Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 34, No. 13 & 14, Winter 1989

The old man shrugged lightly. “He died, of course. I understand he was wounded during the highjacking. We all die, sergeant. Abraham. A rose. You and I.”

“And the gold?”

“Lost. Gone forever. Buried, probably, before he died.”

“Do you think Atlee knew of its location?”

“Perhaps. We shall never know.”

At the public library Andrew spent over an hour and discovered several suggestive facts. He also discovered — and took along with him, to read later — an old history book with a picture in it of Abraham Mayani and Robert Atlee. According to the caption, the black and white photograph had been taken by one of Mayani’s men, just before the attack on the gold shipment. The two men stood side by side in battered military khakis, bareheaded, grinning in the glare of sunlight, each with an arm over the other’s shoulder. Mayani was slightly shorter than Atlee, but even so he seemed the more impressive of the two. Both were handsome men, but Mayani’s grin was wider, bolder. He seemed more vital, more vigorous; seemed not only to draw comfort from his youth and strength, as Atlee did, but to revel in them.

The Atlee in the photograph was recognizable, just, as the same man who had lain dead on the bed at the Sinbad. The younger version and the older could have been two separate people. And of course — despite the resemblance, despite their sharing some long-ago early years — they were.

Even in here, in the office, hung the cloying smell of disinfectant. A small fan shuddered at the open window, but served only to stir the dense, warm air sluggishly around the narrow room.

The white-uniformed woman sitting on the far side of the desk was in her fifties, big, heavyset, her face round and jowly, her eyes pinched between rolls of flesh. Her two front teeth were gold. A most formidable personage.

Andrew said, “You were on the plane from the capital, matron. Your name is on the manifest.”

“Of course I was on the plane. I told that to the other policemen.” Testy, impatient, a woman used to giving the orders and asking the questions. “Look, sergeant, I’m very busy. I’ve a hospital to run.”

“You did know that one of the other passengers on the plane, a man, was murdered yesterday morning?”

“So I was told. What’s that to do with me? You think I killed him? I was here, making rounds all night.”

“And you know, of course, that man was Robert Atlee.”

She blinked, furrowed her brow, frowned heavily. “Who?” A fine performance.

Andrew smiled. “Matron, I should think it unlikely that you’d be unfamiliar with this name, even if you hadn’t lived here in the Township during The Troubles. In the fifties, the man was a hero.”

“I didn’t live here during The Troubles,” she said. “I didn’t come here till afterward.”

“I’m sorry, matron, but that is untrue. The public library keeps very good records, among them a book written by a local European woman. It has photographs. And among those is a photograph of the staff of Dr. Hamilton’s clinic, which, as you know, preceded this hospital. In 1955, you were one of the three nurses working there.” She had been a striking woman then, tall, slender, proud.

She waved a hand dismissively. Brazening it out. “Yes, well, so what? Is that supposed to mean something?”

“It means that you would have known Robert Atlee. Would have known who he was, and possibly would have known him personally. His father owned the Atlee Ginnery, an important man. It means, in all likelihood, that you recognized him when you saw him on that plane two days ago.”

“Nonsense. Thirty years ago. Who recognizes people after all that time?”

“The two of you were on a small airplane for two hours, matron. Time enough for the memory to return. He had changed, certainly, but he was still recognizable.” She had changed as well, but more so; changed enough that Robert Atlee, had he once known her, had he noticed her on the plane, would never have guessed her identity.

“I think, too,” said Andrew, “that thirty years ago you would have recognized Abraham Mayani if you had seen him near Daniel Tsuto’s house.”

More blinking. “Abraham Mayani?” Her voice pitched a shade higher.

“I have learned that thirty years ago, Ronald Nu, the current Assistant Minister of the Interior, was a member of the G.S.U., which at the time was searching for Mayani. Bwana Nu had a woman friend here in the Township. This woman was a nurse. It was she who told Bwana Nu that she had seen Mayani. That woman was you, matron, was it not?”

“That’s ridiculous.” Bluster. “I wasn’t the only nurse in the Township then.”

“There were five nurses in the Township then. Three at Dr. Hamilton’s clinic, two at Dr. Hannah’s. All of them, except for you, were women in their forties or fifties.”

Trying for anger now, almost succeeding: “Sergeant, you’re wasting my time. Whoever told you about me and Minister Nu was lying. The only time I’ve seen the man was in the newspapers.”

Time to produce the famous sledgehammer.