[Mark Twain Mysteries 01] - Death on the Mississippi

by Peter J. Heck

  “I’m glad you see it that way,” said Mr. Clemens. “All I ask is that you keep the news from spreading until we reach Memphis tomorrow. So far, only the three of us, plus the captain and Mr. Snipes, know about the murder. That’s five—plus the killer. The captain and Mr. Snipes have both agreed not to tell anyone else for the time being, except for those crew members who’d find out anyway—and they won’t know any more than that there’s a dead man aboard, not who it is or how he died. If we can keep the news of the murder from the rest of the passengers, maybe we can trick the killer into letting it slip that he knows about it.”

  “But won’t the news come out in Memphis?” I asked. “Once the police start coming aboard and questioning people, everyone will know something’s amiss.”

  Mr. Clemens nodded. “That’s why I want to find the murderer before then. Do you think you’re up to taking another look around Berrigan’s cabin?”

  I looked at Dr. Savin. “Have you put that brandy away yet, or do you think I could have another small taste of it?” He gave me a knowing look, nodded silently, and reopened his bag.

  After the doctor took his leave of us, Mr. Clemens and I returned to the detective’s cabin, a few doors away. “The captain found Berrigan’s key,” said Mr. Clemens, pulling it out of his pocket. “It was in Berrigan’s vest pocket.” He opened the door, and I saw (to my relief) that the body was gone.

  Mr. Clemens must have read my expression. “Mike searched the body, and then he and Charlie Snipes smuggled it down to one of the meat lockers to keep it on ice—and I’m glad I wasn’t the one who had to do the job. There’s the rest of what they found.” He waved in the direction of a bedside table, where personal effects from the detective’s pockets were piled next to a nearly empty whisky bottle. A battered valise sat on the floor next to the table.

  I looked at the items on the table, wondering what it must have been like for the captain to search the body. Just thinking of the grisly task made me shudder—I remembered the pool of blood on the floor, and deliberately turned my mind to examining the objects on the table. There was a well-worn pigskin wallet, a briar pipe and a brown corduroy tobacco pouch, some loose papers, a medium-sized envelope, two pencil stubs, and a penknife. I picked up the wallet and looked inside. There was no money, but pinned to the inside was the badge the detective had shown me in New York. “It looks as if he’s been robbed,” I said.

  “No, Snipes took the money for safekeeping,” said Mr. Clemens. “There was forty-eight dollars in greenbacks and another five and change in coin—he had me count it. Good thinking, though, Wentworth. Do you see anything else out of the ordinary?”

  I poked around in the pile of papers taken from the dead man’s pockets. “This might be worth a closer look.” It was the passenger list the detective had shown me.

  Mr. Clemens glanced at it perfunctorily and said, “I saw that before, but didn’t think much of it. What makes you think it means anything?”

  “Something Berrigan said yesterday—he mentioned having seen something on this list that jogged his memory. It must have been a name he recognized, perhaps an alias some New York criminal has used before.”

  Mr. Clemens looked at the paper more carefully, then refolded it and put it in his breast pocket. “Well, then, I’d best give it a look-over. Let’s see the other papers, too—maybe there’ll be something useful among them.”

  We spent the next few minutes passing the papers back and forth, but found nothing of any obvious relevance to our case until we opened the envelope. That turned out to include the photograph of Lee Russell, the New York murder victim, and two notes: one the scrap of paper with the names of Mr. Clemens and the Union Square Hotel that the police had found in Russell’s pocket, the other the message, supposedly from Farmer Jack Hubbard, that had been left for Mr. Clemens at the hotel desk. Mr. Clemens put those in his pocket, along with the passenger list. He also took the wallet and the badge to give the clerk for safekeeping. “Poor Berrigan may have had a wife and family,” he said. “They ought to have these things, at least. I’ll try to find out when we get to Memphis. Now, let’s go over the rest of the cabin and see what clues we turn up. You take that side and I’ll take this. Pick up anything you find, even a pin.”

  The stateroom was small enough that we completed our task in a short time. The results were, in a word, disappointing: a penny under the bed, a burnt match-end, a broken pencil—and, to Mr. Clemens’s amusement, a bent pin. None of them suggested anything about the murder; for all we knew, they had been on the floor for weeks. That left only Berrigan’s valise to search. We turned that out on the bed and pawed through his clothes, discovering a Smith & Wesson revolver. “Have you ever used one of these things?” asked Mr. Clemens, holding it as if he feared it might turn and nip him.

  “I’m afraid not,” I admitted. “Is it loaded?”

  He looked at it, then nodded his head. “It’s loaded, all right. A lot of good it did Berrigan, packed away where he couldn’t get to it. I’m going to give this to the captain for safekeeping, then. I probably couldn’t hit the floor if I pointed it straight down, and giving it to you is no protection for either of us if you don’t know how to shoot it.”

  “Why wasn’t Berrigan carrying it?” I wondered.

  “Good question. Maybe he didn’t expect to need it, or maybe he was too drunk to realize he needed it. A fatal mistake, either way.” Mr. Clemens began to pace in his usual way, then was brought up short by the bloodstain in his path. He shook his head sadly and turned back toward me.

  “If he were planning to arrest someone, he’d have been carrying it,” I said. “I think we can assume that the person who did this is the one who killed Lee Russell in New York.”

  “No question about it, in my mind,” said Mr. Clemens. “I can’t think of any other reason for anyone to have done him in, other than his personality. What I wonder is whether Berrigan knew the killer was coming to visit. If he was caught by surprise, it would explain why he didn’t have his gun ready.”

  “But that suggests that the killer knew Berrigan had spotted him,” I said. “I was alone when he told it to me, and I haven’t told anyone but you. Could he have told anyone else, do you think?”

  Mr. Clemens pointed to the whisky bottle. “I can’t say what Berrigan might have done with a few drinks under his belt—for all I know, the idiot went down to the saloon and shouted it at the top of his lungs. Or maybe he sought the fellow out and invited him to his cabin for a few hands of cribbage. More likely, somebody overheard him talking to you—or you talking to me, come to think of it.”

  “I suppose that makes sense.” An uncomfortable thought crossed my mind. “You were serious about giving me the gun, weren’t you.”

  “Yes, until I found out you haven’t shot one before. I won’t take the risk of giving it to you unless I know you can use it—and that you will use it, if you need to. We’re up against a man who’s killed twice, Wentworth. He won’t be anybody you can bluff or scare off. And he must have some notion that we’re wise to him. That’s the other reason I want to solve this case before Memphis; it’s simply too dangerous to travel any farther with a known murderer among us. If we haven’t settled this, one way or another, before we leave Memphis, I’ll have to call off the expedition to recover the gold. I’d be looking over my shoulder every foot of the way.”

  “Yes, I suppose we don’t have many alternatives. I wish he’d told me who his suspect was.”

  We glanced over the room once more to make certain we hadn’t missed anything, but found nothing more out of the ordinary—to the extent one can say that of a room where a man has just been stabbed to death. Finally, Mr. Clemens put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Better call it a night, Wentworth—this has been the devil’s own work. I know it must have been hard for you to come back into this room—it wasn’t easy for me either—and I appreciate the help. Try to get a few hours’ sleep now. We’ll both need all our wits about us.”

  “Thank y
ou, sir,” I said. “I don’t know how easy it’ll be to sleep after this, but if I can’t sleep, it won’t be because I’m not tired.”

  We locked the door behind us and made our way slowly up to the texas deck, where we parted company; it was after three o’clock, by my watch. I took off my jacket and lay down on my bed, and was almost asleep when I realized what else had been missing from the room: Berrigan’s little notebook. I’d seen it in his hand that very afternoon, when he’d teased me about his “little list.” Could the captain have missed it in his search? It didn’t seem likely, although I supposed the only way to check would be to search the body again—a task I wasn’t eager to perform myself. There, if anywhere, was where Berrigan might have written down the name of his main suspect—and its absence seemed to confirm our guess that Berrigan had been killed to prevent his bringing the New York killer to justice.

  Assuming, for the moment, that the notebook really was missing, I wondered where it could be. The most likely answer was that the killer had taken it; perhaps Berrigan had brought it out and waved it in the killer’s face before he was stabbed. In all probability, the killer had thrown it overboard under cover of darkness. At least, that’s what I should have done in his place, knowing its importance. If that were the case, I knew, we might never learn the killer’s identity.

  Or, worse yet, I found myself imagining, we might learn it only when he revealed himself to us in some lonely place, with a dagger in his hand and no help in sight. On that disturbing image, I finally managed to drift off to sleep. Mercifully, for once I did not dream.

  19

  I awoke at first light, not really rested. But my mind was seething so furiously that, after a futile attempt, I gave up trying to go back to sleep. The odd thought struck me that this must be how soldiers felt on the morn of an impending battle. And almost inevitably, the notion of a battle made me think of Major Demayne’s poem on Antietam, which I had promised to read over for Mr. Clemens and had all but forgotten.

  It was too early to go looking for breakfast, so I turned on the light and dug out the Major’s manuscript from my suitcase. The verses seemed no better than before:

  Somewhere I hear the cannon’s fearsome roar—

  Antietam! Waves of blood roll on thy shore!

  My comrades fall, their lives not spent in vain—

  I lov’d them, and remember still their pain.

  Napoleon’s armies reach’d no greater heights;

  Engrave in Golden numbers, Muse! their fights.

  E’en I, unworthy wretch, am spar’d to tell

  Deeds of renown, in Sharpsburg’s deadly dell.

  Ten thousand fell on that ensanguin’d field,

  O’er whelmed by fire, but not about to yield!

  Secessions’s minions cannot win the day;

  E’en Lee himself cannot the Vict’ry stay!

  Eagles of Triumph above our standards soar—

  Youth’s slain and crippl’d, but the battle’s o’er.

  Out of the blood the Union rises whole—

  Union Forever! I shout with all my soul.

  I searched the page for any evidence of poetic merit. Something in these lines had made me want to look at them again, but I was at a loss to discover anything to set their author apart from dozens of amateur poets in the newspapers. The verses scanned, and the rhymes did not clash in my ear, but I discerned no flash of genius, no feeling that the poet was describing scenes that had any great meaning for him. The veterans of Antietam would have to await some other Homer to sing their deeds. Surely there was nothing here worth Mr. Clemens’s time, with two murders hanging over our heads. . . .

  Suddenly, I realized what I had missed on my first reading: there in front of my eyes were the words “Napoleon,” “Golden,” and “Ten thousand.” I was thunderstruck; how could I have overlooked so many obvious references to the treasure Mr. Clemens and I were seeking—ten thousand dollars in gold that he had described as hidden in the vanished town of Napoleon, Arkansas? Even “Eagles” seemed to fit, now that I was thinking in terms of gold pieces. Major Demayne had given me the broadest hint imaginable, and it had gone right over my head. No wonder he was so anxious for Mr. Clemens to see his “poetry”!

  Clearly, I would have to give Mr. Clemens the manuscript immediately. But what could Major Demayne know of our treasure hunt, and what sort of message could he be trying to pass to my employer in such a mysterious way? Why didn’t he simply approach Mr. Clemens and ask to speak with him privately? Did the message mean that he was involved in the murders, or that he was also in danger and afraid to reveal himself directly?

  I found it difficult to believe that the kindly old soldier (who, after all, had twice come to my rescue) was in league with a murderer. But I had to admit that such a connection could explain the “secret message” inserted into the manuscript of his rather pompous epic. I scanned the verses eagerly, looking for other clues, but saw nothing more of obvious significance. Whatever else lay on the pages, it was somehow concealed behind the Major’s antiquated rhetorical flourishes and self-consciously “poetic” diction.

  I glanced at my watch and realized that it was now after seven, so I set the manuscript aside, put on my jacket and shoes, and headed below in search of breakfast. The events of the previous night still seemed unreal to me, although the image of Berrigan’s body lying in a pool of blood remained fixed in my mind like a luridly colored photograph. The doctor had told me and Mr. Clemens that Berrigan must have died almost instantly, but I found it impossible to recall the slumped body without thinking of incredible pain. It wasn’t until I was halfway through my second cup of coffee that the discrepancy struck me: how had the mortally wounded detective managed to lock the door behind his assailant without leaving a trail of blood across the floor of his cabin?

  The captain had found Berrigan’s key in his pocket, but the door had been locked. Either the detective had been alive long enough to lock the door from the inside, somehow managing to avoid bleeding, or the killer had taken Berrigan’s notebook and key from his body, left the cabin, locked the door from the outside, and then magically conveyed the key back into the dead man’s pocket through the closed door. Neither solution made sense to me. Why even bother to lock the door on a dead body, unless to create pointless mystification?

  This new mystery made me especially anxious to speak to Mr. Clemens. As he had not appeared for breakfast yet, I took my half-finished cup of coffee and climbed back up to the texas to see if he was awake. I was in luck; he was at my stateroom door, tapping softly. “There you are, you rascal,” he said gruffly. “A shabby trick, to get up early and leave an old man knocking at your door trying to wake you up when you’re already gone. After last night, a locked door with no answer to my knock makes me nervous.”

  I laughed. “Believe me, it wasn’t done on purpose to fool you,” I said. “I hope the fact that I’ve been thinking about our murder last night will compensate. I’ve found a couple of things that puzzle me—perhaps you can make sense of them.”

  “Good man, Wentworth. Only don’t speak so loudly about that business last night—remember, we want to keep it quiet as long as possible. Come on in the captain’s cabin. He’s had a pot of coffee brought up from the galley, and we can go over what you’ve found out without the whole boat being able to overhear us.”

  Captain Fowler admitted us to his cabin with a somber expression. After topping up my cup of coffee, I told the captain and Mr. Clemens my speculations about the missing notebook and the locked cabin.

  “Well, I’ll be dagnabbed,” said the captain. “Here I was so bothered about that fellow being killed on my boat that I never did notice there was anything else funny about it. How the hell does somebody get a key into a dead man’s pocket through a locked door? Or lock it from outside without the key?”

  “I spotted that problem, too,” said Mr. Clemens. “I think Wentworth’s right about the notebook; most likely, it’s at the bottom of the river, eighty miles behind
us. As far as the locked door, I can think of a few possible answers—too damned many answers, in fact. How many sets of master keys are there?”

  “Tarnation! The master keys!” said the captain, setting his coffee cup down with a thump. “Of course—all the cleaning women will have a set, as well as the clerk’s office. I’ve even got a set, not that I ever use ’em. You don’t think one of the crew killed poor Berrigan, do you, Sam?”

  “I’m pretty sure you didn’t kill him, Mike, but so far I can’t prove you didn’t—or that anybody else did or didn’t, for that matter. The cleaning crew, the clerk’s office . . . Who else has keys?”

  “I couldn’t rightly say, Sam—it’s Charlie Snipes’s job to hand ’em out, not mine. He’s pretty careful with ’em. But I reckon there’s more’n half a dozen keys somewhere or another on board that can open that stateroom door.”

  “That’s what I thought. So somebody could bribe one of the cleaners, or sneak into Snipes’s office and lay hands on a master key. And if the fellow we’re looking for is somebody who’s spent time on a riverboat before, he probably knew that. This isn’t going to be an easy job, Mike. Almost anybody could have gotten hold of a key to that room.”

  “I’m not sure how easy it would be to sneak into Charlie’s office without him noticing,” said the captain, although without much conviction in his voice. “He usually knows just what’s going on: who’s in every cabin, what port they got on the boat at and where they’re getting off, whether they have checked baggage. You’d have to get up mighty early in the morning to put one over on him, Sam.”

  “But he was out of his office when I found him,” I pointed out. “He was in the main cabin, watching the poker game. Couldn’t someone have gotten into his office then?”