“I’m sorry, Mr. Heller. Your photo, it was sent ahead to us.”

She extended a slender hand; pink-and-red-and-white-beaded wooden jewelry dangled from her wrist, making more music. “Marjorie Bristol.”

I shook her hand, and her grip was strong, but the flesh was smooth and soft.

My tongue was thick as one of the sponges on those ragtag schooners. “Uh, I take it you must represent Mr. Oakes, Miss Bristol.”

“I do,” she said, repeating the dazzling smile, “but he prefer Sir Harry-an interestin’ combination of the grandiose and commonplace, don’t you think?”

“I was just thinking that,” I said.

“Let me take your bag,” she said.

“Not on your life, lady!”

She looked at me, startled.

I smiled. “Sorry. That came out rude. It’s hot, it’s sticky, and I’m in a foreign land. Please lead the way-but I’ll carry my own bag.”

She smiled again, but in a no-nonsense manner. “Certainly.”

She walked just ahead of me and her high, rounded rump moved impertinently under the blue linen dress, as if the globes of her backside were constantly trying to balance themselves and failing, nobly.

“I’m in charge of Sir Harry’s household staff,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind bein’ greeted by a female.”

“Hardly.” I was following along with my coat slung over my shoulder, shirt clinging as if I’d been swimming in it, lugging my bag. Her rear end might be impertinent, I reflected, but Marjorie Bristol herself seemed as polite and businesslike as she was charming.

“We have a surrey waitin’ in Rawson Square,” she said, tossing me a friendly glance.

Beyond the wharf, native women sold straw headgear and baskets, their own flamboyant woven hats their best advertising tool; others peddled sponges, shells and coconut candies. Miss Bristol walked me past a peaceful palm-and hibiscus-flung postage-stamp park where black little boys rode ancient cannons and black little girls sat primly on green benches before a band shell, possibly while their mothers sold straw goods nearby. A Negro policeman, hands behind him, chin high, stood motionless on a corner of Bay Street, in his white gold-spiked sun helmet, freshly laundered white jacket, red-striped dark blue trousers and black reflective boots. He might have been a statue.