The Deceiver

“What’s odd about it?” asked Hannah.

“Well, the lead, to start with. It’s extremely old. Seventy years, at least. They haven’t made lead of that molecular consistency since the early 1920s. The same applies to the powder. Some tiny traces of it remained on the bullet. It was a chemical type introduced in 1912 and discontinued in the early 1920s.”

“But what about the gun?” insisted Hannah.

“That’s the point,” said the scientist in London. “The gun matches the ammunition used. The bullet has an absolutely unmistakable signature, like a fingerprint. Unique. It has exactly seven grooves, with a right-hand twist, left by the barrel of the revolver. No other handgun ever left those seven right-hand grooves. Remarkable, what?”

“Wonderful,” said Hannah. “Just one gun could have fired that shot? Excellent. Now, Alan, which gun?”

“Why, the Webley 4.55, of course. Nothing like it.”

Hannah was not an expert in handguns. He would not have known, at a glance, a Webley 4.55 from a Colt .44 Magnum. Not to look at, that is.

“Fine, Alan. Now tell me, what is so special about the Webley 4.55?”

“Its age. It’s a bloody antique. It was first issued in 1912, discontinued about 1920. It’s a revolver with an extremely long barrel, quite distinctive. They were never very popular because that extra-long barrel kept getting in the way. Accu­rate though, for the same reason. They were issued as service revolvers to British officers in the trenches in the First World War. Have you ever seen one?”

Hannah thanked him and replaced the receiver.

“Oh yes,” he breathed, “I’ve seen one.”

He was rushing across the hall when he saw that strange man Dillon from the Foreign Office.

“Use the phone if you like. It’s free,” he called, and climbed into the Jaguar.

When he was shown in, Missy Coltrane was in her wheelchair in the sitting room. She greeted him with a welcoming smile.

“Why, Mr. Hannah, how nice to see you again,” she said. “Won’t you sit down and take some tea?”

“Thank you, Lady Coltrane, I think I prefer to stand. I’m afraid I have some questions to ask you. Have you ever seen a handgun known as a Webley 4.55?”

“Why now, I don’t think I have,” she said meekly.

“I take leave to doubt that, ma’am. You have in fact got one. Your late husband’s old service revolver. In that trophy case over there. And I’m afraid I must take possession of it as vital evidence.”

He turned and walked to the glass-fronted trophy case. They were all there—the medals, the insignia, the citations, the cap badges. But they were rearranged. Behind some of them could be dimly discerned some oil smudges on the hessian, where another trophy had once hung.

Hannah turned back. “Where has it gone, Lady Coltrane?” he asked tightly.

“Dear Mr. Hannah, I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about.”

He hated to lose a case, but he could feel this one slipping slowly away. The gun or a witness—he needed one or the other. Beyond the windows the blue sea was darkling in the fading light. Somewhere out there, deep in its unquestioning embrace, he knew lay a Webley 4.55. Oil smudges do not make a court case.

“It was there, Lady Coltrane. On Thursday, when I came to see you. It was there in the cabinet.”

“Why, Mr. Hannah, you must be mistaken. I have never seen any .. . Wembley.”

“Webley, Lady Coltrane. Wembley is where they play football.” He felt he was losing this match six-nil.

“Mr. Hannah, what exactly is it you suspect of me?” she asked.

“I don’t suspect, ma’am, I know. I know what happened. Proof is another matter. Last Tuesday, at about this hour, Firestone picked you and your chair up with those huge arms of his and placed you in the back of your van, as he did on Saturday for your shopping expedition. I had thought perhaps you never left this house, but with his help, of course, you can.

“He drove you down to the alley behind the Governor’s residence, set you down, and with his own hands tore the lock off the steel gate. I thought it might take a Land-Rover and chain to pull that lock off, but of course he could do it. I should have seen that when I met him. I missed it. Mea culpa.

“He pushed you through the open gate and left you. I believe you had the Webley in your lap. Antique it may have been, but it had been kept oiled over the years, and the ammunition was still inside it. With a short barrel you’d never have hit Sir Moberley, not even firing two-handed. But this Webley had a very long barrel, very accurate.

“And you were not quite new to guns. You met your husband in the war, as you said. He was wounded, and you nursed him. But it was in a maquis hospital in Nazi-occupied France. He was with the British Special Operations Execu­tive, and you, I believe, were with the American equivalent, the Office of Strategic Services.

“The first shot missed and hit the wall. The second did the job and lodged in a flower-basket full of loam. That’s where I found it. London identified it today. It’s quite distinctive. No gun ever fired that bullet but a Webley 4.55, such as you had in that case.”

“Oh dear, poor Mr. Hannah. It’s a wonderful story, but can you prove it?”

“No, Lady Coltrane, I can’t. I needed the gun, or a witness. I’ll bet a dozen people saw you and Firestone in that alley, but none of them will ever testify. Not against Missy Coltrane. Not on Sunshine. But there are two things that puzzle me. Why? Why kill that unlovable Governor? Did you want the police here?”

She smiled and shook her head. “The press, Mr. Hannah. Always snooping about, always asking questions, always in­vestigating backgrounds. Always so suspicious of everyone in politics.”

“Yes, of course. The ferrets of the press.”

“And the other puzzle, Mr. Hannah?”

“Who warned you, Lady Coltrane? On Tuesday evening you put the gun back in the case. It was there on Thursday. Now it is gone. Who warned you?”

“Mr. Hannah, give my love to London when you get back. I haven’t seen it since the Blitz, you know. And now I never shall.”

Desmond Hannah had Oscar drive him back to Parliament Square. He dismissed Oscar by the police station; Oscar would have to polish up the Jaguar in time for the new Governor’s arrival the next day. It was about time Whitehall reacted, he thought. He began to cross the square to the hotel.

“Evening, Mistah Hannah.”

He turned. A complete stranger, smiling and greeting him.

“Er ... good evening.”

Two youths in front of the hotel were dancing in the dust. One had a cassette player around his neck. The tape was playing a calypso number. Hannah did not recognize it. It was “Freedom Come, Freedom Go.” He recognized “Yellow Bird,” however—it was coming from the Quarter Deck bar. He recalled that in five days he had not heard a steel band or a calypso.

The doors of the Anglican church were open; Reverend Quince was giving forth on his small organ. He was playing “Gaudeamus Igitur.”

By the time Hannah strode up the steps of the hotel, he realized there was an air of levity about the streets. It did not match his own mood. He had some serious report-writing to do. After a late-night call to London, he would go home in the morning. There was nothing more he could do. He hated to lose a case, but he knew this one would remain on the file. He could return to Nassau on the plane that brought in the new Governor, and fly on to London.

He crossed the terrace bar toward the staircase. There was that man Dillon again, sitting on a stool nursing a beer. Strange fellow, he thought as he went up the stairs. Always sitting around waiting for something. Never actually seemed to do anything.

* * *

On Tuesday morning, a de Havilland Devon droned in toward Sunshine from Nassau and deposited the new Governor, Sir Crispian Rattray. From the shade of the hangar McCready watched the elderly diplomat, crisp in cream linen with wings of silver hair flying from beneath his white panama hat, descend from the aircraft to meet the welcoming committee.