Puzzle of the Pepper Tree

by Stuart Palmer

  Miss Withers nodded and pointed to the tightly fastened portholes. “Were these open last night?”

  “Fresh air is bad for gambling,” explained Waite. “They were just as you see them now. We couldn’t have heard a foghorn through that thick glass.”

  “I don’t suppose—” began Miss Withers. Then she stopped as a rap came on the door. It was Mrs. Snoaks, afire with tidings.

  “Miss Noring is taking a bath!” she shouted, as soon as she saw that her search for Miss Withers was over. Then she departed, and after an uneasy moment the school teacher followed her, concealing a certain eagerness.

  Dr. Waite sat down at his desk and prescribed three fingers of brandy for himself. His brow was wrinkled with perplexity. “Why in blazes shouldn’t Miss Noring take a bath?” he asked himself aloud.

  Something was going on that he did not understand. He walked out of his office and saw Loulu Hammond going up the stair. On a wild impulse he tried the news on her. “Miss Noring is taking a bath,” he hazarded.

  “Amazing!” said Loulu Hammond, and passed on out of sight.

  At that moment Miss Hildegarde Withers, the most eminently respectable passenger on board, was on her knees before the keyhole of Candida Noring’s stateroom. She had brought a twisted hairpin with her, but her own key turned with only slight difficulty in the lock. Miss Withers entered, locked the door behind her, and drew the curtain across the portholes. Then she looked at her watch. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and she had fifteen minutes, perhaps, to do what she had come to do. Swiftly and methodically she set to work.

  She went through baggage, both Candida’s and that of the missing girl, with the speed of a customs official and with considerably more neatness. The result—apart from showing her that Rosemary had liked frilly things and that Candida went in for more sensible apparel—was exactly nothing.

  In the rack above Candida’s berth were three books: Swann’s Way, Philip Macdonald’s Escape, and the collected sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay. In the rack above Rosemary’s berth were Colette’s Young Woman of Paris and a copy of True Story. A pressed bunch of violets marked a place halfway through the Proust book.

  Miss Withers thumbed through them all. She lifted mattresses, poked behind pictures, and even scrutinized the carpet very thoroughly. Last of all she went through Candida’s pocketbook, finding only a packet of brown cigarettes, some silver and bills, and a pocket lighter.

  Nowhere within that stateroom, she could have sworn, were the pages torn from Rosemary Fraser’s diary. Feeling considerable prickings of conscience, Miss Withers replaced everything exactly as she had found it, stepped out, and locked the door behind her. She looked at her watch. It was sixteen minutes past two.

  As she came down the corridor, hurrying a little, she saw a door open. Steam floated out, and then Candida Noring, in a brown bathrobe, came toward the school teacher.

  Her dark hair hung stringily on her tanned forehead, and she looked both tired and ill.

  “Heavens, child,” Miss Withers accosted her. “You’d better let the doctor give you a sleeping potion. You look worn to nothing.”

  Candida stopped. “Do I? I haven’t been to bed, for I know I shan’t sleep.”

  “Nonsense!” Miss Withers patted her shoulder. “Don’t feel that you have all the responsibility. Tomorrow night or Monday morning we’ll be in the Thames, and Scotland Yard will soon straighten out the mystery. They’ll know how to—”

  “Scotland Yard?” Candida’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know—”

  “The purser says that they always handle the formalities in case of a death at sea,” Miss Withers told her.

  “Thank heavens for that,” said Candida, with real relief in her voice. “Now all I have to worry about is just what I shall have to cable to Rosemary’s people. I believe I will go down and let the doctor give me something…”

  She hurried on, and Miss Withers sought her own stateroom. She lay down, intending to rest while she let her mind occupy itself with the intriguing puzzle of the missing pages of the diary. In a few moments she slept, so soundly that she heard nothing of the bitter family quarrel in the next stateroom—nothing of Loulu Hammond’s soprano monosyllables and Tom Hammond’s gruff bewildered phrases. Not even the shrill, joyful participation of the fat-faced Gerald could waken the weary school teacher this afternoon. She slept through dinner, wakened late in the evening, when the steward brought her soup and toast, and wandered for a short while through the oddly deserted ship. No one felt like dancing or bridge that night. The bar closed for lack of trade at ten o’clock, and there was no light beneath the doctor’s door.

  On deck she saw Tom Hammond sucking on an empty brown pipe and thinking his own thoughts as he strode endlessly up and down. A light fog drifted wetly against her face, and on the bridge she could dimly make out that Captain Everett had no less than two officers beside him as his hushed and saddened ship rolled smoothly on toward Land’s End and the Lizard.

  It was a hush which somehow lingered through the next day, in spite of vague efforts on the part of some of the older passengers to hold hymn-singing services on the Sabbath morning. The sound of the distant voices came faintly to Miss Withers in her cabin. They finished, as always on shipboard, with “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep.” It was a feeble, belated funeral service for Rosemary Fraser, Miss Withers fancied. Had the girl laid her down in peace to sleep, then?

  No one went to bed on that Sunday evening, for the little American Diplomat was slipping in the fog past clusters of shore lights to port, past the white chalk cliffs of Dover, and then, miraculously, pushing on up a narrowing river that smelled as Miss Withers had always known the Thames would smell. The lights to port and starboard closed in steadily, and then, shortly before midnight, the throb of the engines stopped. The anchor went down with a roar of chain, and through portholes misted with rain Miss Withers could see a mammoth electric sign announcing the virtues of “OXO.”

  “Passengers in the social hall, please!” a steward was shouting. His gong rang endlessly up and down the corridors. Miss Withers opened her porthole and saw that a slim black launch, with one staring eye, was coming down the river from where the glow of the city shone brightest. She tidied her hair and joined the excited, nervous gathering.

  Everyone wanted to know if there was a chance of getting ashore tonight, and everyone was assured several times over that the British Customs close at 6 P.M. “Not until morning,” the purser was saying, in his thin and worried voice.

  “Then what are we here for?” the Honorable Emily demanded. Nobody told her, but through the half-open door that led to the deck Miss Withers heard the muffled beating of a powerful motor. There were voices on the deck, the motor rose to a roar and died away, and then Captain Everett entered the social hall. He seemed to have regained the weight he had lost the night that Rosemary Fraser disappeared. Behind him was Jenkins, the first officer, and last of all came a tall, bulky man wearing a bowler hat and a dingy yellow trench-coat.

  In spite of his bland, innocent face, in spite of his slick blond hair and the brown spats he affected, Miss Hildegarde Withers was instantly aware of the fact that she was staring at an operative of the C.I.D. She knew it by the pale hazel eyes that looked once—and saw everything. She knew it by the neatly blacked shoes, bump-toed as are the shoes of any man who has ever walked a beat, in any city of the world.

  The three men disappeared through the curtain of the smoking room—the bar had been locked since the ship entered British waters—and there was a long silence. “I’m a British subject,” the Honorable Emily once began, and failed to finish her protest. The passengers were restless, but nobody felt like talking. Even the terrible Gerald was silent, staring intently at his unsmiling parents. Andy Todd pretended to read, and smoked cigarettes chain fashion.

  At last the curtains opened, and Captain Everett showed his face. He beckoned to Peter Noel, who stood near by in his best uniform, and whispered something to him.r />
  Noel nodded. “Miss Hildegarde Withers,” he called. He held open the curtain, and Miss Withers entered to see the two ship’s officers on the settee, and the Yard man facing her across a bridge table. She was not asked to sit down.

  “This is Chief Inspector Cannon of New Scotland Yard,” said Captain Everett gently. “He’d like to ask you a few questions…”

  Miss Withers started to say something, but the Yard man leaned forward. “You were the last person to see Rosemary Fraser?” he asked. He began writing in his notebook before she had worded her answer. Whatever ideas the good lady might have held regarding the telling of her story in her own way were instantly dispelled. She answered question after question, and in less than five minutes had told everything that she knew and nothing that she suspected about the passing of Rosemary Fraser. “Thank you,” said Cannon, without obvious interest. She went back into the social hall.

  “Miss Candida Noring,” announced Peter Noel, after another prompting from Captain Everett.

  Candida rose, ground out her cigarette, and walked to the curtains like Joan of Arc to the pyre. Her hands were buried in the deep pockets of a camel’s-hair coat, and her knees did not seem as steady as usual. When Noel held the curtain aside for her, she swayed suddenly against him, and he smiled reassuringly. The smile was wiped from his face as if with a sponge.

  Miss Withers saw him look quickly toward the three exits of the room. In each of them a ship’s officer was standing. Noel frowned thoughtfully as he took up his former position a short distance from the curtains of the smoking room. She wondered if the fixed terror of Candida’s face had spoiled his innocent pleasure in holding the office of master of ceremonies. His hand went to his coat pocket and was suddenly withdrawn. He straightened his necktie and waited…

  They all waited, waited interminably. Loulu Hammond looked at her husband, and when she caught his eyes looked suddenly away. The minutes dragged on forever—and then the curtains parted and Candida came forth. Every eye was upon her, searching for signs of hysteria, but Candida Noring was smiling. In her fingers a dark cigarette glowed.

  Another pause ensued, and then Captain Everett showed himself again. He beckoned to Peter Noel, but this time he did not speak a name. And suddenly, Noel knew!

  He drew a long, deep breath and straightened his shoulders. Then he went through the curtain. The thick draperies closed behind him, while little surprised murmurs rose among the passengers. Miss Withers strolled part way across the room, but she could hear nothing.

  Inside the smoking room Chief Inspector Cannon was standing quietly, his notebook put away. The captain and the first officer were also standing.

  “Well?” said Noel.

  The Yard man spoke in a rapid singsong. “Peter Noel, in the light of information which has been laid before me, it is my duty to arrest you for the murder of Rosemary Fraser, and it is my further duty to warn you that if found guilty of this charge you may be sentenced to death.”

  Noel’s handsome face was a mask of blank surprise. His mouth opened foolishly and closed again. But his brain was working swiftly.

  “Do you wish to make a statement? It is my duty to warn you that you do not need to make a statement, and that if you do it may be used against you.”

  Peter Noel laughed suddenly, the fear soaking out of his heart. His hand was in the pocket of his blue uniform jacket, and as his laughter changed to a fit of coughing, he covered his mouth.

  “None o’ that!” cried Cannon, stumbling against the table. His methodical mind framed an entry for his notebook. “Prisoner upon arrest attempted to dispose of evidence by swallowing.”

  Noel was smiling. He held out his hands for nonexistent handcuffs.

  “I have nothing to say except that this is a lot of bloody nonsense,” he told them quickly. “Take me on shore if you’ve got to, but somebody has filled you full of poppycock. If Rosemary Fraser was murdered, this is the first I knew of it…”

  Chief Inspector Cannon had a sudden misgiving. This confident, calm voice was not that of a guilty man, not even that of a worried man. “I shall have a jolly good chance of making a charge of false arrest,” went on Noel.

  “Come along, then,” he was told. The Law laid its hands upon him, and he was very briskly searched. Captain Everett fidgeted, and Jenkins protested in a loud whisper: “I tell you he was shooting dice with the doctor!”

  Noel was coughing again, more realistically this time. He held back against the large brown hands of the detective. “Wait a minute,” cried Peter Noel. “Wait a minute…”

  “None of tha’ tricks, now!” boomed Cannon. He realized that he was holding the prisoner’s entire weight. In his excitement the Yard man reverted to his native Lancashire. “None of tha’ tricks, lad!”

  But this trick of Peter Noel’s was beyond the power of Scotland Yard. He clutched at the curtain, and staggered forward.

  Women screamed in the room outside as a dead man, with his face twisted in an expression of complete and horrified surprise, plunged headlong among them.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1933, 1971

  New material copyright © 2008 by The Rue Morgue Press

  Cover design by Mimi Bark

  978-1-4804-1883-7

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