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Drake nodded into his lemonade. “That’s what the men who put the nails into Christ said, Mr. Hannah.”
Hannah did not want to be drawn into politics or theology. He had a murder to solve. “You didn’t like Sir Mars ton, did you?”
“No, God forgive me.”
“Any reason, apart from his duties here?”
“He was a hypocrite and a fornicator. But I did not kill him. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, Mr. Hannah. The Lord sees everything. On Tuesday evening the Lord summoned Sir Marston Moberley.”
“The Lord seldom uses a large-caliber handgun,” suggested Hannah. For a moment he thought he saw a hint of appreciation in Drake’s glance. “You said ‘fornicator.’ What did that mean?”
Reverend Drake glanced at him sharply. “You don’t know?”
“No.”
“Myrtle, the missing secretary. You have not seen her?”
“No.”
“She is a big girl, robust, lusty.”
“No doubt. She is away with her parents in Tortola,” said Hannah.
“No,” said Drake gently, “she is in Antigua General Hospital, terminating a baby.”
Oh dear, thought Hannah. He had only ever heard her referred to by name. He had not seen a picture of her. White parents live on Tortola, too.
“Is she ... how shall I put it ...?”
“Black?” boomed Drake. “Yes, of course she’s black. A big, bouncing black girl. The way Sir Marston liked them.”
And Lady Moberley knew, thought Hannah. Poor washed-out Lady Moberley, driven to drink by all those years in the tropics and by all those native girls. She was resigned, no doubt. Or perhaps she was not. Perhaps she had been driven a bit too far, just this once.
“There is a hint of American in your accent,” said Hannah as he left. “Can you tell me why?”
“There are many Baptist theological schools in America,” replied Reverend Drake. “I studied for the ministry there.”
Hannah drove back to Government House. On the way, he considered a list of possible suspects.
Lieutenant Jeremy Haverstock undoubtedly knew how to use a gun if he could get hold of one, but he had no apparent motive. Unless it was he who was the father of Myrtle’s baby, and the Governor had threatened to break his career.
Lady Moberley, driven too far. She had plenty of motive, but she’d have needed an accomplice to rip off that steel gatelock. Unless it could have been done with a chain behind a Land-Rover.
The Reverend Drake, despite his protestations of being a man of peace. Even men of peace can be driven too far.
He recalled the advice of Lady Coltrane to look at the entourages of the two electoral candidates. Yes, he would do that, have a good look at these election helpers. But what was the motive there? Sir Marston had been playing their game for them, easing the islands into independence, with one of them as the new Prime Minister. Unless one of the groups had thought he was favoring the other.
When he got back to Government House, there was a spate of news waiting for him.
Chief Inspector Jones had checked his firearms register. There were only six workable guns on the island. Three were owned by expatriates—retired gentlemen, two British and one Canadian. They were twelve-bore shotguns, used for clay-pigeon shooting. The fourth was a rifle, owned by the fishing skipper Jimmy Dobbs, for use on sharks if ever a monster attacked his boat. The fifth gun was a presentation pistol, never fired, owned by another expatriate, an American who had settled on Sunshine. The gun was still in its glass-topped case, its seal unbroken. And the sixth gun was Jones’s own, kept under lock and key at the police station.
“Damn,” snorted Hannah. Whatever gun had been used, it was not kept legally.
Detective Parker, for his part, had a report on the garden. It had been searched from end to end and top to bottom. No second bullet. Either it had deflected off a bone in the Governor’s body, come out at a different angle, and sped over the garden wall to be lost forever; or, more likely, it was still in the body.
Bannister had received news from Nassau. A plane would be landing at four, in one hour’s time, to take the body to the Bahamas for post-mortem. Dr. West was due to touch down in a few minutes, and he would be waiting to take his charge to the mortuary at Nassau.
And there were two men waiting to see Hannah in the drawing room.
