One Hour to Kill

by George Harmon Coxe

  This seemed proof enough that it was this Negro, with or without Anderson, who had jumped him last night, but even as the thought came to him he realized that there was no point in making any accusation. He had not told the police about this part of the story and he could not mention it now. Later, if he got boxed in a corner, he might have to tell the rest of it but at the moment he contented himself with asking a simple question.

  “You weren't here last night around ten or so, were you?”

  “Me?” Anderson’s brows bunched and his surprise seemed genuine. “Hell, no. You saw me at the Tavern.”

  “That was earlier,” Wallace said. “How about later?”

  “I was home.” Anderson jabbed a finger at the Negro as he climbed into the back seat. “Jeff here can testify to that.” Wallace watched the car drive away and saw that Oliver was waiting at his elbow. His glance was evasive as he took off his straw hat and cleared his throat, his attitude not unlike that of a small boy with a confession to make.

  “Sir,” he said tentatively.

  “Yes, Oliver.”

  “About last night, sir. There’s something I didn’t tell you.”

  “Oh?” Wallace said, his curiosity coming alive.

  “I didn’t know until Ernestina told me.”

  “All right. What is it?”

  “Ernestina has a bad tooth. She say last night it give her the miseries. She don’t tell me. She stay quiet beside me so I think she is asleep but she isn’t. She heard two cars come.”

  “When?”

  “She says this is after you leave the second time. After that— she doesn’t know how long—this car comes and stays maybe ten minutes and leaves. Soon there is a second car. She knows this because it has a different sound. This car does not stay long. A few minutes only. Then you come and right after that the other car leave.”

  Wallace tried to put the facts together. The second car just mentioned was undoubtedly the one he had seen but not identified. That there had been an earlier car was interesting but of no help at the moment. When he realized it was pointless to speculate without more facts he filed the information away for future reference.

  “She didn’t hear anything more?”

  “She say no. After that she go to sleep right quick.” Wallace thanked him. He said it might be just as well not to volunteer the information if the police came back. He said he had some things to do now and that if anybody came to see him Oliver could say he didn’t know when Wallace would be back.

  11

  The late morning traffic was heavy as Dave Wallace approached Marine Square, and as he came to a stop behind a line of waiting cars he wondered where the name came from. For Marine Square was not a square at all in the accepted sense of the word but a wide, tree-studded mall that separated two sides of the pavement and ran close to the water front for eleven or twelve blocks to form the basic downtown section of the city.

  The cruise ship he had seen the night before at the head of King’s Wharf had been replaced by a blue-gray, modern-looking freighter, and as he drove slowly along South Quay he glanced back and saw, farther out, one of the shallow-draft ore carriers which brought back bauxite from the Guianas. He found a parking place not far from the customs building, locked the car, and carried his jacket over his arm as he walked along Queens Wharf, which served as a terminal for interisland sailing craft.

  He knew that Nick Rand sometimes anchored off the yacht club, but the schooner had not been there when he drove by and he had no difficulty in locating it now. The rest of the boats, the large ones all schooners, were black-hulled and native-built. For the most part without auxiliary power, they were broad-beamed and rugged-looking, the mainsails gaff-rigged, the small deck houses jerry-built and dirty. Rand’s Sea Witch was as different from her working sisters as a cup defender from a catboat. Originally designed and built in Nova Scotia, she was perhaps sixty-five feet over-all, with sleek but seaworthy lines, her blue hull and white trim immaculate.

  An awning had been rigged aft to provide shade and Wallace was pleased to see that the owner was aboard. A colored man, naked to the waist, was swabbing the deck forward and Rand, equally naked and barefoot, was relaxing in a canvas chair, a bottle of beer in one hand, a soiled yachting cap cocked on his long blond hair, and a newspaper spread across the knees of his dirty white ducks.

  “Okay to come aboard?”

  Rand glanced round and put the newspaper aside. “Permission granted.” He gestured with the beer bottle and indicated a nearby camp stool as Wallace stepped carefully on deck. “Sit down. How about a beer? . . . Esteban!” he yelled to the deckhand; then, as Wallace shook his head: “Scratch that. Carry on.”

  Wallace would have liked a beer but in the light of things he was going to say he was reluctant to accept that sort of hospitality. He sat down and folded his coat on the deck.

  “What brings you here?” Rand said, leaning back and folding his arms across his muscular and darkly tanned chest. “Where’s the paint brushes and easel?”

  Wallace considered the handsome face. The broad grin seemed genuine and the gray eyes beneath the sun-bleached brows had humorous lights in them. He had been told once that he and Rand looked something alike but he considered the resemblances minor ones. Rand was an inch or two taller and certainly more ruggedly built. The color of their hair was similar except that Rand’s was worn longer and bleached about the edges. The eyes had about the same value if not the same color, but Rand’s neck was thicker, the face muscular rather than lean and angular. That muscularity was evident in the naked torso and somehow, as his glance shifted, Wallace saw the glint of metal on the left hand, which was still clamped on the other bicep. Focusing, he saw that this was a heavy gold signet ring. It was on the third finger rather than the little one but he knew now that he might have been mistaken about the hand that clamped over his mouth the night before. The ring could have been on the third finger, couldn’t it? . . .

  The question hung in his mind as he realized Rand was waiting for an answer. “No painting for me this morning,” he said. “Have the police been here yet?”

  “Police? You mean the Harbor Police? Why the hell should they? I’m clean with customs.” He laughed and said: “If you’re thinking about that little unpleasantness last year, forget it. I’m a good boy when I come in here now.”

  He tipped the bottle and let some beer run down his throat. He glanced out across the harbor and chuckled again.

  “I’ve got a better racket now. Safer too, by God. There’s not much money in it but I found out it doesn’t pay to be too damn greedy. What started it is that new Premier they have in Barbados. He put the taxes up so goddam high on rum that a guy in my line of business would be crazy not to take advantage of it.”

  He looked at Wallace and began to expand the theme with obvious enjoyment. “Suppose I have a four- or five-day charter with maybe three couples. I tell the Barbados customs chaps I’m going out for ten days and I’m going to need plenty of booze. They don’t care how much rum I take out so long as I don’t bring it back. So maybe I put aboard ten cases—in bond. Right from the distillery warehouse.” He lifted the bottle to emphasize the point. “That means no tax, which is the major part of the cost, and everybody’s happy. When I get to St. Vincent or Grenada a chap comes out in a small boat and takes off maybe eight cases. At twenty-five a case profit, that’s two hundred dollars, not a fortune but a nice little bonus.

  “That other time,” he continued, his voice both amused and reminiscent, “I’d been up to Martinique. I don’t get up there too often but when you go to Martinique you don’t fool with rum. You put plenty of champagne and brandy aboard. Still in bond, you know? So I brought it in here and made the mistake of getting caught. I got off with a fine but when I come in here now I behave. Hell, if I was going to make a business of it and go for the big dough I’d take my chances with Venezuela. Do you follow me?”

  “I follow you,” Wallace said. “But I wasn’t thinking of the Harbor
Police. I was thinking about the other police.”

  Rand frowned and the gray eyes were suddenly wary. “And what would they want with me?”

  Wallace had told his story at varying lengths to the police, to the Carvers, and to Joe Anderson. Now he told it again, hearing Rand’s startled comments and questions without paying much attention to them. What he had to say required little thought and he considered again the bits and pieces of information that he had picked up about the man.

  Much of this had come from Fay, who not only had an overdeveloped sense of inquisitiveness but was also, when properly stimulated by alcohol, a gossip. Rand, he knew, came from a prominent Montreal family and had eventually acquired the status of black sheep. He had managed, after three tries, to get a prep-school diploma but his behavior in college made him a sort of journeyman student who never did get a degree. There was also, Wallace knew, a wife and child somewhere in Canada, at present being supported by Rands family.

  He had come first to Barbados on a holiday. When he decided to stay and see if he could get into some line of business the family was apparently happy to put him on an allowance if only he would stay there. Certain ventures he had tried met with a little success and he had made a final appeal to his family for enough cash to buy the Sea Witch from a fellow Canadian who had sailed her down and run out of money.

  A small diesel had been installed and the interior completely refitted so that there were three small but comfortable double staterooms, two showers, and a roomy main cabin. The increasing popularity of the islands with the Canadians and Americans who wanted to escape the winters had come at the right time and Rand’s charter business had prospered. From what Wallace had heard, it cost a party a thousand a week plus a daily charge for food and liquor. For shorter charters he charged sixty U.S. dollars a couple per day, plus extras.

  He understood that Rand had a small beach cottage on the leeward coast of Barbados, and although he was seldom there this was more or less his headquarters. For the most part the area he cruised was triangular in shape and extended from Barbados to St. Vincent, down the Grenadines to Grenada, and then either back to Barbados or southward to Port-of-Spain. Now, considering these things, Wallace remembered another bit of information that had come from Fay which seemed highly important in the light of what he knew.

  Rand had nearly lost the schooner last September when he had been caught at the edge of a hurricane. The Sea Witch had suffered the loss of both masts and most of her sails as well as considerable topside damage. The boat had been out of commission for several weeks while it was being refitted and Rand had found it necessary to borrow ten thousand dollars to cover the cost of the work. According to Fay, the money had come from Herbert Carver. A note had been given for that amount and it occurred to Wallace now that if such a note was still outstanding Rand might well have a motive for murder. Deciding to find out about it if he could, he listened to what Rand was saying.

  “It’s a rough deal all around but”—he put the empty beer bottle on the deck—“I still don’t see why the police should bother me.”

  “They’ll probably want to check on all Fay’s boy friends.”

  “Boy friend?” Rand grunted softly. “You mean because I took her out for a couple of weeks?”

  “I got the impression that Fay thought there was more to it than that. If you ask me, she was pretty sore about it.” He hesitated, and decided to do a bit of bluffing. “She fell for you and you turned her down for Lorraine.”

  “Oh, come off it, Wallace. I’ve got women in all the islands. You know what they say about sailors. One in every port. I’ve known Lorraine for over a year. Were good friends. It’s the same way with Carver.”

  “Does he still have your note for ten thousand?”

  “Yes. What about it?”

  “How long is it for?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, is it a three months’ note or a six months’ note—”

  “It’s a demand note. Why?”

  “Fay could make a lot of trouble if she didn’t like you.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “She was also pretty vindictive when she'd been drinking. I just wondered if she threatened to go to Herbert Carver.”

  “Carver?” Rand said as though he’d never heard the word. “Why the hell would she do that?”

  “Carver may be a friend of yours but I have an idea he’s in love with his wife. If he thought Lorraine was running around he might be a little more sensitive about it than a younger man. If he wanted to get tough with you he could call that note. He could attach your schooner and maybe put you out of business.”

  Rand folded his arms again and eyed him coldly. “Look, old boy,” he said. “You’re talking rot, you know.”

  “I’ve flown over to Barbados several times on Saturday morning,” Wallace said, persisting. “On two of those flights Lorraine rode with me.”

  “What the hell are you driving at?” Rand demanded. “Everyone knows she goes over there every couple of weeks. It’s a regular thing.”

  “She goes over every other Saturday morning,” Wallace said. “Comes back either Sunday night or Monday morning. What does she do during that time besides get her hair done and see her dressmaker?”

  “She’s got friends there.”

  “On one of those trips while I was trying to peddle my paintings I noticed your schooner tied up in the careenage. That would indicate that you were available in case Lorraine wanted company.”

  “So?” Rand said, his face as blank as a wall.

  “Another time I saw you and Lorraine having a drink at the Patio.”

  “Well, why not for God’s sake? I buy her a drink here when I see her.” He came to his feet and laughed again, a harsh, sardonic sound. “I think you’ve got a touch of the sun.”

  “You could be right,” Wallace said. He rose and looked out across the choppy surface of the Gulf. He thought about the card he had in his pocket that told of a man named Leon Doucette who was a private investigator in Barbados. Not really believing that what he was about to say was true, but wanting to keep up the pressure, he said:

  “If there was anything going between you and Lorraine in Barbados, and if Fay happened to find out about it, she was the kind who might just go to Carver and blow the whistle. And this much I know: Fay had a date with somebody at the bungalow last night. I wasn’t smart enough to get the message but she started an argument just to get me out of the house. Somebody came down there to see her, not to kill her necessarily but because she knew something that was a threat of some kind to whoever it was that came. In the mood she was in, it wouldn’t be hard to lose your temper; to grab her by the throat and hang on a little too long. Right now I’m at the top of the list. I’m going to make sure I’m not alone, so I’m including you, Nick.”

  As he finished he realized that Rand’s eyes had focused on some point beyond him. As he watched, a wry smile twisted the handsome face and the voice turned sardonic when he spoke.

  “If I didn’t know you better I’d think you’d been smoking opium, but I have to admit you’re right about one thing. You said the law might pay me a visit and here they are.”

  Wallace turned as Rand finished and now he saw the familiar black police sedan. Two neatly dressed Negroes were walking toward them and even from that distance Wallace identified them as Inspector Edwards and Sergeant Finley.

  12

  The Brittany Hotel was at the north side of the city, out beyond the Savannah and Government House. Until the new Hillside had been opened, the Brittany, possibly due to its excellent chef, was supposed to be the best in town, even though its exterior was unprepossessing at first sight. Located at the end of a one-way street that was hardly more than an alley, it had its rooms for the most part laid out in a quadrangle that enclosed the swimming pool. Separated from this by a low wall was the open-air dining room, and a second air-conditioned dining room stood on the other side of the small lobby.

&nbs
p; Coming up the steps to the main desk shortly before noon, Dave Wallace asked if Shirley Goddard was around. The clerk said she was but since Shirley was seldom in one place for long he couldn’t say where. The information counter and adjacent cubby were empty, but Wallace found her in the bar that featured air-conditioning and a sort of lighting that made it difficult for one to see what one was drinking. She was talking with gestures to three men at the far end and he waited until she saw him. She gave him a small salute of recognition and presently she joined him.

  “Are you in a drinking mood?”

  “Not even a lime squash.” She put her hand on his arm and squeezed, and the expression on her face and the odd distress in the green eyes told him that she knew about Fay.

  “You know what happened?” he said.

  “The police were here just a few minutes ago. I can’t tell you how shocked I was and how sorry I am.”

  “Yeah. Well, I’m glad I didn’t have to break the news.”

  “I can’t pretend I liked her,” she said as though she had not heard. “There were times when I think I hated her but—” She sighed and one hand moved unconsciously to her throat. “To have it happen that way. I mean”—there was a quick shudder of her shoulders—“I get the shivers every time I think of it.” She removed her hand and the green eyes narrowed slightly. “The police asked me a million questions. I guess you had to tell them I was there last night.”

  “I had to tell them everything.”

  “They seemed to think Fay was dead when we were there. You’d already told me she wasn’t. You said you’d looked in her room.”