The Far Side of the Sun (13 page)

‘I was collecting donations for the Red Cross and he was generous enough to oblige. But what’s your interest in Mr Morrell?’

The young woman looked down at the biscuits, at a trail of ants marching across the stone flooring, at her own hands wrapped together in her lap, all without saying a word. When finally she raised her eyes, they had changed. Something dark had pushed forward in them.

‘He’s dead.’

A
whoof
of air rushed out of Ella’s lungs and her hand flew to her throat. The young woman picked up the jug, poured lemonade into one of the glasses and placed it in front of Ella.

‘Oh no, that’s terrible. So sudden. I’m sorry. What happened?’

‘He was stabbed. I found him in an alleyway the night before last,’ she answered. ‘I tried to save him but… he didn’t make it.’ She shook her head.

‘Who did it?’

‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m here.’

The air was growing cooler as the rain slapped down on the glass roof of the verandah, slithering down it, leaving tracks like snails.

‘How did it happen?’ Ella asked.

‘I don’t know. Morrell told me nothing.’

‘Have the police been informed?’

‘Yes. But they know nothing either.’

Ella took a sip of lemonade. Her mouth was dry. ‘How horrible for you.’

The chestnut head seemed to sway forward as though about to say more, but instead she picked up a biscuit and regarded Ella in silence.

‘Why have you come to me?’ Ella asked, baffled.

Dodie Wyatt replaced the biscuit and drew something from inside her pocket and set it down in the middle of the table. It was a gold coin, gleaming even in the dull morning light, an old coin that would be called something like a doubloon or a noble, something equally odd. Ella wanted to touch it.

That’s the thing about gold – it is fantastical. It is all-powerful, it corrupts the soul. It hypnotises the mind. The coin of the devil. Yet it decorates and debases churches across the world.

She recalled the words she’d heard spoken by Sir Harry Oakes the night before last, soft and seductive.

Go on, Morrell, take it. Free your soul
.

She remembered Morrell’s grunt of gratification, as the gold won. Saw the sweat on his neck.

‘Mrs Sanford?’

Ella dragged her eyes from the coin.

‘Mr Morrell asked me to give you this coin.’

The girl placed a scrap of paper on the table top in front of Ella and stood her glass on the corner of it to prevent it blowing away. On it was Ella’s name. At once she recognised the bold handwriting. It belonged to Sir Harry Oakes.

‘Why,’ Dodie Wyatt asked, ‘would he do that?’

The quiet intensity of her voice scarcely reached across the table because of the buffeting of the trees.

‘To be honest, I don’t know. Believe me when I tell you I didn’t know him. I met him once for no more than five minutes and —’

‘When was that?’

‘The night before last.’

‘That’s the night he was killed.’

Ella glanced out of the window at the driving rain that was enclosing her world in a chill grey overcoat. She unhitched her fingers from her glass and rose to her feet.

‘Let’s go inside.’

The drawing room was warmer, but this time neither woman sat down. The inlaid rosewood cabinets with their fine Meissen porcelain, the delicate marquetry tables and the jade silk curtains felt formal to Ella and she noticed the way they both stood more stiffly, facing each other in the centre of the room.

‘Why would he send me to you with such a coin?’ Dodie Wyatt asked bluntly. ‘He must have meant something by it.’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Have you seen the coin before?’

‘No. It doesn’t make any sense to me, I’m sorry.’

That should have been the end of it. Miss Wyatt should have said her goodbyes and left, so Ella was taken by surprise when her visitor stepped closer.

‘You’re lying,’ the girl said softly.

‘Don’t be so rude, Miss Wyatt. Or I will have to ask you to leave my house.’

‘I’m not being rude. I just want to find out the truth about Mr Morrell. I owe him that much.’

‘It strikes me that you owe the man nothing at all if he was a stranger to you.’

‘Mrs Sanford, my house was burnt down last night and I lost everything I own. I believe it happened because I helped Mr Morrell, so I need to find out all I can about him.’

‘How ghastly for you. I’m sorry.’

Ella picked up a tortoiseshell cigarette box on a nearby table. She didn’t usually smoke till cocktail hour, but she needed one now. She offered a cigarette to Miss Wyatt and when it was politely declined, she lit one for herself.

‘If you are so keen to discover the truth,’ she said through a skein of smoke, ‘why didn’t you take the gold coin and that piece of paper with my name straight to the police?’

It happened in the blink of an eye. The girl changed. She took a step backward and a flush of crimson flooded up into her cheeks.

Ella became concerned. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Tell me.’

The girl stared down at her sandals. ‘It’s just that I reported a crime once before. No one believed me, not even the police. They all said I was a trouble-maker. I lost my job because of it and no one else would employ me until Miss Olive took pity on me and gave me a chance at the Arcadia Hotel. If I go to the police with a story about Mr Morrell and it drags you in as well, they might…⁠’ The words jammed behind her lips.

‘They might rake up the past and see you as a trouble-maker again?’

A silent nod.

‘So why not leave this alone?’ Ella urged. ‘What is Morrell to you? Or to me? We know nothing about him. He is just a ripple on the surface of this island. For heaven’s sake, he was only here less than twenty-four hours, so —’

The chestnut head shot up. ‘How do you know that?’

‘He told me.’

‘So you
do
know something about Morrell.’

‘I remember he mentioned that he’d come over that morning and was leaving that night.’

‘Anything else?’ Her eyes were bright once more.

‘No, I’m sorry, that was all.’

‘I wanted to speak to you first,’ the girl explained. ‘That’s why I came here.’

‘I’m very glad you did. I’m not connected in any way with Mr Morrell, I swear to you. All I did was bump into him while out on the stump for the Red Cross.’

‘So go to the police,’ Dodie Wyatt said earnestly. ‘Tell them that. And tell them what you won’t tell me – where you met him.’

‘I’m sorry, I can’t do that.’

‘Why not?’

Ella frowned. ‘I am married to a diplomat who works every day alongside a lot of powerful people to keep this beautiful little island afloat. He can talk for England on how important it is to keep connections open and the business of government and commerce flowing freely. The murder of a solitary stranger is sad and, yes, it’s horrible – I readily admit that – but it’s not worth disrupting the system for. The good of the island comes first.’

Dodie Wyatt’s eyes were looking at her as if she were speaking a foreign language.

‘Why would it disrupt the
system
?’ she demanded.

‘Because…⁠’ Ella sighed. How do you explain to a young and innocent mind the way things work to maintain the fine balance of diplomacy? ‘You know what it’s like yourself. To be tainted. A trouble-maker. People don’t let you forget something like that. If I label someone as the person who introduced me to Morrell – someone involved with a murdered man – despite all protestations of innocence, rumours would start. It will do damage to him. I’m not willing to do that.’

Dodie Wyatt moved away from Ella towards the door.

‘Mrs Sanford, maybe you’ve been married to a diplomat too long.’

Today was Ella’s Red Cross day at the hospital. It was her turn in the children’s ward to sit with Gus, massaging his small lifeless legs on the bed. He insisted on singing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ to her, because his father was fighting somewhere over in France and would be wearing the Armour of God on his chest. Gus’s eyes shone with certainty. Only seven years old and recovering from poliomyelitis, he helped Ella buckle the heavy metal callipers on his thin legs and held on to her as she walked him a few fumbling steps up and down the ward.

A burst of laughter erupted at the far end of the ward where Ella saw a familiar neat dark head hard at work. It was the Duchess of Windsor. The Duchess liked to laugh and she liked to be active. Forty-seven years old but constantly doing something, as if she didn’t dare keep still. Always wrapping bandages, straightening sheets, combing hair. In her crisp Red Cross uniform she drew eyes effortlessly. The nurses were besotted and the doctors scurried about finding excuses to examine patients in whatever ward she happened to be on.

During the last two years, Ella had watched with admiration the way in which Wallis Windsor had thrown herself into the role of the wife of the Governor-General, with an energy that would exhaust most women half her age. She visited clinics, schools, hospitals, setting up a canteen for the Bahamian Defence Force and a hostel for survivors of bombed ships. Ella often joined her to go dancing with servicemen to boost morale or at tea parties for them at Government House, and the Duchess was as industrious at looking for ways to improve the lot of black Bahamians.

Ella walked down to her. That’s what happened when the Duchess entered a room – people were drawn to her the way a pot of honey draws flies. Ella was willing to admit that Wallis Windsor could be imperious when she wanted to, sharp-tongued and certainly capricious at times, but Ella liked and respected her for her passion for life.

The Duchess lifted her head at Ella’s approach, finishing pinning a nappy in place on one of the infants. ‘Ah, Ella, just the person I want to see.’

‘Good afternoon, Your Highness.’

‘I saw Freddie de Marigny last night and he scared me with a story about you being attacked on the way through town yesterday.’ Her violet-blue eyes swept over Ella with concern. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, it was just my poor Rover that bore the brunt. Tilly Latcham and I got a bit of a fright, that’s all.’

‘I bet you were scared witless, you poor thing.’

‘We did make rather a fuss, I’m afraid.’

‘So you should, my dear Ella. You can’t always play the sensible and helpful wife role, not all the time. You’re allowed to scream sometimes, you know.’

‘They hate me.’

They were in a small sluice room, just the two of them, and the Duchess was staring moodily out at the rain sheeting down outside. She was smoking a cigarette in an ebony holder, the muscles at the corners of her wide jaw flexing back and forth.

‘Who hates you?’ Ella asked.

‘The British public. But even more, the royal family. They hate me for stealing away their king.’

‘Oh, you’re exaggerating, ma’am. They were disappointed to lose him, of course they were, but they don’t hate you.’

‘Then why do they vilify me in their press? As though I am the devil incarnate.’ She turned her gaze from the window and raised a finely arched eyebrow at Ella. ‘Your Prime Minister Churchill wants to destroy me.’

‘No, he’s probably trying to distract the public eye from the number of tons of shipping sunk in the Atlantic last month. Tucked it away in a bottom corner somewhere, while you are paraded on the front page to attract public attention. See it as doing your bit for keeping up morale.’

The Duchess laughed, a low sultry sound. Her hand touched her throat, fingered the tendons and the pearls.

‘That bitch,’ she muttered, stubbed out her cigarette in the sink and lit herself another. ‘She has everything – the throne, the titles, the jewels, the palaces, the adoration of the gullible public.’ She shrugged. ‘I could go on…⁠’

‘Please, don’t, ma’am.’ Ella smiled and tossed the sodden cigarette butt into a bin. ‘I might talk in my sleep and what would Reggie think if I murmured your comments?’

Wallis laughed again but her face looked strained and her shoulders tense. She was a small thin woman, not exactly attractive, yet oddly compelling, a strange mix of masculine bone structure with Southern belle charm which she had the wit to know when to turn on.

‘They’ve said no again,’ she told Ella.

‘To the title?’

‘Yes.’ She was being denied the title of Her Royal Highness, the usual form of address for a royal duchess, but she craved it nevertheless. ‘Churchill has just refused my husband’s latest request for it.’

‘I’m sorry, ma’am.’

Wallis narrowed her eyes at Ella. ‘Believe me when I say it all comes from that bitch in Buckingham Palace.’ Her eyes sparked with annoyance and her Southern accent grew more pronounced. ‘And now that she’s queen, she goes around saying that she’s glad that Buckingham Palace has been bombed because it means she can look the East End of London in the face when it is ravaged by bombs night after night.’

‘I suppose it’s true.’

‘Oh, Ella! She lives in a house with six hundred rooms, for Christ’s sake. She owns five other houses. Their royal estates pile food as high as a goddamn mountain on their plates while the rest of the nation squabbles like cats over a measly pat of butter or an egg. Rationing is vile. And she is a hypocrite.’