CHAPTER ONE

PARADISE LOST

On a Saturday morning in 1949 the following announcement appeared in an English language Majorca Island newspaper: MARRIED: The former Alexis J. Smith, American private investigator and widow of a U.S. Army pilot stationed in Britain during the war, to Detective Inspector Harry Hawkins of Scotland Yard, London. The couple had been on holiday inMajorca prior to their wedding at ten o’clock this morning in the village of Porto Cristo.

But we weren’t.

Harry and I were not married at ten o’clock that morning or any other morning, in the village of Porto Cristo or anywhere else. It was true, what the paper said about our vacationing on the island of Majorca, but that was all.

Our latest caper together, a few weeks earlier in England, had nearly undone us both, and we needed to escape to somewhere as far removed from the pressures of our sometimes separate, sometimes collaborative cases as we could get. So we had chosen Majorca in the Mediterranean and the quaint little fishing village of Porto Cristo.

An enthusiastic London travel agent had said the place would be perfect, handing us a brochure that described the village as “colorful, a quiet coastal town dating back to AD 1 1260, with miles of beach for strolling, or a romantic dinner overlooking the breathtaking ocean.”The name Porto Cristo meant “The Port of Christ,” a name it had acquired at the time of the Christian invasion. Legend has it that an ox carrying an icon of God through the town simply stopped and refused to go any farther. The people took it as a sign that Christ wanted to remain there.

“This place is as close to Paradise as I’ve ever been,” I sighed, breathing in the soft, sea breeze off the water as we strolled hand in hand along the sun-drenched beach. “Paradise?” laughed Harry. “Isn’t that where Adam and Eve lived before the Fall in the biblical account of the Creation? The Garden of Eden, in other words?”

“It’s also a town in Nevada, but I don’t mean either one, silly! Porto Cristo is our Paradise.Think of it,Harry. No telephones, no radios, no newspapers delivered to our rooms. Nothing but the sound of the waves on the beach.”

“True,” replied Harry. “And no gunfire, either, which must be a relief to you, in particular.”

He was right about that. There had been a lot of shooting connected with my most recent assignment in England. I hate guns; although, as a private detective I am never without my little American Derringer, which fits nicely into a lady’s purse. Oddly enough, Harry does not carry a gun, though he has demonstrated often enough that he knows how to use one. British policeman, and even Scotland Yard detectives, are not allowed to possess firearms. It is almost impossible to imagine our American police and FBI agents hobbled by that kind of restriction. In my country, guns are as commonplace as smog in Los Angeles or wind in Chicago. No matter what side you are on, in the great gun debate, they are part of the scene in the “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.”

The travel agent had been correct about Porto Cristo. It did seem perfect for us. Everything the brochure said was accurate, too. The place was ideal for a stroll along the beach or a romantic dinner overlooking the breathtaking ocean. At one such romantic dinner Harry surprised me with a proposal. Not that it was all that much of a surprise. We had never seriously discussed marriage, though it had been in the back of our minds for some time. I was the one who was hesitant about making a commitment. Harry had never been married, but I had—briefly—to Allen Smith, a young soldier I had met at a dance early in the war and married a few weeks later in a dingy combination wedding and funeral parlor in Reno.

I was barely nineteen; he was twenty-one. It was one of those hasty wartime marriages that people entered into on the spur of the moment and later regretted. It was all the more foolish because I was on the “rebound,” with no hope of marrying the only man that I have ever really loved. Allen and his Army Air Corps unit had gone overseas three days after the wedding. Stationed in England, they flew alongside their British counterparts in the RAF and later took part in the massive D-Day invasion of Normandy. Many of them, including Allen, never returned. That was six years ago. To this day I am still marriage-shy and afraid of making another mistake. Of course that’s ridiculous. Dear, stalwart Harry Hawkins is nothing like my impulsive young husband, whom I barely knew. Harry and I know each other very well. Maybe too well. We have worked together on a number of cases and hold many of the same values, although he is British and I am American. And that’s another thing. I worry about our cultural differences. In trying to sum up my feelings for Harry, I know that I am not wildly in love with him, but at least we like each other and get along well. Is that reason enough to marry? I have always thought that I would hate a “marriage of convenience,” and that’s what it would be, wouldn’t it?

Ah, but there in romantic Porto Cristo, at dinner overlooking the breathtaking ocean, I had said yes to Harry’s proposal. The next day we had gone shopping for a ring along the short main street in the village and discovered that Majorca is famous for its pearl industry. I now wore a lovely pearl and diamond ring on my left hand.

Since I had no family, except for a younger sister back home in the States, we decided to be married right there, in a pretty little chapel called Santa Veronica. We visited the chapel and met the charming young padre, who wore a long brown robe with a monk’s cowl. He told us he would be happy to perform the wedding ceremony, though he wondered if it would be legal in the US and Britain. We assured him that we would apply for a proper license when we got back to England and repeat the marriage vows later. The date was set for the following Saturday.

In the meantime I went shopping for a dress, recalling that I had been married the first time in a short, powder- blue suit with matching hat and a white orchid pinned to my shoulder. The image made me shudder. I wanted something as different from that outfit as Porto Cristo was from Reno! Of course it would not be proper to wear a traditional white gown for a second wedding, so after a day of looking in every shop on the main street, I selected a long, Spanish-style dress in pale pink, with a fitted bodice and three-tiered skirt, along with a white lace mantilla to wear over my head and shoulders. The pale pink color showed off the tan I had acquired in the time I had spent in the Mediterranean sun. My normally honey-blonde hair had bleached out almost to gold. I had to frown at my own image in the shop’s wavy mirror to disguise how pleased I was. Other store patrons were “oohing” and “aahing,” making me feel like a model on the runway of a fashion show. I certainly did not feel like that teenager in her short, powder-blue suit and hat with a limp white orchid pinned to her shoulder!

On Saturday morning I was getting into the dress in my room at the small inn where we were staying, when there was a knock at the door.

It was Harry. He said a telegram had arrived from London, forwarded from Scotland Yard. It was for me.

“For me? Who even knows I’m here?”

I felt a rush of panic. It could not be good news, I was certain of that. Quickly tearing open the envelope I stared at the message inside before handing it silently to Harry. It read: CAN YOU COME IMMEDIATELY (stop) MOTHER VERY ILL (stop) NEEDS YOU DESPERATELY (stop) MARY.

Harry frowned. “Mary?”

I had a hundred thoughts buzzing around in my head and didn’t even hear the question.

“Lexie?”

“What?”

“Who is Mary?”

“My sister.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“My only sibling. Six years younger than I am.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I mean about your mother.”

“You needn’t be. My sister didn’t send this telegram.”

“Why do you think that?”

“It says ‘mother is very ill,’ that’s why.”

“Well? Maybe she is.”

“Hardly. She died three years ago.”

“Ah. Then who…?”

“Who sent the telegram? Good question.”

“What are you going to do?”

I glanced at my reflection in the mirror above the small vanity table. The pink dress, the white mantilla over my head and shoulders, which I had loved up until ten minutes earlier. Now I thought I looked ridiculous. I was already peeling off the mantilla, back in detective mode.

“I’ll have to go, of course.”

“Go? Go home, you mean? To the States?”

“Yes. I’ve got to find out who sent that wire and what it means.”

“Wait.Why don’t we find out what Scotland Yard knows about it, before we go off the deep end.”

So like Harry! Careful to think through every step before taking it. And so unlike me, always leaping in with both feet before even testing the water. Had it been unrealistic to think we could ever be a couple, bound together in Holy matrimony, with all our differences? Maybe it was an omen, the telegram coming when it did, a warning from the gods not to go through with the wedding. That must be it. Dazzled by this romantic little village, I had not been seeing things clearly. I’d had a narrow escape.

Or had I?

A different thought occurred to me now: Fool! One of these days Harry is going to get tired of waiting for you. An attractive man like him isn’t going to hang around forever, no matter how devoted he is. But I pushed all thoughts aside and returned to the present problem.

“All right. See if you can find a telephone in this godforsaken place, and try to put a call through to London.”

I saw his expression change. What I had been calling “our Paradise” ever since we got here I now deemed a “godforsaken place,” and it was evident that it hurt him. Whoever sent that telegram had either done me a great favor or ruined my life. But which was it?

When Harry came back to my room, almost an hour later, I was packed and ready to go. I had changed into a traveling suit and left the pale-pink dress and white mantilla on the bed, a present for the Spanish maid.

“Well? Were you able to talk to London?”

“Yes, there was a telephone with international service in the police station. I got through to Scotland Yard and the communications office that received the wire from the States.”

“It did come from home, then.”

“Right. Sacramento, California. It was addressed to you, with instructions to forward through me. Whoever sent it must have known how to reach you.”

I asked impatiently, “And that’s all you were able to learn?”

“Not quite. I also ran it past our cryptology section, to see if the message might be in some kind of code.”

“And?”

“It wasn’t. None they could discern on short notice, anyway.”

I sighed. Of course I knew that Harry and his contacts at Scotland Yard had done everything they could do, but I was still left with nagging, unanswered questions. Someone wanted or needed me to come home immediately, but who? The reason given—that my mother was ill—was obviously phony. Nothing but a red herring. I knew it, and the sender surely knew it, too, which only added to the mystery. I briefly considered that it might be a trap. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d been lured into a dangerous situation. Even so, I had to risk it.

“Well, that settles it. I’ve got no choice. I’ll have to go.”

Harry knew it was useless to argue. “I’ll come with you, shall I?”

“No, Harry. Honestly, there’s nothing you could do over there. Why don’t you stay here and enjoy the rest of your holiday?”

Even as I said it, I knew what an absurd suggestion that was. Could he enjoy being here without me? No more than I could enjoy being here without him, I suspected. Seeing other couples strolling hand in hand along the beach and having romantic dinners overlooking the breathtaking ocean would only be a reminder of our lost paradise here in Porto Cristo.

“At least let me accompany you as far as London.”

I started to protest, but he said, “I’d rather. With you gone, I might as well go back to work at the Yard.”

“All right. But before we leave, someone has to tell the padre that we won’t be keeping our appointment with him this morning.”

Harry nodded. “I’ll do it,” he said a little sadly.

Later, while checking out at the desk downstairs in the small lobby, I glanced at a newspaper left open to the Personals Page. It was there that I read the announcement of our marriage, which supposedly had taken place that morning in the Santa Veronica chapel. It must have been written much earlier by some overeager reporter in order to get the “facts” into the announcement column while there was still room.

At that moment I felt a little like Mark Twain, who, upon reading his own obituary in a London newspaper, sent a cable to the Associated Press which read: THE REPORTS OF MY DEATH ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED.