Max Collins - Carnal Hours

“Yes.”

It was possible other servants had, from time to time, seen that chest of gold, open; or that Harry, in his cups, had opened it to show, to friends. So word about his cache of coins could easily have spread….

“Has Lady Oakes said anything about the chest being missing?”

“No. Come to think, I…I don’t remember seein’ it on the bookshelf, though.”

“I don’t suppose you could ask her….”

“No.”

Well-I could have Nancy check on that.

“Marjorie-do you think that Sir Harry could have been the victim of voodoo? Or…what is the other term?”

“Obeah,” she said.

“Right. Or a victim of that.”

She motioned me to the table, where I sat. She went to the stove and got me a cup of tea.

“Obeah is not voodoo,” she said. “It’s the practice of Bahamian magic.”

“That sounds like voodoo to me.”

She put the cup before me, then got herself one. “Obeah is part African, part Christian-a mixture.”

“That also sounds like voodoo.”

“But it’s not a religion, Nathan.” She sat across from me. “It’s a way to cure sickness, or for a farmer to protect his crop from theft or the bad weather, a way to get success in business, or love…”

“I could use some of this stuff.”

She smiled faintly and looked into her own cup of tea. “It’s not a religion…obeah is somethin’ one person, a shaman, sells to another.”

“Like somebody who wants somebody else dead, you mean?”

She frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t think so. Obeah doesn’t kill by hittin’ a man in the head and settin’ him on fire. Obeah kills from a distance.”

“Like with a spell, or potion, you mean.”

She nodded gravely. “And what motive would any black man have for killin’ Sir Harry? Sir Harry, he was good to us. And only a black man would think to use obeah.”

“What if Sir Harry had been fooling around with a black man’s woman?”

“Foolin’ around?”

“Sexually, I mean.”

She looked puzzled. “Sir Harry? He loved my Lady Eunice.”

“He never had other women at Westbourne? When your Lady was away, perhaps?”

“Never!”

I sipped my tea. “This is good. How’d you sweeten it?”

“Honey.”

I smiled. “I wish you were calling me that.”

That embarrassed her. “You should go now.”

“All right.” I stood. “Thank you, Marjorie. I won’t bother you again-you have my word.”

She nodded her thanks. “Has Curtis Thompson had any luck findin’ Samuel or that other boy?”

“No. You were right, Marjorie. They’re long gone.”

She shook her head sadly. “Some people, some things, you just can’t get back again.”

I don’t think she knew what she’d said till she said it, then she looked away and her eyes were moist and so were mine, and I just slipped out of there.

Now, a day later, I was standing with another beautiful woman, an unlikely escort considering, at the fringes of a native, voodoo-tinged ceremony or party or some damn thing, called a fish chop. Right now, they had stopped the music, and the musicians were holding their drums close to the flames, I guess tightening the skins that were their drumheads. As the other merrymakers swayed gently, almost sleepily, waiting for the music to start up again, a figure broke away and, trudging slowly across the sand, approached us.

He was perhaps fifty years of age, his hair and eyebrows and mustache snow-white, his skin still smooth, shirt open to the waist, trousers rolled up; he’d been one of the fishermen, but he had, thankfully, left his machete behind.

He stood a few feet away, respectfully. “I am Edmund. Do I have de priv’lege of speakin’ to my Lady Diane?”

“You do,” she said with a smile. “This is my friend Mr. Heller.”

“Mist’ Heller,” he said, nodding. He had sleepy eyes.

I held my hand out and he seemed a little surprised, but shook it.

“Do you know why we’re here?” she asked.

“Yes-Daniel say you’re interested in de gold coin.”

“That’s right,” she said.

“Follow me, please,” he said.

Even under a moonless sky, the garish painted colors of the village huts-green, blue, purple-were obvious; the windowless, precarious-looking shacks of wood and/or corrugated metal had dried palm-frond roofs and doors made of packing-crate panels or large tin advertising signs-here Typhoo Tea, there Pratts High Test Petrol. It was a tropical Hooverville.

Edmund opened the door for us, a red Coca-Cola sign loose on its leather hinges; it was hot within, filled with the staleness of no ventilation, and I could make out the sweet stench of muggles in the air. What was it they called it here? Ganja.

But Edmund’s shack was not filthy-there was a hammock, several wooden crates and cardboard boxes serving as furniture; the dirt floor was as hard as a wooden one.

“Sorry dere’s no real place for a lady to sit,” he said.

“That’s all right,” Di said. “What about the coins?”

“Just one coin,” he said. “A fella from Abaco give it to me for some work I done on his boat.”

“Could we see the coin?” I asked.

He went to one of the packing crates and lifted back a piece of frayed white cloth, rustled around and came back with a gold sovereign.

I had a look at it and so did Di.

“This isn’t pirate’s treasure, is it?” she said to me.

“Not dated 1907, it isn’t,” I said.

“Is dat coin worth somethin’?”

“Twenty shillings,” Di said, “but I’ll give you twenty dollars American for it.”

“Sold.”

She gave a twenty-dollar bill to Edmund and the coin to me; I slipped it in my pocket.

“This guy from Abaco,” I said, “what’s his name?”

He shrugged; his eyes were rheumy. Too much ganja. “Dunno, mon. Just a colored fella who need help with his boat.”

“Not somebody who comes around here often?”

“No, sir.”

Before long, Di and I were back in the cabin of the motor yacht; Daniel was up on the bridge, taking us back to Nassau on a glass-smooth sea. The night beyond our windows was dark. The cabin was dark. But the leather of the sofa we lay on was so white, it seemed to glow.

“Did we find something, do you think?” she asked.

“Buried treasure? I don’t know.”

“You look…confused.”

“It’s a look I often get. I wake up with this look.”

She was lying on top of me; we were both clothed, though I had taken off my coat and my holstered gun. I might have been aboard the Lady Diane, but Lady Diane was aboard me.

“I didn’t mean to confuse things,” she said.

“It’s just that this…voodoo stuff, and Sir Harry catting around, and stolen gold coins…none of this fits in with other things I know.”

“Such as?”

Her blond hair was brushing my face. It smelled good.

I didn’t really want to get into this with her. “Well…all of that involves some things and some people that are a little outside your royal circles.”

She stuck her chin out snootily. “Oh? Such as?”

Okay, then. Insistent little know-it-all rich bitch….

“A New York gangster named Meyer Lansky, who’s got some kind of connection to the murder. What exactly, I can’t figure.”

“Oh. Him.”

I sat up, pushing her gently off as I narrowed my eyes at her. Now she was sitting beside me, looking at me like a schoolgirl who got caught with cigarettes in her lunchbox.

“You’ve heard of Meyer Lansky?”

She shrugged. “I’ve met him. He’s friendly with Harold Christie.”

“Harold Christie doesn’t say so.”

“Well, he is. I understand Harold accepted a ‘gift’ of a cool million from Mr. Lansky, in return for certain services.”