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

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Johnson moved across to the drinks table, and uncapping the whisky bottle began to pour three neat doubles into three heavy tumblers. ‘You may have blown your cover, Bart,’ he said crisply, ‘but I’m damned if you’re going to blow mine.’

  ‘You’ve made your point,’ Edgecombe said. He paid no attention to the drink Johnson laid by his side. Edgecombe said, ‘I suppose I can’t expect you to come to Nassau for the funeral? There won’t be anyone else.’ His eyes were bloodshot as if he had had a blow on the head, but I thought his training showed, if nowhere else, in the remarkable grip he had taken again on himself. Johnson offered me a whisky and I snapped a refusal. I wasn’t in the bloody Spoonmakers’ Union.

  Johnson sat down. ‘Doesn’t Denise have any relations?’

  Edgecombe shook his head. ‘A few distant ones in the south of England. They couldn’t afford to come, and wouldn’t care anyway. She . . . she’d made her life with me.’

  ‘But you left her alone a good bit, didn’t you? Didn’t she resent that?’ Johnson said.

  Edgecombe shut his lips and put the back of his hand to his mouth. I walked across and standing between Edgecombe and Johnson, put my hands on my hips. ‘What possible business is it of yours?’ I said to Johnson. Pleasantly, I trust.

  Edgecombe said, his hand still over his face, ‘He gets twenty-five thousand a year for asking that sort of question. At this sort of time.’

  ‘Was she alone a lot?’ Johnson repeated. He might not have heard me.

  ‘Yes. But she had friends,’ Edgecombe said.

  ‘Did you know who they were?’

  ‘Not all of them. I couldn’t,’ said Edgecombe with sudden bitterness. ‘Go here: do that: we want this code broken by Monday. . You know this business. I had a wife. I’m sorry. It was a mistake. But I’d had her a long time, long before I entered your stainless profession. I loved her . . “

  ‘Did she love you?’ said Johnson. ‘Or was she bored and resentful, and open to suggestions by anyone with enough money? Suggestions which would make her a comfortable widow . . except that she didn’t live to become a comfortable widow. Because Denise talked too much when she had too much planter’s punch, didn’t she? Who made up the crab sandwiches you took to New York, Edgecombe?’

  Edgecombe’s big, well-groomed face had gone white to the lips. I said sharply, ‘Drink this!’ and gave him the whisky Johnson had poured. He started to speak; and then, as I looked at him, drank it off in one gulp. He put it down and got to his feet and stared at Johnson, until his breathing allowed him to speak.

  Then he said, ‘All right. You said that, with Denise lying dead in that diabolical quarry out there. She fell on a harrow . . . can you imagine that? I expect you can; you’ve seen plenty of violent deaths in this job. Before that she was suffocated - by gas, by a cloth - it doesn’t matter. You can imagine that, too. I’d like you to. You can further imagine that we slept here last night, Denise and I, and had breakfast together this morning. I shaved, she dressed. We talked of the day, and our plans for tomorrow . . She was looking forward to her golf . . ‘

  He stopped, still breathing hard. I made a little movement, but he waved me off. ‘Beltanno was too good a player. I realized what had happened. Denise wasn’t strong-willed. She didn’t need to be. She had me . . most of the time. She knew her own weaknesses, and we supported one another. She wasn’t spiteful, she wasn’t anything but a nice, pretty woman who was perhaps a bit vain . . ‘

  He looked straight at Johnson. ‘She doesn’t deserve on her deathbed to be accused of murder and treason. I don’t deserve that the first posthumous words I hear of my wife are the suggestion that she wanted to kill me.’ He stumbled, and I put my hand on his elbow and kept it there. ‘You may withdraw your attention from Great Harbour Cay,’ said Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe. ‘As from this moment, I have resigned from your service. Whatever interest you have kindly heretofore taken in me, I deserve none of it now.’

  Through it all, Johnson had not even moved. His glasses, motionless, reflected the chair, the table. Edgecombe’s pale face and the blue of my beach shirt, as I stood and supported him. I had forgotten I was still in my swim-suit. The anger I was suppressing became a strengthening pain in my stomach. I controlled myself. Johnson said, levelly, ‘As soon as you are exposed as an agent, your career as an agent is ended. Nothing has changed.’

  ‘Something has,’ I said with satisfaction. ‘I put a strong sedative in Sir Bartholomew’s whisky, Mr Johnson. If you want to distress him still further, I suggest you come back in two hours.’

  Johnson said, ‘Is he distressed?’

  I had Edgecombe’s pulse under my fingers. I said, ‘Would you like to come and feel this?’

  Johnson shook his head. He was looking at Edgecombe. Sir Bartholomew stared back at him. I could feel his weight press on my arm as the drowsiness gathered. Edgecombe said, ‘I told you the truth.’ The rancour had gone out of his voice.

  ‘I know,’ Johnson said. ‘But I had to be sure. We swear loyalty ten times over to our employer, and mean it. But we cover up for the person we love.’

  Edgecombe said, his voice gentle, ‘She wasn’t mixed up in anything. Not Denise,’ and Johnson, walking forward, stopped, ignoring me, and took Edgecombe’s other arm, turning him towards the shut bedroom door. ‘You would know. I accept that,’ he said. He walked Edgecombe to the door and opened it on the empty bedroom. ‘I never apologize for the inexcusable,’ he added.

  Sir Bartholomew put one hand on the doorpost and with the other patted my shoulder. ‘You see? Brains and tenacity,’ he said. ‘Should I accept his apology?’

  ‘He didn’t offer one,’ I said grimly.

  ‘Oh. My mistake,’ said Sir Bartholomew vaguely. But he smiled at Johnson before he turned in the door, and closed it gently behind him. And below the bifocals Johnson’s lips, I saw, stirred in an answering smile.

  It had disappeared when he turned towards me. ‘That was interfering of you, Doctor,’ he said. ‘But not as disastrous this time as it might have been. If you could take a moment now to veil your splendid nubility. I should like to see where Denise Edgecombe died.’

  I didn’t speak to him even after I dressed. I cannot remember addressing a word to Johnson through all the dreadful, drawn-out proceedings of the long day. The police came, and another doctor, and questions were asked, but in a climate of reverent pity. Lady Edgecombe had died from a fall, after being made dizzy by the inadvertent use of a gas tarpaulin. So all the experts said, and who were Johnson and I to contradict them. Or perhaps it was because of Johnson, behind the scenes, that the formalities were so smoothly completed.

  Denise, taken from her resting-place in the nurse’s tidy white trailer, was flown at last to Nassau, her husband beside her. Johnson let them go, and restrained me also from following. ‘There is nothing you can do. He will be under the eye of the hospital, and besides, he can take care of himself.’

  ‘I want to go to the funeral. I was their guest,’ I said. They were the first words I had spoken to him directly, since that sadistic discussion that morning.

  ‘He doesn’t want you. I’m sorry, but that is the truth. He doesn’t want anyone. And I wish you to come to Crab Island,’ Johnson said.

  We were back in Bart Edgecombe’s empty house. I was watching his maid pack up Denise’s things, and Johnson, french windows open, was standing on the sundeck over the golf-course, absently filling his pipe. ‘A splendid idea,’ I said. I picked up an ashtray and, marching out, placed it on the table beside him. ‘A big, cheerful party with the Begum and James Ulric, and who? Krishtof Bey ogling and Sergeant Trotter giving his famous imitation of a Royal Canadian Mountie on top of a camel. That’ll soon cheer us up.’

  ‘You’d find it compatible compared with the clubhouse,’ he said. ‘Stage people hate death.’

  ‘Who doesn’t?’ I said. I badly wanted a quarrel.

  ‘Some people come to terms with it,’ Johnson said. ‘The Begum, for one. And your father, f
or another . . . Why didn’t you tell me about Pentecost’s family?’

  ‘I meant to make some inquiries myself,’ I said brusquely. And so I had. Only there had been so little time. I said, ‘Who told you? Dahlia?’

  ‘Eventually,’ Johnson said. ‘She disappeared after you saw her, and my people only found her this morning. By then it was too late.’

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  ‘The family had gone from Bullock’s Harbour. Someone put two and two together and guessed that the water-tower would lead us to Dahlia. They left yesterday to go work on Abaco. So they said. Of course, now there’s no trace.’

  I was silent. I had meant to do that myself, when I first set foot on Great Harbour Cay. Instead I had swum, and bought myself clothes and listened to the doctor birds on the hibiscus bushes. And had lain on a beach chair with Paul’s warm hand massaging my spine, while Denise Edgecombe fell to her death. Johnson said, ‘I know Bart asked you to stay here. But it would send you crazy, Beltanno.’

  ‘So would Crab Island,’ I said.

  ‘It won’t,’ he said. ‘Or if it does, I’ll bring you straight back to this house. Or to Nassau. Or anywhere else you want to go.’ He paused, and then said, ‘I’m taking Wallace Brady over with me . . Do you know, Beltanno, what it means to finish a job?’ And I understood that. No apologies for the inexcusable: no reference, either, to Pentecost. I thought of Brady’s voice indignantly refuting my own ironical suggestion. Leave things long enough and they’ll find their own answer.

  Whatever one thought of Johnson, he was concerned at the moment with bringing the author of two deaths to light. And for that he wanted my help. I didn’t want to go to Crab Island. I wished to avoid the Begum, more than ever in the company of my father. The friends she surrounded herself with, I did not know. The three I knew, Brady, Krishtof and Trotter, were each still men of mystery: figures of unproved suspicion. And Johnson himself I distrusted, after this morning.

  He had been watching me, while lighting his pipe. He took it out of his mouth. ‘Have you ever seen,’ he said, ‘a bronchial patient being lambasted out of a spasm? Perhaps you’ve had to do it for your father.’

  I had, twice. I didn’t say anything.

  ‘It isn’t pleasant,’ he said.

  The maid had finished. I walked back into the room and turned on one of the lamps. I thought of my own lapse with Pentecost. ‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘it may be necessary.’

  He came in and stood in the doorway, the lamp igniting the bifocals, the pipe glowing red in his hand. He had extraordinarily thick dense black hair, with no hint of grey. But he was older, of course, than I was. ‘Sometimes it shouldn’t be,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘Denise Edgecombe should not have died.’

  I looked at him. ‘You said yourself. Who could have stopped it?’

  ‘I could,’ said Johnson. ‘I personally. Big Daddy, could. But I didn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ I said. He had had, I think, a shade more whisky than even a Top Person could carry with no sign at all.

  But he had not had as much whisky as that. ‘Probably because you had that blue thing on at that airport.’ he said, sticking his pipe in his mouth. ‘How many inches above the knee did it come? Ten? Twelve? . . I want you to wear the blue thing on Crab Island, Beltanno. And the swim-suit. And everything else you’ve got. Don’t become a case history. Mix your professions like me.’

  ‘Do you need me on Crab Island?’ I said.

  I thought he was going to quip for an answer, but he didn’t. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘In the Spoonmakers’ Union?’

  ‘In close affiliation to it. A Tong, perhaps.’

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  We dined briefly in the clubhouse, beleaguered at a table with Mr Brady and Mr Tiko, to whom with some misgivings I introduced Johnson Johnson.

  I had no need to worry. Johnson, it was clear, had not heard of the heir to the MacRannochs. Mr Tiko on the other hand had heard of Johnson Johnson. They discussed Japanese painting, to the confusion of the long chain of well-wishers who came to commiserate with us over Lady Edgecombe’s sudden death, and to inquire in the nicest possible way into her domestic circumstances.

  We separated early, Johnson to sleep in a rented roundette for the night, I to retire alone in the Edgecombes’ silent big house. But first, he came in and watched while I checked the mesh frames at every window, and locked the french windows. I had my gun by my bed.

  ‘I fancy you’re safe, with Bart away, but it doesn’t do to take risks. Nervous?’ he asked.

  I shook my head, as near truthfully as makes no difference. One takes one’s precautions. Then it is merely a matter of willpower.

  ‘Good girl,’ said Johnson.

  ‘And Bart Edgecombe?’ I said.

  ‘I give you my word,’ said Johnson. ‘Nothing will happen to him in Nassau. And after it’s over, I’m bringing him back on Crab Island with me.’

  I remember concealing my rising horror, and tackling instead the more domestic connotations of this statement. ‘Heavens,’ I said. ‘How big a house has the Begum?’ For guests with the Begum Akbar never meant seven blow-up mattresses on the sitting-room floor. It meant seven bedrooms with full personalized plumbing. We, who had been forced to put in all those extra bathrooms in Castle Rannoch, were sorely aware of it.

  Crab Island was a half-mile across. ‘And the sewage!’ I added, as my stream of consciousness began to run faster.

  But Johnson Johnson merely gazed at me through his bifocals. ‘Good-night, Doctor. I won’t spoil the surprise. Wait,’ he said, ‘till you see it.’

  TEN

  We set off for Crab Cay next morning, Wallace Brady and I, in Dolly’s white 50 m.p.h. Avenger launch, Johnson at the wheel. Brady, neatly and rather formally dressed, was not in a talkative mood; and neither was I. I noted that the approach road and first span of Brady’s bridge were already in position not far from where we embarked. The outline of Crab Island was quite visible from the shore of the larger island, and we followed the line of the new bridge all the way, tying up where the piles at the Crab Island end already stood in the water. There was a small jetty, without a great deal of weather protection, off which Dolly rested at anchor.

  We climbed out of the speedboat on to the jetty, and into a green Daimler convertible, which was waiting there empty. Johnson again took the wheel. ‘Green is the Akbar colour,’ he said. ‘And philanthropy their habit. You should see the Akbar elephants campaigning for Family Planning. There’s been a population explosion of tigers, because the elephants are all pooped with handing out condoms.’

  The jetty ended. A uniformed man at the entrance to a low modern bungalow unlocked a pair of wrought-iron gates and saluted, and the Daimler swept on to a broad metalled road edged with Japanese fuchsias, royal palms and oleander bushes. We passed a man in two shades of green, spraying them. A large scarlet butterfly trembled past.

  Brady said, ‘That’s a -’ and Johnson lifted one hand from the steering-wheel and waved with it. ‘It is. They buy them in and release them. Same with birds. Ever seen a doctor bird, doctor bird?’

  ‘Frequently,’ I said.

  ‘They’re a damned nuisance, aren’t they?’ said Johnson. ‘Whoa.’

  The Daimler came to an expert short halt. Overhead were tall pines, their spaced and interleaved branches like fruit espaliers,. each feathered in dark silky green hair. In front of us, crossing the road with their salmon necks looping, was a small flock of flamingoes. They stepped with great deliberation, their elbows like pink coral beads on pink needles. Their feathered bodies could be worn with an eye-veil at weddings. One came close and gazed pupil to pupil with Johnson, its yellow whorled eyes glistening over its thick black-tipped beak.

  ‘Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Virgil,’ said Johnson.

  ‘The kiss of the sun for pardon, The song of the birds for mirth, One is nearer God’s heart in a garden, Than anywhere else on earth. Dorothy F. Bloomfield,’ said Wallace Brady, surpr
isingly.

  I’d been to the Ardastra Gardens too. ‘These flamingoes are the unique gems of the tropical bird world,’ I said helpfully. ‘Miniskirts and midriffs are not allowed. Lack of modesty breeds contempt.’

  Johnson took the bird by the beak and turned its head firmly away. ‘That wasn’t contempt. That was just one of the dirty old men of the tropical bird world,’ he said. ‘I could see its Polaroid camera.’

  It was, I suppose, a short dress. Wallace Brady gave me a hesitant smile. I hadn’t the strength of mind not to smile back. And yet, what shaft of brilliance had called forth this tribute of manly comradeship? In a nutshell, my knees.

  The drive continued between flowers and trees for a considerable distance, considering the size of the island. Johnson reassured us that it was all done with mirrors, and we were still back to back with the Ghost Train. He seemed to have forgotten Lady Edgecombe’s death in the thrills of forthcoming reunion with Trotter.

  We passed a gazebo, a fountain, a bridged pool with duck, a dovecote and two marble statues. ‘Miniskirts and midriffs are not allowed,’ said Johnson chidingly. Stables, tennis-courts, shuffle-board. The glimpse of a pool. The roofs of staff houses, discreetly tucked away behind a landscaped wood of coarse orchids. An avenue of firs, which turned with a sweep at the end. ‘Shut your eyes, Doctor,’ Johnson said.

  Nonsense.

  A moment later he looked in the mirror and said coolly, ‘What are you scared of?’

  I shut them.

  The car turned the corner, slowed and ran to a quiet halt. ‘Open them, Doctor,’ Johnson said.

  I opened them.

  In front of us rose the Begum Akbar’s house on Crab Island. I didn’t examine it, floor by floor and window by window. I didn’t even speculate on the number of rooms she had, or what promoted the unique and unusual ground plan.

  I didn’t need to. The Begum’s house on Crab Island was an exact copy, turret for turret and stone for stone, of Castle Rannoch in Scotland. She had built James Ulric a second home, here in the Bahamas.