The Sun Is God (6 page)

“We are dressed for dinner,” Kessler protested.

Will raised his eyebrows and Kessler and Bremmer reluctantly helped Will turn Lutzow, who was, naturally, completely rigid.

Will examined Lutzow's back and shoulders and sighed.

“Yes?” Kessler asked.

“Are you sure you haven't let the undertaker see him at all?” Will asked Bremmer.

The young doctor shook his head. “No. No one has been in this room except for His Excellency Governor Hahl, Hauptman Kessler, and myself.”

Will nodded and stroked his mustache.

“What do you make of that?” Will asked, pointing a pair of semi-circular bruises on Lutzow's shoulders.

“Mosquito bites?”

“Could be,” Will said, shaking his head.

“Or?” Kessler demanded.

“Let's get out of here, I'm going to catch my death,” Will said.

They put the blanket back on the body and left the room. Bremmer locked the cellar door and they climbed the stairs to the main floor of the hospital. It took all three of them a few seconds to cope with the transition from thirty degrees Fahrenheit to around eighty. Once they'd recovered, they resumed their walk to Queen Emma's along the coastal track.

Doctor Bremmer offered Will a cigarette and he accepted. A skinny, naked Kanak boy asked them in pidgin for tobacco and Will passed the cigarette on. They continued past the large buildings of the Forsayth Company where Doctor Parkinson (Frau Forsayth's chargé d'affaires) stored coffee, cotton, and rubber from Queen Emma's extensive plantations—so extensive in fact that they nearly doubled the amount of land owned and cultivated by the German New Guinea Company.

The trail now took a sharp right turn and became a narrow palm-tree-lined boulevard that had recently been lit by small electric lamps on stubby iron poles—the only such piece of street lighting in all of German New Guinea, possibly in this part of the hemisphere. This path up to Gunantambu was swept and drained, too, which was just as well because by now Will's “waterproof” Liverpool Rubber Company plimsolls were completely soaked.

“Shall I tell you what I think?” Will asked.

“Please do,” Kessler said.

“It could well be murder. They may have drowned him but they didn't need to force the poor fella that hard. They'd given him enough opium to knock out the Derby winner. This explains the yellowing in the eyes and face, the swelling in the tongue . . .”

“Go on,” Kessler said.

“So it could be that they rendered him pliable with the opium, took him to the nearest rock pool, and drowned him. Those bruises on his shoulders might be where they held him down.”

“More than one of them?” Kessler asked.

“I believe so. There is still the chance that it was an accident or a possible suicide. He ingests the opium and wanders to the sea for a little night swimming or self-murder, but I think not.”

“Because of this bruising?” Doctor Bremmer asked.

“That for one, but also the fact that he wasn't in the water for any length of time. Gradually the skin on the palms and soles of a body becomes white and wrinkled in water and after seven or eight hours can be peeled back. Saw an instance like that in Gibraltar once. Suicide. But it's not the case with Herr Lutzow, is it?”

“No,” Bremmer said.

“And another thing,” Will continued. “His body had no shark bites. Corpses that have spent any time in these waters tend to attract the attention of the tiger sharks, do they not, Klaus?”

“Yes,” the German assented.

“But what motive could there be for murder?” Bremmer asked.

“We must endeavor to discover it,” Kessler said.

5

QUEEN EMMA'S SOIRÉE

T
hey were met at the ornate portico of Queen Emma's house, Gunantambu, by Evans, the saturnine, starchy, Australian maître d'hôtel. “Come along gents, the lady of the house is hungry and wants her dinner. You are all very late!” he said in a counterfeit English butler's accent.

“I do not think we are late. As a matter of—” Kessler began, taking out his watch.

“Come on gents, no time for that, go right in,” Evans said.

Kessler and Doctor Bremmer walked into the dining room, but Will, who was in the rear, found his wrist grabbed and held firmly in Evans's surprisingly undainty paw.

“What do you think you're doing?” Will said.

“I know you,” Evans said in his native, rather intimidating, Sydney Cove diphthongs. “I'll be keeping an eye on the silver, mate, so don't even think of trying anything.”

Will shook his wrist free and attempted to make his mustache bristle in the way the German military men did so well, “My dear fellow, you must have mistaken me for someone else entirely.”

“I don't think so, Mr. Will Prior, you just make sure the number of knives and forks at your place is the same as when you got here.”

“I've never suffered such impertinence in my life,” Will was going to say, but he was weary of the fight and instead nodded meekly and walked on, thankful that Evans hadn't commented on his plimsolls, which were squeaking now like poisoned rats in a granary.

“Finally!” Queen Emma said when he at last entered the dining room.

“I do beg your pardon,” Will said, his cheeks crimson.

“Sit, sit and we can begin,” Queen Emma ordered with a grin that was both indulgent and a little impatient.

The table was set for seven and the room was much as Will remembered it. Open on the north side to catch the sea breeze with sliding American-style screen doors keeping out the insects. A lethal looking chandelier hung from the high-beamed pine ceiling. European oil paintings from three different centuries hung on the walls. The floor was a scrubbed and polished teak but Queen Emma was a flamboyant eater and the table and chair legs were covered with ant traps.

The only innovation since Will's luncheon—when there had been twenty people in here and a servant behind every chair—was the cooling device: a large mechanically operated fan blowing over a gigantic slab of ice from Emma's ice-making machine. With the breeze and the ice, the room was a pleasant seventy degrees Fahrenheit.

Emma herself was unchanged. Easily fifteen stone and tanned from her yacht but still extraordinarily beautiful. She was dressed in a purple sarong with bare arms and shoulders and a décolletage that took a frightening plunge. Her eyes were dark and intelligent, her cheeks ruddy, and her famous laugh—which Will could hear sometimes all the way from his house—was evidently intact. The daughter of a Samoan princess and an American trader, she had been schooled in Australia and taught business by both her father and her first husband, the Scottish entrepreneur James Forsayth. Emma was the richest woman in German New Guinea and one of the richest women in the South Pacific. She had built her empire on copra, rubber, and a few coal seams, originally in Samoa and now mostly in New Britain and New Ireland. The Germans had let her be when they had annexed the place, which was wise because she was the only one who seemed able to turn a profit in these parts—no matter what was happening in the world economy.

Apart from the fidgety Doctor Bremmer and rather tense Captain Kessler the other guests at the table were Doctor Parkinson, Governor Hahl, and a mysterious lady whom Will had never seen before. She was obviously European and a bluestocking, not quite of Emma's size but getting there. She was no beauty, although her cheeks were red and her eyes were clear, green, and sharp. She had curly brown hair crammed under a rumpled pink hat that might have been in fashion twenty years ago.
A half a crown, she's the sausage-eating sister of Governor Hahl
, Will said to himself.

Hahl himself was a languid little man, with a waxed face, waxed mustache, and a tight coiffure resembling that of the tin soldiers Will had played with as a boy.

The famous Doctor Parkinson, Queen Emma's plantation manager and aide-de-camp, was tall, clean-shaven, blue of eye, and Danish. He had to be pushing fifty-five, which was positively ancient in the fever latitudes. He, more than anyone else, was responsible for Queen Emma's wealth. He had a knack for wise investments, buying failing plantations and turning them into profitable endeavors. He was an eccentric who liked to watch birds, botanize, and paint still lifes, but he was probably the most intelligent personage in the colony—whatever that honor was worth.

Will sat in the only remaining chair as chilled French champagne was served to the party. All the men but he were in full evening dress.

As was the custom at Gunantambu, Kaiser Wilhelm's health was drunk, followed by the health of King Edward and then a final toast to the memory of the monarch who connected them both—King Edward's mother, Kaiser Wilhelm's grandmother, Queen Victoria.

Everyone stood, toasted, drank, and found their seats again.

“Lovely stuff!” Queen Emma said in her own peculiar accent: not quite Polynesian, American, or Australian.

“Indeed,” Governor Hahl agreed.

“Evans!” Emma yelled and the butler came scurrying into the room.

“Yes, madam?” he inquired, his eyebrows arching upward in a way that skirted the boundary of outright mutiny.

“You forgot to announce the three gentlemen.”

“I did what?”

“You didn't announce the gentlemen. Now nobody knows anybody, do they? Miss Pullen-Burry can't be expected to talk to strangers, can she?” Queen Emma said and poured herself another full glass of the deliciously cool champagne.

Evans bowed. “Of course, madam. Doctor Bremmer, Hauptman Kessler, and Mr. William Prior, allow me to introduce our esteemed hostess Mrs. Forsayth, Miss Pullen-Burry, his excellency Governor Hahl, and Doctor Parkinson,” Evans said quickly and then strode out of the room looking miffed.

“Thank you, Evans,” Queen Emma said. “Tana, make sure everyone's glasses are filled.”

A young native man entered, bowed, barked a few orders in pidgin, and for the rest of the dinner Will's crystal glass was kept brimming with chilled champagne by silent Kanak servants. The members of the string quartet on the dais were also Kanaks and it had to be admitted that they played well, although without much enthusiasm. Will knocked back his first glass of champagne and started on the second.

Will had been seated at the end of the table next to the mysterious Miss Pullen-Burry (
Miss
, not Fräulein, he noted). He was opposite Doctor Bremmer and at a diagonal to Klaus. Queen Emma sat at the head of the table with Doctor Parkinson to her left and Governor Hahl on her right. Whether this seating arrangement was intentional or not, Will couldn't help but feel that he was in the seat of least honor. How he had annoyed Evans, he had no clue; he certainly had not stolen silverware the last time he had been here—at least he didn't think he had.

The dishes came thick and fast and if you hadn't finished by the time Queen Emma was done that was just your tough cheese, as your plate got whisked away quicker than a bang in a Cheapside brothel.

There were times too when Will wasn't exactly sure what he
was
eating. Stuffed quail he recognized, as he did with the yellowbelly gudgeon, wild pig, New Zealand lamb, sweet potatoes, bull shark, stuffed parrot, durian, Polynesian long-finned eel, and corned beef, but there were dishes—lizards perhaps and sea snails—that left him clueless.

He'd always had a good appetite though and he consumed everything with gusto. Miss Pullen-Burry had attempted to keep her end up too, but she had twice dry retched during the durian course, heroically managing not to throw up into her handkerchief.

Will had little option but to eat and especially drink, as he found himself the odd one out in the various English and German conversations taking place at the table. Miss Pullen-Burry and Governor Hahl conversed with Queen Emma, which disconnected both of them from any discourse with him, and Doctor Bremmer and Klaus appeared to be captivated by Doctor Parkinson's tales of butterfly collecting in obscure habitats in the highlands.

On the one occasion Doctor Bremmer managed to catch Will's eye, the conversation turned to matters medical.

“You have not had the malaria, Herr Prior?”

“No.”

“You use the bark?”

“I usually sleep under a Ross net.”

Queen Emma seized upon this. “I myself need no net! I have never had a moment's illness in my entire life!”

“We are not all blessed, alas, with the sturdiness of your constitution, Frau Forsayth,” Doctor Parkinson said. “However, I think it is prudent for all white men and white ladies in particular to sleep under these nets.”

Queen Emma was skeptical. “What is your opinion, Doctor Bremmer?”

“I insist that the patients in the hospital do so. I myself got the malaria in Africa, but I am quite recovered. My worry here has been . . .” he began and chose not to elaborate—evidently something to do with his bowels.

“If you can get through your first year here you will live to be a hundred!” Emma declared.

Doctor Bremmer nodded sadly and Will noticed that he had only been picking at his dinner. Poor chap probably wouldn't see Christmas.

There was a fizzing noise and the mechanical fan blowing upon the block of ice suddenly stopped.

“Evans!” Queen Emma screamed.

“What is it now?” an acerbic voice demanded from an unseen room.

“The fan is broken again!” Queen Emma yelled.

“Hold on to your bloomers, I'll be there in a jiffy!” Evans yelled back.

“Emma, we are quite cool,” Doctor Parkinson said, but Emma patted him on the hand affectionately.

“This will only take a few seconds,” she insisted.

Evans appeared with two Kanak boys and a thin piece of rope. They speedily disassembled the mechanical fan, attached the piece of rope to one of the bits of machinery, and began tugging it back and forth. The blades of the fan began to turn again although not as quickly as before.