Vineyard Deceit

by Philip Craig

  He raised a brow above an expressionless eye. “Yes?”

  “Mr. Jackson has some questions,” said Helga.

  “Has he? Well, please come in.” He stepped aside. His words were polite, but his voice was like his face, dark and cutting. A voice like a saw, like a knife, like his profession.

  We went in. There were soft chairs near an open window overlooking Edgartown Harbor. Through the window I could see the Edgartown waterfront beyond the anchored yachts. The spire of the old whaling church was clear and white. A large yawl was leaning into a gentle northeast wind as it tacked out past the town wharf. That same wind was soft and cooling as it rustled the curtains at the window. We sat down in the chairs.

  “May I offer you wine?”

  “I thought wine was not drunk by Muslims.”

  “Ah, not by many, perhaps, but by me. Yours is said by some to be a Christian country, and though I see no great evidence of that save in the number of churches in your towns, perhaps I should quote your Saint Paul, who advised us to take a little wine for our stomachs’ sake and for our oft infirmities. Or shall I cite the poet Khayyam, who held that since beautiful girls and wine were the promise of heaven they were also to be enjoyed on earth?” His hooded eyes were deep beneath his brows. “Or, perhaps,” he said, “you would like coffee. I have that too.”

  “Nothing,” said Helga.

  “Nothing,” I echoed.

  “Then I will enjoy this vintage alone,” said Nagy, bringing a decanter and glass to a table beside his chair. He gestured toward the window. “A lovely view. We have a few such yachts in Gwatar. They are like beautiful sea-birds. What are your questions, Mr. Jackson?”

  “You have a pistol. I’d like to see it.”

  His eyes floated toward Helga, then came back to me. “As you no doubt are aware, I have diplomatic immunity, Mr. Jackson. I need tell you nothing. May I ask why you’re interested in my pistol?”

  “Yes. Willard Blunt was shot to death with a 7.65 mm Beretta pistol manufactured for the Sarofimian military. It’s not the sort of gun that’s seen on Martha’s Vineyard. If you don’t have your pistol, it could be that yours was the one that killed Blunt.”

  “Ah. And I might be a suspect in the killing. A murderer, perhaps.”

  “Maybe. Can I see your pistol?”

  He surprised me. “Of course.” He got up and went through a door on one side of the sitting room.

  “Adjoining bedrooms on both sides,” said Helga, nodding at another door opposite the one Nagy had exited by. “I think that Zakkut and Youssef shared that room while they were here.”

  I nodded. Zakkut, the Padishah’s physician and political advisor, and Dr. Omar Youssef, the curator of the National Museum of Sarofim. Both now with the Padishah in Washington, I imagined. Nagy came back to his chair and handed me a pistol.

  It was a Beretta 9 mm Parabellum. I dropped the clip out. Full. I snapped the slide back and a round popped into the air. Nagy’s hand flashed, and he caught the bullet before it hit the floor.

  “It’s dangerous to hand loaded weapons to people,” I said.

  “All weapons should be presumed to be loaded, Mr. Jackson.”

  True enough. I looked at the pistol, then replaced the magazine and handed it back. “Is this the pistol you were carrying when the Padishah nearly ran us down with his cigarette boat?”

  “As I recall, Mr. Jackson, on that day you very gallantly stepped between me and the woman who had just pushed my master overboard. You had a look at my pistol then. What do you think now? Is this the weapon?”

  “I don’t know. I do know that this isn’t one of the weapons that Beretta makes for the Sarofimian military.”

  “My master’s private security force is a branch of the Sarofimian military. We are armed with the standard weapons, I assure you. With exceptions, of course.”

  “Such as this weapon for yourself?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “How do you think Willard Blunt happened to have a Sarofimian pistol?”

  “I’m sure you have a theory.”

  “Not really. Could he have stolen yours?”

  “Stolen my pistol? Do you imagine that an elderly and ill man such as Blunt could steal my pistol?” Nagy’s thin lips actually formed a smile.

  “It’s possible. There were some light fingers on Chappy last weekend. Did any other member of the Padishah’s party carry a pistol?”

  “Only the master himself and he, being a great fan of James Bond motion pictures, insists upon arming himself with a Walther PPK 7.65 mm. Sometimes he even carries it in a Burns-Martin triple-draw holster. It is a constant worry to me, as you might guess. Of course I need not tell you about his weapon, since you took it away from him only last Saturday night.”

  True. “You haven’t answered my question. Is this the pistol you were carrying on the boat that day?”

  “And if it is not?”

  “Then Blunt may have been shot with your pistol.”

  “And I may be a suspect in that shooting.”

  “Not necessarily. If I were you and I wanted to murder Blunt and make it look like suicide, I certainly wouldn’t leave my pistol in his hand. That doesn’t make sense.”

  The Colonel turned his wineglass and held it against the light from the window. The wine swirled like a huge liquid ruby.

  “I’d have used another pistol,” I went on. “And not this one here, either.”

  “Indeed? And why not this one?” The Colonel sipped his wine.

  “This one’s brand-new. It can be traced to a dealer. It doesn’t even look like it’s been fired. I think you might have gotten it in Boston on Monday. Did you?”

  “My dear fellow, I am impressed.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Helga, adjusting her skirt to rid it of some imperfection of appearance that I could not see. “Blunt drove you into town on Sunday to meet with Spitz, the FBI man . . .”

  “Yes. We met Spitz at his Edgartown hotel at seven to discuss the case. Afterwards, I told Blunt that I planned to walk home. Blunt went on to visit a friend. I stayed a bit longer with Spitz, then came back here, as you know.”

  “Arriving very late.”

  “Yes. I walked through the town for a time, stopped for a drink, then walked here from the ferry.”

  “Or from the parking lot where Blunt was shot.”

  Nagy’s hand passed over the pistol on the table and took up the decanter. He poured himself another glass. “But, madam, the ferryman has testified that he brought me over and saw me walking in this direction.”

  “Yes, but perhaps Willard Blunt was waiting for you down the road.”

  He gave her an admiring look. “I have often advised His Majesty to employ more women in his secret service, but he is a child in many ways. He uses them or abuses them, but never appreciates their subtlety. Perhaps it is time that I told you the truth about that evening.”

  20

  “I am a peculiar fellow,” said Colonel Ahmed Nagy. “I am sworn to defend and serve my Padishah with my life and will do that. But, I tell you, my young friends, my Padishah is a child in a man’s body. He is willful, impatient, cruel, sometimes kind, ever in need of a father or a guide to advise him, yet resentful of that advice. He is well educated, yet is a man without thought. If he were not a Padishah, he would be a petty rug dealer, a seller of second-rate olive oils, a voyeur peeping through screens at other men’s wives and daughters, a man of no consequence or potential.

  “But he is the Padishah and is therefore a person of consequence, a person with enemies, a person, in this case, who needs to find that necklace and bring it home to Sarofim. And I am ordered to find it now that it is lost.

  “Shall I tell you that although I have dedicated my life to serving His Majesty, I find my work on this planet to have no more meaning than that of a cloud moving across the sky or a great stone settling deeper into the dust? I am, like your Hemingway’s Jacob Barnes, not capable of being engage. Like Khayyam, my religion is to
be free of belief and unbelief. Yet I have sworn to serve and am, thus, obliged to act as though my work is of significance while knowing that it is not. Am I making myself clear? No matter. I will now tell you the tale of last Sunday night.

  “In the early evening I arranged to meet with the FBI man, Spitz, at his hotel. Blunt drove me there, and the three of us discussed the matter of the missing necklace. We had little information to exchange, but spent perhaps an hour considering the case. Blunt then said he was going to visit a friend. It was a beautiful moonlit night, as you will recall, and just as it has sometimes been my practice in Sarofim to walk in the desert while I consider problems arising from my work, so I determined to walk home to the Damon house while I considered the issue of the missing emeralds. On my way to the ferry, I strolled through the streets of Edgartown and even stopped for a glass of wine at a bar overlooking the harbor. Very lovely. One day, perhaps, the harbor at Gwatar will host as many fine yachts. But I digress.

  “It was perhaps ten o’clock when I crossed to Chappaquiddick on the ferry and walked along the highway. The moonlight was bright on the water, the sand was silver. I thought of my wife, so far away, and wondered if she or our children ever thought of me. Then, ahead, on the side of the road, I saw a Jeep. It was Damon’s Jeep, the very one that Blunt had driven when we visited Spitz. Blunt was in the driver’s seat and he beckoned me to join him. I was rather mindless, I believe. I got in, and he suggested that we drive to a place overlooking the ocean and talk. I was agreeable, and we drove to that very spot where he was later found dead.

  “Immediately in front of us was a short cliff. Beyond it was a span of sand and grass, and beyond that, the ocean. The sand was white, and the moonlight danced on the waves. I remember everything perfectly.

  “Blunt said, ‘Look out there,’ and I did. Then I heard the sound of a revolver being cocked and turned my head and saw, indeed, an old-fashioned revolver in Blunt’s hand. It was pointed at me. I recognized it immediately as a Webley .455 caliber. We have them in the national armory. Such weapons were once the standard officers’ sidearms in the Sarofimian military. I was sure I was going to be killed. Would it interest you to know that I was very detached about it?

  “I had my pistol under my shirt. Blunt took it from my belt. He said, ‘Tell the Padishah that the necklace is beyond his reach. Tell him that I took it and that he will be strangled with it by his enemies. Tell him it is wergeld for a girl named Periezade.’

  “I understood then that I was not going to die. He ordered me out of the Jeep and told me to give his message to the Padishah. I walked along the roads to the Damon house, first over a sandy road, then along pavement, then over sand again. The moonlight was brilliant, and the shadows were fathomless. I was all alone. Never had the world seemed more beautiful to me, more mysterious, more alluring. It took me almost an hour to reach the Damon house. There, I told His Majesty what Blunt had said. He became furious, then almost hysterical. He ordered me to force Blunt to reveal the whereabouts of the necklace. He insisted that the FBI, the police, Thornberry Security, seize Blunt. I pointed out that the authorities would have only my word about Blunt’s conversation with me and that, in America, respectable men such as Blunt could not be questioned with the same techniques as are sometimes used in Sarofim. Finally, Dr. Zakkut quieted him and gave him a sedative and they began to speak of the political consequences of the theft.

  “In the morning we received word of Blunt’s death, apparently by my weapon, and realized that even greater political complications might result from his use of that weapon. Zakkut immediately contacted young Standish Caplan, and we all flew off to Boston so His Majesty could go on to Washington. It was decided that I should return here to try to find the necklace. As you know, I have not found it.”

  Nagy turned his glass in the light from the window. He drank and looked at us with those hooded eyes. “Is that the story you want? Does that clarify any matters for you? You are perhaps pleased that your guesses were so astute?”

  “You bought this pistol in Boston, then?”

  “In my profession a pistol is necessary. You understand.”

  “Yes. And Blunt shot himself. You did not shoot him.”

  “I did not shoot him. Someone else may have.”

  “What about the revolver you say he had? It hasn’t been found.”

  “No one’s looked for it,” said Helga.

  “Indeed,” said Nagy, giving her an appreciative look. “If I were to seek it, I’d not search far from the spot where Blunt’s body was found.”

  “There’s another matter,” I said. “A little bird has whispered in my ear that some people from a foreign land have bad intentions toward Mrs. Zeolinda Madieras and me. You and your boss are the only people I know who might fit that description, and I want you to understand that I will take considerable umbrage should anything unseemly happen to Mrs. Madieras.”

  The Colonel almost smiled. “And what of yourself, Mr. Jackson? Should something unseemly happen to you, will you also take umbrage at that?”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “I have seen Mrs. Madieras only once, but my impression of her is that she too is quite able to take care of herself.” The Colonel looked at Helga Johanson. “As are you, I understand. Such a country. Common men and women treating the Padishah of Sarofim as if he were no better than a beggar. Tsk. He is unaccustomed to such rejection. What is the poor fellow to think?”

  “That Martha’s Vineyard is not Sarofim.”

  “It is my understanding that His Majesty will be returning to his own country in a very few days.” His eyes roamed about the room, settling here and there for a moment and then passing on. “Tell me about your little bird, Mr. Jackson. A cock or a hen? An owl? A hawk? A dove?”

  “Only a voice speaking in my ear, Colonel. Perhaps you will whisper in His Majesty’s ear that if he is one of the persons of whom my bird spoke, he might be well advised to change his plans about Mrs. Madieras.”

  Nagy’s hand stretched across the table beside his chair again, passing over the pistol lying there. He took the decanter of wine and refilled his glass. “His Majesty is not always receptive to recommendations that he change his plans. He is, after all, a Padishah.”

  “One last thing. Mrs. Madieras was kidnapped last Friday night and released unharmed this past Tuesday morning. She was blindfolded all that time, and her captors never spoke to her. Do you know anything about that?”

  Nagy actually looked interested. The hoods lifted momentarily from his eyes. “Kidnapped? Really? And not harmed? Not even raped?”

  “No.”

  “Astonishing. Such a desirable woman. I confess I am surprised by this tale. I assure you that I know nothing of the matter at all.” The hoods lowered again. “From Friday until Tuesday, eh? Much occurred between those times. Do you want my first thoughts on the subject?”

  “Yes.”

  “She is lying about the abduction. The timing is too coincidental. She is involved in the theft of the necklace.”

  “She’s not lying.”

  “Spoken like a man in love, Mr. Jackson. I am not a man in love. Calm yourself, sir. Surely you cannot believe that I intend to harm Mrs. Madieras and at the same time believe that I had her in my custody and did not harm her. You must choose one or the other of those theories, not both.”

  “I don’t think you abducted her, but I think someone did. Who might that be, do you suppose?”

  He shrugged. “Is she a foolish woman?”

  “She is not.”

  “Then perhaps I’m wrong about her lying. An intelligent woman would create a more likely story to explain her absence. Do you agree?”

  “Yes.”

  “Unless she is clever enough to know that we would think that.”

  “You live in a convoluted world, Colonel.”

  “Yes. I regret that I can be of no assistance to you in this matter. I will think upon it, however.” He sipped his wine. “Oh, by the way, shou
ld any of the information I’ve given you become public, I will, of course, feel free to deny it.”

  I got up. “Of course.”

  “But of course you will tell your superiors.”

  “Of course.”

  Downstairs, Helga Johanson looked at me. “Well, that was enlightening. A kidnapping, eh? I hadn’t heard of that. I’ll telephone the police and give them Nagy’s story. Maybe they can find that revolver. If they can, it will lend credence to the Colonel’s tale. And there’s this matter of the little bird whispering in your ear. I want to know everything. It might all tie together.”

  “So you’re not going to leave this enigmatic stuff to us manly men, eh? Okay. I’ll give you the details tonight while you’re squandering your boss’s money on me. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

  I drove to Amelia Muleto’s house. It was mid afternoon, and the sun was hot. No one answered my knock, so I went around the side of the house and found her out back weeding her vegetable garden.

  “Just in time,” she smiled, sitting back on her heels. “I’m ready for a cup of tea.” She put out a hand, and I pulled her up. “Thanks. I don’t suppose I could interest you in some tomatoes or zucchini . . . ? No, I thought not. Come in, dear.”

  Over tea we discussed Zee’s adventure. “Spooky,” said Amelia. “I can’t imagine what it was all about. Thank goodness she wasn’t hurt. I’m so grateful for that.”

  “Me too. Was Willard Blunt here on Sunday night about eight o’clock?”

  “Yes. Poor Willard. He didn’t look at all well. And just a few hours later he was dead. Quite shocking.”

  “The autopsy revealed that he had cancer throughout his body. Did you know about that?”

  She nodded. “Ah. Yes, I did. He confided in me, but asked me to keep it to myself. He didn’t want sympathy, you know. Said that he’d had a long and good life and had no complaints. He was in considerable pain, however, and that bothered me. He was on some sort of medication. That last night he seemed quite frail, I thought.”