[Mark Twain Mysteries 01] - Death on the Mississippi

by Peter J. Heck

  “Ah, but listen to this,” she said, touching my sleeve. “Today, one of the gamblers started to brag about the different places he’d played cards—England, Spain . . . half the world if one could believe him. Of course, the others chimed in with all the places they’d gambled. A few of them are from the East, so the talk eventually turned to clubs and private games in New York. New York is where the real money is, said one of them. If you really want to see gambling, you have to come to New York. I’ve seen some of your Wall Street tycoons put five hundred dollars on the table at the turn of a card, and not bat an eye. And the others all chimed in with stories of their own about the high stakes they’d played for in New York.”

  “Including McPhee?”

  “No,” said Martha. “Mr. McPhee scoffed at them all, and came down squarely for western gambling. We used to fleece the New York fellows regularly when they’d show up out here, he said. They’d come in claiming to know it all, and we’d teach them pretty quickly that they didn’t know anything about cards. Every now and then, some boy who could barely cut the mustard on the river would go east and come back with his pockets full. But I never saw the point to it. There’s more money to be made right here on the river than on the whole East Coast, from what I see. I wouldn’t go to New York City if you gave me fifty dollars a day.”

  “That sounds like his sort of cant,” I said. “A provincial to the bone.”

  “But don’t you see? McPhee had every chance to brag about going to New York and winning big money there, and he said exactly the opposite. That clears him of the murder in New York.” She pressed her point rather vigorously, and I could see she was taking her role as “detective” very seriously.

  “I suppose it looks that way,” I admitted. “Still, I would be careful of taking his word on anything. The fellow is a born liar, according to Mr. Clemens.”

  ‘I think Mr. Clemens has some grudge against him, and I think you do, too,” said Martha, putting her hands on her hips and looking up at me with a stern expression on her pretty face. “How can you hope to solve the murder case if you won’t look at things objectively? You’re inventing reasons why Mr. McPhee must be guilty, instead of looking for the real criminal. If you’re not serious about solving this mystery, I shan’t waste my time trying to help you.”

  “Oh, I am serious,” I said. “And I do appreciate your help. Perhaps I just need time to absorb all the new information.”

  “Take all the time you need,” she said. She gave me another little smile. “I’ll keep my eyes and ears open, and let you know anything else that comes up. Believe me, the two of us together can find out more than you’re likely to alone. But you do have to trust me.”

  “I do trust you, Martha,” I said, trying to make it sound as sincere as I felt. She had no idea how pretty and appealing she was, and I was anxious not to lose her as an ally in this business.

  She took my hand and gave a little curtsy, now smiling broadly. “Then we shall solve this mystery together!” she said. Then she released my hand and walked away, turning to look back at me and wink just before she rounded the corner of the cabin.

  I leaned back against the rail, thinking. Martha appeared to have logic on her side. As much as I disliked McPhee, I would be foolish to continue suspecting him in the face of evidence that exonerated him. And yet his remarks about Napoleon, Arkansas, were grounds for treating him with suspicion. But there was no way I could tell Martha all this without telling her about our real mission, and something in the back of my head argued against revealing that last secret.

  A loud voice roused me from my musings. “Well, Mr. Cabot! Still playing Sherlock Holmes?”

  It was Detective Berrigan. Something in his voice and demeanor seemed unusual, and when he drew closer the reason became clear—I could smell liquor on his breath. “Mr. Berrigan,” I said. “I didn’t know you were a drinking man—or are you off-duty now?”

  “I’ll have a taste or two when there’s something to celebrate,” said the detective. He stuck his thumbs into his belt and struck a swaggering pose. “But tell me, Mr. Cabot, have you solved your murder? Have you and the young lady delved out all the deep secrets and found the guilty parties?”

  “No, I’m afraid not,” I said. “I didn’t know we were so obvious.”

  “Maybe not to everybody, but you can’t fool a professional,” said Berrigan, smirking. “Let me give you a little hint, Mr. Cabot. When you want to have a private conversation out here on the deck, you can’t just look to the left and right of you. Sound carries very nicely over the water. You might think you’re all alone, but a man standing on the deck directly above you can hear every word you say—and if he’s careful, you’ll never know he’s there.”

  “You’ve been eavesdropping!” I said.

  “It’s part of my job, thank you. And you don’t seem to mind it when pretty Miss Patterson eavesdrops on Mr. McPhee and his cronies, do you now?”

  “McPhee is a murder suspect,” I protested.

  “Aye, I forgot about that,” said the detective. “McPhee’s a murder suspect—have to note that down.” He went through an exaggerated charade of looking for his notebook, finally finding it, then pulling it out. He flipped through the pages, with a show of peering intently at each one. “Oh, never mind. I have him down already, right after you. You did remember that you’re on my little list, didn’t you, Mr. Cabot?” He tucked the notebook back in his pocket and grinned at me.

  “Damn your little list!” I was getting annoyed at his drunken shenanigans. “Surely you don’t consider me a serious suspect. You’ve had plenty of opportunity to check my story, if you thought you needed to.”

  He shook his head in mock sadness. “You’ll never make a detective, me boy. The first rule is to suspect everyone, don’t you know? You’ve gotten all fascinated by McPhee—who’s a rotten enough apple, no denying—and clean forgot about everyone else. Meanwhile, your poor ignorant Irishman plods along and solves the case.” He made a mocking bow in my direction.

  It took a moment for his words to sink in. “You’ve solved it? But how? Who is the killer? Have you made an arrest?”

  He held up his index finger and shook it at me. “You’ll find out soon enough, Mr. Cabot. I told you, something on that passenger list tipped me off. At first it seemed a false lead, but now I know exactly who did it. I’ve one little bit of business to attend to before I can take him into custody, but that should be a matter of a day or two at most. And if I tell you everything I know, how can I be sure Miss Patterson and half the people on board won’t have heard it by bedtime, and the other half by breakfast? And how long do you think the villain would wait around after finding out I’d spotted him?”

  I stiffened. “I know how to hold my tongue when I need to,” I said, although my conscience suggested otherwise. “Just be sure the fellow doesn’t harm anyone else while you’re letting him run around unhindered. Better safe than sorry, with a murderer on the loose.”

  “I’m not giving him that much free rein, believe me,” said Berrigan. “If this were New York, I’d have him behind bars right now; but I’m out of my jurisdiction here, so I have to step softly. Once I convince the local authorities he’s the man, I can put the cuffs on him anytime I please.”

  “Well, I hope you don’t delay any more than necessary,” I said, somewhat annoyed to learn that I had been preempted in my investigation. I turned and made my way to dinner, not at all happy with the day’s events, even though I was twenty-five dollars better off than I had been upon arising in the morning.

  I took my supper at Planter’s, a respectable place in town. The food was plentiful and well-cooked—a thick slice of ham, with baked sweet potatoes and green peas and plenty of light buttermilk biscuits—and it somewhat restored my energy, if not my spirits. At first I thought to see what entertainment Cairo might offer, but I found little to entice me, unless I took a sudden fancy to smoke-filled workingmen’s saloons. Perhaps my sour mood was to blame, but in any event
I finally gave up and walked back to the Horace Greeley in time for the beginning of Mr. Clemens’s lecture.

  I was pleased to see that nearly all the seats were taken; not only did this guarantee us a good return for this stop on our tour, but it would put Mr. Clemens in a good mood—a full house always elevated his spirits. There is something contagious in the response of a large audience, whether one is sitting in it as a member or (to judge from Mr. Clemens’s reactions) standing before it as a performer. Mr. Clemens was always energized after one of his lectures, but the level of excitement seemed to rise proportionately to the size of the crowd. On the other hand, so did the temperature, and many in the audience had converted their programs into paper fans.

  Almost by habit, I scanned the audience for familiar faces. The passengers seemed to make up a larger fraction of the audience than usual tonight; perhaps they’d had no more luck than I in finding amusement on shore. Before the lights were lowered, I saw that Major Demayne was seated a few rows in front of me, with Miss Cunningham across the aisle from him, and Detective Berrigan not far behind them; Andrew Dunbar, the reporter, was in the front row, toward the side. Even a few of the crew members had put in appearances—I saw Chief Clerk Snipes, his apprentice Tommy, and Frenchy, the engineer, occupying seats near the middle of the audience.

  Mr. Clemens made his typical unobtrusive entrance, and began, as usual, with some preliminary remarks tailored to the local audience. “Back in the good old Silurian period, when I was a river pilot, it always made my heart glad to see Cairo when we came downriver from St. Louis. The town wasn’t nearly as big back then as it is now, and there weren’t as many fine brick buildings in town then. Mr. Dickens”—several of the audience members made disapproving noises—“I say, Mr. Dickens gave Cairo a pretty thorough running-down in his book. Well, Mr. Dickens was a pretty good writer of novels, I’ll give him that much credit. But I can’t take his part, not when it comes to Cairo.” (Cheers.)

  “I have to admit that I never spent much time here in Cairo. The boats would tie up long enough to load any cargo that might be going our way, and take on passengers, and then we’d head back to the river. So I don’t have a lot of memories of the town—none I can tell with the ladies present, anyhow.” (A general round of laughter.) “No, the reason I liked to see Cairo when I came downriver was that the river between St. Louis and Cairo was a steamboat killer, and getting to Cairo meant we were in safe water at last, with the Ohio’s waters swelling the stream.

  “The captain tells me the whole river’s safer, nowadays. There used to be nearly thirty wrecked steamboats in sight of Hat Island—but I couldn’t even find that old landmark, last time I came through. There used to be a hidden rock just above Cairo that took out the bottom of more than one boat; no sign of it, now. Another stretch north of here was called the Graveyard, there were so many dead boats in it. Old-timers could count two hundred wrecks, nearly one a mile, for the whole length of the river between St. Louis and Cairo. So when we got to Cairo, we knew we’d come out of the jaws of the nutcracker, and we were mighty glad.” He paused and looked around. “Of course, we purely hated the sight of Cairo coming upriver, but that’s a story for another time. Tonight, I’m mighty glad to see the town again—and all of you.” (More laughter, and applause.)

  At this point, Mr. Clemens began a transition to his usual speech, and (given the familiarity of the matter) my attention began to wander. At first, I watched the audience’s reactions to the stories I myself had heard some dozen times by now, fascinated by how skillfully my employer manipulated their emotions. (Despite my knowing the speech almost by heart, I was not entirely immune to its appeal.) Then the sight of Detective Berrigan a few seats ahead of me ignited a train of speculation about the New York murder. Assuming that he wasn’t merely bragging, Berrigan had solved the case, which meant that the killer must be among us on the boat. But who could it possibly be?

  The detective had indicated that McPhee was not the guilty party. My own instincts still argued for the gambler as the main suspect, but I had to assume that Berrigan knew his business—even though I might not like the way he went about it. Besides, McPhee was nowhere in sight—most likely he was somewhere ashore, fleecing the citizens of Cairo of their hard-earned gold. If Berrigan could be taken at his word, he was keeping a relatively close rein on the suspect. Therefore, his attendance at Mr. Clemens’s lecture might mean that the murderer was sitting in the audience with me. The very thought gave me a chill.

  Again I glanced around the darkened hall, but had little luck picking out faces more than a few seats away from me. I was forced to fall back on pure deduction. The detective had placed himself behind Major Demayne; could it be in order to keep him under watch? The Major listed his home as New Jersey, which was certainly close enough to New York for him to have been in the city on the fateful day. But what possible connection might he have to the dead man? Besides, he had gone out of his way to help me on two occasions. Why would he have done so if he had designs to harm Mr. Clemens?

  Mr. Clemens had taken an instant antipathy to the New York newspaper reporter, Andrew Dunbar. And the reporter (or perhaps the paper he wrote for) certainly seemed to be seeking reasons to reflect discredit on Mr. Clemens. Moreover, it seemed probable that the reporter had been in the city when the crime took place. Those seemed remarkably thin threads on which to hang a murder charge, but perhaps the detective had discovered some clue that had escaped my notice. While it would certainly give me satisfaction to learn that someone so thoroughly dislikable was in fact the criminal, I had no real reason to suspect Dunbar.

  Who else might there be? Two rows in front of me sat a balding fellow with glasses and a double chin, who looked more a gourmand than a criminal; I seemed to recall that he was from Chicago, but there my knowledge of him ran out. Claude Dexter, the riverboat enthusiast from Boston, was on the center aisle, but he seemed more interested in arguing about the authenticity of every minute detail of the boat than in anything else; hardly a strong candidate. Two seats to his right was a lean, long-nosed man with greasy blond hair, who’d been at the card table with McPhee almost every day. Did his association with the gambler make him a suspect, or was I letting my dislike of McPhee stain everyone who had dealings with him? What about the swarthy, ill-kempt fellow with drooping mustaches on the aisle to the left of me? If physiognomy were any clue to character, I would cast him as a knife-man in an instant. But I had overheard him talking to one of the crew earlier in the day, and his voice and manner were as mild as a minister’s. Perhaps physiognomy was overrated.

  When the lights came up and Mr. Clemens took his final bow, I found myself with no firm conclusions. After watching the crowd drift out, I went backstage for my usual post-lecture meeting with my employer.

  We exchanged the usual comments about the size of the audience and how well they reacted; then Mr. Clemens must have noticed something in my demeanor. “You look down in the mouth, Wentworth,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  “I know this shouldn’t be anything to get annoyed at, but Berrigan tells me he’s solved his case. He expects to make an arrest shortly.”

  He gave me a curious look. “You’re right, Wentworth. If it’s true, that’s the best news I’ve heard in a week. What’s the catch?”

  “As far as I can tell—he won’t tell me the entire story—he doesn’t think McPhee is the murderer. And that means that McPhee will probably be with us all the way to the end of the river.”

  “Meaning that he’s still here to interfere with our treasure hunt, assuming he knows about it,” Mr. Clemens said gravely.

  “But he almost certainly knows about it! He all but said so this morning when he gave back my money—surely you heard him?”

  Mr. Clemens leaned back in his chair, propping his feet up on the makeshift dressing table. “Wentworth, that story’s in a book that thousands of people have read, including half the passengers on this boat. Napoleon was pretty notorious in its time—the wickedest to
wn between New Orleans and Cincinnati, they called it, and they were mostly right. Once they had more prisoners than the jail would hold, so they just threw the extras in the river. It was big news on the river when Napoleon finally washed away—it happened piecemeal over a period of years, but the last straw was the flood of ’82. It’d be mighty surprising if Slippery Ed McPhee didn’t know Napoleon—he probably got into his share of crooked card games there, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he got run out of town once or twice. It doesn’t mean anything that he remembers the place.” He smiled.

  “But what if Berrigan’s wrong? It isn’t unheard of for the police to arrest the wrong suspect.”

  “It’s always possible. I’ll talk to him in the morning; maybe he’ll tell me what’s up his sleeve. I’d certainly like to know what’s going on before we make Memphis, and that’s all too soon. Damnation—now I wish we’d been able to schedule a night in one of the little towns between here and there. It’d give me one more day to poke around and find out what Berrigan knows, and figure out whether he’s on the right track.”

  “Lord help us if he isn’t,” I said.

  “Let’s hope we don’t need that kind of help,” said Mr. Clemens. “Nothing against the Lord, but I’d just as soon take care of the problem myself.”

  We finished our discussion, and Mr. Clemens retired to his cabin. I wandered out onto the main deck, where the crew was preparing to cast off. Having no lectures set up between Cairo and Memphis, we had scheduled a nonstop run between the two cities. This would be our first nighttime run, and I was curious to see the river pass by under moonlight.

  After a while the whistle sounded, and Mr. Parks backed the Horace Greeley away from the Cairo dock. The moon—a few days short of full—shone brightly over the eastern bank, and the broad Ohio was a shimmering expanse of silver as we slid by on our way downriver. I climbed the stair up to the hurricane deck for a better view. Several other passengers were there, taking advantage of the clear evening for a bit of conversation or sightseeing. I spotted Miss Cunningham standing alone by the aft rail, and went to join her.