The Cases of Lieutenant Timothy Trant (Lost Classics)

by Q. Patrick

  “I’ll take a chance on doom to the extent of a drink.”

  He started to guide her past the chemin-de-fer table toward the bar, but she shied away. “No, not in here. There’s only one exit from the Salle de Jeu. I—I feel trapped. Let’s go where they’re dancing.”

  They moved out into the broad lounge where couples were dancing an enthusiastic European samba. He let her choose their table, deep in a corner with a view of the entrance to the gambling rooms. He ordered drinks.

  She said: “You’re an American. One feels less self-conscious with Americans. They’re so friendly.” She twisted the stem of her brandy glass. She had small, pretty hands and beautiful arms, emerging rounded and faintly tanned from the short sleeves of her rose-pink blouse. She was Trant’s type of girl.

  “Perhaps,” she murmured, “perhaps you could help me.”

  “Money?”

  “Oh, no, no. It’s not that. It’s—I’m sorry to be such an idiot, but I’ve never been in a situation like this before. My husband …”

  “Your husband …?”

  “He’s just tried to murder me.” She looked self-conscious and British. “Really, it’s too embarrassing, but it happened. He’s a Brazilian. Terribly rich and good family. All that. But, when he’s been drinking, he gets madly primitive. Just because I went sailing today with a young Englishman I used to know, he got insanely jealous. We’re living on our yacht down in the harbor. He chased me all around the cabin, screaming. Then he got his revolver. He pulled the trigger. He would have killed me. He really meant to. But luckily it wasn’t loaded and before he could find the bullets, I managed to escape.”

  Trant asked: “When was this?”

  “Just a few minutes ago. I ran right here because I thought I’d be safe.”

  “And the thousand-franc chip?”

  She shrugged. “I was frightened. I’ve got to get out of Cannes. I’ve got to. The thousand francs was all I had in my bag. That wasn’t enough to take me anywhere. I had the crazy idea that if I gambled and won …”

  She glanced over his shoulder toward the entrance to the gambling rooms, an expression of terror shadowing her face. “Stand up,” she breathed. “Quick. Look at me. Pretend to be talking to me.”

  Trant jumped up. So did she. She slipped around the table, pressing herself against him, using his body to hide her. “He’s there.” He could feel her heart beating rapidly. “He … Thank God, he went straight into the Salle de Jeu. He didn’t see me. Quick!”

  She hurried around the dance floor. He followed. Soon they were out in the cool moon-lit April night together.

  “Now you can help me. Back at the cruiser, I can get some money, pack a few things—if you’ll stand guard.”

  She slid her hand into his. They walked the few yards to the Vieux Port. Fishing nets were stretched like ghostly spiderwebs along the stone docks. The masts of the moored yachts loomed, dark and swaying slightly, before the softer darkness of the southern sky. They hurried past the sterns of anchored fishing boats, motor launches, and pleasure yachts. Beyond a phantom-white sailboat she paused at a narrow gangway leading onto a gray ocean-going cruiser.

  “If he comes back, stop him or call out.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll go up over the deck and down the companionway to the cabin. I’ll lock the door to be doubly sure. I—I can’t tell you how grateful I am.” She pressed his hand, hurried across the deck and disappeared.

  Savoring adventure and the romantic Riviera night, Trant put his hand against the spar of the neighboring sailboat. The spar was sticky. He removed his hand, and lit a cigarette. His sentry job seemed simple. To his left, the wall of the old harbor reached a dead end at the ocean itself. To his right, down the short strip of dock, he could see the lighted Casino. In the Mediterranean moonlight, he could not fail to detect anyone coming along the deserted wharf. For a couple of minutes he seemed to have the whole enchanted waterfront to himself. Then, suddenly, from the sailboat behind him, he heard a faint scuffling sound. He spun around just in time to see a crouched male figure balance itself and then spring lightly from the bow of the white sailboat onto the front deck of the cruiser.

  With anxiety, he realized that the husband had outsmarted them. He had ignored the obvious route along the wharf and had stolen back to the cruiser by jumping from one moored boat to the next. Trant sprang up the gangplank, crossed the cruiser’s deck, and scrambled down the companionway. The locked cabin door blocked his path. He banged, calling: “Look out. He’s coming from the front.” He broke off at the sound of a high woman’s scream, followed by a shot. There was a confused bumping inside the cabin and then a second shot. He hurled himself against the door. It did not yield. A faint moaning sounded inside.

  Then the door opened inward.

  The girl was standing there, the dark hair tumbling around a face blanched with horror. The pink blouse was ripped from one shoulder. She gripped a revolver in her right hand and blood welled, red and gleaming, from her dangling left arm.

  “He jumped on me from the cabin window,” she babbled. “He had the gun. He—he shot me. Somehow I got the gun away. I …”

  She threw herself against him, sobbing. Over her shoulder, he could see the disordered cabin. A square open window showed above a tousled bed. On a second bed lay a small half-packed feminine suitcase. An almost empty whiskey bottle stood on a vanity. Sprawled across the floor, his arms flung upward, lay a large dark man in a gray suit. Blood was splashed across the front of his handsome green linen sports shirt.

  Gently Trant led the girl to the bathroom and dressed the ugly flesh wound in her arm. He slipped the revolver into his pocket and, pulling the suitcase off the second bed, made her lie down. He stooped to examine the husband. He was clearly dead, only just dead. The bullet had pierced his heart. He still looked grotesquely elegant with his muscular brown throat emerging from the green open collar and the smooth soles of his alligator shoes thrusting up into the air.

  The girl had stirred against the pillows and was watching him bleakly.

  “He’s dead.” Trant crossed and, as he put out a comforting hand to her shoulder, he saw the fresh white stain across his palm. Excitement suddenly stirring, he turned back to the dead husband. Then he grabbed up a flashlight, jumped onto the first bed and clambered through the window out onto the cruiser’s deck. In the moonlight he could see the spectral white sailboat alongside. He turned the flashlight down onto the cruiser’s deck. There he saw distinct white footprints on the gray planks. Two pairs of prints pointed inward; two pairs outward. In a second he was back in the cabin.

  “A rich, unwanted Brazilian husband,” he murmured. “And, probably, a poor and very much wanted young Englishman you used to know. Problem: how to replace unwanted former by wanted latter and still keep the dough.”

  She looked up at him dazedly.

  “Ever heard,” he continued, “of a friendly American word called a ‘sucker’? A sucker’s a guy you pick up at a casino with a tale about a murderous husband; a sucker’s a guy you ask to stand guard outside the yacht while you pack a bag; a sucker’s a guy who sees the murderous husband creeping back over the boats; a sucker’s a guy who runs to a locked door, bangs, and becomes the star witness for a lovely wife who’s just shot a husband in self-defense.”

  The girl fluttered a small hand.

  “Clever,” said Trant. “Very clever. But unhappily, there’s a question of wet paint.” He pointed at his own paint stained hand. “I grabbed the spar of the sailboat alongside. See the nasty paint on my palm? There are white paint footprints on the deck outside too.

  “Somebody jumped from the freshly painted sailboat onto this deck, of course. I saw him. But look at the soles of your husband’s chic alligator shoes. How smooth and shiny they are. Not a speck of paint! No, it wasn’t your husband who jumped. It was your accomplice. Doubtless, the charming young Englishman you used to know. Once he was sure I had seen him jump, all he had to do was to hurry away again
back to shore.”

  He sat by her side on the bed.

  “Want me to tell you what happened? First, you planted your boyfriend out on one of the boats down the line. Then—” he indicated the near-empty whiskey bottle— ”you got your husband neatly plastered until he passed out. Then you messed up the cabin and went sucker-hunting at the casino. Once you’d installed us at a strategic table, with my back to the gambling rooms, you pulled that: ‘There goes-my-husband’ gag. After that it was easy to get me to the cruiser where your boyfriend staged his deliberately noisy approach along the boats. Meanwhile, for you in the locked cabin, it was a cinch to shoot your cozily drunk husband and give your arm a little flesh wound.”

  She sprang up. Gently he put his hand on her shoulder.

  He paused. “Incidentally, there’s another tiny point that a Provençal jury’s going to find damning. You claim your husband followed you into the Casino. I’m afraid they’ll never believe that. Know why?” He nodded to the dead man’s open collar. “There’s a rule, a very strict rule in all French Casinos. No one’s allowed inside without a necktie.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t suppose the police will have much trouble locating your boyfriend.”

  He looked at her, wondering ruefully why attractive girls did things like this. “Next time you go sucker-hunting—if there is a next time—don’t pick a policeman.”

  Girl Overboard

  Young Lieutenant Trant of the New York Homicide Bureau sat in the lounge of the S.S. Queen Anne, feeling bored. Around him passengers were chattering and dancing in a mood of mid-Atlantic festivity. After a month’s vacation in Europe, Trant was tired of frivolity. His one authentic enthusiasm—his passion for murderers—had

  been starved.

  He watched the dancers, hoping rather wistfully that one of them would drop dead under mysterious circumstances.

  The lounge steward brought the drink he had ordered. “Here we are, sir.”

  “Thanks, Jimmie.”

  The steward, with his sun-bleached hair and lazy smile, was the dream boy of the female tourists and knew it. He was also colorfully informed as to ship’s gossip. Trant, who took an unorthodox interest in the backstairs of life, had made the Yorkshire-born steward his particular crony.

  “How’s our girl friend and company tonight, Jimmie?”

  He nodded across the lounge to a corner table where two young men and two girls with suntanned backs were making a stormy but striking quartet.

  “Miss Marriner’s party, sir?” Jimmie’s speech and manner would have done credit to a duke. “They seem a little edgy, sir. I’m afraid trouble may be brewing again.”

  “Trouble,” remarked Lieutenant Trant, studying the blonder of the two backs appreciatively, “is something which Miss Mavis Marriner carries around like a pocketbook.”

  Jimmie grinned. “She is a bit of what you might call a magnet, sir.”

  “A magnet for males.”

  Trant alerted, for at the other side of the lounge the blonde had risen in apparent pique and a cloud of turquoise taffeta. Turning the suntanned back contemptuously on her companions, she skirted the dancers and made her way to Trant’s table. She sat down and gave him a blinding smile which she then switched to Jimmie.

  “Jimmie, darling, be an angel and get me a drink.” As the steward hurried off, Mavis Marriner, England’s newest, prettiest, and probably least talented movie star, moaned: “Darling, be nice to me. I’m having a foul evening and you’re the only bearable male on the ship.”

  Lieutenant Trant, whose taste in women was also unorthodox, felt a certain weakness for Mavis Marriner although, apart from a torrid physical appeal, she had nothing to recommend her. She was both silly and selfish and, although she worked overtime to make every man in love with her, she remained—he was sure— technically as virtuous as a police matron. He found it hard to tell why she moved him. Perhaps it was her youth or perhaps in her he saw the classic example of a murderee.

  “What’s the trouble tonight, Mavis?” His lean young face was mildly amused.

  She shrugged. “My dear, so positively stupid! Just because that divine Larry Howard—he’s a great Hollywood producer now, you know—happens to be interested in my career, Armand smolders, my dear, as if he was the Bull of Bashan. And that revolting Claire Howard! Really! She thinks I’m trying to steal her husband. So absurd, I mean!”

  From this rambling statement, the experienced police officer in Trant deduced that Mavis Marriner, who was engaged to the French movie actor, Armand Bardou, had been vamping the multimillionaire playboy, Larry Howard, thus infuriating both Howard’s recent fourth wife and her own fiancé.

  This was, in fact, a typical Mavis Marriner evening. “Really,” continued Mavis, batting her huge lashes and looking almost unbearably luscious, “jealous people are so dismal. Darling, let’s dance.”

  Mavis’ dancing was an expert seduction. Sinuous in Trant’s arms and headily perfumed with Tantalizing, she murmured:

  “You really are intriguing. So mysterious. I’m sure you do something frightfully fascinating.”

  Trant, who knew he was being exploited merely to make Armand Bardou and the “divine” Larry Howard that much more dismally jealous, grinned at her affectionately.

  “I’m a mere nobody. Clay in the potter’s hands.”

  They went back to the table. Jimmie had brought Mavis a menthe frappé. Mavis dazzled at him. “Jimmie, you’re a duck. And don’t forget the milk tonight.

  With just a spoonful of brandy as usual. At one o’clock.” Jimmie, all ducal gallantry, said: “Of course, Miss Marriner.”

  Mavis turned to Trant. “Jimmie’s so sweet. Every night he leaves a glass of milk and brandy outside my stateroom—like a gnome. It helps me sleep. Darling, let’s dance again.”

  Mavis danced long and shamelessly enough with Trant to drive her companions, one after the other, from the lounge. Having achieved her objective, she withdrew in pursuit of other game. It was just after two when Trant finally escaped to his cabin from a relentless chess game with the captain. As he climbed into bed, the boat, which had been quiet all evening, gave an eccentric lurch, toppling his traveling clock onto the floor. He bent to pick it up and thought of Mavis as a stormy sea, toppling everyone she met off balance.

  Soon he drifted into pleasant dreams of suntanned backs and crime passionelle.…

  He awoke next morning at nine to a voice booming eerily over the loud-speakers:

  “Miss Mavis Marriner. Miss Mavis Marriner, report to the bridge at once.”

  A moment later the chief mate appeared anxiously to announce that the captain wanted him in Mavis’ cabin. When they reached it, they found the captain alone, looking grim.

  “I think I’m going to need a policeman’s help, Trant. She’s gone.”

  He told Trant what he knew. The stewardess who brought Mavis’ morning tea at seven had found the cabin empty and locked. She was familiar with all of Mavis’ clothes and was sure that none of them were missing except the black silk pajamas in which she slept. A discreet search of the liner had not yet located her.

  The captain dismissed the mate, saying: “Tell Mr. Spiwack on the bridge that, if there’s no word in ten minutes, he’s to turn the ship around and retrace our course.” He added to Trant: “Regulations. Naturally we’ll never find her if …” Trant, silent but bright-eyed, was gazing around the cabin. The bed was neatly made. The cover of the aft porthole was loose, flapping slightly back and forth. The turquoise dress in which Mavis had danced the night before was slung over a chair. There was an overpowering—even for Mavis—odor of Tantalizing. A glance at the dressing table showed a bottle of perfume almost empty. Intrigued, Trant traced the odor to an area by the bed where it seemed at its strongest. He dropped to his knees and observed a faint stain on the flowered carpet. It was still a trifle damp.

  “Blood?” queried the captain melodramatically.

  “I don’t think so. Mind if I ruin the company’s rug?” Without w
aiting for the captain’s consent, Trant produced a pocket-knife and cut a small circular patch from the carpet.

  The purser came in and announced: “The entire ship has been searched, sir. No trace of her.”

  Trant folded the piece of carpet into one of the company’s envelopes, which he took from the desk, and moved to the porthole.

  “The cover was this way when the stewardess brought the tea?”

  “Nothing’s been touched.”

  Trant hooked back the loose cover and studied the porthole. He gave a little grunt.

  “Look.”

  At his shoulder, the captain peered. Caught on the metal edge was a scrap of black fabric.

  “Black silk,” said the captain, awed. “Her pajamas. So she’s overboard. Suicide.”

  Trant put the shred of material into another envelope, feeling a cosmic pity for Mavis Marriner and all other foolish young women who reap what they sow. He also felt guilt at having had his frivolous wish of the night before so speedily granted.

  “Unfortunately, it’s not suicide. No girl could have squeezed herself through that porthole with the heavy cover flapping loose. Try it yourself. She couldn’t have unhooked it by accident, either, as she went through.”

  The captain stared. “So it’s murder?”

  “I’m afraid it is,” said Trant sadly.

  But only part of him was sad. The other part was musing on Mavis Marriner’s murderer as a hungry owl might muse on a mouse.…

  At that moment the chief steward appeared with a fraught-looking middle-aged stewardess. He said to the captain: “Mrs. Kuzak, the night stewardess, has something to report, sir.”

  In an explosive Polish accent, Mrs. Kuzak affirmed: “Last night at one-thirty flickers the call light of Miss Marriner. I come to this cabin. I knock. Answers a man’s voice: ‘Is all right. Only Miss Marriner has trouble with the porthole. Now is fixed.’ I said ‘Okay.’ I leave.”

  “One-thirty.” Trant watched her. “What was the voice like?”