“Have you heard the latest, Miss Sliver? Mr. Woodbin has been assaulted!”
“He was struck down whilst pursuing the killer!”
“They say he is at death’s door!”
Miss Sliver saw that the place next hers, Mr. Woodbin’s, was empty. The young steward passed it now, and gave her the menu with trembling hands.
“Thick soup, please.” Miss Sliver looked quietly about at the excited faces.
Mrs. Thistlethwaite declared: “If this goes on, we won’t dare leave our cabins! It is certainly a maniac.”
Mr. Thistlethwaite nodded, and said with great authoritativeness: “If Mr. Woodbin should die of his injuries, it will be murder!”
There was a choking sound behind Miss Sliver. A small flood of thick brownish soup spilled from the plate the steward was handing her, and trickled over the white tablecloth.
“Sorry, miss!” he gasped. He patted his napkin over the spot, greatly agitated, and withdrew. When he came back with a fresh white square of linen, Miss Sliver watched his fumbling hands cover the stained place and rearrange the cutlery. She said:
“The report has been much exaggerated. I have just seen the Doctor—that is why I am late. Mr. Woodbin tripped on a bulkhead, and fell. He has strained his ankle. It is unfortunate, of course, and, I fear, very painful. He must exercise great caution. But it is, I am happy to say, decidedly not fatal.”
As a chorus of cries and questions arose, she added gravely: “I think one must beware of fostering the spread of rumors. So easy to lead to exaggeration! This soup is really excellent, is it not?”
The meal continued on a more cheerful level. Miss Sliver rose from table conversing of the cinema which was to be shown that evening. At the door she stopped, and exclaimed: “I have left my handkerchief behind! Dear me!” Excusing herself, she crossed the dining-saloon to her table. The steward was piling saucers on his tray. He turned a round, startled face to her and stammered:
“Can I help you, miss?”
Miss Sliver retrieved the handkerchief which she had had the forethought to leave on her chair. She looked at him soberly and said: “I thought that I could, perhaps, be of assistance to you!”
He stammered: “I—I don’t know what you mean, Miss. I—”
Miss Sliver said, “If you have done nothing wrong, you know, there is nothing to be afraid of.”
She continued to gaze at him expectantly. She smiled. It was the smile with which she had been wont, in the schoolroom, to encourage the shy and the timid. This boy was not proof against it.
“Oh, miss,” he said in a whisper. “I don’t know what to do, and that’s the truth!”
“You had better tell me about it. Can you come to my stateroom after you have finished your work?”
“It’s against the rules, miss.”
Miss Sliver said: “I will take the responsibility with your superiors. I think that on this occasion we have the right to waive minor regulations. Perhaps, indeed, it is our duty to do so!”
The young steward sat gingerly on the edge of a chair in Miss Sliver’s cabin. She looked at him kindly over her knitting. “Well, Bert— You did say your name is Bert Higgs, did you not?”
“Yes, miss.… Please, miss, is it true that Mr. Woodbin is not hurt bad?” He looked at her with intense anxiety.
“Quite true.”
He gave a sigh of relief.
“It was you whom Mr. Woodbin was chasing when he fell, was it not?” She looked at him invitingly.
“How did you know?” he gasped.
Miss Sliver coughed. “It is evident that your concern for Mr. Woodbin’s health goes beyond the ordinary. Indeed, you have appeared worried and unhappy ever since the murder was discovered.”
Bert Higgs’s eyes grew bigger. He said imploringly: “I didn’t do the murder, miss! I didn’t do him in! I never spoke to the gent.”
Miss Sliver folded her hands in her lap. She said: “Suppose you tell me all about it.”
Bert Higgs gazed at her there with her knitting, with her knickknacks and photographs about her. He was suddenly reminded of his Sunday-school teacher back in Liverpool. The words came out in a rush: “Well, miss, it all began with that muffler. It’s mine, that muffler is!” He looked at her expecting signs of astonishment, but Miss Sliver merely continued to gaze at him with benignant inquiry. “I left it somewhere, miss. It dropped in a passageway, most like. And I didn’t ever see it again till— Well, I heard it was found on deck with the dead body, and they began asking questions, and though I knew it must be my muffler I was afraid to say so.”
“You were very wrong not to report ownership at once. The needless questioning has delayed the inquiry, and may have caused sad confusion.”
Bert Higgs gulped. “Yes, miss.”
“When did you realize that it was missing?”
“The day before the gent was killed, miss. But I might have lost it earlier. I can’t rightwise remember.”
“And you cannot remember where you left it?”
“No, miss, unless I dropped it in a passage as I said, where anyone could have picked it up.”
“And you tried to recover it today. Why did you do that, Bert?”
“I thought I could get it back and throw it overboard; and then Mr. Woodbin saw me and ran after me … I never meant him to get hurt!”
For a moment Miss Sliver said nothing. Then she asked: “Why were you so afraid?”
“It’s my muffler, miss!”
“But you could not suppose that that would be enough to make the authorities suspect you of murder. You have not told me quite everything, have you?”
The rest came forth quickly. Bert Higgs looked at her as if she were a sorceress. He said, with anxious eyes: “No, miss. The fact is, I never spoke to Mr. Price, but I once heard him talking, see? It was at night, and I was—I was on the boat-deck.” He gulped again and raised his eyes to her in despair. “I’m not allowed to be there, see? But I—I wanted to see the ship, like, so I crept up there when it was dark, and there was that Mr. Price, what was killed, talking to a lady near a lifeboat!”
“What lady?”
“I don’t know who she was, miss. I didn’t see them. He said: ‘You act mighty fine, but I know about that ice.’ She says, ‘Ice?’ all puzzled like, and he says, ‘Yeah, ice!’ like that. ‘Yeah, ice!’”
Bert Higgs quoted these words with a sort of leer, speaking through the side of his mouth. His mimicry confirmed a notion which had been vaguely forming itself in Miss Sliver’s mind. She said: “So you feared that your knowledge of a secret conversation of Mr. Price’s would bring you under suspicion?”
“That’s it, miss! I know too much! I was scared of the coppers. The dicks!”
“I see. You go to the cinema often when you are at home, Bert, I dare say? Is that how you knew that the ‘dicks’ would assume that you were guiltily involved?” '
“Yes, miss, the flicks, that’s right, but it’s they thrillers, too.”
“Ah, you read detective stories? in the ship’s library?”
“Yes, miss, and Westerns! There’s a big chest of them, miss, they come down from the bridge for us.”
Miss Sliver sighed. She said: “I think you will find that the gentlemen in charge of this investigation are not like the ‘dicks’ you are afraid of. I shall have to inform them of this, of course, but I shall explain, too, why you have acted as you did.”
Miss Sliver knitted thoughtfully for some moments after Bert Higgs had left. Then, with an air of decision, she rang for the stewardess and sent a message to the First Officer, asking if she might see him as soon as convenient.
She knocked at the door of the next cabin. Mrs. Chip-Ebberly received her with evident surprise, and asked her to be seated.
“Has something new happened?” she demanded. “Has there been another attack?”
“None, I am happy to say. There has, however, been a development in the progress of the inquiry.”
Mrs. Chip-Ebberly said vigorously: “Good! Excellent! I trust they will apprehend the criminal at once! This suspense is more than vexatious, and a delay in landing would be intolerable.”
Miss Sliver said quietly: “It has been discovered that Mr. Price had learned that a certain passenger was removing diamonds illegally from the United Kingdom, in order to convert them into dollars. He informed this passenger of his knowledge. His purpose, presumably, was blackmail.”
Mrs. Chip-Ebberly sat like a statue. Her eyes were glued to Miss Sliver’s.
Miss Sliver added: “His threats to expose his victim provided a motive for murder.”
Mrs. Chip-Ebberly’s face broke. She cried: “Murder? No! Certainly not!”
Miss Sliver regarded her levelly. There was no word spoken for a long moment. Then she said: “It is unlikely that the smuggling scheme would have succeeded, in any case. The method is extremely amateurish.” Her eyes dropped to Mrs. Chip-Ebberly’s knitting-bag. “One likes to think that it was a misguided impulse, under financial strain, and that the malefactor would have repented before the time came for consummation of the plan. The authorities might, if it were freely admitted before reaching port, be lenient.”
Miss Sliver rose and went to the door. “Good night, Mrs. Chip-Ebberly,” she said.
Mr. Waggish jumped up and handed Miss Sliver to a chair. “This is a pleasure and an honor, ma’am. Does this visit mean that you have trapped the killer?”
Miss Sliver’s faint shade of coolness reproved this frivolity. “As I said earlier, I do not wish to engage in the investigation. It would be presumptuous and, I am sure, unnecessary. But one or two facts have come to my attention, and it is my duty to lay them before you.”
Mr. Waggish looked at her quizzically. “I’m all ears, Miss Sliver.”
“Mr. Price had discovered that one of the passengers was smuggling diamonds into the United States, with the intention of establishing an illegal stock of dollars there.”
The smile left Mr. Waggish’s face. He bent forward alertly. “Smuggling!” he repeated. “Who?”
Miss Sliver coughed. “Mrs. Chip-Ebberly.”
He sat back, incredulous. “Mrs. Chip-Ebberly? Are you sure?”
“I fear it is all too certain. On the first night out, I observed that Mr. Price was unduly interested in her. He spied on her in her cabin. We know from Miss Price that he sailed on this ship because Mrs. Chip-Ebberly was to be aboard. Tonight, I learned that he was overheard threatening to expose a ‘lady.’ You will recall Mr. Anderson’s telling Mr. Jerry Pason that Mr. Price had said it would be a profitable trip, with the cryptic addition that he ‘hated the water except for the ice.’ ‘Ice’ is, of course, an American colloquialism for diamonds. It is the sort of language, and the sort of witticism, in which Mr. Price indulged. How he discovered Mrs. Chip-Ebberly’s plan in the first place, I do not know; but he had agents here and there, and since the plan could not have been worked out without the consent of some members of her family at least, several persons must have known of it, and the chance of leakage have been considerable. Mr. Price apparently knew the people involved only by name: I expect that the picture be clipped from the Tatler was for purposes of identification. Mrs. Chip-Ebberly’s hostility to the detectives, and some aspects of her rather odd behavior in general, can be explained, I think, on the grounds of her guilty conscience.”
“I can still hardly believe it,” Mr. Waggish said feebly. “She is— Has she admitted it?”
“Not explicitly.”
There was a rat-tat-tat at the door. Without waiting for a summons the Purser entered. His boyish face was quite pink with excitement. “Oh, here you are!” he cried to the First “You’ll never guess what’s happened!”
Seeing Miss Sliver, he broke off; but Mr. Waggish motioned him to continue. “Well—Mrs. Chip-Ebberly just came to see me. She told me that, as the result of a conversation we’d had earlier, she wished to deposit something in my safe, to be held for her return trip to England!”
The Purser brought his hand dramatically from his pocket. There was a flash of light. Mr. Waggish gave a low whistle. Miss Sliver sighed a little.
The Purser went on ironically: “She told me she had ‘forgotten’ that she had this with her, till she came across it in her valise. If you can imagine ‘forgetting’ a necklace worth thousands of pounds!”
Mr. Waggish looked at Miss Sliver with profound respect. He asked: “How did you guess it?”
Miss Sliver coughed. “It was not precisely ‘guessing,’ Mr. Waggish. I have already mentioned some of my reasons. I observed that, though Mrs. Chip-Ebberly carried knitting about constantly, she actually accomplished very little. That might have meant nothing, to be sure. But today she was inordinately anxious to prevent Miss Price from handling her ball of wool when it fell from her lap; and she betrayed great constraint when the talk turned on smuggling—whilst you were there, Purser. Knowing of the family jewels, I guessed she might be concealing something in her ball in an attempt to evade the currency restrictions. Her plan was, of course, a sadly crude and unprofessional one. It is hard to fancy how she expected to deceive the customs officials!”
Mr. Waggish agreed. “That’s it! She is not an—an actress, is she? I cannot see her as a murderer.”
Miss Sliver said in her equable way: “I do not say that she is one. I simply do not know.”
“Who overheard her conversation with Price, by the way?”
“It was a young steward, Bert Higgs.”
The Purser cried: “What? And he didn’t tell us before?”
Mr. Waggish looked at Miss Sliver with an odd combination of affection, amusement, and awe. He said: “I think Miss Sliver has something else up her sleeve.”
Miss Sliver said: “My dear Mr. Waggish!”
Mr. Waggish apologized for the flippancy.
Miss Sliver resumed: “Bert Higgs is the owner of the red and yellow muffler.”
The two officers gasped.
“But you don’t— Do you mean the lad is the killer?” Mr. Waggish asked.
“I am quite certain that he is not. His scarf was stolen.”
The Purser said: “But why would anyone want to steal someone else’s scarf and leave it at the scene of a crime? The kid must have some connection with the murder!”
Miss Sliver said quietly: “A more important question is, why any muffler at all was left there, the murderer’s or another’s.”
“If he’s innocent, why the deuce didn’t he come and tell us?” the Purser insisted.
Miss Sliver said earnestly: “Because he is very young, and his head is stuffed with detective novels. The result is that he has a most unfortunate conception of murder investigations!”
The First Officer said in some embarrassment, “Why, but I read thrillers myself.” He looked at Miss Sliver like one of her pupils caught in a misdeed.
Miss Sliver coughed. “But you read them, I trust, in a different spirit, my dear Mr. Waggish!” She looked at the officers gravely. “Believe me, I cannot think that this boy is guilty, and I trust that the investigation will not be deflected from its true course on his account. If it is, it will happen that, as Lord Tennyson prophesied of another Quest:
This chance of noble deeds will come and go
Unchallenged, while ye follow wandering fires,
Lost in the quagmire!”
Mr. Waggish looked at her with reverence. “I think it’s remarkable, Miss Sliver, the way you’ve detected. To think of you just sitting so quietly, knitting away and uncovering a smuggling plot, and finding the owner of that muffler—who is in our department, too, so to speak, being in the crew—knitting away whilst villains are foiled. Knitting like those ladies in the stories—”
The Purser offered, nodding: “Like that Madame Defarge, or whatever, do you mean, in the Dickens book, who sat at the foot of the guillotine and knitted a stitch for every head that fell?”
Miss Sliver’s hands fell t
o her lap. She coughed in unmistakable reproof. She exclaimed with mild severity: “My dear Purser! Surely not, I trust, quite like that!”
Mr. Waggish looked at the Purser in disgust. He explained, “I meant the Fates, knitting away and settling what will happen to chaps on earth.”
Miss Sliver said in kindly correction: “My dear Mr. Waggish! It was, I believe, spinning rather than knitting which was attributed to the Fates! And, in any case, I have settled nothing. Indeed, as I see it, the mystery is nearly as puzzling as it was three days ago!”
Spike Bludgeon
(From his memoirs)
The fog was like sweat, grey and damp and beady, and the ocean was like the grey cold gravy you get in Bowery hash-houses. Looking in from the deck the lights in the Lounge were warm and pretty, like twinkly bulbs on a Christmas tree, till you thought about the ship and you saw what it really was, a rotten tub with a cargo of dirt. Human dirt. A floating sewer. The Florabunda. A place where murder had been done.
And I was the guy who must catch the killer.
The case wouldn’t have dragged on this long, only I’d been out of commission for the last few days, since the night before the murder was discovered. I’d been hit by a pain that jabbed my body through and through till I ached in every bone and every muscle, a pain that churned my guts and made me want to die.… The ship’s Doctor said it was seasickness, and at the time I took his word for it. Later, looking back over events, I questioned that diagnosis, and with good reason.
Anyway, now I was on my feet and ready to catch the murderer.
All I had to go on was the stuff everyone knew, and one other fact that no one knew about but me. A thing I’d kept to myself so far. What Paul Price himself had told me: how he wanted a bodyguard because he’d been finding things out, and how someone had tried to gouge his eye out.
Well, he hadn’t lost his eye, but he’d got the head it came in smashed. Smashed to such a pulp the eye would never be much good to him again.
Who had done it?
A lot of people hadn’t liked Paul Price. Letting my mind wander over the case, I could understand why. He’d played around with blackmail. He had Anderson under his thumb … Dolores Despana … the kid Winifred … Mrs. Chip-Ebberly … maybe others. He was working a racket. He was out for dough. Dough and power. Yes. Price was a rat.
Murder in Pastiche Page 14
