by Q. Patrick
“But the man?” I cried excitedly.
“That’s the silly part of it. Betty wouldn’t tell his name or anything about him. Of course most of it was explained in the anonymous letter which was found after her death—when it was too late. But Earnshaw was in the room at the time, and if he’d had any red blood in his veins you’d have thought he’d have insisted on her staying with him instead of letting her go and get thrown over-board by the murderous Robinson. But then, I always did think he was a bit of a gigolo—”
“Gigolo nothing,” I exclaimed indignantly. “How on earth could he have realized the danger? Besides, he was awfully busy working on Mr. Lambert’s papers. He told me so himself.”
“But that didn’t prevent him from spending quite a long time with you later in the evening.”
“Nonsense. He only wanted to talk about Betty. He was head over ears in love with her and he probably thought she was safe in bed. You are a silly, suspicious old man, Adam Burr. You’re simply jealous because Earnshaw is the most attractive man on board—”
“More attractive than the uniformed Jennings? More attractive than the young man you write your journal to? More attractive than—me?”
Of course there was no answer to such foolish questions. “Um-m-m,” whispered Adam in my ear. “And I’m inclined to think Mrs. Lambert agrees with you. She’s no chicken, of course, but (if you will excuse my mixed metaphors) there’s many a good tune played on an old fiddle. He’s been very attentive since she became a rich widow—very consoling.”
I laughed in spite of myself. Really, Davy, the man is more of an old woman than Aunt Caroline herself.
“Caesar’s wife!” I cried, “I’m ashamed of you, Adam Burr. When it comes to a question of virtue you are as cynical as a Paris concierge. You mistrust Earnshaw simply because his dark hair and moustache make him look like the handsome Villain of the piece. But apart from the fact that he had a perfect alibi in both cases, may I remind you that our particular villain is clean shaven—with brown hair and spectacles? As a budding young detective I am not interested in Earnshaw. I am interested only in Robinson.”
“Well, that lets me out.” said Adam cheerfully. Then he added in a serious tone: “And, as a matter of fact, the authorities are inclined to agree with you about Robinson. They are convinced that he is an impersonation—probably one of the passengers in disguise—and that he and he alone is responsible for the murder of both Betty and Mr. Lambert.”
I gave a slight shiver. “In other words, every time I sit down by a man—at table—on deck—or in the smoking room, my neighbor may be Robinson. That’s a pleasant thought!”
“Well,” replied Adam flippantly. “Here’s an idea to cheer you up. Why not turn tonight’s fancy dress dance into a Robinson party? Make everyone dress as our mysterious ‘thirteenth chair’ and give a prize for the one who looks most like him. We will be the judges. It’s more than probable that Robinson himself would get fourth place the way Charlie Chaplin once did at a Charlie Chaplin party. What are you going as, by the way?”
“I’m going as a newspaper and pray to heaven it won’t be windy. And now, if you’ve no more to tell me, I want to take a nap—in preparation for tonight and in reparation of last night.”
Adam scratched his bald pate. “You are not going to take a nap, my dear. You are going to scribblé in that infernal book of yours. And I have some more news too. What d’you think? Mrs. Clapp—the inimitable Marcia Manners—has promised to give a turn tonight. But, not a word, mind. Jennings told me as a profound secret.”
“Oh, good,” I said, rising from the chair. “If she’s anything like what she used to be, it will be a marvelous treat. Worth our passage money for that alone! Well, I’ll see you at dinner.”
Then I made my escape and fulfilled Adam’s prophecy by writing all this to you, Davy darling, when I ought really to have been sleeping.
But there’s time for a nap too.
So here goes!
On Deck.
Thursday, November 19th.
9:30 A. M.
Well, Davy, I really felt the depression was over when I saw the passengers decked out in gala array for the fancy dress dance last night. After the terrors of the past few days, the long faces and the mournful expressions, it came as a distinct relief to see everybody looking gay and festive again. And the Veuve Clicquot to which Adam treated our table at dinner was a great help in reviving our spirits. The ship was magnificently decorated and the authorities are evidently doing all they can to make us forget the two unsolved tragedies.
Our old friend Wolcott has reappeared at last after an indisposition of several days’ duration. He was dressed as a medieval monk—a costume which admirably suited his oily smile and unctuous suavity. Throughout the first two courses he did nothing but say “Pax Vobiscum” to every remark that was made, until Daphne, a magnificent Britannia, said that she would stick her trident into him if he said it again. Silvera, in an obvious endeavor to accentuate his pseudo-Spanish origin, was dressed as a toreador, and very dark and dashing he looked. I found myself pitying the bull every time I caught the dangerous gleam in his cruel, handsome eyes.
Little Daniels had blossomed out as some sort of swashbuckling Don Juan or pirate—a costume which only served to enhance his diminutive stature and to accentuate the size and splendor of his Britannia, about whom he fluttered constantly like a hen who has hatched a turkey’s egg.
Some famous psychologist has said that any self-chosen fancy dress is the embodiment of one’s suppressed desires. If so, that gives one a good line on Adam, for he appeared as a very hirsute cave man with a huge mop of horse-hair covering his bald head; an indeterminate garment hiding his pendulous tummy and those spindly legs stained in a manner which hid their whiteness and exaggerated their spindlyness. His line was to say to every available female: “G—rr, grr—I’m Adam, won’t you come and be my little Eve!”
Mrs. Clapp was in plain black evening dress, as usual, though we were given to understand that she would change later for the monologues which she had promised.
Since you are always so sweet and sympathetic about clothes, darling, I may as well describe my own simple costume, which was designed not so much for its beauty as to enable me to refuse dances without going into too many details about my late lamented appendix. For my dress I had sewed a number of old newspapers on to a slip. On my head I wore a saucy little cap cut in the shape of an ink bottle. My swan-like throat was embellished with a necklace of fountain pens intertwined with ticker tape, and my waist was festooned with rosettes of typewriter ribbon and blotting paper. I was a lovely object, as you may well imagine.
There was dancing in the social hall after dinner and it was fun to watch it, if only to see Britannia ruling over her ardent Don Juan—or to watch Adam, the primeval man, hunting out the youngest passengers of the female persuasion and hugging them to his padded chest. Even Wolcott came over and asked for “the honor” of a dance, which was promptly refused. Silvera stood moodily in a corner, smoking a cheroot and scanning the proceedings with smouldering eyes.
After people had amused themselves by bursting a vast number of balloons and hurling multi-colored streamers in their friends’ faces, there was an interval. I was just about to risk my dress on the windy deck when Jennings announced that Miss Marcia Manners, the famous actress, had kindly consented to give two monologues.
We hurried into the dining hall, where a rough and ready stage had been erected. Adam found me a front seat and we eagerly awaited the appearance of Mrs. Clapp—the strange, dark woman who had once held princes and potentates spellbound by her magic art.
Now, Davy, I have seen Cornelia Otis Skinner: I have listened entranced to the performance of Ruth Draper, but I have never imagined that a monologue could be quite as good as this. In a sense it wasn’t really a monologue at all, because, in some subtle manner, one got the impression that the stage was full of people. Without their actually saying a word, one knew exactly what t
he others were doing and thinking through the superb acting of Marcia Manners.
In the first sketch she was a woman, presumably of forty, who whimsically announces that she has decided to divorce her rich husband. Her friends come to her and beg her to reconsider this rash decision. One of them explains that she needs her on various committees; another, after tenders of undying devotion, is shown up as anxious not to miss the delightful dinner parties which her darling Agatha gives so charmingly and so regularly. Another “dear friend,” after expressing much solicitude, finally is forced to admit that she desires above all things to avoid the breaking up of her pleasant intellectual flirtation with Agatha’s husband.
It was a masterpiece of comic satire—a perfect orgy of clever cattiness.
It becomes a bit more serious—even a trifle pathetic—when her débutante daughter enters and points out in the frank, hard-boiled manner of the very young how she will lose caste in her own particular social set if her parents are divorced. She begs her mother to wait, at least, until someone named Harold has popped the question, or until she has landed a job in Lady Queenie’s newly established hat-shop. There is no word of regret at losing her mother’s company.
After a perfectly charming interlude with her little dog—(Davy, I swear you could see its tail wagging!)—the husband appears. At this point Marcia Manners starts to play the dual role, changing from the wife to the husband merely by altering the inflections of her marvelous voice.
Having admitted to several infidelities of which Agatha obviously has had no previous suspicion whatsoever, he implores her to remain with him—at first for the sake of the home, the children and appearances. Finally he tells her that she is the only woman in the world with whom his life would be comfortable, and things are just about to come to a crisis when she calmly announces that she never had the slightest intention of leaving him, but—and these are her final words, Davy—“There comes a point in every woman’s life when she wants to know exactly where she stands with regard to her husband, her friends, her children. I thought this was the best way to find out. And now, darling, I do hope you’re going to be able to take me to Bermuda next month—it’s our silver wedding, you know!”
She received a terrific ovation. People who remembered her in her prime actually stamped their feet with such enthusiasm that I thought we should all be precipitated into the hold—or whatever it is that lies below the dining hall. Even the younger passengers, to whom she was merely a name and on whom a great deal of her gentle irony was doubtless wasted, shouted their appreciation so vociferously that there was no doubt about their sincerity.
After about two minutes she came back for the second act and gave a delightful little piece about an old lady whose income has been cut by the depression and who cannot decide with which of her numerous relatives to go and live. I won’t bore you with a long description of it, Davy, but she finally decided on a scapegrace son—the worst proposition from almost every point of view—simply because his socks need darning and he always offers her cocktails and cigarettes as though she were forty instead of eighty-five.
I was just marveling at the remarkable way in which she could juggle her age, her voice and her personality so competently, when a familiar voice behind me said:
“My God, to think that anyone who can act like that should have been fool enough to quit the stage and marry a man with the name of Clapp!”
It was Earnshaw. He was staring at the empty stage with shining eyes. Dressed in everyday clothes, he had obviously just come up from his stateroom especially to see Marcia Manners act. It was equally obvious that he had not been disappointed.
“Oh, Mr. Earnshavv,” I said, “wasn’t she grand! I’m so glad you didn’t miss it. How about a breather on deck now the dancing is beginning again?” I turned to Adam. “I know you’re dying to dance, Adam, and there’s a blonde little apple over there that’s just waiting to be picked!”
“Grand!” echoed Earnshaw, as the cool breezes from the ocean fanned our heated faces. “Grand is the word! And to think,” he added reminiscently, “that I once imagined that I could act! That’s the first time for two days that poor little Betty has been out of my head, even for a minute. But she’d make you forget anything, that woman!”
I gave him a sympathetic smile and sat down in the deck chair with much rustling of paper. Earnshaw lifted a fragment of my dress and studied the market reports in the financial columns that went to make up my sleeves. “What’s this costume meant to be?” he asked listlessly.
“A newspaper. But don’t be alarmed if those quotations show that stocks are going down. They may be years old for all I know. I gathered them up from the office before leaving.”
He smiled wearily. “You are a reporter, aren’t you?” he asked politely, though his eyes were looking out over the ocean.
“I prefer to be called a journalist, but I hope I smell as sweet by any other title.”
“Oh, yes, of course, I remember now. Someone told me—I think it was Jennings—that you are keeping a journal about everything that has happened so far on board ship with regard to—er—Mr. Lambert’s death and—”
“Quite right,” I replied, “but it’s a very haphazard sort of affair. I’m writing it to amuse myself and to amuse a friend of mine—the man I told you about the other night—it lays no claim to being either exact or scientific.”
“Amuse” was an unfortunate word, Davy, when you consider to whom I was speaking, but Earnshaw apparently missed its significance for he bent eagerly towards me, saying:
“You know, Miss Llewellyn, I’ve been so frightfully upset lately that I’ve been almost out of my mind. I haven’t been able to think clearly or coherently, but I do have—or at least I think I have—a theory—quite a workable theory too. As far as I know, nothing has happened yet to disprove it. It concerns Mr. Lambert’s son, the one who is supposed to be in South America, but of course I can’t say anything definite until I’ve thought it over a bit more and tested out certain aspects of the case. I was wondering if sometime we can go through your journal together and see if there could possibly be anything in this little idea of mine.”
I did not reply, Davy, because at this moment we heard something which made us both stop speaking and hold our breath. The orchestra had stopped playing a few minutes earlier and I had noticed that a couple had come out on deck and taken the chairs a little way from us, just behind an awning, where we could not see them. Being unobserved, they apparently did not realize that they could be overheard. The first sentence was enough to rivet our attention.
“It can’t go on. I can’t stand it!”
The voice was Mrs. Clapp’s; the tone agonized. But the reply was inaudible and obviously came from someone who was not trained to make the voice carry across large theatres. Then Mrs. Clapp’s voice continued:
“But, darling, I thought that you would always stand by me. Whatever my faults in the past, I never imagined this could separate us.”
Though both Earnshaw and I were straining our ears, we were still unable to distinguish the voice of the second speaker. Then Mrs. Clapp spoke again:
“You are the only one I’ve ever really cared for. The only person who understands about Alfred and what I went through with him. The only person—”
But at this point the orchestra struck up again and we could not hear any more. Earnshaw had risen quickly from his seat in a vain attempt to see who the second speaker was. When he returned to me, he whispered excitedly:
“I couldn’t see who she was talking to, but the conversation was very, very interesting, Miss Llewellyn. It all fits in with this little theory of mine about which I was speaking just now. It may not surprise you to know that young Lambert’s name was Alfred.”
“And so was old Mr. Lambert’s,” I whispered back, as I saw Adam marching towards me, waving his arms supposedly in imitation of a gorilla.
“I must have my newspaper,” he cried alcoholically. “The safety-valve even of primitive man�
��”
Earnshaw rose, excusing himself politely, and I went in to watch the dancing for a few moments with Adam before going to bed. Mrs. Clapp, looking about thirty years old, was waltzing around with Jennings. She had kept on her stage dress, of shimmering silver lamé and had seemed to put off her sorrow with her sombre mourning. She smiled gaily to right and left as people called out their congratulations on her performance. It was incredible that she should be the same woman who had gone through the emotional scene which we had overheard on deck a few minutes before.
Daphne was sitting in a corner with Daniels, her trident and helmet discarded, looking rather a hot and wilted Britannia. Mr. Wolcott had given up dancing and was making his way towards the smoking room with three slightly tipsy-looking. business men. Silvera was nowhere to be seen. The party had undoubtedly lost a good deal of its pep. It was stiflingly hot in the social hall.
“Let’s go back on deck,” I said to Adam. “Your fevered brow needs cooling and if I don’t get into the fresh air at once, you’ll have to act up to your costume and carry me off in a fainting condition.”
We went out on deck and took the two seats which Earnshaw and I had just left. Adam lit my cigarette and for a few minutes we gazed up at the starry heavens without speaking. The night was calm and the motion of the boat was hardly perceptible.
“We ought to be seeing the Southern Cross in a day or two now,” he remarked idly. “We get to Georgetown on Sunday.”
“Thank heavens,” I replied. “It will at ieast be a brief respite and we’ll have solid ground under our feet for a while. I’m so sick of all this battle, murder and sudden death—” Then I told Adam about the conversation which Earnshaw and I had just overheard.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, hold your horses, my dear,” he cried, when I had finished enlarging on Mrs. Clapp’s third monologue. “There’s one little point you ought to remember, before you enter all this into that diary of yours. Marcia Manners’ husband—the late lamented Clapp—was also named Alfred. She is, was or has been Mrs. Alfred Clapp. I’m quite positive about it.”
