The Traces of Merrilee

by Herbert Brean

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps you feel a—responsible for her?”

  “In a way. What are you driving at?”

  He seemed to summon his courage. Tom was watching him like a judge watches the key witness at a murder trial. Twit-Twit had gone into her room, but I could see by a shadow on the wall that she was eavesdropping just inside her door.

  “We ’ave found the body, m’sieu.”

  I died, and he saw it.

  “Oh, not hers. But one of her associates. The M’sieu Jones? In a lifeboat. Like the maid.”

  Chapter 19

  The Middle

  I said, “Oh?”

  “You knew him, m’sieu?”

  “Slightly. A bar acquaintance.”

  “That is two, of course. Of the friends of the mademoiselle. It is—it is most ominous.”

  “Yes.”

  The first officer looked around, carefully not seeing Tom. “Can we speak alone, m’sieu?”

  Tom said, “Pardon me. See you later,” and went into his room.

  The first officer bowed acceptance in his direction and spoke lower. He did not see Twit-Twit’s shadow.

  “M’sieu. M’sieu Jones was murdered. Slugged and ’anged. But obviously he was not ’anged in a lifeboat. No. So in my opinion to solve this matter is not only to find the person who kills people, but to ascertain why put them in lifeboats. Someone who thinks he may get off the boat before they are even found, perhaps.”

  “Yes.”

  Twit-Twit’s shadow was still there. The first officer was still looking elaborately away from me, yet our glances met. Because he was watching me, and had been all the time, in the mirror over the Louis XIV commode. He looked away.

  “His steward ’as told me you wanted to get into his cabin early yesterday.”

  That one I was ready for.

  “Yes. We had had a nightcap at the bar, and I mentioned I like to take a turn around the deck early in the morning. He said he would like that too, and asked me to knock at his door. So I did. When he did not answer, I became a little worried—he had had a lot to drink. I asked the steward to look in, just to see if he was all right. That was all.”

  “I see.”

  “Are you checking alibis, or anything like that?”

  “M’sieu! At least, not here.”

  “Then where, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Nowhere, yet.”

  “Has the news gone out to—the rest of the world?”

  “Only to our headquarters in Le Havre. A secret.”

  And how long would it stay a secret there?

  “Just one thing, since we were speaking of alibis.” I was, anyway. “I gather the maid must have been killed last night during the gala. Have you determined a time of death, or figured out who was at the gala and who wasn’t all evening?”

  “It would be impossible, m’sieu. People go in and out. Except people like you and me. We both know we were there all evening.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  So I had an alibi. Or so he thought. Or so he wanted me to think he thought. And he had one too. Or so he wanted me to think.

  “M’sieu. I must ask a favor.”

  “Of course.”

  “There is one part of the ship we ’ave not searched.”

  “Her stateroom?”

  “No, m’sieu. Yours. Your suite. May I?”

  I saw Twit-Twit’s shadow vanish.

  “Please do, by all means.”

  “It is just that—a formality.”

  “Of course. I had just better warn Miss Twickenham.” Twit-Twit was coolly creaming her face at the make-up table when I looked in. “Visitor,” I said.

  He excused himself abjectly, then looked carefully in the closet, around the bathroom, and under the bed. He even glanced into the life-preserver rack. Then he did Tom’s room. If the entire search of the ship was like that, it would be impossible for them to overlook a five-pound sack of flour.

  Back in the parlor, I said, “Now I’d like you to give me a hand with something.”

  “M’sieu?”

  “It involves the ship personnel, and may have something to do with Miss Moore’s disappearance.”

  His glance narrowed. “Oui?”

  “I want to talk to the man who runs the ship’s newspaper. I’ll do the talking. But I want you there to scare him. To make him think his job is in danger.”

  “Beaubien?” He sounded thunderstruck.

  “If that’s the printer. Could we do it now?”

  “He would be ’aving dîner. Below. Far below.”

  “Then let’s go see him.”

  “Oui, m’sieu.”

  I went to Tom’s bedroom door. “I’m going out for a few minutes. Will you or Twit-Twit be here?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s important that someone be in here to take messages.”

  “I dig.”

  “Back in fifteen minutes.”

  We went down, down, down in the elevator and then by stairs. Finally he led me through a narrow, rather grimy, corridor and opened an unmarked door. It was a small wardroom, apparently below the waterline. Half a dozen crewmen were scattered at several clothless tables, eating. A bottle of red wine stood on each table.

  One of those eating was the printer. He saw us bearing down on him and looked alarmed. He got to his feet, rubbing his mouth with a paper napkin.

  “This gentleman wants to talk to you,” the first officer said shortly.

  “M’sieu?”

  “I want the truth about the baseball score.”

  “M’sieu? Baseball score?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I do not understand the anglais very good, m’sieu.”

  “Yes, you do.” I spoke slowly. “This is a police matter. You understand that, don’t you? I want the truth about that baseball score I asked you about earlier today. The truth. Start talking.”

  The first officer said nothing. He stood with folded arms, frowning at the printer. He didn’t know what I was talking about, but he was playing his part.

  The printer touched his lips again with the napkin.

  “I-I—”

  “The truth, immediately,” I said. “Or the police in Le Havre.”

  “Immediately, Beaubien!” The first officer echoed.

  “I—oui. Yes. I change the score. The—how was it?—the Dodgairs against the Mets. It is true.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I receive a letter.”

  “From whom?”

  “I do not know, m’sieu. It was dropped in the mailbox on the door of my printing shop. I found it yesterday evening.”

  “And?”

  “There was a five-hundred-franc note. And the letter said the writer ’ad made a joking bet on the baseball score with a friend. He want me to make it a certain numbers in the paper. And if I did, there would be another five-hundred-franc note.”

  “And so you did.”

  He shrugged. He did not look at the first officer. “What difference makes a baseball score, m’sieu?” He did not look at me either. “I am sorry if it was wrong.”

  One thousand francs. About two hundred dollars. The first officer said, “Did you save the letter you received?”

  “No, m’sieu le commandant.”

  “Where is it now?” I asked.

  He gestured toward the empty wastebasket and shrugged.

  “And did you get the other five hundred francs?”

  “Not yet, m’sieu.”

  That was interesting. Were they simply cheating him? Or playing things doubly safe?

  “When you get it,” I said, “if you do, preserve everything. The envelope it comes in. The franc note. Everything. You can have the money. But w
e want every bit of evidence we can get.”

  He shook his head emphatically yes.

  “Bring it,” said the first officer, “to me. If you get it and do not bring it at once—” He smiled sardonically and made that wonderful little Gallic gesture, a flick of the wrist at waist level, which says so much. Among other things, you know how things happen.

  As we went out, I looked back at the printer. He had sat down and, hands on knees, was staring into his plate un-hungrily.

  Chapter 20

  The Ending

  But what he had said made me think of the metal mailbox, with a hinged top, that I had noticed on the printshop door. And also of something I had learned years ago as a police reporter on a newspaper. I said to the first officer, “Can we go to the ship’s doctor, quickly? I want a lot of aspirin, and some light oil. But let’s hurry—we may be too late even now.”

  “Are you ill, m’sieu?”

  “No—I’ve got a crazy idea. That five-hundred-franc bribe will be paid, I think. And the person who drops it in the printer’s mailbox is the person we are hunting. He will leave his mark on the metal box.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  “Fingerprints are uncertain, no matter what you may have heard. What I have in mind is far more certain.”

  We reached the doctor’s office fast because the first officer commandeered the elevator, and there I ground three dozen aspirin tablets to powder, using some tongue depressors and a metal bowl. We borrowed a little bottle of mineral oil, took the elevator down, and hurried to the printshop.

  I coated its hinged metal cover lightly with the oil, then blew aspirin dust all over it. I wiped away the excess that had blown onto the rest of the box so that the top now looked as if it had been painted a sort of grayish-white. I said a silent prayer that it would work.

  As we walked down a main-deck corridor toward the purser’s office, the first officer said, “M’sieu, I do not understand any of this, but especially I do not understand why someone would wish—would want to ’ave the baseball score fabricated.”

  “It was part of a plot to frighten her. To make her return to America.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “It’s an involved story. I don’t know much about it myself, movie-business rivalry. I’d rather explain what I know of it a little later.”

  We were going up the stairs to the main deck when he spoke again, impulsively. “M’sieu, M’sieu Jones’s face, when he was found, had been painted green.”

  “Painted?”

  “Yes. Could that be connected with the plot to frighten Mademoiselle Moore?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  The assistant purser, in charge of the ship’s office, was young and efficient-looking.

  “Is the report final?” the first officer asked.

  “Je viens de rapporter à la passerelle.”

  “You may speak in English.”

  The assistant purser looked at me curiously. “I have just informed the bridge. The search is complete. She is not aboard.”

  “Not a sign?” I asked. “Of anything?”

  “Not a sign, m’sieu. She never got to le coiffeur. A woman who left the cinema just behind her said the Mademoiselle Moore started for the main staircase and began walking up.”

  “Toward the boat deck.”

  “Or the coiffeur. No one has reported seeing her after that. There is no trace of—anything.”

  “The search must be done again. At once.”

  I felt the same way. Not because a second search was likely to result differently. But because it was something to have going, a last tatter of hope to cling to. Anything was better than this feeling of steady sinking into catastrophe.

  “The captain has already ordered it,” the purser said. “The men are being held.”

  “I will direct,” the first officer said.

  “God damn it.”

  I didn’t say it to anyone in particular except, perhaps, to myself. “She’s got to be—she’s got to be someplace!”

  They looked at each other.

  “Someplace aboard, I mean.”

  “These things somehow—they can happen, m’sieu,” the young purser said.

  Solemnity lengthened the first officer’s lean dark face. “Do not abandon hope. We will do everything that can be done. I will call you on the instant of news.”

  * * * *

  In our suite, Tom had done what he could, too. He had ordered two double Martinis; they stood on a little table between the lounge chairs.

  “I can tell by your face,” he said.

  I sat down. “The search is over. She’s not on the ship. That’s all. She’s not on the ship.”

  “Drink that.”

  I took a gulp. “They’re doing the whole search once more. But it’s routine. They’ve gone over every inch once. Carefully.”

  I leaned back and closed my eyes. After a long while I opened them again and drank more Martini. It could have been water.

  “I think the most that can happen now,” I said, “is that the second search may turn up some indication of how she—of what happened to her. Where are the women?”

  “Twit-Twit was going to shower. Bets came in just before you did. She’s lying down. I think she’d been crying.”

  “Crying?”

  “She’d heard a report on the search. She liked Merrilee.”

  I closed my eyes again. When I opened them, Tom was finishing his Martini. I finished mine.

  Tom said, “You know, to begin with, you did a lot more than you were supposed to do. Right from the start.”

  “I didn’t do enough.”

  He said, “Just for the hell of it, let’s go over the alibis we rounded up, such as they may be.”

  “That’s not the real problem. The real problem is, she’s gone. Revenge is easy. Like punishment. Restoring a human life is impossible.”

  “We’ll have two more drinks.” He rang for the steward. “Let’s compare notes anyway. You probably got more than I did.”

  I recognized what he was trying to do for me. It was probably useless, but anything was better than imagining the way of her death. Aboard ship, in a sudden confrontation? Or in the cold, heaving sea, in a welter of despair?

  “You start.”

  I tried. “I haven’t got so much. I did have one piece of luck,” and I told him about the bridge game.

  “So if what this Cyclops—his real name is Giorgione—says is true, his meeting on deck with the Indian alibis not only himself but the Indian. His alibi for the first night isn’t much, although it’s convincing.

  “Then there’s the kid in the mesh gloves, Mr. Bu. He sat next to us during part of the gala. He said he and his lovely girlfriend left early, but early was a long time after midnight, as I remember. What he was doing the first night I don’t know.”

  “The first officer?”

  “He indicates he has an alibi. He doesn’t, any more than I do. How was your luck with Widow’s-Peak Pennypacker?”

  “Good and bad. Good because, oddly enough, he said he will make a guest appearance on the show next fall and really talk facts. He’s a vain bastard, and I think you’re right about the fag part. He says he must appear in a mask, because he cannot afford personal recognition.”

  “That figures.”

  “Yes. Anyway, he said last night at the gala he was there and sat alone, near the college girls. He danced with some of them, including the chaperone. It seemed to amuse him.”

  “I saw him. But in that crowd anyone could have been there and gone and come back without being noticed by someone else.”

  “The first night he said he had quite a few cocktails and then drank a bottle of sparkling Burgundy all by himself at dinner. He said he went to bed stoned, around ten-thirty.”

  “That
seems to be that. Everybody has an alibi. Or else doesn’t.”

  “Yes. How about that other Pennypacker—Old Grandad? He’s so damned wholesome, I sometimes—the coincidence of names is odd.”

  “Odd, but it’s how things happen in real life. Anyway, at bridge this afternoon he said he and his wife looked in on the gala a few minutes, danced, and then left to go below and read. The first night I know he was playing bridge in the smoking lounge when we came up here, because I saw him.”

  “I have a feeling we don’t suspect the right people.” He pushed the steward’s button in sudden irritation.

  From out in the corridor came the voice of Steak-Lover, bellowing at his wife. “When he comes back with decent sheets, you tell that steward we want some drinking water. Clean! Or no tip Friday.” The door slammed and he clumped down the hall.

  Tom said, “I take it the steward is otherwise engaged. I’ll go up to the bar myself.” And he went.

  I sat there while it got darker. That’s not merely a literal statement. The expensive cloisonné lamps spread subdued light, but a hundred million candle-power could not have brightened that room.

  Twit-Twit came to her door. I didn’t feel like talking.

  “Don’t look like that. And don’t feel like it, darling.”

  “Okay.”

  She walked to me fast on flapping mules and kissed me. But like the Martini, it didn’t do what it usually did.

  “I’m not going to shower. I’m going to take you to the bar and buy you a drink.”

  “Everyone’s buying me a drink. Tom’s gone for some now. You shower.”

  “Sure?”

  “A drink won’t help. Knowing the way you feel does, though.”

  She kissed me again and left, slender in the negligee.

  * * * *

  I knew what I would ultimately do. I didn’t know or care how I would do it. Twit-Twit’s shower hissed on loud, then softer. The ship surmounted a tremendous wave, then seemed to crash down into the trough, the woodwork groaned in torture, and water in hidden pipes gasped obscenely.

  This was an end of things. I wanted Tom to come back with the Martinis. Or with none. I didn’t care if I never had a drink, or if I had a million. I just wanted something to change; if the ship had sunk at that moment, it would have been fine.