Nine and Death Makes Ten

by Carter Dickson

  "But, sir . . ." began the purser.

  "Hold on. Durin' his brief appearances in public as Benoit, he locked the door of his own (Kenworthy's) cabin, and kept the key. Again a part of his alibi. Nobody likes to pester a seasick man. If anybody knocked while he was away, he could just say later that he'd refused to answer. And there was another thing."

  H.M. pointed his finger malevolently at Max.

  "You!" he said. "The number of Kenworthy's cabin?"

  "B-70."

  "Uh-huh. And the number of Benoit's cabin?"

  "B-71."

  "Just a second, there!" interposed Lathrop, frowning. "How is it that they weren't side by side, then? If I remember, Benoit's cabin was on the starboard side, and Kenworthy's on the port."

  H.M. unfolded the plan of the Edwardic.

  "Sure, son. That's the whole point. This ship is built on the plan of nearly every other liner afloat. That's to say: the cabins with even numbers are on the port side, and the cabins with odd numbers are on the starboard. Cabins with following numbers aren't side by side: they're directly opposite each other, with the width of the ship between 'em.

  "And what constituted the width of the ship at that point? What runs straight through there, with one entrance near the door of Kenworthy's cabin and the other entrance near the door of Benoit's cabin just opposite? Think!"

  "The lavatories," answered Max.

  "That's right. Bulls-eye. The lavatories. So if Kenworthy wanted to nip across quickly to Benoit's cabin, or Benoit wanted to get home safely to Kenworthy's, the feller had a short-cut straight through there without showin' himself anywhere else in the ship. Also, it was a place where either of 'em could appear without suspicion. Oh, Kenworthy is mustard! Every move was planned as craftily and innocently as a campaign by our friend in Berlin.

  "He had only two really ticklish or difficult moments, as I'll show you when we recapitulate. Long ago, I got rather a strong idea, long ago in New York Kenworthy made up his mind to kill Estelle Zia Bey—"

  Dr. Archer spoke quietly. "Why, Sir Henry? I have a particular reason for wanting to know that."

  H.M.'s weary expression indicated that he faced once more that quality which he likes to call the blinkin' awful cussedness of things in general.

  "From the evidence we've picked up," he said, "you ought to have a pretty good guess. This gal here ought to be able to tell us, anyway."

  Valerie was annoyed and nearly tearful.

  "Oh, b-b-bother all of you!" she burst out. "I've been telling you all the way across the Atlantic. And not one of you would believe me! You thought Jerome was the chivalrous gentleman and I was the worm! I knew my facts were right. This Zia Bey woman confided to two or three of the girls at Trimalchio's that she had a whole pile of letters from Jerome . . . letters admitting something or other ... I don't know what. .."

  "Would it be askin' too much," suggested H.M., looking at her over his spectacles, "to inquire who you really are? And what in blue blazes your game was all along?"

  Valerie braced herself

  "Yes," she said, "I'll tell you. Ill tell all of you! And why? Because that beast stole my p-passport, and now I shan't even be able to land in England. And I don't care, because

  I don't think I want much to do with the Kenworthy family-*! now." 1

  She braced herself still more. 1

  "My name's not Valerie Chatford, though I've lived all my life in Mr. Chatford's house, first when he was single and then when he married Ellen Kenworthy. I—I went to school with Valerie. She died a year ago. But I'm not related. My real name—" here she braced herself for the third time—"is Gerte Vogel."

  "Vogel!" said H.M. His eyes narrowed, and he whistled! "So! Are you by any chance a relation to the Mrs. Vogel that was housekeeper for Chatford? The housekeeper who caused all the scandal when Chatford married Ellen Kenworthy! (You heard of it, the rest of you.) Old Lord Abbsdale, Jerome Kenworthy's old man, was shocked to the bottom of his Puritan soul, and disowned his sister for good. Any relation to that Mrs. Vogel?" j

  "Yes, I am. I'm her daughter," retorted Valerie. "She's dead now, so don't you say anything against her." H.M. again whistled softly.

  "And Valerie's dead, too," the girl went on. "And Mr. Chatford, my courtesy Uncle Arthur, has been drinking himself blind and green. He's an awful spectacle. And my Aunt Ellen; has turned into a shrew. Both of them have been at me to do something for them, after all they've done for me. They said Aunt Ellen's brother, Lord Abbsdale, was as rich as Croesus, whereas we had nothing. Aunt Ellen said her brother had disowned her, and he was a narrow-minded old so-and-so who'd never take her back. And she wept. And—oh, lots of things." She drew a deep breath.

  "Then they conceived the great idea. They said why didn't I pass myself off as Valerie Chatford? After all, he might take a liking to Ellen's daughter, because he'd liked the daughter as a child. Better still, if I could do the old boy some great service, or some service to his son . . ."

  Color came into her face, and she twisted her fingers together.

  "You know how rottenly I played my part. I wasn't really trying to help Jerome Kenworthy. I was only trying to make him, and everybody else, think I was trying to help him so he'd be grateful. That was why—" she whirled round to Max —"on the night Mrs. Zia Bey was killed, I told you about the litters and most horribly naively asked you to get an envelope from the purser's office. I knew you wouldn't. I knew you'd pass it straight on to the captain. That would bring me Into the middle of it. And then presently I could break down and confess that I'd been trying to help Jerome. I didn't see any harm in it! I knew he hadn't done the murder ... or at least (don't you see?) that's what I thought, because I had seen the Frenchman . . . and I should be getting his gratitude.

  "But all the time," she concluded wearily, "it was Jerome after all. What a world."

  H.M. chuckled, and corrected himself with a cough.

  "Vogel," he mused. "Vogel. That's a good German name."

  "Yes, it is," said Valerie. "That's another thing. My f-father was born in Germany, though he became a naturalized Englishman and as good a citizen as anybody. But I can't help having some sympathy for my father's stock, can I? Then—" again her eyes fixed on Max—"when they began sneaking up on me, and saying, 'Heil Hitler,' I didn't know what dreadful things they mightn't be thinking. They even hinted I was signaling a submarine on the night of the false alarm. Me! When I'm so terrified of submarines that I was only up on that boat-deck because I couldn't sleep for fear of them. I'd never have traveled aboard this ship in a million years if Aunt Ellen and Uncle Arthur hadn't said I'd got to follow Jerome, and get in with him."

  "Now, now!" said H.M.

  "I'm an awful flop, though. You didn't even believe me about the letters, when I was telling you the truth?"

  H.M. opened his eyes. "Didn't I, my wench? Y'know, I think you underestimate the old man."

  "But did you?" demanded Max. "I thought—"

  "Looky here," said H.M. wearily. "Aren't you forgettin' independent testimony? Aren't you forgettin' what your own brother told us? Aren't you forgettin' that Mrs. Zia Bey's cabin stewardess confirmed the fact about there bein' a packet of letters in the handbag?"

  "By George, she did!" muttered the purser.

  Again Dr. Archer intervened. A frown ruffled his classic brow, and he waved a hand in vague dissent. "Yes," he persisted. "But I am still curious about Mr. Kenworthy's motive for wanting to kill the lady. Compromising letters. Er—isn't that (if you will excuse the term) rather a Victorian sort of menace in these days?"

  "Sure," agreed H.M. "But Lord Abbsdale, Kenworthy's father and sole source of revenue, is rather a Victorian sort of bloke. As you'll admit if you've listened to what we've heard about his character." j

  The doctor ignored this. J

  "But there," he smiled, "I can probably assist you. Every-] body has contributed something to this discussion so far except myself. Now I enter. As I told you up on the boat-deck on Wednesday, I cond
ucted a post-mortem. I told you I found results which were surprising." He paused. "I did not say I had discovered the lady was poisoned or drowned. I did discover, however, that she was going to have a child."

  H.M. snapped his fingers.

  " 'Letters,'" he quoted from Valerie, " 'admitting to something or other.' Jerome Kenworthy's child, for a fiver. And Estelle Zia Bey was goin' straight to old Abbsdale. Oh, my eye." He blinked at Max. "Of course. Didn't she tell you, when she was tight, that she was goin' to see someone *in the Adm—which is Admiralty for a fiver? Didn't she say she had her proofs? And there, for our third fiver, is motive.

  "Which, ladies and gents, about seals up the case now.

  "We can pretty well reconstruct. When Mrs. Zia Bey decided to cross the ocean and pour out her woes on Abbsdale's shoulder, Kenworthy calmly made up his mind to kill her. If I had to guess here, I'd guess that he was very charming about it. I'd guess he persuaded her to take this ship, and said he'd go along. I'd guess he only begged her to keep quiet about bein' a great friend of his until he made up his mind what to do."

  Lathrop interrupted.

  "Whoa there!" Lathrop said. "Suppose she told somebody aboard that she was a friend of his?"

  "Well," said H.M., "suppose she did? What of it? I think you'll have noticed that Estelle Zia Bey, for all her merry j garrulousness, was an exceedingly close-mouthed woman about mentionin' personal details—even when she was reel in' drunk. And observe that she didn't trust Kenworthy an inch: she pretended to seal up those letters in an envelope for the purser, and probably told Kenworthy she'd done it, whereas actually she kept 'em in her handbag. Unfortunately, he saw through that

  "But even suppose she had said Kenworthy was a pal of hers? Remember, this crime was to be the work of Captain Pierre Benoit, of the French Tirailleurs. There was never to be any doubt about that. Captain Benoit was to be caught, literally red-handed, with bloody finger-prints. He was to confess. He was to leave a suicide-note, and kill himself. End of case. How could that concern the innocent son of Lord Abbsdale?

  "Kenworthy planned with exceedin' great care. His uniforms and the other frippery, as Benoit, he undoubtedly had made in New York. He booked two cabins, carefully chosen, in two names. Benoit's trunk was sent aboard; but the personality of Benoit never walked aboard: it appeared later. Kenworthy simply dropped Benoit's steamship ticket and passport on the berth in cabin B-71, where the steward could pick 'em up. (It's the steward, you remember, who collects your ticket after departure; you don't have to give it up at the barrier.)

  "Now I don't have to load your minds with details of his double life aboard, which you can imagine for yourselves from what I've already said. He couldn't have kept it up for long; but then he didn't have to. What he had to establish was a blurred impression, on the minds of worried, unobservant other people on a gloomy first night, that one of their fellow-passengers was a dark-complexioned man in a French uniform. The first night he also spread a little disquiet with some spectacular knife-throwin': which was intended to catch attention, and implant in our minds the idea of some half-loony feller with a fanatical grudge against a woman. And he nearly, but not quite, got caught at the boat-drill.

  "On the second night, he was ready. I doubt if he meant to kill Mrs. Zia Bey quite so early at night. Thinkin', d'ye see, that she was safely away getting sozzled with Max, he slipped round in Benoit's character to have a search of her cabin. She surprised him when she went down to get her coat. But she didn't yell out, because at first glance she didn't recognize him as Kenworthy; and the spectacle of a strange man in her cabin, for purposes to be guessed at, wouldn't either upset or even displease her. When she tumbled to it, it was too late. He stunned her and then killed her, probably with that razor.

  "He'd taken along that bottle of ink, not quite decided whether to use it or blood. But he substituted the ink for the bulge of letters in her handbag, wiped his thumbs, and left careful faked prints for the sleuths to find. Then he left.

  "Mind you, he didn't even care if he got some blood on him! Or if he was seen approachin' or leaving the scene of the crime. That would be all to the good later, when 'Benoit's' guilt was established.

  "But now would come the really ticklish part of the scheme. The question was, when would they find the body? When would the hounds start bayin'? When would they begin to chase finger-prints? He didn't think it would be so soon as that night: certainly not within an hour: and it was a reasonable assumption. He got back to Kenworthy's cabin, shed his disguise, swallowed another dose of the rank stuff that had been keepin' him genuinely sick for two days, and crawled groanin' in to bed. And no sooner had he settled down than ..."

  The purser finished it. "I walked in," Griswold said gloomily.

  H.M. nodded.

  "Yes; on your first visit, as you said, to his cabin. But what else? Just to sweeten the imaginary situation, Kenworthy told that ghost-story about a feller in a gas-mask wanderin' about. No sooner has he told that, than in walks Max Matthews. By what Max tells the purser, it's thunderingly obvious to Kenworthy what has happened. They've found the body! The captain's already roaring for action! Kenworthy must have felt a cold sweat in his brain as well as his stomach. Remember—" H.M. looked at the purser and Max—"in what a blistering hurry he chased you out of there? Remember how he nearly had a fit when the purser suggested sending for a doctor? Remember how he swore he wouldn't be disturbed again that night no matter what happened?

  "Now for the real, true, acid-test.

  "He turned himself into Benoit again, locked the door, and slid through the lavatory-way to B-71. Here he sat down to play with his rubber stamps, havin' the ink-pad all prepared.

  "Here was how he intended it to work. Somebody, maybe the captain himself, would come round askin' for fingerprints. Good! Benoit, with the ink-pad in front of him, would agree and press his thumbs to his own messy ink-pad. Then he would show annoyance, wipe his thumbs on a handkerchief, and make in the presence of witnesses the same faked thumb-prints he'd left in B-37. All this time, as though they'd trapped him, he would manage to look and talk as guilty as hell."

  This time it was the third officer who interposed.

  "Excuse me," said Cruikshank. "But all that jabbering of his ... about 'that woman' and 'her' being a traitor ... ?"

  H.M. grunted.

  "Bogus motive, son. He wanted to instill into your mind just the idea he seems to have done: that Estelle Zia Bey was a Nazi spy, and that he'd killed her. Y'see, I'm dead certain it was Kenworthy who wrote the skipper that anonymous note warnin' him there would be a woman espionage-agent aboard.

  "Well! With the thumb-prints taken in Benoit's cabin, he thought his plan would be complete. It wasn't likely that they would compare finger-prints in his cabin, on the spot. They'd just collect 'em first, and take them away for comparison. When they'd taken the prints away—that very same night—'Benoit' would write his suicide-note, stage his fake suicide with a dummy dressed up, and disappear. Nobody would see him again after the purser and the third officer had left the cabin. 'Benoit's' prints would tally with the bloody ones. His confession would be there. Finally, no other finger-prints taken aboard that ship would be anything like Benoit's, because Kenworthy's own prints would be taken in a proper manner. The beauty of that twist, y'know, is brilliant. And the whole imposture would be finished in forty-eight hours."

  H.M. paused, and sniffed into his empty glass. His cigar had gone out, but he did not re-light it.

  "Only," he said sourly, "it went wrong."

  "Because," said the purser, "Cruikshank and I got excited over all his jabbering, and refused to let him use his own ink-pad. So we took his prints in the proper way. And he was dished."

  "Dished?" roared H.M. "No wonder he had that funny look on his face when you left: the look you couldn't quite describe. His whole plan was royally, crisply burnt to a cinder. Don't you see how?

  "We'll pass over the events of the next night, when 'Captain Benoit' was becoming a graver da
nger each minute, and had to be disposed of before he got caught out. Kenworthy dressed up a dummy (he says he made it of a blanket and some rolled-up newspapers), fired a shot, and tipped the 'body' overboard, knowin' quite well the lookouts would see it fall. The 'body' would come undone in the water, of course, but no one would ever know that. He was still tryin' to salvage his plan, y'know. Captain Benoit really did leave a suicide-note, confessin' to the murder: but it got thrown out And Mr. Hooper swore to two people on B Deck.

  "We'll also pass over the appallin' shock Kenworthy must have got when, staggerin' up after having disposed of the dummy, staggerin' up to get his first drink and let his stomach settle again, staggerin' up for the first time in his proper clothes, he ran into a girl who said she was Valerie Chatford, his cousin—and had come to save him from the menace of the letters!

  "Oh, my eye.

  "But don't you see the huge, the hangin' evidence that had now got him round the neck with regard to the thumbprints?"

  Valerie looked puzzled. "No, I don't," she returned. "After all, nobody's prints were the same as the bloody ones on the scene of the murder."

  H.M. stretched out his hands as though pleading.

  "Listen, my wench. For the love of Esau, think! In the purser's safe were eight little white cards, each bearing the left and right thumb-print of a different passenger. But 'Captain Benoit's' prints had been taken properly. Kenworthy's had been taken properly. Consequently, there were two cards on which the thumb-prints were exactly the same"

  "Dished," repeated the purser. "And for good."

  "Yes. Nobody, so far, had thought to compare the various sets of prints with each other. If you had, you'd have found that Benoit and Kenworthy were one and the same person. But, once this ship got to port and the official police took over, a-howler like that would be spotted first crack. Kenworthy had to pinch the card bearin' Benoit's prints. He had to, or he was done for! So he set up the submarine alarm, attacked the purser's office, and—"