by Q. Patrick
“From a foreign land. Not of English. Heavy with accent.” The captain whistled. “She was engaged to that
Frenchman.”
Trant made no comment. He stepped out into the corridor and glanced at the little ledge by the cabin door. A full glass of milk stood there. He sniffed it and smelt the odor of brandy.
“Get Jimmie, the lounge steward,” he said to the hovering purser. “And if he’s got a cabin mate, bring him too. To save time.”
The purser returned shortly, accompanied by Jimmie, who looked sleepy with ruffled blond hair, and a large dark man with tattooed forearms.
Trant said: “When did you bring the milk, Jimmie?”
“At one, sir. Like always, sir.”
“Did you knock?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Miss Marriner answered?”
“Yes, sir. She told me to leave the milk on the ledge as usual and said good night, sir.”
“You heard no other voice in the cabin?”
“No, sir.”
“Did Miss Marriner sound at all different from usual?”
“No, sir.”
“What did you do after you’d left the milk?”
“My work was over. I went to my cabin, sir.”
Trant glanced at the dark cabin mate. “You check that?”
“Yes, sir. I woke up when Jimmie came in, sir. We sat a while talking.”
“What time was it?”
“Just after one, sir.” He glanced at a large silver watch on his tattooed wrist. “I looked at my watch when I woke up.”
“Since she never came out to get the milk, her visitor must have come very soon after one. Almost certainly she was dead before one-thirty and certainly the voice Mrs. Kuzak heard was the voice of the murderer.” Trant reflected. “I’m
going to need an assistant, captain. Can I have Jimmie?”
“Naturally.”
Trant patted Jimmie’s arm. “Rout out Mr. and Mrs. Howard and Mr. Armand Bardou. Tell them the captain wants to see them in his cabin. And use that well-known tact…. ”
The ship was futilely retracing its course as Trant and the captain questioned the three principal suspects. Trant seemed to find the interviews boring.
Mrs. Claire Howard, a vivid red-headed ex-actress with a knife for a tongue, said: "I'm prostrated by grief. I couldn’t be sorrier if the python of the Bronx Zoo kicked the bucket.”
Although she made no effort to conceal her resentment about Mavis’ behavior with her husband, she was firmly alibied by the testimony of an elderly Italian prima donna who swore she had been telling Mrs. Howard’s fortune in the Howard state stateroom between one and one-thirty.
Larry Howard was more conventionally distressed than his wife. He fussed with his hand-painted tie, looked more like a movie idol than any of the stars on his payroll and kept repeating: “So tragic—such a lovely girl—such a talent—”
He too had what seemed like a perfect alibi. After leaving the lounge the night before, he had run into a Hollywood screen writer and had spent the significant time period in the writer’s cabin, discussing an idea for a super-colossal Marriner vehicle, which now would have to be tailored to suit another star. The script writer corroborated this.
After these two had apparently cleared themselves, Armand Bardou was pitifully without defense. The elegant, mournful-eyed French actor denied having been in Mavis’ cabin but had absolutely no alibi. All he could say for himself was that, humiliated by his fiancée’s shameless flirtation with Larry Howard had paced the upper deck for hours in an attempt to collect himself.
“But Mavis was my heart,” he announced with Gallic fervor. “You cannot accuse me of murdering my heart.”
After he had gone, Trant no longer looked bored. In fact there was a gleam of pleasurable anticipation in his eyes. The captain said: “Well, I suppose we’re left with Bardou. No—foreign accent.”
“Foreign accents can be assumed,” suggested Trant mildly. “And it’s too early to talk of alibis.”
“You mean we’re not restricted to the suspects we’ve questioned? Anyone else on the boat could have killed her?”
“They could have killed her,” agreed Trant, “but they didn’t.”
“Trant, you’re not telling me you know who did.”
“Oh, yes,” murmured Trant with an exasperatingly casual shrug, “I’ve suspected it for half an hour. Now I’m sure—”
* * *
The captain, who was a long-suffering man, fell in with Trant’s requests. They were simple. First the lieutenant wanted to inspect the ship’s log. Having done so, he wanted to interview the three suspects individually in Mavis’ cabin. While the purser went off to arrange this, Trant stationed Mrs. Kuzak, the Polish night stewardess, in the little pantry opposite the half-open door of the stateroom. He told her to listen to everything that was said in the cabin and to break in if she heard the foreign voice she had heard the night before. Once she was at her post, Trant and Jimmie went into the cabin. Trant sat down by the bed, lit a cigarette and offered one to the steward.
“Mr. Howard’s coming first, Jimmie. Before he arrives, I want you to duck into the bathroom. Don’t come out till I call.”
“Okay, sir.”
Trant’s gray eyes moved to the porthole. “Jimmie, you’ve had plenty of experience with women crossing the Atlantic. You can help me on a point of psychology. A lot of them throw their bonnets to the sea breezes, don’t they?”
Jimmie grinned. “They’re apt to be in a holiday mood, sir.”
“Exactly. But Mavis was different. That’s the point about her. She vamped like Salome but when the time came to crash through, it’s my hunch she went colder than a Pilgrim Mother.”
“That’s how we crew members had her summed up, sir.”
“All right, Jimmie, before Mr. Howard arrives, let’s assume for a moment that I’m the murderer.” Trant smiled contentedly at this hypothesis. “Miss Marriner certainly hurled her all at me last night. Suppose I’d taken her up on it and come here to the cabin expecting a Big Romantic Moment. What would I have got? The old don’t-touch-me you-nasty-man. Suppose I was vain, used to easy conquests. Suppose I got rough. Suppose she rang for the stewardess. Suppose I realized what an awkward spot I’d be in if the stewardess reported an attempted assault to the captain. Say I struggled with Mavis trying to keep her from calling out when the stewardess knocked, planning to reason with her later and calm her down. O.K. The stewardess came. I invented some trouble with the porthole to explain the ring and to get rid of her. But later—after the stewardess had gone—I realized to my horror that I had been rougher than I thought. I had strangled Miss Marriner.”
Trant looked meditatively at his own hands as if they were the hands of a strangler.
“There was Miss Marriner lying on the bed—dead. I hadn’t intended to kill her, but it was done. I got into a panic. I thought of the porthole. Surely, if I pushed the body through the porthole, they might think it was suicide. I carried her to the port and pushed her through. But I was nervous. As I brought my hands in, I unhooked the porthole cover without noticing it. All I wanted to do was to get the heck away from the cabin as fast as I could. I hadn’t been a very smart murderer, but then I hadn’t planned to be a murderer at all. How’s that fit, Jimmie?”
Jimmie’s blue eyes had widened. “It fits, sir. But what about the foreign accent?”
“Oh, I left out a couple of details. The accent, for example—and the spilled perfume.” Trant nodded to the little hole in the carpet. “The perfume’s simple. There was a stain on the rug, a most incriminating stain. Although the murderer was rattled, he knew he had to remove it. He thought that perfume, with its alcoholic content, would be more effective than water so he tried to wipe it away with Tantalizing. I’m afraid he didn’t succeed. When we reach New York, a laboratory analysis will show what it was.”
“What was it, sir?”
Lieutenant Trant rose. Suddenly he seemed depressed.
>
“Milk,” he said. “Milk?”
“Milk and brandy brought in by the murderer. I’m afraid he was a rather vain murderer. As the glamour boy of the Queen Anne, he was used to conquests. He thought that Mavis, with her ‘darlings’ and ‘angels,’ should be as much of a pushover as the others. It must have been humiliating when he came into this cabin last night as a Don Juan to find that Mavis just thought of him as a fresh steward. It was frightening, too, to know that she was going to report him to the captain. That would have meant a quick end to his career.”
Jimmie sprang to his feet.
“I know what you’re going to say,” continued Trant quietly. “The glass of milk on the ledge outside proves that you never came into this cabin last night. Unhappily, it doesn’t prove that. The ship’s log reports that we ran into a violent squall last night at two. The, boat rolled. In fact, it toppled the clock off my dressing table. If you’d actually left that glass of milk on the ledge at one last night, it would certainly have spilled.”
He studied Jimmie with a thoughtful expression. “You put the new glass of milk there this morning. Last night’s glass was spilled on the carpet in here while you struggled with Miss Marriner to keep her from calling out to the stewardess. You thought you were being clever planting the second glass on the ledge. I’m afraid your cleverness backfired. “And I’m afraid your neat alibi can be broken too. Your cabin mate said he woke up when you came in. He woke up because you deliberately awakened him, didn’t he? But before you awakened him, you switched the hands of his watch backwards. It was easy to stay awake yourself until he fell asleep again and then to turn the hands forward to the correct time.”
It was painful to see Jimmie collapse under this swift, deadly attack. The young steward’s ducal composure fled and with it his elegant accent. He was a frightened little mill boy again and, lapsing into a broad Yorkshire dialect, he cried:
“Yer caan’t say thaat a’ me, zur. She war crazed fur me. She aasked me ter coom oop. Ah didn’t knaw—Ah didn’t mean ter—”
Mrs. Kuzak burst into the cabin. “That’s it!” she announced. “Is the same foreign voice I hear last night.”
Jimmie swung to her. “Eh, wumman, ye caan’t—”
“That’s all we needed,” interrupted Trant quietly.
”People almost always revert to their natural dialect when they’re rattled, Jimmie. No wonder Mrs. Kuzak thought that Yorkshire brogue of yours was a foreign accent.”
He nodded the stewardess out of the cabin. Alone with Jimmie, he felt a twinge of sadness. The hunt was always exciting; the kill never so. Particularly when he was fond of the murderer.
He said: “You didn’t mean to kill her. I’m sure of that and I’ll do everything I can…. I’m sorry, Jimmie. I set a trap for you. I feel like a heel.”
Jimmie had managed to turn himself into the perfect steward again. He smiled a ghost of his engaging smile.
“That’s all right, sir. After all, it’s your job sir.”
There were times when Lieutenant Trant took a low view of his profession.
This was one of them.
This Looks Like Murder
Lieutenant Trant of the New York Homicide Bureau picked up the insisting phone in the squad room. “Police!” gasped a woman’s voice. “This is Marian Alberts—640 East Seventy-eighth. Come — come quickly. He shot me.”
Trant blinked. “Who shot you?”
“George. George Willis. He’s escaping on the express to San Francisco. Get him. But, oh, come quickly. I think I’m dy …”
There was a choking sob followed by the clatter of a dropped receiver. Then, faint and playful from the other end of the wire, came the surprising tinkle of a Strauss waltz.
Tum-ti-tum. Tum-ti-tum.
Stung by the urgency of this most unorthodox call, Trant shouted to Sergeant Riley: “Get to Grand Central and pick up a George Willis off the express to San Francisco.” Leaving rapid instructions, he sped in a police car to Seventy-Eighth Street. Mrs. Marian Alberts was listed for the fourth floor. He ran upstairs and rang. There was no reply. He was about to force an entry when a girl’s cool voice behind him said:
“If you must beat down doors, pick someone else’s. My aunt hates drafts.” He turned. A slim blonde in mink with very blue eyes stood clasping a package of unromantic groceries. He explained the call. Shakily she opened the door with a key and dumped her groceries next to a pigskin hatbox in the hall.
They both hurried into a large living room. Sprawled across a flowered carpet, with a telephone receiver dangling above her, lay a middle-aged woman.
“Aunt Marian!” cried the girl.
Together they dropped to the woman’s side. Trant’s trained eye surveyed the wound just above the heart. She was clearly dead. He scanned the floor for a gun. None was visible. He rose. On the table, beside the phone, a carved wooden cigarette box, and a radio, stood a small aquarium of tropical fish. Something gleamed dully across the smashed water weed at the tank’s bottom. Lifting the lid, he reached through scurrying fish and pulled out a small pistol.
The girl was clutching a cigarette like a lifeline. Trant held a match to her sympathetically. “Smoke. It’ll help. You’re her niece?”
“Yes. Cordelia Ash.” She gave a faint, grateful smile. “I live here. I’ve just come back from work. I’m a model.”
“Recognize this gun?” Trant asked. “Yes. It’s Aunt Marian’s. She’s—was nervous of burglars.”
“Who’s George Willis?”
“George? How do you know his name?”
“Just be an answering machine, Miss Ash. You’ll find it’ll keep the shock back.”
“He’s Aunt’s latest protégé, her partner. He’s starting a business—fabrics. Aunt’s put up the capital.”
“How much?”
“All she had. There’s a paper. A sort of contract.”
“And a will?”
“Not that I know of. Just some insurance policies. Unless she’s changed them, I’m the beneficiary.”
“Can I see them?”
The cigarette in her lips, the girl moved dazedly to a Victorian painting of a benevolent greyhound and opened it like a door. From the safe beyond she brought Trant some documents.
He glanced through the insurance policies which had been taken out a year before and, at Mrs. Alberts’ death, brought her niece twenty thousand dollars. He then studied a much more interesting paper—a brief legal statement in which Marian Alberts invested one hundred thousand dollars in Willis Fabrics, with the added stipulation that, in the event of her death, the capital remained in the full possession of George Willis.
Trant whistled. “Why was she so enthusiastic about Willis Fabrics?”
The girl looked embarrassed. “She was in love with him. He was much younger. It was a mess. But poor Aunt Marian—ever since her husband’s death she’s been terribly confused. A couple of years ago she even had to go for a while to one of those institutions. It always took this form— falling for very young men.”
“And getting killed by them,” Trant said.
In spite of its sensational prologue, this seemed a disappointingly open-and-shut case. George Willis not only inherited one hundred thousand dollars by the death of the pathetically romantic Mrs. Alberts; he had even been denounced by his dying victim. George Willis—a thoroughly commonplace murderer.
Then, suddenly, a Viennese waltz began to dance in Trant’s memory, each note shimmering like a tropical fish. His interest soared. A commonplace murderer—indeed!
Soon the apartment was swarming with his men and later a ruffled Sergeant Riley arrived with George Willis.
“I got him just before the train started.”
George Willis was a young man with exasperated eyes. He barked: “Heaven knows, I’m sorry for poor Marian. But I insist—”
“I know.” Trant studied him thoughtfully. “You didn’t kill her. You just stopped in to tell her you were walking out on her. The capital for Willis Fabrics
seemed like a fine idea, but the emotional demands that went with it were a little too much. Right?”
George Willis gaped. “How on earth did you know? I explained I couldn’t go through with it. It wasn’t fair to her. I told her to tear up the agreement. I …”
“In her way,” mused Trant, “Mrs. Alberts must have been a rather remarkable woman. She knew she’d lost you, but she didn’t tear up the agreement. She shot herself instead— so you could have the money without strings.”
“Shot herself!” shouted Sergeant Riley. “With the gun in the fish tank?”
“Ah. That brings us into a different field.” Trant turned almost sadly to Cordelia Ash. “They tell me that models, for some mysterious reason, always carry hatboxes to and from work. You came in without a hatbox but there’s a charming one in the hall. The groceries were a good casual prop, but that entrance with me was your second entrance, wasn’t it? You’d come back earlier, found your aunt dead, and done a little restaging. The gun, for example—out of her hand into the closed fish tank to make suicide impossible.”
She puffed at a cigarette in icy silence.
“I see your problem, of course,” continued Trant. “Those insurance policies were taken out last year—after your aunt had spent some time in a mental home. No company insures against suicide when someone has been institutionalized. You tried to salvage a desperate situation. It was quite a bright idea. If you’d managed to get Mr. Willis convicted of murder, you’d have got the insurance payments and the hundred thousand dollars, too—as next of kin.”
Sergeant Riley’s thick neck was red. “But you’re nuts, Trant! This Alberts dame accused Willis herself over the phone.”
“Oh, no, she didn’t.” Trant crossed to the hand-carved cigarette box. Smiling ruefully at Cordelia Ash, he opened its lid. Instantly came the tinkling melody of a Strauss waltz. “A woman called me at police headquarters, yes, but it was a woman who, after she’d dramatically claimed to be dying, opened this musical box for a cigarette. I heard the waltz myself. A dying woman isn’t apt to reach for a cigarette—not even in a tobacco ad.”
