Forty-seven minutes,” Gardner said.
He was watching his wristwatch as we stood on the balcony of my room at the British Colonial, while two squares of cloth burned in a large glass hotel ashtray at our feet. It was as if we were performing some arcane ritual. Smoke curled blackly, the acrid fragrance little diminished by the mild morning breeze. The fragments of unburned Westbourne bedding, which we’d doused in lighter fluid, were charred black.
“So it would have taken around that long, at least, for Sir Harry’s bed to have been similarly burned,” I said.
“Well,” Gardner said, eyes wide behind the gold wire-frames, “I’d suggest we douse those other samples in various other flammable materials-kerosene, gasoline-and see if there’s any difference in rate of burning.”
Lindop had been generous in the scraps of bedding he’d provided us; they had come, as I requested, from the unburned, unslept-in twin bed next to Sir Harry’s.
“I may bring an expert in to do that,” I said, “or send the rest of the scraps back to Chicago for testing. But for our purposes, this establishes that the killer or killers spent a longer period of time than forty-seven minutes murdering Sir Harry.”
“Not necessarily,” Gardner said, shaking his head. “The murderers probably left when the fire was still going.”
“But the feathers weren’t sprinkled on Sir Harry’s body until he was on the bed, with his pajamas burned off him. And the bedding was already burned to a crisp when Harry was placed there!”
“True,” he admitted. He gestured with an open hand. “So we’re talking more like fifty minutes to an hour, minimum.”
“Exactly. This killer-killers-were in no hurry.”
“Agreed,” Gardner said, nodding.
He still looked out of place in the Bahamas, in his green-and-brown Western shirt with bolero tie, and his chinos, against the incongruous backdrop of the white beach and vast blue-green sea.
“But I don’t think it was gas or kerosene, anyway,” I said, picking up the ashtray, moving back inside. “Maybe something with an alcohol base…”
“Why, Nate?”
In the bathroom, I ran water over the smoldering embers, which sizzled and smoked. “Ever see a gas fire, Erle? If that bed had been splashed with gasoline, the flames would’ve been eight or nine feet high.”
Gardner snapped his fingers. “And that ceiling would’ve been scorched as hell!”
I rinsed out the ashtray. “Or the goddamn house would’ve burned to the ground. Okay. Whose car shall we take? De Marigny’s or Hearst’s?”
He grinned. “Let the Third Estate take you for a ride.”
“I don’t know if I like the sound of that,” I said, but I let Gardner drive and this time I would man the wristwatch. But first we had to get to our starting point-de Marigny’s house on Victoria Street; I played navigator, pointing the way for Gardner.
The Lincoln was in the driveway.
“Looks like Nancy’s home,” I said.
“Shall we go in and say hello?”
“You wish,” I said, knowing how Gardner would relish an interview. “Drive on, Macduff.”
As Gardner guided Mr. Hearst’s rental Ford back down Victoria Street onto busy Bay Street, I kept track of the time.
“De Marigny left his house, with the RAF wives in tow,” I said, “around one o’clock. After he dropped them off at Hubbard’s Cottages, he claims he came back home the same route, via Bay Street. He says when he got home, he moved his spare car, the Chevrolet, from the driveway onto the lawn, so he could put the Lincoln away in the garage, which he did. Then he went up the outside stairs to the apartment over the garage, knocked on the door and spoke to his friend Georges de Visdelou, offering to drive Miss Betty Roberts, de Visdelou’s sixteen-year-old date, home.”
“Sixteen?”
“Yeah-and honey-blond and more curves than Miss America.”
Gardner frowned over at me. We were moving slow, caught behind a surrey on Bay Street, its horse clopping, bell jangling. “Who is this de Visdelou?”
“Another Mauritian…de Marigny’s cousin, a matinee-idol-type gigolo with no visible means of support, although his family is supposedly wealthy-a sugar plantation or something. Uses the title ‘marquis,’ and isn’t as shy about taking advantage of it as Freddie is. According to Higgs, the Marquis and the Count and the first Mrs. de Marigny had a notorious menage a trois that ultimately split up the marriage, but not the friendship between the two men.
“How continental,” Gardner said; his expression was that of spitting out a seed. A sour-tasting one.
“Anyway, de Marigny went back down the outside stairs to the driveway, went up the porch steps and in the front way and hit the sack.”
“Were his servants still there?”
“Yes,” I said. “And they back up his story.”
“Are they live-in?”
“No-they were just still there, cleaning up after the party. They were gone by two o’clock. At three o’clock Freddie’s dog and de Visdelou’s cat were chasing each other around, and when the cat jumped on Freddie’s bed, it woke him up. Shortly after that he heard de Visdelou taking the Chevy out, finally taking his date home.”
“You should always try to get sixteen-year-old honey blondes home before dawn,” Gardner said archly.
“Right-or their folks might worry. Anyway, de Visdelou was back in fifteen minutes, parked his car in the driveway, and Freddie told him to come get his goddamn cat.”
We picked up speed, the surrey having turned off at Rawson Square. Gardner was lost in thought. “What’s the approximate time of Oakes’ death?”
“According to Barker and Melchen, between one-thirty and three-thirty a.m.”
We both mulled that over. At one-thirty or one-forty at the latest, Freddie had been seen by his servants on Victoria Street; also, de Visdelou spoke to him at one-thirty or so.
Soon the big black gates inscribed Westbourne loomed ahead. No guard on the gate, today; the crime scene was apparently completely scrubbed down-no need to preserve what’s been destroyed.
“Thirteen minutes,” I said.
“Double that,” Gardner said, pulling in and stopping before the gate, “and it’s a twenty-six-minute round trip.”
“And the weather is perfect. That night, it was coming down in sheets.”
“Yes, but there wouldn’t have been surreys and sponge wagons to slow him down,” Gardner said, while the engine hummed. “Hell, man, you drove it, same damn night, same damn time-how long did it take you?”
“I wasn’t paying attention,” I said, “but I would guess half an hour easy, round trip.”
“So Freddie simply didn’t have time to murder Oakes, set the fire, do the voodoo routine, before he got home.”
“Not even close. We’re talking, at best, ten unaccounted-for minutes. I don’t even think those are there.”
Gardner backed out, pulled onto West Bay Street, and we headed into the city. “But he had between two a.m., when the servants left, and three a.m., when his buddy took Shirley Temple home.”
I was shaking my head. “De Visdelou and his date were awake, up over the garage, playing house or whatever. Could Freddie really take the chance that de Visdelou would hear him coming and going?”
“Maybe so,” Gardner said, looking over with a raised eyebrow, “if he figured de Visdelou was ‘coming.’”
I laughed a little. “Yeah, but he also might be going-Freddie had no way of knowing when Georges would finally tire of the blonde and take her home.”
“I see what you mean, Nate-cousin Georgie would surely notice the Lincoln was gone. Of course, Freddie could’ve just lied, if de Visdelou brought that up, and said the Lincoln was in the garage.”
“True. But it’s still risky as hell. How could Freddie chance de Visdelou running into him in the driveway, either coming or going?”
Gardner was nodding. “Besides which, the drive to and from Westbourne took half an hour, and the killing took a minimum of fifty minutes.”
“A bare minimum. Even at that, it totals eighty minutes-and there just aren’t eighty minutes available to Freddie to do the deed.”
“What if the time of death is off? What if our boy did it after de Visdelou got back from taking his date home?”
I thought that over, then said, “That was around three-fifteen. With the Lincoln in the garage, Freddie would’ve had to move, or use, the Chevy. The question is, did de Visdelou leave the keys in the Chevy, or somewhere else Freddie could have got access to ’em? Or did he hang on to them?”
“Whatever the case,” Gardner said, “I would say a lot hinges on this cousin of de Marigny’s. I hope this gigolo makes a good witness.”
Gardner had a point. I needed to talk to the Marquis, who after the arrest had moved out of the Victoria Avenue house, where he’d been living over Freddie’s garage, to an apartment over a bar on Bay Street, Dirty Dick’s, a place where locals and tourists mingled. Access to the Marquis’ apartment was by a wooden stairway in the narrow, sewage-smelling alleyway next to the popular Nassau watering hole.
I knocked on the white weathered paint-peeling wooden door; Gardner stood behind me on the small landing. He had promised that anything he heard on this fishing expedition would stay off the record. I believed him.
“Somebody’s in there,” the writer said. “I can hear ’em talking.”
I could, too, faintly. I knocked again, harder-knocked some paint flakes off.
The sound of speech within stopped, but there was still no response.
Finally on my third assault on the door, it opened. The pretty, puffy, pasty-white face of the Marquis de Visdelou stared at me with indignation, and dark, darting eyes. His brow was wide, his chin weak, his hair black and marcelled; he wore a white silk shirt open at the neck and dark slacks. In one soft hand was a large double-shot glass; it appeared to contain whiskey and ice.
His perfect little Clark Gable mustache twitched as he spoke in a French accent not as thick as de Marigny’s, but just as distinct. “I don’t wish to be disturbed. Please go away.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s important,” I said. “My name is Heller and I’m working for your cousin Freddie, trying to help his attorney clear him.”
For some reason this news made him cringe; he blinked nervously, long feminine lashes fluttering. He looked past me, at Gardner. “And who is this?”
“He’s assisting me.”
“Oh.” He pursed his lips. “Bien. Anything I can do to help Freddie.” He raised his voice; it did not seem to be for our benefit. “Please step in, gentlemen!”
We did, into a living room that was attractively furnished-matching burgundy-mohair-and-walnut sofa and easy chair, another chair with floral tapestry, coffee table, shaded standing lamp, oriental carpet. A Bahama seascape watercolor was framed over a well-stocked portable bar. A breeze and the noise of Bay Street ruffled the curtains of windows behind the sofa.
“Forgive the drab surroundings,” he said, gesturing dismissively. “I was forced to rent a furnished apartment, and the establishment downstairs caters to gauche tourist tastes.”
“How sad for you,” I said.
My sarcasm was lost on him. “Sit anywhere. Can I get you gentlemen something to drink?”
“Sure,” I said. “Rum and Coke, if you’ve got it. Erle?”
“When in Rome,” he said.
De Visdelou smiled condescendingly, went to his liquor cart, freshened his own whiskey, and poured us some Bacardi and Coke on the rocks. We had each taken a chair.
He served us, raised his glass and said something in French, and had a sip. So did we, except for the saying something in French part. He sat on the sofa, where he could lounge against the armrest; he seemed blase, but he wasn’t: a small tic played at the corner of one soulful eye.
“I would so very much like to help Freddie,” he said.
I glanced at Gardner, then looked hard at the Marquis. “You say that like there’s some doubt.”
His prissy mouth pursed, and he sipped the drink again. “Mr. Higgs called. We haven’t spoken yet-but I intend to ask him not to call me as a witness.”
“Why is that?”
“I gave a statement to the police…. It, what is the word? Corroborates Freddie’s story, to every detail. But in open court, on the witness stand…What I would rather do is leave this island, quietly, and not testify at all.”
I sat forward. Gardner’s eyes glittered behind the wire-frames; I knew he was kicking himself that this was all off the record.
“What’s wrong, de Visdelou? Were you lying for Freddie? To cover for him?”
He looked away from me. He seemed about to weep!
“What the hell is going on, de Visdelou!”
He swallowed thickly; he looked toward me, but the darting eyes wouldn’t land. “I’m afraid there are elements of Freddie’s story that will not…coincide…with what I would have to say.”
“Such as?”
He reached forward to the coffee table and popped open the lid of a silver box; he removed a cigarette, inserted it into a holder and lighted himself up with a silver lighter shaped like a horse’s head. The horse’s ass.
He gestured with the cigarette-in-holder. “My…companion for the evening…a young lady…I took her home much earlier than Freddie indicates.”
Gardner and I exchanged sharp glances.
“How much earlier?” I asked.
He shrugged; the breeze was riffling his silk shirt. “Immediately after the party.”
“Before or after the Count took those RAF dames home?” I asked, hoping to catch him.
“After…right after. We were gone probably at about the same time. But I returned sooner, because…my companion…lives only a few minutes from the Victoria Street cottage.”
“Fifteen minutes round trip,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“So you didn’t leave around three a.m. to take her home? And, earlier, Freddie didn’t knock on your door to offer to take her home for you?”
He smiled, as if happy to back up at least part of his friend’s account. “Oh, he did knock on my door around one-thirty…but merely to say good night.”
Gardner’s face was clenched with confusion, but I thought I knew what was going on.
“You’re a nobleman, aren’t you, Marquis?”
“I don’t think of myself that way,” he said, with a tiny smile that said he sure as hell did. He drew on the cigarette-in-holder.
“And you have certain codes of chivalry, that extend back to days of knights and maidens.”
My arch tone was getting under his skin; his smile was gone.
“What are you saying?”
“That you’re shielding that little blonde. She’s sixteen years old, she probably has parents in town, and you don’t want to go on the witness stand and let the world know you two were shacked up.”
“That’s the most outrageous thing I’ve ever heard!”
I laughed shortly. “I doubt that. I doubt I can even imagine the outrageous things you’ve heard, said and done in your Noel fucking Coward world.”
“I don’t appreciate your crudity.”
“I don’t appreciate your warped sense of honor. You’re going to sell out your cousin, your best friend, you’re going to put a goddamn rope around his neck, to protect the ‘good name’ of some little blond bimbo?”
“He’s right, Georgie,” a voice said.
A sweet, female, confident voice.
She was standing behind us, to our left, in a doorway that had been closed, but now stood open to reveal a glimpse of a bedroom; in her arms, held gently as if a child, was a dark gray cat.
Betty Roberts was a lovely fair-skinned girl with long, flowing blond hair that covered part of her face, Veronica Lake-style; silky-smooth, it brushed the shoulders of a blue-and-white polka-dot blouse that almost burst with her buxom youth. Her skirt was white and stopped just above the knees of million-dollar legs.
“Ah,” de Visdelou said. “My little pussy.”
I looked at Gardner and he looked at me; had we been sipping our rum and Cokes at the time, we’d have done spit takes.
The Marquis rose and went to Betty and patted the cat. “My little pussycat….”
Gardner and I traded smiles, rolled our eyes, and both rose.
“I’m Betty Roberts,” she said, handing de Visdelou his pussy. She strode over to us assuredly-she might have been sixteen, but she had the demeanor of a career woman of twenty-five. She extended her hand and I shook it.
I introduced myself, as well as Gardner (by last name only), who also shook her hand, and I said, “That must be the famous cat that awoke de Marigny around three in the morning.”
“It is,” she smiled. “Georgie! Let’s all sit down and talk frankly.”
He came over, holding the cat tenderly, petting it, and sat next to the cheerful girl on the sofa. She was arranging her skirt so that we could appreciate her crossed legs, within reason.
She looked at me with baby-blue eyes that were as direct as her boyfriend’s weren’t. “You’ll have to forgive Georgie. He has some very old-fashioned ideas. Believe me, this silliness wasn’t my doing.”
“My dear,” he said, “the local scandal…”
“Don’t be a silly ass, Georgie.” She smiled at me; her mouth was wide and her lipstick was candy-apple red. “I live with my mother, Mr. Heller, and she doesn’t always approve of my actions…but that’s her problem.”
“You have an interesting point of view, Miss Roberts.”
She threw her head back and the blond hair shimmered. “I don’t care what people think about me. I only care what I think about me. I may not be twenty-one, but I’m free and white and completely self-supporting.”
“She’s a cashier at the Savoy Theater,” de Visdelou said timidly.
“I don’t want you to worry about what Georgie is going to say on the witness stand,” she said. “You tell Mr. Higgs that both Georgie and I are willing and able to testify for Freddie. Every word Freddie said is true, and we can back him up.”
“I’m relieved to hear that,” I said.
The Marquis looked at her with admiration and lust. “You’re a wonderful child, Betty,” he said.
Somehow I didn’t think the child in this relationship was her.
De Visdelou handed Betty the cat; she petted it and it purred. “Miss Roberts is right,” he said, jutting his tiny chin. “As much as I treasure her good name, I can’t put my cousin’s life at peril.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll tell Higgs. Thanks for the drink.”
I stood, and so did Gardner.
“Oh,” I said to the Marquis. “One last thing-when you got back from driving Miss Roberts home, what did you do with the car keys?”
“Of the Chevrolet?” he asked. “They were in my pants pocket.”
“In your pants pocket, in your apartment?”
“Yes.”
“What sort of sleeper are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Heavy, or light?” I asked.
“Light,” the girl said.
He gave her a scolding look, and she smiled and shrugged.
I asked him, “Does Freddie have another set of keys?”
“Not that I know of.”
“All right. Thanks.”
He frowned; the cigarette holder was in his teeth now, at a raffish FDR angle. “Is that useful information, Mr. Heller?”
“It means Freddie couldn’t have moved or used the Chevy without entering your apartment and fishing the keys out of your pants.”
“Oh-well, he most certainly didn’t do that.”
“It would’ve woken Georgie,” Betty affirmed.
“I know,” I said. “By the way, this is Erle Stanley Gardner, the famous mystery writer. He’s covering the case for the Hearst papers.”
De Visdelou’s face fell and Betty’s lit up. He looked like he was about to whimper, and she looked about to squeal.
“Everything we’ve said is off the record,” I said, “but I’m sure he’d love to arrange an on-the-record interview.”
“That’s right, kids,” he said.
She grabbed de Visdelou’s arm; the cat on her lap seemed bored. “Oh, Georgie, can we?”
“We’ll discuss it,” he allowed.
“I’m at the Royal Victoria,” Gardner said, scribbling in his note pad, tearing out a page. “There’s the number of my room phone.”
She grabbed it eagerly, and, leaving the Marquis behind on the couch with his cigarette holder and his pussy, walked us to the door; she took my arm. She smelled good-like Ivory soap.
“Don’t be a stranger, Mr. Heller,” she said.
I didn’t know if that was a come-on, or just sheer friendliness. But either way, I didn’t pay much attention to her.
Unlike the Count and his cousin, I pretty much drew the line at dating teenagers.