Murder on the Caronia

by Conrad Allen

  “I believe we can.”

  “Oh?”

  “In fact,” said Dillman, “we may well find that it’s linked to the murder. I have this feeling that the sergeant’s heavy-handed treatment of offenders was his downfall. One man he arrested, Sidney Nicholls, ended up in hospital for a fortnight. Inspector Redfern admitted the sergeant had a short temper. Nicholls was not the only prisoner to feel his punches, it seems.”

  “Offenders have to be restrained at times.”

  “This went well beyond restraint, Mr. Taggart. According to John Heritage, the sergeant boasted about the way he’d beaten Nicholls up. Arrest is one thing. Gratuitous violence is another.”

  “Oh, I agree.”

  “You only have to look at Webb’s case. It took three members of the crew to overpower him but that’s all they did. When he was swearing at them like that, they must have been tempted to knock him senseless. Instead, they acted responsibly.”

  “That’s what they’re trained to do, Mr. Dillman.”

  “So was Sergeant Mulcaster.”

  Taggart nodded in consent. “What was Sidney Nicholls’s offense?”

  “He was involved in drugs and prostitution.”

  “That might explain it, then.”

  “What?”

  “The reason the sergeant got too violent,” said Taggart. “When I talked to Inspector Redfern yesterday, he told me that Sergeant Mulcaster had an obsessive hatred of drug peddlers. He’d seen the effects of addiction on the son of a friend, a young man in his twenties, who died of an overdose. It made him determined to strike back at anyone involved in the trade.”

  “The best way to do that is to lock up the dealers in prison, not to take the law into your own hands. But it supports my theory,” Dillman said thoughtfully. “Nicholls might be the worst case, but there were other drug peddlers who doubtless felt the wrath of Sergeant Mulcaster. Word spreads quickly in the criminal underworld.”

  “You feel the sergeant was a marked man?”

  “Let’s just say, his reputation did not endear him to anyone involved in smuggling or selling drugs. That’s what makes me certain that the tip-off you received was genuine. We have someone aboard who’s trying to take drugs into England. And that same person,” Dillman concluded, “may well be the man who killed Sergeant Mulcaster and tossed his body overboard.”

  “It would simplify matters, Mr. Dillman.”

  “Exactly. If we catch the smuggler, we arrest the murderer as well.”

  Taggart sighed. “It’s going to be more difficult than catching pickpockets.”

  “I know,” said Dillman, “but we do have one possible lead.”

  “Do we?”

  “I think so, Mr. Taggart. It concerns that funeral casket.”

  “Oh, yes. It belonged to a Mr. Leach, as I recall.”

  “Ramsey Leach,” explained Dillman. “He’s a mortician from England. Yet when I asked him if he had bought anything during his vacation in the States, he denied it. I don’t think something as large as a funeral casket could slip his mind.”

  “Why did he lie to you?”

  “I don’t know, but it wasn’t his only lie. Mr. Leach insisted that he always went to bed early yet I’ve twice seen him leave his cabin around midnight. In fact, he was behaving so furtively last night that I followed him.”

  “And?”

  “He made his way to another cabin and was let in by someone.”

  “You think Ramsey Leach may be our man?”

  “I’m not sure,” Dillman confessed. “I’ve been biding my time until I can get more evidence. On the face of it, he’s a most unlikely person. Quiet, refined, and very reserved. With a gun in his hand, he might be a very different proposition.”

  “Would he be strong enough to push the sergeant over the rail?”

  “He’s wiry rather than muscular but he’s used to handling dead bodies in his profession. He would have had no problem. Mr. Leach is an odd character. He has an expression of professional solemnity most of the time. When I bumped into him in second class, however,” recalled Dillman, “he was almost jaunty. It was not the face he wears at funerals, Mr. Taggart.”

  “If he is the man we’re after, he obviously has an accomplice.”

  “That was my belief all along.”

  “What do you think we should do?”

  “If you can loan me the master key again, I’d like to take a look in his cabin when he’s not around. The stewards would have peeped in there when we did our earlier search but they were really looking for the stolen firearms. I’ll conduct a more thorough search.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “What about the cabin he went to last night?”

  “I’ll check that out as well, Mr. Taggart,” said Dillman. “I got the number. Nobody has searched in there properly before.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a single cabin occupied by a middle-aged woman. When we did our sweep of the ship, we concentrated on able-bodied men of a certain age. That may turn out to have been a mistake.”

  “Take the key with my blessing, Mr. Dillman,” said the purser, extracting it from a drawer. “We’ll have to make sure neither of them returns to their cabin while you’re there. They may turn out to be completely innocent and that could leave us both with red faces.” He handed the key over then reached for the passenger list. “We must avoid that.”

  “We will,” Dillman assured him. “I’ll identify the pair of them to Genevieve and she can keep an eye on each of them in turn.”

  “What’s the number of the cabin Leach visited last night?”

  “Thirty-three.”

  Taggart studied his list. “And the lady’s name?”

  “Miss Pamela Clyne.”

  “Yes, here she is,” said the purser, pointing. His eyes bulged. “Good Lord!”

  “What the trouble?”

  “She occupies the cabin next to Mrs. Anstruther!”

  ______

  Theodore Wright fulfilled his promise. Having agreed to teach Isadora Singleton how to ride a bicycle, he found a place where they would be unobserved. The long passageway ran between cabins occupied by stewards and cooking staff. Since all of them would be working that afternoon, Wright could begin his instruction in peace. The passageway was wide enough for him to stand beside the bicycle, yet narrow enough for the rider to steady herself with a hand on the wall. Isadora was filled with glee. She not only would learn to do something that had always been denied her, she would be brushing up against the remarkable young man with whom she had become infatuated.

  “How do we start, Theo?” she asked.

  “It helps if you sit in the saddle,” he joked.

  “Turn around, then.” When his back was turned, she hitched up her skirt and mounted the bicycle. “You can look now.”

  He swung round. “Okay Izzy.”

  “Nobody’s ever called me that before,” she said with a giggle.

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “I love it.”

  “Then it’ll be my special name for you,” he said affably. “Okay. This is what we do,” he went on, gripping the machine by the saddle and the handlebars. “Put your feet on the pedals and turn them very slowly.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “Try it, Izzy.”

  She obeyed his instructions and the bicycle inched forward. He held it steady.

  “We’re moving,” she cried. “We’re doing it!”

  “We’ll do it time and again to build up your confidence, getting a little faster each time. Then,” he said, “when you feel good and ready, I’ll let go.”

  “Don’t do that, Theo. Please.”

  “I can’t keep doing this forever.”

  “But I like it.”

  When they got to the end of the passageway, she was quivering with excitement. It was not simply the fact that she had cycled—albeit with assistance—a distance of several yards. She had also felt Wright�
�s shoulder pressing gently against her. They turned the machine around and went back in the opposite direction, picking up more speed this time. On their third run, Isadora felt able to push even harder on the pedals.

  “Well done, Izzy,” he said. “You’ve gotten the hang of it.”

  “I knew that I could do it.”

  “Keep moving and you won’t fall off.”

  “Not when you’re holding me, Theo.”

  “Enjoying it?”

  “I could do this all day.”

  “By the end of the voyage, you’ll be riding around the deck with me.”

  “Oh, I could never go that fast.”

  “That’s nothing, Izzy,” he said. “When I race in France, I’ll have to go ten times faster than that. It’s not as bad as it sounds. If you stay on the pack, the other riders help you along.”

  “Not the way that you’re helping me along,” she said with a grin.

  It was on the seventh journey down the passageway that he decided to let go of the handlebars, supporting her only by the saddle. Isadora was amazed she still kept going. She had a wonderful sense of achievement. It was only momentary. Losing her confidence, she let out a cry of fear. The machine began to wobble badly. Wright was equal to the emergency. Running along beside her, he grabbed the handlebars and slowed the bicycle down, but Isadora was not only interested in learning to ride now. With her beloved right alongside her, she pretended to lose control completely and fell off the saddle toward him. Wright used one arm to catch her and brought the machine to a halt with the other. He gave her a friendly smile.

  “I guess that’s as far as we can go for now, Izzy,” he said. “Are you okay?

  “Oh, yes, Theo,” she replied. “It’s been amazing.”

  ______

  The search of Ramsey Leach’s cabin revealed nothing unusual. Dillman was swift but thorough. He looked in every corner of the cabin and the bedroom, kneeling down to look under the bunk and using a long arm to explore the top of the wardrobe. Leach’s clothing was sober and conventional. All Dillman found by way of proof that the man had lied to him were some souvenir photographs of Niagara Falls. He could not imagine why the mortician had visited such a place. Before he left, Dillman picked up the small case he had seen Leach carrying the previous night. It was locked and felt strangely heavy. The detective used the blade of his penknife to jiggle away until the catches eventually flicked open. Inside the case were some flannel pajamas and a striped dressing gown but it was the object underneath them that interested Dillman. It explained why the case had been so heavy.

  Ramsey Leach owned a large revolver.

  After a good night’s sleep, Inspector Redfern felt markedly better. Though he was still exercised by the murder of his colleague, he did not neglect the prisoners. He allotted two whole hours to Carrie Peterson in the morning, going through the details once again with painstaking care. In the afternoon, he turned his attention to John Heritage. Contrary to what the inspector had predicted, the prisoner did not gloat over Mulcaster’s death.

  “Do you have any idea who the killer may be?” asked Heritage.

  “Not as yet.”

  “Daniel Webb claims that he was a witness.”

  “Pay no attention to what he told you,” Redfern said irritably. “Mr. Webb is something of a menace. I can see why the immigration authorities turned him down. And forget about Sergeant Mulcaster. You have a murder charge of your own to answer.”

  “Granted, Inspector. I just wanted you to know that, although I didn’t like the man in any way, I’m profoundly sorry to hear what happened to him.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Heritage.”

  “I’m also grateful that you rescued me from the foul cell.”

  “You can always be sent back there,” warned Redfern. “So can Miss Peterson.”

  “Have you spoken to her today?”

  “At some length.”

  “How is she?”

  “As well as can be expected.”

  “You make her sound as if she’s ill,” Heritage said anxiously. “Is she? What are her symptoms? I’ve got drugs in my case. If you let me have it, I’ll prescribe something for her. I know that she suffers from headaches.”

  “Miss Peterson is not ill, I assure you.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “She’s not enjoying the experience of being locked up, that’s all.”

  “Neither am I, Inspector.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have committed a crime.”

  Heritage paused. “It was wrong of me to steal from the pharmacy account like that,” he said at length. “But it was only money that was owed to me. Stephen had been putting his hand in the till for years.”

  “I’m not so much concerned with the financial irregularities at the pharmacy,” said Redfern. “It’s the murder of your wife I’m here to discuss.”

  “For the hundredth time,” said Heritage, controlling his impatience, “I did not kill Winifred. So what is there to discuss?”

  “The fact that you haven’t shown the slightest grief. You admit that you disliked Sergeant Mulcaster yet you managed to find some sympathy for him. Why is it so difficult to express remorse over the death of your wife?”

  Heritage heaved a sigh. “Are you married, Inspector?”

  “Very happily.”

  “Any children?”

  “Two.”

  “Does your wife mind you being a policeman?”

  “At times,” conceded the other. “She knows there are grave risks in this job. I’m not looking forward to telling her what happened to Sergeant Mulcaster, I know that. It will only alarm her. Mostly, however,” he went on, “my wife is proud of what I do.”

  “Rightly so.”

  “But we’re here to talk about your domestic life and not mine.”

  “Yours is relevant,” argued Heritage, “because your experience may help you to understand mine. You have three things I lacked. A happy marriage, children, and a wife who respected your occupation. My marriage was a living hell, Inspector. It would have been cruel to bring children into that house. As for my work, Winifred spent our whole life together blaming me for not being a doctor or a hospital consultant. Being a pharmacist was not impressive enough for her, especially as I was the junior partner. My wife was the worst kind of snob,” he said. “She always wanted a bigger house, better clothes, and a higher status in life.”

  “And she poured scorn on your place of work, you say?”

  “Without cease.”

  “All the more reason to get your revenge by using the resources of the pharmacy.”

  “No, Inspector.”

  “That poison was bought for a purpose.”

  “I explained that. I contemplated suicide.”

  “But you drew back at the last moment.”

  “Yes,” said Heritage, troubled by the memory. “I wanted to escape and I wanted to hurt my wife, but I saw that wasn’t the right or just way to do it. Carrie—Miss Peterson—would have been desolate. She talked me out of it. That’s why I held back.”

  “Yet you kept the poison in your house.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I wish I’d thrown it away.”

  “I think you do know, Mr. Heritage. You were using it to kill your wife.”

  “That’s simply not true, Inspector!”

  “Then how did she come to die? Somebody murdered her.”

  “Well, it wasn’t either of us.”

  Redfern watched him in silence for a few moments. He was disappointed that he had been unable to break down the man’s resistance. Even after intense questioning over a number of days, the pharmacist clung to the same story.

  “Do you know what Miss Peterson suggested?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “It was when she was interviewed the second time by Miss Masefield, the other detective on board. She works with Mr. Dillman. I hoped that a woman might be able to coax fresh information out of M
iss Peterson.”

  Heritage became wary. “And did she?”

  “Oh, yes. A number of discrepancies came to light. But it was Miss Peterson’s theory that interested us the most. Even though it sounds more like a clever excuse to me. I’m surprised you haven’t suggested it yourself, Mr. Heritage.”

  “Suggested what?”

  “That nobody else was involved. In short,” said Redfern, “your wife was so eager to incriminate you both, that she used the poison to commit suicide in a way that would point to you and Miss Peterson as her killers.”

  John Heritage looked stunned at first but he recovered quickly and even smiled.

  “That’s it, Inspector,” he said, as if he’d just been absolved of the charge. “My wife must have found where I hid the poison. Winifred was always searching my things in the hope of finding letters from Miss Peterson. She’d have done anything to spoil our happiness. This explains it, doesn’t it? Winifred killed herself in order to get back at us.”

  ______

  Genevieve Masefield had been frankly astonished at the task assigned to her by Dillman. Given the evidence, she was prepared to accept that the English undertaker merited investigation, but she found it impossible to believe Pamela Clyne could be connected with him in any way. The woman had been too shy even to speak to a man of her own accord, let alone invite one into her cabin. It seemed incredible. When Ramsey Leach had been pointed out to her, he was reclining in a chair on the boat deck, reading a book. It was easy to keep him under observation. Dillman walked casually past her some time later and she knew the search was complete. Her attention could now shift to the other suspect.

  Pamela Clyne was taking tea in the lounge with Mrs. Cooney and Cecilia Robart. Sitting near the door, Genevieve glanced through a magazine while watching them out of the corner of her eye. Her earlier impression was confirmed. Everything about Pamela Clyne suggested a nervous spinster who found conversation difficult and the presence of strangers worrying. Mrs. Cooney was using vigorous gestures and Mrs. Robart was also animated as she spoke, but their companion sat there meekly in her seat and contributed little beyond nods, smiles, and the occasional affirmative remarks. Taken at face value, Pamela Clyne seemed as likely to be the accomplice of a drug smuggler as the ship’s cat. Genevieve did not, however, dismiss the notion. She had known women before who were capable of disguising their true character completely in order to evade detection. And as demure as she appeared, Pamela Clyne had found the courage to cross the Atlantic in both directions. Genevieve wondered what her two companions would think if they realized the reticent Miss Clyne was under suspicion.