“Sah …” Cesar muttered.

  “Don’t speak,” Fleming said as he held Cesar against him. “I’m taking you out to the Rapier and I’ll drive you to the clinic in Eastport. You need medical attention.” He propped Cesar up against the butcher-block island and went to adjust the canted lantern hanging from the ceiling. A tug or two on the pair of ropes righted it, and the lamps began to burn more evenly.

  “You should … blow them out.” Cesar clung to the butcher-block to keep from falling.

  “Too much time,” said Fleming, his apprehension about Cesar increasing. He had seen men look as his servant did, during the War, when such a cast to the skin usually meant death.

  “The sniper might be waiting,” Cesar said faintly.

  “Then he’d best get out of my way, or I’ll run him down,” said Fleming as he took hold of Cesar again and made his way to the back door. He worried briefly about the lamps left burning in the dining room, and decided he couldn’t spare the time to blow them out, either; Cesar was hurt and he could not wait for help. The fire in the dining room was out, and he was satisfied that there would be no more mischief at his house, at least not tonight. Still, he was careful to lock the door as he went out, half-carrying Cesar; arriving at his open-sided garage, he pulled back the canvas covering of his auto and flung it aside.

  “Don’t … sah,” Cesar mumbled.

  “Stow it,” said Fleming. Lowering Cesar into the passenger’s seat, he had an instant of regret for his leather seats that he quickly dismissed as unworthy. Satisfied that Cesar was secure, Fleming vaulted over the bonnet and climbed into the driver’s seat, his ignition key at the ready.

  The motor purred to life, the headlamps shone; Fleming engaged the gears and the auto leaped forward. Heading up the road, Fleming pushed the limits of speed, swinging onto the main thoroughfare with squealing tires and a change of gears. Hoping that no one was on the road at this hour, Fleming pressed the accelerator and stared ahead, using his hooter at every bend in the road.

  “Hang on, Cesar,” Fleming ordered as he raced toward Eastport; he could tell by the way he flopped in the passenger seat that Cesar had lost consciousness. “Hang on.”

  Ten minutes later, he barreled into Eastport, along the darkened main street toward the clap-board building at the end of the market-square where the clinic was. Passing two bars along the way, he saw business was brisk, but for the most part, the windows of homes showed families were in for the night. A spattering of rain made the dust on the windscreen stand out in runnels, and added to the red stain spreading down Cesar’s chest. As he neared the clinic, Fleming began to sound the hooter steadily, hoping to summon assistance. He braked to a halt, turned off the motor, and leaped out.

  “Doctor! I need a doctor!” he shouted as he ran around the Rapier to lift Cesar from his seat.

  A light came on over the door, and a middle-aged black woman in a nurse’s cap looked out. “Doctor is at home with his family, at supper,” she said.

  “Then fetch him,” Fleming ordered as he bore Cesar up the stairs. “Can’t you see this man is badly wounded?”

  “He is bleeding, sah,” the nurse agreed. “I’ll send Samson to fetch him.”

  “At once!” Fleming said, trying to keep the frantic note out of his voice. “He’s been shot.”

  “Oh, sah,” said the nurse, either in condemnation or in distress.

  “At once!” said Fleming, shoving past her into the main room of the clinic. “Where is the examination—”

  The nurse pointed to closed double-doors on Fleming’s left. She bustled to open them, standing aside to let Fleming carry Cesar into it. “I’ll get Samson. The doctor will come quickly.”

  “Be about it,” Fleming said bluntly. He was struggling to get Cesar onto the examination table.

  The nurse hurried off, calling for Samson.

  Cesar was shaking as if from cold, although the room wasn’t chilly. Fleming found a light blanket and wrapped it around him. He took the towel from Cesar’s shoulder, and dropped it into the wastebasket near the head of the examination table. Then he looked about for some lengths of gauze he could use to put pressure on the wound. “Cesar,” he said. “It should have been I who took that shot.”

  Cesar made no response. He continued to tremble.

  Finding the drawer containing bandages, Fleming took out a roll of gauze and pressed it up against the torn flesh in Cesar’s shoulder.

  “How did he get shot?” The nurse’s question from the door so startled Fleming that he almost dropped the roll of gauze.

  “He was working in the kitchen. The shot came through the window,” said Fleming, returning to his work of stopping Cesar’s bleeding.

  “I’ll get the antiseptics for cleaning the wound. The doctor will be here in a few minutes.” She went about her self-appointed task, gathering a basin, some instruments Fleming didn’t like the look of, and a large bottle of tincture of iodine. “I have to get the soap,” she said, leaving the examination room for a moment, only to return with a bar of carbolic soap.

  Fleming had seen more utilitarian field hospitals during the War, but to his eyes, the clinic’s preparedness seemed rudimentary at best. He wondered if he should have taken more time and driven into Kingston to Saint Anne’s. But that would have taken at least an hour, and Cesar didn’t have sixty minutes to spare. The fifteen minutes he had taken to bring him here might not have left him enough time.

  “Keep the pressure going,” the nurse recommended. “He’s not doing very well, is he, sah?”

  “No,” said Fleming, whose memory of wounded men in the War was now all too vivid.

  “Pity,” she exclaimed as she went to bring a flask of boiled water into the examination room.

  Fleming stood beside Cesar, feeling desperately frustrated. There had to be something more he could do! He thought it was unfair that Cesar should be in such travail on his account—Cesar, who was his responsibility. “I’ll make them pay for this, Cesar. I swear by God I will.”

  When the nurse returned to the examination room, a young man with a mangled foot and a crutch came with her. He wore a tattered canvas jacket with a medal pinned to it: Fleming recognized the Valor Cross. He wondered briefly what the young man had done to so distinguish himself.

  “Do you know his blood type?” The nurse’s question abruptly brought him back to the immediate circumstances.

  “A,” said Fleming. “I think it’s A.” He had it somewhere back at his house.

  “Who in town has A?” Samson asked.

  “The baker does,” said the nurse. “And Widow Hapgood, I think.”

  “I’ll try the baker first,” said Samson, preparing to leave.

  “He’ll be at Carlo’s tavern,” said the nurse.

  “I’ll be back with him,” said Samson, going out the front of the clinic.

  “Where’s the damn doctor?” Fleming insisted.

  “He’ll be here shortly,” the nurse said. “You keep pressure on the wound. I’ll find another blanket. He’s still shaking.”

  “Bring it.” Fleming could tell Cesar was slipping away from them. He wanted to find some way to call him back, to stop this ebbing. “Don’t let go, Cesar. Hang on. Hang on.”

  The doctor came through the door, slightly out of breath. He was about Fleming’s age, freckle-faced and brindle-haired. “Angus Bethune,” he said with a strong Scots burr. “What happened?”

  “Cesar Holiday. My houseman. He was shot. About forty minutes ago.” Fleming didn’t leave off his hold on the gauze.

  “I can see that,” said Bethune, moving Fleming aside. “I’ll take over.”

  Fleming stepped back two paces. “He passed out half an hour ago.”

  “Um,” said Bethune as he bent over the supine form of Cesar. “Natalie,” he said to his nurse without looking up from his examination. “Bring the light nearer, if you would, please.”

  “Yes, sah,” she said, turning on a goose-necked floor-lamp and bringing it up to the side of the examination table.

  “There’s a deal of torn tissue here,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Fleming.

  “I’ll do what I can,” Bethune told Fleming, “but I don’t know how much that will be. This man’s gone into shock and his pulse is erratic and thready. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “Do everything you can,” said Fleming.

  Bethune looked at him, a stern expression in his greenish eyes. “That is what I am obliged to do.” He motioned toward the door. “Now let me do it.”

  Chapter 37

  DAWN WAS breaking when Doctor Bethune finally came out of the examination room, drawn and exhausted, his head down. He carried a clean linen towel and was wiping his iodine-stained hands.

  “Mister Fleming,” he said, and the tone of his voice said it all.

  “Oh, God,” Fleming said as he rose from the uncomfortable chair in which he had passed the night. A few hours ago the nurse, Natalie, had come out to treat his hands and knees—tweezing out the bits of glass in his palms and his legs and bandaging them after spreading stinging iodine on them. He felt oddly guilty at having had such minor injuries looked after when Cesar had been dying.

  Bethune made a gesture of helplessness. “I tried everything I knew, but he’d lost too much blood. The baker’s transfusion looked as if it might help, but it came too late. I thought that when I’d cleaned the wound and dressed it that he would rally enough for the transfusion to help, but he hadn’t enough strength left. It gave out just a few minutes ago. I am very sorry.”

  Fleming lowered his head, anger and grief roiling through him. “I’m sure you did all you could.”

  “I don’t think a larger hospital or more equipment could have made that much of a difference, not once shock set in,” he went on in an attempt to soften the blow. “He wouldn’t have made it into the city.”

  Nodding numbly, Fleming said, “I know you did all anyone could.”

  “So I hope,” said Bethune. “I certainly did all I know how to do.”

  “I’ve no doubt of that,” said Fleming, looking at the bandages on his hands.

  “And you did all a man might to get him the help he required,” Bethune said. “You got him here quickly, you put pressure on the wound, you—”

  “I got him shot in the first place. It should have been me. It was supposed to have been me,” Fleming said through his teeth.

  “You can’t be sure of that, Mister Fleming. There are things that go on among the people here that you and I know nothing of.” He turned, about to go back into the examination room. “I’ve signed the death certificate. I’ll have the body ready by mid-afternoon. I’d attend to it now, but I have to get some rest.”

  Fleming heard him out impassively. “I’ll arrange for his family to claim it. His wife’s name is Bathsheba. Bathsheba Holiday. If she asks, I will bring her here myself. If she would rather her relatives do, then I will not accompany her. I don’t know which it will be yet, so I cannot tell you what or whom to expect. Send me the bill for your care—all of it.” Saying her name, he could not imagine how he could face Cesar’s wife without being able to present her with the murderer as well, in chains and ready for swift justice. Abruptly his rage grew, like a malign beast within him. He wanted to find those responsible for Cesar’s death and smash them to pieces.

  “Very good. Will you leave your card with my nurse?” He walked back into the examination room and closed the door, and a moment later, Natalie came out and approached Fleming.

  “Doctor wants your card, sah,” she said. “And if you don’t mind my saying so, you should take something for your pain and rest awhile before you try to drive back. You’re in no condition to be on the road.”

  Fleming had taken one from his wallet and handed it to her. “Thanks for your concern; I’ll be all right.” He was torn between leaving at once and delaying that moment as long as possible. “I asked the doctor to send me the bill for everything.”

  “Very good, sah,” she said, reading the card. “A journalist. It must be very exciting.”

  “It’s damnable,” said Fleming with strong emotion.

  There was an awkward silence. “I am sorry about your man, sah.”

  “No more than I,” said Fleming, who was dreading what he would have to tell Bathsheba in a short while, and hoping to find a reason to postpone that terrible moment as long as decently possible.

  Natalie ducked her head as if to reassure Fleming that she was aware of his dismay. “We’ll get him ready, sah.”

  “Thank you,” Fleming said, and took two ten-pound notes from his wallet. He handed these to Natalie. “This is an initial payment. I know it will be more, but apply this to what I will owe you, if you would.”

  “I will, and thank you, sah,” she said. “The doctor will file the certificate from here. You needn’t worry that there will be any questions about it, but you should make a report to the police, sah.”

  “I know,” said Fleming, deciding that he would speak with Bathsheba before visiting the constabulary. Best to get the worst over with soonest, he told himself, ashamed of his cowardice in facing Bathsheba. He owed it to Cesar’s family to inform them as soon as he could; it was what was expected of him, his memory repeated what his nanny had said when he was a little boy: you must take care of your inferiors.

  “You’ll want to change your clothes, sah—they’re bloody,” Natalie pointed out.

  He nodded again. “I will.”

  “Very good, sah,” she said, and left him to attend to her duties.

  Fleming stood still for some little time, wondering if he ought to open the examination-room doors for a last look at Cesar, but decided against it. He would see Cesar dead at his funeral. Slowly he left the clinic and went down to his Lagonda Rapier. Cesar’s blood had sunk into the leather and dried to a stiff russet-brown; in a remote part of his mind, Fleming made a note to order a new seat-cover, and felt himself a traitor to Cesar for thinking that. He got in and started the motor, his hands feeling mittened in their bandages. He was almost oblivious to the activity behind him in the market-square. Driving slowly—he didn’t trust himself to put on speed—he left Eastport behind and headed back for his house, keeping his mind as blank as he could. By the time he arrived at his house, his torpor had faded and he was all but consumed with self-condemnation that only increased as he unlocked the rear door and walked slowly into the kitchen. He looked about, checking the lamps hanging in the lantern: two had guttered completely, but the rest still had small amounts of kerosene in them. He used the two thin ropes to lower it and blew out the remaining lamps, then went into the dining room and did the same thing. This task done, he went upstairs to wash, shave, and change, projects that proved awkward with his hands wrapped in bandages. Accepting the difficulty as fitting punishment for what had happened, he persevered.

  Half an hour later, in a navy blazer and dark trousers, he left the house and once again drove off, this time bound for Cesar’s house. Going through the village, he wished he could be invisible, for it seemed to him every eye accused him, and that all blamed him as completely as he blamed himself. As he pulled up in front of the fence in front of Bathsheba’s house, he almost lost what courage he had, and he stepped out of the Rapier slowly.

  Joshua came out of the door, his school-pack slung over his shoulder. He slowed as he caught sight of Fleming, his clever eyes wary. “Good morning,” he said in a carefully neutral tone.

  Fleming could not respond in kind. “Will you wait a moment, Joshua?”

  “Where’s my uncle?” Joshua demanded without apology for his tone. “Has something happened?”

  “Come into the house. Bathsheba will want you,” said Fleming, coming up the walkway toward the steps. “I’m afraid I have bad news.”

  Joshua stepped aside, worry and ire building in his face. “What are you saying?”

  Fleming tapped on the door. “Bathsheba. It’s Ian Fleming. I need to speak to you.”

  Bathsheba came to the door, her hair still damp from washing. She was in a newly ironed dress of intense turquoise that seemed to upstage the sky. “Mister Fleming, sah. Come in,” she said, standing aside to admit him. Her front parlor was small, neat, and ornamented with pictures of saints and other religious figures Fleming wasn’t sure he recognized. In one corner stood her precious sewing machine. “If you will sit down, sah,” she said, indicating a settee upholstered in a colorful flowered print.

  “I think I’d rather stand, thank you, Bathsheba,” said Fleming. He heard Joshua close the door behind him.

  “What is it, then?” Bathsheba asked, apprehension beginning to color her voice. “What do you want to tell me about my husband?”

  Fleming winced. “How did you—”

  “You have never come to my house before, and you have come alone. What could it be but something to do with Cesar?” She seemed calm, but there was a shine of tears in her eyes.

  “Yes,” said Fleming, his voice thickened by sorrow. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Truly.” He took a deep breath. “He … He was shot, last night, while trying to ready my house to defend it. There was a sniper in the trees and he—” He paused to swallow twice and take a deep breath. “I took him to the clinic in Eastport. Doctor Bethune worked all night to try to save him.”

  “But he couldn’t,” said Bathsheba in a resigned tone. “I thought that must be it.” She was weeping silently.

  “And what did you do?” Joshua demanded.

  “I got him to the best care I could, as quickly as I could,” said Fleming. “I know it was little enough—”

  “You’re damned right it was little enough,” Joshua interrupted furiously. “He’s dead. Because of you!”

  “Yes,” Fleming said. “I don’t know what I can do to make up for it—there’s nothing I can do. I can’t make up for it. Ever.” He looked at Bathsheba. “I am sorry. I know that sounds inadequate, but believe me, if I had thought this would happen, I would never have let him stay with me. I would have sent him away.” He wanted her to believe him so he would have a chance of believing it himself.