Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene

by Stuart Palmer

  Adrian Hogue. A handsome man, in his late twenties, with soft dark eyes and black hair that had grown below his collar on the back of his neck and in long sideburns in front of his ears. He supported the statements of Corrine Leicester. They had come up from Los Angeles together. What was his opinion of Captain Westering? On this point, the opinions of Mr. Hogue and his very good friend differed radically. Westering was a fraud. He didn’t give a damn about world peace or philosophical concepts or anything at all except excitement and women, which were, when you stopped to think about it, often the same thing. He was a poseur, a dated swashbuckler à la Errol Flynn. In brief, he was a straw man, a glamorous dummy who fronted for his wife. Aletha Westering! Now, there was a woman! It was easy enough to see that she held her absurd husband in contempt, whatever she might pretend to the contrary. Look at the way she went off to live with her sister in Sausalito and left him at liberty to prowl at will among a load of gullible women who couldn’t tell the difference between a shallow pretender and a real man.

  Rebecca Welch. Former student at Ohio State University. Home in Cleveland. Another runaway, no doubt, with agonized parents somewhere in a sweat behind her. About nineteen. Not over twenty at most. Long blond hair, straight as a string, hanging free. Blue eyes haunted by the shadow of regret and fear. Recent graduate from the teeny-bopper class. Now rudely disenchanted, Miss Withers thought. Home is where the heart is, and her heart was home. She was the friend Lenore Gregory had gone to find just before Captain Westering began to die in his stateroom. Lenore had found her being sick in the crew’s quarters. Rebecca verified this fiercely, as though it were far more important than it was. She was obviously attached to Lenore, in whom she saw one of her own kind, and who was now in need of help. Would the attachment prompt her to lie for her friend? Miss Withers thought it would, but was sure it hadn’t.

  Harriet Owens. Diminutive poet from Kansas City, Missouri. About ninety pounds of fierce intensity in a five-foot package. Dark brown hair cut shorter than most of the men’s. There was something almost exhausting about her, an effect of indiscriminate total commitment that would too often be wasted on ends that weren’t worth it, a kind of cannibalistic hunger feeding on her own heart. Miss Withers thought of another poet famous in her salad days. I burn my candle at both ends … Harriet Owens, like Corrine Leicester, had joined the amateur crew of motley Argonauts in the company of a man, Carey Singer, a young assistant professor of Russian Literature at Wichita University, in Kansas. He and she had done graduate work together at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Seduced by Captain Westering’s siren call, he had jumped his contract and headed west, detouring far enough from his way to collect Harriet, a pushover for a pilgrimage so exalted. It was evident now, however, that Carey Singer felt he had given up quite a lot for next to nothing. His bitterness showed. Intense, diminutive Harriet, Miss Withers concluded, had also been vulnerable to Captain Westering’s magnetism.

  Evelyn Talbot. A secretary from Chicago. Tall and slender. Dark red hair. Apparently square, but definitely not one of the uptight people. That is, she worked for her bread in the Establishment, but she played with the cool ones off-hours. A shuttle-chick. Back and forth between worlds. She’d joined the Argonauts for kicks more than anything else. It looked like being a gas. It was a kick in the teeth for the lousy Establishment. Besides, it was a chance to split from a dull gig, taking dictation from a fat centipede in a loan office. It was too bad everything had gone to hell. After this current scene was over, she supposed she’d have to cop out. Back to the Game. Her bread was gone, and a girl had to live.

  Carl Cramer. From across the bay. Berkeley drop-out. Almost colorless hair that was skinned back and braided in a queue. Sharp nose, sharp eyes, sharp chin. He had a predatory look about him. Miss Withers, an old Stevenson buff, was put in mind of Israel Hands. He seemed far out of character as a dove on a vessel sailing under an olive branch. What was his opinion of Captain Westering? Carl Cramer bared his teeth in a knowing, wolfish grin, old and wicked beyond his years, and said nothing. What had he studied at Berkeley before joining the drop-outs? All about God’s little plants. Botany, that is. The Burbank thing. Captain Kelso, expressionless, made a note and drew a heavy line under it.

  Simon Lefevre. Psychedelic shopkeeper from Haight Street. Whatever a psychedelic shop is. Uncertain mustache. Scant goatee. Horn-rimmed glasses with very thick lenses. Every word like in a dream. Every gesture like in a trance. Living in peace in his private nitty-gritty. Reality, man. The truth below the surface. Cool, man, cool. It was too bad about the captain, but nothing could be done about it. It was nothing, you understand, to get uptight about. Captain Kelso was acquainted with Lefevre. He made notes and looked resigned.

  Leslie Fitzgerald. Last but surely not least. She was wearing a simple dress that hung straight from her shoulders like a smock and ended inches above her knees. She carried her dark head with an air of pride and assurance, and her thin face, although now drawn with fatigue, was lovely and composed. She was an artist with a studio in San Francisco, and Miss Withers would have given odds, not knowing precisely why, that she was an artist with genuine talent who worked hard at her art. She had not been living aboard the yacht with the others. Until sailing date, which had kept looking more and more remote, she was living and working as before in her studio. It was simply bad luck that she had come aboard tonight. She had learned of the voyage from Alura O’Higgins, the captain’s sister-in-law. Alura was the proprietor of a successful restaurant in Sausalito, and had commissioned Leslie Fitzgerald to do a couple of murals for its walls. They had become friends at the time, and the friendship had survived. Leslie had no idea who might have killed Captain Westering, or who, for that matter, would have wanted to.

  Leslie Fitzgerald was dismissed, and Captain Kelso leaned back in his chair with a gusty sigh and gave his naked scalp a vigorous Dutch rub. He closed his eyes, either for forty winks or to review in darkness the events of the last hours. His interrogation, Miss Withers summarized, had elicited in every case, beside a potpourri of personal data, the answers to four pertinent questions.

  At the time of Westering’s death, according to their own testimony, Bernadine Toller, Evelyn Talbot, Corrine Leicester and Adrian Hogue had been in the stateroom down the passage listening to the singing of Delmar Faulkenstein. They were joined by Nathan Silversmith after his return from the Embarcadero. The Prophet Onofre had been prowling the docks, muttering imprecations in his beard. Rebecca Welch had been in the crew’s quarters. Carl Cramer had been there also, asleep on a bunk. Harriet Owens and Carey Singer had been walking together in the vicinity, they weren’t quite sure where, after a reprieve from beans at the Fishermen’s Grotto on Fisherman’s Wharf. Simon Lefevre had been on a visit to his shop, padlocked for the indefinite duration of the pilgrimage, and had returned just before the arrival of the police. Leslie Fitzgerald had come aboard, in fact, after the police had arrived. Not that the presence of anyone aboard at the time of death was crucial. As Captain Kelso kept repeating, the poison could have been put into the decanter at any time earlier. That was the difficulty from the police point of view. And the advantage from the murderer’s.

  Despite the fact that Captain Westering must have done considerable groaning and threshing about in the process of dying, no one admitted to hearing him.

  No one had seen a stranger aboard fitting the description of the hippie-type that Al Fister had seen come ashore.

  No one admitted to seeing any such person at any time prior to that night.

  Captain Kelso sighed again, a low and windy sound between a rumble and a groan, and heaved himself to his feet. He lumbered to the porthole and stood there with his back turned, staring out into the pale light of a day beginning after one that had never ended. Not, at any rate, for Captain Kelso. After a minute or two he turned back, knuckled his scalp, and stared with a horrible grin at the weary spinster. A tough old bird, he thought. Leather and bone and guts.

  “That’s
the lot,” he said. “That’s the whole nest of cuckoos. Now we’ll have to check out those backgrounds. Every damn one of them.”

  “Such a waste,” said Miss Withers, “when only one is guilty.”

  “That’s police work. Weeding. Elimination. Unless you can come up with a blinding flash of insight or something.”

  “I’m afraid it’s all I can do to stay awake at the moment.”

  “I’m through here. I’ll take you back to your hotel.”

  “With your permission, I’d like to take Lenore Gregory with me.”

  “I don’t think so. She’s still a contender, you know. She’d better stay here with the others.”

  “In that case, I shall stay here with her.”

  “You still convinced that she was the intended victim?”

  “I am. And if she was, she’s still in danger.”

  “Will you assume all responsibility for her?”

  “Naturally.”

  “All right. Take her along. The kid who came here with you, too. Al Fister. I’ll meet you on the dock after I make some arrangements here.”

  “Thank you.”

  Miss Withers went out into the passage past the patient watchdog and into the next stateroom. Aloysius Fister and Lenore Gregory were sitting together on the sofa. Lenore’s legs were tucked under her, and she had listed in Al’s direction until her head had snuggled into his shoulder. She was sound asleep, as was faithful Al. He had secured her snugly in place by putting one arm around her slender shoulders. On his engaging, ugly face was a blissful, foolish smile.

  12.

  “AND SO,” SAID MISS WITHERS, “having said so much, I shall say no more.”

  She and Lenore and Al were in her room at the Canterbury, which had taken their delivery in the early hours of the morning by a Captain of Homicide with as superb aplomb as it had earlier taken the delivery of Miss Withers in the sidecar of a Hog. The captain had gone on his way, but Al, who had tagged along behind the police car, had been permitted to come up to the room which Miss Withers had secured at the desk in exchange for the one she had been occupying. This one was furnished with twin beds, and Lenore’s signature was on the register below.

  As the above fragment of dialogue, or rather monologue, indicated, Miss Withers had explained her role in the events that had come last night to their grim climax, and had followed the explanation with a brief lecture on the foolishness of runaway girls who brought distress to their parents, problems to the police, and trouble to themselves. Lenore was properly contrite, but the tilt of her chin, the light in her eyes, and the slight flaring of the nostrils of her delicate nose betrayed the fact that her pride and independence were still not in utter tatters.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Withers,” she said. “I’m sorry that I’ve been so much trouble to everyone, especially to Mother and Father and you, but this was something I had to do. I simply had to. It’s all right to sit and talk about things, but it’s no good unless you do something.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Miss Withers, “it is possible to exercise good judgment about what you must do and how you should go about doing it. But we mustn’t sit here crying over spilled milk. The trouble you have caused others is no longer important. What’s important is the trouble you’ve caused yourself. You must realize that Captain Kelso, a reasonable man, suspects you, with good reason, of having committed murder.”

  “I didn’t kill Captain Westering. What reason did I have?”

  “That’s your question. I’d like to hear the answer.”

  “I had no reason. Besides, I thought you were convinced that I was the one who was supposed to be poisoned.”

  “So I was. And still am. Convincing Captain Kelso of that is another matter. Tell me, what did you think of Captain Westering?”

  “He was a very strange man. He had a powerful personality. Sort of … sort of mesmeric, if you know what I mean. When you were with him you had the oddest feeling that he could do anything, and that anything he did was right. He made you feel … well, free and uninhibited, almost as if you were high on something.”

  “And when you were away from him?”

  Lenore Gregory hesitated. The silence stretched and grew taut as she sat looking down at her hands in her lap, an expression of puzzlement in her eyes. “It’s funny,” she said, “but when you were away from him, it wasn’t that way at all. At least, not for me. You had an uneasy feeling about him, and you began to have doubts about yourself and everything else. Like this voyage. It was a kind of fiasco, really.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, nothing seemed to go right. To be honest, I doubt if that old yacht could have made such a long voyage. There was a ship’s carpenter and a qualified marine engineer on board for two days, but they quit in disgust when they saw how things were. I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever get out of port. It was just a hopeless mess. But Captain Westering never seemed to lose faith, and when you were with him you believed yourself that everything would be all right.”

  “When the people aboard the yacht were being questioned tonight, or last night, one thing was glaringly apparent. Some such view as you have expressed seemed to be common to all the females. The men, however, did not share it. On the contrary, I detected a strong current of resentment and even hatred. It’s difficult to understand such a sharp cleavage of opinion. Was this man a contemporary Svengali or something?”

  “I don’t know what he was. I only know he’s dead, and all I can feel, now that he is, is a kind of relief.”

  “That’s something else I noted. In spite of their extravagant opinion of the captain, none of the women, not a single one, including his wife, displayed the slightest sign of grief over his death. It’s odd. Very odd.” Miss Withers paused and took a deep breath, preparing herself to ask a crucial question. “My dear, it is now time to put something to you directly. It’s not, you understand, that I wish to be a prying old maid, but your answer may be critical in the light of events.”

  “I know.” Color rising in her face like a shadow of roses, Lenore made an abrupt little gesture and shot a swift glance at Al, sitting patiently by. “You want to know how free and uninhibited the captain and I actually got. If we made love, that is. We didn’t. Maybe sooner or later, but we hadn’t.”

  “Did any of the others think you had?”

  “I don’t know. You’d have to ask them.”

  “Had any of the others, as you say, made love with the captain?”

  “Possibly. Probably. You saw how it was on the yacht. Everyone crowded in together day and night, sleeping all over the place with practically no privacy at all. What’s more, the passengers or crew or whatever you want to call us weren’t exactly bound by the old standards, you see.”

  “I see,” said Miss Withers drily, “precisely. I also see that such circumstances, however liberated those involved may think themselves, give rise to a very unsavory emotional climate. Hatreds develop, and murder is committed.”

  “If you ask me,” Al Fister interrupted cheerfully, “murder isn’t such a bad solution in the cases of certain people.”

  “Nonsense!” Miss Withers pinned him with a severe eye. “Murder is never a good solution in any case. If you have nothing constructive to contribute, Aloysius, please be silent.” She turned back to Lenore. “When you left New York, did anyone know where you were coming?”

  “No. I was told about the voyage by a man who worked with me on CAP. The Committee of Artists for Peace. He may have guessed later where I came, but I didn’t tell him before I left.”

  “Then it’s a fair assumption that no one back East knew definitely where you were?”

  “Not at first. Later. I wrote to my roommate at school and told her. And I wrote to a fellow I went out with sometimes when I was working for CAP. Bud Hoffman, his name is. The Committee took him on after I had been working there for a while. I treated him rather badly, to tell the truth, and I thought maybe I owed him an explanation.”

  “D
id you receive a reply from either of them?”

  “From Addie. My roommate. Adelaide Linton. Not from Bud. My letter came back unclaimed. He’d left CAP and gone away somewhere. I guess he felt like I’d done him a dirty trick, but I can’t help that. Anyhow, he was getting to be a problem. He kept urging me to marry him, and he was so intense about it and everything that it worried me. But never mind. It’s all over now. Addie said my father had been on campus inquiring about me. I was going to write to him just before we sailed. You know. In time to let him and Mother know where I was going, but too late for him to do anything about it. So he wouldn’t have time to stop me or make a big issue or anything like that.”

  “Well, it’s apparent now that you are not going to sail, and so I suggest, after you get some sleep, that you pick up the telephone and call him.” Miss Withers turned back to Al, indicating by her expression that she was both surprised and outraged to find him in her room. “Al, why do you continue to sit there like a dummy? Do you expect us to undress for bed with you here to ogle us? Go away.”

  As a matter of fact, Al had already been ogling Lenore, to his pleasure and her secret delight, and now he heaved his weary flesh and bones to their feet, grinning at Miss Withers. “I go,” he said, “but, as a certain general said back in the Middle Ages, I shall return. Miss Withers, I’m in love. At last I’ve found someone I have something in common with. We’re both drop-outs.”

  Miss Withers snorted, Miss Gregory almost leered, and Mr. Fister ambled out in style.

  “There’s an impertinent, lazy boy,” said Miss Withers, “But I believe there is still hope for him.”

  She and Lenore showered in inverted order, beauty before age, and tumbled into their respective twins. Miss Withers, it seemed, had hardly hit the pillow and closed her eyes before she was jerked upright, her heart in her mouth, by the ringing of the telephone. She stared through fog at the face of her travel alarm on her bedside table. A few minutes after one o’clock. She picked up the phone and spoke groggily into it.