"'What satisfaction canst thou have tonight? I gave thee my –' that is, we, um – we'll talk. Later."
Poole hustled her out, looking pale and determined. Fidel adjusted the phone quickly, so the last thing Juliet saw, in her kitchen by means of her husband's stream, was Camille's radiant smile.
– from "What Does It Have in a Name?", part one of this Shakespearean farce
The Seawall Inn on the island of Saint-Marie skulks in the shadow of the Port Royal Resort, although it lies some way past that on the coast, lurking off the road leading out of Honoré past the marina. The undistinguished building is practically buried in the jungle that lines its shallow cove, so that unless you know where to look for the stubby wooden pier jutting off the ugly cement barrier that gives the place its name, you would certainly miss it as you sail past toward Honoré Bay. You almost have to bring a machete along to find the path leading off the road to its tiny car park.
Consequently, its reputation is not the best. But it is cheap, and if you're looking for privacy – and you're not too worried about clean rooms – it makes a splendid hideaway. No respectable inhabitant of Greater Honoré would think of staying there, thus by default making it a haunt of malefactors, and so well known to the police.
The Honoré Police Defender made its wide circuit around the Port Royal grounds and wound down the dust road to the Seawall, going carefully, because its driver was distracted.
"Well?" the person in the passenger seat demanded, for the ninth time.
"Well?" DI Richard Poole answered her, seemingly focused on avoiding potholes.
Sergeant Camille Bordey remained fixed on her boss' profile. "What was it you wanted to say?"
"When?"
"You know when! Just say it, Richard!"
Of course Poole knew when. 'I gave thee my love's faithful vow Before thou didst request it', echoed in his mind, but he had used up all his limited nerve to romance his sergeant in just coaxing the location of the two runaways out of her back at the station, and now he needed a spot of routine police work to steady himself for the next assault – um, attempt – er, approach
. . . or maybe he should just forget the whole thing. It would be the safest course . . . so, as per usual, the next line that came out of his mouth was "We're on duty!"
Camille vented with a noise not unlike that of the tired brakes on the Defender itself. She had been so close! "Richard Poole!" she shrilled at him, "You are without doubt the most irritating, aggravating, stubborn stuffed shirt of a man! You need a course of your Shakespeare, of, of being like Romeo!"
"No good!" he told her, firmly, swerving to avoid a pothole. Him, improvise Shakespeare, let alone romantic Shakespeare? The results would be ludicrous, mere balderdash. "I'd sound more like Dogberry."
This gave Camille pause, for a second. Was this an excuse? Was he claiming to be some sort of parfait? "What is a dog berry?" she asked, suspicious she was being played again.
Poole's answer was automatic. "Fruit of the common dogwood, Comus sanguine, considered to be inedible . . ." he blurted out before the idiocy of the situation shut it down. "Never mind, it's not important," he finished, slowing down to allow Martin the second-hand clothes seller to pass on to Honoré market.
Poole was answered with a second, more grating noise of frustration from his sergeant. "Why am I not a detective inspector?" she railed out her window at Martin, who shrugged and trudged on as Poole put his foot back on the gas.
"I've wondered that," her boss shouted back to her, glad of the change of topic. "You'd be fantastic at it. In fact, you . . ." and once again he had to slow down to allow a span of donkeys bearing cages of chickens to pass unscathed, and in the interim a little of that English courage in the face of French fury crept back, despite the desperate work ahead. He cleared his throat and took the plunge. "Camille, i-if I were to –"
"If I had that authority, I would soon sort out these canailles!" Camille stormed, unheeding of donkeys or anything else but her thwarted feelings. "They would quickly regret impeding the course of true love!"
Poole sped up the car again. "Camille, in the first place –"
But his sergeant was not finished. "All this only because Alfric is a Clifford and Elaine a Montfort! It's ridiculous! Two fine young people in love! What kind of justice –?"
"Camille, could you just –" Poole got out, wondering where she had picked up this habit of ranting. Still, it was better than her tears – he knew right now as he angled around the coconut seller that a single one of Camille's tears would have more weight with him than would many drops of his own blood.
"Where is there a policeman who will act to protect the innocent instead of punishing them?" she was declaiming.
"Cam-"
"Oh, that I had the powers of such a policeman! Or that I knew such a policeman, who would put away his timidity and reserve, who would be valorous and act for them, for my sake!" She was glaring at him murderously; he could feel it.
"I know what you're doing!" he blared back at her. "Can we please just get past that bloody balcony scene?"
"Is it possible to 'get past' it when two such good young people may suffer because of the stupid quarrel of their families?" she demanded.
Poole jumped on this. "What quarrel?" he demanded, slowing down to avoid the next donkey load of vegetable matter bound for the Honoré market. "What was it started this whole mess?"
Camille would have liked to wave the story off as unimportant, compared with the thing she wanted very much to discuss, but she was a professional. "A piece of property both the families wanted, over in the West Point area," she exclaimed over the growl of the engine. "It abuts on both their holdings. Ned Clifford put in his offer on it minutes before Hennie Montfort arrived at the estate agent's to do the same thing, and there was a row right there in the office. She claimed he had gotten wind of her plans and deliberately moved to stop her."
"And of course he denies it," Poole put in.
"Of course he does! Ever since then the Montforts have kept the case in the courts, blocking any Clifford plans for development and trying one thing after another to get control of the property."
"When was this?" Poole shouted, having gunned the Defender once it was safely past the last donkey.
"Years ago, after I was born and when Maman needed to work to support us. Auntie Hennie helped her set up the bar." But all this was ancient history. Camille was focused on her boss now, and as always, all the feelings she harbored for him were flooding back. "What does all that matter, Richard? You had something to say! About us!"
The police vehicle screeched to a stop just yards from the overgrown hole in the jungle leading to the Seawall. "Auntie Hennie?" Poole demanded.
Camille pushed herself off the dashboard back into her seat, throwing her hair out of her face and pausing for just a moment, to briefly contemplate justifiable homicide. "Yes, I said Auntie Hennie," she told Poole, glaring at him as she hunted around for her seatbelt. "She looked after me while Maman was busy building up the business. I grew up with her sons."
"That's why you impeded the investigation," Poole charged her.
"I did not impede. I simply did not actively pursue!" Camille protested.
"Comes to the same thing, Sergeant," Poole said sternly and set the car going again.
Camille nearly squealed in renewed frustration. "I know Elaine," she clamored over the noise of the engine. "She is just an innocent girl, the baby in the family, with five brothers who would kill to protect her. Hennie has told them Alfric is a masher and this whole running-away thing is a plot to ruin Elaine and blackmail Hennie into giving up the lawsuits."
"And he's not a masher?" Poole shouted back, easing the Defender into the hole that led to the Seawall. "There's no plot?" A bit of reassurance seemed in order just now; this Hennie Montfort being a close friend if not a relative of Catherine Bordey, and an influential woman as well, with five certainly hefty and very certainly unreasonable sons, according to the background files on the family.
"Of course not!" Camille snorted. "I know Alfric, too. He is a sensitive boy, intelligent and kind and modest –" who reminded her of someone else she knew, but that was a conversation for later – "He is just a little impulsive!"
"A little?" Poole put in as he negotiated the darkness of the tunnel in the trees.
"His mother Marguerite, God rest her soul, was a cousin of the Commissioner," Camile was going on. "Your friend JD the magistrate is his godfather."
The Defender jerked to a second halt with its bonnet just nosing into the car park of the Inn, all dim with overhanging rainforest. Glory. Catherine Bordey on one hand, on the other the Commissioner, and the less formidable but still slightly worrisome figure of His Worship Jon Paul David, Magistrate of Saint-Marie and not one to trifle with the law . . . unless, for a favorite godchild . . . No. Not JD. Impossible.
Still with his foot jammed firmly on the brake pedal, Poole turned his head and looked directly into his sergeant's eyes. "Camille . . . do you think in your soul that this is honorable, that Alfric really cares for Elaine, and she for him?"
For a moment Camille allowed herself the luxury of gazing back into her boss's eyes, all her outrage washing away. "I do," she murmured, "as sure as I have a thought or a soul."
"Enough," said Poole, half to himself, half to her, "I am engaged," and he started the Defender moving toward whatever awaited them at the nest of vipers that was the Seawall Inn. He had no physical weapon to offer in anyone's defense, but he wielded a double-edged sword nevertheless, in that he had a grasp of the law.
There were never very many vehicles in the Seawall car park, except for today. It was jammed, none too neatly, and Poole had no choice but to park across the entry to the apron of the pier, just as the riot was forming up.
Three tall men and an equal number of Amazon-esque women were milling about to the left, glaring and making the occasional rude gesture at five very large men on the right, who stood menacingly around a tiny, sour-faced woman. Extras on both sides ranged right and left, all seemingly primed for combat.
On the pier itself stood Johnny Conrad, proprietor of the Seawall Inn, wrinkled and sea-burnt and looking very much as if he wished he'd never been born. Beside him was "Red" Drinkall, owner and operator of the only boat ever to call there, the scow Sea Venture. It was now moored at the end of the pier, all fitted up and decked out as a pleasure craft, but fooling no one. Little Conrad had his hands held up pleadingly, palms toward the menacing families, while big, bloated Drinkall, even more wrinkled and sea-burnt than Conrad, flourished a bit of paper teasingly in the onshore breeze, as if it would explain everything.
Behind them, further out on the pier over the sea, stood two pitiful figures: a lithe clean-limbed stripling with a mop of brown hair and wide, blue-green eyes, who clutched at an exotic beauty in miniature. She was obviously mixed-race, with big dark eyes and long dark hair that eddied around her beach coat in the zephyr like the tresses of a mermaid floating beneath the waves. The two of them stood together, watching the developing ruckus at the apron with a certain defiant fear.
"Call for backup," DI Poole ordered his sergeant, and climbed out of the Defender.