“About what I figured,” the detective said. “Do you see any names you know from before you took the job with Mr. Twain?”
I scanned the list again. “No, I’m afraid not. Is this connected with the murder in New York?”
“Sure, and why else would I be asking?” said Berrigan. “My chief sent me on this trip because the political boys who give him his orders think the murderer might be following Mr. Twain. If that’s so, our suspect’s name—or the name he’s using now—is somewhere on this list. I want to eliminate the people who couldn’t possibly have done it. If I can eliminate everybody on the list, I can go back home.”
“Then why is Mr. Clemens’s name still on the list?”
“I told you, this is the complete passenger list. If I showed you a list with names crossed off, and my conclusions noted in the margin, it might keep you from saying something I need to know about. Maybe someone’s given me an alibi, and you know something that contradicts it. Maybe you saw people someplace they forgot to tell me they’d been to.”
“But surely you don’t consider Mr. Clemens a suspect.”
“Why, he was the first one I eliminated. I told my chief about the note at Mr. Twain’s hotel, and he decided to settle that question before we went a step further. So he got his boss to call somebody in the mayor’s office, who called Henry Rogers, and he vouched for Mr. Twain. They’d been in a business meeting with two people from the steamboat tour all morning, and Mr. Twain and Rogers had a long lunch afterwards. He’s not a suspect—that you can be sure of.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear I’m not working for a criminal,” I said, in my best sarcastic tone. I flipped through the list to the final page. “My name’s still on here, too.”
Berrigan cleared his throat. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. Can you tell me your whereabouts last Thursday afternoon?”
I thought a moment, somewhat taken aback by the question. “I arrived at my hotel a little before noon. Mr. Clemens was out at his business appointment, so I spent the afternoon in the art museum uptown.”
“You did, now? And what did you see there?” I mentioned a few canvases, and Berrigan surprised me by showing a rather detailed familiarity with them, even asking about others that were hung near the ones I’d mentioned. I wouldn’t have thought a policeman would have such a knowledge of art, and told him so.
“You won’t find many,” the detective said with a grin. “Last year, I had a case that sent me to shadow a suspected art thief, and guess where he spent his afternoons? I shadowed him through the museum about five times, all told, before we cleared him and arrested another man. I found myself missing the paintings, so I went back to the museum on my own about a month ago, and he was there again—so I struck up a conversation and we had a jolly time talking about art and artists. You never know, in this business. Anyhow, you’ve obviously been to the museum. That doesn’t prove it was on Thursday, of course, but I have ways of verifying that if I need to.”
“Surely you don’t think I killed this fellow in New York! What reason could I possibly have?”
“Suppose you came in while he was still in the lobby, and the clerk pointed him out as the man who was asking for Mr. Twain. He talked you into going with him, and when he got you away from the hotel, the two of you got into an argument.”
“This is preposterous,” I said, somewhat heatedly. “Why would I have gone with the fellow?”
“He might have claimed that Mr. Twain had sent him to find you, and persuaded you to follow him downtown,” said Berrigan. His face was expressionless. “Then, in the alley away from the hotel, he tried to rob you and you killed him in self-defense. Or maybe he threatened to blackmail Mr. Twain, and you killed him to protect your employer—and your job.”
“You dare accuse me—” I began, rising from my seat, but he stopped me with a raised hand. I realized that I must have been speaking loud; people at nearby tables had stopped talking, and some of them were looking at me out of the corners of their eyes. I was uncomfortably aware of Laura Cunningham among the onlookers.
“Calm down, Mr. Cabot,” said the detective. He said it quietly, but there was a firm, no-nonsense tone to his voice. I sat down, acutely aware that I had been making a spectacle of myself. “Nobody’s accused you of anything,” Berrigan said. “In fact, the sooner I can eliminate you for certain, the happier I’ll be. The main reason I’m here is that somebody with a load of influence back in New York is afraid that Mr. Twain is in danger from persons unknown. Now, wouldn’t it be a fine mess if it turns out the private secretary of the man I’m supposed to be guarding is dangerous, and I haven’t investigated him properly? And if I eliminate you from my list of suspects and you go ahead and kill him, where am I then?”
“I suppose it makes sense, if you look at it that way,” I admitted.
“Nothing personal, of course; I just have to consider all the angles in a case like this. You can’t deny that you were in the right town at the right time, and you’re the only person who admits to having seen the dead man in New York, and you’re employed by Mr. Twain, and so I can’t eliminate you entirely—even though you don’t strike me as a very likely murderer. You can be sure we’d be having a much less friendly conversation today, if I thought you were the man I’m after.”
“Not a very likely murderer, am I? Well, I guess it’s a compliment of sorts. What can I do to make myself even less likely in your eyes?” I leaned back and crossed my arms across my chest. I was beginning to understand my employer’s view of this interfering detective.
“Help me find the one who did it,” said Berrigan. “You’re the closest thing to a witness we have at this point. You saw our victim, and there’s a chance you may have seen his killer without knowing it at the time. Keep an eye out on the passengers, and let me know right away if you see a face that you might have spotted in New York last Thursday, especially if they were at Mr. Twain’s lecture or in his hotel.”
I thought a moment, trying to think whether I’d noticed anyone on board the boat I recognized from elsewhere. I mentioned having seen Miss Cunningham at the Chicago lecture, and Berrigan duly noted the fact, with a chuckle. “Hard to forget that face, isn’t it? I’d be surprised if she’s our killer, but I’ve been surprised before.” I glanced at the spot where she had been sitting earlier, and realized that she was gone. I wondered whether my outburst had been part of her reason for leaving.
I had the feeling that I was omitting someone else. Perhaps, I thought, something would come to me when I’d met more of the passengers and had faces to attach to these names. Thinking about the list reminded me of something else: “What about the Throckmorton brothers? They’ve been thrown off the boat, but they were scheduled to be on the trip originally.”
“I doubt it was that pair, nasty as they are. They’re trouble, for sure, and I’m just as glad to be rid of them, but unless something new pops up, they’re not suspects in this case. I can imagine them knifing a man without batting an eye, but not leaving money in his pockets afterwards. Besides, their alibi looks good. Now, McPhee’s another story, and a fishy one at that. If I could place him in New York on the day of the murder, I’d arrest him this minute. And I’m keeping an eye out for that Jack Hubbard as well—I’ll wager he’s still in the game, somehow. The question is whether we can spot him—if he’s here, he didn’t give his right name when he bought the ticket.”
“I’d be amazed if he had,” I said. “He’s probably changed disguises, too. But Mr. Clemens might recognize him, if he’s on the boat.”
“Aye, that he might,” said the detective, folding the list and standing. “I’ll have to find Mr. Clemens and ask him. Meanwhile, keep your eyes open, and let me know if you spot anything funny.”
While I was vexed that Detective Berrigan had not been willing to remove me entirely from his list of suspects, I was not sorry that we had talked. He had reminded me that the criminal he was pursuing remained at large, and might very well be among the ha
ppy passengers surrounding me on the decks of the Horace Greeley. It was sobering to glance at the people in the main cabin and on the decks, wondering whether one of them might be a murderer—and, if Berrigan was right, a real and present danger to Mr. Clemens. I had allowed the simple pleasures of seeing new places and meeting new people to distract me. It was time to rededicate myself to my search for the killer.
The only problem was, where to begin? I scanned the faces of my fellow passengers, looking in vain for one I recognized from New York or anywhere else. There were depressingly few who seemed even vaguely familiar, and fewer still whom I could imagine in the role of a criminal.
Chief among these was Ed McPhee, who sat at a round table in a corner of the main cabin, already engaged in a lively game of poker with four other men. He was obviously wasting no time lamenting the absence of the Throckmorton boys, and was instead avidly pursuing his vocation, if one can dignify cardplaying with so lofty an appellation.
But while Berrigan claimed to have found discrepancies in McPhee’s story, nobody had reported seeing him in New York at the time of the murder, and he denied ever having visited that city. His expression of surprise on seeing the murder victim’s photograph had seemed genuine. On the other hand, Mr. Clemens had characterized him as a liar, and a man not to turn one’s back on. And it was quite possible that he suspected the truth about Mr. Clemens’s story regarding the treasure in “Napoleon, Arkansas.” McPhee would bear watching, I told myself.
Besides Mr. Clemens and myself, the only passenger I could remember seeing in New York before our departure was Detective Berrigan himself. But there seemed to be no profit in that line of speculation, despite Mr. Clemens’s initial doubts as to Berrigan’s bona fides. The detective had put himself too squarely in the middle of the affair to escape attention. Besides, there was no reason to believe that he knew anything at all of the hidden gold, which was the only motive I could imagine for his killing a man in New York, then manipulating events to allow himself to follow Mr. Clemens down the river.
The newspaper reporter, Andrew Dunbar, was another who had probably been in New York on the day of the crime. But given his obtrusive manner, and his apparent hostility to Mr. Clemens, I could hardly have missed noticing him had he been anywhere in our vicinity on the day of the murder. As for a possible motive, killing a man to get a newspaper story seemed too far-fetched to credit.
The passenger list had included several other people who’d given New York as their residence, although I knew far too little about any of them to support even the wildest theory. Could one of them, I wondered, be the elusive Farmer Jack Hubbard? I had to grant the possibility. Never having laid eyes on the fellow, I had only the vaguest of descriptions to go by—a tall man, who had been in the habit of posing as a rustic. I would have to make note of any unusually tall passengers—I realized, with a sense of irony, that I myself would be on that list if Berrigan were compiling it. Of course, if Hubbard were on board, even in a new disguise, Mr. Clemens would have the best chance of spotting him.
Considering all these uncertainties, I could understand why Berrigan had been reluctant to remove me from his list of suspects. I was perhaps the only person on the boat who was in New York at the right time and who had an undeniable connection (however innocent) to Mr. Clemens. The detective’s speculations concerning me were obviously rubbish; even he admitted that they were unlikely. But who knew what he might do if he came under pressure to make an arrest, or what his superiors might be ready to believe? It was clearly in my best interests to help him find the real murderer. Unfortunately, I seemed to be no closer to doing that than I had been when I’d first learned of the crime.
I decided to take a stroll around the decks. After all, I had met only a small fraction of the passengers. There was a reasonable chance that I might spot someone who had been in the crowd at the first of Mr. Clemens’s lectures I had attended, or even in the lobby back in the Union Square Hotel. As things stood, there was a shortage of credible suspects. It was time to see if I could make any additions to the number.
The sun was still shining brightly as I came out of the cabin. The river had widened out into a sort of lake, and it seemed we were now in a separate little world of our own, free for a brief while from the rules and customs of the rest of civilization. The thought that one of our group might be a cold-blooded killer struck home even more sharply at the realization that there was nowhere to escape him, should he turn his hand to slaughter once again.
What, I wondered, would a murderer look like? The faces of my fellow passengers, smiling at the simple pleasure of seeing the natural beauty of the river on a fine, clear day, gave no sign of darker passions. There was no hint of guilt about them, nothing I could interpret as evidence of criminal propensities. I had seen more anger and passion in Mr. Clemens’s face over the course of a few days than in those of my fellow passengers, yet I was quite certain he was no murderer.
The Throckmorton brothers came far closer to my notion of criminal physiognomy than any of the faces before me. I had vivid memories of Billy Throckmorton’s smirk as he’d shoved me into the river at St. Paul. I could as easily imagine the same brutish expression on his face as he leveled a revolver or a knife at a defenseless victim. On the other hand, McPhee, whom Berrigan evidently believed to be capable of such a bloody deed even if he was not necessarily the murderer he sought, had sat at the card table with a calm, businesslike expression. He might as well have been an attorney greeting new clients. Would his face appear the same as he snuffed out a life?
I realized that I had spent much of my life in a state of comparative innocence. It seemed highly unlikely that there were habitual criminals among my playmates, or in my parents’ circle of acquaintance—my father, as an attorney, may have had the occasional unsavory client, but if so, he never brought him home to meet the family. I had witnessed no murders, and few enough serious fights; the football field was as close as my life had come to violence. Until Detective Berrigan had pulled out the photograph of poor Lee Russell in the New York morgue, I had never laid eyes on a body dead of any cause other than age or disease. How could I judge what the visage of a killer would show?
Berrigan must have seen many hundreds of criminals in his time, some of them from the worst levels of society. Most likely he had had occasion to defend himself from deadly assault by some felon resisting arrest. Yet he somehow walked through the world with a placid expression, and showed no external sign of an acquaintance with death and corruption. Perhaps too great a familiarity with evil made a man comfortable with it, even a man who had to fight it every day. If so, what would a truly hardened criminal look like? Was there no external sign of that inner deficiency of soul?
By the time I had circled the boiler deck and the hurricane deck, I was convinced that nobody on board could be a killer—and a moment later, that every single person aboard the Horace Greeley was a potential assassin, waiting only for the opportune moment to drop the smiling mask and, like a mad dog, run through the crowd dealing death to all and sundry. Just as my thoughts reached this depth of despair, I turned the corner of the cabin and found myself face-to-face with Miss Patterson.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Cabot,” she said. “Whatever causes you to frown so on such a beautiful day?”
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I was taken aback, as much by Miss Patterson’s sudden appearance as by her question. My face must have shown my confusion, for she twirled her parasol and gave a little laugh. “Of course, you needn’t answer if I’m intruding. It just seemed strange to see you with such a dark expression. I do hope nothing’s wrong!”
I shook my head. “Nothing really,” I said. “Just a passing mood.” Her eyes twinkled at me, and the afternoon sun sparkled brightly off the waters of the river. I could hear music from the lounge and the voices of other passengers laughing and chatting pleasantly as the boat glided smoothly down the broad expanse between the banks. It was hard to think unpleasant thoughts in such surroundings, and in s
uch company.
“Well, I hope it won’t pass my way,” she said. “It would quite spoil this marvelous scenery. Do you think that mountain is Maiden Rock?”
“Maiden’s Rock, I think it’s called,” I said. I had seen an engraving of it in my guidebook, but the reality was far more imposing. “There is some sort of Indian legend associated with it, but I can’t recall the details.”
“I remember the story now,” said Miss Patterson. “An Indian maid named Winona had given her heart to one handsome brave, but her parents insisted that she wed another, a famous warrior of the tribe. On the eve of the wedding, they sent her with the other maidens of the tribe to gather flowers on the summit of the rock, as was their custom. But rather than marry against her will, she threw herself off the rock. They say that travelers on the river can sometimes hear her singing as they pass by the rock.”
“A melancholy tale for such a picturesque place,” I said. “Is it true?”
She thought for a moment, then said, “I’m not sure whether it is true, but it is such a pretty story that I find myself wanting to believe it nonetheless. Sentiment can be as meaningful as what the history books tell us, don’t you think?”
“I’m sure it can,” I said. “Although I must confess that if I heard someone singing from the top of the rock, I would be more likely to suspect a prank than an Indian ghost.”
“Mr. Cabot! Have you no imagination?”
“Mr. Clemens seems to think not,” I told her. “However, he appears to consider the lack of it something of an asset, though I’m not sure whether or not to take him seriously.”
“How remarkable!” she said, with a little laugh. “It must be very interesting to work for such a famous literary man. Does he always say peculiar things like that?”
[Mark Twain Mysteries 01] - Death on the Mississippi Page 13
