Murder in Pastiche

by Marion Mainwaring

  Beare had closed his eyes again, but I guessed he wasn’t asleep; so I went on: “Then there are the ones I’d like to marry— passengers, I mean, not detectives. One of them is named Winifred, but I’ve decided not to take her because I don’t want to call Price Uncle Paul; and anyway she’s interested in the Purser. Now if only I had a uniform I could compete—”

  “Ernie.” Beare opened his eyes. “No more coyness. I appeal to your magnanimity. Revenge later, if you will. Not here, not now.”

  “Yes, sir. The other one is Dolores Despana, an actress. So far I don’t know any reason for not choosing her. That’s all I have to report, except the officers. The Captain is said to be a looney. The Doctor writes poetry. Maybe you’d like him to drop in, he loves to read it aloud to people. The First Mate needs a haircut. The Purser’s all right except for being my rival with Winnie—”

  Beare kept his eyes shut and said, “Good night.” I guessed he meant it, so I headed out and off to my own berth.

  Murder

  The Florabunda ploughed on through grey seas and pearly fog at a dogged fifteen knots. The Captain signed the records of her progress: he signed, he sighed, he stroked his long beard yearningly. When not on watch, the First Officer kept a vigilant eye on his commander, talked with his friend the ship’s Doctor, or read. The Purser labored over invoices and customs forms, and the Doctor (with reluctant digressions to dole out pills or attend to cuts and bruises) over his epic, “Tipptoppus and Gazella.” The other officers and the crew pursued their duties according to an immemorial routine.

  But the crossing was no routine matter for the passengers. The presence of nine detectives could not fail to be sensational. In vain did the detectives themselves protest (quite truthfully) that only chance had put them all on the same ship at the same time. Who could be expected to believe that if Lord Simon Quinsey visited Mr. Trajan Beare it was simply to discuss food, a topic of passionate concern to them both; that if he took tea with Miss Fan Sliver it was to share with her his newborn enthusiasm for the verse of Tennyson? Nine famous detectives were too many to take calmly. And some wit declared that, under the circumstances, if a murder did not exist one would have to be invented.

  Nevertheless, while life in general imitates art, in any given case the ideal schemes of the imagination are not usually viable. And so, with a single exception, everyone aboard the Florabunda was startled to hear, just after the second breakfast of the trip, that the gossip columnist Paul Price had been found dead—murdered—his head bashed in.

  A deck steward discovered the body, amidships on the starboard side of the main deck. The tarpaulin with which he had covered a pile of folding chairs last night was disarranged; when he moved it he saw a man’s body wedged in between the chairs and the angle of the bulkhead so tightly that it had not been dislodged by the rolling of the ship. The steward recognized the face. He ran to notify the head deck steward, who notified the Chief Steward, who caught the First Officer’s eye at the very moment when the Captain was approaching in the course of his daily tour of inspection, with an attendant train of officers.

  The First fell back to listen to the Chief Steward. “What’s that?” he exclaimed. “What, what?”

  The Captain looked back with an inquiring frown.

  “A murder, sir,” Mr. Waggish told him. “One of the passengers. Mr. Price has been murdered.”

  “Good,” said the Captain simply. He resumed his progress along the deck.

  “But—have you any orders, sir?”

  The Captain swung about and blinked at him.

  “That is—if the man was killed, sir,” Mr. Waggish suggested diffidently, “shouldn’t we take steps to find out who did it?”

  “Who did it?” the Captain repeated. His eyes glittered with a sudden green flame. It died; he replied indifferently: “Very well, Mr. Waggish. The matter is in your hands.” He moved grandly on.

  The First Officer stared after him with a baffled expression. He became suddenly aware that their conversation had been eagerly followed by a large number of passengers, as many as could squeeze within earshot.

  “Look here,” said the Purser in a low voice, his pink face kindling. “We’ve got those detectives on board, haven’t we?”

  Mr. Waggish looked at him gratefully. “So we have,” he said in relief. “That’s no’ such a bad idea, Tom.” He looked about at the passengers, and turned to the Purser again. “Send someone to them,” he said. “Ask if they’ll have the goodness to meet me at—er—at the scene of the crime, and confer about this business.”

    

  “Someone has murdered Mr. Price,” the First Officer explained, “if it wasn’t accident, that is, or suicide; but I don’t see how it could be, the way the body’s crammed into that corner. Well, we’ve never had this happen before, and I don’t quite know how to tackle it, and so I thought—I speak for the commander of this vessel when I say—that is, I’d be damn’ grateful if all hands would give me their expert assistance and advice and—er—assistance.”

  He looked at the detectives hopefully, anxiously out of bright blue eyes, as their heads rose and fell rhythmically against a backdrop of swirling fog.

  The request was not completely successful. Ernie Woodbin explained that his employer, Mr. Beare, never worked except for a fee even on dry land. Spike Bludgeon was in bed, seasick. Miss Sliver demurred out of modesty: her services could not be necessary with so many distinguished investigators at hand. Simon Quinsey declined, too. For an instant his nostrils quivered like those of an old warhorse scenting battle; but he shook his head. “No, no,” he said austerely, “I gave up all that sort of thing years ago,” and went below to read Idylls of the King.

  The others were touched to acquiescence by the blend of formality, bashfulness, and nautical unworldliness in Mr. Waggish’s appeal.

  “But the mechanics are awkward.” Sir Jon. Nappleby frowned. “We cannot investigate en masse. Yet we are bound to overlap unless we share such information as we glean.”

  “We can keep in touch through Mr. Waggish,” suggested Mallory King. “He can act as a sort of clearinghouse.”

  “Certainly, whatever you gentlemen say,” said that officer cautiously. “Only, you see, I’ve no experience in this line—”

  “So much the better,” smiled Broderick Tourneur. “A Watson is needed, and you may play the part. You shall be Watson, sir, to the lot of us.”

  The Doctor arrived and stooped over Price’s body to examine it as well as its cramped position permitted. When he straightened up everyone looked at him expectantly.

  “The paths of glory,” the Doctor told them, “lead but to the grave.” He supplied this information with a conclusiveness which suggested that he considered it adequate to any just demands which might be made of him. But presently, as an afterthought, he explained that death was due to a blow on the head inflicted by (in this area of diction at least the Doctor was not sensitive to cliché) a “blunt instrument.”

  “When was he killed?” Mr. Waggish asked him.

  “I can’t tell here.” The Doctor sounded cross. “Have him taken below.”

  When the body was moved, the detectives saw something which had been concealed hitherto: a woollen scarf, with bright red and yellow stripes, quite sodden with salt water which had flowed back and forth across it with the tilting of the deck. Lifting it carefully, Sir Jon. Nappleby disentangled a smallish object which had been caught up in one end of it—a black briar pipe.

  “A new one,” he observed.

  “It has never been used,” Jerry Pason agreed. He explained: “I can tell because there are no teeth-marks on the stem and no traces on the bowl of smoke or of tobacco ash.”

  “We have them on sale in the ship’s store,” said the Purser. “I don’t suppose it’s heavy enough for the weapon?”

  The First Officer said suddenly: “The weapon-a blunt instrument? Why, one of the passengers has a cosh. He was showing it in the Lounge.”

  Mallory
King nodded. “But it was stolen!” He related how Homer T. Anderson’s blackjack had disappeared.

  There was no trace of it, or of any other blunt instrument at all, on deck.

  “Do you think it could have been thrown overboard?” the First Officer asked. He flushed a little and added apologetically, “I mean, it seems possible … I’m only a lubber when it comes to detecting.”

  “It’s an intelligent guess,” said Chief Inspector Tourneur kindly. “The deck is open here. But the great question, of course, is—” He paused significantly, and the other detectives nodded.

  “Aye?” Mr. Waggish ventured after a respectful pause.

  They were silent. Then: “If you think for a moment,” said Atlas Poireau, “you will see for yourself what it is, Mr. Waggish.”

  The apprenticeship of Watson had begun.

    

  Price’s body was carried into the little consulting room which adjoined the Doctor’s cabin on B-deck. Into the cabin crowded the detectives with the First Officer and the Purser, who seemed unable to tear himself away from the investigation, though he was long overdue at his office. They found seats amid a litter of pipe-tobacco, beer-tins, oranges, neckties, and countless loose sheets of lined foolscap paper which were written over in a slashing hand in bold black ink and slithered back and forth over table, deck, bunk, and settee with the rolling and pitching of the ship.

  The contents of Paul Price’s pockets now lay in a green box on the doctor’s desk, with the scarf and the pipe which had been under his body. Mr. Waggish, handling them gingerly, as if they might explode, passed them about for inspection.

  The passport recorded that Price had been born in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1906, was a journalist, and had travelled in France and the United Kingdom.

  “Then his wallet.” The First opened a brown alligator case. “An identification card; a driver’s license, U.S.A.; a pound note; and … seventy-five, seventy-six dollars in American bills.”

  The door to the consulting room opened, and the Doctor burst in, in his shirt-sleeves. He made his way to the untidy bookshelf over his desk and, one hand outstretched to steady himself against the Florabunda’s tossing, began to search for a book. He shoved aside Jerusalem Delivered, an odd volume of Browning’s Poems, and a battered Rhyming Dictionary, and came at last to a huge book in half-calf, which he spread out on the desk. It was a medical encyclopedia. The Doctor flipped through the pages, read a paragraph or two with furious concentration, banged it shut, and darted back into the other room.

  Mr. Waggish cleared his throat. “Here is a pack of Players. It’s pretty well crumpled. There are only fourteen—fifteen fags left. And here’s another pack of twenty, still sealed. And a handkerchief, and a key-ring, and a book of American Express traveller’s checks.”

  The door flew open again; the Doctor lunged again at his encyclopedia. Thumbing the pages, he found his place once more, and reread the page.

  Mr. Waggish coughed. There was silence till the door had closed again behind the Doctor. Then he said, “There’s nothing else but some odd coins.”

  “What are they?” inquired Atlas Poireau.

  The First Ofiicer obediently sorted them out and counted them. “Three French pieces, and a torn hundred-franc note rolled up with the coins. Then there’s … Ah, four half-crowns, two florins, two shillings, two sixpences, and a halfpenny. And a fifty-cent piece, four quarters, and three dimes.”

  Tourneur asked: “Did he leave any valuables with you, Purser?”

  “Nothing at all. His—Miss Price left her cheeks and her passport with us for safekeeping, but he did not.”

  “His niece! That reminds me,” said the First Officer compunctiously. “We ought to notify her. I never thought to.”

  “I happened to see Miss Price,” said the Purser, “and spoke to her. She had already heard. She—she is very much upset.”

  The Doctor came in, pulling on his coat. “Well,” he announced briskly. “It’s a nasty wound. A single blow did it, too. Very efficient.”

  “When did it happen?” several voices asked.

  “Ah, well, there are many factors to be taken into consideration,” said the Doctor, with an involuntary glance towards his encyclopedia. “The temperature, don’t you know, and the—”

  “Well, but roughly?” the First Officer cut in unceremoniously.

  “Between eleven last night and two this morning.”

  “You’ll do a post mortem, of course,” Mallory King said blandly.

  “Oh, if you like,” said the Doctor without enthusiasm. His eye fell on one of the loose sheets of his manuscript, and without transition, with a sudden access of zest, he read aloud:

  “‘What though,’ Tipptoppus cried, ‘my men be slain in this fierce strife?

  What though,’ he somewhat loudly cried, ‘I risk my own dear life?

  To see the Gods come down to earth and mortal men accost,

  To see their spears hurled fore and aft, their faerie lances tossed,

  I rate my life a gudgeon’s worth, and count the World Well Lost!’”

  Frowning, he abstracted a pen from the litter on his desk, and began to make corrections in his verse.

  Mr. Waggish looked at the detectives hesitantly. “I suppose it’s still too early to give us any notion who the killer is?”

  At the expression on their faces he turned slowly red. He was abashed to the point of speechlessness.

  “But, monsieur,” said Atlas Poireau at last, not ungently, “it is not the affair of a moment, do you not see, to find a murderer! Not even for us! But rest assured, Mr. Waggish, we will find him; we will find him, we will rout him out, though it be the Captain of the Florabunda himself!”

  Atlas Poireau

  Atlas Poireau cast an approving glance about the Lounge—at its square carpets, its careful, regular arrangement of chairs and sofas and tables.

  What Poireau liked about an ocean trip was not the ocean, that great waste of space and energy, nor the superabundance of fresh air, nor (bon dieu!) the ceaseless swaying and tossing. What he liked was the tidiness of the vessel itself. Everything balanced, port and starboard. Economy. Precision. Names and numbers and labels. Ropes coiled neatly, gleaming brass, daily scrubbings and hosings. An efficient hierarchy, discipline, order. Everything, in fact, shipshape. He rolled the word on his tongue. Shipshape.

  And then—murder!

  The reason why Poireau had consented to aid in this investigation was his outrage at the breach of order the murder represented. It meant an end of quiet; a brouhaha; a deluge of questions, exclamations, gossip—and, no doubt, of lies.

  And it exposed regrettable human weaknesses in that so admirable hierarchy. Poireau groaned inwardly as he recalled the deplorable unconcern of the Captain—the First Officer’s hesitancy—the Doctor’s—the Doctor’s … Fervently Poireau prayed that he might not be stricken down with any serious disease whilst on board the R.M.S. Florabunda.

  So far, a couple of hours after the discovery of Price’s body, investigation had yielded little. It was known that Price had dined as usual. Much later, about eleven-twenty, the bar steward remembered serving him. Several people had noticed him talking with Mr. Homer T. Anderson on deck, not far from where his body had been found this morning, but no one could say exactly when this had been. With the irresponsibility which overtakes most landsmen at sea, they had paid no attention to the hour. They could only say it was before midnight, by which time practically everyone had turned in.

  A high voice asserted: “It’s the work of a gang, you see. This Paul Price was the leader. They called him ‘the Rat.’”

  Poireau raised his eyebrows and looked towards the voice. In a corner of the Lounge, three elderly women were talking. Moving closer, his listened unashamedly.

  A second woman said: “And the stewardess told me, quite confidentially, that that is why all these detectives are aboard! But it was not the gang that killed Mr. Price, my dear. His niece …” The rest was a whispe
r.

  The Hon. Mrs. Chip-Ebberly nodded. She said: “I saw her with my own eyes, coming in from deck. She was the very picture of guilt. Her face was scarlet. I was shocked—"

  Mrs. Chip-Ebberly noticed Poireau. She frowned. Poireau bowed affably. With a sweeping glance that took in all the marks of the foreigner, from his polished patent-leather shoes to his glossy black moustaches, she sniffed. She made a faint inclination of her head.

  Poireau was puzzled. Gossip, that was to be expected. But not of Mrs. Chip-Ebberly. In her it seemed—disorderly. It was out of character.

  Poireau knew the Ebberly tradition. He had stayed once at the family place—charged with recovering some stolen jewels. There had been the family peacocks on the terrace, the family ghost, the family Rubens, marked “Doubtful” in the catalogues, the quite undoubted family diamonds, the family library, the … But that, of course, was before the War. Now, one never knew. Things had changed.

  Still, one did not expect a Mrs. Chip-Ebberly to change in deference to a mere War! What had shaken her so that she chattered loosely with other old ladies?

  Thoughtfully, Poireau made his way to the cabin which the First Officer had set up as a headquarters for the investigation.

    

  With Mr. Waggish were Winifred Price and Homer T. Anderson. Winifred Price sat very upright. Her eyes were red, her face pale; she held a crumpled damp handkerchief tightly in her right hand. In her tweed skirt and white blouse, with her dark hair rumpled, she looked childlike and defenceless.

  The First Officer turned a harassed face towards the little Belgian. He exclaimed: “Mr. Poireau! Good! Maybe you can help.”