[Mark Twain Mysteries 03] - The Prince and the Prosecutor

by Peter J. Heck

  “Mr. Clemens?” The artist looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Are you connected with him?”

  “I am his traveling secretary,” I said. Suddenly I wondered if it had been a mistake to mention my employer’s name—Mr. Clemens had not shown much deference to Signor Rubbia. Indeed, there had been some friction between the two on their first meeting.

  “Your Mr. Clemens thinks he is clever, but he knows nothing of art,” said Signor Rubbia, raising his voice. “He makes ignorant remarks, and the ignorant herd laughs at them. He cannot bear to think that someone may know things that he does not, and so he mocks them.”

  I glanced around, hoping no other passengers were within earshot. Unfortunately, there were a gentleman and a lady not far away from us—with a bit of a jolt I recognized them as Mr. Clemens’s old acquaintances Michael Richards and his sister, Mrs. Martin—although they were at least pretending not to hear what Rubbia was saying. I lowered my voice and said, as calmly as possible, “Really, Signor Rubbia, I am not Mr. Clemens, and my opinions sometimes differ from his. But it is very uncomfortable for me to stand here while you criticize my employer, even if your complaints may be just. I have no reason to dislike you, and I would appreciate it if you did not give me one.”

  Signor Rubbia sputtered for a moment, but then he nodded. “You are right, young man. I apologize. I am afraid your Mr. Clemens has pricked me in a sore spot. I so often find myself fighting those who look down their noses at an artist. They do not like me because I am a fat little Italian, who speaks with the accent. They do not like me because I can do something they cannot do and can barely understand. I am not usually welcome in their homes, except perhaps to paint their wives’ portraits, or to give their daughters drawing lessons.” He sighed, and I found it hard not to feel sympathy for Signor Rubbia. He wasn’t really such a bad fellow, and he certainly appeared to have genuine artistic talent.

  “Well, Mr. Mercer certainly seems to appreciate your knowledge and ability,” I said. “After all, he engaged you to guide his group through the museums, did he not?”

  The little artist smiled broadly; there was a curious gleam in his eye, as well. “Yes, Mr. Mercer has been very good to me. I wish I could say that of all his group.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “That one young fellow, Robert Babson, seemed to take every chance he could to attack you. He seemed to have it in for everybody—I got on his wrong side, and he did his best to make me sorry for it. A shame about his going overboard, of course.”

  Signor Rubbia looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “A shame, indeed. But perhaps there is no evil thing that does not bring good to someone. Young Mr. Babson was ignorant, and proud of his ignorance, and yet there were many young people who thought he was smart and elegant. I would not have pushed young Mr. Babson over the side, but I do not think that I will miss him very much.” He puffed himself up as he said this, though his voice was still low. I was glad of this, since I feared Rubbia might become less talkative if he believed he was speaking for any ears but my own.

  “I suppose I won’t much miss him, either,” I said, realizing that the moment I was waiting for had come. “Do you really think the poor fellow was pushed over the side?”

  “Not only do I think so, I saw it myself,” he said, his voice full of confidence. “I was no farther from it than I am from the rail, right there.” He pointed toward the stern of the ship, perhaps twenty feet away.

  “Really,” I said. “It must have been terrible. I assume there was no way you could prevent it.”

  He looked at me for a moment, then said, “I doubt anyone could have prevented it; it happened very quickly, you know. And I am an artist, not a fighter.” He spread his hands and shrugged, as if to deny further responsibility.

  “Still, with your help perhaps Babson could have defended himself,” I said. “It was that German who did it—Prinz Karl, the man they arrested—wasn’t it?”

  Signor Rubbia looked me directly in the eyes for a moment, then lowered his gaze. “Why, of course,” he said. “Who else could it possibly have been?”

  22

  After Signor Rubbia’s statement that he had seen Prinz Karl push Robert Babson overboard, I was reluctant to face Mr. Clemens. My employer would hardly be pleased to learn that his theories had been punctured by Rubbia, for whom he had so little regard. I decided to take a few moments to think how I would break the news to him.

  The deck was still crowded, though it was late in the afternoon, and I knew that the lounge would be full of noise and chatter, as well. So I headed for the ship’s library, which on my previous visits had been sparsely occupied; on a fine day like today, it was unlikely that many passengers would be staying indoors to read. Indeed, except for my encounter there with Miss Babson, I had not laid eyes on anyone in the library whom I recognized the entire time I had been on board the ship.

  As I had hoped, the place was as quiet as a tomb when I entered. There was nobody present except Mrs. Tremont, the librarian, who sat at her desk with a small book open in front of her. She glanced up as I entered, and I nodded to her without saying anything. I walked over to one of the shelves and picked out a book almost at random, then slid into a soft leather armchair. I opened the book, a selection of verse by the late Lord Tennyson, and tried to appear absorbed in reading it, in case any of my fellow passengers entered the room.

  “Pardon me for interrupting, Mr. Cabot,” said Mrs. Tremont, who I suddenly realized had walked over to the chair without my having noticed.

  “Yes, Mrs. Tremont?” I said, looking up at her in surprise, then hurriedly rising to my feet. She stood with her hands clasped over her bosom, and there was a faint smile on her lips.

  “I really am sorry to intrude,” she said. “I see you are reading Tennyson, and I do love his poetry, so I won’t bother you for more than a moment. But perhaps you will be so kind as to ask Mr. Clemens a favor for me? And for the other passengers?”

  “I will do what I can, Mrs. Tremont,” I said. “What do you wish to ask him?”

  She looked down at the floor for a moment, then directly into my eyes. “I asked Mr. Clemens some days ago if he would be so kind as to give a brief talk on a subject of his choosing. Many of the passengers have seen him on board and asked me whether he will be speaking. He said he would do his best to accommodate me, but we didn’t set a date. Now, between the effects of the bad weather and the unfortunate incident the other night, the entertainment aboard the ship has not been up to our usual standards. But I think the fine weather has put people in more of a holiday mood, which is as it should be on a sea voyage.”

  “Yes, the weather has been quite delightful today,” I said.

  “It certainly has. But as I was saying, the weather has forced us to cancel several of our planned events, and we’ve had disappointing attendance at those we went ahead with. Dr. Jarvis has been indisposed, and so we won’t hear him talk on London church architecture at all, this trip. And poor Mrs. Brooks had only three ladies for her flower-arranging class,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You can imagine what a predicament we’ve been in. My lecture calendar has been a dreadful muddle, and I’m afraid the captain will think I’ve done a very poor job.” A worried look came over the librarian’s face, and I sensed that she felt that her job might be at risk, although I couldn’t see how the captain could blame her for bad weather.

  She looked me in the eye and said, “We can recover in wonderful fashion if Mr. Clemens will be so kind as to speak tomorrow night, Saturday. We’ll have the best turnout of the voyage for him, and perhaps it’ll give him a chance to try out a few passages from the new book you say he’s working on. Do you think he can fit it into his plans? I know he’s by far the most notable speaker aboard, and I don’t want to miss the opportunity for our passengers to hear him. I would want him to speak at about eight o’clock tomorrow, in the Grand Saloon.”

  “I’ll be glad to ask him, though of course I can’t make promises for Mr. Clemens,” I said.
“How soon would you need an answer?”

  Mrs. Tremont lifted her chin, like some sort of small bird, and peered intently at me. “We need to post an announcement by tomorrow morning, at breakfast. I would appreciate it very much if he could give me an answer this evening, after dinner. If for some reason he can’t accommodate us, I still might be able to find a substitute, though I’m sure I couldn’t find anyone nearly as good on such short notice. Poor Dr. Jarvis is still feeling quite out of sorts.”

  “I’ll go ask him now, and bring you his answer as soon as I can,” I said. This, at least, would give my employer something to think about other than my news of Rubbia’s seeing the prince murder Robert Babson. And if the news sent him into one of his black moods, it would give me an excuse to escape him.

  “Oh, thank you very much,” Mrs. Tremont said. Then she turned and pointed to the seat, where I had left the book when I stood to speak to her. “Don’t forget your Tennyson, Mr. Cabot. I’ll sign it out for you, if you’ll wait a moment.”

  Mr. Clemens was pacing back and forth, smoking a rank-smelling cigar, when I reached the cabin. He whirled around to look at me as I came in the door. “Aha,” he said. “I’m glad you’re back, Wentworth.” And then, glancing at what was in my hands, he asked, “What’s the book?”

  “Tennyson’s poems,” I told him, tossing it lightly onto the sofa. “I’ve spoken to Rubbia.”

  “Good man, Wentworth,” said my employer. Then he looked more closely at my face. “Looks as if the news isn’t anything I want to hear. I guess you’d better tell me anyway.” He flopped down on the sofa next to the book, knocking an inch-long cigar ash onto his trouser cuffs in the process.

  “Rubbia claims that he saw the prince shove Babson overboard,” I said. “He says he was no more than twenty feet away.”

  “Damnation,” said Mr. Clemens, absently brushing at his ankles. Then he looked up at me, frowning. “Wait a minute, now. Why didn’t Rubbia go straight to one of the officers and tell what he’d seen? Why did that lawyer Babson come in with Jennings and put the finger on the prince, and the next day at that? We didn’t hear about Rubbia being a witness until just this afternoon.”

  “Why, I don’t know—I’m sorry, I didn’t think to ask him,” I said, surprised to have overlooked such an obvious question.

  “Something smells rotten,” said Mr. Clemens. He got to his feet and went to stare out the porthole, then turned to look at me. “Tell me what Rubbia said, start to finish. Then maybe I can figure out what his game is.”

  I repeated the exchange with Signor Rubbia, including my drawing his picture, and his offer to give me lessons. Mr. Clemens listened in silence, interrupting only when I mentioned my suspicions as to Rubbia’s eyesight. “That would be a problem for an artist, wouldn’t it, now? It sounds to me as if he’s far-sighted, though, if anything—you say he held the pad at arm’s length?”

  “Yes, and he squinted. At first I thought he was simply trying to judge the composition as a whole, but when I saw him squinting, it made me wonder how good his eyes were. Of course, the murder took place at night, in the middle of a storm, so even a man with perfect eyes might have trouble making out everything that went on.”

  “If he saw it at all,” said Mr. Clemens. “That’s the part that smells wrong to me.”

  “But why would he lie?” I asked. “If he’s caught lying about such a serious matter, he might be risking a perjury charge—I assume British law is the same as ours. Even if he weren’t convicted, he’d have a great deal of trouble getting a position as a tour guide again. I’d think the class of people likely to patronize him would give him the cold shoulder.”

  “Damned if I can figure it out,” said my employer. “I still think he could have pushed that boy over the rail himself, but then why would he start blabbing about the prince doing it? He must know people will question him about his story. More to the point, he’ll be the leading suspect if they catch him lying about what he saw.”

  “Assuming they catch him,” I said. “He sounds absolutely confident. Unless another witness, can refute him, or some solid evidence turns up of the prince’s innocence, I fear that Signor Rubbia’s story will stand.”

  Mr. Clemens stared out the window again. “I guess this kills our hope of clearing the prince. There’s no point going to talk to him now. I might as well write the poor rascal off. Still, I wonder what kind of game he was running with his claim to be from a place nobody’s heard of. I suppose we’ll never find out.”

  “Oh, if you really want to find out, you could still go talk to him,” I said.

  “It hardly seems worth the trouble—not with an eyewitness. I’ll do better to sit in the lounge and swap yarns with Kipling and the boys.” Mr. Clemens ground out his cigar. His expression was downcast, but I suspected he would recover his spirits once he was in company. A group of people always brought out his cheerful nature.

  This reminded me of Mrs. Tremont’s request for him to give a talk to the passengers. Perhaps it might serve to take his mind off the disappointment of seeing his detective work go for naught. I had just opened my mouth to mention the request, when there was a knock on the cabin door. At Mr. Clemens’s signal, I opened it to admit Mr. Kipling.

  “Hullo, lads,” he said. “A fine day at last, eh?” Then he looked at my employer. “Why so down in the mouth, Clemens?”

  “I’ve been made a fool of, Kipling,” said Mr. Clemens. “Rubbia saw Prinz Karl push that boy overboard. That ruins any chance we might be able to clear him. We can bring up all the maybes and what-ifs we want to, but they aren’t worth a rebel dollar against an eyewitness account.”

  “Really! How odd,” said Kipling, settling himself on the couch. He picked up the book I’d tossed there, looked at the cover, and shrugged. Then he turned back to Mr. Clemens. “Do you think Rubbia’s telling the truth?”

  Mr. Clemens scowled. “Hell, no, but how do I prove it? It’s my reasonable doubt against his solid word, and unless we can find somebody who saw something different, or who can prove Rubbia wasn’t on deck that night, it’s wasted breath. The only thing that made me defend the prince to begin with was the feeling that he was being accused not because there was any more likelihood he’d done it than half a dozen others, but because he’d made himself obnoxious to some people. But with a witness, that argument goes up the chimney.” He pointed toward the ceiling, then dropped his hand to his side. He looked defeated.

  “I don’t think we’re as bad off as all that,” said Mr. Kipling. “In fact, I’d come to tell you something I think puts a rather different complexion on the matter, even after your news about Rubbia.”

  “And what would that be?” asked Mr. Clemens, raising his brows.

  “Well, you remember I was talking to the officer on watch the night of the storm,” said Kipling. “A bright young chap named Steven Lewis. It turns out I knew his uncle—Harry Lewis, his name was, a clerk in the government office at Bombay, when I was a newspaper reporter there. Small world, as they say.” He paused to fish a cigarette case out of his pocket, then continued. “I remember one day Lewis and I were walking back to work from the Punjab Club, when a dreadful storm came up all of a sudden, the way they do in tropical countries. We took shelter under the eaves of a native temple, where curiously enough, there was a small troop of monkeys also sheltering. Now I don’t know how often you’ve been around monkeys . . .”

  “You can tell me that story another time,” said Mr. Clemens, somewhat sharply. “What’s your news, Kipling?”

  Mr. Kipling was lighting a match. He looked up with a sly grin on his face. “Really, Clemens, it’s a most amusing incident, and perhaps one with a lesson for us all. But I see you aren’t in the mood for diversion.” He lit a cigarette, shook the match to extinguish the flame, let out a puff of bluish smoke, then looked up and said, “Let’s see, where was I?”

  Mr. Clemens, who had been all but hopping from one foot to the other in his impatience, said gruffly, “Something Lewis
told you about.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Kipling. “If you’ll remember, Harry Lewis and I were in the temple with the monkeys—”

  “Damn the monkeys,” Mr. Clemens cut in, somewhat more vehemently than I would have thought strictly necessary. “You don’t need lessons on how to drive a fellow to distraction, do you, Kipling?”

  “I’ve studied with the masters,” said Kipling, grinning. “But I shan’t keep you in suspense any longer. I asked Mr. Lewis here on the ship whether he’d seen Prinz Karl on deck that night. Of course I’d asked him before, and he’d said he hadn’t, but it never hurts to go over the facts again, because sometimes a man will remember details the second or third time around. Lewis told me again that he hadn’t seen the prince, but since our previous conversation, he’d been talking to some of the other ship’s officers. Not to stretch things out, one of them had seen Prinz Karl that night.”

  “Aha!” said Mr. Clemens. “And where had the prince been?”

  “Curiously enough, he’d seen him below decks—near the steerage. The fellow thought it odd to see a first-class passenger going that way, still dressed up in all his finery from the concert. Particularly in such foul conditions—rough as it gets in our part of the ship, the poor chaps in steerage have it much worse.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Mr. Clemens. “Did this officer remember what time he saw the prince?”

  “It was after the concert. He’d already heard about the fight, though he hadn’t heard which passengers had been involved. Still, he recognized the prince—not a man you’d easily mistake for someone else, I think. And he didn’t see the prince come back—he was on watch until midnight, I believe.”