Murder by Latitude

by Rufus King

  His nod to Mrs. Poole was barely perceptible; his suggestive indication of the deck was equally so. He left the open doorway and walked a bit along the dark still deck. The wind seemed fresher. It beat more keenly against his cheeks, and the ship’s rolling had become more noticeable. He heard the murmur of voices and saw two figures carrying off a third between them. He joined Captain Sohme who was talking, with stolid matter-of-factness to young Swithers. “…laid out decently,” he was saying. “Please gather and make out an inventory of his effects, and keep them in your locker until we can turn them over to his kin ashore. Have Chips prepare the necessary canvas and sew the body up. We will have the burial at four bells on the last watch.”

  That would be, Valcour knew, at six on the following morning.

  “Wouldn’t it be possible to have it later, Captain, when the passengers are up?” he said.

  “It is because I do not want the passengers to get any more nerves than they have, Valcour, that I do not want them up.”

  “We will lose the value of their expressions.”

  “The what?”

  Valcour moved closer to Captain Sohme and said quietly, “I believe that the man who did this would be there while the body was going over the side.”

  Captain Sohme nodded. “After breakfast, then, Mr. Swithers. Say at three bells.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Captain Sohme stared vaguely after the two figures who were, so easily, carrying off a third between them. “It would be fitting for somebody to sit up with the deceased all night.”

  “I’m sitting,” said young Swithers.

  Valcour turned and headed back towards the lounge door, and quite suddenly out of the darkness Mrs. Poole, in her white evening dress, was beside him. She touched his arm and started walking aft. She stopped at the deserted green table, and they sat down.

  “I feel as if we were engulfed in privacy,” she said.

  He caught the accuracy of her meaning: nothing living, nothing of life, seemed near them at all. The topgear swung black spindles across hazed stars while the cold strong wind and hurrying waters pursued their noisy businesses, divorced with a blind indifference from the affairs of men. They were two motes afloat on a larger mote that was intently scurrying them across a little segment of the ocean’s momentarily tolerant floor.

  “The ocean,” she said, “doesn’t care. If we get where we’re going, all right; if we don’t, all right. It’s all the same to the ocean.”

  It wasn’t the ocean, Valcour felt, that she was talking about at all. It was any number of things: life, God, herself, her curious lack of satiety concerning husbands, and what he considered her genuine emotional sincereness, no matter how volatile or impermanent it was, or how infinite its variety. From all that he had heard about her—

  “I’m going to deliver a letter, Mrs. Poole,” he said, “that was addressed to you.”

  She sat quite still, very lovely, very beautiful in the night’s harsh vagueness, and tested the sentence’s curious implications: going to deliver a letter…that was addressed… “You’ve read it,” she said.

  “Yes, Mrs. Poole.”

  “Why?”

  “It was found on the scene of a crime that occurred over a week ago in New York City. A man was killed, and we think that the letter was lost there by the man who killed him.”

  “This letter was addressed to me?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Poole. It was addressed to Mrs. Victor Barton.”

  She didn’t say anything for a minute. She accepted a cigarette from Valcour’s case and waited until he had lighted it. Then she said, “It’s interesting, isn’t it?”

  Valcour smiled and bowed slightly. “I’m not being so absurd as to suggest that you were in any way involved in the killing. But it seems logical that you must at some time have been involved—that’s probably too strong a word, I should have said acquainted—with the man who did it.”

  “Why, yes—if he wrote to me. What is his name?”

  “The letter wasn’t signed. There was only your name and address on the stamped envelope. The message inside reads: ‘Death comes again and again when one is young, even though the body does not die. I know where you are and I am coming to you because—’ The message stops there. There wasn’t, as I say, any salutation or any signature.” His voice almost drifted off into the singing wind. “Does it mean anything to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Who knew that you would be in Bermuda, Mrs. Poole?”

  “Everybody.”

  Valcour laughed pleasantly. “I see.” He hesitated for a moment, and then said, “I hope you won’t mind my becoming personal, but have you known your husband for any length of time?”

  He could feel warmth radiating from her, from some private and inner glow; gently radiating toward him through the harsh cool breeze.

  “It wasn’t necessary,” she said.

  He couldn’t, of course, agree with this too strongly—on the basis of what must have been her catholic and accurate fund of experience in the selecting of husbands. Mr. Poole, he knew, was her fifth. The other four had been spectacular either in their divorces or in their demises. He wondered whether young Mr. Poole would be spectacular too, if one took it for granted that the present marriage would terminate after three or four years, as her previous marriages had terminated.

  There was one novel feature that puzzled him about the present incumbent: to the best of Valcour’s knowledge, young Mr. Poole was unknown, either socially or otherwise, and there were none of the signs about him that go with the possession of wealth—none of the subtle signs, and none of the blatant ones.

  It occurred to him that she might have married young Poole for love or (more probably) from infatuation. The others, in the orderly sequence of their several exits, had either settled upon her or bequeathed to her a totaled fortune of millions. But Valcour believed that young Mr. Poole could do nothing like that…

  “Before I show you this letter, Mrs. Poole, I wish you would consider our five men passengers, excluding your husband. Have you ever come in contact with any of them before?”

  “No.”

  Her answer was quite certain. There was no hesitancy about it at all. He looked at her steadily, trying to clarify her vagueness of features in the darkness.

  “In that case we must consider the possibility of a stowaway, because there is someone on board this ship, Mrs. Poole, who at some time during his life has known you, and whom you have known. I am going to ask you to read this letter. It is printed by hand, so there will be no significance connected with its handwriting, but its sense and style of wording may be familiar to you.”

  Valcour took a flashlight from his pocket. From another pocket he took a stamped and addressed envelope, from which he drew a sheet of notepaper. He pulled his chair closer to Mrs. Poole’s and turned the beam of the flashlight onto the printed message. She stared at it intently: “Death comes again and again when one is young, even though the body does not die. I know where you are and I am coming to you because—”

  “It means nothing,” she said.

  “There is no significance for you in it?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything to me at all.” Her voice hardened a little and Valcour could sense a creeping arrogance in it as she added: “Why should it?”

  “There are lots of reasons why it should, Mrs. Poole. The way we consider it at headquarters is that the man who wrote it wanted something from you, something which he felt belonged to him, either—”

  “Nonsense!”

  He cut methodically through her impatience. “People often believe things are theirs, or that they have a right to things, even though from another’s point of view they believe so wrongfully. We must divorce ourselves from the idea that the writer of this letter was an ordinary crank.”

  “I don’t see why. It seems to me the insane sort of letter that a crank would write.”

  “That is true, Mrs. Poole. But if it were the action of an ordinary crank
I think it would have stopped right there, with the letter; at most there would have been some later letters. But this man didn’t stop with letters. He robbed and killed a man, and seriously injured another man, in New York City. We think at headquarters that he followed you down here, to get in touch with you. I believe that he killed Mr. Gans tonight, and I think that he did it to prevent the delivery of a wireless message that contained a description of himself. I should like to convince you that we are dealing with a killer, Mrs. Poole; not with a crank. I wish you would tell me whether anyone within the past few days, or since our voyage started, has attempted to get in touch with you.”

  “No one, Mr. Valcour, in the sense that you mean, has attempted to get in touch with me.”

  He gauged her veracity, her sincerity, and it did not occur to him to doubt either. “It is that aspect which puzzles me so,” he said. “Why should a man who wants to obtain something from you fail to make himself known? It’s foolish, unless something happened during the last day or so since his arrival at Bermuda to make him change his plans. What could have?”

  “Well—what could have?”

  “Has anything unusual occurred to you?”

  She said a bit acidly, “My marriage—although one wouldn’t call that unusual.”

  He hesitated for a minute before saying, “But wasn’t it?”

  “Well!” She laughed somewhat harshly. “I did expect a little more savoir faire from you.”

  “I’m not trying to be impudent, Mrs. Poole. I’m not even trying to be nosy. In a curious case such as this one, there is little to do except feel one’s way blindly, frequently stupidly.”

  She swung off at a wide tangent. “Why are you mixed up with it at all? I didn’t know that important members of the New York Police went so far afield.”

  “We don’t usually, except in cases involving influential men.”

  Her interest quickened perceptibly.

  “This one did?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Poole. The man who was robbed and killed in New York last week was your first husband.”

  CHAPTER 10

  LAT. 33° 54' NORTH, LONG. 64° 38' WEST

  From forward, carried past them on the steady swinging breeze, came the jerky sound of seven bells. Clearly their sound cut the oasis of stillness, the effect of which Mrs. Poole had established about herself.

  “Eleven-thirty? I had no idea it was so late.” She accepted another cigarette from Valcour. “Larry’s dead, then,” she said.

  Larry Lane, from all but forgotten distances, came back to her: his muscular grossness overlaid with a thin veneer (he had been in his day an internationally known sportsman)—a veneer that had dropped from him so easily during their moments of privacy; onions, interminable quantities of onions—they hadn’t been named in the divorce, but they might well have formed the foundation of it; always smelling a bit horsy, just a faint odor of horsiness lingering beneath excessive uses of medicated soap; much given to easy sweating even in mild weather—little beads of sweat that broke out on a scrubbed and polished largish face; nervous hands, thick strong hands that were gentle with horses and which, when they were gentle with you, made you feel subconsciously like a horse—comparatively—frequently unfavorably so. The picture rose up in its detailed entirety and crushed her, just as Larry had so often crushed her, crushed her with his onioned and horse-essenced maleness. He was dead. Somebody had killed him last week in New York, and Mr. Valcour had expressed the belief that whoever had done it was on the boat for the purpose of getting something from her. Whoever had done it must be on the boat, because Mr. Valcour believed he had killed the wireless operator only a while ago to prevent his own identity from becoming known.

  “I can’t imagine Larry dead,” she said. “He was the most alive person I’ve ever known; something like life itself, in terms of easily running and foolproof machinery. How did it happen?”

  “Mr. Lane was killed in the washroom of a night club.”

  She felt that somewhere there was an apt irony about it, about his mode of living and the happenstances of his death. She believed in the completeness of things: you did a certain thing, or lived a certain way, and you got your deserts for it before you died, either in fitting punishment or reward. She was skeptical of any adjustment of life’s balances in the hereafter.

  “A fight?” she said.

  “No, Mrs. Poole. We felt that there hadn’t been any fighting in that sense. It wasn’t a row. Your—Mr. Lane was at the club with a few friends. He went into the washroom with one of them, a Mr. Beverley from somewhere out West. We imagine that the murderer followed them into it. He stabbed Mr. Lane, killing him, and seriously wounded Mr. Beverley.”

  “Larry was drunk?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Poole. But Mr. Beverley, we understand, was fairly sober and we were relying upon his recovery to get an identification of the murderer. Both of their wallets, containing a total of about eleven hundred dollars, were stolen. The murderer was noticed by no one, and the crime wasn’t discovered until ten or fifteen minutes after it had been committed.”

  She was sure that there was an ironic justness in it: in Larry’s immaculate grossness—punctured—bleeding its life out on the tiles of a night club’s washroom—one private door removed from his world—

  “I’d like to know who did it,” she said.

  Valcour laughed and said, “Well, we think you do.”

  “You mean that at some time or other I’ve met the man?”

  “We think it must have been more than just a meeting, Mrs. Poole.”

  She answered him sharply: “Such insistence is stupid, Mr. Valcour.”

  “I wish you would understand that I’m not questioning your veracity. I’m questioning your memory. My meaning is that at some time in the past there has been some connection between you and this man. It may have seemed negligible to you, and you have undoubtedly forgotten it entirely. I think it did not seem negligible to the man, and that his remembrance of it is quite vital.”

  “Well, from that angle—”

  “My whole attitude is from that angle. May I rely upon your discretion in this, Mrs. Poole?”

  “Discretion?”

  “That you will say nothing about what I have told you?”

  “Why—yes.”

  “And you will take reasonable precautions?”

  “Against this man, Mr. Valcour—whom I don’t know?”

  “Against what either of us knows this man may do, Mrs. Poole.”

  He could sense her tenseness even though her tone remained casual. “You must admit, Mr. Valcour, that this is all slightly tinged with—well, the fantastic.”

  Valcour switched abruptly. “Mrs. Poole, why are you on board this boat?”

  She stood up, her white dress silver in the darkness, her copper skin lost in the darkness, her eyes alone effectively coming through it. She said, as she started to walk away, “Because my husband cannot afford to travel on a more expensive one.”

  CHAPTER 11

  LAT. 33° 56' NORTH, LONG. 64° 38' WEST

  The seas seemed heavier as Valcour mounted a ladder to the bridge. Even the small increase in elevation of eleven feet or so added greatly to the ship’s motion. The chart room was dark, and no light showed but the small shielded lamp in the binnacle that theatrically, pallidly washed the snubbed, youthful features of the seaman who was doing his trick at the wheel. Captain Sohme’s bulk formed a black blot at the bridge’s starboard end. Valcour went over and joined him.

  “What a damnable business this is, Valcour. I saw you walking aft with Mrs. Poole. Did she tell you anything?”

  “The letter means nothing to her at all.”

  “So. We are in fog again.”

  “No ship has been sighted, I suppose, Captain?”

  “None. I should have been notified at once.”

  “Where is the body, Captain?”

  “On its bunk. When morning comes, Chips will sew it up in canvas.”

  “Mr. Swithers is
with it?”

  “Yes.” Captain Sohme stared across the dodger at private pictures faintly painted on a jet-black sea. “I think, Valcour, that those two liked each other.”

  “Later I should like to make a more careful examination of the body than was possible out here by flashlight. You don’t mind?”

  “Mind? I have been praying to the dear God, Valcour, to direct me as to what to do. In all my years at sea I have never run into anything like this business before.”

  “I think that if for no other reason than leaving no stones unturned, a search should be made for a stowaway. Mrs. Poole states that she has never before sailing come in contact with any of our passengers.”

  Captain Sohme seized this suggestion of activity eagerly. “I will have a search made at once,” he said.

  One was. It was very thorough, very complete. It lasted for three quarters of an hour, and ranged from crow’s-nest to bilges. There was no stowaway.

  Valcour returned to the boat deck at the conclusion of the search and stood by the forward railing staring down at the shadow-blocked well, the cranes, the uneasy lift and swift sinking of the bow. He felt creeping into him the morbid melancholy which always came creeping into him when alone at night time on the sea. He tasted at such moments the leaden essence of loneliness, of an incalculable loneliness, so complete that it edged on the romantic.

  “I wonder whether you could tell me, Mr. Valcour, if there is a typewriter on board?”

  Mrs. Poole had come, it seemed to him, from nowhere. She stood quite close to him at the rail—white and bronze, and exceedingly efficient, with that manner which is possessed by those rare women who know exactly what it is they want.

  “A typewriting machine, Mrs. Poole?”