Puzzle of the Pepper Tree

by Stuart Palmer

  “I’ve known for some time,” said the schoolteacher. “But sometimes I don’t tell all I know, in spite of my talkativeness.”

  Forrest approached, to take her outstretched hand. “I must explain,” he said. “About the blister—”

  She nodded. “You need not. I know about that, too. I’m not sure what the penalty is for obstructing justice by stealing one’s own identified corpse. But your originality in burying your own body should be rewarded. It was a mad thing to do, but I’m willing to make allowances for the frenzy of a man who has been hunted until his hair turns gray. You thought that getting rid of the corpse would prevent a reversal of your identification and keep Roswell Forrest dead, didn’t you? It’s too bad you weren’t used to wheelbarrows, Mr.—er—Kelsey. That blister was a mistake. I don’t suppose you noticed that someone looked in through the window of the infirmary while you were there—and was frightened away? Someone who left a peculiar heel mark?”

  “I notice the heel mark,” admitted the young-old man. “That’s why I smudged out the others and let it stand. A red herring, you know.”

  “I know,” agreed Miss Withers. “Marvin Deving, the jack-of-all-trades who had been a drug clerk, had the same idea as you. Only you were there first, and you hid the evidence of the newlyweds’ joint crime for them.”

  “I’ve acted like a fool,” he said.

  “Not like a fool. Panic is temporary insanity. Look at that girl today. She had not a chance in the world of getting away, but she tried.” Miss Withers gathered her handbag and umbrella. “I must go find the inspector and tell him the things he’s dying to hear,” she said. “Good-bye, and good luck.”

  She stopped short. “Where are you two going?”

  “We haven’t any plans,” Phyllis admitted. “But we’ll get back to the mainland and trust to something.”

  “Have you any money?”

  Forrest nodded, and Phyllis shook his arm. “Don’t try to fool her, it can’t be done. No, we’re stony. The lawyer took our last pooled dollars. But what does that matter if we get away from here?”

  Miss Withers frowned. “That may not be as easy as you think,” she said. “There’s a process server named Hellen Damnation waiting on the passenger pier.”

  Forrest grew perceptibly smaller. “I have an idea,” Miss Withers told him. “I hope you don’t mind my interference. But in Mexico, I understand, you can get a divorce almost instantly. I don’t approve in most cases, but since your wife is divorcing you in New York on a charge of desertion, I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t get one of your own.”

  Phyllis was alight, but Forrest shook his head. “How would we get to Mexico, and what would we live on?”

  Miss Withers bit the tip of her thumbnail. “Captain Narveson has been waiting these many days to join his whaling ship and sail for Mexican waters,” she suggested. “If I said a word or two he might take you with him. That would get rid of the little man in the derby, too. As for money—perhaps the captain would let you work for him on his ship. Something would turn up, I feel it. And I haven’t been wrong recently, have I?”

  “You have not,” said Phyllis.

  “We’ll try it,” said Forrest.

  “Go and pack,” Miss Withers told her. “I’ll catch the captain and make him wait. For a day or so I’ll have real authority around here. And another thing—” She called them back. “I have a sort of premature wedding present in mind. Here’s the key to my room. Take it and go in and get your own present. It happens to be hidden in the Gideon Bible at the head of my bed. Take the book without opening it, or I’ll never forgive you. I’ll buy another Bible for the room. You can look when you get out of sight of the island. Promise?”

  They promised, faithfully. Least of all did this couple dare to think of disobeying the all-powerful schoolteacher whose hour this was.

  “Good-bye,” she told them, a catch in her throat. “And listen to me, you idiots. You’ve both made a tangled mess of your lives, but you’ve got a new chance to use some common sense. Try and keep out of mischief. And may God help you both.”

  She kissed Phyllis and shook hands again with the man who used to be Roswell T. Forrest.

  Then they were gone. Miss Withers wiped her eyes carefully, powdered her nose—a habit which she had recently adopted owing to the arid California climate—and stalked out of the empty building.

  Luckily it was but a few steps to the pier, where she found Captain Narveson wigwagging out to sea with a pocket flash. An answer shone from the whaler.

  “Ay am going!” he told her joyfully.

  “Not for half an hour,” she announced. It was easier to win him over than she had thought. She shook his horny palm and took a last admiring look at his freckles. “Good-bye,” she said. Then she caught sight of the inspector, who was wandering about the streets with a worried look which vanished when he saw her.

  “Oscar, let’s leave this place,” she cried. “You’re not needed any longer to pin the crimes on those terrible juveniles, are you?”

  He shook his head. “They’ve pinned them on each other,” he admitted. “I was just beginning to appreciate the scenery here. But if you insist … get packed, and I’ll phone for the police boat. I guess a visiting fellow cop is entitled to some courtesies.”

  As they walked wearily along the shore toward the distant hotel, gay couples passed them, bound for the Casino and its gay evening of dancing. These joyful younglings had either not heard of the day’s dramatic ending to a murder investigation or else they did not suffer it to affect their lives. The island was already taking up the pursuit of pleasure where it had left off, and Miss Withers was able to remember only with an effort the glimpse she had had of the older, sterner side of Santa Catalina.

  As they walked, she enlightened the inspector upon the few remaining points which were not clear. “I can understand that the marathon dance couple probably met Mack through friends in even less savory rackets,” Piper said. “As you say, he may have picked Marvin Deving because the boy had been a drug clerk and could probably gain access to poisons in some shop where he had worked. The marriage was an afterthought, to give them a splendid excuse to be on the plane, and it incidentally legalized a union of some standing. But I wish you’d go on from there.”

  “Listen,” said Miss Withers. “It’s very simple. Kelsey was posing as Forrest, and vice versa. Therefore the pleasant little team of murderers picked the wrong man. They learned of the trip which the two fugitives planned to Catalina, no doubt through the reservations Kelsey made. Then they melted the chewing gum with its deadly dose and rewrapped it. Probably Marvin Deving hovered around the Hotel Senator the evening before his wedding—remember, he was out all night. He may have planned to gain access to Forrest’s room. Then he saw Kelsey—who had already been pointed out to him as Forrest—leaving the hotel. This was his victim. He followed the man out to a notorious amusement spot and seized his opportunity somehow to delay him in starting the next morning. He dared not strike then—he’s the weak sister of the team. Follow me?”

  “I’m not far behind,” admitted Piper. “Go on.”

  “Well, how he accomplished it I won’t try to guess. Perhaps he picked Kelsey’s pocket during the night and set his watch back. Perhaps he bribed one of the girl entertainers to do it—or did something to the man’s rented car. Anyway, he arranged that Kelsey, who he thought was Forrest, would arrive at the Catalina Terminal after the Avalon sailed. “It would be human nature for the man to take the waiting plane, if only as a supreme gesture of defiance to the ship which had gone off and left him. The murderers were cunning, never fear. They provided for the possibility that Kelsey might wait for Forrest—or for the man they thought was Forrest—and both fly together. That is why the newlyweds sat on opposite sides of the plane, with a vacant seat in front of each of them. Wherever the victim sat, he was within easy reach. And then—”

  “And then I stop,” said Piper. “How did they administer the gum?”


  “Air sickness is all too common,” said Miss Withers. “And the first thing anybody does when airsick or seasick is to chew gum. I doubt if it helps, but the idea is universal. Well, when the plane made its first lurch, Kay Deving clutched the man in front of her. She was a honeymoon bride, mind you. But she grabbed Kelsey—thinking him Forrest—instead of her husband. That was what made me suspicious, when I heard it. While she was grasping him, she deftly withdrew the package of candy gum furnished by the airplane, and substituted one stick of the poisoned gum. The murderers counted on their victim’s being in such a nervous state that he would not notice the difference, or the mildly pungent taste, when he reached for something to assuage his upset stomach. He didn’t.”

  “I’m beginning to see,” admitted Piper. “And then?”

  “And then they went right on with the honeymoon, which was probably partly genuine. They got worried when the death wasn’t certified as natural, and Marvin went out at night to do something about it. Probably he intended to burn the infirmary and destroy the evidence. Lucky for Dr. O’Rourke that Forrest was there and frightened the young fellow away. But Marvin left a heel mark. That puzzled me for a long time, because I was dead sure that the newlyweds could have had nothing to do with the disappearance of the corpse. Marvin Deving’s heel print didn’t fit. He couldn’t have stolen the body. It was then that I got the idea of two separate parties on the same mission. One would be the murderer—the other could only be the one other person who would want the body to disappear. Quite evidently, the man who hoped it would stay identified as himself! The blister on Forrest’s hand proved it for me. Ergo, if he was there, and if the second party who was there was the murderer, then Forrest was not the murderer of his double. See?”

  “Whee!” protested the inspector. “Go slower.”

  “I’m nearly through,” Miss Withers promised him. “Mack arrived to pay off his tame killers and got frightened at my interference. So he devised a method of paying them which could not involve himself. He was panicky about being seen near the real killers. He rented a lock box under an assumed name and phoned Deving the combination and number. He could then go away and let the blue envelope be picked up at Deving’s convenience, when the chase cooled. Only I got there first and substituted a dummy envelope. That killed Mack.”

  “I don’t see that,” said the inspector dubiously.

  “I foolishly told Mack I had the money. Intent upon getting it back, the man tied me up and hurried to search my room. Marvin Deving—or maybe the girl—had already got the dummy envelope, figured out that they were being double-crossed, as you call it, and set out on vengeance bent. It was a killing for money, and they wanted their fifteen thousand. Therefore, Marvin shot down Mack, as he so richly deserved, and hurried back to the second-floor room, where he removed the coating of collodion—and passed your test. The rest, as the books say, is history.”

  “There’s more to it than that,” Piper protested. “If Forrest stole that body and buried it under the pepper tree, he’s in a bad way. It’s a serious offense.”

  “Would they extradite a man from Mexico for it?”

  Piper admitted that it was very doubtful if anybody would try. “All the same, you’re going to do me a favor and say nothing about it,” Miss Withers advised him. “Marvin Deving sneaked out of the hotel that night—which is why his bride had to get up and answer the drunken Tompkins’ pounding—and left a footprint outside the infirmary window. Since he’ll hang anyway, I don’t see what harm it would do to have the body-snatching laid at his door.”

  “Nor I,” agreed Oscar Piper. He was strangely meek this afternoon. They were coming underneath the cliff between the hotel and the Casino, and Miss Withers was overjoyed to see that the handyman had already laboriously replanted the pepper tree in its proper niche—with its branches again leaning toward the highlands.

  A bus whirled past them in a cloud of dust—a bus evidently chartered for the occasion. In its wake followed a startled “Hello … Good-bye …” which told Miss Withers that Phyllis and her young man were headed full tilt for the boat in which Captain Narveson now sat so impatiently puffing at his corncob pipe.

  “It’s over—all over,” she said to the inspector. Slowly they climbed the stairs and entered her room.

  “All over but handing back the fifteen grand that you lifted from the mail box,” Piper reminded her. “Or are you going to keep it?”

  “It’s gone,” Miss Withers told him. “I was puzzled for days about what to do with it. I didn’t want to have it go back to Mack’s friends among the racketeers and politicians of our fair Manhattan. I didn’t want it to go to the murderers who had earned it. After all, it was promised to whoever would arrange the complete and final disappearance of Roswell T. Forrest. Well, that gentleman has arranged it himself, forever and ever, so I gave it to him and Phyllis for a wedding present. She doesn’t know it yet, but I cut away the concordance of the Gideon Bible and pasted the blue envelope there.”

  The inspector sat down hard in a chair. “You’ll be the death of me,” he said. “You’ve committed everything but arson this trip. Thank heaven it’s all over. Now for a nice peaceful trip back East.”

  “I’d like some peace,” Miss Withers agreed. “You know, it’s all in my imagination. But I keep hearing little screams—very muffled and far away.”

  “Reaction,” said the inspector wisely. “You need rest and freedom from responsibility.” He went across the room to get her a glass of water and then stopped short. He cocked his head to listen.

  “I’m getting it, too,” he admitted. “And I’m not the type to have nerves.”

  He whirled toward the closet and whipped open the door as if to surprise the source of his annoyance, as he actually did. He slid weakly to his knees.

  “Good grief,” he muttered. Then he reappeared, holding a sheet of notepaper.

  “It’s for you,” he said. “Evidently from that high-stepping Phyllis dame. She says—‘We are both simply dying to open our wedding present but will follow your advice. Wanted to give you a remembrance, so here is Mister Jones. He likes you better than he does me anyhow. I put him in the closet because he doesn’t feel so well. … Lovingly, Phyd.’”

  “Now wasn’t that nice of her to give me Mister Jones!” Miss Withers remarked. “Bless his heart!”

  The inspector rose to his feet. “Bless whose heart?” He was choking with internal mirth. “When you get strength enough, come here and take a look.” Miss Withers, bewildered, came and saw.

  Mister Jones, quivering with pride and happiness, had just become the mother of four squirming puppies.

  THE END

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Hildegarde Withers Mysteries

  Chapter I

  Surprise! Surprise!

  IT ALL BEGAN WITH Tobermory, who was trying with tooth and nail to tear his way through the traveling case of imitation leather in which he had remained prisoner for an eternity or so. Tobermory was a cat who walked by himself, but all places were not alike to him. From time to time he thrust a wicked gray paw through his tiny window and uttered a soft and eerie wail.

  Tobermory’s unhappiness was increasing in direct ratio to the growing swing of the vessel. The broad-beamed little passenger freighter American Diplomat had long since shown her stern to the verdigris’d fat lady who stands for Liberty in New York Bay, and now was beginning to wallow in the high Atlantic swells which came rolling in past Ambrose Lightship.

  The door of stateroom 50 finally opened, and someone began to bustle among the luggage. Tobermory knew that it was not his mistress, the Honorable Emily, for she smelled less of starch and more of lavender and heather. He yowled in appeal, and heard the latch of his case snap open.

  “Nice pussy!” offered Mrs. Snoaks dubiously. Tobermory came striding from prison, lashing his magnificent tail and looking like the diminutive ghost of a long-haired Siberian tiger. The silver hairs of his ruff and back stood out warningly, and Mrs
. Snoaks called on her Maker to witness that she had never seen so much cat at any one time in her life.

  Tobermory surveyed his surroundings without enthusiasm, and then instantly made up his mind. Only one exit offered itself—a round and inviting window above the divan. Tobermory sprang for it. As his saber claws caught the porthole, a capful of salt spray slapped him full across the whiskers. His amber eyes widened as he saw that there was nothing beneath him but ocean—an infinity of restless, alien ocean. Tobermory changed his mind.

  He was already halfway out of the porthole, and it was rather late to change his course. Only at the loss of his dignity and by dint of much scrambling did Tobermory save all nine of his precious lives. Otherwise this tale might have had a very different ending, or perhaps none at all.

  Ruffled but unabashed, the big cat lingered long enough to regain his self-respect by spitting silently and nastily at the whole Atlantic Ocean, and then cast his long silver-gray body downwards in an effortless leap to the pillow of the opposite berth. There he at once began to lick the dust of Manhattan from his padded paws, staring balefully at Mrs. Snoaks the while.

  That personage hastily completed her unpacking of the Honorable Emily Pendavid’s clothes, uneasy in the unwavering stare of those implacable amber eyes. She hung the last tweed suit on its hanger, tucked the last suit of woollen underwear in a drawer, and went out shaking her head.

  Halfway down the passage she met the immaculate blue-clad figure of Peter Noel, the handsome bar steward. He seemed to have more uniforms than the Old Man himself, did this gentleman of parts, though naturally he wore somewhat less of gold braid than Captain Everett.

  Mrs. Snoaks plucked at the crisp blue sleeve. “Mark my words!” she began. “Do you happen to know what day this is?”

  “Thirteenth of September,” Noel told her. “So what?”

  “Exactly! And a Friday. That gray hairy ghost of a cat in Number 50, he knows. Tried to jump ashore, first off I let him out. And when cats leave a sinking ship—”