In St. John it was just after ten o’clock in the morning as Jenny Grant walked along the waterfront to the cafe and went up the steps and entered the bar. Billy was sweeping the floor and he looked up and grinned.

“A fine, soft day, you heard from Mr. Henry yet?”

“Five hours time difference.” She glanced at her watch. “Just after three o’clock in the afternoon there, Billy. There’s time.”

Mary Jones appeared at the end of the bar. “Telephone call for you in the office. London, England.”

Jenny smiled instantly. “Henry?”

“No, some woman. You take it, honey, and I’ll get you a cup of coffee.”

Jenny brushed past her and went into the office, and Mary poured a little water into the coffee percolator. There was a sharp cry from inside the office. Billy and Mary glanced at each other in alarm, then hurried in.

Jenny sat behind the desk looking dazed, clutching the phone in one hand, and Mary said, “What is it, honey? Tell Mary.”

“It’s a policewoman ringing me from Scotland Yard in London,” Jenny whispered. “Henry’s dead. He was killed in a road accident.”

She started to cry helplessly and Mary took the phone from her. “Hello, are you still there?”

“Yes,” a neutral voice replied. “I’m sorry if the other lady was upset. There’s no easy way to do this.”

“Sure, honey, you got your job to do.”

“Could you find out where he was staying in London?”

“Hang on.” Mary turned to Jenny. “She wants to know the address he was staying at over there.”

So Jenny told her.

It was just before five and Travers, in response to a telephone call from Ferguson asking him to meet him, waited in the foyer of the mortuary in the Cromwell Road. The Brigadier came bustling in a few minutes later.

“Sorry to keep you, Garth, but I want to expedite things. There has to be an autopsy for the coroner’s inquest and we can’t have that unless he’s formally identified.”

“I’ve spoken to the young woman who lives with him, Jenny Grant. She’s badly shocked but intends to fly over as soon as possible. Should be here tomorrow.”

“Yes, well, I don’t want to hang about.” Ferguson took a folded paper from his inside breast pocket. “I’ve got a court order from a Judge in chambers here which authorizes Rear Admiral Garth Travers to make formal identification, so let’s get on with it.”

A uniformed attendant appeared at that moment. “Is one of you gentlemen Brigadier Ferguson?”

“That’s me,” Ferguson told him.

“Professor Manning is waiting. This way, sir.”

The post-mortem room was lit by fluorescent lighting that bounced off the white-lined walls. There were four stainless-steel operating tables. Baker’s body lay on the nearest one, his head on a block. A tall, thin man in surgeon’s overalls stood waiting, flanked by two mortuary technicians. Travers noted with distaste that they all wore green rubber boots.

“Hello, Sam, thanks for coming in,” Ferguson said. “This is Garth Travers.”

Manning shook hands. “Could we get on, Charles? I have tickets for Covent Garden.”

“Of course, old boy.” Ferguson took out a pen and laid the form on the end of the operating table. “Do you, Rear Admiral Travers, formally identify this man as Henry Baker, an American citizen of St. John in the American Virgin Islands?”

“I do.”

“Sign here.” Travers did so and Ferguson handed the form to Manning.

“There you go, Sam, we’ll leave you to it,” and he nodded to Travers and led the way out.

Ferguson closed the glass partition in his Daimler so the driver couldn’t hear what was being said.

“A hell of a shock,” Travers said. “It hasn’t sunk in yet.”

“Leaves us in rather an interesting situation,” Ferguson commented.

“In what way?”

“The location of U180. Has it died with him?”

“Of course,” Travers said. “I was forgetting.”

“On the other hand, perhaps the Grant girl knows. I mean she lived with him and all that.”

“Not that kind of relationship,” Travers told him. “Purely platonic. I met her just the once. I was passing through Miami and they happened to be there. Lovely young woman.”

“Well let’s hope this paragon of all the virtues has the answer to our problem,” Ferguson said.

“And if not?”

“Then I’ll just have to think of something.”

“I wonder what Carter will make of all this.”

Ferguson groaned. “I suppose I’d better bring him up to date. Keep the sod happy,” and he reached for his car phone and dialed Inspector Lane.

At precisely the same time Francis Pamer, having made a very fast trip indeed from London in his Porsche Cabriolet to his country home at Hatherley Court in Hampshire, was mounting the grand staircase to his mother’s apartment on the first floor. The house had been in the family for five hundred years and he always visited it with conscious pleasure, but not now. There were more important things on his mind.

When he tapped on the door of the bedroom and entered he found his mother propped up in the magnificent four-poster bed, a uniformed nurse sitting beside her. She was eighty-five and very old and frail and lay there with her eyes closed.

The nurse stood up. “Sir Francis. We weren’t expecting you.”

“I know. How is she?”

“Not good, sir. Doctor was here earlier. He said it could be next week or three months from now.”

He nodded. “You have a break. I want to have a little chat with her.” The nurse went out and Pamer sat on the bed and took his mother’s hand. She opened her eyes. “How are you, darling?” he asked.

“Why, Francis, what a lovely surprise.” Her voice was very faded.

“I had some business not too far away, Mother, so I thought I’d call in.”

“That was nice of you, dear.”

Pamer got up, lit a cigarette and walked to the fire. “I was talking about Samson Cay today.”

“Oh, are you thinking of taking a holiday, dear? If you go and that nice Mr. Santiago is there, do give him my regards.”

“Of course. I’m right, aren’t I? It was your mother who brought Samson Cay into the family?”

“Yes, dear, her father, George Herbert, gave it to her as a wedding present.”

“Tell me about the War again, Mother,” he said. “And Samson Cay.”

“Well, the hotel was empty for most of the War. It was small then, of course, just a little colonial-style place.”

“And when did you go there? You never really talked about that and I was too young to remember.”

“March nineteen forty-five. You were born in July, the previous year, and those terrible German rockets kept hitting London, V1s and V2s. Your father was out of the army then and serving in Mr. Churchill’s government as a Junior Minister, just like you, dear. He was worried about the attacks on London continuing so he arranged passage on a boat to Puerto Rico for you and me. We carried on to Samson Cay from there. Now I remember. It was the beginning of April when we got there. We went over from Tortola by boat. There was an old man and his wife. Black people. Very nice. Jackson, that was it. May and Joseph.”

Her voice faded and he went and sat on the bed and took her hand again. “Did anyone visit, Mother? Can you remember that?”

“Visit?” She opened her eyes. “Only Mr. Strasser. Such a nice man. Your father told me he might be coming. He just appeared one night. He said he’d been dropped off in a fishing boat from Tortola and then the hurricane came. It happened the same night. Terrible. We were in the cellar for two days. I held you all the time, but Mr. Strasser was very good. Such a kind man.”

“Then what happened?”

“He stayed with us for quite a while. Until June, I think, and then your father arrived.”

“And Strasser?”

“He left after that. He had business in South America, and the war in Europe was over, of course, so we came back to England. Mr. Churchill had lost the election and your father wasn’t in Parliament anymore, so we lived down here, darling. The farms were a great disappointment.”