20-Inspector's Holiday

by Lockridge, Richard

  “Whitney?”

  “She just said, ‘That major of hers.’ I thought of Whitney, of course. It—there seemed to be an echo from somewhere.”

  “From the party, Susan. Mrs. Powers told Whitney he hadn’t known her husband. And that she wasn’t talking to him, anyway. Whitney, that is. And Whitney said something about having run into Powers now and then and added, ‘Right, Ellen?’ And she said something about not knowing who he’d run into, and he called her ‘Lady Grimes’ instead of ‘Ellen’ and was waspish about it. In a gentlemanly sort of way, of course.”

  “You listen, don’t you? More than you seem to be listening.”

  “Acquired characteristic. Habit of the trade. Hinting that Whitney and Lady Grimes were playing around together?”

  “It sounded that way. Yes. Or, I suppose, some other major. There must be a lot of majors in Washington.”

  “Full of them, I’d think,” Heimrich said.

  He closed his eyes. It was Susan’s turn to wait.

  “Probably Grimes’s estate is entailed,” he said. “Goes to his son, along with the baronetcy. But, at least a settlement on Lady Grimes. Substantial if the estate was substantial, and I suspect it was. Damn.” He opened his eyes at the “Damn.”

  “Why?” Susan said. “I mean, why ‘damn?’”

  “Because we’re locked up in this ship,” Heimrich said. “I can’t get about and ask questions. About simple little things I’d like to know. Were Major Whitney and Ellen Grimes playing around? People would have seen them if they were. Gossiped about it. People I could find or Charley Forniss could find. Cooped up. That’s why the ‘damn,’ dear. Does Grimes leave a big estate? And does his widow get a big part of it? And does our very proper major like money? And need it? And—”

  “Merton.” It was said in a stopping tone. He stopped.

  “Ellen Grimes is charming. She’s also sweet. And she was in love with her husband, and he was in love with her. I mean in love, darling. In. You could—oh, you could feel it. You felt it yourself. It’s not like you to be—obtuse. Years back, when—before we were married when you—when you couldn’t get it through your thick head that I was—then I used to think you were—I thought, ‘Oaf.’ But—”

  Heimrich got up and crossed the cabin. He put his arms around his wife and pulled her up and held her close and kissed her hard. He let her sit back on the bed.

  “Lady Grimes is a most charming person,” he said. “She loved her husband dearly. And I’m a cop. Full of nasty suspicions.”

  “You!” Susan Heimrich said. And then she said, rather thoughtfully, “I do love you, Merton.”

  They looked at each other for rather a long time. Then Merton Heimrich went back across the cabin and sat down again on his own bed.

  “She didn’t go on with that?” he said. “Mrs. Powers, I mean. About Lady Grimes and this unidentified major?”

  “No. The operator came back from lunch, and she had her hair washed. She probably has it washed every day. And then the other operator was free, and I had mine washed, and he set the wave in it and cut it. With a razor, and very well, I think. And—”

  The cabin telephone rang. Susan was nearest and reached for it and said, “Yes?” into it. Then she said, “Yes, he is,” and held the telephone toward Heimrich, and he took two steps across the cabin and took the telephone and said, “Heimrich.”

  “Whitney here. Wonder if you’ve got a few minutes? About Grimes, poor old chap. Because—”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I’ve got a few minutes, Major. Where?”

  “My cabin? Could have a spot of tea brought in, I’d think. Cabin Ten. Boat deck. Right?”

  “Ten minutes,” Heimrich said, and put the receiver back. He said, “Well.” He closed his eyes for a moment and said, “Well,” again.

  “I could hear him,” Susan said. “He has a carrying voice. Stiff, but carrying. You’re not really fond of tea, are you?”

  He smiled down at her. He said, “A policeman’s lot and so forth. You?”

  “A nap,” Susan said. “You won’t get lost, will you?”

  He promised he would not get lost. He went out of Cabin 82 and up by elevator to the boat deck and along the starboard passageway to Cabin 10. He knocked on the door of Cabin 10. It was opened almost immediately.

  Major Ian Whitney stood very erect; his shoulders were very square under a blue polo shirt; his mustache was crisp—a mustache of command. He was a handsome man, Heimrich thought. A good many women probably thought him an attractive man. He said, “Good man,” and Heimrich followed him through a short corridor into his cabin. There was a single bed in it and a chair and a mirror and a chest of drawers. In the wall on the right as Heimrich followed the erect major into the room, there was a door. It led, Heimrich thought, into the adjacent cabin. It was closed.

  “Have a pew,” Whitney said, and motioned toward the chair. “Tea ought to be along. Stuffed in bags, I expect. The way you Yanks like it, what?”

  “Some do,” Heimrich said, and sat on the indicated chair. Whitney sat on the bed. He said, “Something stronger, Inspector? Spot of whisky?”

  “Rather early,” Heimrich said. “You said about—”

  The door buzzer sounded. Whitney said, “Yes?” across the room, and the door to the passageway opened, and a steward came in, carrying a tray high. There were cups on the tray and two small pots, with a tag dangling from each on the end of a string. There was sugar in a bowl and a silverish pitcher. There was also a covered plate. “Down there, man,” Whitney said and gestured, and the steward put the tray down on the chest of drawers. He said, “Signor?”

  “All right,” Whitney said, and the steward said, “Grazie, signor,” and went out. Whitney lifted the cover from the plate and said, “Scones, I give you my word,” and put the cover back on again. “What they call scones, anyway. Have to let it steep, what? Still won’t be tea, you know. Bags. Want one of those scones, Inspector?” He held the plate out. Heimrich didn’t especially want a scone. He took one. He took a napkin which was held out to him and put the napkin down on a small table within reach and put the scone on it. Whitney lifted the lid of one of the teapots and looked into the pot and jiggled the tea bag up and down in it. He raised the lid of the silverish pot and looked into it and then held his hand against the metal. He said, “Warm. Ill give them that.”

  “You said something about Sir Ronald,” Heimrich said. “I gathered something you wanted to tell me about him.”

  “Good man, Grimes,” Whitney said. “Gather he’s turned up missing. And that you’re trying to find him. Won’t, you know.”

  “I may not,” Heimrich said. “Who told you he’s missing, Major?”

  “All over the ship,” Whitney said. “Steward told me first, matter of fact. Their cabins are a couple of doors aft, y’know. Serves them too. But it’s all over the ship. First class, anyway.”

  “I suppose it is,” Heimrich said. “What did you want to tell me, Major?”

  “Barged in on Lady Grimes this afternoon,” Whitney said. “Sympathy. That sort of thing. Only thing to do, wouldn’t you say?”

  “A considerate thing to do,” Heimrich said. “I take it you and the Grimeses are good friends?”

  “Wouldn’t go that far,” Whitney said. “He was commercial at the Embassy, y’know. I’m on the military side. Not much contact, actually. But got to know him, and Ellen too. Even took her to dinner once or twice when he was tied up. Played tennis with her a few times. He was past that, y’know.”

  “He was, I take it, around sixty,” Heimrich said. “A good many men of sixty play tennis.”

  “Not Grimes,” Whitney said. “What I’m getting at. Ellen didn’t know, and there you are.”

  Heimrich didn’t see that he was anywhere. Whitney looked again into the teapot and bounced the tea bag in it again. “Good as it’s going to get,” he said, and poured from the pot into one of the cups. He said, “Milk? Sugar?”

  “Just as it is,” Heimrich
said, and took the cup held out to him and put it down on the little table beside the scone. Whitney poured tea into the other cup and added warm milk. He tasted from his cup and shook his head and put it down.

  “What didn’t Lady Grimes know?” Heimrich said and let patience sound in his voice.

  “Getting to that,” Whitney said. “I was pretty sure. Kind of a man he was, y’know. When I barged in on her this afternoon I—well, I sort of edged around it, y’know. She didn’t have an inkling. I’d swear to that. She’s got it all wrong, I think. And, I think you have, Heimrich.”

  “Major,” Heimrich said, “if you’ve got something to tell me about Sir Ronald, tell me.”

  He let the patience drain out of his voice.

  “All right,” Whitney said. “No use edging around it with you, what? You think somebody killed Grimes. Pushed him over the side. And you’ve let Ellen think that. And you’re wrong, y’know. Thought you ought to know.”

  Merton Heimrich closed his eyes. After a moment he opened them and looked at the resolutely handsome face opposite and said, “Know what, Major?”

  “Grimes was washed up,” Whitney said. “And knew it. Talked about going home and growing roses, but knew he wasn’t going to. End of the line and knew it. End of a career—pretty satisfactory career, matter of fact. His whole life, y’know. Put out to pasture, and knew there wasn’t going to be any pasture. Know what I mean?”

  “No. You’re talking in circles.”

  “Don’t mean to be. Damn it, man, he didn’t want people to know. Sort of thing one doesn’t like to do. Telling what people want kept secret. Didn’t tell Ellen, matter of fact. Wouldn’t have been the thing.”

  Heimrich sighed, making a good deal of it.

  “All right. Grimes was a sick man. Had maybe six months to go. Not pleasant months. So, you can’t blame him, can you? What I’d do myself, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “I take it,” Heimrich said, “you’re saying—trying to say—that Sir Ronald took his own life. That it, Major?”

  “Couldn’t be clearer, I’d think,” Whitney said. He lighted a cigarette. “Inoperable. At the end of the line, it came to. Add them up. Retired to nothing. Six months to go. No good to anybody, probably the way he looked at it. No good to his country. No good to himself. And an ocean and a rail anybody could climb over.”

  “He told you he was sick? I take it it was cancer?”

  “Not me,” Whitney said. “Colonel Collins. My chief at the Embassy, the colonel is. They were old friends. Grimes and the colonel, I mean. Family sort of thing. Went back for generations, in a way of speaking. Always army, the Grimeses were. Except Ronald himself. Anyway, he told Collins, and the colonel—well, he let it leak. Broken up, the colonel was. Friends for years, y’know.”

  “Let it leak to you, I take it?”

  “Didn’t mean to, probably. As I said, he was broken up. Yes. To me, Heimrich.”

  “To others?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “When was this? That you learned about Sir Ronald’s illness?”

  “Two-three months ago.”

  “And you think that, knowing he was going to die, Sir Ronald committed suicide?”

  “That, and the fact that he was being put out to pasture. Yes. Rather jumps out at one, wouldn’t you say?”

  Heimrich closed his eyes again. He opened them and sipped from his cup. The tea was all right, as tea went. It was no longer especially hot.

  “It could have been that way,” he said. “It’s—it’s something I’ll bear in mind, Major. Did you know a man named Hunt?”

  Whitney merely repeated the name. Then he shook his head.

  “Lady Grimes didn’t say anything about him?”

  Whitney shook his head again.

  “The same night Sir Ronald disappeared,” Heimrich said, “a man named Hunt was murdered. Detective Inspector Albert Hunt. English. Assigned to the Special Branch. You never heard of him?”

  “Can’t say I have, Inspector. Special Branch, you say?”

  “Yes.” He waited a moment. Whitney merely shook his head. “Wasn’t around the Embassy the last few weeks? Or months?”

  “Now there you’ve got me. Could have been, I suppose. Good many people in and out. Rather a busy place. If he was, I never ran into him. Afraid I don’t get the connection, Inspector.”

  “Between Sir Ronald’s disappearance and Inspector Hunt’s murder? The same night?”

  “Coincidence,” Ian Whitney said. “Sure to have been, I’d think. This Hunt. He was a copper, you say? Good many people have it in for coppers. Good many people in this ship. Wander all over it, actually. Come up from tourist if they don’t believe in signs. After somebody on the ship? And somebody got there first?”

  He put out the cigarette he had been smoking and lighted another. Then, unexpectedly, he smiled. It didn’t change his face as much as smiles change most faces, Heimrich thought.

  “Matter of fact,” Whitney said, “friend of mine aboard. Pretty little thing. Cabin class but I’ve had her up for drinks once or twice.”

  “Small,” Heimrich said. “Very pretty. Black hair.”

  “That’s Sylvia,” Whitney said. “Sylvia Blake. Nice kid. American but a nice kid. Met her in Washington. And getting out of a cab at the pier. So I looked her up, what? Aboard ship, I mean. Going to look her up again in Venice, shouldn’t wonder.”

  Heimrich stood up. He said, “Thanks for telling me about Sir Ronald, Major. Probably be helpful.”

  “Thought I ought to,” Whitney said, and stood up too and went with Heimrich to the door of the cabin.

  Going down in an elevator to the upper deck, Heimrich remembered he hadn’t eaten his scone. He also wondered whether Major Ian Whitney was always so long in getting to his point. He had no way of knowing. There was nobody he could ask about Major Whitney. Oh, of course, there was one person. A person who was looking out at an empty world through the shock in her eyes. Or, of course, perhaps was doing that. If she really was in shock.

  There was one other person. Heimrich made his way back up to the wireless room on the sun deck and put through another call to the British Embassy. He found out, in spite of a certain amount of static, that Colonel Collins was away from Washington and would not return until next week.

  10

  Heimrich went into Cabin 82 as quietly as he could. Susan was in her bed, but she was not asleep. She looked up at him. She did not ask any questions. She merely looked at him. She knows his face and can see answers in it to questions she has not asked. Heimrich sat on his own bed and looked across the cabin at her.

  “Nothing that proves anything,” he said. “Whitney took Lady Grimes to dinner once or twice when Grimes was tied up. Played tennis with her a few times, because Grimes wasn’t up to tennis. What he wanted to tell me, apparently. What Grimes wasn’t up to. That Grimes was a sick man, pretty close to a dying man. But, still active enough to climb over a ship’s rail and jump overboard. Because it was a quicker way to die. And that Grimes had not told his wife how sick he was.”

  “How would he know that? Whitney, I mean?”

  “I don’t know. He may be wrong, naturally. Wrong about Sir Ronald’s sickness, come to that. He got it secondhand. But—he may be right, of course. A sick man. And a man thrown out of his job. His whole life, Whitney says Grimes’s career was to him. And that could be true.”

  Susan sat up in bed and continued to look across the cabin at Merton Heimrich. Then she shook her head. Then she said, “Merton, if you were sick—really sick, fatally sick—would you try to keep it from me?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t try to keep things from you.”

  “Because anyway you couldn’t,” she said. “I think Sir Ronald and Ellen Grimes were the way we are. Something the way we are. You thought so too.”

  “Yes,” he said. “But that’s not good enough, is it? What we guess at about people? Only, this is pretty much all guesswork with nothing—damn it, with nothing to base
anything on.”

  “Whitney thinks Sir Ronald committed suicide,” Susan said. “Says he does, anyway. And what about Hunt? Is he supposed to have strangled himself?”

  “Coincidence,” Heimrich said. “That Hunt was a policeman. That he may have been after somebody on the ship. That whoever he was after got to him first.” He paused. He closed his eyes. “This ship goes to Trieste, doesn’t it?” he said, without opening them. “After we get off her?”

  “The last port,” Susan said. “Then she turns around and goes back. Why?”

  “Trieste is close to Yugoslavia,” Heimrich said. “Which is close to Hungary. Not a member of the club, Yugoslavia isn’t. Not in good standing, anyway. But—there may be holes in the curtain there. And—people to widen holes. I wonder where the Grimeses planned to leave the ship.”

  Susan merely shook her head. But then she stopped shaking it and looked at him silently for some moments, and then she said, “Oh,” with a falling inflection. Then she said, “I don’t believe it, Merton.”

  “People do defect,” he said. “On both sides, to both sides. And—efforts are made to stop them. Hush-hush efforts, to avoid the stirring up of messes. Making scandal.”

  “You look tired,” Susan said. “You’re supposed to look rested.”

  “Frustrated,” Heimrich said. “A day of getting nowhere.”

  “Then call it a day. There’ll be tomorrow.”

  He shook his head and stood up. He said there were not too many days before Monday and Málaga. He looked at her a little anxiously. “Are you all right, Susan?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “But if it’s Lady Grimes—to ask whether they had planned to go through to Trieste—I don’t think you’ll find her alone. I’m pretty sure she went to tea in the main lounge with Miss Farrell.”

  Heimrich looked his question.