[Mark Twain Mysteries 01] - Death on the Mississippi

by Peter J. Heck

  “But how do you know it’s the same man who killed Berrigan?” asked Captain Fowler.

  “I’m getting to that, Mike,” said Mr. Clemens. “Once Berrigan told his chief that he thought one of my old friends might be the victim in a murder case, his superiors decided they had to consider the possibility that I was a target, and my backers in New York agreed with them. They ordered Berrigan to follow me, and act as an unofficial bodyguard for me as well as investigating the murder of Lee Russell. This was heaven to an old city cop—a chance to travel, to mingle with a better class of people, to concentrate on one single case. It was practically a paid vacation. The surprising thing is that Berrigan decided to take the assignment seriously, not just as a chance to get away from the job. You all saw him. He questioned all the passengers, looked at all the evidence, and kept the telegraph wires burning between the river and New York. And yesterday afternoon, he told Cabot he’d solved the case.”

  “Aye, but he never told him what he’d discovered,” said the captain. “Now he’s where he can’t tell anyone. And with his little notebook missing, who knows what he’d figured out?”

  “What Berrigan could figure out, I can figure out,” said Mr. Clemens. “One thing seems pretty clear: the killer somehow found out what Berrigan said to Cabot. Mr. Knepper told us he heard Berrigan and Cabot arguing on deck. It’s not hard to guess that someone else overheard Berrigan bragging that he’d found the murderer. You know how sound carries on the water. It was Berrigan’s bad luck that one of the people who heard him bragging was the killer. Later that night, our killer went to see Berrigan. And Berrigan made the fatal mistake of letting him in.”

  “That’s the one thing I just can’t understand,” said Captain Fowler. “Why did Berrigan let a cold-blooded killer into his cabin late at night? He didn’t even have his gun out where it would be any use to him.”

  “Neither did he have his wits about him,” said Mr. Clemens. “To judge by the empty bottle we found in his room, he’d washed away whatever good sense he usually had by the time the murderer came calling. Also, the murderer came to his room planning to try to bribe him—and maybe Berrigan was ready to consider the offer. The people in the neighboring cabins heard them arguing about money. Maybe Berrigan’s price was too high, or maybe he was honest all along, and was just pretending to consider the offer as a way to draw his man into a confession; who knows? All we can say is that in the end our man let his knife do the talking, and that was the end of Berrigan.”

  “That’s a very entertaining theory,” shouted Andrew Dunbar. “Maybe even true. But you still haven’t told us who the killer is.” People turned in their seats to see who was talking. And I could see a few heads nodding in agreement with the reporter. Dunbar smiled, sensing that he’d scored a hit.

  Mr. Clemens stared at the reporter for a moment. “You’re in an awful hurry for the answer, Mr. Dunbar. You should never rush a man who’s telling a story. What if he gets to his point and you don’t like it?”

  “What do you mean by that?” said Dunbar.

  “Why, nothing particular. Just that, without any more evidence on the table, I could as easily point at you and say There’s the killer!’ as at anybody else in the room.”

  “Who would believe you?” said Dunbar, looking very uncomfortable. Now the whole audience was staring at him. “There’s nothing to link me to the killings.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” said Mr. Clemens. “You won’t deny that you were in New York, will you? Or that you were on the boat last night?”

  “That’s a thin thread to hang your case on,” said Dunbar. “Your Cabot was in both places, too. So was Hubbard. Either one of them is a more likely suspect than I am. Hubbard even admits that he knew the first victim, Russell, which is more than you can allege of me.”

  “What does that prove? Suppose your paper sent you to snoop out any damaging stories about me; lots of papers like to print gossip about famous people, the more scandalous the better, and truth’s got nothing to do with it. Your paper has taken quite a few potshots at me over the years. Suppose you were skulking around my hotel lobby, and overheard Lee Russell leaving a message for me at the desk. You sized him up as a shady character, and decided to follow him to see if he had any dirt on me. But you’re no Indian scout, not even of the Fenimore Cooper class, so he spotted you and challenged you. One thing led to another, and you stabbed him—maybe it was even self-defense. But you panicked, and ran away. It wasn’t until later that you learned that the police had connected the killing to me, and that Berrigan was on your trail. Of course, once he identified you as the killer, you had to eliminate him.”

  Dunbar’s face had turned red, and he was visibly quivering with suppressed emotion. “This is a pack of lies,” he shouted. “What possible motive would I have? Why would I lie in wait at your hotel, then follow some tramp who leaves a message for you? No judge would believe that.”

  Mr. Clemens put his hands into his pockets. “Your paper recently invested a good deal of money in a Mergenthaler linotype system, did it not?”

  “Yes. What of it?”

  “You must have known that I was one of the main backers of the Paige typesetting machine—the major competing system.”

  “I suppose so; it’s not really my business. That kind of thing is the publisher’s concern, not mine.”

  “But your orders come from the publisher. What if your publisher was afraid that the Paige system would prove more successful? That would leave your paper behind the eight ball, with a huge investment in obsolete equipment. By discrediting me, you undercut the Paige system, both by damaging my ability to earn money to invest in it, and by making my testimony on its merits less credible to other investors. Suppose your orders were to make Mark Twain look bad, whatever the cost. The rest falls into place pretty neatly, I think.”

  “You’re inventing this out of thin air,” Dunbar shouted. “I know—you’re trying to shield Cabot! Knepper heard him arguing with Berrigan just yesterday, and he swore that it was Cabot’s voice he heard. You’ve been ignoring that evidence all along. You can’t prove anything against me!”

  “Well, I might mention your selling cocaine to the crew,” said Mr. Clemens. “Now maybe the stuff is even legal in some of the states we’ve been going through. But until we dock, Captain Fowler is the law on board this boat, and I doubt that he and Tiny Williams much appreciate your turning their men into dope fiends.”

  Dunbar turned pale. “What? How did you know about that?” he blurted out—then jerked back and glared guiltily around as he realized what he’d let slip.

  “I thought there was something wrong with you the first night you came on board,” said Mr. Clemens. “You were acting jumpy—seemed as if you were mad at the world. It wasn’t until later that I realized there might be something more to it than just plain ordinary nastiness. But a few days later, I saw you talking to a couple of roustabouts, and looking over your shoulder like a schoolboy sneaking off for a smoke and afraid the principal was after him. And when I saw those same two roughnecks mouthing back at Tiny Williams later that same day, I knew something was fishy. The most likely explanation was that you had been selling them drugs of some kind. The cocaine was just an educated guess, based on what I’ve heard of its effects. Thanks for confirming my suspicions.”

  A ripple of laughter went through the audience at seeing the reporter caught out; Dunbar had not made himself popular. As I watched him stand there, fuming, I heard the Horace Greeley’s whistle blow twice, the notes muffled by the closed doors. We must be nearing Memphis, I thought. Mr. Clemens isn’t going to have much longer to prove his case against Dunbar. But Mr. Clemens was forging ahead, quieting down the audience and calling up one more witness.

  “Berrigan told Cabot he’d learned the murderer’s identity by looking at the passenger list Mr. Snipes gave him. And for a while, I wondered what he could have seen in a simple list of names. Now I think I know—but just to confirm my guess, let me call up the one who
wrote the list.” Chief Clerk Snipes stood up, but Mr. Clemens waved him off. “Not you, Charlie, I want the boy who actually wrote it out. Tommy Hazelwood, will you please come up front?”

  The young mud clerk stood up in the back of the auditorium and raced up to the stage. I wondered if he ever simply walked anywhere. “Yes, sir, Mr. Twain, what do you want?” he said as he climbed the stairs, two at a time.

  Mr. Clemens reached in his breast pocket and pulled out a folded sheaf of papers. “Take a look at this, Tommy, and tell me if you recognize it.”

  The boy took the papers and unfolded them. After glancing over them he nodded and looked at Mr. Clemens. “Yes, sir, it’s the passenger list Mr. Snipes asked me to copy out for Mr. Berrigan.”

  “Why did he ask you to copy the list instead of doing it himself?”

  “He always has me copy over things for other people to read. I guess my writing’s a little clearer, and I have more time than he does. He always has a lot of things to do.”

  Mr. Clemens reached over and pointed to one page. “This is Mr. Dunbar’s name, is it not?”

  “Yes,” said Tommy.

  “And it’s your handwriting, am I right?”

  “Yes, it is,” said the boy again. I wondered what possible significance there could be in who had written Dunbar’s name on the list. From the puzzled look on Tommy’s face, I could see that he was having trouble following the logic as well.

  Unperturbed, Mr. Clemens turned to another page. “But here, there’s a note in different handwriting, about the Throckmorton boys having been kicked off the boat. That’s not your handwriting, is it?”

  The boy squinted at the paper where Mr. Clemens’s finger pointed, then said, “Oh, no, that’s Mr. Snipes’s writing. I just copied the whole list and gave it to him, and he about threw a fit when he saw those two fellows were still on it. This is supposed to be a list of who’s on the boat, not who used to be on it, he said, and he grabbed a pen and scratched out their names. He was still awful mad about having to give back their money when he threw them off the boat.” Tommy smiled and looked eagerly up at Mr. Clemens, as if fishing for a compliment.

  Mr. Clemens chuckled. “I guess so—the chief clerk’s supposed to worry about money. I wasn’t happy to lose two paid-up customers, either—I’ve got a mighty big debt to work off before I can go home to Hartford. But we’re about to lose some more fares. Mr. and Mrs. McPhee will be getting off in Memphis, I think. I suspect the captain and first mate might want Mr. Dunbar to leave, as well. And of course we’ll be leaving the murderer with the police in Memphis.”

  “Hold your horses, Sam,” said the captain, stepping forward from the rear of the stage, where he’d been guarding the Throckmortons. “I thought that drug-peddling skunk Dunbar was the killer. Now you’re talking like it’s somebody else again.” Captain Fowler looked puzzled at the long story.

  “Oh, I was just giving Dunbar a dose of his own medicine. He seems to think it’s perfectly fine for him to fling around wild accusations, slander folks’ good names, and create a general stink. I figured it was time to knock him off his high horse. He didn’t do it—he doesn’t have the guts to stab a man anywhere but in the back.”

  “Then who in the world did it?” said the captain. He seemed near the end of his patience.

  “Why, I already told you, it’s the man whose handwriting is on these two notes from New York—the one in poor Lee Russell’s pocket, and the one he left at my hotel desk. It was also on the one Jack Hubbard saw, the one that sent him uptown on a wild-goose chase while the murderer stole his disguise.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out two pieces of paper. “Tommy, do you recognize the writing on these?”

  The boy looked at the papers, then nodded. “Sure, that’s Mr. Snipes’s writing. I’d know it anywhere,” he said eagerly. Then his face changed as he realized what he’d just said. He looked at Mr. Clemens and stammered, “But—but—that means . . .”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Clemens, and then all hell broke loose. Snipes leapt out of his seat and made a dash for the nearest door, only to find two of the roustabouts blocking his way. I jumped off the stage and began to run toward him; out of the corner of my eye I saw the captain draw his gun again, but his target was surrounded by a crowd of innocent bystanders, and he held his fire. Seeing his escape shut off, Snipes whirled about, suddenly brandishing an improbably large knife, and with the other hand he grabbed a young woman seated on the aisle near him—the Reverend Elijah Dutton’s daughter Gertrude. The other passengers drew back in terror, and someone screamed.

  “Everybody stay right where you are, and won’t nobody get hurt,” said Snipes. He held one arm around the young woman’s throat and held the knife up for everyone to see. I froze in my tracks. “You’re smarter than I thought, Clemens, but you ain’t got me yet. Now, tell the boys to ease out of the way and give me a clear path out, and I’ll let the young lady go soon as I’m clear. All I ask is a fair head start.”

  “That’s more than you ever gave Lee Russell or Paul Berrigan,” said Mr. Clemens. “It’s over, Charlie; put away the knife. I arranged with the pilot to let me know when we’d tied up to the dock in Memphis, and that whistle you heard a few minutes ago was the signal we agreed on. The police are on their way. You don’t have a chance.”

  “Don’t be so damned sure—I’ll take a few more with me if I’m going to swing,” said Snipes, brandishing the knife again, a wild look on his face. Gertrude Dutton writhed in terror, her mouth open and her eyes wide. Then from behind Snipes a tall figure rose from the audience, his left hand swinging a cane down onto Snipes’s knife with the accuracy of a billiard cue shot. The blade went flying, and then Jack Hubbard brought his cane up backhanded into Snipes’s jaw. Snipes’s head recoiled from the blow, and he staggered to the side; before he could recover, two strong men were on him, bearing him to the floor. His recent captive slumped into her mother’s arms, sobbing.

  I waded forward through the crowd; from the stage behind me, I could hear the captain yelling to his crew, trying to get some semblance of order. It was futile—people close to Snipes scattered to avoid the struggle, while those farther away climbed on their chairs to get a better view or pressed forward in their eagerness to see. For a few moments chaos reigned in the small auditorium. Then the doors burst open, and two uniformed policemen strode in. At Captain Fowler’s signal, they moved in on Snipes as he struggled against his captors. With rough efficiency, they shackled him and hustled him away, kicking and cursing.

  Somehow, despite the tumult in the audience, my employer had managed to remain standing unruffled on the stage. When the murderer was finally safely in police custody, Mr. Clemens took a cigar out of his pocket and snipped off the end. ‘That’s all for this afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Tell your friends if you enjoyed the show, but I’m afraid I can’t promise to repeat it for them tomorrow. Now, if you all will pardon me, I’m going to have a drink. Come along, Cabot.”

  29

  “The police found Berrigan’s little notebook in Snipes’s cabin,” said Captain Fowler. He’d gone ashore to testify to the magistrate who booked Snipes on murder charges, then joined us in Mr. Clemens’s stateroom. “And just as you figured, the detective had written him down as the killer—along with his own guesses as to where your treasure might really be. That must be why Charlie kept it. Anyhow, I guess that clinches it. But tell me, Sam, did you know all along it was Charlie Snipes that did it, or was it by guess and by golly at the last minute?”

  Mr. Clemens took a sip of his whisky and soda, and smiled. “I’d like to claim I knew it all along, but it ain’t so. I was on the wrong track for a long while, thinking it had to be another passenger—especially after Berrigan said that something on the passenger list gave him the answer. Of course, it was Snipes’s handwriting he meant.”

  “How did you figure that out?” I was stretched out at full length on Mr. Clemens’s bed, resting muscles I hadn’t known I’d pulled until the whole af
fair was over. I’d felt this way before, after a hard-fought football game—exhausted and exhilarated at the same time.

  “Once I looked at the list, I realized that the same man who wrote those two notes had marked the passenger list,” said Mr. Clemens. “And Tommy Hazelwood told me that he had copied out the passenger list, and that Snipes added the note about the Throckmortons being kicked off the boat. Of course, Tommy could have been lying. But I’d gotten a sample of Snipes’s handwriting weeks ago—remember when I interviewed all the old river rats for my new book, and had them write out notes giving me permission to quote them? I compared them today, and the writing on Snipes’s note matched the ones from New York.

  “When I spotted that, everything else made sense. Snipes had been in New York, and he knew my address because he stayed in the same hotel. He knew about the gold, because he’d been the mud clerk on the Gold Dust back in ’82, when I first went looking for it. He knew Lee Russell, because he’d gambled with him. And of course, as chief clerk, he had keys to all the staterooms—and he was a stickler for locking doors behind him.”

  Mr. Clemens took a long sip of his drink. “What should have tipped me off even sooner was his acting as if he didn’t know which stateroom Berrigan was in, when he prided himself on having every detail of the boat right at his fingertips. He must have been playing for time, trying to figure out what to say when he finally opened the door and everybody saw the dead man.

  “So I was pretty sure it was Snipes before I went on stage. What made it a dead certainty was when he confirmed that Tommy was the one who wrote the passenger list. But I didn’t want to finger him until we were safe in port, where we’d have the police for help. So I stalled for a while, letting some of the passengers spout off, even though I knew they were full of hot air. And it’s why I took so long raking that Dunbar fellow over the coals—not that he didn’t deserve a little grief, after all his self-important posturing. Once we’d docked and could get the police in to help out, I knew it was time to clinch the case. My only miscalculation was not realizing he’d react by pulling a knife on that poor girl. If I ever have to deal with a killer again—and I hope to heaven I won’t—I won’t be quite so cavalier with the safety of bystanders.”