Holiday Homicide

by Rufus King

  “I’ll have a writ of habeas corpus as soon as I can get in touch with Judge Broderick. I shall demand bail. We’ll meet it to any figure, Seward—any!”

  They left, with Emberry still demanding, and then was the first good opportunity I had for taking in Mrs. Schuyler and young Elizabeth.

  Mrs. Schuyler first. You couldn’t miss it, the way she was trying not to look smug. Even in spite of her my-dear-this-is-too-too-silly-but-isn’t-it-ghastly attitude you couldn’t miss it. She was wearing a black broadcloth afternoon number reminiscent of the heyday of Worth, and had a dog collar of black opals around her throat that must have cost a junior fortune.

  She moved in on Emma Jettwick, who was sitting on a settee and had taken everything like a brick, clutched one of Miss Jettwick’s hands and said, “There’s nothing I can say, my dear—nothing!”

  So she went right on and talked for the next five minutes, which gave me time to shift to Elizabeth. I’d expected her to be on the verge of a nervous collapse, but had forgotten the red hair. She’d stopped being elegant with a Minton cup and had gone over to a cellaret and mixed herself a good hooker of scotch. I took it out of her hand and said, “Thanks. Sherry for you, Miss Schuyler.”

  “Just what’s the idea of that, Mr. Stanley?”

  I tried to save my life by admitting to her that a careworn debutante could easily drink a retired bartender under a table, but pointed out that right now there was no place for a table. As well be King Canute and shake a finger at the sea. She said, “Oh?” and took the glass back, and probably would have found herself in a fine stupor if her mother hadn’t stopped for breath and said, “Elizabeth, is that a highball?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Pour yourself a glass of sherry, dear, and give that thing to me.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  My opinion of exclusive finishing schools went up a peg when I caught the restraint it must have cost Elizabeth to walk sedately over, hand the glass to her mother, come back, and pour out some sherry, before rocking me on my heels with an underbreath damn.

  Spider McRoss was the last specimen for the slide. He had been standing at a porthole looking out across the deck to the landing stage. His villainous eyebrows were tight in a straight line, and, although I’ve only hearsay knowledge of a hawk’s gaze, his had it bad. He moved alongside us and said, “You know how these things go, Mr. Stanley. I mean now that they’ve taken Bruce, how about the rest of us?”

  A good deal of chichi had gone out of his voice and he sounded pretty tense, and as though he wanted a straight answer.

  “So far as the rest of you are concerned, Mr. McRoss, the fact that Mr. Jettwick is being detained for investigation doesn’t mean a thing. The fact that Seward is certain he has an open-and-shut case doesn’t mean a thing. What does mean something is that Mr. Moon believes in young Jettwick’s innocence.”

  “Of course, naturally, we all of us do, but I’m not referring to that. Neither Commissioner McGilvray nor District Attorney Seward said anything definite about our, well, freedom of movement.”

  “There’s nothing they can say, unless they want to detain you the way they’re detaining Mr. Jettwick.”

  “But suppose you wanted to leave town?”

  “Then they’d probably detain you.”

  “There’s a policeman still standing at the head of the gangway. Would he stop you if you wanted to leave the yacht?”

  “No.”

  “What’s he there for, then?”

  “Probably to save Miss Jettwick from annoyance from the press, from curiosity seekers.”

  “You mean I could just walk ashore and nothing would happen?”

  “No, I don’t mean that. You’d be tailed.”

  “Really? Well!”

  Elizabeth said, “Then Mother and I could go home?”

  “I’m quite sure of it. Will you?”

  She looked over at her mother, and there was something I couldn’t get in her expression, but it wasn’t right. She said, “I don’t know.”

  Then you did get it, suddenly, from the way her eyes were opened wider than normal and a tightness about her mouth. It was fear. I suppose working with Moon had hardened me to murder in the sense that you came to look upon it as a game, the who-did-it, and the why-and-how being more important than any personal element involved. It must be the same way with men whose business is poisonous snakes, getting callous to them through habit, the way we were callous about the chance that the person right at your elbow throughout an investigation might be the guy who committed the crime.

  Well, Elizabeth had had no chance during her seventeen years to get callous. You could almost see the way her thoughts were running: there he was (Myron Jettwick) moving, talking, breathing, enjoying, and suffering the business of living, sitting up in his bed and surrounded by the security of his own familiar things, certainly familiar enough with his murderer to lean back against the pillows and chat, then startlingly to face that deadly change. The change of face, from someone whom you know, into the face of Death.

  From someone whom you know.

  There was the crux of it so far as Elizabeth was concerned. I didn’t believe for a minute that even a hardened debutante could seriously picture her own mother pumping lead into flesh and wiping out a human life, but the nasty fact remained that Harriet Schuyler had been up and dressed at half past six in the morning and had been wearing her hat.

  Then again, why had she accepted this proposed cruise in the first place, having practically just brought Elizabeth out, suddenly to snatch her away? It must have meant the cancellation of numberless important dates, a complete disruption of the girl’s most imperative social season. It must have been a desperately important reason to have made Harriet Schuyler do that.

  It was a relief to get a message from Moon.

  A steward brought it in. It was a telegram which Moon had sent from the men’s bar at the Plaza, telling me to get in touch with Jimmy Singer. Jimmy runs one of the few reliable private detective agencies in town and Moon always uses him when he needs detailed research work or added men on his cases.

  Moon wanted Jimmy to trace the record of two people during the past fifteen years, and to find out the present whereabouts of each. One was the wife of Senator Blackman, the woman who had insisted on prosecuting Helen Jettwick for the jewel theft on Leviathan. The other was the correspondent in the ensuing divorce, Mr. Jeffry Smith.

  Moon also asked me to arrange with Miss Jettwick that he and I occupy Myron Jettwick’s quarters aboard Trade Wind for the next few days. He listed the things he wanted moved over from Coquilla. Apart from an essential wardrobe and toilet accessories he wanted his copy of Richard Hughes’ A High Wind in Jamaica, which he reread at least once a year, and a box of Moreton Bay chestnuts which had recently been shipped him from Australia.

  He specified only one thing so far as my own stuff was concerned. He told me to bring my gun.

  Chapter Ten

  THROUGH A PORTHOLE

  Harriet Schuyler made no move. No one did. They decided to stay on Trade Wind even though there was no longer any question (right then) of making the Caribbean cruise.

  You could understand McRoss staying. Miss Jettwick had asked him to, and to remain with her and work with Wallace Emberry until her brother’s estate could be wound up and put in shape. And you could understand Helen Jettwick staying, rather than suffer the emptiness left in their apartment by Bruce’s present sojourn at the Tombs. But Mrs. Schuyler’s excuse for subjecting Elizabeth to an environment still foggy with murder was as thin as her reason for her hat.

  Her own home was a substantial and expensive house on Madison Avenue that had been in the family for three generations. Elizabeth told me about it with that frankness which, for the young of my day, would have produced some good wallops with the back of a hairbrush and no supper before bed.

  I gathered, with no bother at all, that Mrs. Schuyler camouflaged her sharp interest in business by an outward absorptio
n in the world of art, and that her drawing-room was a free-lunch counter for handsome young artistic things who were always on the brink of “arriving,” but never did. You ended up by picturing Mrs. Schuyler as a culinary Major Bowes.

  Anyhow, Mrs. Schuyler decided to remain for a while on the yacht to escape (the excuse) the sympathetic weaseling of friends which would be more difficult to ward off in her home, unless she declared a state of siege. Later, when the investigation was settled in one way or the other, she said she would take Elizabeth abroad and give her a season both on the Continent and in England.

  I didn’t believe it for a minute, and neither did Moon when I told him about it after he had decided it was psychologically safe to return from his monastic retreat in the Plaza. This was around eight. Our stuff was by then aboard Trade Wind and he asked me, while we dressed for dinner, to arrange for three interviews after the meal. He wanted to see the night watchman who had been on duty last night on the landing stage of Wharf House, also the sailor on deck watch on Trade Wind between midnight and four, and Captain Plummet.

  It was a gloomy meal, but nobody skipped it. Even Emberry was there to do a little spade work on the estate with Miss Jettwick after coffee.

  The cook was almost as fervent an artist as Walter and drew together, among various accessories, a very fine mess of Buzzards Bay oysters, clear green turtle soup, a roast saddle of mutton, plus Château Mouton Rothschild, and a baked Alaska.

  I wondered at the ice cream until Elizabeth, who had pecked at mutton, dove overboard into it with no shame at all, and then you appreciated more than ever Miss Jettwick’s sound judgment and goodness of heart.

  I rounded up Captain Plummet first, gave him Moon’s compliments and the request that he join Moon in the owner’s quarters. The captain looked no more like what a typical sea captain is supposed to look like than any captain does. He hit the average which, without the uniform, would have made you put him down as a middle-aged, middle-class, moderately successful businessman who knows his job thoroughly but is in constant dread, through some malignant and unpredictable prank of fate, of losing it.

  He gave concisely the information Moon wanted. He explained that everything had been a little out-of-the-ordinary last night because of it having been New Year’s Eve. The owner had given permission for all men to go ashore and celebrate with their families and friends, with the exception of those required for service in the galley and the steward’s department. He said that no watch had been kept until midnight when Terrence, one of the stewards, had been posted on deck to stay there until six.

  Moon asked baldly if Terrence had been drunk, and Captain Plummet said equally baldly that Terrence had.

  “He had been drinking during the evening, Mr. Moon, and had a pretty good load on even by the time he went on watch. I know that under the circumstances you want the absolute facts, so I’m giving them to you.”

  Plummet made it unnecessary for Moon to see the night watchman on Wharf House’s landing stage by letting us know that the man had spent his tour in a beautiful stupor from nips thrust upon him by tenants and guests either coming or departing for revels which must have been normally wet.

  It began to look as though the whole town could have walked aboard Trade Wind with nothing to check them but a bleary smile, but Terrence’s tale changed that.

  I got Terrence after Captain Plummet had left. He was a constitutionally thin young man with sandy hair and a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t mustache. He had the utter assurance of the Irish, and unburdened himself to Moon with the abandon of an Abbey player going to town on his Synge.

  He had felt a native irritation that he should have had to work while the majority of the crew were enjoying themselves ashore. He had felt this in spite of the generous bonus which Myron Jettwick had given to those who had stayed on the yacht.

  He made us vividly see himself up there on deck in the cold wind and snow, harking to the happy noises of a city engaged in revelry, and feeling very sorry for himself in consequence.

  He had passed most of his time near the gangplank, leaning on the rail, and watching the different parties of people arriving at Wharf House. They were people in high good humor, and both Trade Wind and Coquilla had been targets for their interest. Terrence had talked with several, and had gone down the gangplank and taken a sup from anyone who offered him a flask. You can imagine that the mixtures awash inside of him must have been amazing.

  By two o’clock he was halfway down to Rio, and said he had no accurate knowledge of what the man looked like who had given him an opened bottle of Jamaica rum.

  “Were you on deck or on the landing stage, Mr. Terrence, when this bottle was given you?”

  “I’d swear on my oath, sir, it was the landing stage—but you know.”

  “Did the man approach you from the yacht or from the direction of Wharf House?”

  “Now that I couldn’t tell you, Mr. Moon. The way I was feeling then, he might have come from both.”

  Two facts were significant. Terrence did recall a lot of white shirt front, which suggested that the man had not been wearing an overcoat, and the second fact blasted any hope that some passing stranger had dropped aboard and shot Myron Jettwick for a whim. Terrence hadn’t been able to finish the bottle of rum so he had taken it below to his bunk and stowed it, and himself alongside of it, letting any further guarding of Trade Wind for the night go bang.

  He had found himself face to face with the bottle when he woke up this morning, and he recognized the rum as a special brand with which the yacht was stocked. He hadn’t wanted to be accused of stealing from the yacht’s stores and had thrown the bottle into the river through a porthole and that, so help him, was that.

  It was plenty.

  Moon filed it, then dismissed it from his mind, dismissed Terrence from the living room, and prepared for bed. This involved, while he showered and got into flannel pajamas, sending to the galley for three pâté sandwiches, a pint of milk, and a pear, then fitting them on the bed table along with the box of Moreton Bay chestnuts, Hughes’ A High Wind in Jamaica, a thermos of ice water, a glass, cigarettes, matches, an ash tray, and a chart for how to find what.

  He opened the same porthole that had been opened last night when Myron Jettwick got his, got into bed, said good night, and asked me to close the door.

  This left me with the living room to rattle around in, and a cot which the steward had set up in one corner for my frame. There were plenty of blankets, however, so it didn’t look too desperate.

  I opened a porthole beside it and took some deep breaths of the cold night air. The small aft-deck which arched around the bedroom did not extend this far so when you poked your head out of the porthole you looked straight down on the water, which was about six feet below, very oily, swift and deadly black, and just as cheery as an accomplished ghost.

  I got undressed, shoved my gun under the pillow, turned out the lights, went to bed, and slept until the knocking noise woke me up at half past three. Well, you know how it is when something unusual wakes you out of a dead sleep, or if you don’t know, you’re lucky. It wasn’t very loud, but it was a steady bumping sound and came in through the open porthole. I looked from habit at the radium dial of my wrist watch (where-were-you-at-three-thirty-when-etc.) and pulled the gun from under the pillow.

  Moon gave me a lecture in the morning on the fundamental laws of physics after he found out what had happened. But, like most lectures, of course, it came too late. My perfectly rational explanation of the dilemma cut no ice with him at all; I mean the fact that if I poked the gun out of the porthole there was no room left for my head, so I couldn’t see what to shoot at, and if I poked my head out it became physically impossible also to poke out the gun. Portholes just happen to be that way, that’s all.

  I chose my head. What with still being half asleep and so forth I couldn’t imagine what they were doing. There were two men in a rowboat. It was snowing again in slow fat flakes and that, with the pitch dark of the ni
ght, made them look like a couple of vague blots. The boat was some distance forward, and rode jerkily on the swift tide rip of the water. Its rise and fall and swinging were responsible for the bumping noise. Both of the men were crouched in the bow, and one of them seemed to be holding a rope.

  Moon has always been very nice about it, but I know that he thinks I rated a one-way ticket to Bloomingdale for having opened my trap and shouted at them:

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Both of them looked up, and the one holding the rope dropped it in his fright. The other man stood up, which brought his head just below the level of my own. He took off a pair of heavy mittens and fumbled with one hand beneath his reefer while fending the rowboat from the yacht’s side with the other, as the current carried the boat down toward the porthole and dumb me. Both men wore caps, and the large collars of their reefers covered their chins.

  Several things happened simultaneously. I realized that the man had taken his mittens off so his fingers could close around the butt of a gun under his reefer. The tide carried him to a point just alongside of me as he did get his gun out from under his reefer. I poked my own gun through the porthole only to find that because of my head already being through it the only thing I could aim at was Venus.

  I know now that if he’d had his silencer along the man would have shot me. As it was, he had to restrain himself and simply belt me one with the butt of his gun on the head. Just before everything went black, as the old saying goes, I did hear the other pirate say:

  “Christ, but you shouldn’t of done that.”

  Chapter Eleven

  PLANS FOR TWO-THIRTY

  I agreed with him next morning thoroughly. It was seven o’clock before my skull recovered consciousness and a conviction that it had been split open in two parts. The body also took some time to thaw out from the cold blasts that had hit it from the open porthole with nothing to make them hesitate but a pair of magenta-striped silk pajamas Moon had given me for Christmas and which I had always admired until then.