[Mark Twain Mysteries 03] - The Prince and the Prosecutor

by Peter J. Heck

  “So it’s hardly to his benefit to see the prince falsely accused, is it?” I said.

  “Not unless there’s some sort of dirty business going on,” Mr. Clemens replied. “Say, if somebody offered him a huge wad of greenbacks fresh from the Philadelphia mint.”

  “I have my doubts about that,” said Mr. Kipling. “The captain of a ship like this can retire to a life of luxury, if he keeps his good reputation. He risks losing everything if it comes out that he’s taken bribes to cover up a murder. You’d have to offer him a great deal of money to make him risk that.”

  “What about blackmail?” I suggested. “Suppose someone is threatening to reveal something that would cost the captain his command?”

  “Possible,” said Mr. Clemens. “Damned unlikely, though. I think we’re barking up the wrong tree, trying to involve the captain in some kind of conspiracy—I might change my mind if he refuses to let me talk to Prinz Karl, though. More likely, Jennings is just plain lazy. Or maybe he’s doing the best he can, and we’re expecting more than he can deliver.”

  “Or maybe someone’s bribing Mr. Jennings,” said Kipling. “He’d be easier to reach than the captain, and far cheaper.”

  “True enough,” agreed Mr. Clemens. “So I reckon we’ll just have to learn the truth without his help, won’t we?”

  “I guess so,” I said. But I was far from certain we had any chance of doing that before the ship reached port.

  20

  Our morning conference did not produce any great surprises. Mrs. Kipling, having nothing to report, had decided to spend her morning talking to the ladies in the Grand Saloon, and would join us in the afternoon if she learned anything of interest. I recounted my conversations with my Yale friends, with Wilfred Smythe, and with Robert Babson’s circle of friends. I had discovered that I had a knack for remembering the details of a conversation, which made these summaries much more useful to my employer.

  Mr. Clemens was particularly interested in Smythe’s story. “A jilted suitor—I knew there’d be one—and right here on board, too! Tell me, Wentworth, how do you size him up? Could he have done it?”

  I thought for a moment, leaning back on the comfortable sofa. “I saw him glaring at Babson and Miss Mercer when we first came aboard, and thought I wouldn’t want to be the fellow he was angry at. He’s moody. I suppose he could have overcome Babson, especially considering how drunk Babson was that night. But I’m not certain he’s the murdering type. After all, he is a minister’s son, and he’s earned a position of trust in Mr. Mercer’s bank.”

  “Doesn’t mean a damn thing,” said Mr. Clemens, waving his hand dismissively. “Some of the worst scoundrels I’ve ever seen were sons of preachers. And I’d sooner trust a horse trader than a banker—though I’ll grant you they’re more likely to pick your pockets than to stab you or shoot you.”

  “Hum—I’ll agree he bears watching,” said Mr. Kipling. “But don’t forget the gambling crowd, either. Cabot says he owed some of them a good bit of money.”

  “I don’t think any of them would kill a man who owed him money,” I said, somewhat surprised. “It hardly seems the way to collect on a debt.”

  “They needn’t have had killing on their mind at the start,” said Mr. Kipling. “Suppose one of them needed cash, and tried to get Babson to make good his IOUs. From what you say, his father had been holding the purse strings tighter than usual, so he’d have been hard-pressed to pay up. They might have argued, and the rest is easy to imagine. A couple of drunken fellows start shoving one another, one loses his balance on a slippery deck—that’s all it takes.”

  “Seems likelier than the story old man Babson is peddling, in any case,” said Mr. Clemens. “If the boy and Prinz Karl hadn’t scuffled, everybody would have figured his disappearance was an accident, and left it alone.”

  “I think it unlikely the prince would have taken revenge so quickly,” said Mr. Kipling. “He’d have known that everyone would instantly suspect him. He’s got a quick trigger on his temper—we’ve seen proof of that—but that’s another story from cold-blooded revenge.”

  I saw one difficulty with that analysis. “What if the prince had gone on deck and unexpectedly met Babson? If Babson had started slanging him again, he might have lost his temper again.”

  “Yes, of course it’s possible,” said Mr. Kipling. “If that’s what actually happened, then we’re chasing a phantom. But lacking a witness, I think we have to begin with a presumption of innocence.”

  “Bulls-eye, Kipling,” said Mr. Clemens. “Prinz Karl’s an easy target for the father to blame his son’s death on. Easier to pin it on somebody you don’t like than to admit it was probably the boy’s own fault. If my daughters were as rotten as that Babson boy, I’d likely be trying to ignore it, too. But we don’t have any love for the boy, so we see his faults clearly. I still don’t think the prince did it, and I’m going to make damn sure he doesn’t get railroaded.”

  Mr. Kipling stood and walked over to the porthole, then said in a quiet voice, “What we need are witnesses who can establish the prince’s whereabouts that evening. If the captain agrees to let you interview him, we’ll know his account of his movements. If we’re lucky, he’ll have been someplace where people will have seen him.”

  “And if we’re not lucky, he was in his cabin, reading,” said Mr. Clemens.

  “Good lord,” I said, slapping my forehead. “I just now remembered—I did see the prince that night. We were sitting in the smoker, and he stuck his head in just briefly, as if looking for someone he didn’t find. His hair was wet and disheveled—as if he’d been out on deck, in the rain. I’d forgotten that entirely.”

  “Damnation! That makes him look guilty as the devil,” said Mr. Clemens. He stood up and paced several steps, nearly running into Mr. Kipling before he spun around to face me again. “Well, I suppose it’s better to know it before I go in to talk to him than to have you spring it on me later. Do you think anybody else saw him?”

  “I can hardly say. Nobody’s mentioned it to me, at least.”

  “You can bet your last penny that if anyone did see him, they’ve told Jennings—or Babson,” said Mr. Kipling. “It’ll make the case against him all the blacker.”

  “Damn, damn,” muttered Mr. Clemens. “Well, if it turns out the prince did kill the boy, I’ll go smoke my pipe and mope about misplaced faith in humanity. But I still don’t think he’s guilty, and if nobody else will make the case for him, I reckon I’ll have to make it myself.”

  He paced a little more, thinking, then stopped and pointed at me. “Wentworth, I want you to follow up on the jilted suitor. Find out where Wilfred Smythe was when Babson disappeared. See if you can talk to Miss Mercer, or some of her friends, whoever they are; try to learn whether their engagement was going well, or whether there were signs of trouble. Was she making eyes at young Smythe again? What did her father think of Babson? Mercet strikes me as a stiff old buzzard—he couldn’t have liked the idea of his daughter marrying a wastrel.”

  “I doubt any of us would,” said Mr. Kipling dryly. “What would you like me to do?”

  “I think you’ve got the right idea about finding witnesses. Try to find anyone who was on deck that night—there shouldn’t be that many of them. I take it the watch officer didn’t mention anybody else?”

  Mr. Kipling shook his head. “No, but the only ones I asked him about were Babson and the prince. Someone could have thrown Babson overboard and run back inside in a matter of moments—if the watch was on the other side of the deck, a pock of thugees could have strangled Babson and thrown him overboard, with the watch none the wiser. I’ll make it a point to find him this afternoon and ask him again. He was perfectly willing to talk about it.”

  “Good,” said Mr. Clemens, “and I’ll see whether anybody else in the lounge noticed the prince when he stuck his head in—or any other time that night. I’ll probably get a whole pack of contradictions, but at least it’ll give me something to work with when I go t
alk to the prince.”

  “That’s assuming the captain will let you talk to him,” I pointed out.

  Mr. Clemens’s eyes blazed as he looked at me. “He’ll let me talk to the prince, all right. When Captain Mortimer invited me to sit at his table for supper, he figured he was just getting Mark Twain, the famous funny fellow, to entertain his other guests. He didn’t figure on getting Mark Twain the hell-raising roughneck—but he’s about to find out the two come in the same package. If he’s got any notion of stopping me from seeing the prince, he’ll change his mind right soon—and you can take that to the bank, Wentworth!”

  I decided to approach Miss Mercer after luncheon. She had resumed taking her meals in the dining room with the rest of the passengers; Robert Babson’s mother and sister were still conspicuous by their absence. While her somber dress acknowledged the recent loss of her fiancée, Miss Mercer seemed in good spirits when I turned to look at her. I saw her talking quietly with her friends, though she did not often smile. But when she and two other young ladies arose from their table and left the room before I had time to put down my dessert fork, I was left to my own devices to discover where she might be.

  The weather had turned sunny again after our bout with the storm, and having no better notion where Miss Mercer might have gone, I decided that a turn around the decks would give me a chance of meeting up with her, or possibly with one of the young ladies I’d seen her talking with. If she was not on deck, at least I would get a welcome dose of fresh air and sunlight.

  The first-class deck was as crowded as I had seen it. Half the ship appeared to be there, sitting with a book, leaning on the rail to look at the waves, or strolling with a group of friends. Most of those on deck seemed to have congregated on the starboard side of the ship, where the afternoon sun was warmest. I had taken only a few steps before I was glad of my decision; the salt air was invigorating, and the light off the wave-tops sparkled like a chest of jewels. The sound of excited voices came from the direction of the shuffleboard courts, and so I turned my steps that way, on the chance that Miss Mercer or some of her friends might be playing or watching the game.

  I arrived to discover Alan Mercer and his friends in the midst of choosing teams for a shuffleboard match, while a small group of young ladies (including Miss Mercer) stood watching. As I walked into view, Jack Holtzman—who’d been so extravagant in his praise of my football prowess—spotted me and said, “Here’s the very man I want on my team! Cabot, we’re one short—be a good fellow and take one of these sticks, will you? The losers buy the drinks this afternoon.”

  “I doubt I’ll be much use,” I said, taking the pronged cue he thrust in my general direction. “I’ve never played this before, you know.”

  “Do you think the rest of us are trumps?” said Holtzman, laughing. “I never played this silly game before I came aboard ship. Besides, you’re a football star—you’ll pick it up in an instant.”

  “Well, I could use a bit of fun,” I said, hefting the stick experimentally. “Just tell me what the rules are.” Despite my disclaimer, I realized that the game might afford an excellent opportunity to make the acquaintance of Miss Mercer and her friends, after which it would be the most natural thing in the world to strike up a conversation with them.

  Holtzman quickly explained the rules, with good-natured interruptions by Trombauer and Alan Mercer, who was the captain of the other team. We were playing four to a side; I was teamed with Holtzman, Trombauer, and Harry Williams, while Mercer had chosen Jimmy Archer and two other fellows I hadn’t met before, Marty DuPont and Archer’s brother Ted. After a good bit of laughter and flippant taunting of the opponents, we were agreed on the rules and the stakes, and the game began.

  Holtzman was right—I seemed to get the knack of the game almost instantly, though it was more akin to billiards than to anything I’d ever done on the football field. There was a triangular target painted on the deck; we slid wooden disks at it with our sticks, aiming for the highest-scoring numbers and trying to knock away the opponents’ disks. Once I got the touch, I found I could place my disks with gratifying accuracy. I had missed the camaraderie of a hard-fought sporting contest, and in the heat of the competition, I found myself almost forgetting my ulterior motive in entering into the game.

  Mercer and his teammates began the match in a frivolous spirit, letting their disks fly with abandon. In fact, Jimmy Archer seemed at first to care nothing at all for the game, but sent his disks flying at the feet of any young lady who ventured too close to the field of play, laughing as they jumped and squealed. His brother adopted a different approach, sliding his disk like a cannonball at the other end of the court, trying to scatter the other disks (regardless of which side’s they were) like bowling pins. But Holtzman and I took a more sporting attitude, playing for score, and soon we had a good lead.

  Then Alan Mercer realized that he and his friends were about to buy a round of drinks for us. Jimmy Archer let loose another of his wild shots, making a pretty girl skip out of the way, and Mercer sneered. “Perfect shot, Jimmy. Now, if you can get as close to the target as to Alice, Jack and his boys will be buying us the drinks.”

  “Oh, can’t a fellow have a bit of fun?” groaned Archer, but he looked chastened, and at that point, began to play in earnest. With a little luck on their side, Mercer’s boys brought the score back to even. Jimmy Archer proved he could target the scoring surface as well as the ladies’ shoes, and Ted Archer suddenly developed a better aim, though the velocity of his shots did not noticeably alter.

  As the game became more competitive, the young women began cheering on their favorites, and soon we were having a merry time. Somewhat to my surprise, Miss Mercer began to take an active interest in the game. She sided against her brother, mocking him when his shots went awry, and clapping when his opponents played well. When I made the final shot—a tricky double carom that knocked away one of the other team’s disks and at the same time nudged one of ours onto the highest scoring area—she cried out, “Well played, well played!”

  “Beginner’s luck,” I said, with a mock-serious bow toward her and the laughing young ladies standing with her. “Although having such enthusiastic supporters certainly didn’t hurt.” I smiled directly at Theresa Mercer, to make certain she knew which of the supporters I was referring to, and I thought she smiled back at me.

  Alan Mercer grimaced. “Well, sis, I suppose I shouldn’t have expected you to root for my team, but I didn’t think you’d be so glad to see me lose. It was bad enough when I used to play tennis with Bobby—at least I could usually beat him, in spite of your blatant partiality.”

  Any hint of a smile disappeared from Miss Mercer’s face. “I won’t have you making remarks about poor Bobby,” she said, glowering at her brother. “He was a better man than you’ll ever be, and you know it, Alan. You know it.”

  “Wait a minute, sis, I didn’t mean anything . . .” Alan protested. There was genuine contrition on his face, I thought, but he might as well have been talking to the ocean.

  “I thought that if I came out with my friends for a little while, it would divert my mind from what happened to Bobby,” she said, stepping up to confront her brother. Her hands were on her hips, and she was the picture of defiance. “It’s hateful of you to bring it up. I think you must have done it on purpose to make me miserable.”

  Alan Mercer backed up a couple of steps. “Sis, I didn’t say anything about him . . .”

  “You certainly did,” she said, pursuing him. Her voice had gone up an octave, and suddenly she seemed far less attractive than I’d thought her just two minutes earlier. “You’ve never been able to forego any opportunity to make me miserable. You don’t care at all about me. You don’t care that I’ll never see Bobby again. He was a good man and I loved him, and now he’s gone forever.” There were tears on her cheeks as she continued. “If you had a heart at all, you’d remember that. I think you’re absolutely despicable!”

  “Confound it, sis,” said Ala
n, clearly distressed at the turn of events. But almost before the words were out of his mouth Theresa Mercer had turned on her heel, sobbing, and fled from the now-silent group. One of the other young women darted a hostile glance at the dumb-founded brother, then sped off in pursuit of the fleeing Theresa.

  Alan Mercer stood speechless for a moment, then turned to his friends. “What could I have said, Harry? Was I that cruel?”

  “She’s your sister,” said Harry Williams, trying to appear nonchalant. “How am I supposed to know what’s going to upset her?”

  “There’s not much you can do about it, Alan,” said Trombauer, his face serious. “She’s upset about poor old Bobby, and I guess I don’t blame her. I miss the old rascal myself—more than I’d have thought. I guess she’ll get over it with time, but maybe you’d best tread lightly for now.” Then his voice assumed a heartiness that didn’t quite ring true, to my ears. “Do you want to shoot another round, or are you ready to pay the piper?”

  Mercer tossed his shuffleboard stick to Jimmy Archer, who fortunately was paying attention and caught it before it hit him in the face. “Oh, hell, let’s go have a drink,” he said, an annoyed expression on his face. “I guess I’m buying, more’s the rotten luck.”

  Mercer’s good nature seemed to revive somewhat, once he had a glass in his hand. I had pegged him as a sore loser, but he was soon bragging about his team’s dramatic recovery, after a bad beginning, to make the score close at the very last. “By George, if Jimmy hadn’t been sniping at the girls, we’d have beaten you after all. That last shot of yours was damned clever, though, Cabot,” he said, raising his glass.

  “Thank you. We’ll have to play a rematch some time,” I said, more sincerely than I might have a short time before. I’d had a good time, almost forgetting that I was there as a spy, gathering information in hopes of exonerating Prinz Karl.