The Traces of Merrilee

by Herbert Brean

  “Everything okay back at the ranch?” Betsy asked.

  “Yes. Sorry. It was the office, about a story I closed a few weeks ago.”

  It was an awkward lie, and what made it really awkward was that no one said anything more about it, and so obviously no one believed it.

  The band struck up a tune, and I looked at Twit-Twit.

  “Dance?”

  “If you can tear yourself away from business.” And then, as we got out on the floor, she added, “Whatever your business may be.”

  I put my arm around her much more strongly than I needed to. “My business is this. You smell nice.”

  “You gave it to me for Christmas.”

  “I have damned good taste. And speaking of business, I’m going to have to leave you again. For about half an hour.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t flip. But it’s better that I don’t tell you right now. I will—and soon.”

  “It has something to do with Miss Moore.”

  “That’s right. And it’s making me bite my nails. Which is the understatement of the century. But it’s nothing personal with her.”

  “I don’t know why the hell I believe you.”

  “Just as long as you do.”

  I saw the Pennypacker who had caught me in his room—Widow’s-Peak Pennypacker, that is—get up from a large table otherwise occupied entirely by the college girls. Their chaperone got up too, and Widow’s-Peak followed her to the floor. They brushed past us presently. She danced well.

  * * * *

  I was sitting with my back to the dance floor, considering making my break, when someone leaned in on my shoulder and a familiar voice said, “Why don’t you come over and meet the captain? He’s a darling.”

  It was Merrilee, dancing with the proud and happy first officer.

  “I’d like to.”

  They danced away.

  “I’ll bet you’d like to,” said Tom.

  “When did you get chummy with her?” said Betsy.

  “Magazine writers get around,” said Twit-Twit. “You know, they write stories.”

  “Or mash notes.” I grinned. “Mind if I leave you a moment? I really should, and I can’t tell you why.”

  “I can tell you why,” said Tom.

  “Shut up, you evil old man.”

  “I couldn’t care less,” said Twit-Twit, “but I’m going to try.”

  But she didn’t seem really mad. So, a few minutes later I went over to the captain’s table, and the first officer gave up his chair next to Merrilee.

  “I’m glad I came,” she said and patted my arm.

  “To the party?”

  “On the trip. I don’t know that I should have come to the party.” She lowered her voice and it became a fragrant breath blown in my ear. “I feel awful about Sam Jones, even though I hardly knew him. But I don’t think I had anything to do with his death. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Why would he kill himself?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes there’s no logical explanation.”

  “And paint his face like that? He couldn’t have known of my dream. I think it just shows that I do have some kind of ESP power. Don’t you think?”

  I ducked it again. “Precognition, it’s sometimes called.”

  “You’re like me. Mixed up about it. I mean—I don’t know what I mean. But for days I’ve been scared and going sort of crazy inside, and tonight—well, tonight the way they received me and made me feel welcome—it just warmed me up all over. So that’s why I’m glad I came. And you are responsible.”

  “I don’t think I can take any credit.”

  “You can ask me to dance.”

  The band drifted into “Anima e Core,” a song that can make me amorous if I just hum it to myself.

  Putting my arm around her on the floor, I felt a little self-conscious. I knew everyone in the room was watching me. She danced like a cloud.

  “You look lovely.”

  “Never mind that.”

  “Tired of hearing it?”

  “You never get tired of hearing it.”

  I saw the first officer go over to our table, bend over Twit-Twit, and she got up, looking pleased. As he led her to the floor, he looked a very quick question at me: he was being courteous and thoughtful, but was it all right? I smiled that it was all right, and felt grateful for French gallantry and quickness. He smiled back.

  “I don’t want to keep talking about Sam,” she said. “He—he wasn’t—well, a personal friend, you know.” She had such a breathless way of talking. “But what will happen? His body hasn’t been found. Will it be?”

  “Maybe not.”

  Her arm tightened a little on my shoulder.

  “Somehow I feel safe.”

  Maybe my grasp tightened a little too. “There’s no reason why you should not feel safe.”

  “Oh, yes there is. It’s what my mother told me. The sea. Like, I’m haunted by the idea of someone—of seeing someone fall overboard. Like a child.”

  “That’s silly.”

  “It’s not silly. It could happen. But it makes me even afraid of going near the railings.”

  “Why, exactly?”

  “Because if someone falls overboard, I would feel I had to jump in after them. It would be—you know, a duty. To help them. And I wouldn’t have the courage. That’s what scares me. I’m a coward. I’m afraid of the sea.”

  I did hold her closer now. “That’s really morbid. No one’s going to fall overboard.”

  “It might be a child,” she said, and looked up at me, and suddenly she was not beautiful and poised and glowing. She was fear-struck, and her fear was contagious. It brought back my own anxieties and responsibilities, so different and so much bigger now than when I accepted the job. “I would have to help a child. I couldn’t let one die.”

  “You need a drink. A stiff one. No sissy champagne.”

  It was idiotic, but it is my own solution for sudden problems.

  “Let’s just get a breath of air,” she said. “I’d love to go out on deck. With someone, that is.”

  “Okay. But after that, I’m going up to your cabin to try to get the lay of the land. As I said I wanted to.”

  I do not need to tell you, of course, that at that moment Twit-Twit and the first officer danced by, and I knew from Twit-Twit’s chin that she had heard what we said.

  And so it goes.

  Chapter 11

  Contents of a Lifeboat

  We went out on the veranda deck.

  The wind was strong; after a moment you could taste the salt on your lips. She took my arm and the ocean wind blew the scent she was wearing my way. It was dryly, understatedly pungent. I thought of her entrance and that elaborate hairdo.

  “This may not do your coiffure any good.”

  “Klára can redo it in a few minutes.”

  It was cold, though. I thought of what she had on underneath that dress. Except her, there was almost nothing, obviously.

  “Remember, I’m going to search your cabin,” I said.

  “Now?”

  I wondered if she thought she was reading my mind. I wondered if she was.

  “After a bit.”

  “Why?”

  “I have the feeling it may be bugged.”

  “Who would do it?”

  “That’s a little hard to say.” If she couldn’t guess, why alarm her? She was having a good evening, and she deserved it.

  “It is cold.”

  “Yes. In for another dance?”

  “Let’s. But you warm up with a drink if you like. I don’t want one.”

  “I don’t need one. I have on more clothes than you. At least, I think.”

  She smiled up at me and wrinkled her nose and somehow wiggle
d. Everything wiggled.

  I dropped her off at the captain’s table.

  We danced and sat for a little while. Twit-Twit occasionally looked at me out of her eye corners, but she said nothing. We sipped brandy between dances and Tom went on about his student life in Paris and I occasionally glimpsed Merrilee, dancing with closed eyes and open mouth. At least she wasn’t worrying about children falling overboard.

  The friendly first officer, the one who had danced with Twit-Twit, came up to our table.

  “M’sieu Deacon?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ’ave a word?”

  “Mais oui.”

  He led me out to a passage that connected the grand salon with a sort of serving pantry. Both were empty.

  “M’sieu? You are a friend of Mademoiselle Moore?”

  “I am.”

  “Something ‘as ’appened.”

  He was being reserved, but his eyes were alarmed. Something had happened. I guessed what it was.

  “A friend of Mademoiselle ’as—’ad an accident. Someone close to her. The friend ’as been found.”

  “Where?”

  “In a lifeboat, m’sieu.”

  I was right.

  “Who—what happened? Who is this?”

  “I don’t know whether to tell her or not, m’sieu. The captain ’as commission—’as asked me—that is why, I thought, if you are a close friend, I would avail myself of your advice.”

  There were little windows in the swinging doors of the pantry entrance. Through them I could see the dance floor, and even as I looked I saw her for a moment, dancing with the captain, smiling, oblivious to the dark present.

  “My advice is at your service. If it will help you.”

  “Perhaps you would tell her, m’sieu? Break the news?”

  “Does it have to be broken? Now, I mean?”

  “I do not compre—understand.”

  “She is enjoying herself. Look out there. Must we spoil her evening? Even though a corpse has been discovered?”

  “A corpse?”

  “A corpse. A body. The dead person.”

  He looked strangely at me, and for the second time during the brief period I’d spent on the ship I felt something cold crawl down my spine.

  “M’sieu,” he said. “The person is not dead. Not yet, at least.”

  I don’t know how long the millennium actually lasted, but during it I couldn’t breathe.

  “Perhaps you had better explain.”

  He said, “Perhaps you would be so good as to accompany me and see for yourself.”

  I said, “Sure,” thickly, and followed him through the pantry to a service stairway and up a flight of stairs and then up some more and out onto the boat deck, all the time wondering what in God’s name had happened.

  For we went to a lifeboat. But it wasn’t the right lifeboat.

  The tarpaulin had been thrown back, and two men stood in the boat, one in a white medical jacket. They were struggling with something. A crewman, standing by attentively, snicked on a flashlight and shone it on a stretcher at his feet. The two men in the lifeboat raised something heavy. We both looked in.

  The crewman flashed his light into the lifeboat, and we saw what they were lifting. It was a body, all right.

  But it wasn’t Jones’s body.

  It was the maid, Klára. She muttered something and her eyes rolled strangely under half-open lids in a way that did not suggest life as much as it convinced you of death.

  “We’ll take her to the infirmary at once,” the man in the white jacket said. “If she lives that long.”

  Chapter 12

  The News in Hungarian

  “What do you think, m’sieu?” The first officer spoke in a low voice. “It is her maid, of course.”

  “Yes. I’d like to go to the infirmary with her and see if she can say anything.”

  “But Mademoiselle Moore?”

  “There is nothing she can do. And there is plenty of time to tell her. I see no point in disturbing her at the moment.”

  “It is true.”

  We followed the stretcher-bearers and the doctor to the elevator, but we could not all get in, so the first officer and I walked down to the infirmary. While we did, I thanked my lucky stars that he had accepted me, as he clearly had, in the role of close friend of the family. I was desperately anxious to learn whether Klára would say anything, especially since I was sure the doctor’s terse diagnosis was right. The head wounds I had glimpsed were actually skull depressions, deeply bloodied. They were sickening.

  When we pushed into the infirmary’s second room, white, bright, and antiseptic-smelling, she was stretched out on a sort of operating table. She had on a black maid’s dress but the white cap was crimson and mashed into the head wounds. Her eyes were open and unfocused; her lips moved but only throaty, sucking sounds came out.

  I asked, “Is there any chance?”

  The doctor just looked at me. “The brain damage is massive. It’s a wonder she’s not dead.”

  “She cannot live?”

  “I can do nothing, m’sieu. I have given her an injection. But I would not even touch that poor head. Adrenalin may keep her alive for fifteen minutes or a few hours.”

  “The wounds must be the result of a terrible beating,” I said.

  “It is clear she did not fall downstairs, m’sieu.”

  “Nor climb into the lifeboat by herself.”

  He smiled faintly.

  “But can you guess at the nature of the weapon?”

  “The weapon, I do not know, but a club of some sort. A heavy metal bar, perhaps. Wielded by quelqu’un sauvage.”

  I said, “Klára,” a little loudly. There was no response at all. I bent over her and said it again, more loudly.

  The eyes did not flicker. I smelled blood, the sweet, waxy, sickening smell that brought back major auto accidents I’d covered as a kid reporter, and once a horrible triple knifing. “She is beyond hearing, m’sieu.”

  “She is beyond everything.”

  “Oui.”

  “How was she found?”

  The first officer answered. “The tarpaulin was not properly fastened by whoever put her in the lifeboat. It began to flap, and the bridge noticed. When a sailor went to fasten it, he saw her.”

  There was something suffocating, in spite of the careful air conditioning, about standing late at night in that bright room with all its helpless surgical equipment and useless cabinets of medications, waiting for someone to die.

  “Will it matter if I try to talk to her again?”

  They exchanged glances. “It will make no difference,” the doctor said. “She is already dead. Except for ceasing to breathe.”

  I bent over her again, holding my breath.

  “Klára. Klára! KLÁRA!”

  Nothing.

  “Who did this to you?”

  I could hear the ticking of the big cheap watch on her wrist.

  “Who did it?”

  Then it came, a sudden gush of words, the eyes still open and sightless. But the words were strange syllables only. The high harsh voice was speaking in Hungarian. It repeated a phrase, and I grabbed a pad and pencil from the table and wrote it down phonetically.

  “Vezetö meg ölt engem.”

  I listened carefully and wrote it down phonetically several times. There were minor variations, or so I thought. The watch ticked on precisely.

  I said, “Is there a Hungarian aboard? We need an interpreter—instantly! “

  It took them a second to come to life.

  “Galli, the assistant pastry chef,” said the doctor. “He knows Hungarian. I treat him for his sprain.”

  “Get him at once,” the first officer barked. He was beginning to look drawn.

  The doctor wen
t to a wall phone and dialed. Klára’s murmur of Hungarian went on, now a mumble, now shrill singsong.

  “Klára, who did this to you?”

  I asked it again when she paused for breath. “Speak English.”

  The first officer tried it in French. But all we got back was the language we did not understand, with vezetö frequently repeated. Finally she fell silent.

  “Where in hell is that pastry chef?”

  “He is coming to the phone, m’sieu. He was in his bunk.”

  “What will happen next about this?” I asked the first officer.

  “There will be an investigation. It is clearly murder. I will so inform the captain.”

  I drew on my slender French. “C’est fantastique.”

  “Oui. C’est horrible.”

  “How long ago was she discovered?”

  He looked at his wrist watch. “About thirty minutes.”

  I looked at mine. It was five past midnight.

  We waited in silence. Klára began mumbling again, but more faintly now. A nurse came in, still buttoning the last button of her uniform, saw what lay on the operating table, blanched, and, at a gesture from the doctor, stood to one side.

  The door opened again and a plump, elderly, bald man came in. “You sent for me?”

  “She is speaking Hungarian,” the first officer told him. “She is dying. Act quickly. Ask her who attacked her. At once.”

  The plump little man looked frightened. “Attacked her?”

  “Hurry.”

  He turned to her. As he did, the mumble gurgled in her throat and stopped. The doctor moved fast to her.

  “C’est fini,” he said somberly. “She is dead.”

  Now all I had was what had sounded like vegeta meg ult engine. We all looked at each other and then we looked away. The awareness of death comes strangely. But it always comes, sooner or later.

  The nurse brought a white sheet with which to cover her. I plucked the pastry chef’s arm.

  “What does this mean?” and I read what had sounded like vegeta meg ult engine as best I could. I repeated several versions, slowly. He looked puzzled.

  “I think what you say,” he said at last, “is ‘I was killed by the lord.’ Or ‘the master.’ It is hard to translate vezetö.”

  “Or the boss?”