I had to hand it to her. From what I knew, she must have doped out that disguise herself and put it on herself. And it was pretty good.
They stopped at a stateroom door lettered B-78, and I brushed past without looking twice. Down at the end of the Montmartre’s boat deck there’s a tiny bar, primarily I suppose for the carriage trade that occupies the boat deck. I went into it because I wanted to get out of sight, and to appear to have been going someplace, in case I was being observed.
It also occurred to me that a drink would not be a bad idea at this point; I had not had much champagne because I don’t like sparkling wines.
But the bar was crowded, and I felt a little nervous about leaving the others on the deck below. The ship’s whistle sounded the final blast. So as soon as I thought it was safe and I was not likely to be spotted, I started back down the passage toward the stairs. I wanted to go by her door again to be sure I knew its exact location.
Just as I passed, the door swung open wide and the steward came out. I caught a glimpse of what was beyond. A girl who had just taken off an old frump of a coat, and was taking off a hat that had covered what seemed to be gray hair. The hair was gray all right. But the body and the young profile were known around the world. I looked away fast and kept going.
* * * *
“Where did you go?” Twit-Twit said.
I saw the last line snake inboard. The band was still playing “Anchors Away” but as the chorus ended they modulated without missing a beat into “Le Marseillaise.” I looked down over the rail. Only the little ribbons of paper bound us to land, and they began parting. Dirty brown water appeared in the gap between the ship’s white side and the pier. Confetti fell into it. The band played even louder, and people began yelling meaningless final greetings.
“Take care of yourself!”
“Have fun in Paris!”
“Kiss Marie for me!”
I told Twit-Twit, “I just went around on the other side. To see what I could see.”
“And what did you see?”
“The other side. But I have to run below in a moment. Gentleman’s powder room.”
“You do not. You hardly touched the champagne. You’ll stay here while we go down the bay.”
“I’ll stay for a little.” She took my arm.
But for once I wasn’t thinking of her. I was telling myself I knew where I stood. The subject was on the ship and I knew where to make contact. The charm, as Macbeth’s witches crooned, was wound up. The fact she was aboard was the signal that she was really going ahead and making the moving picture.
How long I could keep the whole thing concealed from my three traveling companions, I had no idea.
Still, perhaps because of the pleasant hysteria of sailing, I felt confident and happy. There’d be a drink soon, and then a delicious lunch. The rest of the day would take care of itself.
* * * *
The ship had backed out into the Hudson or North, a term I prefer, River. The band played a final brave chorus and then moved off to its next station in the first-class lounge. The tugs swung us around efficiently and pointed us south, and there was New York’s West Side skyline. The Dolans were looking at it.
I said, “Look, cookie pants. I’ve really got to go below and see about our accommodations. Let’s meet at the smoking room bar. Order me a very dry Martini. Like the nice bitch you are.”
Unexpectedly, she squeezed my arm. “I don’t believe you for a minute. You’re up to something. And I don’t know what it is. But I’ll find out. And meanwhile, I love you for getting us on this boat at the last minute. It’s going to be a dreamy trip.”
I was glad that she loved me, for that or for any other reason. But I had gotten the accommodations at the last minute only because I had accepted a responsibility, and I had to do something about it now.
I kissed her cheek. “The bar. Ten minutes. A very dry Martini.”
Below, the passages were filled with stewards bringing, late-arriving flowers and fruit baskets, and bearing away the glass debris from bon voyage parties. I went to the purser’s desk.
“The final passenger list is not made up?”
“No, m’sieu. In an hour perhaps. Meanwhile, there is the temporary list.”
“May I look?”
“Mais oui.”
I looked up cabin number B-78. It was occupied by Constance Kent and maid, Klára Vörös. Constance Kent. Why had she picked a name like that? Did she know of an earlier Constance Kent? (The Case of Constance Kent is one of the most teasingly uncertain murder mysteries in the unparalleled annals of English crime. Constance was a daughter in a family living in Wiltshire. Her mother died in 1852 after many years of emotional instability; her father married again, and on June 30, 1860, the body of Constance’s four-year-old brother Francis was found, his head virtually severed from his body, in an outcloset. In the Victorian police investigation which followed, suspicion attached to sixteen-year-old Constance, due in part to the disappearance of a nightdress. She denied knowledge of the murder. In a highly controversial trial, she was acquitted and went into a French convent where, in 1865, she confessed that she had murdered her little brother because of hatred of her stepmother, whose child the victim was. But there was, and still is in certain quarters, suspicion that Constance Kent made her confession to help someone else. Sentenced to penal servitude, she was released in 1885, and disappeared in the fogs of anonymity. There is reason to believe that both Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins drew on the case of Constance Kent for The Mystery of Edwin Drood and The Moonstone, respectively.)
But I had learned what I wanted; it was time to get to the bar.
Chapter 2
How to Succeed in Business—One Way
I got there by going out on deck. The skyline was still going by; we were passing the Wall Street district, and the sun was bright and the water sparkling.
I went up one deck too many and so walked aft in the open along the boat deck’s narrow space, hemmed in on one side by lifeboats and by the windows of the deluxe staterooms on the other. As I did, the deck door of one of the staterooms opened and she came out.
The long black coat was gone. She was wearing a white bare-shouldered sundress and big, dark sunglasses. The hair was still faded silver, but nothing else about her was faded. She had the happy, relaxed air of someone about to enjoy a little quiet, after a hectic time. Which I guess was the case.
It was as good a chance as I might have all day, short of walking up to her door and knocking.
As she started to pass me, not looking at me at all, I said, “Procedural meeting.”
She looked at me for a fraction of a second out of the corners of wonderfully sky-blue eyes, and went on.
I turned after her. “Procedural meeting,” I said, louder.
This time she turned, and really looked at me. Then she went on again.
“ABC,” I called. She kept going.
And a voice behind me said, “D, E, F. What the hell are you up to?”
It was the last person on earth, or rather on water, that I wanted to see at that moment. It was Twit-Twit.
“Nothing. Why aren’t you at the bar?”
She had come out of a passageway door. “Because I thought I’d find out what was delaying you. Since when did you start molesting gray-haired old ladies?”
“I wasn’t molesting gray-haired old ladies. I was practicing my spelling lesson.”
“You were like hell. You said something to that woman.”
Sometimes the most distracting thing you can say is the plain truth.
“I gave her the code word,” I said.
“Go code-word yourself,” said Twit-Twit. “And you know what word I’m thinking of.”
“Come off it.”
Twit-Twit is too smart a tactician to press an advantage once she has gained it. She said, �
��Come in and get your drink.”
But as we walked down to the promenade deck, she added, “Don’t think you’re fooling anyone, junior.”
The only people at the smoking room bar were the Dolans and a dark, sallow man with a droopy, Stalin-like mustache, although others were still at some of the tables nearby. The man with the mustache had a bright-blue shirt and the look of a weasel who is momentarily sleepy, and I concluded he was fairly drunk. Two Martinis stood in front of two bar stools, and Twit-Twit (In case you wonder, as a lot of people have, why she is called Twit-Twit, it’s because her last name is Twickenham and, as explained in The Traces of Brillart, when she was in school some of her classmates nicknamed her Twit-Twit because they thought she was flighty and brainless. How wrong they were.) and I climbed onto the appropriate stools. That put me next to the sleepy weasel.
I sipped the Martini. It was still very cold, and clean, and dry. There’s something about the first drink of the day, and I winked my appreciation to the bartender. He smiled. It still looked like the beginning of a good trip.
Tom was saying, “My glass is empty. Why is my glass always empty?”
Twit-Twit said, “There’s a little leprechaun who keeps boring holes in the bottom of it.”
Betsy snorted. “There’s a big hole in the top of his glass,” she said, “and a little leprechaun named Dolan keeps finding it.”
Tom pushed his glass to the smiling bartender. “It’s the story of my life,” he said.
The sleepy weasel lurched in my direction and said, “How’s everything?” I said it was fine and turned to Twit-Twit. But it wasn’t that easy.
“Think we’re gonna have good trip?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“I never been on this boat before. Any big boat, that matter. I always fly.”
Twit-Twit murmured in my ear, “You make friends so easily. How I admire the gift.”
“Go code-word yourself.”
I turned and surveyed the tables and the few who had not already gone down to lunch. One man, sitting with a slender, dark-haired girl whose back was to us, looked like a real case history. He had not bothered to take off his dark cap or his sunglasses, his hands were encased in immaculate white-mesh gloves, and he wore a short-sleeved sport shirt with a gaudy tie. He continually turned a sort of bold, unblinking stare around the room in a way suggestive of a periscope.
“We have interesting traveling companions,” I told Twit-Twit.
“We sure do, and I’ve got a little suspicion you’re going to turn out to be the most interesting of them all. Honey.”
“I’ve already told you what you can do.”
“If we’re going to have another, let’s get it and then go below. I’m starved.”
“So am I.” I waved to the bartender.
“I may be seasick,” the guy next to me said. “What’s it like when you’re seasick? I never got seasick going to Catalina or Avalon. Now I think I will be.”
“Drink cognac and water, don’t look at the horizon, and forget about the possibility,” I said.
“You’re a doctor?”
“No.” The drinks were in front of us, and Twit-Twit and I reached at the same time and gulped at the same time. “I can make enemies fast, too,” I told her. “Hang around and see.”
“No, don’t,” she said. “He’s tight. How about dejeuner?” she asked the Dolans.
“They sure pick up the patois fast on these foreign schooners,” said Tom. “Let’s go.” He scribbled the suite number on the check, and we slid off the bar stools.
“Well, what business are you in?”
I don’t like being rude, and I wanted to defer to Twit-Twit as much as I could.
“Magazines,” I said, and followed her toward the door.
As we passed the man with the white-mesh gloves, I noticed he was holding a glass containing some kind of yellowish liqueur like Strega or chartreuse.
* * * *
We had asked for a table for four when we first came aboard. The maître d’hôtel took us to it. It was in a cornet of the dining salon and was one of the best tables in the room. Twit-Twit looked at me.
“I suppose you did this, too.”
“I suppose I did.”
“Do you have stock in the line?” asked Betsy.
“I own the line.”
But I wondered how I had really done it.
Next to us was another table for four. There was a little, elderly man with cottony hair and a continual good-humored chuckle, and a rather gaunt, dark younger woman who was evidently his wife, sitting with another couple who were rather nondescript except for the man’s glowing Technicolor tie.
The steward approached us. Behind him was our waiter; hovering behind him was the server, and not too far in the distance, the sommelier. You must admit there’s nothing like French dining service.
The steward said the chef was offering a very nice cold caneton à l’orange in aspic, or if we wanted something more hearty, the boeuf bourguignon was very good. We all looked at the menu which offered about thirty-five entrées, decided on the duck, with consommé first, agreed on Chablis, and were leaning back comfortably when a page approached the table next to us.
“M’sieu R. Pennypacker?”
He didn’t pronounce the name very well, but I understood, nevertheless. Old Cotton-Hair nodded eagerly.
The page handed him a ship’s cablegram, saluted, and left. Pennypacker—I could not believe that it was he—thumbed open the envelope, read the message, leaped out of his chair, and uttered a loud “Hey!” It brought around every head that was within earshot.
“Listen to this,” he yelped happily. He was addressing the woman opposite him, but twenty other people heard him read, “‘Beth today made you grandfather again. Boy, seven pounds eight. Everyone well. Congratulations. Doctor Maxwell.’ How about that?” he demanded.
The people around broke into applause. So did the other couple at his table. So did we.
“A grandfather again,” he said proudly.
“How many is that?” the other man at his table asked.
“Six,” he said. “Six of the loveliest little chickadees you’ve ever seen in your life.”
The consommé had arrived; the sommelier was pouring our wine. Tom raised his glass. “To the chickadees,” he said. “May they live long and fly far.”
Other people around us raised their glasses, too. The old man bowed his head in appreciation. It was rather touching.
We finished our broth, and he said, “I must really go up and acknowledge that cable. Are you finished, dear?”
She said what sounded like, “Yes, Richie.”
Tom said, “Congratulations, Richie,” and the old man waved happily.
As the waiter and server held their chairs for them, the other man at the table asked indignantly, “How are our steaks coming?”
As they left, I noticed that Mrs. Pennypacker clung to her husband’s arm and limped markedly.
After they were gone, I told Tom, “It isn’t Richie, it’s Reggie.”
“Reggie?” Betsy paused in mid-forkful. “It sounded like Richie.”
“Because you don’t know who that is.”
“Who is it?” asked Tom.
I dropped my voice. “That’s Reginald Pennypacker. The industrial spy. I can’t believe it.” I never meant anything more in my life.
“The what?” said Twit-Twit.
“Skip it for now. Until the other people at his table have left. Then I’ll tell you. At least, as much as I know. But that old sweet lump of kindliness is one of the most fantastic sons of bitches in the United States.”
“And with that cliff-hanger you leave us?”
“Only for a while. What else is new?”
Tom said, “Well, the Daily News had an interesting story this morning
on page 3, if anyone saw it.”
I had.
“Merrilee Moore is missing,” said Tom.
Betsy looked up. “You’re kidding.”
“I am not. She had contracted to make a picture in Greece. She came to New York three days ago from Beverly Hills to fly over. Then she disappeared.”
Twit-Twit said, “Merrilee Moore can no more disappear than Mount Everest can. It’s a publicity stunt.”
“I don’t know,” said Tom. “She’s a funny dame. Shy. Quiet. Insecure.”
“You know her?” said his wife with the overtones of all wives.
“I’ve met her. Keep your hair on.”
“I hadn’t heard.”
“It was on my last trip to Hollywood. A few of us had lunch.”
“With Merrilee Moore?”
Tom will play the long-suffering husband just so long. Then his patience runs out.
“Well,” he said, “there was a girl at the table. As I recall, the initials were M. M. And it was not Marjorie Main.”
We all ate duck a moment.
“She’s a doll,” he added. “Who knows? Maybe she’s on this ship, right this minute. Crossing by sea instead of by air.”
It was time to change the subject. The people at the Pennypacker table had left. I said, “Now I’ll tell you about Pennypacker.”
“What’s an industrial spy?” said Twit-Twit.
“Well, it’s an interesting and very new profession,” I said. “You know about international spies.”
“I’ve read Eric Ambler.”
“And John Le Carré. Well, an industrial spy is the same thing, but a little more localized. And considerably better paid. It goes like this.”
I leaned back and watched our server bring us individual pots of filtre.
“Supposing you’re a manufacturer, making a product that retails at fifty dollars and grosses twenty million dollars a year. And you discover that your nearest competitor is about to bring out the exact same product, or even one better, to sell at $39.50. You know production costs for this gadget, marketing costs, everything. Yet your competitor is about to beat you by ten dollars on the same product. Your twenty-million-dollar business is going up the flue. What do you do?”
The Traces of Merrilee Page 2
