Clouds Across the Sun

It had all the ingredients of a made-for-TV movie. The newly appointed colonial governor of a subtropical resort isle is taking the evening breeze in the manicured gardens of the governor's mansion. At his side are his handsome young aide-de-camp and his pet Great Dane. Suddenly a shadow comes to life, gunfire shatters the calm and the Governor and his aide fall dead. Even the dog lies lifeless. A state of emergency is declared, the airport is monitored and homicide experts are flown in from Scotland Yard . . .

At week's end, this all too real mystery story had no solution. Police appeared as baffled by the murder of Bermuda's Governor Sir Richard Sharples and Aide Hugh Sayers as they were by that of the island's police chief, George Duckett, exactly six months earlier. Were the killings connected? Were they politically motivated? Nobody knew for sure, but everybody had theories. From Bermuda, TIME Correspondent James Simon sent this report:

Just three days after her husband's murder, Lady Sharples sat before news-conference microphones in the elegant drawing room of Government House to declare: "I can only wish that no one will think this changes anything on the island." After she spoke, reporters poked about the drawing room, fingering the fine silver and peering at pictures of the four Sharples children, Queen Mary and Viscount Montgomery (whom Sir Richard served as military assistant in the early 1950s).

The conference was intended as a signal to foreign tourists (who annually spend about $100 million in Bermuda, three-quarters of the island's income) that all is well. The sun still shines more than 340 days a year, the hibiscus still bloom, and the Bermudian bobby still stands in his elevated bird cage directing the traffic on Hamilton's Front Street.

Bermudians are uneasy discussing the killings with visitors. One popular theory on the murders, held by many cab drivers, bartenders and shopkeepers, is that it was an "outside job." The leader of the minority Progressive Labor Party, Walter N.H. Robinson, a portly black lawyer of 55 who just before the murder demanded the removal of any Governor appointed by London, has closed ranks with the ruling United Bermuda Party in deploring the murders. He privately speculated that the crime stemmed from underworld efforts to bring in narcotics.

Police divers have been searching the waters around Government House hoping to find the murder weapon. Scotland Yard detectives and local police questioned scores of suspects. A dozen people, mostly young blacks, were detained by police under an emergency proclamation that allows the government to keep suspects in custody for 96 hours without bringing charges.

The earlier victim, Police Chief Duckett, had the reputation of being a tough cop. After a crime was committed, he did not discourage his police from wholesale roundups of blacks merely on suspicion that some might have been involved. On one occasion he publicly slapped a black suspect across the face. In the black community (which makes up about 60% of the Bermudian population of 52,000), Scotland Yard Superintendent William Wright has found a "wall of silence" about the Duckett crime.

Sir Richard Sharples was a very different sort. After a successful military career, he entered the House of Commons in 1954 and rose through Conservative Party ranks to become a Minister of State for the Home Office, then got the assignment to Bermuda last October. "This man had just come here and hadn't done anything to anybody," said one fisherman in Hamilton. It is the view among Bermudians, both black and white, that Sir Richard was pleasant, outgoing and informal. "The shooting could not have been personal," said M.P. William M. Cox of the United Bermuda Party. "That chap was a Christian gentleman."

Protest. Many Bermudians dismiss both the theory of narcotics involvement and that of a personal vengeance. They fear that the shootings may nonetheless represent a defiant protest against the last vestiges of British colonialism. "There must have been a political motive," says one government official. "But it's really a symbolic protest. Bermuda is the oldest self-governing colony in the Western Hemisphere. It seems they're trying to knock the symbols out from under it."

The "they" refers to the handful of known black militants on the island. The closest thing to a militant organization is the now defunct Black Beret Cadre, which flourished briefly with protests and a publication from 1968 to 1970. At least two former members of the cadre were being held this week in police custody.

Compared with their black-bereted counterparts in the U.S., however, Bermuda's militants have little cause for complaint. In contrast to America's ghettoed cities, Bermuda is close to a paradise: there are no slums; there is, even today, no visible tension on the streets either by day or night. There is no official discrimination in employment, and blacks are represented in all enterprises on the island. In the legislature, both the majority and minority leaders are black.

Whether there is racial discrimination in Bermuda is debated often in Hamilton, but usually out of earshot of tourists. At the Hoppin' John Restaurant and Bar, where tourists often debate nothing more substantial than whether to order the Portuguese bean soup or the Bermuda fish chowder (both $1.25), locals at the bar try to convince themselves and others that Bermuda is completely tranquil. One white businessman, somewhat loose with liquor, tells a black employee that "for the last ten years the white man has bent over backwards to make Bermuda, black and white, work."

P.L.P. Leader Robinson disagrees: "This is a bigoted place. There is racial discrimination here, as subtle as it is. Everything is open--in the civil service and private business--but there is still a white attorney general, a white commissioner of police, a white chief justice and a white senior magistrate."

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