Harold Christie clutched the rail around the witness box till his knuckles went as white as his double-breasted linen suit. As he gave his testimony, the little balding lizard of a man swayed from side to side, as if his balance were constantly at risk.
After establishing that Christie had been a real-estate agent in Nassau for about twenty years, Adderley asked him to describe his relationship with the deceased.
“I considered Sir Harry one of my closest personal friends,” Christie said, but prosecution witness or not, his tone was defensive.
Nonetheless, his story of the day-and night-of the murder was a dull, rambling recap of his previous statements: tennis at the country club in the afternoon, dinner at Westbourne with a few guests, Chinese checkers until eleven o’clock when Mr. Hubbard and Mrs. Henneage departed, after which he and Sir Harry went up to bed.
He’d chatted with Sir Harry in the latter’s bedroom, and Oakes was in bed, in his pajamas, reading a newspaper, when Christie went to his own bedroom, to read for half an hour or so himself.
Under Adderley’s respectful, even fawning questioning, Christie gradually calmed down. In a firm, natural voice, he told of waking up twice in the night-once to swat some mosquitoes that had gotten under his netting, another time because of the “strong wind and heavy rain.” But he’d heard nothing from Harry’s room, nor had he smelled smoke.
The next morning, when Sir Harry wasn’t waiting on the porch, where they usually breakfasted, Christie claimed to have called out, “Hi, Harry,” as he went into the bedroom, only to find his friend-scorched and sooty-on the still smoldering bed.
“I lifted his head, shook him, poured some water into the glass on the night table, and put the glass to his mouth.” He reached in his back pocket and began swabbing the sweat beading on the shiny dome of his head. “I took a pillow from the other twin bed, propped his head up, got a towel, wet it and wiped his face, hoping to revive him.”
Behind the iron bars, de Marigny’s expression was incredulous; he looked over at me, for the first time, and I shrugged at him. I’d been at the crime scene, and de Marigny-like everyone here-had seen the large blowups of the charred body.
The notion that anyone could have mistaken the corpse of Sir Harry Oakes for a living person seemed like something out of Lewis Carroll.
But something else was gnawing at me, as well: why in the hell would Christie-why in the hell would
Before long, the preening Adderley, enjoying the booming British sound of his own voice as it filled the little courtroom, asked Christie, “And are you acquainted, sir, with the accused, de Marigny?”
Christie, shifting yet again in the witness box, one foot to the other, nodded. “I am. I think I’ve known him since he first came here.”
“What was your most recent encounter with the accused?”
“About two weeks ago, he enlisted my services in connection with selling property of his on Eleuthera. He said he had considerable expenses to meet.”
“Did Sir Harry Oakes’ name come up in your conversation, sir?”
“It did. He stated that he and Sir Harry were not on friendly terms.”
“Did he state a reason?”
“No, but I think perhaps there were a number of reasons. I think Sir Harry felt de Marigny had treated his former wife, Ruth Fahnestock de Marigny, unfairly-”
“Objection, my lord,” Higgs said, rising, his tone one of weary patience.
“Withdrawn,” Adderley said, and smiled condescendingly at Higgs, then turned back to his witness. “Could you limit yourself, sir, not to your own opinions, but those expressed to you by the accused, on that occasion?”
Christie nodded again. “At the time, he told me that Sir Harry had not treated him fairly, since his marriage to Miss Nancy Oakes. That Harry had been unduly severe.”
“I see. And this was the last time you spoke to de Marigny, before the murder of Sir Harry Oakes?”
“No. That was the last time I
“The day of the night of the murder?” Adderley asked, with pompous melodrama.
“Yes,” he said. “De Marigny called me about helping him obtain a permit for his poultry business.”
“Did the accused, at that time, invite you to have dinner at his home on Victoria Avenue on the night of the seventh?”
“No, he did not.”
“Could he have asked you…casually? Is it possible you may simply not recall an offhand invitation of his?”
“If de Marigny had invited me, I would have remembered it.”
De Marigny’s face was almost pressed into the iron bars; his frown was pressed just as deeply into his flesh. Christie was directly contradicting de Marigny’s statement to the police.
What followed was a description of Christie calling out to Marjorie Bristol from the balcony, telephoning Dr. Quackenbush and Colonel Lindop, and the subsequent arrival of the Nassau, and then Miami, police; there was no mention of communications with the Duke of Windsor, much less of the personal appearance His Royal Highness put in.
Soon it was Higgs’ turn, and I was pleased to see he intended to break Gardner’s first rule of English law.
“Mr. Christie…Were Sir Harry’s eyes open, or closed, when you wiped his face?”
Christie was dabbing his own face with the sopping hanky. “I don’t recall.”
“We’ve all seen the photos of the deceased. What made you think Sir Harry might still be alive?”
“I thought he still had some hope. His body was warm.”
“I should think. It had been set afire, after all.”
“Objection!” boomed Adderley.
“Withdrawn,” Higgs said, flashing his boyish smile at his colleague. “Mr. Christie, could you explain the blood smeared on your bedroom and bathroom doors?”
“I may have gotten blood on my hands, wiping Sir Harry’s face.”
“And the blood on your sheets, in your bedroom?”
He swallowed thickly, braced himself against the railing. “As I stated earlier, I awoke in the night and killed a few mosquitoes with a magazine.”
“The blood on your sheets, then, came from the little mosquito corpses.”
De Marigny was leaning back in the cage, smiling; he seemed more relaxed now, picking his teeth with a wooden match.
“I would presume so, yes,” Christie said, fingering his black four-in-hand tie nervously. Another fine mess.
Higgs was smiling again, but there was nothing boyish about it, now. Relentlessly, he took Christie on an excursion of the upstairs in the aftermath of the murder, showing that the little real-estate giant had no grasp of which doors had been open or closed before, or shut by him after, his discovery of his beloved friend’s warm body.
“I put it to you,” Higgs said, “that Count de Marigny did in fact invite you to dinner at his Victoria Avenue address on the seventh of July.”
“No, sir, he did not,” Christie almost shouted.
“No further questions, my lord,” Higgs said, faintly sarcastic, and returned to his table.
Christie, his suit soggy with sweat, stepped down from the witness box and shambled out of the courtroom, a wreck of a witness. Nothing in his testimony had really incriminated Freddie, or anybody else for that matter-except perhaps H. G. Christie.
I smiled to myself.
The next witness was Detective Captain Edward Walter Melchen, Chief of the Homicide Bureau of the Miami
