“Oh.”
“The Duke’s involvement with Banco Continental is unfortunate-it’s a rather well-kept secret, however, and I doubt the Duke even knows that Naval Intelligence is aware of it. But we are. And now, so are you.”
“Why me, for God’s sake?”
The waitress was back, bringing another round, exchanging smiles with Fleming.
“You mind if I duck your question? Just for a moment?”
“Do I have a choice?”
He sipped his second bourbon and branch water. “When I was nine, vacationing with my family at St. Ives, Cornwall, I was searching the caves off the beach for amethyst quartz when I stumbled onto a lump of ambergris as big as a child’s football.”
I wasn’t sure what ambergris was, but I knew it was valuable. I should have been irritated, but this aloof son of a bitch was a good storyteller.
“Now, I knew at once I would be
He paused to sip his drink again. Then resumed.
“But my ambergris, as it turned out, was actually a lump of very rancid butter, which a supply ship had dumped off the coast. My mother was not amused.”
“Neither am I. What’s the point?”
“The point, Mr. Heller, is merely that sometimes ambergris turns out to be rancid butter.” He smiled again, mostly to himself; blew smoke through his nose. “Wenner-Gren is your host right now, so to speak.”
“I’ve never even met the man. Never seen him, outside of an oil painting.”
“But you’re spending time with the charming Lady Medcalf, are you not?”
“Yeah. She’s been helpful, too.”
“Has she? I wonder. What do you know about her?”
His perpetual mild amusement was starting to irritate me. I said, “She’s the widow of some pal of the Duke’s; she’s very high up in royal society or whatever the hell you call it.”
He smiled and showed his teeth now; it turned his handsome face horsey. “Diane Medcalf is the former June Diane Sims of the Blackfriars settlement in the East End of London. Strictly lowerclass.”
I blinked; swallowed thickly. “How is it possible she could wind up married to a lord?”
He shrugged one shoulder, gestured mildly with his cigarette-in-hand. “David Windsor gave up the throne for a twice-divorced American said to have done a stint in a Hong Kong brothel.” He put out the cigarette and flipped open his gold case to get another. “Hell, man-you’ve seen ‘Lady Diane’…a damn sight closer up than I have. She’s a smart woman and a beautiful one.”
“I still don’t see how…”
He lighted up his new cigarette and said, almost impatiently, “She was a lowly clerk with the Royal International Horse Show, an annual event held at the Olympia in London-home of the Windsor Cup, till the abdication. At any rate, it’s a year-round organizing job, and Miss Sims worked her way up to assistant manager- where she came in contact with the poshest toffs in town.”
“All right,” I said defensively. “So she wasn’t born with a silver spoon.”
“I just thought you should know who exactly it was you were…seeing.”
I laughed. “You don’t look like the kind of ‘bloke’ who checks a girl’s pedigree before climbing in the sack with her, yourself.”
He nodded agreement. “Women do have their uses…for release of male tension. Although Englishwomen have little appeal for me. They so seldom bathe. Or is Lady Diane an exception?”
“What exactly is your objection to Diane? Other than maybe she doesn’t take enough baths to suit you?”
He waved that off with the cigarette-in-hand, making smoke trails in the already smoky air. “Oh, I have no particular objection. But you may find it of interest that your lovely friend is…how would your Raymond Chandler put it? Wenner-Gren’s bag woman…and the Duke’s, for that matter. Making frequent trips to Mexico City, to Banco Continental, freighting currency and such. By the way, isn’t that where she is now?”
I wanted to smack the smug son of a bitch. “Even if that’s true, why the hell would it have anything to do with Sir Harry’s murder?”
“It doesn’t, necessarily. But I find it intriguing that Sir Harry himself made numerous sojourns south of the border, in the past year or so, with serious talk floating about of his relocating from the Bahamas to Mexico.”
“I still don’t see the connection.”
He waved it off, cigarette trail making a lazy S. “Perhaps there isn’t any. Nonetheless, I would very much like to catch Lady Di in some illegal act. It would be a pleasure to shut down the Duke’s activities without having to… embarrass him.”
“Or the Crown. So why the hell are you keeping an eye on
“I’m not, really. Lady Medcalf is my interest.”
I got out of the booth. “Well, you’re right about one thing: Di’s my friend. And I have no intention of helping you catch her in
He shrugged with his eyes, exhaled smoke. “I don’t remember asking you to.”
Suddenly the native band’s steel drums seemed deafening.
“Then why tell me all this?”
“Strictly to keep you informed. You see, I’ve already gathered that if anyone might happen to unravel the truth of this case, Mr. Heller-it’s most likely to be you.”
I just looked at him. He smiled his faint smile and raised his glass to me.
“Do stay in touch,” he said.
When I glanced back before I went out, he was chatting smoothly with the waitress, who seemed entranced.
It was enough to make you wonder who was getting fucked tonight.
23
“Oyez! Oyez!” the dark-robed little man cried, shortly after capturing the packed courtroom’s attention by beating his crown-tipped staff on the hardwood floor. “God save the King!”
And the assemblage was on its feet as a short, rather stout individual in shoulder-length white wig and furtrimmed scarlet gown took the bench. Sir Oscar Bedford Daly, Chief Justice of the Bahamas, was in his mid- sixties, though he didn’t look it: streaks of black eyebrow were the sole harsh element of a face as round and smooth as a child’s.
According to Higgs, Daly was fair-minded and incisive, with a reputation for cutting through red tape and red herrings alike to find the heart of the matter. Right now this pleasant-looking jurist was casting a rather be nign smile on the crowded courtroom.
And crowded it certainly was: cane chairs, camp stools and wooden folding chairs took every spare inch of floor space at the center and side aisles and back of the room. Again, the wealthy had sent servants hours ahead of time to get in line and hold seats for them. Nonetheless, about half of the faces here were black, belonging to native spectators who had no intention of giving up their seats for anybody.
The morning was hot, if not particularly humid, and the buzzing of flies could be heard over the churning ceiling fans. As the principals settled into place, and English justice took care of its formalities, the only major difference between this and the preliminary hearing was the jury box, all male, all white, merchants mostly. The foreman was a grocer.
Otherwise, all else was much the same-from the two teeming press tables, including Western-garbed Gardner, who sat forward like a hungry bulldog, to the robed, wigged lawyers: boyishly handsome Higgs sitting quietly confident, albeit with the addition of his second-chair counsel, W. E. Callender, a handsome mulatto with an
