Puzzle of the Pepper Tree

by Stuart Palmer

  “They can lower a boat!” Candida thought aloud. “They can stop the ship and—” She ran forward along the deck, but Miss Withers caught her arm.

  “Wait,” said the school teacher. “Child, hadn’t you better make sure? I heard no splash. She might have slipped past you in the darkness, or hidden here behind a lifeboat until you passed. I can’t believe—did she have any real reason to take her life?”

  Candida Noring shook her head. “No real reason—no. Of course not.”

  “You’ll find her in your stateroom when you go below,” counseled the school teacher. “Go and see, at any rate. I’ll look around up here on the deck.”

  Candida nodded, and color began to return to her tanned face. She called over her shoulder as she went, “I’ll meet you here…”

  Miss Withers made a brisk and thorough survey of the boat deck, from the ladders that led to the bridge past lifeboats, deck houses, shuffleboard courts, to the after rail. She peered into the window of the wireless room, where plump, genial Sparks was admiring his collection of French postcards in a fog of blue tobacco smoke. Sometimes passengers dropped in for a chat with Sparks, but tonight he was alone. She tried the lid of the blanket locker, and found it repaired and securely padlocked.

  Finally Miss Withers returned to the rail, where she had seen Rosemary leaning with her blue scarf whipping in the wind. She stared into the night, but the night kept its secret. There was a chillness in the wind which she had not noticed before.

  She waited ten minutes—fifteen, perhaps. Still Candida did not return. Did that mean that she had found her roommate or not? Miss Withers was thoroughly chilled by this time. She went forward along the deck, wondering. Had there been a splash? Had she by any chance dropped off for a moment’s doze and not heard it?

  She looked up toward the bridge and saw the broad shoulders of Captain Everett moving against the sky. This sort of thing was his responsibility, not hers. Why, no matter where she wandered, did the real or fancied troubles of those around her inevitably come to rest upon her shoulders? She felt weak and tired…

  Her tiredness was swept away when she saw Candida Noring belatedly appearing up the forward ladder. The girl came toward her, almost running. But she pushed past and clambered wildly up the bridge ladder. Miss Withers clutched the rail and listened…

  “She’s gone!” Candida cried. “Stop the ship, I tell you. Go back, oh, for God’s sake, go back!” Somebody barked a hoarse order.

  The engine room signal tinkled mysteriously, and Miss Withers felt the slackening of the mighty engines far in the bowels of the ship.

  Eight bells rang out for midnight at that moment. “Good heavens, woman,” barked the voice of the captain, “what are you asking? Your friend is probably in somebody’s cabin. I can’t put my ship about and lose time because you fancy—”

  Candida was clutching at his uniform. “I tell you I know!” she cried. “Just because nobody heard her fall…”

  Captain Everett hesitated, and then gave the order, his wide shoulders limp. “Put her about,” he told the officer. They made hurried calculations. He swung toward Candida. “When did you miss her?”

  “Oh—I don’t know. I’ve been searching everywhere for a long time.” The captain shrugged hopelessly. First Officer Jenkins cut off “Metal Mike” and took the stubborn wheel.

  Then he was startled by the apparition of a long New England face that rose unsteadily level with his ankles. Miss Hildegarde Withers peered onto the bridge. “The girl was last seen a few minutes before eleven, at the rail,” she announced.

  “An hour ago? Good God, we’ve come eighteen knots!” The captain seemed perceptibly to lose weight. He turned to Jenkins. “You can put back on the course, mister.” Bells tinkled again, and the sky began to swing…

  “But you must turn back!” protested Candida. Captain Everett shook his head. “We couldn’t get to that approximate spot on the chart inside of another hour. No swimmer in God’s world could keep afloat in these waters for so long a time.” He drew a deep breath. “Anyway, perhaps you’re wrong. We—I’ll have the ship searched.”

  He swung down the ladder as Miss Withers backed out of his way. Candida followed woodenly. “That girl wouldn’t commit suicide,” Captain Everett said, as if to reassure himself. “Why, she was so gay at the dinner tonight—you were all laughing and having high jinks.”

  Candida said softly that she hadn’t mentioned suicide, but he did not hear her. “Mark my words, the Fraser girl is safe and sound somewhere. According to what I hear, she has a habit of hiding away in strange places…”

  He led the way down to the promenade deck, the two women following close behind. “We’ll just have a bit of a look-see,” said Captain Everett. “No need to alarm the passengers. We’ll find her, never you fear.”

  The captain had a look-see until the sun was well above the horizon, with picked detachments of his officers scouring the ship, but Rosemary Fraser was not to be found. This time she had not crept away for a love tryst in any secret place aboard the American Diplomat.

  “Rosemary Fraser, aged nineteen,” Captain Everett wrote painstakingly in his log, beneath the date “September 21st.” He added the fateful words, “Unaccountably Missing,” and laid aside his pen.

  Miss Hildegarde Withers sat up for a long time with Candida. “I can understand that her shame over a real or fancied sin of that kind could have driven her to suicide,” the school teacher finally agreed. She was holding in her lap the leather-bound diary which had been Rosemary Fraser’s. “But I don’t understand why she should have gone without leaving a suicide note behind—or why she should tear half the pages out of this little book.”

  Candida Noring knew. “Rosemary took with her everything she had written,” she said calmly. “Of course she would. She didn’t want anyone to know what she had put down, to search out the secrets of her silly girlish heart. She didn’t want anybody to know who was the man over whom she had lost what people would call ‘her good name.’”

  Miss Withers turned her keen blue eyes on the girl with the tanned face. “Do you know who he was?”

  But Candida only shook her head. “I could guess,” she said. “But I won’t.”

  At that moment Tom Hammond raised his rumpled head from the pillow and saw his wife Loulu standing, fully dressed, in the doorway.

  “I didn’t hear the breakfast gong,” he said cheerily. He stopped short as he saw the look on Loulu’s face.

  “You may as well know,” she said, in a voice that was not her own, “that Rosemary Fraser went overboard last night.”

  Tom didn’t say anything for a moment. “I thought you might be interested,” his wife finished, and closed the door forcibly on his torrent of questions. Hammond slid out of bed, doused his head in cold water. He dressed quickly, without his bath. This morning, through some beneficent miracle, the Vesuvius of bedclothing on the settee did not erupt. It was a lucky thing for the demon Gerald that he still slept, for his father was in a mood to answer no questions.

  The news came to the Honorable Emily via her steward, who rapped at the door at nine o’clock bearing a fearful and wonderful bird cage which the carpenter, true to form, had contrived out of light wire and a rusty oil tin. The Honorable Emily was so busy moving her new pet into its improvised cage that she did not at first grasp the meaning of what she heard.

  Tobermory stared sulkily from the pillow, his eyes never leaving the bird, which was, by every right, his. The robin waited patiently for his certain doom.

  The Honorable Emily then gave her attention to thoughts of Rosemary Fraser. Unconsciously she repeated her remarks of the previous evening. “Poor girl!” she said aloud. Then, “These Americans!”

  She repeated them again as she went down to breakfast with her nephew Leslie Reverson. “I’m glad you weren’t mixed up with a girl like that,” she added.

  Young Reverson told her that if he hadn’t been mixed up with Rosemary that was Rosemary’s fault and not his o
wn. Neither one of them was able to eat much breakfast.

  Dr. Waite was entirely unable to eat breakfast. He rubbed his bald head constantly and forgot to snigger. “Why,” he kept saying, “she didn’t look like that kind at all!”

  Miss Hildegarde Withers was warming herself with a cup of tea. She turned and stared at him across Candida’s empty chair.

  “What kind?” she inquired suddenly.

  “Why—the kind that would take her own life!”

  “Suppose she didn’t!” said the school teacher abruptly, and left the table. She went out on deck, wandering aimlessly in the bright sunshine. First she went to the place at the boat-deck rail where she had last seen Rosemary leaning far—almost too far—out. She stood there for a little while and then went below again. She came out on the promenade deck, striding up and down along the curtained portholes. “I’m getting what the French call an idée fixe,” she told herself. “Why couldn’t a suicide be just that—an ordinary suicide?” She watched a big wave leap up and then flatten again. “Particularly since Miss Noring says that the girl was terrified lest the Colonel and his wife, who knew her father back in Buffalo, would take it upon themselves to spread the scandal, and that she would thus be called home from her world tour in disgrace?”

  That was motive enough for suicide, certainly—given a sensitive, emotional type such as Rosemary, for the first time in her life away from parental overseeing. Yet—

  Miss Withers came back around the deck, talking to herself, and then she suddenly stopped short. A man in a natty blue uniform was leaning over the rail near the door of the social hall, and from his fingers bits of something white were snatched by the wind, which whipped them back toward the ship’s wake.

  She approached and saw that it was Peter Noel. He bade her a good morning. “Cleaning house?” she asked casually.

  Noel nodded. “That’s one advantage of a ship,” he informed her. “Anything you don’t want you can throw over the side. I just got rid of some playing cards… they should have gone weeks ago. They were like shuffling pancakes.”

  He ventured a polite grin and stepped back inside. Miss Withers still stood at the rail, staring back at the oily, tumbled trails of uneasy water churned up by the powerful screws. Back there to the westward lay America—somewhere nearer the curve of the horizon a proud, slim girl in white had found a chilly grave…

  Miss Withers was very thoughtful. Then her keen eyes noticed that a scrap of paper, smaller than a postage stamp, was staring at her from a looming iron stanchion, held firmly by the wind against the damp metal. She took it idly in her fingers, and then turned and walked forward again.

  Locked in her stateroom, she began to study it, for lack of anything better to do. It was worth studying. Never before in her life had Miss Withers seen a fragment of a playing card made of cream paper with a blue rule lined across it. Never before had she seen a bit of playing card bearing the scribbled letters “—osem—.”

  For half an hour she tried to think of a word in English or any other common language into which that fragment would fit. Finally she put the scrap of paper safely into her handbag and rang for Mrs. Snoaks.

  The stewardess became instantly voluble about the disappearance of Rosemary Fraser, but Miss Withers cut her short. “Please draw me a hot bath at once,” she requested. Then, as the woman turned to go, “Just a moment.” Miss Withers took a crisp five-dollar bill from her bag and crinkled it. “I want you to do something for me.”

  Mrs. Snoaks would have done anything, including arson, for a five-dollar bill. Her eyes widened when she heard her instructions, but there was that in the manner of Hildegarde Withers which prevented questions. “No matter where I am or what I’m doing,” the school teacher insisted, “come and tell me.” Mrs. Snoaks swore, and departed.

  Half an hour later, refreshed in spite of her sleepless night, Miss Hildegarde Withers climbed out of the tub, dried her angular body, and donned a serge suit. Then she went to the top deck and knocked at the door which bore a brass plate—“Captain.”

  The master of every vessel, no matter what his age, is known on board as “the Old Man.” Today Captain Everett looked the part. He sat at his desk, his eyes circled with dark rings, and stared at those fateful words—“Unaccountably Missing.”

  His face did not light up at the sight of Hildegarde Withers in the doorway. “Well?” he rasped. In his hand was a wireless form which Sparks had just handed him, from the line’s moguls in New York.

  MAKE EVERY EFFORT CLEAR MYSTERY OF FRASER GIRL STOP PARENTS DISSATISFIED AND VERY INFLUENTIAL STOP UNFORTUNATE YOU DID NOT TURN BACK AND LOWER BOAT STOP MAKE FULL REPORT HERE AND TO LONDON.

  “I’d like to make a suggestion,” said Miss Withers hurriedly. “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to find out where various members of the passenger list were at the time Rosemary Fraser is supposed to have gone overboard?”

  “What?” Captain Everett had an unpleasant feeling that this meddlesome woman was implying something frightening and unthinkable. “You mean to tell me that you suspect—that you think somebody had a hand in—”

  “I’m not suspecting anything, yet,” Miss Withers told him. “But if we knew where the passengers were, we might learn something from someone’s hearing the splash—or not hearing it.”

  But Captain Everett shook his head. “It will only alarm the passengers,” he decided. “They’ll think they’re being asked for an alibi, and I’ve done enough asking questions for one day. Besides, if any of them had heard anything, they’d have come forward.” He turned back to his desk as a sign that the interview was over.

  “There’s more ways to kill a cat than by choking it with butter,” Miss Withers told him somewhat cryptically, and withdrew in injured pride.

  As she stood thoughtfully on the deck outside the captain’s door she heard the clanging signal of the luncheon gong. That gave her an idea. She hastened below, and such was her promptness that she very nearly, but not quite, got into the dining saloon ahead of Dr. Waite, who had just emerged from his combined office and sick bay at the foot of the stairs.

  Instead of avoiding discussion of the tragedy of the previous night, Miss Withers welcomed it. As the others straggled in, each contributed his own theory. Most of them agreed that it must have been a shame suicide, though Leslie Reverson surprised everyone, including himself, by venturing to suggest that perhaps Rosemary had fallen overboard.

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Miss Withers innocently. She was in a hurry to get this over before Candida Noring, the only absent member of the table group, should join them. “Suppose each of us tries to remember whereabouts on the ship he or she was between quarter of eleven and five after—which must have been the time the girl went over board? Perhaps the estimated hour is wrong—if one or more of us was near the right-hand rail—”

  “Starboard,” said Tom Hammond.

  “The starboard rail, thank you… and if that one did not hear a splash, as I did not, it will prove either that the girl went overboard at another time or from the other side of the ship!”

  The various individuals at the doctor’s table looked at each other. Loulu Hammond broke the silence. “I heard nothing,” she admitted. “Because I had gone to bed and was sound asleep.” She smiled. “And so was the pride and joy of the Hammond household, our darling Gerald.”

  Leslie Reverson tried to account for himself, but was very vague about it. He had wandered into the bar about that time, looking for a nightcap, but had found it unaccountably closed. He had taken a book from the ship’s library in the social hall and read himself to sleep in his stateroom. The Honorable Emily stated that at approximately eleven o’clock she had been down below decks importuning the night pantryman for some crumbs to give her new pet.

  “I myself was drowsing on the boat deck, as you all know,” Miss Withers said. “Miss Noring was looking for her roommate, and came up the forward ladder at approximately eleven. She heard nothing, she says.”

  Only Tom Ham
mond had not spoken. He looked at the doctor. “I was three dollars ahead of the crap game,” he said dryly, “at approximately eleven. Isn’t that so, Doctor?”

  Dr. Waite nodded, “Yes—I guess so—there were five or six of us in my diggings,” he explained. “The purser, the third officer, Mr. Hammond, and the Colonel. Later in the evening Noel, the bar steward, wandered in and lost a couple of dollars.” He turned to Leslie Reverson. “That was after you left, I guess.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Reverson. “I forgot to mention that I went down there.” He reddened a little.

  Dr. Waite was conscious of Miss Withers’ disapproval. “Just a little game for dimes and quarters,” he hastened on. “It passes the time away. The boys were in and out of my place until one o’clock or so, but I couldn’t set any exact hour. Anyway, we were too busy wooing the goddess of luck to hear anything.”

  He had finished his lunch, and Miss Withers rose and walked out of the saloon with him. “I’d like to see your office,” she suggested. He held the door open and ushered her into a spick-and-span suite, surprisingly well equipped with hospital and medical apparatus. Along one wall was a medicine cabinet holding hundreds of neatly labeled bottles.

  Miss Withers tried the handle and found the door unlocked. “You have quite a stock of drugs,” she observed.

  “Have to keep ’em,” said Waite. “Can’t send out to get a prescription filled here, you know.”

  There were two portholes on either side of the cabinet, above the thick soft rug upon which male members of the party had hazarded their dimes and quarters. This was the starboard side of the ship, and very nearly at the point amidships where Miss Withers had last seen Rosemary Fraser two decks above.

  Upon pressure, the doctor admitted that in the course of the dice game several of the players had stepped out from time to time to get sandwiches and coffee at the near-by pantry. He was thus very inexact as to hours, except that he remembered that young Reverson had wandered in and out again shortly after ten. “The kid seemed nervous about something,” recollected Dr. Waite.