Operation Nassau: Dolly and the Doctor Bird; Match for a Murderer

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘Bart’s a good man,’ Johnson said. ‘Hard-working. Thorough. The last person to run into trouble.’ The sun had gone down on a copper band into the sea, and it was now perfectly dark, with the quock of a night heron coming occasionally over the water. Dolly moved, slackly, with the waves and the steam from our coffee, coiled white in the warm air, lit from below, where Spry was clearing the meal.

  ‘So why now?’ I asked. ‘Why should someone try to kill him now? And do you know who it is?’

  ‘The answer to that is, I don’t know, in triplicate,’ Johnson said.

  I was not sure whether I believed him. I said, ‘Has it happened before?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge. If it had, he would have reported it. In fact, it’s the sheerest chance that I’m here now. I only arrived three days ago for this thing in Miami. He must have seen a report in the papers.’ He finished lighting his pipe, sent the match flaring into the darkness and said, ‘Incidentally, there was nothing wrong, he says, with the crab sandwich. He mentioned it to stop any public health fussing, but he’s sure the crab was all right. If it was . . . how do you think the two doses of arsenic were administered? If there were two doses?’

  ‘I think there were two quite distinct episodes,’ I said. ‘Arsenic works quickly, and the old food Sir Bartholomew had had before coming to the airport had been shared by Mr Brady. Even if Mr Brady had poisoned that meal, it would have worked, I think, before 4.30. There remains the staff of the Monarch Lounge and Sir Bartholomew’s fellow travellers. The fact that no one else turned ill means, I think, that the poison was put specifically into something Sir Bartholomew ingested, and was not dropped into the open bottles, or introduced into the tea or the sugar. It argues, I think, action by someone sitting beside him. His drink is the likeliest thing, And he served himself, I was told, to that.’

  ‘Who told you?’ asked Johnson.

  ‘The hostess. But it was corroborated by Trotter.’

  Brady and Trotter. The two men who sat nearest to Edgecombe and therefore were able to help when he collapsed. In fact, Brady had already met him by chance in New York. Trotter. I gather, had no idea who he was , but merely assisted out of good will . . And both men were on the plane the next morning.’

  ‘Yes. Well, they both missed the last plane as I did , through helping.” I said.

  ‘And the second attack? You were with Bart all the time except when he went to the lavatory?’

  ‘Apart from the water and aspirin, he had nothing to eat which I cannot vouch for,’ I said. ‘Again, anything he had before I met him that morning would have shown its effects before then. On the other hand, no one was to know that he would leave his seat in the plane. If anything happened to him in the lavatory, it was sheer opportunism, I fancy.’

  ‘The steward I can find out about. What about the other young man who helped him? Could you describe him?’

  ‘He was Turkish,’ I said. ‘At least he carried a Turkish passport through Immigration Controls. Aged about twenty-four, medium height, dark complexion, of extremely sinewy build. His face was Mongoloid with high cheekbones and long hair. He was clean and well-groomed, but unconventionally dressed in a Mogul silk tunic with a mandarin collar. He spoke hardly at all, but his English had a slight American accent.’

  ‘A good piece of observation.’ Johnson said. ‘I wish there were more like you. Do you know where he was going?’

  ‘No. But he was met at the airport by a green Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. He had a great deal of luggage.’ I recalled something. ‘There was a Press photographer waiting for him. He certainly looked like a celebrity.’

  ‘He was,’ said Johnson, ‘if your description is accurate, and I am sure that it is. Does the name Krishtof Bey mean anything to you? Or do you not frequent the world of the dance?’

  He did not, I suppose, refer to ballroom dancing; but to the equally tedious business of jumping about in white tights. ‘He is a ballet dancer, I take it?’ I said. ‘I know nothing of the subject, I am afraid.’

  ‘No,’ said Johnson thoughtfully. ‘I can’t sic you on to Krishtof Bey. I’m afraid. But if one of the others reappeared in your life, what do you think your reaction would be?’

  I employed my intelligence. “The only person likely to be dangerous to me is the would-be murderer, should he suspect that I have diagnosed Sir Bartholomew’s illness as poisoning. I must therefore reassure him that I have not, upon which I trust he will lose all interest in myself.’

  ‘Could you do that?’ said Johnson. ‘Remember, we don’t know who it is. And if they do try to pump you, they’ll go about it in an oblique and unexpected way.’ He paused, and said, ‘Well, at least they should make sure you are well out of the way before the next attempt on poor Bart is made.’

  Espionage has always seemed to me a childish game, and this aspect of it the most tiresome. ‘You don’t intend,’ I said, ‘to report this and give him adequate police protection? Surely these things can be done quite discreetly? After all, a man’s life is in question!

  For a while, irritatingly, Johnson did not speak. Then he said, ‘He took that risk when he joined us. No. Until I know more about it. I can’t call in the police.’

  ‘I would remind you,’ I said, without hiding my feelings, ‘that through no fault of my own I have some personal stake in the matter.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Johnson: and rising, put his hand on the wheel and, with a touch, started the soft buzz of the engine. ‘But as you so recently pointed out, the emergency situation is perhaps more frequent in medicine than in portrait-painting. And if ever I met a person who can take care of herself, it is Dr B. Douglas MacRannoch.’

  It was 10.30 p.m. when I got home, and my father, as he often does when bored, had gone off to bed. There was a note by the telephone in his writing. It read: Beltanno. Some American creep telephoned at the start of The Fugitive to invite you to golf at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning. I offered him seventy-five thousand dollars to marry you, but he says he just wants to play golf. Please keep your love life out of my Fugitive. It was unsigned, but he had written beneath, as an afterthought, Name of Broody.

  I had promised Johnson two things: one, to tell no one what I had learned from him that evening, and second, to report any overture whatever from one of our suspects. I therefore telephoned the Coral Harbour Yacht Club and had Johnson brought to the instrument.

  ‘Brady has telephoned,’ I said. ‘He wants to golf with me tomorrow. On Paradise Island. At seven in the morning.’

  ‘How energetic of him,’ said Johnson’s voice, regretfully. ‘Could you go?’

  ‘I have to be at the United Commonwealth later. I could manage - nine holes,’ I replied.

  ‘Will you?’ he asked.

  My father has an impression of himself as a wit. It was unlikely that he had actually spoken to Wallace Brady of marriage.

  ‘Yes. I’ll meet him.’ I said, and listened to Johnson’s voice, distantly, congratulating me.

  Whatever it was, it had started.

  THREE

  Two dollars to my mind is a high price for the half-moon toll-bridge which connects Nassau to Paradise Island. Since I have no interest in the Casino and the golf-course has only recently been restored, I seldom trouble to cross it. At that hour in the morning the gamblers, the tennis players, the waterskiers and sunbathers were asleep; the helicopters and the yachts not yet in motion. Only a few other cars besides the Ford Anglia crossed the bridge with me: contractors for the development company; early-morning golfers like myself. It is warm for golf by mid-morning in the Bahamas, and some people still have work to attend to.

  Wallace Brady awaited me at the golf-course, which is on the right, or eastern, end of the island. Although several luxury hotels and duplex villas have been created, and the excellent beach is fully equipped, some of Paradise Island is still largely jungle, and the straight avenues of pines dissolve into unmade roads edged with scrub, partly cleared here and there for new sites.

  Bought originally by M
r Huntington Hartford, it bore the name Hog Island, I understand. The new packaging, I have no doubt, will match the new brand name chosen for it. Hog Island, to my mind, is the more honest appellation: both simple and etymologically sound.

  However, my views on such subjects are not generally the popular ones. I drew up outside the low, canopied entrance of the golf- club, greeted Wallace Brady without undue fuss, and brought my clubs round the corner, where he had already hired an electric golf- cart, a sorry sight. We entered, and he put his foot down and drove off.

  I should here mention, I think, that golf, a game played in Scotland largely by the unemployed, is in America and those countries adjacent to her coasts regarded as a highly esoteric pursuit,.followed largely by the middle-aged and the elderly, and requiring real wealth and leisure. The equipment and facilities, as Johnson had noted, are all accordingly priced for this market in addition, naturally, to the obvious cost of maintaining in prime order many acres of grass which in Scotland would be watered, free, by the elements. For all these reasons I have noticed that if an American can afford to play golf at all, he can usually afford to do it better than anyone else.

  Mr Wallace Brady, self-styled acquaintance of Bartholomew Edgecombe and working on Great Harbour Cay, was an American. The first hole was over three hundred yards long, a dog-leg to the north: par for both, 4. I took out a Wilson X31 No. 1 wood, flexed my knees, dug in my unlined Gullanes with white aprons and replaceable spikes, and swung.

  There was a whicker and a click, and my ridiculous American ball flew, straight as a rule, well over two hundred yards down the fairway. Wallace Brady said, ‘I knew it. I’ve asked to play ball with a tiger.’

  ‘Not a tiger, Mr Brady,’ I said. ‘Just an average player from Scotland.’

  There is no virtue in exaggeration, after all.

  To describe the round would be tedious. Paradise Island golf-course is scenically attractive, with coconut palms, flowering bushes and a small lake stocked by coots, whose wooden bridge we crossed in the golf-cart. An advantage perhaps in the long American fairways, these are still to my mind no substitute for a caddy. However, I am, I know, a reactionary.

  I played well that morning, and the two balls I shot into the rough I recovered, although on the fourth I had to play a tricky chip shot from the sand. The fourth, fifth and sixth at Paradise all run by the sea, and I have known couples break off their game to sit on the rock-strewn white sand and foster their sun-induced cutaneous cancer.

  But then, on an American course one can hardly tell golfers from sunbathers. Brady, at my side, was moderately dressed in thin stone- coloured trousers and a knitted white shirt with short sleeves. But three of the foursome behind us, I noted, sported all the atrocities of bright shirts and long coloured Bermudas: one overweight person in a straw hat was playing in his bare feet. For golf, I have always worn an Orkney tweed skirt with a low inverted pleat at the back, and oversocks with good shoes. If one wishes to play properly, one must be properly dressed.

  I won that hole, and Brady the next, which reduced my slight lead, but not enough to concern me: I was clearly the better player of the two. As we turned from the sea I noticed, a little way out in the channel, the long white lines of a gaff-rigged ketch tacking idly in the light wind: her power boat was quite clearly missing. Someone on Dolly had risen early this morning. I wondered who was ashore. Spry or Johnson; and where. The thought gave me confidence, and at the next hole I got a birdie which Brady, unlike many of his sex, took in good part. After the doubtful start at the Trueman Hotel, I was finding him mildly congenial.

  He kept his good temper even at the end when we finished our nine holes, he one over and I one under par. There was time for coffee, but he would not consider help-yourself instant on the terrace and asked me instead to wait and accompany him to the hotel. Thus it was that I entered the pro’s shop to look round while he paid for the cart.

  As usual, the golf-bags looked like elephant howdahs, and there was a display of crossed irons which would have done credit to the Great Hall at Inverary itself. The guest-book was open on the counter, where he had written our names, and below it were the names of the players behind us, including the foursome whom I could now hear playing the ninth. Three of the names gave Nassau addresses: the fourth gave no address at all, not even Scotland.

  But the name was MacRannoch. T. K. MacRannoch. The name of James Ulric’s despised heir.

  It was the merest coincidence, but I always prefer to make certain. I walked out of the pro’s shop, almost bowling over Wallace Brady, who was coming to find me. I had no time for Brady just then. I was looking at the fourth, sober member of the gaily dressed foursome, who was occupied, head bent, in holing an extremely difficult putt. He looked up, smiling, and I saw that my native sixth sense had not failed me. The player was Japanese.

  ‘What’s the pitch?’ said Wallace Brady eventually, after we had driven in silence to the hotel complex, walked through the darkened casino with its covered tables and clicking, glimmering rows of one-armed bandits and up through the simulated leopard-skin to a lounge where we could sit and have coffee. ‘You don’t like playing golf with poor performers? I thought gilt-edged was weakening there for a bit.’

  He had, after all, paid for the round. ‘I beg your pardon,’ I said. ‘I enjoyed the game very much. I dare say I have more practice than you do. I play whenever I can.’

  ‘Outside Mickey Wright, I don’t know who you’d have trouble beating,’ said Brady. ‘Did you ever think of becoming professional?’

  I have, of course. There is a great deal of money in golf. But one needs money, or backing, to start with. I said, ‘Some day, perhaps. My father has multiple allergic sensitivity, and it will be difficult to leave Nassau until he improves.’

  He had an extremely deep suntan, in which his eyes were quite pale, but the eyeballs unveined and apparently healthy. It was hard to guess his profession. ‘You miss your home, Dr MacRannoch?’ he said.

  Across the lounge I had just spotted the back of Johnson’s head. The question reminded me of my anger. ‘Unfortunately,’ I said, ‘I have little chance to do so. My father is head of a Scottish clan , Mr Brady, and is prone to bring his surroundings with him, wherever he goes.’

  ‘His drapes, you mean?’ He looked slightly bewildered.

  ‘His clansmen, I mean,’ I said, no doubt with some grimness. ‘Didn’t you see the register at the clubhouse? T. K. MacRannoch.’

  ‘You don’t say?’ He looked duly astonished. Then he said, ‘Well, I wouldn’t bawl out the old man too quickly. There are an awful lot of Scots in the Bahamas.’

  There may be, but they are not all MacRannochs. The word gets round. Even among the unwanted, like T. K. MacRannoch, the word travels like typhoid. I said, ‘I knew it. Father is planning a MacRannoch clan gathering.’

  ‘Here?’

  I wasn’t thinking of Brady. I was thinking of James Ulric’s bronchial spasms.

  ‘Here, or at the Begum’s house,’ I said, on reflection.

  ‘But,’ he said, ‘I thought the Begum spent the winter at your castle in Scotland?’

  I stared at Wallace Brady with surprise, and then with increasing suspicion.

  I hadn’t told him that. I had no desire to talk about the Begum, who is the decayed English widow of an extremely rich Indian prince, and who annually rents Castle Rannoch as a shooting-lodge from James Ulric MacRannoch.

  While he disports himself in the sunshine, the Begum Akbar from the time of my senior schooldays has moved into the castle with her clothes, her butler and maid, and using our gillies, our cook and our house staff has killed deer and fished salmon and shot our grouse with her friends.

  I had never met her. I would never go home when she was there, and I had avoided her house here on Crab Island by Nassau. It was she who had found our present villa and rented it in advance for my father. It was because of the Begum, I was sure, that James Ulric had come to Nassau at all. They were welcome. I do not care for lif
e on the edge of a Barclaycard.

  But I had said nothing of all that to Brady. I said, ‘How do you know that? You knew about Father before I mentioned him to you?” And. as an unlikely thought struck me. ‘Mr Brady. What do you do for a living? On Great Harbour Cay?’

  To do him credit, he looked me in the eye as he answered. ‘My firm has a project there,’ he said. ‘A big constructional project. I’m a civil engineer, Dr MacRannoch.’

  There was a deadly and sundering silence, fully understood by both contributing parties.

  ‘You build bridges,’ I said. I opened my handbag, selected my car keys, snapped it shut and stood up. ‘I’m sorry I can’t introduce you to my father .’ I said. ‘He has built five bridges, Mr Brady. And those were five bridges too many. Thank you for the golf and the coffee. Good-bye.’

  He didn’t say anything, but half-way to the door a thought struck me, and I went back to give him the benefit of it. ‘You might go back to the golf-course and try Mr T. K. MacRannoch,’ I suggested.

  The hospital was busy when I drove in under the blue arch: there had been a triple crash in Bay Street and a British frigate had called on her way south for combined exercises; which meant sixty pints for the blood bank and a long, robust queue of A.B.s calling four-letter words to the nurses while poor Currie, the lab technician, sat inside draining them off in batches of four.

  It was needful to keep our blood stock replenished. But I sometimes wondered if the naval platelets storming through the Bahamian vascular system were not the source of the strange tribal love-rock appeal of New Providence Island.

  However, it was cool as yet, which cuts down the casualties; and too early for the rum and meths drinkers, so we got through the work unimpeded, and by mid-afternoon I was able to look in on Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe, about whom I had already taken advice. Although there was no cause for anxiety, renal function after the second attack had undoubtedly been more seriously impaired than the previous day, and was not responding to treatment as well as it should. Dialysis was indicated, and after this had been settled, I walked through the private wing to inform Sir Bartholomew.