by Frances
“The way I hear it,” the other man said, “some woman shot herself.”
It had started; here was evidence that it had started. It had been, for all the discretion enjoined on Captain Cunningham—practiced insofar as was possible—inevitable that it would start. And now it eddied through the ship—moved softly, changing as it moved, from deck chair to deck chair. At the bar it passed, in multiple forms, from Respectable Rifleman to Respectable Rifleman, as they stood shoulder to shoulder. It swirled softly among the tables in the smoke room, and among those—generally older, and more sedate—who frequented the Grand Lounge, from which windows, high above the ship’s hull, opened to the sea. It swirled more rapidly in the small cocktail lounge off the dining saloon. In the motion picture theater which opened off A Deck, it was more exciting than the movie. It took new forms in the crew’s quarters, and the kitchen was full of it.
The ship, steaming prettily into ever warmer waters, suffused with rumor. This was rather pleasant than otherwise for the hundred and forty-odd passengers. It is not always that, to the divertissements offered on a pleasure cruise, the spice of mysterious violence is thus generously added. The managing director of the line had been wrong. Everybody enjoyed it very much, although nobody knew quite what “it” was.
Where it had begun, nobody knew that afternoon, or could find out later. Nobody made great effort; once rumor began, its point of origin became of little importance. Perhaps Stewardess Felicia Brown, although she had been warned, could not restrain dark hints to Mrs. Palsey and Mrs. Fish and young Miss Pratt, the flibbertigibbet, when they met in their crowded cabin below decks. Perhaps an assistant purser, overwhelmed with knowledge so dramatic, had let some of it trickle to his friends. Perhaps, while he could still talk—he could not, yet, talk again—young Cholly had talked too much.
By the time strangers were telling strangers, and so engendering that relaxed good fellowship so to be prized on holiday, the rumor would not have been recognized by its maker. That somebody had fallen overboard was, inevitably, the simplest version, and the one most often repeated. It became known for a fact, by those who did not have other and more factual facts, that the ship had, during the night, in darkness, turned back on its course in search of a—it was to be hoped—floating passenger. The floater, but by now sinker (since the fact was that the search had been hopeless from the start), was that blond girl who is always in the swimming pool, the poor man with a mourning band around his arm (in his case it had been suicide) and that little boy of seven who was always running into people. (A small, but darkly determined, group stuck to this theory to the end, and told friends afterward in New York that it had happened and was, if anything, too good for him.)
But it was also a fact that the dark man in B 29 had killed the woman he was traveling with, and it was all very well to say she had been his wife, but if you really wanted to know the truth—And the chief bar steward had hanged himself. That was why nobody had seen him for hours. And the staff captain had throttled Miss Springer, the social hostess. But it was really one of the girls in the group of entertainers—the one who tried to sing like Dinah Shore, and so noticeably failed—who had been throttled. By the man who played the piano. On the other hand, it wasn’t violent death at all. People would believe anything. For those who really wanted to know it was—whisper, whisper. And, whisper, whisper. “But how dreadful,” they said in the Grand Lounge, over teacups. “Sort of thing that happens all the time,” they told one another, man to man, in the smoke room.
Now and then they came closer. It was that New York policeman with the pretty wife—the one who pretended he was merely on vacation. Actually he was after a gangster, who was on the ship in disguise, and he had been killed by the gangster—a big gambling man from Chicago. No, he had killed the gangster. It was being hushed up. The body—whose ever body it was—was in the meat refrigerator. No, it was in one of the freezers. No—all it really came to was: there had been an outbreak of typhus—no, beriberi—in the crew. The captain’s steward, the one who waited on the captain’s table, had died of it. That’s why you didn’t see him any more.
Rumor was a haze in the Carib Queen—a haze in public rooms and passageways and in staterooms. Warm breezes across boat deck and sun deck did not blow the haze away. Respected Captain J. R. Folsom, about three o’clock, groped his way through it to stand, as if by accident, near the Norths, who still reclined. Jerry, all thought of exercise abandoned, did not even twitch. It was with some difficulty that he opened his eyes when the respected captain, somewhat morosely, said, “Good afternoon.”
“Huh?” Jerry said, as Pam, who had been oiling said, “Isn’t it a pretty one?”
“Oh,” Jerry said. “Afternoon, captain.” He moved his feet, invitingly. Folsom sat down on the end of the deck chair. He wore a bright sports shirt, and slacks of green. His face was red, from nature and from sun. But the gaiety of color did not, it seemed, reach his eyes, which were coldly gray—if a little bloodshot. Jerry’s deck chair gave somewhat under Folsom’s stocky weight.
“Hear something’s happened,” Folsom said. “You hear what it was?”
They had heard several of the versions. Jerry hesitated.
“Yes,” Pam said. “We know what it was, Mr. Folsom.”
Folsom said, “Oh.” Then he said, “Supposed you did. Being with this policeman and everything. Although they told me to keep it under my hat.”
He continued to look at them, still with vestiges of doubt.
“Mr. Marsh,” Pam said. “He was killed with your sword.”
“Wait a minute,” Folsom said. “What do you mean ‘my sword’?”
“Used to cut your son’s wedding cake,” Pam said. “Wasn’t it yours?”
“The company’s,” Folsom said. He looked sad. “Don’t know that it matters much,” he said. “Just keeping the record straight, like they say.” He paused. “Since you know,” he said, “I suppose you know about me? That I went along to find him and blundered into things? When he didn’t show up for a drink?”
“Yes,” Jerry said.
“Been trying to remember,” Folsom said. “Weren’t you in the bar last night? Before the, dining room opened?” He snapped his fingers. “Bought you a drink,” he said, with triumph. “Standing there with the poor guy and said to myself, ‘There’s a nice couple. Buy them a drink.’” He shook his head. “Couple of hours later,” he said, “he was dead, the poor guy. Makes you think.”
They agreed it made them think. Folsom mopped his forehead with a handkerchief.
“What gets you,” Folsom said, “I figured him for a hundred per cent. Never happened to run into a man in his line of work. Know the police commissioner at home, of course. Shows up at Rotary, like everybody else. But what they call a private eye.”
He looked at them, and again he shook his head, as if all of it—the fact that a man may be dead only hours after one talks to him; that people may not fit into the patterns one cuts for them—bewildered him entirely.
Only—Pam North thought. Only—his eyes really aren’t like that at all. Not when he forgets to be one hundred per cent Rotarian. But she stopped herself, thinking that now she was doing it. She was trying to push people into patterns she had shaped for them. What do I know about Rotarians? Pam asked herself, and was answered by dead silence. Perhaps all of them have shrewd gray eyes.
“Read about them in books,” Folsom said. “You know, Marsh didn’t even carry a gun. Told me that. Know how sometimes you meet a guy and get to talking? Say more, maybe, than you would to some guy you’d known all your life? Learn a lot that way. Bet he knows—” He stopped. “Bet he heard more, anyway, about paper boxes than he’d ever heard.”
They both nodded their heads, it not being apparent that they were expected to speak.
“One thing he told me,” Folsom said. “He’d been letting on he was retired. Well, he wasn’t. He was here—right here on this boat—to try to find somebody. A woman, I gathered. This Captain Weigand
of yours know about that?”
Now his gray eyes were suddenly very sharp and shrewd indeed.
“Because I was thinking,” Folsom said, without waiting for an answer. “Suppose a man in his business finds somebody who doesn’t want to be found?”
He looked at them expectantly—as, Pam thought, one might who had planted a seed and was waiting for it to come up.
“The point would be,” Pam North said, “had he? Did he say he had?”
“He didn’t say he had,” Folsom told them. “He didn’t really say anything. Just—let things drop. I’ll admit I had to put two and two together. But, he admitted I was right. Said he could see I was the kind of man you couldn’t keep things from.” He paused. “Shouldn’t repeat that,” he said. “I don’t pretend to be any smarter than the next fellow, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh,” Pam said, “I do, Mr. Folsom. And you and Mr. Marsh got quite friendly?”
“Fellow was at loose ends,” Folsom said. “You could see that. Wanted somebody to talk to.” He nodded his head; he mopped it. “Something I will say,” he did say, “I’m an easy man to talk to. Get along with people.”
“Oh,” Pam said. “I’m sure you do. I—”
She was interrupted. A rifleman, in full regalia—and looking well steamed—stood at attention in front of Folsom, white-gloved hands stiffly at the seams of trousers.
“Sir,” he said. “Sergeant Montgomery reporting, sir.”
“Inspect—gloves,” Folsom said, standing himself. Sergeant Montgomery brought his hands forward smartly, palms up. The gloves appeared to be immaculate.
“Carry on,” Folsom said, and was saluted, and returned the salute. “In a military manner,” Folsom added. “And not the whole time in the bar.”
“Sir,” Montgomery said, and did an about-face and went off with measured tread. Folsom looked after him. “Good man,” he said. “Hundred per cent. Well—bothered you people enough.”
“Not at all,” Jerry said, but he stood up.
“Tell your policeman about it,” Folsom said. “If you think it might mean anything.”
“Oh, we will,” Pam said, and Mr. Folsom said, “Well” once more, and went off, not with measured tread.
“Well,” Pam said, when he had gone off far enough, “isn’t he the subtle one?”
He could not, necessarily, be blamed, Jerry pointed out. Folsom had blundered into things. It was possible he was merely trying to blunder out again. The most innocent man might well. As for the woman—there was a picture of a woman.
“Which he’s afraid we might miss,” Pam agreed. “Oh, I don’t doubt Mr. Marsh told him something. Perhaps even showed him the picture. Only—why?”
“Captain Folsom is an easy man to talk to,” Jerry reminded her. “Says so himself, as he shouldn’t. He starts talking to Marsh and—”
Pam shook her head. She said it hadn’t sounded that way. It sounded as if Marsh had been the one who had started it, and had opened the conversation. And again—why?
“Wanted somebody to talk to,” Jerry told her. “As Folsom says. As a matter of fact, Marsh talked freely enough to us.”
“You pumped,” Pam said. “To see if you could bring up a book. And—he didn’t tell us anything about looking for a missing woman. Here, I mean.”
“Folsom,” Jerry said, “gets along with people. Says so himself.”
“On the other hand,” Pam said, “did you think that Marsh may have been pumping him?”
Jerry had not. “About paper boxes?” he asked.
He was told that it was all very well, but that there might be more than met the eye.
The Cambridge police had found the daughter and son and daughter-in-law of Mrs. Winifred Ferris—found them living in a substantial house in Cambridge, and sorry to hear about the death of J. Orville Marsh (who had seemed such a nice man, and so different from what one would have expected) and quite sure that the disappearance of their mother and mother-in-law could have had nothing to do with it. Not that they hadn’t employed Mr. Marsh to find her. But—she had been found.
“Back home?” Bill Weigand asked, and Sergeant Stein, his voice crackling with static—and now and then whistling curiously—said that it hadn’t come to that. She was in California, and planning to stay there, and she had written her family to say so. Stein amplified, relaying the report of the Boston police.
Mrs. Winifred Ferris—age sixty-six, height five feet six, weight one hundred and seventy, white hair—had left the Cambridge house about four months earlier. They had wakened one morning and found her gone, with a note left. She had said that she wasn’t going to be a burden any longer, but that they were not to worry about her, because she was perfectly able to take care of herself.
“Money?” Bill asked, and was told by Stein that they said so; that there seemed, had seemed to the Cambridge police, to be plenty of money in the Ferris family.
The son and daughter, and daughter-in-law, had expected her to return. They did not admit it—and the police were in no position to press enquiries—but the detectives who had talked to them thought that this was probably not Mrs. Ferris’s first disappearance. But when time passed, and she did not return, they had engaged Marsh to look for her.
“Not to bring her back,” Stein said. “Just so they could know where she was. That’s what they say.”
Marsh had—or thought he had—traced her to Arizona, but there lost the trail. He had, nevertheless, continued a search until about a week previously, when a letter had come from her in California—a very pleasant letter, the police were told, one assuring everybody that she was well, and happy, and liked the climate and had made some wonderful friends and thought California was much better for her than the Boston area.
“No doubt about the letter?” Bill asked.
“They say not. Her handwriting. Her—the way she usually wrote. Looks as if we wash it out.”
“Nothing fishy about it?” Bill asked.
“I didn’t see them,” Stein said. “I’m just passing it along. The boys in Cambridge don’t seem to have smelled fish.”
“Somebody could have mailed the letter for her,” Bill said. “But—” He let it hang. “Did they happen to get a picture of her? I suppose, if it looked okay, they didn’t.”
They had not.
“Fingerprints?” Bill asked, and for a moment static crackled back at him. Then Stein said, “You don’t give up easily. No. No place to get them. The letter’s gone. Her room’s been redecorated. No prints on file.”
“Where in California?” Bill asked then, and was told Los Angeles—merely Los Angeles.
“And that’s not fishy?” Bill said.
Stein was, again, merely a relay point. He had, of course, brought it up. The Cambridge police didn’t think it fishy. The Ferris family did not think it fishy. Mrs. Winifred Ferris wanted them to know she was all right; she did not want them to bother her. “A case,” Stein said, “of don’t call me. I’ll call you. It could be, captain.”
“Right,” Bill said. “It could. By the way, has she any other children?”
She had not.
There was nothing new—from Marsh’s files. There was nothing new from Worcester.
Stein had suggested he fly to Worcester. Higher authority—in the person of Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley—had snorted, had enquired who was supposed to pay; had pointed out that the Carib Queen was of British registry, so that her crimes became British. (O’Malley actually said “English” and said it with asperity.) When he had more to go on—specifically a radioed picture of the signature—Stein would take the point up again.
“As soon as we get in,” Bill promised. “I’ll send the picture of the woman, too. Have Cambridge try it for size.”
“You don’t give up at all,” Stein said. “And, suppose it is? We already know he was looking for her. Had been, anyway.”
“Right,” Bill said. “All the same.”
Stein promised, needlessly, that they woul
d keep at it. Bill replaced the telephone receiver and looked at it reproachfully. He went to the doctor’s office, and was taken to the infirmary, where Cholly Pinkham lay in bed, conscious—and extremely embarrassed. Asked how he felt, he admitted to a headache. Asked what he could tell, he became more embarrassed than ever.
“Let you down, cap’n,” he said. “The old man, too.”
Because, he remembered nothing—at any rate, remembered nothing useful. He had lain down on one of the beds, in the darkness, determined to keep awake. He had waked up, an hour or so ago, where he was now. Between, there was nothing. It worried young Cholly; it frightened him a little.
“Perfectly natural,” the doctor told him. “You got knocked about, son. Knocked it out of you.”
“Let everybody down,” Cholly said, and was disconsolate. They left him so.
“Concussion,” the ship’s surgeon said, needlessly, when they were outside. “Wipes things out, sometimes.”
Bill knew that. Would what had been wiped out return? The physician could only shrug, only point out that time would tell.
“I’d like someone with him tonight,” Bill said. “To see he isn’t—bothered.”
“That way, is it?” the physician said and, when Bill said it might be, said he would pass the word. “It’s all a sticky business,” the doctor said, and Bill agreed it was indeed, and went to look at the gun cases, inboard on the promenade deck, forward on the starboard side—just where a promenader, making a clockwise circuit, might most easily bark shins on them. The cases were chests, somewhat larger than coffins. They were both padlocked.
They stood under the windows of promenade deck staterooms. The occupants of at least three rooms could look almost directly down on them, those in another could peer out, at angles, and see the chests, if they wanted to go to the trouble. There did not seem to be any reason why they should or why Bill Weigand, having seen that there appeared to be nothing to see, should stand in front of the boxes and look down at them as, in fact, he had done before. Now he was not really seeing the chests; he was simply, not too happily, wondering where—where the hell—he went next. This uncertainty sometimes afflicts detectives, as it does others. It is, of course, nothing to reveal in the presence of possible malefactors.
