forward. “Can we trip them up?”
I nodded. “If Freddie’s story is backed up by some of these other witnesses who were also at Westbourne being questioned at the time-like those RAF dames, for instance-we can trip ’em up Duke of Windsor style.”
“Duke of Windsor style?” Nancy asked, puzzled.
“Royally,” I grinned.
Di was still frowning. “Why were those women taken to Westbourne for questioning, instead of the police station?”
I shrugged. “That was the Miami boys’ doing. Sometimes it comes in handy when the bad guys are idiots.” I looked at Di and smiled. “And that party you’re throwing this weekend is going to be very helpful, too-
“They’ll show,” she said with a wicked little smile. She curled a gloved finger at a black waiter, summoning another gin and tonic.
“You know,” I said, smirking at Nancy, “I feel kind of funny coming back to the B.C., having been so recently banished and all.”
“Is the guest room at Higgs’ suiting you?” she asked, with earnest concern.
“It’s okay. I’m afraid I’m getting on the nerves of his wife and kids.”
Under the table, I felt a hand on my leg.
“I have a guest cottage,” Lady Diane said, ever so casually, “at Shangri La…if you don’t mind the inconvenience of having to take a five-minute ride by launch every time you’re coming and going.
With her hand on my leg like that, I’d be coming before I was going.
“That’s very gracious,” I said, “but I’m afraid you’d be the one who’d be inconvenienced….”
She squeezed my thigh; it was more friendly than sexy, but it was sexy enough.
“Nonsense,” she said, in her brittle British way. “You’d be welcome company.”
“Well…”
“I think it’s a simply fabulous idea,” Nancy said, eyes sparkling. “I spend half my time over there with Di, anyway. So we could have planning sessions and talk strategy.”
The hand beneath the table slipped away.
“All right,” I said, and looked at Lady Diane, narrowing my eyes and sending a signal. “I’ll be glad to come.”
“How delightful,” Di said, and those Bahama-blue eyes locked onto mine and sent their own signal.
“Besides,” I said, “I know all about how no one in Nassau can dare refuse your invitation.”
She laughed a little, then stopped cold to pluck her latest gin and tonic from the hands of the waiter, who seemed a little startled to have his cargo snatched so rudely away.
Nancy leaned in. “Who else do you think will testify today, Nate?”
“To keep the chronology at all coherent,” I said, “there’s only one man Adderley can call….”
