A Matter of Time (19 page)

Eventually they turned left into the well-landscaped, circular drive to Sandys House. In the cycle park, Ron was waiting and
wondering what had happened to Dan. He knew Bartholomew from Eastport and was surprised to see him there.

The three men repaired to the bar, where a number of the guests had already gathered. Dan steered them to a corner table.
“Peg thought I might run into you. Gather you’ve been on some kind of personal retreat.”

The monk nodded and smiled. “It’s pretty much over now.”

“Say,” said Ron, “we’re taking Nan Bennett—Ian’s wife—and her son Eric out to dinner tonight. The Chief bagged a four-hundred-fifty-pound
blue marlin this afternoon, and we’re going out to celebrate! Want to come?”

Bartholomew hesitated. The retreat was over. Dan was a good friend. It would be nice to eat with company, for a change….

Seeing him on the fence, Dan seconded the motion.
“Come on, we’re going to the Frog & Onion, which sounds a lot like Gordie’s back home.”

Ron nodded. “You’ll think you’re back in Eastport.”

“Well—”

“Eric will be here to get us any minute.”

But as badly as he wanted to go, it didn’t feel right. “Let me take a rain check,” Bartholomew said with a sigh. “And I mean
that; I’d like to go any other night. Just not tonight.”

“A deal,” said Dan. “I’ll check with you tomorrow.”

Just then, Angela Atkins, the cheerful social director for Sandys house, came up to Ron and Dan. “I don’t suppose either of
our Cape Cod fishermen would be interested in a bit of snorkling tomorrow morning? Roger Thomas, our local naturalist, is
taking anyone who’d care to check out the reef at Sandys Cove, at ten o’clock.”

One look at their expressions made her laugh. “No, I suppose not.”

“Come on, Dan,” his monk friend teased, after she’d gone on to the next group, “how long has it been since you’ve used a snorkel
and flippers?”

The Chief scowled at him. “Some things you don’t do at my age. And close to the top of that list is appearing in public in
a bathing suit.”

The three men laughed. Ron looked out the window and nodded towards it. “Eric’s here.”

They got up—Ron and Dan to leave, Bartholomew to say good night.

As Eric entered, Bartholomew realized with a shock that he was the boy in the cathedral.

Suddenly the boy’s eyes widened, and he ran out, jumped in the car, and roared out of the driveway, leaving the three of them
stunned.

“Well,” observed Dan, “Nan’s been really worried about him. Looks like she’s got good reason.”

“I’m going to call her,” said Ron, leaving to find a phone.

Dan was looking carefully at his monk friend. “You’ve seen the boy before, haven’t you?”

“He was in the cathedral today, at the eleven o’clock Mass.”

Dan’s eyebrows rose. “So that’s where he was. We had to wait an hour for him—but it was worth it.”

Bartholomew looked out the window. “I got the impression he was wrestling with something pretty heavy.”

“Yeah,” Dan agreed, “I talked to him a little on the boat yesterday. I haven’t told Nan yet, but I’ve got a feeling it’s drugs.”

Bartholomew nodded and told him about the flyer the boy had been studying, and how he’d almost gone back to the clergy offices.

Ron returned. “Nan doesn’t want to go out tonight. She wonders if we could come by and stay with her until Eric comes home.”

Wishing them good luck, Bartholomew walked back to the Quarry Cottage.

Twilight was gathering when he got there. But he could see that he had a visitor—in formal attire, black with a white blaze
on her chest. In the center of the quarry was an old poinciana tree—possibly as old as the cottage itself. In front of the
tree was an old stone bench, covered with lichen. His guest was sitting on it, exactly in the middle.

“Good evening, madam,” he greeted her, bowing slightly. “May I show you a table for one?”

She gazed at him impassively.

“I’ll be with you in a moment,” he said, ducking into the cottage. He returned with two saucers, one with milk, one with a
slice of deli turkey, torn into small pieces. He set them on the grass, half way between her and him.

“Please do begin; don’t wait for me.” He went back in, put together a sandwich, and bringing the desk chair, came back out.

The light from the open door behind him fell on the two saucers. She had not touched them. But neither had she gone away.

“You waited? What lovely manners!”

He returned thanks—for this meal, for the whole day, and for Noire.

23
  
  
man with no name

At 10:30 Monday morning, like a mother duck leading ducklings into a pond, Somerset’s resident naturalist, accoutered in face
mask, snorkel, and swim fins, led eight intrepid adventurers, similarly equipped, into the clear, calm waters of Sandys Cove.

As there were only four takers from Sandys House—Maud and Margaret, plus the honeymooners, Jane and Buff—their number was
augmented by four guests from the Red Lion Inn down the road toward Ely’s Harbour, just before Willowbank.

Their guide had briefed them on the coral reef they were about to explore—“Go near it, but don’t brush against it; it’s sharper
than it looks.” And he’d alerted them to the fish they were likely to encounter—red snapper, bright blue and yellow parrotfish,
and myriad jacks, groupers, and eels. Now he was leading them out a hundred meters or so, to the optimum diving location.

But before he could give them the signal to commence, one of the Red Lion guests—a blonde, strong of chin, body, and opinion—demonstrated
that she was also more independent-minded than the other ducklings. Having
informed them that, thanks to spinning, she could hold her breath for at least a minute, she simply up-tailed, up-finned,
and disappeared.

She wanted to be the first on the reef, she reported later, to see something special, before the others arrived and maybe
drove it away.

She got her wish.

It was a priceless minute. She saw yellowtailed damsel fish, whitebonded butterfly fish, parrotfish and red snapper. But she
was intrigued by a little green fish, following it down into a wide cleft in the reef. It was on its way to join another,
which was feeding on something under an outcropping of pink coral. Curious, she swam closer. But her shadow startled the little
green fish, and they darted away.

What had drawn them? It appeared to be something shiny and round, like a brown marble in the fine, white sand. A marble? Curiouser
and curiouser, she reached down to retrieve it. But it was lodged in something under the sand.

Running out of breath—and patience—she brushed the sand away. The air in her lungs exploded into her facemask, as she screamed.
The “marble” was an eye, in the face of a man.

Bursting to the surface, she tore off her face mask, screaming hysterically. The naturalist went to her immediately, trying
to ascertain what had happened. Had she encountered a Portuguese man-of-war? A moray eel?

She just kept screaming and screaming. He tried to assist her to shore, but she pulled away from him and made it to the beach
on her own. Once she was out of the water, her hysteria began to subside. Enough to tell him and the others, “There’s a man
down there! A dead man! The fish
were eating his eye! I thought it was a marble and—” suddenly she doubled over and retched over the swim-fin clad feet of
Buff MacLean, who was doing his best to calm and comfort her.

Inspector Harry Cochrane came out from the downtown headquarters of the Bermuda Police to head up the investigation. He was
a medium man—medium build, medium brown hair and eyes, medium disposition.

But that was all that was medium about Tidy Harry, as his fellow officers dubbed him with grudging respect. For unlike the
cinematic inspector of the same name, made famous by Clint Eastwood, this one went by the book. Always. He had, in fact, written
the book, at least the part on procedures that was taught at the academy.

Accompanied by Sergeant Tuttle, he quickly set up a situation room at the Somerset Police Station. By the time police divers
had retrieved the body and sent it on to the hospital pathologist, clerks, phones, and computers were in place. All information
having to do with the crime would be processed through this room.

But so far, there was little to process. All clothing had been removed from the body (Caucasian male, early fifties, no distinguishing
marks or features other than a twice-broken nose and four old puncture scars, probably knife wounds). Fingerprints had been
taken and wired to Scotland Yard and the FBI, which by the end of the day had sent word back: Neither organization had any
record of him.

The pathologist’s report indicated that the body had been in the water not more than two days, three at most.
From the salt water in the lungs, it was clear the man had died by drowning. But he had obviously not wedged himself under
the corner of the reef and covered himself with sand before expiring. This was murder, of the premeditated kind.

And there was nothing to go on. In the past two days Inspector Cochrane had interviewed everyone who had been on the snorkeling
party, then everyone who had been in the vicinity of Sandys Cove in the last three days. No one had seen or heard anything
out of the ordinary.

So, late Tuesday afternoon, Harry Cochrane went for a walk. Nowhere in particular, just out and about. It’s what he did at
the beginning of a case. Just took what he had and went for a walk with it. No point to the walk, really, except it kept his
mind relaxed. And he wanted it that way, not leaping to conclusions that would later be like Rorschach inkblots. Once you
saw them as two butterflies kissing, you could never see them any other way.

He walked the Railway Trail behind the police station, hands in his pockets, listening to the distant buzz of noise-making
kites, enjoying the shifting pattern of the late afternoon sunlight through the trees. Letting logic and intuition lightly
arrange and rearrange the pieces, until one or two began to fit.

The utter absence of clues was in itself a clue, of sorts. This was no amateur’s doing. An amateur would have left something
behind or overlooked something. There would be a contusion, a scratch, a sign of struggle—something.

He paused to admire the boughs of Queen Anne’s Lace that formed a canopy of green stained glass above him.

This was not just a murder, he mused. It was an execution—improvised, perhaps, but carefully thought out, nonetheless. The
discovery of the body had been a fluke.
The perpetrator had every reason to believe that it would not be discovered for months. Years.

Which meant that he—or she—or they—were, in all likelihood, still on the island. They would have no reason to leave.

The pathologist’s report had mentioned a couple of things, intriguing enough for Cochrane to give him a call. On the wrists
and ankles were found traces of adhesive. Presumably the victim had been bound with—what? Duct tape, probably. Had he been
drowned while trussed up? Possibly. Except, why bother to unwrap him?

Because, Cochrane glanced up at the yellow kiskadee scolding him, whoever did it assumed that the body would remain underwater
for so long that when (if ever) it was found, the remains would be skeletal. And might even be regarded as having arrived
there by natural causes.

Of one thing they could be reasonably certain: The drowned man was not your average Bermuda tourist. The old knife wounds,
and the nose that had been broken twice a long time ago, indicated that the victim had been no stranger to trouble. Quite
possibly he had received the knife wounds in prison.

Yet if that were true, the Yard or the FBI would have him in their database. He seemed to be a crook without a country…. Unless—he
was a Euro. Cochrane smiled and made a mental note to have Tuttle wire the prints to Interpol first thing in the morning.

Was the murder drug related? Probably. There wasn’t much else on Bermuda that would attract a hard-case who’d done hard time.

How long had he been on the island? No way of knowing. Nor had anyone missed him. The only recent missing
person report involved a cruise ship passenger who’d been left behind by the
Norwegian Majesty
. (She’d tried to get the cruise line to pay for her flight home, but the long-suffering captain pointed out that he had delayed
the ship’s departure nearly an hour and sounded the whistle four times. Turned out she’d been in Trimingham’s—in Hamilton,
because the branch store didn’t have her size.)