Sir Ronald was a pleasant man, on his way home to grow roses. With, he thought, quite a few years ahead to grow them in. (Or cabbages, of course.) But he was a man, and his wife a woman, I’d met only casually; would never have met again after we left the ship at Málaga. I have no personal concern; no official concern. Sir Ronald’s death is a murder—if it is a murder—I can let somebody get away with. There’s no doubt that Hunt was murdered, but—
I didn’t exchange half a dozen words with Detective Inspector Albert Hunt. Grimes was nothing to me—a pleasant man met on shipboard. Hunt was even less. Only—all right, Hunt was a cop. A lot of cops get killed. Getting killed is a risk a cop contracts for. He was a cop somebody had built a stone wall around, and nobody is going to thank me for pulling at the stones.
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” That was Frost. Susan likes to read us Frost. There’s something in me that doesn’t love a wall. Susan said something like that. She wants her holiday. She doesn’t want me hacking away at a wall, with singularly bare hands to do the hacking. But she said something about its being the way I am and something about liking the way I am. All the same—
He realized he was standing near the door with his eyes closed. He opened them. The wireless man was looking at him. The wireless man said, “Will there be anything else, signor?”
“I guess—” Heimrich said, and stopped himself before not.
“Do your records show any calls—ship-to-shore calls—charged to Albert Hunt? Cabin One-oh-eight, I think it is.”
The wireless man could look up the records. Heimrich waited while he looked up the records. There were no ship-to-shore calls charged against Cabin 108. Was there anything more?
Heimrich said there wasn’t anything more. He went down a flight of stairs and took an elevator “below” to the “upper” deck. He might as well have a look at the cabin Hunt had died in. Although it had, probably, been cleaned up. The sheets a man had writhed in while trying to stay alive would have been removed. The bed would be newly and neatly made.
On the upper deck. Heimrich walked aft on the starboard side of Italia. He walked past Cabin 82 and was tempted to go into it. Susan might have returned from the hairdresser; she might be in the cabin. He went on aft through the corridor and came to Cabin 108. He tried the door and found it locked. But then Guido was behind him and said, “Signor Inspector?”
“I want to get into Hunt’s cabin,” Heimrich said. “Have a look at it. You’ve been told to help me?”
Guido said, “But certainly, Signor Inspector,” and unlocked the door of Cabin 108. Heimrich went into the cabin, and Guido stood outside it, looking in.
It was a small cabin, inboard of the ship. There was one bed and one place to hang clothes, and the bathroom which opened off had a glass-enclosed shower and no tub. But it was enough cabin for a man traveling alone.
It had not been made up. Sheets trailed from the bed, and the pillows were on the deck beside the bed. “We were told to wait,” Guido said. Heimrich said, “Good,” his voice abstracted. The tangled bed in which a man had died wasn’t going to tell him anything. A business suit—a neutral gray business suit—hung on a hanger in the open closet space and a tweed jacket, also gray, and slacks hung beside it. Heimrich went through pockets. He found part of a pack of Gold Flakes and a folder of matches.
“His wallet?” Heimrich said over his shoulder. “His papers. Keys. Things like that?”
“The commissario, signor. The purser’s office. In the safe.”
There was one moderate-size suitcase in the luggage racks, constructed to hold many cases.
Heimrich took the suitcase off the rack and opened it. It was empty. No, there was a paper clip in a corner. Heimrich closed the case and put it back on the rack. He said, over his shoulder, “All the luggage he had, Guido?”
“I think there was one other,” Guido said. “A small, flat case. Such as he might have carried papers in, signor. I cannot be sure, but that is what I think.”
“The purser’s office?”
“Probably, signor.”
“When you’d come in in the mornings,” Heimrich said, “to bring his breakfast—how would the place look, Guido?”
“Pardon, signor?”
“Things strewn around?”
“No. His dinner things hung up, signor. His shirt hung up. His underthings folded and on the chair. On the dressing table, his billfold. Keys. Cigarettes and matches, signor.”
There were drawers for shirts and handkerchiefs and socks and shorts. Heimrich opened them. Hunt had traveled light. He had traveled neatly. He had a dinner shirt and two grayish blue dress shirts and a gray sports shirt to go with sports jacket and slacks. He had socks and ten handkerchiefs and half a dozen pairs of shorts. The shirts and the shorts had labels of a London haberdasher. They had not, Heimrich thought, cost Albert Hunt very much.
There was a dark gray necktie, to go with the business suit. And a black tie, almost certainly the one that had been found on the deck, was in the drawer beside the gray one.
“He was dressed when you found him. I mean, in a dinner jacket?”
“Yes, signor.”
“Still on the body when it was taken to the hospital?”
“Yes, signor.”
There was nothing in the cabin. It was as unassuming, as negative, as Hunt himself had been.
Heimrich went down to the foyer deck and found the office of the purser. A man in uniform, with thinning black hair, said, “Certainly, Inspector. We have been instructed.” He opened a safe and put a wallet on a table and a ring with two keys on it. He said, “The properties of Inspector Hunt, signor.”
There was a warrant card in the billfold and a few other cards of identification. There were $215 in American banknotes and a sheaf of American Express checks. The checks added up to $500. It was a new traveler’s-check folder. No checks had been used out of it. Tucked in a compartment of the wallet were two 500-lira notes. In a change compartment there were English coins and some American and several pesetas. Which did not necessarily mean that Hunt had planned to go ashore at Lisbon.
Nothing meant anything, except that Detective Inspector Albert Hunt had been Detective Inspector Albert Hunt and could have proved it.
“There was a case,” Heimrich said. “An attaché case, apparently. May I see that?”
He got spread hands and shrugged shoulders and a shaken head. He got, “No such case was given us, signor. One of my assistants collected Signor Hunt’s effects for safekeeping. Alonzo?”
Alonzo was a younger officer, and he said, “Signor?”
There had been no such flat case in Signor Hunt’s cabin. A large suitcase, which was empty. Clothing. Nothing which needed to be put in the safe.
“The steward remembers seeing such a case,” Heimrich said. “Hunt spoke of working on a report. He probably carried papers in an attaché case.”
“It was not there when I brought Signor Hunt’s possessions from his cabin,” Alonzo said. “There was no such case, Inspector. The steward could be mistaken, no?”
“I doubt if he was,” Heimrich said, and went out of the purser’s office and down a flight of stairs to A deck and the hospital. The doctor, who had pronounced Hunt dead and guessed at a time of his death, was busy. He was holding a stethoscope against the chest of an eight-year-old boy, who was very much alive and proving it by wriggling. A woman in her thirties and, for Heimrich’s taste, somewhat overrounded, said, “How is he, Doctor?”
“He’s got no fever,” the doctor said. “Chest sounds fine. A slight cold, perhaps, signora. A few hours in bed, signora. Perhaps a gentle laxative.”
The eight-year-old was taken out. The doctor said, “Mothers.” He looked up at Heimrich. He said, “You look fit enough, signor.”
“Heimrich. About the man who was strangled, Doctor.”
“Inspector,” the doctor said. “The comandante advised me. You wish to see the body?”
Heimrich did not, particularly.
He had seen many bodies. He said, “Just tell me, Doctor.”
“Manual strangulation,” the doctor said. “He died between eleven and probably, about two in the morning. He died quickly, Inspector. The carotid artery plexus was crushed.”
“Someone with strong hands?”
The doctor shrugged.
“Probably,” he said. “But someone who knew where to press—who can say? The carotid artery area is fragile, Inspector. Special strength would not have been needed.”
“A woman might have been strong enough?”
The doctor shrugged again. “Many women are of considerable strength, signor. If the inspector wishes to view the body?”
Heimrich said, again, that he did not want to look at the body of the late Detective Inspector Hunt. He said, “That will keep.” Then he added, “I suppose it will, Doctor?”
“Certainly,” the doctor said. “We have most adequate facilities, Inspector. Most ample. For any emergency.”
The doctor was, Heimrich thought, going back to the upper deck by elevator, a shade complacent about it. He somehow managed to imply that, if it became necessary, the bodies of all the Italia’s passengers could be efficiently refrigerated.
9
The elevator was small, and Heimrich is not. But there was enough room in the elevator for one man, however large; there was no reason for Merton Heimrich to feel trapped in it. Nevertheless, he felt trapped as the elevator, with dignity and at leisure, rose from A deck to the upper deck. But it was not the elevator which trapped him. It was the ship. More precisely, it was the circumstances under which, with less than his usual confidence, he was working. The elevator stopped and opened its door, and Heimrich went out onto the ponte superiore.
He was cut off from the conditions, the established conditions, which made criminal investigation a reasonable occupation and gave it a chance of success. It had not occurred to anybody to photograph the body of Detective Inspector Hunt. That was a small thing; quite probably the clearest of photographs would have helped little. He had no staff; there were no detectives and no troopers to visit people and ask them questions. There was no Lieutenant Charles Forniss to do the things Forniss did so well. There was only a telephone, which tended to sound somewhat muzzy, and at the distant other ends, people who set up stone walls. And he could not shut his eyes and listen to their voices as they talked nor open his eyes and watch their faces.
Continental Forwarding, Limited, was more than that, and the girl who had answered the telephone there had, of course, been lying. Robert Mason—Sir Robert Mason—in Washington knew what it was, but Sir Robert wasn’t saying. Hunt had been working on something. Chief Inspector Hammond wasn’t saying what.
The telephone is abrupt. A telephone receiver can be put down firmly in its cradle. The telephone inhibits patient inquiry; the slow turning over of facts and statements about facts and the looking at them from the other side—with eyes open to watch faces and closed to concentrate on the inflections of voices.
I’m alone on this, Heimrich thought. These people are the shadows of people, and I cannot dig into their backgrounds and find the substances of the people. These are shipboard acquaintances, without pasts or characters I can guess at with the knowledge to make guessing possible. It is work in a vacuum. A man named Sir Ronald Grimes has disappeared. Possibly he was pushed over the side. Possibly he climbed over the rail and let himself drop into the Atlantic Ocean. A man named Albert Hunt has been strangled, and an attaché case he had has been stolen. If Guido is right. I wonder if Grimes also had an attaché case, and whether it is in his cabin?
He had been walking aft through the port passageway of the upper deck. He was thinking about murder, and also he was thinking about Susan. This was spoiling her holiday, and she needed her holiday. He was not worried about her now—not worried as he had been worried. Still—
The hairdressing salon opened off the port passageway. She had been going to get her hair done, if she could get an appointment. He looked into the large window of the hairdresser’s place. A woman was sitting in a barber’s chair, and a handsome, dark young man in a green smock buttoned up at the neck was brushing her hair. Her hair was a rather startling shade of yellow. A woman was sitting under a dryer, which partly obscured her face. But it was not Susan’s face. Probably Susan was in her deck chair on the promenade deck, and probably she was wondering what had become of him, as so often she had to wonder. This was a holiday; this was a time when they were to have been together. Damn it to hell. Damn the whole of it to hell, including Comandante Antonio di Scarlotti.
Heimrich crossed through the ship and went down the starboard passageway to Cabin 82. He opened the door, and Susan said, “Merton?” and he went on into the cabin.
She was standing in front of the tall mirror, and she was, thoughtfully, combing her hair. Her hair shone under the overhead light, and there seemed to be a ripple in it. It also seemed shorter than it had at lunch. But it is never long.
“I don’t know that I like it,” she said, and touched the ripple in her hair. “But he wanted to and I let him. But I like the cut, don’t you?”
Heimrich said it was a fine cut. He said he liked the curl, if the ripple was a curl. She turned from the mirror and he looked at her carefully. She looked all right. She looked more than all right. The sparkle was back. He sat down on his bed, and she looked at him, and he answered the question she asked only with just raised eyebrows.
“No,” Merton Heimrich said, “I’m not getting anywhere. “I’ve made a few telephone calls. There’s something very hush-hush about it.”
“Hush-hush?”
“Restricted information,” he said. “From me, anyway. Top secret, for all I know.”
“Spies,” Susan said. “Atomic secrets.”
“I doubt if there are atomic secrets any more,” Heimrich said. “Oh, there are secrets, of course. And somebody apparently did make off with an attaché case of Hunt’s.”
She raised inquiring eyebrows.
“All I know,” Merton Heimrich said. “Or am likely to, probably. The report he was working on, perhaps. If he was working on a report. And perhaps extra socks and last Monday’s crossword from the New York Times.”
Susan said, “Mmmm.” Then she said, “Mrs. Powers isn’t hush-hush. She thinks Sir Ronald caused her husband’s death. She’s—she’s bitter about it, Merton. She’s an odd woman. She spills things out.”
He waited.
“She was at the hairdresser’s when I was,” Susan said. “We had to wait. One of the operators was at lunch. The other one was setting somebody’s hair. So we said good afternoon, and she began to talk about her husband.”
“The Raymond Powers,” Heimrich said. “The great man who worked himself to death for his country. And, I’d have guessed, for his corporation. Blames Grimes for his death? He died of a heart attack. Fell dead in Washington near—” He paused. “Near the British Embassy,” he said. “Where he may have been seeing Grimes. But you can’t cause a man to have a heart attack. Oh, I suppose you can. Shock him into it. But only if he’s ready to have one anyway. Or, does she think it wasn’t a heart attack?”
“She’s not clear,” Susan said, and went across the cabin and sat on her own bed, so that they faced each other across the little room. “She’s—oh, she’s not entirely coherent about it. And I think she may have had several drinks before lunch and they hadn’t worn off. But perhaps she’s always like that. It’s hard to tell about people you’ve only just met. It was something about Sir Ronald’s having blocked Powers on something very important. A business thing, she says. Something vital to the country. Either she doesn’t know what, or she’s not saying what. I think she doesn’t know. She said, ‘Ronald Grimes tormented Ray. And he knew Ray hadn’t been well.’ And then she said, ‘It’s as if he’d murdered Ray.’ She said that a good many times, actually. She talked very fast, but her voice was always low. Part of the time I could hardly hear her. And after a while I didn’t much want to
. Merton, I’m a stranger to her. And to—to go on and on.”
“Probably you’re right about the extra drinks,” Heimrich said. “At the captain’s party—what you called the V.I.P. party—she switched from sherry to vodka martinis. Extra dry vodka martinis. And she needled Sir Ronald. She was a little high, actually. And took an elevator down instead of walking down.”
“I didn’t pick it up about the martinis,” Susan said. “Going down by elevator—yes. Not that I didn’t think of that myself. But—well, Comandante di Scarlotti apparently expected us to walk down. You think today—when she was talking to me—she was high?”
She said the last with doubt in her voice. Heimrich waited.
“She seemed,” Susan said, “oh—almost hysterical. In a low-keyed sort of way. There was something in her voice. Strange in her voice. And she kept on talking about her husband and Sir Ronald—on and on. To someone she’d only met.”
“Some people are like that,” Heimrich said. “Find it easier to talk to strangers. Rattle on with strangers. This business about Grimes tormenting Powers? Bringing on his heart attack? That was all she rattled on about?”
It was mostly that, Susan told him. That over and over. But—
“She said, ‘Calling somebody a lady doesn’t have to make her a lady. You know what I mean?’ I said I didn’t know what she meant. I said if she was talking about Lady Grimes, I thought Lady Grimes was charming. Probably I was a little abrupt about it. I was—well, I suppose I was trying to shut her off. Because, by then, I’d pretty much had it.”
“Did it shut her off?”
“No. She said, ‘Oh, you do, do you?’ and her voice was—well, the way it got to be at the party. Strident. Except she still didn’t speak loudly, as she did part of the time at the party. I said, yes, I thought Ellen Grimes was very charming. And she said—I don’t remember exactly what she said; I was just wanting it to end—but something like, ‘You’re not the only one who thinks that. There’s that major of hers.’ Something like that. And with a certain tone in her voice. An—implication.”
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