The Traces of Merrilee

by Herbert Brean

  “I’m for le dejeuner.”

  We went down for what I figured would be a restful and restorative lunch. And I was right—for a while.

  * * * *

  The steak-lover was not complaining this noon, and Cotton-Hair Pennypacker looked over and waved but did not ask us to play bridge. Maybe the fifth person at our table overwhelmed him. Widow’s-Peak Pennypacker ate by himself as usual, tasting the cold salmon and its accompanying mayonnaise intently. The Indian was there and so were the college girls and their tall, pretty chaperone. The murder, news of which must by now have spread all over the ship, did not seem to have disquieted anyone, nor was there noticeable talk of it. Especially at our table.

  Tom read the ship’s newspaper.

  “I just want to see what the market did yesterday,” he said.

  “We’re in the market,” said Betsy. “We have A.T.&T. One share. We also have one share of I.B.M. Or is it B.M.I., dear?”

  “B.M.I is an association of song writers, you mutton,” said Tom.

  “Then that’s what we’ve got,” said Betsy. “We’d never have anything valuable like I.B.M.”

  “Shut up,” Tom growled cheerfully. At that moment the first officer came up to the table, cap in hand. He bowed to all of us. But he addressed Merrilee.

  “Pardon. I ’ave been asked to give you this, Mademoiselle.”

  It was a stateroom key.

  “It is the key to your stateroom. It was in the apron pocket of the—of your maid. It is all she ’ad on her at the time in the way of the possessions.”

  “Oh.” There was something poignant about that tagged rod of heavy brass. “Thank you.” She put it on the table, as if she didn’t like holding it.

  He bowed all around again and left. I watched him go out, cap in hand, and observed how many other people were watching, too. Being with her a couple of hours was really moving into a goldfish bowl.

  Tom was looking around at the others, too, and his gaze stopped at Widow’s-Peak Pennypacker.

  “I’d still like to get that guy for a TV interview,” he said. “Next fall. If he’d open up.”

  “Maybe you could persuade him.”

  “Maybe I could if I asked him over here. He’s sure interested in what’s been going on at this table. I noticed it when the officer was standing here.”

  “Why don’t you brace him after a while? Maybe he’d go for it.”

  “Maybe. You never can tell.”

  “Also, you might just find out where he was last night between 10:30 and midnight. I don’t know that he was at the big gala all that time.”

  Tom looked at me. “Is that the time, and what we want to know?”

  “That’s what we want to know. About a lot of people.”

  “Then I brace. Tom Dolan, boy detective.”

  We had reached the coffee stage. Merrilee’s fingers stroked the key.

  “Why do you want to know that?” she asked.

  “I just like to know things. Sometimes a couple of them fit together and tell me something more.”

  “Like what?”

  I didn’t want to go any further.

  “Come on, Sherlock,” said Twit-Twit. “Give us a f’r-instance.”

  “Well. Like that key.”

  “What more does that tell you?”

  “That the people who killed Klára don’t need it. Otherwise they wouldn’t have left it in her apron. So it means they can get into your cabin any time they want without it. It’s something to bear in mind, Merrilee. I’m serious.”

  “And with that happy thought,” said Twit-Twit, pushing her chair back, “we’ll leave you. Have your port and cigars, gentlemen. The ladies are retiring to the drawing room. Or to a stroll on deck. Why don’t you come along, Merrilee?”

  She got up, and had to balance herself against the ship’s roll. Merrilee looked appealingly at me for an instant. “Will you drop by and see me in an hour?”

  “Of course.”

  “I have—premonitions. Or something—you know what I mean. They have nothing to do with the key.”

  “Right. Forget about the key for now.”

  As a matter of fact, she did. She got up from the table and left the key where it was. Whatever else she was, she was irresponsible, and dependent on other people to pick up the pieces. And right now in a kind of daze.

  Tom said, “More coffee?”

  “Just a touch. I shouldn’t have said that, I guess.”

  “Yes, you should have. It’s a very valid point. She should be on her guard. And something should be done, like changing the lock.”

  “Something will be. I’ll see to it.”

  Cotton-Hair Pennypacker, his wife, and the Steak-Lovers were getting up. He smiled at us as usual. “Got a little game going,” he said. “Nothing else to do on an afternoon like this but play cards and forget the rolling.”

  “Right,” said Tom.

  “I’ve given up inviting you boys to play, at least temporarily.” He grinned. “Our friends here—” he gestured toward the Steak-Lovers “—are joining Mrs. Pennypacker and me this afternoon. But I’ll be after you again.”

  “And we’re pretty scared about playing them,” said Mrs. Steak-Lover.

  “How is that?” I asked.

  “You know how these business experts are. They’re awful tricky.” She smiled archly.

  “Business expert?”

  “Doctor Pennypacker is professor of business administration at Grinnell University,” Steak-Lover announced importantly.

  They got up.

  “Well, don’t take any wooden market-predictions,” Tom said. “How are the chickadees?”

  Pennypacker grinned. “Haven’t a single stock to my name,” he said. “And all five are great.”

  When they had left Tom said, “Let’s get on with the war. Or the alibis. I’ll talk to that other Pennypacker guy. Who else should I take?”

  “Thanks. I’ll take the guy with the bad eye—Dr. Cyclops, let’s call him ’til I get his name. You take the little joker with the white-mesh gloves. He was eyeing Merrilee pretty closely last night. I’ll take the Indian—and the first officer, because I have to talk to him anyway. He’s supposed to be on our side.”

  “Do you really think he’s a suspect?”

  “All I have for sure is that two people have been killed, and the approximate time of each murder. If we find someone who has no real alibi for one, we begin to check that person on the time of the other. And we also know this—that the enemy is aboard, and he is probably a man, but he may have a girl assistant.”

  “We know all that? How?”

  “I think the voice that lured me to Jones’s porthole was a woman, trying to sound like Merrilee, though I could be wrong. But the maid was slugged by a man. It took strength to make those skull depressions.”

  “It might have been a woman in a maniacal fury.”

  “These are not crimes of passion. And if the killer is a man, it would make sense to give him a girl assistant, because a woman can do things and get places men cannot.”

  “Like girls’ powder rooms.”

  “Exactly, Watson. Which reminds me—I’m latching onto that key.” I dropped it in my pocket.

  Tom was making little notes on his ship’s newspaper. “Those crazy Mets,” he said.

  “What about them?”

  “They won the opener yesterday. In thirteen innings. But did you ever see such a wild score?”

  Somehow I knew what was coming, and I didn’t want it to come.

  “Look.” His finger pointed to a line in the mimeographed sheet.

  Mets 21 dodgers 19

  I felt the normal air go out of my lungs and cold night vapor seep in.

  “What the hell,” said Tom. “You’re white as a sheet.”

  Chapter
16

  Strip, Tease, and Bug

  I took a few turns around the promenade deck. There were not many people about.

  The sea was a sullen undulation, cresting into whitecaps that seemed almost to snap their heads off, and occasionally a wave hurled itself so high it struck against the stout glass of the deck’s forward enclosure. I had never felt a major ship so completely subdued by the ocean. It was like being an actor standing in the middle of a set designed for some 1890’s melodrama.

  How had that crazy prediction come true? I began to think how.

  There was one way. It was a wild guess, but it could explain things.

  And I could test it out.

  * * * *

  In the main-deck foyer I found a framed map of the ship and located the printshop, which was three decks below.

  I found my way there by degrees. The door, which was decorated with a large metal box to receive copy or communications, was open wide, and a man in sweaty shirtsleeves was hand-setting type, his fingers deeply ink-stained. A stack of colorful dinner menus, the inner sides all blank at the moment, awaited the imprint that would tell the first-class passengers what triumphs the chefs had prepared for them that night.

  “Pardon ,” I said.

  “Oui, m’sieu.”

  “There was a baseball score in the paper this morning. An American baseball score. You know what I mean?”

  “Oui, m’sieu.”

  He looked longingly at the work he still had to do.

  “Where did it come from?”

  “From the radio, m’sieu. The radio office. They take all the news from New York. Or Le Havre. Depending on where is the ship.”

  “This was the Mets-and-Dodgers baseball game. It was a strange score.”

  “Oui, m’sieu.” He was being polite but he wanted to get rid of me.

  “And that was the score that came in by radio? There is no chance of error?”

  “M’sieu, I do the paper. Also the menus. Also the announcements. I do it all. I am busy, m’sieu. But I do not make many mistakes.”

  “And no one could have changed that score?”

  For the first time he began looking at me with a certain respectful suspicion. He said, “M’sieu, I get the what-you-call copy from the radio. It is short. Brief. You know. I write it out longer and the officer goes over it. He—what you say?—edits it. Then I mimeograph it.”

  “And that’s what happened last night?”

  “Oui, m’sieu.”

  “Who’s the officer who does this?”

  “Often the first officer, m’sieu. Because of the big party last night, the assistant purser took care of it. But he made no changes at all.”

  I said thanks very much.

  Going to Merrilee’s stateroom, I began wishing I had never left New York, or met Newton Harlow III.

  I still couldn’t believe it. But there it was.

  * * * *

  I knocked at her door and got no response. I waited a while and knocked louder. No one home. They were all still walking the enclosed deck. Good. I had a key in my pocket and a search to conduct.

  I used the key, let myself into her suite, and closed the door softly. Then I threw the bolt, so I could not be easily interrupted by any of the help, and began a leisurely inspection of Merrilee’s digs, even before starting to hunt the one thing that I wanted to make sure was either there or was not.

  Besides the living room, with its good-sized closet, there was a bedroom with another closet, and the bathroom. How would you bug a place like that?

  Hardly the bedroom. This was not a divorce case.

  But where in the living room? Chandeliers were a great place, but there was no chandelier. Behind a picture? There were some, but they were screwed into place on the wall, and an inspection of the screws’ painted heads told me none had been recently taken out and put back.

  Somewhere around the baseboards? I started a circuit of the rooms. I’d gotten to the bedroom when I heard a scratching in the living room. It seemed to come from the outside door. But it didn’t come again. A passer-by, perhaps, who happened to run his hand or key against the door.

  It rasped again, and I saw the doorknob turn slowly, then turn back slowly. There came the surreptitious sound of a key sliding into the lock.

  Nothing happened.

  I knew what that could be. The man outside looking down the corridor each way. Then sliding the key in. Then another look each way to see if anyone was watching.

  The lock made a loud, quick switching sound, and I leaped back into the bedroom. Someone was coming in.

  There was only one place in the bedroom to hide; you couldn’t get under that low-built bunk unless you were a thin suitcase. I strode into the closet, backed in among sheer, scented dresses and more intimate things, and pulled the door almost shut.

  The outer door opened and closed with a positive click. Then the bolt was shot. Like myself, whoever had come in didn’t want to be interrupted. I waited.

  I listened.

  I heard nothing. Then he came into the bedroom, moving quietly, and I heard the soft, uncertain sound of cloth being moved.

  I was hunched over, leaning away from all the clothes hung behind me. After a while my back began to hurt and I wanted to move, but I didn’t dare, for fear of knocking something off a hanger. I heard occasional undistinguishable sounds from beyond the door, and soft scufflings. That was all.

  I had to look out. My fingers found the surface of the door. I pushed gently, and a crack opened up wide enough to let me see half the room. I looked out.

  Merrilee was standing in the middle of the floor. She had been undressing all this time. She had just kicked off her shoes and she was barefoot. In fact, all she had on was some sort of thin tight panties and, as I looked, she rolled these slowly down her thighs and stepped out of them, naked.

  She did not look at all like an international sex symbol. She didn’t even look sexy, but rather like a slight, adolescent girl with breasts considerably smaller than millions of people thought.

  This is based on memory. At the moment, I was in something of a panic.

  All I could think of was that I was a Peeping Tom—unintentionally, but nonetheless about to be caught in the act of spying on the world’s most desirable woman in a completely private moment. If I had only looked out thirty seconds earlier, or if she had taken off only her dress—but she was in the buff. What did I do now?

  She was studying herself in the mirror, confident of her solitude, looking first at her face and then raising her breasts with her hands, critically. It was not the moment to step out of a closet, clear your throat, and say, “Hello, there. How’s every little thing?”

  She stepped backward, dropped her hands, then walked forward toward the mirror. As she did that, she became less adolescently sexless, for her flesh was like sun-tanned jelly, and it quivered like jelly as she moved; she was naturally sinuous and soft.

  But I also felt myself blushing in an agony of embarrassment. I like girls; they’re my favorite sex. But I don’t like to spy on them unintentionally in their intimate moments, and I could not bear the thought of being caught doing it.

  I rapped my knuckles on the door. “I’m in here,” I called out. “Don’t be alarmed. I’m coming out with my eyes shut.”

  I closed my eyes and stumbled out into the room and stood there. “I can explain everything,” I grinned stupidly.

  There was no gasp or scream or indignant reproach, or anything that I had anticipated. There was a rather delicious gurgle of laughter. Slowly I opened my eyes. She stood before me, still nude, utterly unselfconscious, and smiling.

  “Whatever were you doing in my closet?” she laughed. “Hunting for that bug you mentioned?”

  She still made no move to put anything on. She enjoyed her nudity and the embarrassment it caused
me. But my embarrassment began to abate.

  “Yes. I—I had your extra key. I came in. When I heard you at the door, I thought it might be a prowler—honestly, I had no idea it was you or that you were undressing.”

  She laughed again and then with one finger gently pushed me aside. She went to the closet, thoughtfully considered several negligees, selected one, and slipped into it unhurriedly. She stepped into mules, fluffed out her hair, and smiled mischievously.

  “My, but you can blush,” she said. “Certainly you’ve seen girls without clothes on before.”

  I exhaled. “Go to hell. It was—just the—the Peeping Tom aspect of it that—”

  “Any time you want to peep, you come right in and peep, Tom.”

  We laughed at each other, but for different reasons. She was amused. I was relieved.

  But whatever else I had done by my awkwardness, I had broken the spell of shock which had gripped her all day.

  “Okay,” I said. “Speaking of keys, I’m going to get your locks changed. But meanwhile I want to keep yours, and I also want to give you a key to our suite. Here. I can get another. Any time you feel alone or frightened or want a friendly word, drop in.”

  “I will. I’ll hide in your closet for a change. What time do you undress?”

  “Now, come on. Let me up. As a matter of fact, I want to get to work. You sit still and smoke your cigarette.”

  I began once more to search the bedroom. I didn’t know how big an object I was looking for, but I knew that these days bugs could be pretty small. Her bed was bolted to the floor, with the headboard flush against the wall; it was possible but not likely that the device was behind that. There was nothing under the bed but a small traveling bag, and that was empty. I felt around the mattress edges and the springs underneath. Nothing.

  She smoked and watched.

  The bathroom was tiled and barren. I probed the jars of cold cream and other things with a long pin, even though it seemed unlikely that the bug could be buried in one of them. I went through the clothes in the closet carefully and inspected the telephone on the night stand. Still nothing. Finally I felt and probed the chairs and their cushions, upended two little tables and the lamps. Nothing.