20-Inspector's Holiday

by Lockridge, Richard

  “It’s upside down,” Merton Heimrich said. “Not that everything isn’t at the moment. But if a man’s been killed, you don’t make a point of how much you hated him. That sort of thing can give people ideas.”

  “Does it, dear?”

  “Nothing seems to this morning. Possibilities.” He looked beyond Susan at the quiet ocean. “Of which I have too many.”

  “She looks like a strong woman,” Susan said. “She moves well. These chairs aren’t all that easy to get out of. She—oh, swirled out. Said, ‘I’ve bored you long enough, Mrs. Heimrich,’ and then, well, just wasn’t there any more. Not that it wasn’t a relief. You’re tired, aren’t you? By Lady Grimes?”

  “Her. A man named Parsons in London. A man named Mason in Washington. Something called A. Schmidt Gesellschaft, probably in Zagreb. By Major Ian Whitney, in the Italia. Unless he’s fallen overboard too.”

  “He hasn’t. At least ten minutes or so ago he hadn’t. He was sitting in a deck chair, facing outboard. He was watching you and Lady Grimes, I think. After Mrs. Powers let me off the hook I looked around—looked aft—to see where you’d gone. And saw. And saw Major Whitney too.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I saw him too.”

  “Is it too early for Mario?” Susan said.

  He looked at his watch. It was a quarter of twelve.

  “A little,” he said. “Anyway, there’s a call I ought to make. Something I forgot.”

  She said, “Oh,” her voice diminished.

  “Not a long one,” he told her. “Nor far away. I’ll come back and we’ll go see Mario.”

  He swung out of the chair.

  (He moves so well, she thought. With so little effort for so big a man. There’s nothing puzzled about the way he moves.)

  Heimrich found a telephone. He got the purser’s office, and then got the chief steward. He verified the security men’s findings—if Louis Cataldi had had anything unusual happen to him Wednesday night, he had not told any of his fellow stewards about it. Or none of them remembered that he had.

  “His belongings?”

  “In his locker, signor. Clothes. A picture of a man with mustachios. Very large mustachios. His father, it is possible, signor.”

  “Money?”

  “Two five-hundred-lira notes, signor. A few American coins. A dollar bill. Not money.”

  Heimrich called the ship’s hospital. Louis was still unconscious. He had, however, said a few words. They had not seemed to mean anything. They had been more sounds than words. Money? In the clothing he had been wearing when he was hit? No, signor. Oh, a dollar bill. Perhaps two dollar bills.

  If Louis had seen something and had tried to collect on what he had seen, he hadn’t collected. Except, of course, a blow on the head. Delivered by whom? And with what?

  Heimrich went back to the promenade deck. Susan was watching for him. He nodded his head and beckoned. She was out of her chair and walking toward him.

  (She moves with springs. I lumber.)

  They went to see Mario in the veranda belvedere. The four Frenchmen were already there. They were smoking their cigars. There were few others in Mario’s bar. Mario beamed at them. The four Frenchmen blew smoke into the air.

  Susan dislikes cigar smoke. The dislike of cigar smoke is almost an obsession with her.

  “We’re almost the first,” she said, as Mario went to get their drinks. “We drink more on holiday, don’t we?”

  “To prove it’s a holiday,” Merton Heimrich said, his voice low and with a depressed note in it. “The only proof we’ve got, and I’m sorry.”

  She smiled at him and patted his hand for an instant. She said, “It’s funny all that cigar smoke doesn’t bother me the way it usually does.”

  “Air conditioning,” Heimrich told her. “Whole ship is. Thank you, Mario.”

  They sipped. They had half finished their drink when a steward came in and said something to Mario. Mario nodded his head, and nodded it toward the Heimrichs. The steward came to their table. He said, “Signor Heimrich? Telegramma, Signor Heimrich.”

  Heimrich said, “Thanks,” and provided a quarter and got “Grazie, signor.” He opened the wireless message. It was brief:

  “Permitted tell Schmidt East German agency. Parsons.”

  A stone in the wall loosened? Or one set in place?

  Heimrich read the message again, this time aloud.

  “It means something?” Susan said.

  “Earlier you said something about spies,” Heimrich said. “Joking, we both thought. Maybe you weren’t, dear. Even if you thought you were. Parsons is something called ‘Continental Forwarding, Limited.’ Very close-mouthed, until now. Got permission from somebody to open up a little.”

  He put the message in a jacket pocket. She looked at him and raised her eyebrows.

  “The match folder,” he said. “I told you about it. Or meant to, anyway.”

  She shook her head. He told her about it, briefly. He told her where he had found it and of Ellen Grimes’s suggested explanation. She said, “The major?”

  “According to her story,” Heimrich said. “Which she took a time to remember. Or, to think up, naturally. She—”

  He stopped abruptly. He raised his glass and held it toward hers and, slowly, she met his glass with hers. “To the Costa del Sol,” Heimrich said, and she raised her shoulders slightly and repeated his words. Then she looked around the room, into which people had begun to trickle.

  One of those who had come in was Major Ian Whitney. He did not trickle in. He walked in erect and resolute, and Mario met him and said, “Signor Major. One, signor?”

  Whitney said, “Minute, what?” and instead of following Mario came to the Heimrichs’ table.

  “Morning, Inspector. Mrs. Heimrich,” Whitney said. “Wonder if you can spare me a few minutes, Inspector? Something I may be able to clear up for you.”

  “Glad to have things cleared up,” Heimrich said. “Now?”

  “No hurry,” Whitney said. “After lunch. My cabin be all right? Two-thirtyish be all right?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said, and Whitney walked—or marched—to the table Mario stood by.

  “The wireless message?” Susan said. Heimrich shrugged his shoulders. “They could have paged you in the main cocktail lounge,” Susan said. “Gone around saying, ‘Inspector Heimrich, please. Telegramma, please.’”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Or he may have seen the man come in with the telegramma. Also, he wasn’t sitting too far away when I was talking to Lady Grimes.”

  “Close enough to watch,” Susan said. “To hear—overhear—I shouldn’t think so. Unless he has very good ears. You’ll have a chance to ask him, apparently.”

  Heimrich said, “Yes.” He looked at their almost-empty glasses and then at Susan.

  “Yes,” she said. “To prove it’s a holiday. And to the Costa del Sol.”

  Mario had also seen the almost-empty glasses. Mario was everywhere and saw everything. He came to their table and said, “Sir? Madam?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is calm today,” Mario said. “The sea is behaving herself, signor.”

  Heimrich said, “Yes,” again and, as before, he seemed to be speaking from a long way off.

  Mario carried away their empty glasses and brought back filled glasses. He also brought a dish of nuts. Susan said, “Thank you, Mario.” Merton said nothing at all, which was unlike him. They sipped from their glasses and said little, and after a time the lunch chimes sounded. The four Frenchmen led the way, their cigars still alight.

  There was no partly filled wine bottle on their table. They had finished the last of a bottle the night before. Their waiter said, “The wine steward, signor?” but Heimrich did not appear to hear him, and Susan smiled at the waiter and shook her head. There isn’t much point in trying to prove it’s a holiday, Susan thought. And it worries him so. But now, I think, it isn’t that which is worrying him. He’s submerged, now. Which means—which I hope means—that it�
��s nearly over.

  They finished lunch. “A while on the deck for me,” Susan said. “Then a nap, I think.”

  “I’m sorry,” Heimrich said. “I’m sorry as hell, darling.”

  She laughed lightly. Then she said, “Shhh, my dear.”

  “I’ll find you,” he said, and she smiled up at him and said, “Always, Merton.”

  He went up to the sun deck and the wireless station, with which he was getting wearily familiar. After rather a long wait, he got the British Embassy in Washington—and more static than ever.

  Sir Robert Mason was gone for the weekend.

  He looked at his watch. It was two-fifteen. But “-ish” provides latitude. He went the two flights down to the boat deck and turned left toward the starboard corridor. Directly ahead of him, beyond a wide passageway and an elevator, was a door to the open promenade—a passageway and door that anyone going straight from the veranda belvedere to the starboard cabins—Cabin 16, say—would have to pass. It was from here, probably, that Sir Ronald had been decoyed—or more likely knocked unconscious and carried or dragged—to the rail over which he was heaved. Probably as soon as he and Hunt had left the lounge and separated, Hunt to go below to his own quarters.

  Heimrich went aft to Cabin 10. The door was closed. He pressed the buzzer button and after some seconds heard, “Come in,” and went in.

  Whitney was sitting on his bed and was fitting a tennis racket into its case, which seemed to Heimrich an odd thing to be doing in mid ocean. He saw enough of the racket before it disappeared into its case to see that it had a steel frame.

  “Meeting friends in Lisbon,” Whitney said. “Going to their club with them, y’know. Great one for tennis. Get in a set or two, perhaps.” He tossed the cased tennis racket onto the bed. “Checking on the stringing while I waited for you,” Whitney said. “Damp sea air’s hard on gut, y’know.”

  Heimrich said he supposed so.

  “Didn’t get you here to talk about tennis,” Whitney said. “Have them bring us in a drink, what?”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “Had a couple before lunch. What did you want to see me about, Major?”

  “Right,” Whitney said. “Get down to it. Saw you talking to Lady Grimes this morning, didn’t I? Showed her something. Looked like a match folder from the club. That right, Inspector?”

  “You’ve good eyes, Major.”

  “Something written inside the folder, way I saw it. Gave it to her, and she read it. That right?”

  “There was something written inside the folder. Yes, Major?”

  “At a guess,” Whitney said, “it was an address. An address—say on the other side of the Iron Curtain?”

  “It’s your guess, Major.”

  Major Whitney nodded his head, apparently in approval. He said, “Cagy, aren’t you? Found this match folder in Grimes’s cabin, I shouldn’t wonder? Must have hidden it there, wouldn’t you say? Grimes himself, I mean.”

  “It wasn’t too much hidden.”

  “Silly ass not to have merely remembered the address. Torn the folder up. Hell, burned it up. Where’d you find it, Inspector? Not just lying around on a table or something. I’d wager on that.”

  “No.”

  “You showed it to Lady Grimes,” Whitney said. “She—how’d she take it? Seem surprised? That sort of thing?”

  “She didn’t think it was her husband’s writing.”

  “I’ll wager she didn’t,” Whitney said. “Hundred quid to tuppence she didn’t. Say whose she thought it was? Or do you want me to guess, Inspector?”

  “If you want to.”

  “Not difficult. I’d a notion they’d rumbled me. And Hunt too. Wily pair, the Grimeses are. She’s wily for both now, of course. Probably leave the ship at Lisbon and fly on to London. Innocent as a lamb, what?”

  “Innocent of what, Major?”

  “You mean you haven’t figured it out?” He shook his head. “Puts me in a bit of a spot,” he said. “No ill of the dead. Sort of thing we don’t like to spread around, y’know. Fine old family, the Grimeses. Goes back centuries. Manor house and that sort of thing. And—well, to break with all that. Damn strange. I’ll say that. Rough on his son, y’know. Have to resign his commission, I shouldn’t wonder. When it comes out. As it’s bound to now, y’know. No way of covering it up. That was the idea, y’know. Some of our people meet him at Lisbon and—just ease him home. No fuss. Nothing in the press. Can’t handle it that way now, thanks to you, Inspector.”

  “To me?”

  “Oh, in a way of speaking. Realized you were aboard and—call it panicked. Went over the side on his own, rather than face up to it. Comes to that, wouldn’t you say?”

  Heimrich shook his head. He was the picture of a sorely puzzled man. He said, “You’ll have to be clearer, Major. You’re talking in circles. Want to go back a ways? You wanted to guess whose writing Lady Grimes thought it might be in the match folder. You didn’t guess. You want to now? To clear things up a bit?”

  “Oh,” Whitney said, “probably mine. Attack the best defense and that sort of thing. Something about my joining them for cocktails at the club, what? And—I don’t know the details she made up. Telephone call for me, perhaps? And I went into the booth and wrote something down on the inside of a match folder? And—” He shrugged. “Grimes switched the folders? Something like that?”

  “It’s your guess, Major. Go on guessing.”

  “I can’t fill it in, y’know. Don’t know how her mind would work, actually. But she’s a wily person, as I said. And in on it up to her neck. Too bad. Rather a pretty neck. But there it is.”

  “All right. Where is what?”

  Heimrich let impatience sound in his voice.

  “Not onto it yet? Sir Ronald Grimes, Bart., was going over to the other side. We’d—got onto him. Hunt was sent to the States to take a hand. What the Special Branch is for, among other things. Hunt and I—well, we worked together. And got what we needed. He’d been passing things along, y’know. Top secret things. Not the first time it’s happened at the Embassy. Give you that. Sir Robert—Robert Mason that is—rumbled it first. Reason I was assigned to Washington. Reason they sent Hunt over. We—well, say we got the goods on him. And he found out we had. So—time to get moving, he figured. Must have been a bit of a shock to them when Hunt and I turned up aboard this ship. So, he had to do Hunt in. Or thought he had to. Hunt had plenty in that briefcase of his. Get it, even if it meant killing Hunt. Throw it over the side.”

  “And then kill himself, Major? I take it you are a major?”

  “Oh, yes. With—call it a sideline, shall we? What you Yanks call a troubleshooter?”

  Heimrich said, “Mmmm.” Then he said, “This story Lady Grimes told me. About your having written an address down in a match folder. Not the way it was, I gather?”

  “We were having cocktails at this club,” Whitney said. “That’s the way she probably told you. And it’s true. To a point it’s true. Then Grimes got this telephone call and went into a booth to take it. And wrote Schmidt’s address down on a match folder. I could see him writing through the glass of the booth. And could guess what he was getting. The address of the contact he was to make in Zagreb. On his way—well, on his way elsewhere, if you know what I mean. Any of the Iron Curtain countries. The boss country, probably. Happen to have that match folder with you, Inspector? Might be useful to us, y’know.”

  “No, Major. Not on me. In my cabin. You saw Sir Ronald writing something down? This address, you assume?”

  “Had to be that way. From a contact in Washington.” “Wrote it down and kept the folder. In his pocket. As you said, rather a silly thing to do. Sort of thing you’d commit to memory, I’d think.”

  “I would in his place, certainly. But—they slip up, don’t they? You must know that, Inspector.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said, “they slip up, Major. Helpful to us when they do.”

  Merton Heimrich stood up and looked down at Major Whitney.

&nbs
p; “How did you know the address was of somebody named Schmidt?” Heimrich said. “In Zagreb? He show you the address in the folder? When he already knew you had, as you put it, rumbled him? Or—how did you know? If you weren’t told it yourself, and didn’t write it down yourself? If it wasn’t the way that Lady Grimes told me it was?”

  “Schmidt? I didn’t say anything—”

  And then his face changed, as he remembered. He could have wriggled out of it, Heimrich thought. He could have said that A. Schmidt Gesellschaft was a cover long since blown to other people in his “sideline.” As it had been, obviously, to a man named Parsons, who was clearly in the line of business Whitney claimed he was in. Whitney hadn’t seen the place to wriggle through. He wasn’t as wily—

  He stopped thinking because Whitney was getting up.

  He was getting up with the cased tennis racket in his hand—the steel-framed tennis racket. Then he had the case off the racket, and his strong hands were quick.

  They were not quick enough. Heimrich was on holiday and had no gun. But he had hands and they, too, were strong and quick. He hit Whitney on the jaw as Whitney, on his feet, pulled the uncased racket back and high in his right hand, held sidewise so that the steel edge would crack down on Heimrich’s head.

  Whitney fell back on the bed, and the tennis racket fell to the deck. Whitney wasn’t out—not, anyway, too much out to listen.

  Heimrich picked the racket up and looked at it.

  “Strings seem to be all right,” Heimrich said, in a conversational tone. “Damp sea air doesn’t seem to have damaged it. But then, the ship’s air-conditioned, isn’t it, Whitney? Dehumidified. So it wasn’t the gut you were worried about, was it? Trying to make sure there wasn’t any blood in the groove the gut fits into. From the last time you used it. Not on a tennis court, Whitney. On the deck outside. To hit a man—a boy, really—who had seen you come out of Hunt’s cabin the night Hunt was strangled. And—tried to shake you down, Whitney? It was that way, wasn’t it?”

  I’m wasting my breath, Heimrich thought. The man’s out. And he won’t get to Trieste on his way to A. Schmidt Gesellschaft in Zagreb. Or, as he said himself, “elsewhere.”