Murder in Pastiche

by Marion Mainwaring

  “Ha, Mr. King! Sit down. If you want poetry, why read that old stuff? Let me read you a bit of this!” Holding up a sheet of his manuscript, he read aloud ebulliently:

  “Her champions, though victorious, suffered fatal wounds enow:

  Gazella wept on hearing their grand ultimate miaow.

  ‘O Leo, King, who reign’st on high in majesty Zodiacal,

  Regard thy kin! Avenge their death!’ (she cried in woe cardiacal),

  ‘And for my part I will erect on this ill-fated site

  A golden tomb, and mourn their loss with tears and decent feline rite.’”

  “Superb!” Mallory said earnestly, his hand on the doorknob.

  “But that’s only the beginning!”

  Mallory pleaded a pressing engagement. He fled.

  In his cabin he leafed through Browning with trembling fingers. The story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin came back from his childhood: the plague of rats—the concern of the town councilmen—the mysterious stranger who offered, for a consideration, to rid them of the pests, and lured the rats after him with his enchanting music into the river Weser, where they drowned. But where was that passage … Surely he remembered, in the description of that quaint remorseless figure, the Piper, that tall thin man in particolored coat— Yes!

  round his neck

  A scarf of red and yellow stripe,

  To match with his coat of the self-same cheque;

  AND AT THE SCARF’S END HUNG A PIPE!

  Mallory smacked the page with his open palm triumphantly.

  The meaning of the scarf and pipe found under Price’s body was incontrovertible. They were symbols—the pipe in a punning way. The murder was symbolic!

  Everyone who had met Paul Price, or even seen him merely, had instinctively compared him to a rat. And the killer was deliberately identifying himself with the Pied Piper—the slayer of rats!

  When he could control his excitement enough to talk, Mallory expounded his discovery to the First Officer. The First Officer was thrilled and delighted.

  Mallory forestalled his inevitable question. “I still don’t know who did it! But now we know something about the character of the killer! … I’ve got to think.”

  Looking in, hours later, Mr. Waggish found him surrounded by sheets of paper scribbled over cabalistically. He saw WINIFRED INIWDREF DOLORES SLODORE DEORSODL EBBERLYPICH …

  Mallory grinned at him. “I haven’t gone crazy. At least I don’t think so. I’m just working on the suspects’ names anagrammatically.”

  “I see …”

  But Mallory, out of kindness, explained: “I mean, I rearrange the letters.… Often names provide vital clues, you know. They can influence character. In one of my cases there were two brothers, called Kane and Judah: their real names were Cain and Judas!”

  Alone again, he worked on patiently.

  PAUL PRICE.

  Paul Pry. Paul Pry. Pied Piper.

  Paul Price, the quintessential quidnunc.

  No, that meant nothing. Only that one got nowhere by minding one’s p’s and q’s.

  P … Q … R … Rats. The Pied Piper chased rats. So did terriers. So did ferrets. So did—most obviously—cats.

  Mallory let his mind wander. It strayed back to that garbled piece of pseudo-Price:

  THE REAL NAME OF THIS CROOK IS NOT ON HIS PASSPORT IT IS GIB

  Now why should he think of that gibberish?

  Gib—gibberish—GIB! GIB!

  Something clicked in Mallory’s mind, and this time it did not escape. He whirled around and grabbed his dictionary from the bunk, where he had flung it in the course of his anagrammatizing. Gib … Yes!

  “gib (Abbr. fr. Gilbert, name of a cat) A familiar

  name for a cat. Hence, a cat, esp. a tomcat.”

  The last word in that forged paragraph was not the first syllable of “gibberish.” It was the complete name itself. Gib!

  Mallory’s head spun. For that was not all.… Gib, he realized, is not the most common type-name for a cat. Rather, the traditional name is … Desperately he tried to remember animal names. There was Reynard the Fox and Chanticleer the Cock and Gilbert the Cat, whence Gib, and the White Cat and Puss in Boots. Cats are

  Grimalkin or Graymalkin or Tabby or …

  Mallory remembered Romeo and Juliet. Who was that swaggering bully whom Mercutio called the “king of cats” because he had a cat’s name? King of cats—ah! Mercutio had challenged him to a duel. He had said: “Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk?”

  Tybalt! Tybalt the cat! T!

  Mallory felt an electric shock go through him. He jumped up and grabbed his jacket. He found the First Officer, and demanded the passports of the suspects, or their customs forms, or anything with their names in full. Mr. Waggish sent the request on to the Purser. Mallory bit his thumb. At length the Purser came in with an inquisitive look at him and a request that the forms be returned to his office.

  Mallory flipped through them impatiently. Mrs. Chip-Ebberly—her name was Arabella Felicia Sophia. Price, Winifred; Price, Paul—Anderson, Anderson—Anderson, Homer THEOBALD!

  Mallory cried in exultation: “Theobald!”

  “Theobald?” Mr. Waggish repeated dazedly.

  “Theobald,” Mallory explained, “is the very same name as Tybalt. Another spelling, that’s all; like Tibbald. They all used to be pronounced the same. And Tybalt is the Cat! The cat of cats—the immortal, dedicated enemy of rats!

  “The killer, who left the scarf and pipe to show he was a rat-exterminator like the Pied Piper, also wrote cryptically, in a passage purporting to be written by Price but actually describing himself, of a monster criminal called Gib. Now Gib, like Tybalt, means Cat! (And note that GIB spelled backwards is BIG!)

  “In other words, the killer is a clever, devious, diabolical fanatic, rash and brilliant, who, with the inevitable conceit of the murderer, thinks of himself as a super-cat!”

  The First Officer sat down abruptly. He was awestruck. “But—” he stammered feebly.

  Mallory, intoxicated, asked: “What?”

  “But it doesn’t make sense, Mr. King!”

  “It makes its own special, sinister, fateful sense! The murderer is working symbolically. In his own warped way, he loves to play with what is clearly a better-than-average fund of philological information!”

  “But—Anderson?

  “I know,” Mallory granted. “He’s not the type I’ve just described, or doesn’t seem so. And it may be that someone is trying to build a frame against him on the fact that he happens to have the mystic name of Theobald. But don’t you see? We’ve assumed that the killer is a rather bungling, clumsy worker. No careful normal killer would be so careless and untidy. But once hypothesize that the killer is abnormal—a Machiavellian genius—and see what happens! We must recast our whole interpretation. What formerly seemed stupidity must be deliberate pretense of stupidity. That spelling, for instance: ‘colour,’ and the use of ‘whilst’—the killer need not be British. He may be an American who has adopted English usage to focus suspicion on one of you Britishers. He may even be quite strong enough to have thrown Price overboard, but chosen to leave him on display with the pipe and scarf as a triumphant symbol of his achievement and a challenging hint to his own identity! He may be clever enough to mask as a stupid—as stupid Homer T. Anderson! After all, don’t forget the Kiddie Kit! Let’s pay a little visit to that gentleman.”

  As they went down the passage Mallory said more soberly: “Darn it, I forgot. I suppose he’ll want his lawyer on hand.”

  Mr. Waggish said happily: “He’ll not have his wish, then, Mr. King. Mr. Pason has sacked him as a client—he had too much of him.”

  Mallory grinned, and knocked.

  Anderson gave them a sullen and suspicious glare from his small three-cornered eyes. There were traces of a heavy scent in his cabin, and Mallory guessed it was not long since Miss Despana had paid a call.

  Mallory said suavely, “We’d like to ask you just one que
stion.”

  “You mean you masterminds haven’t caught the killer yet?” Anderson spoke with mastodontal irony. “Well, I’ve told you all everything I know—over and over again. What’s the sense of questions? All you do is talk. You don’t seem to get anywhere at all.”

  Contempt brought expressiveness to his stolid face, a gleam of some kind—a kind of ersatz intelligence, Mallory thought. Or was it more genuine?

  Mallory demanded sharply: “What is your middle name?”

  Anderson’s mouth fell open. He hesitated. Then: “Theobald. So what?”

  “Exactly. Well, Mr. Homer Theobald Anderson, it may interest you to know that we are looking for a cat!”

  Mallory watched him narrowly for a reaction. He got it.

  With a vengeance!

  The triangular face went putty-colored, then purple. He jumped up. “My God!” he ejaculated thickly. “My God! I think everyone on this damn ship is crazy! I—I—a cat! I—my God, a killer, and you talk about looking for a cat! I—I think I must be getting a nervous breakdown.”

  He sat down with an ungraceful bump and said preposterously: “I wish I was home in New York.”

  He began to sob.

  The First Officer looked away, red with embarrassment, and cleared his throat. Mallory regarded the display coldly. Was it fright? nerves? Or was it cunning—consummate histrionic skill? Genuine? Imitation?

  Whichever it was, Anderson had more resilience than Mallory had thought. His fit ended quickly. He pulled himself together and demanded: “What is all this crap about cats, anyway?”

  “You’re sure it means nothing to you? Cats? Rats, Mr. Anderson?”

  Anderson said disgustedly: “Naturally I know what cats are. We even make them—but that’s the animal department, and I don’t have anything to do with it. I’m not interested in animals, only in bombs—” A new vigor came to him at the thought of his darling death-rays. He pointed a thick, accusing finger at Mr. Waggish. “If you’re looking for the crook, look at him! He took my toys away. Or look at that so-called Doctor!”

  “It’s no use throwing names around,” said Mallory. Machiavel or moron, Anderson was thoroughly objectionable, he decided. “People don’t kill without a motive, you know.”

  “I told you before, he had a motive. Price insulted him. He said his poetry stank.”

  Mallory sensed that the First Officer had stiffened slightly. Avoiding his eye, he told Anderson coldly: “You mean, I suppose, that you told Mr. Beare that you overheard Price call the Doctor incompetent? We have naturally assumed that he was disparaging his competence as physician.”

  “What difference does it make? I just forgot—but I heard him say something about poetry too. And do you want to know how I happened to hear? 1—”

  “Don’t tell us,” Mallory said wearily. “You were in the apple-barrel.”

  “It’s in a book,” Mallory told him. “Boys used to read it before you gave them atom-rays to play with.”

  As he went out with the First Officer, they met Dolores Despana. She gave them a breath-taking smile, and passed Anderson’s door as if she had no idea where it led to.

  “What do you think, Mr. King?” asked the First Officer. “He doesn’t act like a super-cat to me, somehow—”

  Mallory sighed. “I know. But remember, our killer is a superlatively clever actor. At least Anderson gave us one useful item.”

  Mr. Waggish blurted out, “If you mean his saying Price insulted the Doctor, why, everyone agrees the Doctor wouldn’t murder for that!”

  Mallory said mildly, “We all have agreed that the Doctor takes his professional responsibilities—er—lightly. But animadversions on his epic would be something else again.”

  “He wouldn’t kill on any account. I’m positive! And he surely does not think he is a Cat!”

  Mallory smiled at his troubled lean face. “Don’t worry too much about it. And of course, I may be wrong about all this. I’m always making mistakes."

  The First Officer looked at him. “Mistakes?” He said rather shyly: “I can’t believe that of you, Mr. King. I think your, your theorizing is brilliant! And the things you know! It’s as if—as if you had an encyclopedia in your cabin, and a book of quotations!”

  Taken aback, Mallory nearly blushed. “O Watson, Watson, thy name is Waggish!” he declaimed. “You should talk to my father, and you’d hear about my errors!”

  But he felt absurdly touched and flattered by the sincerity of this admiration. He had to tell himself severely that he must not allow himself to bask in it. The case was anything but solved.

    

  The Doctor was still scribbling away when Mallory returned the Browning, but this time he looked up promptly. ‘Was it any help?”

  “It was, thanks.” Mallory added: “I seem to be in a mood for poetry, Doctor. I wonder if you’d permit me to look at your opus?”

  The Doctor’s face shone with unbelieving pleasure. “Delighted!” he cried. He began to fumble through his manuscript. “I’ll read it to you now!”

  Mallory told him quickly: “I always have to see a thing to appreciate it. I was struck by some lines you recited to me earlier. Could I have a look at that part?”

  The Doctor bent to find the page. Casually, Mallory asked:

  “Why was Price so objectionable about your poem?”

  “Him!” the Doctor muttered, still rummaging about. “Ah, this must be the passage you want.”

  “It must be hard,” Mallory insinuated sympathetically, “having rude things said.”

  Straightening up, the Doctor looked at him with an unexpected glint in his eye. “Price was damned uncivil, aye. Why, he said I couldn’t even rhyme ‘cat’ and ‘rat’! Me!” He gave a short laugh, and went on with a sudden change of tone. “But why should I care, Mr. King, since he had never read a single word of ‘Tipptoppus and Gazella’? Or any other epic, I expect. He was a thorough boor. Now if you, after reading this, were to belittle my ability—” A complacent smile dismissed such an eventuality as too silly for consideration.

  “He hadn’t read any of it, you say?”

  The Doctor’s smile became a little strained. “Did I no’ tell you that he said I couldn’t rhyme?”

  Mallory apologized hastily, and the Doctor went on, soothed: “You’d be amazed how difficult it is to find people who appreciate such works, nevertheless. They have time for newspapers, or thrillers, or the B.B.C., or—or making love; but for heroic poetry, no!”

  “Thanks.” Mallory reached over for the pages the Doctor held. “I promise to take good care of it.”

  The Doctor started. “You want to take it away?’

  “I’ll be careful,” Mallory said firmly.

  “But—” The Doctor frowned a little.

  “Thanks.”

  “Aye—’tis my only copy,” the Doctor admonished him, following him to the door. “And I don’t know that passage by heart at all—”

  Mallory went back to his cabin. He took off his jacket, then his shoes. He read through the Doctor’s magnum opus, or rather that infinitesimal fraction of it which had been so reluctantly surrendered to his charge. From what he could make out, the heroine had at this stage of her career been rescued from a Fate Worse Than Death by an army of noble lions who gave up their lives in her defence.

  O Leo, King, who reign’st above in majesty Zodiacal …

  Mallory put the pages neatly into his table drawer.

  The pile of cigarette stubs grew.

  He sent for coffee.

  He let his meals go by.

  He paced the floor.

  His mind whirled.

  A fanatic. A super-cat. A rat-killer. Pipers and cats.

  Cats—lions—Leo.

  He must not read too much into it, he reminded himself. Such episodes were partly a matter of convention. Epic convention.

  Conventions … There were conventions of another kind, too!

  Mallory shivered. He remembered another Cat. He saw, suddenly, ano
ther set of clues.

  He pursued his idea feverishly.

  And the pattern took shape!

  Lord Simon Quinsey

  “And that’s the position, Lord Simon.”

  The First Officer looked hopefully across at Quinsey, who, arrayed in a brocaded smoking-jacket, still leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, his sleek hair shining in the light which wavered as the ship slowly rolled from side to side. Everything in the cabin about him betrayed the man of taste and immense wealth: the pile of rare books in mellow calf bindings; the dark red roses in a square antique bronze vase; on the table at his elbow, an exquisitely carved jade cigarette box and a decanter of priceless brandy.

  Quinsey opened his eyes lazily at last. “So,” he said in his hesitating, curiously husky voice. “The criminal remains at large. Murder stalks the Florabunda. You can’t blame your passengers for being nervy. It’s a bit disconcerting, what?”

  “Aye. More than a bit.”

  “And the longer I listen to you, the less able I am to guess who’s guilty. Oh, don’t think I am impugning your recital; you are admirably lucid. But the situation is not. Have some more brandy.”

  Mr. Waggish held his glass out. “Well,” he said philosophically, “if this is investigation, it’s better than standing the dogwatch, at any rate.”

  Quinsey grinned. “Ad cratera per corpora, what? I suspect you’re secretly enjoying the whole bally thing.”

  The First Officer laughed, a little embarrassed. “I won’t deny that,” he said slowly. “It’s the most interesting experience I’ve ever had—like a novel, so to speak. Very—well, psychological. The things that come out about human nature! For instance, who would have thought a lady like Mrs. Chip-Ebberly would be a smuggler? And then too, watching the great minds at work—very educational. And the suspense of wondering who the killer is— why, it is … it is …” Mr. Waggish waved his hand vaguely, in indication that the Pleasures of Detection were somehow ineffable, and rolled a drop of brandy luxuriously on his tongue.