Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy

'Right,' agreed Mann. 'Just a little more help like that from Gerry Hart, and I fall down dead.'

I looked at my watch and said, 'If there's nothing else, I've got a call booked to London.'

Mann said, 'And it looks like another trip to Florida tomorrow.'

'Oh, no!' I said.

'That phone call just now — the C.I.A. duty-officer at Miami airport. Reid-Kennedy just got off the London direct flight. His chauffeur met him with the Rolls — looks like his old lady was expecting him.'

'What time do we leave?'

'Give the Reid-Kennedys a little time to talk together,' said Mann. 'What about the six a.m. plane tomorrow morning. Leave here at four thirty.'

Chapter Sixteen

It wasn't the same when we went back: it never is. The gardener was having trouble with the sprinklers, one of the cars had scraped the fencing and taken away a section of bougainvillaea. Crab grass was in the lawn, the humidity was high and there was haze over the sun.

'Mr and Mrs Reid-Kennedy are not at home,' said the Spanish lady slowly and firmly and for the third time.

'But that's not what we were asking,' explained Mann patiently. 'Are they in? Are they in?'

I suppose even the ladies who guard rich people's doors learn to recognize the ones who can't be stopped. She let Mann push her to one side but she failed to look as if she liked it.

'You know we're cops,' said Mann. 'Let's not fool about, shall we.'

'They are not here,' said the woman sullenly.

He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. He ran his fingers up his cheeks as if trying to force himself to smile. 'Listen, did I ever tell you that I moonlight for the immigration department?' he said. 'You don't want us to run all through the house, checking out whether all these people have got permission to work in Florida. You don't want that, do you?'

The lady went as pale as an illegal Mexican immigrant without working papers can go, and then shut the door gently, behind us.

'Now, where are they?'

'On the Sara Lee,' said the woman pointing to the big motor-boat that was moored to the jetty at the end of the enormous garden.

'Sara Lee!' said Mann very respectfully. 'And there's me been calling it the Aunt Jemima all this time.' He smiled at her and she forced a smile back at him. 'Well, you just make sure no one leaves the house, Duchess, or…'

We walked through the breakfast-room. It faced the lawn and the water. The remains of a breakfast were still on the white marble table. There were half a dozen different kinds of bread, a couple of uneaten boiled eggs and a silver dish loaded with crisp rashers. Mann picked up a piece of bacon and ate it. 'Still warm,' he said, 'they must be there.' He went out on the balcony and looked at the boat. There was no sign that it was about to depart. In the distance across the water I could see the Goodyear airship glinting silver against the clear blue sky.

'What the hell would they be doing down there in that boat,' muttered Mann. 'They aren't the kind of couple who enjoy decoking diesels together.'

I said, 'If you've got a dozen servants in the house, I guess you need a long garden, and a moored boat, to go and have an argument.'

I was opening the fly-screen that separates the polished oak balcony from the raked gravel back-drive, when I heard a woman shout. Then I saw Mrs Reid-Kennedy. She had already come down the gangway from the boat, and was hurrying towards us across the lawn. She was shouting.

'Hey there, what do you want? What do you want?' She almost tripped. She was wearing the same sort of silk lounging pyjamas that we'd seen her wearing last time, except that these were pale green, like the silk scarf she had tied round her head. But a lot of that Southern belle had disappeared. That you-all eyelash fluttering, and help yourself to the candied-yams gesturing, had now been replaced by a nasal tone and shrillness that was saurbraten, schweinkotelett and sour cream, and all the way from Eighty-Second Street.

She was speechless when she reached us. She put a hand on her chest while she caught up on her breathing.

'You shouldn't run like that, Mrs Reid-Kennedy,' said Mann. 'A woman of your age could do herself a permanent injury running across the lawn like that.'

'You will have to come back,' she said. 'Come back another day. Any day you like. Phone me and we'll fix it.'

'Unless of course the kind of injury that you might do yourself by not running across the lawn is even more permanent. Then, of course, it would make sense.'

'We'll talk in the house,' she said. 'We'll have coffee.'

'That's mighty civil of you, Ma'am,' said Mann. 'That's right hospitable of you.' He touched his hat at the end of the peak. 'But I think I'm going to just mosey down to the levee there, and see if I recognize anyone aboard the paddle-steamer. You see, I've always been a gambling man.'

'You're too late, Major Mann,' she said. Her voice was neither frightened nor boastful. She said it as if she was stating a fact that could not be argued, like the number of kilogrammes in a ton, or the weight of a cubic metre of water.

'You had better tell us all about it, Mrs Reid-Kennedy.' His voice was gentle, and he took her arm, to support her weight.

'If I talk to you, will you promise that it is in confidence? Will you promise not to do anything… at least for the time being?'

'Well, I couldn't promise that, Mrs Reid-Kennedy. No one could. I mean, suppose you told us about a plot to assassinate the President of the United States. You think we could listen to you and keep a promise about doing nothing?'

'My husband was a good man, Major.' She looked up, into Mann's face. 'I mean Douglas was… Mr Reid- Kennedy.'

'I know that's who you mean,' said Mann. 'Go on.'

'He's in the boat,' she said. She didn't turn round far enough to see the twelve-ton cabin-cruiser, but she pointed vaguely at the waterfront. 'Douglas went down to the boat about half an hour ago. I thought something was wrong, so after the bacon was almost cold… Douglas loves bacon when it's crisp and warm but he never eats it when it's cold…'

'O.K., Mrs Reid-Kennedy,' Mann patted her arm.

'And bacon is so expensive nowadays. The servants could have it, of course, but none of them eat it either.'

'Go on, about Douglas.'

'Well, that's all,' she said. 'I found him on the boat, just now. He's shot himself. He's lying there in the engine-room… the top of his head… l don't Know who will clear it up. There's blood everywhere. Will the police know someone who will do it? I couldn't go down there again.'

'No need, Mrs Reid-Kennedy. No need to go down there again. My friend will take a look in the boat just to make sure that there are no valves open, or anything like that. While you and me go up to the house, and get you a stiff brandy.'

'Do you think I should, Major? It's not even eleven thirty yet.'

'I think you need one,' said Mann firmly.

She shivered. 'My, but it's turned cold suddenly,' she said.

'Yes it has,' agreed Mann, trying to look suddenly cold.

'It's telling the servants that's the real trouble,' she confided.

'Don't worry about that,' said Mann briskly. 'My friend will do that. He's British; they're terribly, terribly good at speaking to servants.'