The sun was as high in the winter clouds as it was going to ever be when Guy Marlborough finally awakened. In the night frost had left their mark upon the window panes, an event so rare that many of the people who awakened to the sight the next morning had never seen it before. The detective, who had managed to amass all the bedcovers in a cocoon around himself, never saw any of this, having determined in his sudden gloom the night before to spend as much of the day asleep as he possibly could. The hotel room had grown frigid during the night, and for a few late hours the man and wife had been sleepless, tossing and turning and flailing their legs to create warmth and talking to each other quietly and sharply about their seemingly imminent return home.
It would be a relief to Margaret. During these days she had found friends among the community of diplomats' wives, to be sure, but gentle tours of Caracas and the odd game of bridge grew old quickly, especially for one who had never been able to play cards. She would be glad for these new friends to serve as correspondents from a hemisphere away if it meant a safe return to England.
"Don't be so certain about returning," he had told her in the night. "I mean, we will be back home soon, but it may be longer than you expect, and it may be difficult to get back."
"What do you mean?" She had been looking for reassurance.
"The blockade, of course. I am fairly certain we will be able to get out, since I will be escorting three British spies, but Margaret, we are talking about a military action here. And if we - I mean, the Royal Navy - see fit to attack Venezuela, we - I mean, us - are, well, trapped, are we not?"
She had to admit that this was the case, and turned the subject to something cheerier, though the frosty weather and infuriating news left her husband rather immune to the shift in direction. He gradually grew less talkative, until Margaret realized that he had, somehow, fallen asleep.
When he awakened it was the very beginning of the afternoon. He had no intention of working on this day, partly in protest of the new assignment he had been given and partly because as consciousness grew inside him he felt an overwhelming desire to remain motionless under the covers. His wife had left, probably to eat. He turned on his side and picked up a printed card welcoming guests to the hotel, reading it absentmindedly. Marlborough shut his eyes again but sleep didn't return. He kept his eyes closed anyways.
The case had, at any rate, become too much for one person to handle, hadn't it? The half-dozen murders, or whatever the number was now, suggested a conspiracy, or multiple conspiracies, far beyond one detective's capacity to handle, and at any rate they somehow tied in with the fact that gunboats were only a few miles away, ready and willing to pound an entire nation into submission. Beyond that ring of gunboats, meanwhile, there was another ring, prepared to sink the ships that had destroyed the nation, if necessary. It was all rather a lot for a British man who, though loved by his boss, was distrusted by his department because he always solved their cases for them.
Was that why he was even here in another hemisphere in the first place? Guy Marlborough wouldn't be surprised. They had gotten him out of the way for a while. He could solve someone else's cases for them now, and that certainly is what he would do if he could find a way of proving that the president of a South American nation was murdering dissidents and foreign spies, in such a way as to not be arrested and somehow appeal to an authority higher than that President to bring the powerful culprit to justice. And then there was the British Ambassador's suggestion that Cipriano Castro was a puppet for someone else. Marlborough would have to be careful to avoid this rather alarming personage - if he were still working to solve these murders.
If he were still working to solve these murders.
Somehow, he thought as he pulled the covers ever tighter around him and buried his face in the pillow, he would still unravel this mystery. He would just need the help of an unusual ally.
