[Mark Twain Mysteries 01] - Death on the Mississippi

by Peter J. Heck

  “Good evening, Mr. Cabot,” she said. “The river is very picturesque tonight, is it not?”

  “Yes, although it would be more to my taste if there were a bit of a breeze. My New England blood isn’t really used to this kind of weather.”

  She nodded. “Nor is mine, really. I suppose it is only natural, as it is the middle of summer, and we are headed south, after all. I doubt it will get any cooler.”

  “I wish it would,” I said, taking off my hat and fanning myself. “I’m afraid the heat has put me rather out of sorts.”

  A serious expression came to her face, as if she were searching for the right words. “So I have heard,” she said at last, lowering her voice. “Perhaps it is not my business, but I am somewhat distressed to hear your behavior being discussed in very unflattering terms.”

  “What do you mean?” I was astonished. “Who has been talking about me?”

  “If what they say is true, does it really matter who they are?”

  “Tell me what they say, and I’ll tell you if it’s true,” I said. “What have you heard about me?”

  She looked at me with a grave expression. “I suppose it is only fair to give you the opportunity to refute what is being said about you, considering that what I have heard really casts more doubt on your judgment than on your character. I have heard that you lost a good bit of money gambling with that McPhee person. I also heard that you spoke in profane language to Mr. Berrigan—who despite his origins, deserves some respect as a representative of the law. Neither accusation does you credit, Mr. Cabot.”

  I was thunderstruck; I could deny neither accusation. But even more distressing was the fact that the incidents had apparently become public knowledge. All I could think of to say was, “Who told you this?”

  “Someone quite respectable, whose word I do not doubt,” she said. “I see that you do not choose to deny either accusation. I must say I am disappointed in you, Mr. Cabot. I hope you will take it upon yourself to examine your conduct very carefully. I do not think you are a bad person, but perhaps you should choose your company more carefully. And now, I think I should say good night.” Before I could say another word, she turned and left.

  As I was attempting to absorb the implications of what Miss Cunningham had said, Detective Berrigan came out on deck, swaying a bit, although the river was calm. He leaned against the rail, sipping from a little flask. After a moment, he turned and looked at me, and gave a mocking bow. Not anxious for any more of his company, I continued up to the texas deck. But behind me I could hear him, softly whistling a tune I recognized—it had been one of my father’s new favorites the last time I was home from Yale, and he had sung it loudly and incessantly. I could still remember the words, even though Berrigan confined himself to the melody. “I’ve got a little list; I’ve got a little list.”

  I was not sure whether he intended it to annoy me, but it had that effect.

  17

  I meant to go to bed early and get a good night’s sleep, but it was not to be. The weather had been oppressively hot ever since St. Louis, and this was the hottest night so far. There was almost no breeze, except what the boat’s motion stirred up, and little of that seemed to find the one small window of my stateroom. Besides, for some reason the steady sound of the engines and the movement of the boat kept me from dozing off. I had barely noticed our motion when traveling at daytime, but now trying to lie down somehow magnified every roll and lurch. I was in no danger of seasickness, but neither was I able to relax.

  It didn’t help that my mind was full of the events of the last few days. I thought again about McPhee’s cheating me at cards, and his arrogantly returning my money; Berrigan’s claiming to have solved the New York murder, and his refusal to confide his findings to me; McPhee’s apparently casual mention of Napoleon, Arkansas, alluding to the treasure which Mr. Clemens and I hoped to recover; Miss Cunningham’s admonition, which put my recent actions in an unsettling light; and always near the surface, Martha Patterson’s face and voice, which had somehow cast a spell on me—not an unpleasant sensation, but not one conducive to rest.

  I tried a few mental tricks that had served to conquer insomnia in the past, but counting sheep bored me without relaxing me, and recalling peaceful landscapes only reminded me that I was in a hot, airless cabin on a moving steamboat, with one of my fellow passengers a cunning murderer. I had nothing to read, unless I wanted to reread Major Demayne’s verses—not an appealing prospect, although I realized it might indeed put me to sleep. Finally, sometime well after midnight, I decided to walk out on deck and seek whatever breeze and comfort might be there. Perhaps, I thought, a few turns around the deck would use up my excess energy.

  A light gleamed in the pilothouse high above me, but I was in the mood for solitude, not company. Were I so minded, I knew, I could undoubtedly find McPhee and his gambling cronies burning the midnight oil in the main cabin, where their games went on until near dawn. But the river and the moonlight were company enough for me, and I strolled aimlessly around the promenade deck, enjoying the reflection of the moon on the surface of the water. Our wake shone brilliant white behind us, and the blades of the paddle wheel gave off silver images as they rose dripping from the river. The moonlight seemed to cloak the river and the boat in a romantic veil, removing everything ugly and modern from the view. Even as a no-nonsense modernist who expected to live the better part of my life in a new century, I could understand the nostalgia Mr. Clemens and the other old river hands felt for the era when steamboats had ruled the Mississippi.

  While I was vaguely aware of a few other late-night prowlers on the decks, I was not anxious to converse with them. I have no idea what put me in this curious mood, unless it was the desire to avoid scrutiny, now that I had somehow become the object of gossip. At any rate, on two or three occasions when I heard footsteps coming up or down a stair from another deck, I drew back around the corner of the cabin to avoid meeting anyone face-to-face. While this little game of secrecy had no object other than to preserve my solitude, after a couple of “close escapes” I began to play it half in earnest, as if discovery would entail serious consequences. I would peek around each corner to make certain the next stretch of deck was empty before proceeding to the next corner, creeping along quietly to listen for voices or footsteps.

  Thus, I was nearly frightened out of my skin when a hand fell on my arm and an unfamiliar voice from behind me said, “Young man, come with me.”

  I turned to see a small, elderly woman in an old-fashioned nightcap and robe, with a grim expression on her face. While I had no notion what she might want of me, the set of her mouth made it clear that she would brook no refusal. “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “What seems to be the matter?”

  “Come and I’ll show you,” she said, pulling my sleeve. Since she offered me no choice, I followed her up to the hurricane deck and into the dimly lit corridor, past a row of stateroom doors. About a third of the way down the corridor, she stopped and pointed to a door. “Someone in there is hurt, and they don’t answer the door,” she told me.

  “How do you know they’re hurt?” I asked.

  “I was awakened a little while back by voices—my room is next door to this one,” she said, pointing. “Two men were arguing loudly, and they sounded very angry.”

  “What were they arguing about, ma’am?”

  “I couldn’t make out what they said. I’m afraid I’m a little hard-of-hearing these days. But they were shouting, and the tone of voice was very angry—make no mistake about that, young man; I know an argument when I hear one. Then there were sounds of a struggle, and one of them gave a dreadful cry. I heard the door open and close, and someone walked past in the corridor—only one person, mind you. I went to look, but there was nobody in sight when I got to the door. I knocked, but there was no answer. I think there was a fight, and someone in there is badly hurt.”

  “Well, let me try,” I said. I knocked loudly, calling out, “Is anyone here? Are you hurt?” but heard
no reply from within. I tried the knob, but the door was locked. I turned back to the woman. “Are you certain this is the right door?”

  “As certain as I’m standing here,” she said adamantly. “Do you think we should call the captain?”

  “I’m not sure we ought to disturb the captain,” I began, but I was interrupted by the opening of an adjacent cabin door.

  A stout man with squinting eyes looked out at us, obviously in a foul mood. “Well, isn’t it enough for those two men to shout and wrestle at all hours to keep a man awake? Now you have to bang on the door and raise a ruckus to wake the dead! Don’t you have anyplace else to go?”

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” I said. “Do I understand you to say you heard an argument and a struggle in this room just a short time ago?”

  “Aye, and no thanks to you for keeping the racket going. Will you be quiet and let a fellow sleep?” And with that, he slammed the door.

  That put a different face on matters. Without the neighbor’s corroboration, I might have tried to persuade the woman to return to her cabin and sleep. But now I knew that at least one other person had heard an argument and apparently a fight in the room. “I’ll find someone to open the door,” I told her, keeping my voice low. “Go into your room and close the door; I’ll be back shortly.”

  She nodded gravely and went into her stateroom, and I went to look for help. I hesitated for a moment when I came out on deck again, not entirely certain which way to turn—was this incident serious enough to warrant calling in the captain, who might well be sound asleep at this hour, or would some lesser authority suffice? If there was an injured passenger, we might need a doctor. Then I recalled that one of our number might well be a killer, and decided to take no chances. I turned my steps upward to the texas deck.

  However, it was not the captain’s door, but Mr. Clemens’s, upon which I decided to knock. He answered the door almost at once, wearing a plaid bathrobe. He took one look at my face and asked, “What on earth is going on, Wentworth?”

  I briefly told him what I knew.

  “Yes, it sounds as if it could be serious,” he said. “Do you have any idea whose cabin it is?”

  “I forgot to ask,” I admitted.

  “Well, there’s nothing to do but go see what’s happened. I’ll get dressed and try to wake up Mike. You go down to the engine room and see if you can get one of the stokers to come up; we may have to break that door in. And if you see Berrigan, bring him along, too. This may be out of his jurisdiction, but if there’s been a murder on board, he’s the only expert we have.”

  Sobered by Mr. Clemens’s voicing of what I realized I had already feared, I made my way down to the lower decks.

  Thinking that Detective Berrigan might be in the main lounge with the cardplayers, I looked in there on the way to the engine room. The detective was not in view, but McPhee was at the corner table with the usual noisy group: half a dozen habitual gamblers, along with a small group of spectators. Among the latter was Mr. Snipes, the chief clerk. I caught his eye and beckoned to him to come over to the door, not wanting to advertise my purpose to the group at large. “Have you by any chance seen Mr. Berrigan?” I asked him.

  “No, not tonight,” he said, pulling at his goatee. “What do you want with him at this hour?”

  I briefly told him the situation, and he nodded. “I’m just the man you need. Come on down to my office, and I’ll look up which cabin is Mr. Berrigan’s—we can fetch him on our way up. There’s a doctor aboard, too, if we need him, but we don’t have to call him just yet. I’ll bring the master key so we can get in without breaking the door in. That’ll keep the whole thing quiet—no point bothering the other passengers unless there’s an emergency.”

  In his office, Mr. Snipes fished a ledger from some papers atop his desk and flipped through the pages. “Berrigan, let’s see now—by God, what cabin did you say the trouble’s in?”

  “Number forty-one on the hurricane deck,” I said.

  “That’s the very one Mr. Berrigan’s staying in!” he said, slamming down the ledger. “Come on!”

  He grabbed a ring of keys, locked the door behind him, and we went flying up to the hurricane deck. Mr. Clemens was waiting there, as was the captain, in his shirtsleeves. I quickly explained the situation while the chief clerk tried his master key in the door. “It’s double-locked,” he said. “Berrigan must have locked it after the other fellow left.” After a moment’s turning and pushing, it opened. In the light from the corridor, I saw a crumpled form on the floor.

  We crowded into the cabin, Mr. Snipes leading the way. Even from a distance I could see that the body was lying in a pool of blood. And the rumpled suit it wore was all too familiar. Mr. Snipes bent and turned the body over. The face was ghastly, but there was no doubt of the identity. “It’s Berrigan all right,” said the clerk. “Nothing the doctor can do—he’s dead as a doornail.”

  Captain Fowler bent to look at the corpse. “Knifed,” he said in a sorrowful tone of voice.

  “But why would someone want to kill him?” I said, shaken by the presence of a corpse.

  “That seems clear enough to me,” said Mr. Clemens. “It looks as if Berrigan was telling the truth when he told you he’d found the murderer he was after. Damn it all, why didn’t the poor fool tell somebody the killer’s name while he still had the chance?”

  The captain made some sort of answer, but my head was full of noise, and I couldn’t make out what he’d said. A moment later, the cabin began to whirl about me, and I found myself collapsing helplessly to the floor—fainting like a frightened girl, for the first time in my life.

  18

  I came to my senses to find an unfamiliar face examining me from close range. I was lying on a bed, and there was a cool, wet cloth on my forehead. “Feeling better, are we?” said the man. He had thinning, sandy hair and wire-rimmed spectacles over an aquiline nose.

  “I think so,” I said, in a weak voice. “Who . . . ?”

  “Dr. Savin, at your service,” he said. “Take a sip of this; it’ll help restore your strength.” I drank from the flask he held out toward me and got a draft of strong brandy, which made me sputter a bit.

  “Back among the living, I see,” said Mr. Clemens. I turned to see him sitting in a corner chair not far from where I was lying. “Better than we can say for poor Berrigan.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “This has never happened to me before. . . .”

  “No need to apologize,” said the doctor, his hand on my pulse. “Do you hurt anywhere?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Where am I?” Without even looking at the floor, I could tell that this was not the cabin where the murder had taken place.

  “Just down the hall from Berrigan’s cabin,” said Mr. Clemens. “There was an empty cabin nearby, so we brought you down here until Charlie Snipes could bring the doctor.”

  “I appreciate your coming, Dr. Savin,” I said. Then the terrible truth of the situation struck home. “My God, Berrigan’s really dead, isn’t he.”

  “I’m afraid so, son. I doubt he suffered very long, though. The wound was directly to the heart.”

  “No consolation to the victim,” said Mr. Clemens. “He didn’t deserve to die this way—hellfire, nobody deserves it. I blame myself for not going to see him earlier. If I’d persuaded him to tell me what he knew, he might still be alive. I could have talked Mike into putting the killer in irons straightaway, and to the devil with the legal niceties.”

  “There’s no use making yourself responsible for the man’s death,” said Dr. Savin. “People die every day, and there’s not a man alive who can stop it. You learn to accept that pretty early if you’re a doctor. You never learn to like it, but if you take every death to heart, you’ll drive yourself mad.”

  “Well, maybe I couldn’t have prevented it, but I can damned well make sure it doesn’t go unpunished,” said Mr. Clemens fiercely. “The fellow who did this is going to pay, I promise you.”

 
“Do we have any idea who it is?” I asked. I sat up on the edge of the bed.

  “No, but we’d better do what we can to find out,” said Mr. Clemens. “Unfortunately, the fellow nominally best qualified to play the role of homicide detective is playing victim instead.”

  “What about the police in Memphis?” I asked. “Won’t they investigate the case?”

  “Oh, I’m sure they’ll take an interest. But there are problems of jurisdiction. I’m not even sure what state we’re in at the moment—Kentucky? Kansas? Elmer Parks could probably tell us—that’s the sort of thing a pilot has to keep track of. More to the point, the trail will be a whole day old by the time we land. For all we know, the murderer’s already swum ashore.”

  “If he has, we’re well rid of him,” said Dr. Savin, looking up as he closed his medical bag.

  “True enough, although I’d rather have the fellow in jail than running loose,” said Mr. Clemens. “First thing in the morning, Captain Fowler’s going to verify who’s on board. If there’s anybody missing, we’ll know who our killer is.”

  “And if everyone’s still here?” Dr. Savin asked, a worried look in his eye.

  “We’ll know he’s still on the boat. Then we’ll have to figure out who the devil he is.”

  “The devil? I’m afraid you’re right,” said the doctor. “What worries me is that he may decide to favor us with more of his deviltry before we reach shore. I don’t mind telling you, one corpse per voyage is quite enough for me.”

  “It’s one too many for me,” I said with much feeling. “What will the other passengers think when they learn of this atrocity?”

  “For now, we’re going to do what we can to keep them from learning about it,” said Mr. Clemens. “Can we trust you to keep it quiet, Dr. Savin?”

  “I see no reason to cause a panic,” said the doctor. “But I can’t promise to be quiet if I think there’s imminent danger to anyone.”