Mr. Waggish laughed. “Sailors have been known to knit too, Miss Sliver, but it’s entirely out of my line. I never thought that I should have the job of investigating a woollen muffler!”
“A muffler?” Miss Sliver looked up with an air of expectant interest.
Mr. Waggish surveyed her as she sat there. No one could have seemed more prim and dull. Her mousy hair was by sea-breezes. In fact, Miss Sliver had scarcely ventured on deck—“so damp, and so draughty,” she had explained to Mrs. Chip-Ebberly, “aside from the risk of slipping and falling overboard!” Her pince-nez was attached to her dress by a thick black ribbon; she wore woollen stockings and buttoned boots. All in all, she was the incarnation of a retired governess. She reminded Mr. Waggish of a dear old aunt of his in Bath. He said apologetically, “But it’s not a very nice subject to discuss in front of a lady.”
Miss Sliver permitted herself a faint smile. “My profession has brought me into contact with many instances of unpleasantness and, I regret to say, of violence.”
“That’s true.” Mr. Waggish was abashed. “I knew you were a detective, of course, Miss Sliver, but it’s hard to remember. That is, you—I mean to say—” He broke off, a little red in the face.
Miss Sliver said kindly, “The muffler you allude to is, I dare say, the one found near Mr. Price’s body? A dreadful affair.”
“Aye, that’s the one. A red and yellow scarf. It was on deck, you see, under the body, along with a pipe. The pipe seems to have been taken from the store; anyone could have taken it. But we cannot trace that muffler. I wish you’d look at it, Miss Sliver! Maybe you could tell us something about it.”
Miss Sliver smiled. “I have seen it; on the morning of the discovery. I recall it well. But beyond the obvious facts that it is of Midlands yarn—number 6 or 7 I should say—and of prewar quality, I fear I can be of little assistance to you.”
Mr. Waggish said: “There is no shop label, so we couldn’t trace it in that way, even if we were ashore. I suppose it was torn off.”
Miss Sliver coughed. “My dear Mr. Waggish! The scarf is obviously of home manufacture.”
“Ah? You are sure of that?”
“It is quite beyond doubt. In any case—”
A steward interrupted with a low-voiced message for the First Officer. He turned to Miss Sliver to excuse himself.
Miss Sliver smiled. “Pray do not let me detain you.”
As he left, she shivered a little, and realized that this section of the Lounge was now exposed to draught; some porthole had been opened … Really most reckless. She rose, holding her knitting and her flowered knitting bag carefully in one hand and keeping the other free to grip tables and chairs should the rolling of the Florabunda increase.
Crossing the Lounge, Miss Sliver paused more than once to nod to friends. In these few days at sea she had made several most interesting acquaintances. In that respect the trip had proved even more broadening, more stimulating, more rewarding than she had hoped. There was Professor Cheetah with his tales—“instructive, yet so entertaining"—of excavations in Syria. There were the Thistlethwaites, who had turned out to be friends of very old and dear friends of Miss Sliver’s in Dorset. “Such a small world, is it not?” There was Mr. Ernie Woodbin, with his fund of information about orchids and his interesting American idiom.
The only drawback, in fact, to the voyage was the distressing series of incidents arising first from Paul Price’s reprehensible life, and then from his death. As hours went by and the criminal remained at large, tension mounted. It was not pleasant to think that one of the persons about one might be guilty of so shocking a crime.
Miss Sliver nodded kindly to a young steward who was slipping unobtrusively past. “A chilly afternoon, is it not?”
He gulped. “Yes, miss,” he said.
Miss Sliver sighed as he vanished. Such a pleasant lad! A mere boy—surely no more than sixteen. She had chatted with him on the first evening out, drawing him out in her inimitable way. It was his first trip, and he was filled with excitement! But now he, like the passengers, was affected by the knowledge that a murderer was at large. He was pale and nervous and had lost his high spirits.
No one, indeed, was quite at ease. The community of passengers resembled a village, Miss Sliver thought. There was the same limited range of interests, the same proneness to accept the easy and popular attitude towards any given event; above all, the same insatiable curiosity and love of gossip. She found a specimen of this gossip as she passed a group of middle-aged women playing bridge near the fireplace. She caught the words “shocking” and “unfair,” and then: “… they say they have all the evidence against her that is needed, but because she’s who she is they won’t arrest her!”
Miss Sliver frowned. The story of the boat-drill, and of Miss Dolores Despana’s charges against the Hon. Mrs. Chip-Ebberly, had spread rapidly. People who had courted Mrs. Chip-Ebberly from snobbish motives now shunned her and whispered behind her back. She was not a woman to whom Miss Sliver was attracted: she was large, rigid, and overbearing in person, and narrow, rigid, and overbearing in opinion. But Miss Sliver was eminently just and temperate. Her sense of fairness was offended by the readiness of the passengers at large to give credence to a quite unprovable accusation—particularly as the ladies, at least, were illogical enough to shun Miss Despana herself, and Miss Price, as well!
With a pleasant nod, Miss Sliver took a seat near Mrs. Chip-Ebberly. She wondered a little at her choosing to place herself in so public a room: but courage, she reminded herself, must be esteemed! Mrs. Chip-Ebberly was clearly not at ease. Her eyes darted about the Lounge, and though her knitting bag, flowered like Miss Sliver’s, lay on a table beside her, and a large ball of light-grey wool and needles with an inch of light-grey ribbing in her lap, she scarcely pretended to knit. For long periods her hands remained quite still.
Miss Sliver came to the end of her ball of white wool. She extracted a new skein from her knitting bag.
Winifred Price came near. She was with the Purser. She looked about rather defiantly at the other passengers, who broke off their talk at her approach; but she looked like a fluffy kitten who is lost and unhappy. Miss Sliver was fond of young girls. She greeted this one kindly, and the dark eyes responded gratefully. Winifred asked:
“May I help you wind that yarn, Miss Sliver?”
Miss Sliver was pleased to note that, in spite of the emotional ordeal she was undergoing, the young American was well mannered. She smiled with peculiar graciousness. “How very kind of you to offer! If you would really not mind holding the skein, it would be most helpful!”
Winifred Price took a seat opposite her, and held up her hands for the skein. Turning to Mrs. Chip-Ebberly, she said politely, but in evident nervousness of the older lady: “The Purser has been telling me some stories about his work-the things he has to do!”
“Well, it’s worse since the War,” said the Purser. He was evidently continuing their previous conversation.
Winifred Price said: “It must be terribly hard to travel on only fifty pounds! It’s a wonder that the British are able to travel at all!”
Mrs. Chip-Ebberly sniffed. “Hard! It is intolerable, Miss Price. One had never expected that one would be required to travel on an allowance, as if one were a child!” She looked to Miss Sliver for agreement.
Miss Sliver coughed. She said mildly: “Doubtless the currency restrictions do cause great awkwardness and even, I fear, hardship in individual cases.”
The Purser’s lips twitched. He said: “You’d be surprised, Miss Sliver, how easily some people get over that awkwardness. There are plenty of clever dodges—too clever by half. If they don’t actually smuggle sterling out, they take out valuables.”
“How romantic smuggling sounds!” exclaimed Winifred Price. “Like pirates, and highwaymen, and outlaws!”
Miss Sliver coughed again. There was a hint of reproof in her voice as she observed: “My dear Miss Price! We must not let the superficial color
fulness of such activities blind us to the gravely mistaken ingenuity which makes them possible. To smuggle is, after all, to commit a felony.”
The tone was that in which, in the schoolroom, she had corrected many an errant boy or girl.
Winifred Price blushed. “Oh, I know, it’s antisocial,” she said. “And I’m honestly not criminally inclined, Miss Sliver. I accounted for every franc I spent, on that customs form we had to fill out; and still I’m nervous about going through customs!”
The Purser said, “They’re only interested in professional crooks, you know. Dope, diamonds, and liquor—and they’re usually tipped off in advance whom to look for. They’ve a good eye for such things. If you’ve a secret stock of cocaine, Miss Winifred, you had better make a clean breast of it before we dock. Just come to my office and confess!”
Winifred Price laughed. She looked more alive, more the way a girl of her age should look, than she had before. Miss Sliver gazed at her benignly. A charming girl. And the Purser, so very handsome and … Miss Sliver sighed. She hoped, with a faint twinge of anxiety, that neither young person had allowed proximity, and the peculiar circumstances of the voyage, to lead him or her to mistake a natural friendship for something more!
Mrs. Chip-Ebberly was speaking. She said portentously: “I do not consider crime a jesting matter. Let us change the subject. I—”
“What’s that?” Winifred Price asked sharply, starting nervously and pointing to the table. Her interruption, and her manner, showed Miss Sliver that her gaiety was only momentary. Underneath lay deep uneasiness, even fear.
She was pointing at an object which a sudden motion of the ship had dislodged from behind Mrs. Chip-Ebberly’s knitting-bag. It was a gleaming cigarette-case.
“What a beauty!” the Purser exclaimed.
Mrs. Chip-Ebberly picked it up and looked at it suspiciously. “It is a very expensive case,” she said. “Someone was exceedingly careless to leave it lying about. Such cases should not be left lying about. They are positive inducements to crime!”
The Purser said cheerfully: “You’re absolutely right, Mrs. Chip-Ebberly. If people would only deposit their valuables with me, we’d be spared a lot of trouble. I wonder who left this loose. They’ll be running to me in the morning to say it’s stolen.”
Miss Sliver coughed. “I believe the case belongs to Miss Despana. I have observed her using one very like it. And she sat here earlier today.”
Mrs. Chip-Ebberly put the case down as if it had burned her fingers. The air was instantly thick with her dislike.
Winifred Price said quickly: “Miss Despana? Why, she’s coming over here now! She must be looking for it.”
The Purser forgot himself to the point of letting out a very low, foreboding Whistle. He looked enormously uncomfortable as Miss Sliver and Mrs. Chip-Ebberly looked up at him in deprecation.
Dolores Despana asked: “Did anyone see a cigarette case here?” She saw Mrs. Chip-Ebberly, and gave a start. An odd expression crossed her face as their eyes met. She seemed unable to tear her eyes away: it was as if she were a gorgeous varicolored bird, hypnotized by some drabber but powerful foe.
Miss Sliver watched the encounter gravely, without a pause in the rhythmical clicking of her needles. She said, with her usual ready tact: “A beautiful cigarette case. Most exquisite workmanship! We have just been admiring it. It is of French manufacture, Miss Despana?”
Dolores Despana finally freed her gaze from Mrs. Chip-Ebberly. Picking up her case, she said indifferently: “I don’t know. A gentleman friend of mine in New York gave it to me, it’s solid gold.”
The Purser said genially: “It’s much too fine to leave about like that, Miss Despana. Not safe.”
“Safe!” Dolores Despana repeated indignantly. She had, Miss Sliver noted with regret, no desire to preserve a decent semblance of ordinary social intercourse. “Nothing’s safe on this ship. Not even your life.” She looked significantly at Mrs. Chip-Ebberly, this time without losing her courage, and after a moment added in a trembling, loudish voice: “If those detectives were any good they’d have the killer under lock and key by now. If you ask me, they’re just so many phonies.”
Winifred Price’s eyes sparkled with anger. She said, “Don’t you know Miss Sliver is a detective herself?”
Miss Despana stared at Miss Sliver. “You?” she asked. “You’re a detective? Somebody said you were, but I thought they were pulling my leg.” Her round blue eyes took in the hairnet, the fringe, the dowdy dress and woollen stockings. She added, “I thought you must be a schoolteacher.”
Miss Sliver said quietly: “For many years I was engaged in the scholastic profession. But I am now a private investigator.”
“Well, what do you know!” Miss Despana observed faintly; she already seemed to have lost interest in the subject. Her eyes wandered across the room. Glimpsing the unattractive form of Mr. Homer T. Anderson, she brightened. She nodded casually to Miss Sliver and directed a defiant stare at Mrs. Chip-Ebberly. Then she walked away very gracefully. A moment later the Purser excused himself.
Mrs. Chip-Ebberly had been sitting stiffly upright in an attitude of almost inhuman rigor. Now she relaxed. The ball of grey wool slid from her lap to the deck, and rolled away. Winifred Price slipped a hand free of the white skein she was holding for Miss Sliver, and reached for the ball; but, stooping from her chair, Mrs. Chip-Ebberly almost snatched it from the girl’s fingers. She cried in a sharp voice: “Pray don’t trouble!”
Winifred looked both startled and disconcerted. She gasped a little.
Mrs. Chip-Ebberly bit her lip, evidently recognizing that she had been discourteous. “Thank you very much,” she said. “I did not want you to lose your skein, and have to disentangle it. I—I fear my nerves are not what they should be.”
Miss Sliver said brightly: “I have been admiring your wool, Mrs. Chip-Ebberly. Such an interesting shade. So soft, so tasteful. It is to be a scarf?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Chip-Ebberly thrust the ball, and the long needles with their edging of grey, into her flowered bag. “I have letters to write,” she said, rising. Her eyes turned in the direction which Miss Despana had taken, and she said: “Should anything happen to me, it is well that there should be a record! There is, after all, more than my own fate at stake! Pray forgive me if I leave you.”
Winifred Price watched her go. She said suddenly: “I hate this trip!” Her eyes filled with tears.
Miss Sliver coughed. “You have had a most unfortunate experience, my dear Miss Price.”
“The whole atmosphere is ghastly. We all suspect each other. Do you think Mrs. Chip-Ebberly tried to kill Dolores, Miss Sliver?”
“I think that Miss Despana genuinely believes that she did.”
“But do you think so?”
Miss Sliver said gravely: “I do not know. It would be easy, if one were frightened, and with the motion of the ship, and the steepness of the ladder, to imagine that one had been pushed from behind.… If Mrs. Chip-Ebberly did do it, it was an exceedingly rash act, as well as a wicked one!”
Winifred Price wrinkled her nose thoughtfully. “Well, I can’t make up my own mind about it. If she did push her, than I suppose she’s the murderer, too. And she is so very respectable that you can’t help suspecting her. She is obviously dangerously repressed! Inhibited!”
Miss Sliver put down her knitting, shocked. She gazed at Winifred Price. “My dear child!”
Winifred Price said hastily: “Well, she’s so—aristocratic. Some people seem to think she’s above suspicion just because she has a title. Of course, I know that isn’t what you mean—”
Miss Sliver’s cough rebuked her again. “Most decidedly not! As Lord Tennyson so admirably put it:
“Howe’er it be, it seems to me,
’Tis only noble to be good.
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.”
Miss Price listened, Miss Sliver observed regretfully, with a polite but ra
ther blank expression. When Miss Sliver had concluded, she said:
“Anyway, I’d rather believe Dolores is guilty. Mrs. Chip-Ebberly seems just as suspicious of her as she is of Mrs. Chip-Ebberly! She might have done it with Mr. Anderson as an accessory, or the other way around; they’re as thick as thieves just now. Of course, she’s on the make.”
Miss Sliver said quietly: “We ought not to think ill if we can help it.”
“I know.” Winifred dropped her hands as Miss Sliver wound the last of the white yarn neatly about her ball. “I expect really I’m just catty about her because of submerged sexual jealousy, she’s so pretty!” As Miss Sliver frowned in distress, she continued hurriedly: “You’re probably right, Miss Sliver. She probably is only interested in Mr. Anderson because she hopes he will be an angel.”
Miss Sliver’s charitable proclivities had not carried her so far that she could envisage this possibility. She cried in mild bewilderment: “An angel? Really, my dear Miss Price, I hardly dare hope—”
Winifred Price gurgled with laughter. Then she said quite nicely: “I beg your pardon, Miss Sliver. I am sorry. But that’s American slang; it simply means that she wants him to finance a show for her.” Her face sobered, and she said, “If my uncle was— was murdered for money, that might have something to do with it.” She looked at Miss Sliver questioningly, in helpless awareness of her own confusion.
Miss Sliver said quietly: “I think financial issues do, indeed, play a part in this case. But not, perhaps, in quite the way you mean!”
Miss Sliver was a little late at the next meal. Slipping into her seat, she apologized to her table-companions.
“Pray forgive me—”
She was cut off by a babel of voices.
Murder in Pastiche Page 13
