S.S. Murder

by Q. Patrick

  “The sky’s the limit,” murmured Adam in my ear as time and time again Mr. Hirsch failed to lob high enough to go over Daphne’s head.

  “Mr. Da-a-aniels,” sang out the ship’s messenger and two more radiograms were added to my pile.

  “Congratulations seems to be a bit previous,” remarked Mr. Hirsch, facetiously, as the second set went to our friends and Daniels stopped for a second to count his envelopes.

  “He must be playing the market,” said some wag, as they took their places for the final set.

  There’s no need for me to go into every point of the next game, Davy. Suffice it to say that the Daniels-Demarest household will be enriched by yet another useful article in the shape (doubtless) of a silver cruet or a salad spoon. If Daphne goes on winning things at this rate no one will ever be able to say that she went to her husband empty-handed. Seriously though, she played a magnificent game and I shall always think of her in a gym costume against a background of sea and sky, leaping, running and hurling like something on the Acropolis. She was unique—graceful and strangely beautiful. In fact, if you take her away from her surroundings of undersized men and women, she is a super-creature, a young goddess—a thing to be loved and wooed even as Daniels has (apparently) loved and wooed her. I admire his good taste. After all, it is only a thin, niggardly convention which demands that women should be pretty and reasonably small. I have a distinct presentiment that the angels in heaven will be beautiful in the large, sexless and somewhat athletic manner of Daphne Demarest.

  But I am digressing, darling, and though the deck tennis was fascinating, it is not half so thrilling as the latest developments in the great game of hunting Mr. Robinson.

  As soon as they had won the championship, Daniels left his inamorata, and came over to me to collect his radiograms. We left the spectators who were thronging round to offer their congratulations and retreated to a quiet corner. There I watched him read his messages with a serious, puckered face. After looking them over he gave vent to a long whistle.

  “Well?” I inquired. “Am I to be allowed in on things at this point?”

  He shoved the envelopes in his pocket before replying. “Miss Llewellyn,” he said seriously, “I certainly owe you a debt of gratitude. Last night I could not believe the evidence of my own senses. Then, as I sat up reading your journal, I began to see daylight. Your account is so clear, and—ah —complete, that I cannot believe that you do not know—that you have not; known all along who is—er—responsible for the deaths of Mr. Lambert and his niece.”

  “Mr. Daniels!” I exclaimed. “You are either flattering or insulting me. I have no more idea who Robinson is than the man in the moon. It wouldn’t surprise me if he were Captain Fortescue—yourself or—or—the ship’s cook! I’m waiting for you to tell me.”

  He shuffled his feet and looked around him apprehensively. “No, no, not yet. I dare not,” he whispered. “You are still in terrible danger, Miss Llewellyn. In fact my blood runs cold when I think of what frightful danger you have been in throughout this trip. The only thing that has saved you is your ignorance—” he coughed apologetically. “If I were to tell you now the name of—er—this person, your face would betray your knowledge and you might never even reach your stateroom alive. You remember how the captain told you once that it was dangerous for you to know too much. He was right. It is, as I just said, your ignorance that has saved you, because the ‘hunch’ you mention is perfectly correct; you have the fatal clue to Robinson in your keeping. But there is a great deal to know. I myself feel nervous when I think of the amount of knowledge I have unearthed in the past few hours.” He tapped the radiograms in his pocket.

  “But aren’t you ever going to make any disclosures?” I cried impetuously. “Are you going to keep us all in ignorance until we reach Georgetown?”

  Daniels jumped up to his feet and gave me a disarming smile. “No,” he said, “In fact I’m going to make you a promise, Miss Llewellyn—I promise you that you shall know at least two hours ahead of anyone else. How’s that for a fair offer? But you’ve got to promise me something in return.”

  “I’ve got to the stage where I’d promise anything, Mr. Daniels.”

  “All right. Then you must do exactly as I say. I want you to stay up here exactly where you are until you hear the gong for lunch. During lunch you will receive an invitation for tea at 4:30. You will accept it. As soon as the meal is over—and without speaking a word to anyone, that is, anyone in private,—I want you to go straight down to your stateroom. Is that dear?”

  “Sounds very mysterious.”

  “Not at all. I am just taking ordinary care for your safety. Later on you will see why. I don’t want you to be alone with anyone until 4:30 today. After that, there will, so I hope, be no more danger. Do you promise?”

  I nodded.

  “All right. After lunch go and wait in your stateroom until I come. Lock your door and don’t open it to anyone. I shall rap out ‘God Save the King’ on the panels with my knuckles. You know the tune? Tum—tum—tee—ta—tum—tum—. Whatever happens, be sure you don’t open the door to anyone else. There’ll be no guard in the corridor this afternoon. He’ll be busy doing something else—something for me. As I was saying, I shall bring your journal and I will tell you the name of the—er—party concerned. I want you to spend the afternoon going through your record and checking my theories. I shall mark certain passages that seemed important to me. At half past four I’ll come and fetch you—but, as you value your life do not open the door to anyone—anyone, mind—until I come. Remember ‘God Save the King’—nothing else!”

  The little man’s tone was so intensely serious that I could do nothing but acquiesce. Besides, you can probably imagine, darling, that I am not anxious for a repetition of yesterday’s little pantomime. I may be a bit thick but it’s quite obvious, even to my somewhat limited intelligence, that Daniels believes Robinson to be one of us. And so I’ll probably be better off by myself until we know exactly which one of us he is. And I’m afraid it’s equally obvious that he is someone with whom I might, under normal circumstances, spend the afternoon.

  All of which opens up vista upon vista of hideous suspicion—

  Stateroom,

  Sunday, November 22nd.

  2:15. P. M.

  “Well, Davy, here I am locked in my stateroom, waiting for the sound of ‘God Save the King’ on the panels outside—waiting for my little man like patient Griselda.

  It may interest you to know that I’ve been here only ten minutes and yet three people have knocked at my door already, or, to be accurate, someone or other has knocked on three separate occasions. I was a good obedient girl and didn’t say a word. I sat perfectly still, just pretending I wasn’t there, so of course I don’t know who it was. Once the receding footsteps sounded like a man’s—another time I thought I heard a woman’s voice whisper my name—but I couldn’t be sure. I was far too scared to speak or poke my head out. Daniels has filled me with such an unholy mistrust of all my little playmates that I find myself looking in the mirror and asking whether, even I, Mary Llewellyn, am entirely beyond suspicion.

  And while I am waiting for my lord, I may as well tell you what happened at lunch time. There was an envelope at every place daintily disposed in the folds of the napkin. I opened mine with trembling fingers. I’ll copy it out for you.

  COMMANDER HORATIO FORTESCUE, R.N.R. requests the pleasure of Miss MARY LLEWELLYN’S company to tea at four-thirty

  on

  Sunday, November Twenty-second 170

  Well, that was exactly as Daniels had prophesied. I was just about to slip the card nonchalantly into my bosom, when I noticed some small writing on the corner of the card. Printed in tiny capitals I read the extraordinary legend:

  TO MEET MR. ROBINSON

  Percy Daniels.

  Immediately I hid the thing from sight as though it were something obscene and shameful. Then I glanced guiltily around. The others had opened their envelopes and w
ere looking at the invitations with serene brows. Try as I would, however, I was unable to catch a glimpse of Adam’s card.

  Lunch was a tense, hurried sort of affair. We gobbled our food and all looked at each other with furtive distrust while we ate. Conversation was fitful and jerky. Even Adam seemed preoccupied. I was glad to escape to my stateroom.

  And here I sit till 4:30. So far nothing has happened except the knocks on the door aforesaid. Patience, Mary—

  Ah, there it is!

  Tum—tum—tee—ta—tum—tum. Even the British National Anthem barely gives me courage to open the door.

  God Save little Daniels!

  An Hour Later,

  Stateroom.

  Well, Davy, he’s come and gone, and here I am sitting with my journal in front of me and a maëlstrom of conflicting emotions in my head.

  Or, to put my state of mind in plain English—I am simply staggered. I just don’t know what to say or do or think—I only know that my reason still refuses to accept the awful truth which has just come to me through Daniels.

  At this point, darling, I want to stop and talk to you a moment. Tomorrow, God willing, I shall pack up this journal and send it off to you. There will be one more installment after this. That, I hope, will be written tonight and thus ring down the curtain on the fearful tragedies in which we have all been involved. But, as a matter of fact, the full story has been told already in these scribbled pages. Without realizing it, I have placed all the necessary threads in your hands. If you are as intelligent as I believe you to be, you will have guessed long ago the identity of the murderer of Mr. Lambert and Betty. Indeed, as Daniels has just pointed out to me, any person of super-intelligence reading this journal might have reached the right solution on page 19. (I’ve numbered the pages for your benefit.) For, on that page there is one word, one little word of four letters, which must have crept in out of my sub-conscious mind, but which, none the less, gives the key to the whole situation.

  And now, my dear, if you haven’t guessed already, go back at this point and read page 19 over four or five times. Then pit your brains against Daniels’.

  Of course, Davy, I should have known all along, especially considering the way I pride myself on always spotting the criminal in a detective story. I may be fooling myself this time, but I honestly think that if I had been reading this in a book I should have guessed the solution. Somehow when you’re living in the atmosphere of crime, it is very different from voluntarily steeping yourself in it for an hour or two by your own fireside. Your faculties seem to be alert enough, but in real life the issue is confused in a manner that the cleverest writer cannot imitate in a story. Your impressions of the actors involved, your instinctive belief in other people’s good faith—not constant, heaven knows, but pretty fundamental after all—all such considerations keep you off that straightforward path from clue to clue which the detective fiction always seems to follow.

  Then again, one can only believe in the things one sees and hears, and the things which we have seen and heard on board this ship have been no help in arriving at any reasonable solution. Several people have been nearly—so very nearly—correct with their theories. Everyone, however, seems to have missed several big, outstanding points, and a miss in this case has been far more misleading than a mile. But the murderer has taken good care to get us all thoroughly muddled. That was part of the job.

  So much so that when Daniels crept into my stateroom an hour ago and whispered a name in my ear, I burst out laughing and told him that love—or something—must have gone to his head. In fact I laughed him out of the cabin and it was only after he had gone, when I gave the matter earnest, sober thought, that I realized there might be some truth in his ghastly accusation.

  Immediately I snatched up my journal and read through the passages he had marked (I shall rub them out before I send it off. You are quite clever enough to do without them.) Gradually I began to see the evidence piling up against the guilty party. Little by little I realized what an important rôle my journal will have played in this case; and by degrees it started to dawn on me why Robinson had been prepared to take such frightful risks in order to get the manuscript.

  Davy, it is his death warrant!

  And the word brings me to the question of my own personal danger. I came on this trip to rest up after my operation. I expected tranquil, care-free days. I expected safety. As a matter of fact I might as well have bivouacked in the most dangerous of New York’s traffic intersections or pitched my tent among a tribe of Polynesian head-hunters. Unthinkingly I have walked on swords and played with dynamite. Death has been my companion every moment of this voyage. As Daniels said, it’s only my blessed ignorance that has saved me. I tremble even now at the thought of leaving my stateroom and going all the way up to the captain’s quarters at 4:30 this afternoon. Luckily I shall have an escort.

  For there is still danger, Davy. Every time I hear a sound in the corridor outside I look at my door and reflect how, even though locked, it is a precious thin protection against a desperate criminal. I look in my mirror and see once again the face of Robinson as I saw it yesterday. I feel the loathsome pressure of his lips against mine, and I think now, even at this eleventh hour, if he could get hold of my journal and destroy it, he might be able to save his neck. And then I think of those knocks on the door that I heard earlier in the afternoon. Were they the innocent inquiry of some friend—or were they—were they Robinson coming back?

  And now, perhaps, you see, Davy, why I dare not write the name of the murderer until he is safely locked behind bolt and bar. Not even to you, my beloved, will I breathe the secret —at least not yet.

  I don’t want to tell you anyhow until the latest possible moment. Isn’t that the correct technique for detective stories? You, as the reader, are supposed to exercise your ingenuity to the penultimate paragraph and then be amazed when you read the name in the last line. And the joke of it is that this journal—which started out as a series of love letters—might be dished up as quite a passable mystery story if one had the knack of arrangement. Not that I’d ever dare to put it out under my own name. I have my reputation to consider as a truthful journalist, and no one would ever believe that the perfectly fantastic happenings on board this ship had even a nodding acquaintance with the truth. And yet, though my climaxes are probably placed all wrong and the writing is perfectly appalling, all the ingredients are here. There have been a few false trails, but I have laid them in innocence and good faith. Yet, through it all, the path of truth has stretched out amazingly straight and steady like the shining furrow behind the stern of a liner. Circumstances have blinded me so that I’ve been unable to see it myself, but it’s been there for all the time, Davy. I wonder if you have seen it—I wonder!

  And now, having digressed to this extent, I suppose I should go back to Daniels and his final instructions. It’s nearly half past four and he’ll be here at any minute. I’m to bring my journal with me and be prepared for what will probably be the most exciting hour in my life.

  Davy, there is to be a dénouement—an exposé—I can’t think of any more French words to express it (they’re bad copy anyhow), but still, it does sound as though it’s all going to be very dramatic. Daniels says that it will start off like an ordinary tea or cocktail party and that nothing must be done to alarm Robinson or give him any idea that the game is up.

  After that—well, it will have to wait. I hear heavy footsteps in the corridor outside. Daniels with two stewards! They have come to act as my bodyguard, and I shall proceed to the captain’s quarters like a European potentate or the Queen of Sheba.

  Room for Mary Llewellyn and her journal—!

  Writing Room,

  Sunday, November 22nd.

  9:00 P.M.

  At last, my darling, there is a period of tranquillity in which I can recollect the emotions of this afternoon. The shouting and the tumult have died. The ship seems strangely quiet. I am alone in this room.

  The other passengers
are all on deck trying to catch a glimpse of land or lights or some other outward and visible sign that the first stage of our journey is almost done. Ever since dinner the sea has been full of flotsam; strange, exotic sea-fowl have screamed at us as they swooped down on titbits belched forth from the ship’s sides; the water is no longer a clear ultramarine; it is turbid and green—indubitable signs that land is near. We reach Georgetown at 6:30 tomorrow morning.

  But the whole uncontaminated evening is before me, Davy, and I will not stint you on the last act of our little melodrama. You shall have it all to the minutest detail. My journalese shall have full rein. I leave you to judge whether or not the subject is worthy.

  It seems like a month since I was sitting in my cabin writing to you last. In reality it was less than five hours ago when Daniels came down to take me to the captain’s tea party. A great many people (including myself) must have lived through a whole lifetime since then.

  Well, darling, picture me as you last saw me marching solemnly along with three men, my journal under my arm. At the captain’s door it is handed over to the steward and Daniels and I enter alone, trying to look unconcerned. The stage is all set. There are teacups, a cocktail shaker, and highball glasses. The guests are seated and seem to be talking together quite merrily. Mrs. Lambert is being entertained on the sofa by Captain Fortescue. She looks pale and forlorn but is obviously making an effort. Silvera sits on her right—equally obviously making no effort whatsoever. In one corner Daphne is obscuring all the light from a porthole while Jennings plies her politely with tea and toast. Earnshaw is seated with his back to the purple curtains and is talking to Adam, who jumps up as I enter and knocks over the chair which he has vacated for my benefiit. There are rather too many grim-faced stewards (including our old friends Trubshaw and Sam Bumstead) to pass round the cakes and sandwiches, but, apart from that, everything is calm and natural. There is no hint of the storm that is brewing in those peaceful teacups.