Anderson stared at Poireau out of cold, pale, triangular eyes. Poireau returned his gaze with urbanely concealed dislike. A geometric, regular, symmetrical face—yes. But it did not please. It was not—sympathique. Instinctively, Poireau patted the top of his own smooth, egg-shaped head.
“You come to tell us that you were with Mr. Price last night?” he inquired innocently.
Anderson almost shouted: “So you’ve heard about that, too! I don’t deny I saw him. But I wasn’t the last one to see him. She was. You’ll find she killed him!”
He pointed at Winifred Price, who looked defiantly at him without saying a word.
“Ah! You saw Mademoiselle attack her uncle? That does, indeed, forward our investigation,” Poireau said smoothly.
“Saw— Of course I didn’t see her kill him! But I saw them talking. She was with him on deck after I was.”
Poireau said: “And you hasten to let the authorities know! I felicitate you on your public spirit.”
The First Officer said indignantly: “I call it a bloody rotten thing to do!” He added quickly: “I beg your pardon, Miss Price.”
Anderson said almost uncomfortably: “It’s plain self-defence. People have been saying I was the last one to see Price.”
“You can supply a motive for Mademoiselle, also, no doubt?”
Anderson regained momentum. He said: “Price was rich! She’s his heir. She hated him; he told me himself she was giving him a lot of trouble.”
“You knew Mr. Price well, one gathers.”
“Hardly knew him. We just had a word now and then.”
“You were perhaps interested in his—work?”
Anderson’s face purpled. He demanded: “Why should I be?”
“I do not know,” Poireau confessed. “You are not yourself, I imagine, a journalist?”
“I’m a businessman. But never mind about me—”
“Ah! And may one ask, what business?”
Anderson glared. “Business,” he said.
“Ah—merci,” Poireau said drily. “But last evening, monsieur, you discussed with this Mr. Price, whom you scarcely know, his intimate family affairs—his relations with his niece?”
Anderson said: “That was just in passing. We were having a friendly talk and a smoke, just before I went to bed.”
“And how,” Poireau asked, “do you suggest that Miss Price killed her uncle?”
“Why—they say he was hit on the head.”
“With what?”
Anderson seemed to pull himself in. He asked cautiously: “You mean they don’t know what the weapon was?”
Poireau said: “Not yet.”
“Then—” Anderson’s pale eyes went towards the porthole. It was as clear as if he had said, Then it will never be found. An odd look passed over his grotesquely moulded face.
He is relieved, thought Atlas Poireau.
Anderson stood up. He said belligerently: “I’m leaving. I’ve told you all I can.”
Poireau made no effort to detain him. But he removed the cover from the green box which had been brought here from the Doctor’s cabin.
“M. Anderson! You forget something.” He held out the red and yellow muffler which had been found under Price’s body.
Anderson looked blankly at it. “What, that scarf? It isn’t mine. Never saw it before.”
He went out.
The First Officer asked: “Don’t you think the muffler belonged to Mr. Price?”
“I think it unsafe to take anything for granted. But we can ascertain. Mademoiselle, can you tell us if this was your uncle’s?”
Winifred Price looked at the muffler dully. “I don’t know— Why, yes, I do know!” she said more energetically. “It can’t be his. He bought one in London because he didn’t have any, he said; and the one he bought was the Royal Stuart tartan. But what does that have to do with who killed him?”
“Nothing, perhaps. One merely inquires. But, mademoiselle, you have not had much opportunity to speak, and yet you have probably something to say.”
“Only that it isn’t true!” said the girl. “I did see Uncle Paul, near the place where he was—killed. But I didn’t do it! And it was quite early when I left him, well before half-past eleven; it was closer to quarter past.”
“And after that, mademoiselle?”
“I went to bed,” said Winifred Price. She looked directly at him, and her fingers closed hard on her handkerchief.
The First Officer glanced at his watch and said worriedly, “I’m due on the bridge—”
Poireau rose and held the door open. “Mademoiselle, will you permit me to talk with you again, say in fifteen minutes?”
She said dispiritedly, “I’ll be in my cabin.”
As the door closed Mr. Waggish said heatedly: “Imagine anyone accusing a nice kid like that of murder! Poor lass. What a bastard!”
“He is ungentlemanly, yes,” Poireau agreed, correctly disentangling the First Officer’s meaning. It was not the first occasion he had had to marvel at the chivalrous propensities of the English. And sailors, he knew, are a particularly sentimental lot.
“But you’ll clear her, won’t you?” Mr. Waggish continued, his blue eyes appealing to Poireau from his tanned face.
“If she is innocent, certainement. We must first ascertain the truth.”
The First Officer said, with an unexpected turn for generalization: “That is not always easy, though.”
Poireau smiled. He said: “For some, non! But Atlas Poireau never fails!”
Mr. Waggish was impressed. He said eagerly: “I’m glad that you’re investigating, Mr. Poireau. Everything seems very confused to me. And I wish you would tell me one thing before I have to go. What is the great question? You chaps said on deck that there’s one ‘great question.’ But I don’t see—”
“Ah, oui. It is a question indeed. Only consider, my friend.” Poireau paused dramatically. “You have decided to kill a man. You find him alone on deck. You strike him down. He falls—he is dead. It is dark. No one has seen. Very well. Now what, I ask you? Do you push and pull and shove this man across the deck and into a tiny cramped space and then drag a heavy canvas over him?” Poireau paused again. “Or do you simply push him over the rail? Why, with all of the Atlantic Ocean to abet you, do you deliberately leave the evidence of your crime behind?”
Mr. Waggish was chagrined. “I see! Now that you point it out—why, no one but an imbecile would have left the body on board!”
Poireau shook his head in reproof. “You are too hasty, mon cher. I can, offhand, think of three simple reasons. First: the murderer is not strong enough to raise the body to the necessary height. Though Mr. Price was, remember, a small man.”
“But that would mean a woman.”
“Peut-être. Second: the criminal wants the body to be found! He wants to avoid a verdict of ‘Presumed death’ merely. He wishes, maybe, to avoid delay in the probate of a will.”
“But— And the third reason?”
Poireau said: “Ah, mon ami—think for yourself!”
Poireau knocked three firm knocks, regularly timed, on the precise center of the door.
Winifred Price called immediately: “Come in!”
She had taken advantage of the past quarter-hour to freshen herself. Her hair was smooth, her face no longer shiny. But she was so pale that her lipstick stood out in a garish streak.
Poireau took the seat she offered him. He said: “Mademoiselle, I omitted just now to offer my condolences. You must forgive me.
She asked bitterly: “Do people offer sympathy to—to murderers?”
He said gently: “My child, you are, I think, melodramatic.”
“You don’t think I killed my uncle?”
“Did you, mademoiselle?’
“No!” said Winifred Price. “No, I didn’t. Honestly! I don’t know why that Mr. Anderson says I did. You’d think he had a grudge against me, but I never even saw him before this trip. And the other pass
engers—they look at me as if—as if … It was bad enough before. They acted as if I was poison, just because—”
She bit her lip and stared hard at the porthole, over Poireau’s head.
Poireau said invitingly: “Tell me, mademoiselle. I do not mean about last night, simply. Tell me about your uncle and yourself.”
Something in his face seemed to encourage the girl. She began in a halting way: “It’s hard to explain. He was my guardian, but I never really knew him. I was always at boarding-school, or camp, and then college. But he paid for everything. I just took it for granted when I was a kid. I never really thought about him.
“And then at college I began to realize. The girls would say something about ‘Paul Pry’s latest’ (that’s what people call him, you know), and then they’d remember I was there and be embarrassed. And then there was the time he was sued for libel and it was all over the front pages. And one day in class my Sociology professor talked about him and said he was a symptom of the decay of American culture. He didn’t know Paul Price’s niece was at the lecture, of course. But I thought I’d die.”
“Not easy, non,” Poireau murmured gravely.
“But the bad part was, I couldn’t stand up for him! What people said was true. Of course, it was very understandable. He was suffering from a deep feeling of inferiority which he never acknowledged overtly. He overcompensated for it by aggressiveness. Sadistic and—and erotic aggressiveness!”
She looked darkly at Poireau, who gave a respectful nod. She went on less glibly: “He was a lot worse than outsiders knew. He would … Well, for instance, once when I was going to visit my roommate, he told me to find out all I could about her family. He wanted something he could use for scandal; her father was going to run for Congress. I said I wouldn’t be a spy, and we had an awful fight.”
She looked at Poireau and bit her lip again. “And, you see, all the time I had to be grateful to him. I owed everything to him. And I didn’t cut loose, I was a minor, and besides I’m a moral coward.”
She added gloomily: “Now I’ll go through the rest of my life with a guilt complex. In ten years, I’ll be neurotic.”
Poireau gazed at her. “In your college, mademoiselle, you doubtless studied many subjects—you studied Psychology perhaps?”
“I took two courses in it! Why?”
Poireau bowed his head. “I wondered, merely … But, you did go abroad, n’est-ce pas? You escaped?”
“They let me take my Junior year abroad. I took courses at the Sorbonne. It was wonderful! No one knew about my uncle. I met someone and got engaged. He’s American, and he knows about Paul Price, but he doesn’t blame me. So—well, I wrote to my uncle and said I was going to marry Llewelyn; that’s his name, Llewelyn. There was no answer, but the next thing I knew Uncle Paul was in Paris. He had a ghastly fight with Llewelyn, accusing him of being a fortune-hunter. And he made me come home with him. We went to London first, and we were going to fly home, but something happened.”
“What happened, mademoiselle?”
Winifred Price shook her head. “He didn’t really explain. He came into the hotel looking terribly pleased with himself and said maybe Llewelyn had done him a service by bringing him over, because he’d come across two nice pieces of business.”
“Ah!” Poireau leaned forward eagerly. “Did he explain?”
“He must have meant he’d found material for the column. I remember he said something about tittle-tattle. ‘Someone has tattled,’ I guess he said. And then he told me we would be sailing on the Florabunda. That’s all. Only it’s been awful on board ship too, because he thinks—he thought everyone who was human to me was after his money.”
Poireau murmured: “I seem to recall an incident in the Lounge. The young officer—”
Winifred turned red. “Yes. That was typical, M. Poireau. We were just talking, and my uncle came up and told Tom—the Purser—that he would report him for misbehavior with a passenger! It was horrible. I hated him!” She caught her tongue and looked at Poireau aghast. “But last night it wasn’t like that, honestly! I don’t mean I’d forgiven him, but we didn’t quarrel.”
“What did happen last night?’
“Nothing! I was on deck, I saw him, and spoke to him for a minute or two. That was all.”
Poireau’s sense of order was offended. He said severely: “Surely not all, mademoiselle. No detail can be ignored.”
“All right. Well—I wanted to show him I wasn’t immature. I asked him for a cigarette, very calmly and politely.”
“And he, mademoiselle—was he also calm and polite? Did he give you a cigarette?”
“Well, no—he happened to be out of them; but he wasn’t so rude as he’d been before. He was quite pleased about something. He said the ocean wasn’t ‘a bad place for a deal.’”
“And that was all?”
“Yes. Except that I asked him if he could exchange some money for me.”
Poireau felt a tingling sensation. He asked quietly: “Why, mademoiselle?”
“Why? I had more English money left than I could use up before landing, that’s all, and he’d mentioned being down to his last halfpenny; so he was glad to take some of my money for his dollars—”
“How much, mademoiselle?”
“Oh, five or six dollars, it wasn’t much—”
“How much did you give him, mademoiselle?”
She passed a hand wearily across her forehead. “Does it matter?” But at Poireau’s pained expression she answered hastily: “I gave him two pound notes.”
Poireau was silent for a moment. Then he asked: “And after that?”
“I went in, and I—went to bed.”
Her head went back as if she were bracing herself against another question, but Poireau only got to his feet and told her mildly:
“Merci, mademoiselle.”
He found Mr. Homer T. Anderson on deck.
Anderson said: “Look, I don’t like all this snooping! Bad enough having a murder. Now all this snooping about the ship, snooping into people’s private affairs! I didn’t pay good passage money to have the police going into my private affairs.”
Poireau repeated thoughtfully: “Passage.… Do you know, monsieur, I have wondered about that.”
“Huh?”
Poireau explained: “The Florabunda is not the most rapid of ships. Nor is any ship so swift as a plane. To find a man of affairs like yourself, a businessman, a financier, aboard, is—of interest! One would expect, rather, to find you on the airplane. Zip— New York to Le Bourget! Zip—Croydon to New York!”
He cocked his head and regarded Anderson inquiringly.
Anderson seemed baffled by his volatility. He replied stiffly: “I couldn’t get plane reservations. Weather conditions.”
“Ah! Like M. Price.”
“What the devil do you mean?”
Poireau raised his eyebrows. “But did you not know?” he lied smoothly. “He too was aboard this ship because of difficulty with plane reservations. I thought you might have discussed it with him. It is the sort of topic discussed on shipboard, n’est-ce pas, by persons who are not intimate, but who are amicable.… Your relations with M. Price were amicable?”
Anderson’s distrustfulness reached a new peak. He grunted: “Huh? Were what?”
Poireau said humbly: “Perhaps I misuse a word. I am not, you understand, English, or American, and have not your command of the language! I meant to ask if you were on good terms with him.”
“Sure we were! We stood right there last night,” said Anderson, pointing to a part of the railing to which their walk along the deck had brought them, “and we talked. We just talked in a very friendly way about the weather and the food. Nothing in particular.”
“And it was here, perhaps, that you offered him the cigarette.”
“That’s right. Or, as a matter of fact, he offered me one. We were friendly, see? His cigarettes were Players, and I hate them, but I took one—to be polite.”<
br />
Poireau drew a deep breath. He said ambiguously: “Thank you for the explanation, monsieur.”
Poireau questioned the bar steward, a wizened Cockney who rattled off information without a second’s pause in his polishing of glasses on the counter.
The answers were what Poireau had expected.
A simple problem, really—hardly worthy of his powers. Yet there remained something not quite right. One detail.…
Poireau put his little black notebook neatly into his pocket and sought out the Hon. Mrs. Chip-Ebberly.
Mrs. Chip-Ebberly, though burdened with a shawl, a rug, a knitting-bag, and a large handbag, refused to be seated. They stood, and kept their balance with some difficulty. As Poireau had expected, Mrs. Chip-Ebberly was cold and brusque. But she was also agitated. Her eyes darted past him as if she feared the approach of an enemy.
On Poireau’s reminder, she admitted that they had met some years previously. “I thought that I knew your face. And, in fact, your name struck me as faintly familiar when I examined the passenger list.”
Poireau was vexed. He said: “You are too kind, madame. I myself remember the circumstances well. I was instrumental in recovering some jewels for your brother. I trust his lordship is well?”
“Thank you.” Mrs. Chip-Ebberly’s mind was elsewhere. She jumped nervously as a steward passed.
Poireau said: “They were exquisite diamonds. It would be a pleasure to feast the eyes on them again.”
Mrs. Chip-Ebberly returned her attention to the little Belgian. She said repressively: “They have been in the family for many years.”
One understood that this established their merit. Poireau sighed again. Never would he understand the British! He said: “At present I am concerned with a very different case. And I should like to know, madame, at what time you saw Miss Price come in from the deck last night.”
“At midnight precisely. I know because, being unable to sleep, I got up and left my cabin to check the clock in the Lounge, in order to put my watch back at the proper time.”
Murder in Pastiche Page 4