Murder by Latitude

by Rufus King

  It was singularly feminine in tenor—certainly not any mental spasm on the part of a Gyp the Blood. All this, of course, if one granted the masquerade.

  Suppose there were no masquerade and that the theory were still to be held to. Valcour attempted to fit Toody into either of the two Misses Sidderby, and Toody wouldn’t fit. The younger one was automatically canceled, for Ella Sidderby had been playing bridge with him when Mr. Gans had been strangled, and could furthermore have had no knowledge that the radio had been received. The elder sister? The opportunity had been hers, and even if one did establish Toody in her twenties, a woman could age herself in appearance much more successfully than could a man—than could Mr. Sanford.

  But Valcour did not believe that Toody was Miss Sidderby, any more than he believed her to be the syrupy and foularded Mrs. Sanford. But he did believe that Toody was the one whom he would meet at the end of this strange, strange trail: a mentally warped and spiritually broken Toody—bitterly, cleverly vindictive, with a child-cunning that had never matured into normal reason…for if Toody should fall through, there was nothing immediately apparent to pin the business to at all, and then Captain Sohme would both get and go mad.

  Even as it was, Valcour disliked picturing Captain Sohme’s reception were he to go to him and say: “See here, Captain, the man we’re after is a girl and he (she) killed Lane, killed Mr. Gans, and has his (her) knife out for Mrs. Poole, because Mrs. Poole bounced her out into the cold hard world at the age of about nine, with a yearly check to take care of her, because Mr. Jones did not like children…” It was himself, Valcour knew, whom Captain Sohme would want to have put in irons. And if this were all a mare’s nest built of desperation… If this Toody business were to have nothing to do with the case at all…if the fog and the murk were just to grow thicker and thicker…

  CHAPTER 19

  LAT. 35° 6' NORTH, LONG. 64° 30' WEST

  “I want you,” said Valcour, “to tell me about Toody.”

  They were seated (Valcour and Mrs. Poole) on a leather settee in one corner of the Eastern Bay’s small smoking saloon. The sea was flat beneath a deadly calm, its gentle roll scarcely perceptible, and a chill gray drizzle fell interminably, blanking the saloon’s ports, and seeming to seep cheerlessly in through their glass. Mrs. Poole said nothing for a moment. She continued to lean with careful negligence against the settee’s cushions, and her stare at Valcour was as unreadable as the drizzled reaches of the gray still waters.

  “Toody?” She dragged the name from forgotten pasts. “What on earth makes you speak of her?” Her eyes were losing their indifference. “How do you know about her?”

  “I’ve been talking with your maid.”

  “With Anna?” Mrs. Poole laughed shortly. “I imagine the conversation was enlightening. She’s been with me a good many years, and I shouldn’t call her exactly chatty.”

  “For twenty years, she said, Mrs. Poole.”

  “Really?” A flick of anger crossed her face. “I had no idea it was as long as that, and certainly no idea that her memory was so, well—acute.” She smiled slightly and said, “The least you can do is to consider her as having been, at that time, my nurse.”

  Valcour smiled too. “I’m afraid we’re not in Spain, Mrs. Poole. There was Mr. Lane, you see.”

  “Child marriages? Of course, I see.” Her voice hinted at sharp irritability. “I was absurdly young when I married Larry Lane—absurdly young.”

  Valcour, with Anna Wickstod’s picturing of Mrs. Poole in a womanly pompadour and long dresses, steered clear. “What I’m really interested in is Toody,” he said. “I wish you would tell me about her.”

  “But didn’t Anna?”

  “Incompletely.”

  She continued to stare at him curiously. “I’m perfectly willing to tell you all about Toody, but I haven’t the faintest notion why you’re interested in her. Has it anything to do with this—” she hesitated over choosing the word—“this business?”

  “Well, couldn’t it have?”

  “Toody?” Her laugh was genuine. “Aren’t you trespassing upon Mr. Dumarque and being bizarre? That child!”

  “But you see, Mrs. Poole, Toody isn’t any longer a child.”

  The idea seemed to strike her as something incredible (the idea of Toody no longer being a child)—the whole age business was incredible whenever she attacked it mathematically or in cold blood, which was never, when she could help it.

  “Suppose she isn’t?” she said. “You can’t picture Toody running around with her little hands and strangling people, can you? I can’t.”

  “But the hands are no longer little, Mrs. Poole.”

  Her irritation boiled over. “I do wish you would stop talking like a Swedish epic, Mr. Valcour.”

  He smiled pleasantly. “I was, wasn’t I? All we needed off-stage was the sound of distant thunder, and a hero in the foreground licking wet grass.”

  “I didn’t mean to be rude. Of course, I was—”

  “I shouldn’t have been so clumsy. I think the sea air is making me stupid. How old was Toody when Mr. Lane adopted her?”

  “He didn’t adopt her. She was about four or five, I think.”

  “But wasn’t some arrangement made?” Valcour’s expression indicated that even a wealthy and prominent man like Mr. Lane could hardly step out and pick up a child without something being arranged about it.

  “Why, I suppose there was. Larry attended to the whole business.” (And what a tiresome business this was, with Ted asleep in their cabin. Why did the darling sleep…and sleep? If he’d just been a bit older—a bit older while still retaining his profile… One couldn’t, of course, have everything—but pretty nearly everything.) “I’ve never had any head for business.”

  “Then you do think there was some business connected with it?”

  “No, I don’t. I’ve told you I didn’t—not business in the sense you’re referring to. Larry would have said something about it when we were divorced if there had been.”

  “He said nothing about Toody at all?”

  “Do you want me to take that literally?”

  “Please.”

  “I think he said: ‘I suppose you will want Toody, Cassie?’ and I said: ‘Yes.’ So he left me Toody, and that’s all there is to that.”

  “Toody was about nine then, wasn’t she?”

  “About.”

  “Was she in school?”

  “School? Heavens no. I wanted her at hand where I could see her.” What on earth was the use of owning a child, Mrs. Poole’s perfect eyebrows wanted to know, if you packed her off to school where you couldn’t see her?

  “There was a governess?”

  “Certainly; a very good one. Fraulein Smeldt. I remember her eyeglasses—big, thick lenses. She was very nearsighted, and peered. I do believe the poor dear spent half her life in just peering.”

  “And the other half?”

  “In spouting knowledge, of course.”

  “On Toody?”

  “On Toody.”

  “When Mr. Jones—” Valcour shifted uncomfortably on the settee. “That is to say, when it was no longer desirable to keep Toody, I understand that certain arrangements were made through your attorneys for her provision?”

  “Ample.”

  Valcour laughed. “I might just as well be blunt about it,” he said. “How much?”

  “Twelve hundred a year.” Mrs. Poole’s manner implied: If you must know, but I don’t see what business or interest it is of yours…and perhaps Ted was awake. He couldn’t nap all morning… Why didn’t he show up and relieve her of this uncomfortable probing into a wanted-to-be-forgotten past?…

  “Was this amount ever increased, Mrs. Poole?—I mean as Toody grew up.”

  “No, Mr. Valcour. Why should it be? It came entirely from my own income, and I wasn’t under the slightest legal obligation to the child. While she was with me I gave her every possible advantage. I would call twelve hundred a year very generous, wouldn’t
you?”

  “Certainly, Mrs. Poole.”

  Valcour continued to smile with his lips at this singularly beautiful and matter-of-fact woman, but it was Toody whom he was thinking of: Toody in her most formative years, when the wells of affection are more filled for generous giving than they are ever likely to be again; of Toody pouring this clear sweet stream of affection on what must have been, to her, an angel of boundless indulgences and beauty: a firm, unvanishable, everlasting angel—for everything is going to last forever, from the viewpoint of little children. And then came Mr. Jones who did not care to have, about his houses or about his person, a child.

  “Did you keep in communication with her, Mrs. Poole, after she left you?”

  “No.” She frowned slightly. “It’s one of my principles.”

  “To cut yourself completely off from something that is past?”

  “Yes.”

  “You left everything in the hands of your attorneys?”

  “Yes.” (Ted’s eyes, when they opened after sleeping, were so instantly clear…only the eyes of the beautiful young, when they opened after sleeping, were so instantly clear…)

  “And did the lawyers keep in communication with her?—beyond the yearly mailing of the check, I mean.”

  “I haven’t the remotest idea, Mr. Valcour. Their instructions were that I was not to be bothered about the matter further.” She caught herself a little, and said, “That way seemed kinder, just one clear decisive cut that ended the whole thing.” (Much, thought Valcour, in the clear kind way in which one drowns a kitten. She might just as well have taken little Toody and put her in a bag with stones, as to have let those clear sweet wells of young affection dry up into shocked aridity, to be filled again in later years with the slow and miserably bitter excrescences of hate. And aren’t you, he asked himself, taking a good deal for granted? The child may have been a nasty little brat.)

  “I detest,” Mrs. Poole said, “anything that lingers on and on—that dribbles.”

  “Your maid tells me that the checks were returned during the past few years.”

  “My maid seems to have been telling you a great deal, Mr. Valcour.” Her tone was sharp and the blue in her eyes was not so meltingly limpid—a touch of good hard agateware.

  “Under protest. She’s rather simple, isn’t she? She had no intention of being disloyal. I persuaded her that her information would prove of assistance to you.”

  “I still fail to see why.”

  “I can only repeat that I believe we will find Toody at the bottom of all this. I wish you’d answer me frankly, Mrs. Poole.”

  Her eyes widened in genuine astonishment. “But I’m perfectly willing to. I have been—quite frankly.”

  “Was there any reason advanced by the lawyers for the returned and unclaimed checks?”

  “None that I know of. They simply came back through the mails stamped ‘undelivered,’ that was all.”

  “But wasn’t any investigation made?”

  “They wanted to make one, but I didn’t see why they should. It seemed perfectly simple to me : Toody either married or else no longer needed financial support. I saw no reason why I should do anything further in the matter.” She added, quite irritably, “I do think she might have sent me a card to her wedding. I could have sent her a suitable present.”

  “What was her given name, Mrs. Poole? Toody was of course a nickname, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes—I think it was Ethel. I’m sure it was Ethel. We always called her Toody, though.”

  “I understand that her hair was blond and that her eyes were brown.”

  “Very blond—lovely, lovely curls, Mr. Valcour.”

  “It seems that your maid (if you’ll promise not to shoot me for bringing her into it again) never viewed the child intimately. Perhaps you can tell me whether there were any identification marks—scars, birthmarks, any deformities, things like that?”

  “Oh I’m sure there was nothing like that. Mr. Lane would never have given her to me if there had been.”

  “You would have noticed it yourself, I suppose. You must have seen her undressed lots of times.”

  “Toody? Heavens no. I’d go in and kiss her occasionally when she was in bed.”

  “Her governess, this Fraulein Smeldt, took care of her?”

  “Oh no; her aunt did.”

  Valcour felt a curious prickling at the base of his neck. “Tell me,” he said gently, “about this aunt.”

  “Why, she came as a nurse with Toody, and took care of her while the child was with us. We knew nothing about the relationship until just as they were leaving us. She told me about it then. I don’t see why people are so secretive. It wouldn’t have made the slightest difference if we’d known about it. That is, I don’t suppose it would. It’s hard to tell about those things, especially in retrospect, don’t you think?”

  “Very. Did you make any effort to prove that the relationship was authentic?”

  “The lawyers did. They sent the checks to the aunt, you see.”

  “I think I’m beginning to see. What did this woman look like, Mrs. Poole?”

  “I don’t know. She seemed an ordinary, negative sort of person during the few times I came in contact with her—the type that’s hard to describe—syrupy, that’s it.” Shock tightened Mrs. Poole’s indifferent eyes. “One is reminded of her,” she said, “by Mrs. Sanford.”

  CHAPTER 20

  LAT. 35° 6' NORTH, LONG. 64° 30' WEST

  Ted Poole stretched on his bunk luxuriantly, and sleep still drenched him like a narcotic. The cabin’s two ports were wide open, but still the air felt stuffy and there was that indefinable ship odor about it which was always prevalent on the smaller ships. He opened his eyes and wondered where Cassie was. Someone rapped lightly on the door and his eyes turned lazily toward it and he said, “Come in.”

  “Oh, hello,” he said. Then he repeated, “Come in.” He smiled agreeably at the man who came in and stood by the door. For the life of him he couldn’t remember what the fellow’s name was—he was constitutionally unfitted for remembering names, unless he was tremendously interested in a person, and even then he had to use the name for a day or two before it came with any degree of certainty.

  “I wondered where you were, Ted,” the man was saying. “I didn’t see you up on deck.” The man stared casually about the fair-sized cabin. He closed the door softly. He went over to an armchair and sat down. “I thought you might be sick or something.”

  “Me?” Young Poole, still not through with stretching, stared at him incredulously. “Riding along on this pancake?”

  “Lots of people get sick in calm weather.” The man took a cigarette case from his pocket. “Have a cigarette, Ted?”

  “What are they?” Ted looked at the brand. “They’re too strong for me, thanks. Do you mind chucking over that package on the washstand? Thanks.”

  The man stood up and struck a match. He cupped it, and moved over to the side of the bunk. Ted hoisted himself on an elbow and got a light. Then he sank back onto the bunk.

  “I’m lazy as hell,” he said.

  The man went back to the armchair and sat down. “It gets monotonous, this business of being at sea.”

  “It just goes to show what indifferent hogs we are.” Young Poole waved his cigarette expansively. “All we want is to sleep and to be fed. There’s a poor devil died last night and was buried this morning, and the kick’s already gone out of it and I’m sleepy and you’re bored, and what the hell anyway.”

  The man laughed politely. “Even with marriage?” he said. “That’s only three days old, isn’t it?”

  Ted blew rings. “That’s different.” A faint touch in his tone implied that, as a topic, it was also private.

  “I should think that with a killer loose about the ship you’d keep your door bolted,” the man said.

  “That’s sort of bosh, isn’t it? Naturally Valcour gets melodramatic about it. It’s his business. Personally I don’t think that Gans was murdere
d at all.”

  “No?” The man’s eyes were very serious, very polite, as they stared across the gray-misted cabin at Ted.

  “What’s there to prove it beyond some marks on his neck? Valcour isn’t a doctor. I think that Gans had a stroke.”

  “What sort of a stroke, Ted?”

  “How do I know? But everybody knows what strokes are. People are always dying of them, and getting black in the face about it, too.” Ted flicked ashes into an empty glass standing on a chair beside the bunk. “You often read about cases like that in the papers.”

  “But after all there were those marks on the neck,” the man said mildly.

  “Valcour probably imagined them. It was dark enough last night, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, but he had a flashlight, and I understand that he examined the body later in the wireless man’s cabin under a strong light.”

  “Even so. There were discolorations on Gans’s face and,” Ted said with lazy triumph, “why shouldn’t the marks on his neck just have been similar discolorations, too?”

  “It’s interesting, the way you look at it.”

  “I think it’s the only sensible way. To have a crime, you have to have a motive. Anybody’ll tell you that. Who on earth would want to kill Gans, and why?”

  The man smiled a little. “Who on earth,” he said.

  “Even if Valcour tried to pin it onto one of the crew it wouldn’t be so raw—but to come blasting out the way he did at breakfast with this ‘the passengers are included’ stuff—what a swell guy that is. Say, did you catch the look on the Sidderbys’ faces when he pulled it? They both looked like sick raspberries.”

  “It wasn’t exactly nice. I wonder why he did it?”

  “Why does an ass bray?”

  “No,” the man said gently, “it isn’t that. Valcour’s a very clever and a very tactful man.”

  “Then why doesn’t he catch his whooped-up murderer?”

  The man’s gesture was quite impartial. “Perhaps the murderer is a clever man, too,” he said.