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He had a long interview with the butler, Jefferson, who related to him the Governor’s unswerving habit of retiring to his walled garden about five each afternoon, to take a whiskey and soda before the sun went down. He asked how many people would have known of this ritual. Jefferson frowned in concentration.
“Many people, sir. Lady Moberley, Lieutenant Haverstock, myself, Miss Myrtle the secretary—but she away with her parents on Tortola. Visitors to the house who had seen him there. Many people.”
Jefferson described exactly where he had found the body, but he averred that he had not heard the shot. Later, this use of the word shot would convince Hannah that the butler was telling the truth. But he did not yet know how many shots there had been.
The forensic team from Nassau was working with Parker on the grass, looking for spent cartridges ejected from the killer’s gun. They searched deep, for careless feet might have trodden the small brass case or cases into the earth. The feet of Lieutenant Haverstock, Inspector Jones, and his uncle Dr. Jones had walked all over the grass on the night of the killing, erasing all chances of useful footprints.
Hannah examined the steel gate in the garden wall as the Bahamian fingerprint man dusted the steel for possible prints. There were none. Hannah estimated that if the killer had entered by the gate, as seemed to be the case, and fired immediately, the Governor would have been standing between the gate and the coral wall below the steps that led to his reception area above. If any bullet had passed through him, it should have hit that wall.
Hannah switched the attention of the team crawling about the lawn to the path of crushed conch shells that ran along the base of the wall. Then he went back to the house to talk to Lady Moberley.
The Governor’s widow awaited him in the drawing room where Sir Marston had received the protest delegation from the Committee for Concerned Citizens. She was a thin, pale woman with mousy hair and skin that had been yellowed by years in the tropics.
Jefferson appeared with a chilled lager beer on a tray. Hannah hesitated, then took it. It was, after all, a very hot morning.
Lady Moberley took a grapefruit juice. She looked at the beer with raw hunger. Oh dear, thought Hannah.
There was nothing really that she could contribute. So far as she knew, her husband had no enemies. Political crime was unheard of in the islands. Yes, the election campaigns had caused some small controversy, but all within the ambit of the democratic process. She thought.
She herself had been five miles away at the time of the shooting, visiting a small mission hospital on the slopes of Spyglass Hill. It had been endowed by Mr. Marcus Johnson, a very fine man and a great philanthropist, after his return to his native Barclays six months ago. She had agreed to become patroness of the facility. She had been in the official Jaguar, being driven by the Governor’s chauffeur, Stone.
Hannah thanked her and rose. Parker was outside tapping at the window. Hannah went out to the terrace. Parker was in a state of great excitement.
“You were right, sir! Here it is.”
He held out his right hand. In the palm, badly distorted, was the flattened remnant of what had once been a lead bullet. Hannah stared at him bleakly.
“Thanks for handling it,” he said. “Next time, shall we try tweezers and a plastic bag?”
Parker went pale, then scuttled down to the garden, put the bullet back on the conch-shell gravel, opened his murder bag, and took out a pair of tweezers. Several of the Bahamians grinned.
Parker laboriously lifted the crushed bullet with the tweezers and dropped it into a small clear bag.
“Now, wrap the bag in cotton wool and place it inside a glass jar with a screw top,” said Hannah.
Parker did as he was told.
“Thank you. Now put it in the murder bag until we can send it to Ballistics,” said Hannah. He sighed. This was going to be a hard slog. He was beginning to think he would have done better alone.
Dr. Caractacus Jones arrived, as requested. Hannah was glad to be able to talk to a fellow professional. Dr. Jones explained how he had been summoned from his home and surgery just after six the evening before last by Jefferson, who had been sent by Lieutenant Haverstock. Jefferson had told him he should come at once, as the Governor had been shot. The butler had not mentioned that the shooting was fatal, so Dr. Jones had brought his bag and driven over to see what he could do. As it turned out, the answer was, nothing.
Hannah led Dr. Jones into the late Sir Marston’s office and asked him, in his capacity as the island’s coroner, to sign a release for the body to be removed that afternoon to Nassau for a post-mortem.
In British jurisdiction, the court with the highest of all authorities is actually not the House of Lords but a coroner’s court. It takes precedence over every other kind of court. To remove the body from the island of Sunshine to the
territory of the Bahamas, a coroner’s order was required. Dr. Jones signed without demur, and then it was legal. Bannister, the junior staffer from the Nassau High Commission who had accompanied them to Barclay’s, typed the release on Government House notepaper. He had just installed the new communications system and was prepared to transmit.
Hannah then asked Dr. Jones to show him the body. Down at the dockside, the ice house was opened, and two of Inspector Jones’s police constables slid the cadaver of their former Governor, now like a frozen log, out from between the fish and carried him to the shade of the nearby warehouse, where they laid him on a door supported by two trestles.
For the press—now joined by a team from CNN out of Atlanta who had tailed Hannah all morning—this was wonderful stuff. They photographed it all. Even the Governor’s bed companion of the previous thirty-six hours, the marlin, got a spot on CNN’s Headline News.
Hannah ordered the warehouse doors closed to keep them out, and he made as thorough an examination of the rigid body beneath the layer of ice as he could. Dr. Jones stood by his side.
After peering at the frozen hole in the Governor’s chest, Hannah noticed a neat, circular tear in the sleeve of the left arm. Slowly he kneaded the fabric between his finger and thumb until his own hand’s warmth made the material more pliable. The frost melted. There were two such holes in the shirt sleeve, one in and one out. But the skin was not marked. He turned to Parker.
“Two bullets, minimum,” he said quietly. “We are missing a second bullet.”
“Probably still in the body,” said Dr. Jones.