20-Inspector's Holiday

by Lockridge, Richard

  Heimrich walked all the way forward and around the veranda belvedere to the port side and into the ship. The sounds of violin and guitar and tenor voice came out of the lounge. Heimrich did not go into it. As he passed the writing room, he looked into it. It was empty. He had not really supposed that Susan had gone to it to write letters or postcards.

  He went into the library with books behind glass doors on shelves. After a little time he found an atlas. Zagreb was in Yugoslavia. It appeared to be about a hundred miles from Trieste. It appeared to be about sixty miles from the Hungarian border. As a crow might fly. But all the many crows Heimrich had seen flew zigzag.

  Starting out of the little library into the passageway, Heimrich had to step back to let a couple, bound for the lounge, pass him. They were people he did not remember having seen before. They looked at him, however, very intently, and the woman seemed to draw back, and she said, “Oh!” in a startled voice. But they went on into the lounge, and Heimrich went the other way and into an elevator and down to the upper deck.

  He could use the telephone there and find out whether the boy who was growing his first mustache was going to live to go on with it. If they knew yet. He could use the telephone to find out to what deck, and to which side of the ship, the boy had been assigned the night before. Detective Inspector Hunt’s cabin had been on the starboard side, as was the Heimrichs’. Had he seen something, or seen someone? You cannot ask questions of an unconscious man.

  Guido was in the passageway near the door to Cabin 82. He said, “Good—” and stopped abruptly. He said, “Signor Inspector!” with an emphasis which surprised Heimrich, who said, “Evening, Guido,” and went on into the cabin.

  Susan was in her bed, reading. She turned toward him, and a smile started to form on her lips. But it died as it started, and she swung out of bed and stood, all in one swift motion, and came toward him and said, “Darling! Merton! You’re hurt. Merton. You’re bleeding!”

  He remembered, then. He looked down at himself, at his bloodied shirt. No wonder the couple on the boat deck had looked at him intently or that the woman had gasped an “Oh!” No wonder Guido had broken his “Good evening, signor” into bits.

  “No, dear,” Heimrich said to his wife. “Blood, yes. But not my blood, Susan. The blood of a man—a kid really—somebody tried to kill.”

  She sat down on her bed, and it was almost as if she had fallen onto it. Her breasts rose as she sucked air into her lungs. She let the air out as a sigh.

  “Hit on the head,” Heimrich said. “A steward. Who was on the boat deck near Lady Grimes’s cabin. I found him. Carried him inside. He’s in the hospital now.”

  “Dead? Someone else dead?”

  “I don’t know,” Heimrich said. “Alive when they started down to the hospital with him. They were quick in coming.”

  He looked at his jacket. There was not much blood on it, or blood did not show so clearly on black fabric. He took the jacket off and the shirt, which was drenched with blood. “Hit on the head,” Heimrich said and dropped the shirt on the desk. “Scalp wounds bleed like the devil.”

  Blood from the bleeding head had gone through the shirt onto Heimrich’s chest.

  “You’d better shower,” Susan said. “And—wait a minute. I’ll put the shirt in cold water.” She started to stand up and then for a moment sank back and looked up at him. “You’re all right?” she said. “You’re really all right?”

  Her voice shook a little.

  “I’m fine,” Heimrich said. “Getting nowhere, but getting there in one piece.”

  “Stay that way,” Susan said and came off the bed and carried the shirt into the bathroom. She left the door open, and he could hear water running and then a sloshing sound. Susan came out after a few minutes. She said, “I don’t know. They say cold water, but I don’t know. Now you.”

  Merton Heimrich said, “Yes, lady,” and went into the bathroom. There was some blood on his shorts, too. He put them into the wash basin with the shirt. The water in which the shirt was soaking was faintly red. He let the water out and ran fresh cold water and put shirt and shorts back in to soak. He doubted whether anything much was going to come of it.

  He showered. Blood came off him all right. He was toweling when Susan came to the bathroom door and opened it.

  “The telephone,” Susan said. “Always in the middle of a shower, isn’t it?”

  He put a towel over his wide shoulders and, in the cabin, put it down on the dressing table bench to sit on. He still wasn’t very dry. He said, “Heimrich,” into the telephone.

  “Ellen Grimes. I heard people moving in—in Ronald’s cabin. And talking. I—I was half asleep. I—for a moment I thought—thought he’d come back. But I opened the door and—there wasn’t anybody in the cabin. So he hasn’t—”

  “No, Lady Grimes. I wish it were another way. A man got hurt. We put him in there because it was the nearest place. He’s in the hospital now.”

  “A man?”

  Briefly he told her about the steward named Louis. She said, “Oh. How dreadful. This—this awful ship.”

  There wasn’t anything to say to that. Heimrich made a sound to answer that.

  “It wasn’t about that I called you, Inspector,” Ellen Grimes said. “Not really about that. I knew it wasn’t that Ronald had come back. I—I was half asleep. I said that, didn’t I? I—I dreamed he was moving in his cabin. That he would come in and we would have breakfast and—I’m not thinking straight, Inspector. My mind’s all numbed. I didn’t call you about that.”

  “I’m sorry it wasn’t the way you dreamed, Lady Grimes,” Heimrich said. “What did you call me about?”

  “That match folder,” Ellen Grimes said. “The one you showed me?”

  “Yes?”

  “I said I couldn’t be sure whether the writing on it was Ronald’s. But the more I think about it, the more sure I am it wasn’t his. You found the match folder in his cabin?”

  “Yes. In a pocket of his jacket. The little pocket in the right-hand side.”

  “That silly pocket,” she said. “He never knew what was supposed to go in it. But—it doesn’t make sense, Inspector.”

  “The pocket?”

  “No. Matches being in it. Because Ronald didn’t smoke, Inspector. Hadn’t for a year. More than a year, actually. Arnold—Arnold Oliver, our doctor in Washington, told him the X-ray suggested emphysema, and that he’d better cut down on cigarettes. So Ronald quit them altogether. I—that’s the way he does things, Inspector. The way—” There was a rather long pause. “The way he used to do things,” Ellen Grimes said, and her voice was very steady. But it was also defeated. “Good night, Inspector.” She hung up.

  “Sir Ronald had a packet of matches in a jacket pocket,” Heimrich said. “But he had given up smoking a year ago.”

  “Darling,” Susan said, “she told us that at the captain’s party. When she was saying how thin he was. Something about people being supposed to gain weight when they stopped smoking. Don’t you remember?”

  “No. Probably I didn’t hear.”

  “Some men carry matches to light other people’s cigarettes,” Susan said. “At least, I knew one man who did. I’m almost sure I remember a man who did. It’s almost midnight, isn’t it? Since you’re not hurt, I’m sleepy again.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I am too, dear. A couple of calls first.”

  The steward named Louis—Louis Cataldi, he turned out to be—was still unconscious. Preliminary examination did not indicate a fracture. The concussion was severe. It might be hours before he regained consciousness. It might be days. And he might not remember, when he did, what had happened immediately before he lost consciousness.

  Heimrich said, “Yes, Doctor. I know it happens that way.”

  He sighed because it did happen that way, which could be a way to a dead end.

  He made another call.

  Louis had been assigned to the upper deck, going on duty at eleven P.M. and staying on until se
ven. He had worked the starboard side of the ship. He had not, when he went off duty this morning, reported anything unusual having happened. Not to the chief steward, at any rate. What he might have said to other stewards nobody could guess.

  “Ask Comandante Ferrancci’s security people to ask around,” Heimrich said. “In the morning.”

  He got a “Si, Inspector,” from whoever had answered the purser’s telephone.

  The Heimrichs went to bed.

  12

  Sleep is supposed to refresh the mind. It is also supposed to knit up the raveled sleeve of care. At nine or thereabouts of Friday morning, Merton Heimrich could not find that it had done either of those things. Sleep had only increased the murk and enhanced his impatience with the whole muddled business. Angela and Guido brought breakfast, on trays held high. Guido looked at Heimrich with concern on his grave face. He said, “You are well, signor?”

  “Quite well,” Heimrich said. “Last night I had, er, merely spilled a drink on my shirt.”

  Some explanation was due. Guido said, “Sì, signor,” with no conviction whatever in his voice.

  “Not a very likely story,” Susan said, across the cabin after the steward and stewardess had left.

  “I was drinking a Bloody Mary,” Heimrich told her. “The ship lurched.”

  They finished coffee. Heimrich lighted a cigarette. Lighting a cigarette, although he used a lighter, reminded him of a match folder. He got out of bed and got the match folder out of the pocket of his dinner jacket and looked at it again. The penciled lines still said, “A. Schmidt Gesel. Zrinjevac 48 Zag.” Put through another telephone call and listen, again, to static? This time, probably, in German, with which Heimrich is only mildly cognizant. Or Yugoslavian, which would be worse. Heimrich got back into bed and continued thinking that it was a hell of a holiday. Which reminded him.

  “Are you all right?” he asked Susan. “It’s being a hell of a trip for you.”

  “I’m fine,” Susan said. “Really fine.”

  He got out of bed and crossed the room and looked down at her. She looked fine. She had already been up and put lipstick on and combed her short hair, still with the wave in it. She was meticulous about mornings. Heimrich ran fingers over his own face and decided he certainly needed to and went into the bathroom and shaved the face which needed it. He put on clothes—slacks and sport shirt and a sports jacket. He looked down at Susan and sighed.

  “I know,” she said. “Murder calls. No lazing on the deck.”

  “Tomorrow,” Heimrich said. “Tomorrow and Sunday.”

  But he did not speak with any conviction.

  “And Monday Spain,” Susan said. “And this hotel in Nerja they told you about. And a balcony facing the Mediterranean. And lazing.”

  “The rain in Spain falls mainly,” Heimrich said, and picked up the telephone and got at it.

  Louis Cataldi was still unconscious. There was definitely no fracture. His pulse was almost normal; he was breathing satisfactorily. “A matter of time only, signor. We are quite certain of that.” No, they could not predict how much time. Yes, they would notify the signor inspector when Louis Cataldi regained consciousness.

  Another telephone call. Two men from the security force were questioning stewards to whom Louis might later have reported any strange occurrence on Wednesday night. The ones he would have been most likely to talk to would have been night stewards like himself. The signor inspector would understand that men assigned as night caretakers had breakfast and went to sleep after their tours were over. They were being waked up. The four who had been wakened could not remember that Louis had said anything. Louis had not, it appeared, been a boy who talked much. Of course, the signor inspector would understand, this was his first voyage in the Italia. He had not made many friends.

  Heimrich put the telephone back in its cradle and looked at it with reproach. Telephones are poor substitutes for face-to-face conversation. And, of course, interrogation.

  Louis, on duty between eleven o’clock Wednesday night and seven Thursday morning, would have gone back to the crew’s quarters and had something to eat and gone to bed and to sleep. He would have been sleeping when Detective Inspector Albert Hunt’s body had been found. He would not have heard of it until he had finished sleeping, probably in the late afternoon.

  I should have looked him up then, Heimrich thought. Asked him then if he had seen anything out of the way. Or heard anything. Or the ship’s security people should have. I can’t be everywhere at once or even, apparently, think of everything at once. At home, routine would have taken care of that. Forniss would have taken care of that. At home, things move in order. Damn.

  He said the last word aloud.

  “Yes, darling,” Susan said. “But it will all come clear.”

  He sighed an answer.

  “After a while,” Susan said, “I’ll dress and go up on deck and—and read a book, perhaps. Is the sun shining?”

  Heimrich crossed the room and looked out a porthole. The sun was shining. He told her the sun was shining.

  “You’ll find me on the deck then,” Susan said. “Reading a book. Drinking consommé. Come and find me when you can.

  He leaned down and kissed her. He said, “Good morning, Susan.” She said, “Good morning, darling.”

  She did not ask him where he would be, which was as well, since he had no notion. Probably on a telephone, talking fruitlessly ship to shore. Talking to people who would not answer. Or, come to that, call him back. A man named Parsons. Executive director of something called Continental Forwarding, Limited. A man who should have got a message asking him to call Inspector M. L. Heimrich aboard Italia. And who apparently hadn’t, or had ignored it. Because if it was getting on toward ten aboard Italia it would be considerably later than that in London.

  “Take care of yourself,” Merton Heimrich told his wife. “I’m sorry things are this way.”

  “Spain,” Susan said. “A balcony from which we can see the ocean. Sun flooding down on us.”

  Heimrich said, “Mmmm,” with doubt in the sound, and went out of the cabin and, by elevator, up to the wireless room.

  There was a different operator on duty. He also had been instructed. Heimrich gave him the London number he had called before, and the operator said, “Sì, signor. Charged to the ship. I shall ring in Booth One when we are through.”

  Heimrich opened the door of Booth One and sat down beside it and waited for the bell to ring. It was longer this time. It was two cigarettes longer. Sir Ronald probably had been wise to give up cigarettes. Although in the end it had done him no good to give up cigarettes. If he had enjoyed smoking, he might as well have kept on with it.

  The bell rang in the booth.

  He got the number repeated in crisp tone. He said, “Continental Forwarding?” and got a “Certainly, sir. Can I help you?”

  “Mr. Parsons, please.”

  “Who shall I say is calling?”

  The old routine; the weary routine. Heimrich told the girl who she should say was calling. Then the routine changed. The girl said, “Inspector Heimrich? Mr. Parsons has been expecting you to call. One moment, please.”

  The next voice was male and light and quick.

  “Parsons here. You’re Police Inspector Heimrich? Of Troop K, New York State Police?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I have your badge number, Inspector?”

  So. It had seemed to Continental Forwarding, Limited, worth the trouble of checking on. Which was interesting. Which possibly accounted for Parsons’s delay in calling. Heimrich gave him the badge number.

  There was a momentary delay. Then Parsons said, “Checks out. You called to ask if Sir Ronald Grimes had telephoned this office. Were told we were closed for the day. Right?”

  “Quite right, Mr. Parsons.”

  “Little confusion about that,” Parsons said. “Hadn’t been informed, Miss Brightly hadn’t. He did call. I talked to him myself, matter of fact. Routine matter.”

&nbs
p; “Mr. Parsons,” Heimrich said, “Sir Ronald has disappeared from the ship. Apparently he has gone overboard. This call to you was the last call he made, so far as I can find out. We check on such things when we’re policemen. As you, apparently, have checked out on me.”

  “Matter of routine,” Parsons said.

  “This routine matter? That Sir Ronald called you about? From mid-ocean. At considerable expense.”

  “Some things he had in Washington,” Parsons said. “Furniture. Things like that. Wanted them here in England. We are handling that. Were, anyway. He called to ask if things were moving along. See what I mean?”

  “No. I can’t say I do. He thought—oh, that some difficulty had come up?”

  “You can put it that way, yes.”

  “In mid-ocean,” Heimrich said, “he suddenly starts to worry about his furniture and things like that. Calls up at what, by your time, would be late evening. Were you able to reassure him, Mr. Parsons?”

  “Absolutely. Everything in train, y’know.”

  “Continental Forwarding. Just what do you forward, Mr. Parsons?”

  “Quite a few things. Variety of things, you might call it.”

  “Sir Ronald wasn’t having you ship his furniture, or whatever, to Yugoslavia, by any chance? To—or say in care of—A. Schmidt Gesellschaft in Zagreb?”

  There was a long pause. Then Parsons said, in a voice deeper, and harder, than it had been before. “A Schmidt Gesellschaft, you say. How’d you come by that, Inspector?”

  “Sir Ronald,” Heimrich said, “had jotted the name down. With an address, or what I take to be an address.” He read from the penciled lines on the inside of the match folder what he took to be an address.

  “Sir Ronald had?”

  “I can’t be sure he had. Lady Grimes doubts it was his handwriting. Somebody did. On the inside of a match folder. May just have dropped the folder, of course. Somebody else I mean, naturally. And Sir Ronald may have absently picked it up and put it in his pocket. Only, Lady Grimes says he’d given up smoking.”

  Parsons did not say anything.