“Your room is where, Mr. Oakes?”
“Second on the north side, front.”
“Your uncle’s?”
“Head of the stairs.”
“And Miss Thurmond’s?”
“Next to his on the south side.” Oakes’s mouth pinched in at the corners. “With a connecting door,” he added.
“Was the library door always kept locked at night?”
“The door and both windows but not only at night. Whenever he wasn’t here.”
“Miss Thurmond wasn’t allowed in here by herself?”
“No. He didn’t trust her. Didn’t trust anybody.”
“So she doesn’t have a door key?”
“No, and neither do I or Cheng. He kept his key with him at all times, never let it out of his sight.”
Sabina looked again at the stains on the carpet. “Your uncle’s dying words — how did he say them? All three together, or with a pause or pauses between them?”
“Are we back to that again? Back to that again? I don’t see what difference it makes.”
“Please answer the question, Mr. Oakes.”
“Let me think....” Then, “With a pause between the last two.”
“‘Pick up... sticks.’”
“Yes.”
“Was he lying still when he spoke?”
“Lifted his arm as if he were attempting to rise. In the next second he was gone. Dead as a doornail.”
Sabina crossed to the rear wall and opened the drapes. The windows were both casements with double-halved panes fitted into brass frames. A storm shutter covered the innermost of the two on the outside; the other, the one through which she’d briefly looked yesterday morning, had none.
“Why is only the one window shuttered?” she asked Oakes.
“Both were, but the shutter on that one was damaged in Saturday night’s storm. Cheng took it down.”
“Are the windows always kept shuttered?”
“No. Only during kona weather.”
Sabina peered at the frames in the shutter-free window. They fit tightly together and were secured by a bolt that turned by means of a small brass knob centered between French-type handles. She unfastened the bolt, an act that required two turns of the knob.
“Are you sure this window was secure when the shooting took place?” she asked.
“I checked it myself. So did Miss Thurmond. Locked tight. Both of them. Locked tight.” Oakes’s voice was edged with impatience now. “I don’t see the need for all these questions. Captain Jacobsen didn’t ask half as many.”
“I believe in being thorough.”
“Do they help prove the shooting was accidental? Do they? I don’t see how.”
Sabina had become as annoyed with him as he was with her. “You asked for my professional assistance, Mr. Oakes. Kindly allow me to investigate as I deem necessary.”
“All right. All right. What else do you want to know?”
“Nothing more at the moment. Now, if you don’t mind, I would prefer to continue in here alone.”
“You want me to leave?”
“If you don’t mind,” she repeated.
He did mind, judging from his expression, but he made no protest. He said, “Very well, I’ll wait for you in the parlor,” and took his leave.
Sabina turned back to the window. The two halves opened outward, letting in the overheated breeze. She examined the frames top and bottom, then the sill. It was less than three feet above the ground outside.
There was a faint mark on the sill’s outer portion — a tiny scrape in the wood, she discerned upon closer inspection, neither deep nor long but fairly fresh. There were no other marks on the window casing. But when she felt along the top corner of the left-hand frame, her fingertip was lightly pricked by something caught there.
Carefully she pinched it off. It was a sliver of soft, blackened wood. When she rubbed it between thumb and forefinger, it left a thin smear. She sniffed the smear, then the splinter; both had a faint brackish odor.
She went to the writing table. The top left-hand drawer contained bond paper, some plain and some with a Great Orient Import-Export Company letterhead, plain and printed envelopes, handwriting tools. Sabina slipped the splinter into one of the plain envelopes, which she then folded and tucked into her skirt pocket.
In the top right-hand drawer were two accordion files, one filled with a jumble of notes written in a spidery backhand, the other with a sheaf of manuscript pages penned by a different, precise hand that was likely Miss Thurmond’s. Sabina flipped through the first few pages. This was the book Gordon Pettibone had been writing, a ponderous tome with a ponderous title: A Comprehensive History of China’s Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms.
Nothing in any of the other drawers captured her attention. She moved on to the shelves of books on the wall behind the table. Most were old and bound in brown and black leather, a few others in buckram. Judging by their titles, all were volumes of Far East and East Asian history, the preponderance of them concerning ancient China. All, that was, except for one tucked into a corner on an upper shelf. That one, also leather-bound, had the words HOLY BIBLE stamped in gold leaf on its backstrip.
On impulse, Sabina took it down. It, too, was old and seemed to have been well read. By Pettibone’s late wife, evidently, for the flyleaf bore her signature. Tucked inside was a two-by-two-inch white index card of the sort she and John used to file addresses at Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services. It had been in the Bible for some time, a fact attested to by a yellowish tinge to the paper and the faded ink of the single line written on one side.
RL462618359.
The penmanship was not that of the late Mrs. Pettibone, but rather the same as that on the notes in the accordion file — Gordon Pettibone’s. What did the two letters and line of numbers signify? Some sort of reference to passages of Scripture? No, that was unlikely. And nothing had been written in the Bible itself.
She decided against pocketing the index card. Instead she returned to the writing table, and with pen and ink from the drawer, copied the two letters and line of numbers onto the envelope containing the splinter.
After replacing the card and reshelving the Bible, she opened three of the Oriental history books at random. Each also contained an index card, these relatively new, on which were noted dates of purchase, prices paid, estimated worth, research references to similar volumes. The handwriting was the same as on the manuscript pages: Miss Thurmond and her cataloguing duties.
Sabina looked around the rest of the study. The fireplace, in this tropical climate, was ornamental rather than functional. There was nothing of interest on or under the armchair cushions, or under the armchairs themselves, or anywhere else in the room.
The shutter-free window drew her again. Its two halves were still open; she widened the gap and leaned out to look at the ground beneath. The stubbly grass had been cleared of most of the debris from Saturday night’s storm, but it was still littered with leaves and twigs. Needle in a haystack, she thought. Then again, perhaps not.
She closed and re-bolted the window frames, drew the drapes, and went in search of the way to the side porch.
18
Sabina
The side porch opened off of the kitchen. Cheng showed her the way after she encountered him in the central hallway. She took the opportunity to ask that he tell Miss Thurmond she wished to speak with her and to please wait with Mr. Oakes in the parlor. The houseman, used to being given orders and to obeying them unquestioningly, went to do as she requested.
Outside, Sabina went around to the rear of the house. Starting in close to the wall, she walked slowly back and forth for a distance of several feet on either side of the shutter-free window, her body bent forward and her eyes searching the ground. When she failed to find what she sought, she moved outward by two paces and repeated the process. She had to do this five times before her efforts were rewarded.