A Poison of Passengers

by Jack Treby

  ‘Of course. I...yes.’ Mrs O’Neill took a moment to collect her thoughts. ‘It started some time ago. Letters received through the post. Vile letters. Mostly aimed at my husband.’

  ‘Typewritten letters?’

  ‘Yes. They upset him terribly. Whoever wrote them, they seemed to know everything about him. We thought at the time they must be from an employee. Well, a former employee; someone with a grudge against him. My late husband was a hard task master, where business matters were concerned. Then, after he died, the letters stopped for a while. But when Sir Richard and his family came here, over Christmas, they started up again. Letters to him and to his sister.’

  Miss Wellesley was stunned. ‘I had no idea,’ she said. It was curious that the American woman had chosen not to confide in her. But then, they had only known each other a short while.

  ‘And what did they say, these letters?’ I leaned forward.

  ‘It was all kinds of intimate, personal things. It’s too distressing to talk about. It spoilt our Christmas.’

  ‘Did you report them to the police?’

  Mrs O’Neill shook her head. ‘No. The letters...the information they contained was too personal. Almost as if it was from a member of my own household. That was why I...why I decided to go to Europe. To get away from it all. And then the restaurant...the bomb....after that, it became even more urgent. I had to get away, don’t you see?’

  I nodded. That, presumably, was why she had not told the police the whole story. ‘But whoever sent those letters – and that bomb – Mrs O’Neill, it looks like they may be onboard this ship.’

  ‘Oh, Henry. They can’t be true! Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘Well, Lady Jocelyn has received at least one threatening letter, since we boarded the Galitia. I heard her talking about it to her brother, last night.’

  ‘But that’s not possible!’ Mrs O’Neill rocked back in her chair, horrified. ‘She can’t have. She would have told me.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s true. A typewritten note, just like you said. But it’s worse than that.’ I glanced across at Miss Wellesley. ‘I’m sorry to do this to you, Miss Wellesley, but I think in the circumstances...’ The girl looked down at her lap and nodded softly. ‘You also received a note. It was delivered to your hotel room yesterday morning, just before you got up.’

  Mrs O’Neill frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

  I reached into my jacket, retrieved the piece of paper the young woman had given me and handed it across.

  Miss Wellesley watched closely as the older woman opened it up. ‘It was pushed underneath the door,’ the girl explained. ‘I didn’t want to frighten you, so I hid it away.’

  Mrs O’Neill shuddered. ‘“NEXT TIME IT WILL NOT BE A HOAX”,’ she read out loud. ‘And this was before we set sail?’

  ‘It was,’ I admitted grimly. ‘And now at least one, or possibly two other people have received similar letters. Which means that whoever organised that bomb at Leopardi’s, they may well be onboard this ship.’ And, I added silently to myself, there was a distinct possibility that they had done for Harry Latimer.

  Chapter Six

  I lit up the cigarette and took a long, heavy drag. It had been a hell of a morning. I had barely had a moment to myself – in all the confusion – to stop and think. I closed my eyes and let the smoke fill my lungs. I am not usually a heavy smoker, but today the soothing effects of tobacco were sorely appreciated. I had retreated to the Carolean, to gather my wits and to give myself a bit of a breathing space. The smoking room was all but empty right now, as most of the passengers were down at lunch. I exhaled a cloud of smoke and opened my eyes. What the devil was I going to do? I would have to contact Terrance Greenfield in New York and let him know what had happened. If he hadn’t already heard. Doubtless telegrams would be firing across the Atlantic, a well worn routine when a passenger died at sea. What would London think, when they heard that the man I was supposed to be keeping an eye on had expired on my watch? It would not reflect well on me. God, what a mess. I took another puff of the cigarette and coughed.

  Just twenty four hours previously I had been sitting in this same alcove, conversing with Harry Latimer, after Sir Richard had toddled off with his secretary. It seemed, with the benefit of hindsight, that we had not had a care in the world, as we stubbed out our cigarettes, pulled ourselves out of the padded armchairs and made our way along the Long Gallery towards the elevators.

  I had taken my time, admiring the paintings on the walls – there were some particularly fine royal portraits along the way – but Harry was dismissive.

  ‘These are all reproductions,’ he said. ‘Just a load of fakes.’

  ‘Rather fine fakes,’ I thought.

  ‘But not the real deal.’ Harry’s interest in art extended only as far as their financial value. ‘They wouldn’t risk the originals on a steamship. The insurance companies would never allow it. It’d cost them a fortune if the ship went down.’

  ‘That’s a happy thought,’ I said. ‘Typical insurance people, valuing paintings more than people.’

  ‘People are a dime a dozen, old man. Each of these paintings is unique. The originals, I mean. They’re irreplaceable. You wouldn’t want to lose them.’

  ‘I’ll remind you of that when we’re running for the lifeboats.’

  That was Harry all over. Always business. He was one of life’s schemers and, like any good criminal, he always kept his cards close to his chest. The more I reflected on his death and all the other peculiar incidents which had taken place over the last forty eight hours, the less credible it seemed to me that he could simply have died of a heart attack.

  But what was the alternative? I tapped out a bit of ash into a nearby ashtray. Could he really have been murdered? Quite a few people across various continents might have been happy to see him six feet under. Yet there was nothing at the crime scene to suggest foul play; no smoking revolver or bloody knife. Harry had been lying in his bed, as peaceful as a lamb. That did not preclude the idea of murder, however. Homicide did not necessarily have to involve actual violence. He might easily have been poisoned. I pondered that unhappy possibility for a moment. There had been no signs of distress; his face looked utterly serene. Any toxin would therefore have to have been slow acting; and, if such a poison had been employed, a post mortem would surely uncover it. Chemicals in the blood and all that. At least, I hoped it would. If Harry had been poisoned, though, how would it have been administered? Had somebody spiked his brandy at the bar last night, or contaminated the water jug by his bed? That would be the obvious thing to do. I grimaced, an unwelcome memory bubbling up in my mind. I had some experience of interfering with a person’s drink and it had not ended well.

  I tapped out the end of my cigarette and considered the practicalities of such an idea. Who would have had the opportunity to do it? There were only a handful of people onboard ship who could have gained access to his cabin without arousing suspicion; always assuming that the poison had been administered there. The stewards, mainly, and perhaps the odd acquaintance. What motive would any of them have had? Aside from myself, there was barely anybody onboard who even knew Harry. The occupants of the Reynolds Suite had been virtual strangers until last night. He had known Miss Wellesley and Mrs O’Neill a little longer than that, but neither of them struck me as credible suspects. The older woman was, admittedly, not quite as clueless as I had first supposed – she had managed to deduce that Harry and I were old friends – but her distress at discovering his body had struck me as entirely genuine. As, for that matter, had Miss Wellesley’s reaction, when we told her the news.

  The younger woman had been the last person to see Harry alive, of course, which meant she would have had the better opportunity; and for all the girl’s apparently sweet nature, she did have a brain in her head. A student of botany, no less. That fact sparked a related thought: if she knew all about plants, she might also know a little about poisons. Most toxins were plant based, were they not? In t
heory, therefore, she might know the right combination of herbs with which to spike his drink. I chuckled to myself, dismissing the idea at once. Miss Wellesley was hardly likely to carry a set of herbs around with her, on the off chance that she might want to kill somebody. Besides, what possible motive could she have? She and Harry had only just met. Or perhaps – it occurred to me now – she might have lied about that. Harry had been less than honest about our friendship, after all. Perhaps he and Miss Wellesley had known each other for some time but had kept quiet about it for some reason.

  If it had to be one of the women, though, Mrs O’Neill struck me as the more likely suspect. Maybe she had got wind of Harry’s scheme to steal her necklace. What exactly had she been doing skulking about in his bedroom like that? Had the door really been unlocked? It seemed unlikely to me. The woman had had the opportunity but what would have been the point of killing him? If you discover somebody is a thief, you call the police, you don’t poison them. And, of course, more to the point, with all the alcohol she had knocked back last night, Mrs O’Neill would have been out for the count until breakfast in any case.

  Perhaps I was barking up the wrong tree. If Harry had been murdered, the culprit was more likely to be somebody I didn’t know; some scoundrel lurking in the background. There could be any number of people aboard the Galitia Harry might have had dealings with. One of the stewards, perhaps, or a member of the crew who might have known him on the sly. If he had been killed, it was probably as the result of some scheme or other he had been involved in, some criminal he had upset, cheated or wronged. Gangsters, perhaps, back in America. Could that be it? Could it have been a “hit” of some kind? My mind drifted back to the hoax bomb at Leopardi’s. Harry had certainly been spooked by that, though he had done his best to hide it. He had been rather anxious to get away afterwards, too. At the time, I had thought that was because of the police; but it could just as easily have been some local gang. One of them slipping aboard, maybe somebody in second or third class, and then creeping upstairs and doing the deed in the dead of night. Yes, that might be a plausible sequence of events.

  I rubbed my eyes. What about the poison pen letters, though? Was all that just a coincidence? According to Mrs O’Neill, she and her late husband had been receiving these letters for several years, on and off. She had asked me not to mention the fact when I spoke to the detective fellow, and I had some sympathy with her request. Telling the boys in blue – or their local equivalent – would only muddy the waters and serve to embarrass Lady Jocelyn. Besides, if the first of those letters had been sent in 1928 or 29, as Mrs O’Neill claimed, then Harry could not possibly have been responsible. He would have been in Europe at the time. Admittedly, the man had received a suspicious looking note of his own last night, in the ballroom, but I had no reason to suppose that this was one of the regular pen letters. A malicious writer would not send a note via a steward, when it could so easily be read by anybody and the perpetrator traced. More likely it was a summons of some kind. Miss Wellesley had said that Harry had disappeared for a short while afterwards. Some other business, then, that I knew nothing about? And maybe that was what had got him killed.

  Any further analysis was cut short by the arrival of Sir Richard Villiers. Having eaten his fill at the restaurant on D Deck, he had come up to the Carolean for a quiet drink and a smoke. He glanced across the hall. The smoking room seemed to have filled up rather in the last few minutes. The lunch time servings were coming to an end. A good half an hour must have passed by while I had been contemplating Harry’s death. I tapped out my cigarette in the ashtray and was surprised to find it was my third of the day. A couple of ageing Americans were mumbling to each other on a settee in the centre of the hall and a retired colonel was dozing in a far corner, his cigarette gently fizzling away on its ashtray. Sir Richard’s gaze swept across them and then fixed on me, tucked away in a small alcove off to the left. I struggled not to grimace. That was the last moment of quiet I would be allowed this afternoon. Sir Richard raised a hand in greeting and strode across to join me. ‘Mr Buxton,’ he said, his chunky glasses sparkling in the light from the high windows above us. By now, he would have heard about Harry’s death, and his expression was suitably grave. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, coming to a halt in front of me. ‘You weren’t at lunch.’

  ‘I wasn’t hungry,’ I said. In truth, I could not bear to face the company at table; all those sympathetic faces.

  ‘I don’t blame you, old boy. A terrible thing to happen.’ He sat himself down next to me and pulled out his pipe.

  ‘Dreadful,’ I agreed. I gestured to the empty whisky glass in front of me and he nodded. A waiter jumped to attention as I indicated the glass and ordered two more.

  Sir Richard filled the end of his pipe and lit it expertly; then he sat back in his armchair and took a long suck. ‘Life and death. It’s a rum do, isn’t it?’

  That was an understatement. ‘I’ve seen so much of it lately,’ I said. ‘Some people you think will be there forever. Nanny Perkins. My old valet, Hargreaves. And Harry. Even if you don’t see them for years on end, you know they’re there. And when they die...’ I trailed off as the waiter arrived with two whiskies.

  Sir Richard reached forward for his glass. ‘Best not to think about it too much.’ He slurped at the drink. ‘Stiff upper lip and all that.’

  ‘You’re right, of course.’ I downed the whisky. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to be maudlin.’

  ‘You have every right, old boy. I barely knew the fellow, of course, but it’s hit Susan hard. Shock, I suppose. You know what women are like. They can’t help themselves, the poor dears.’ He placed his tumbler down on the side table. ‘She couldn’t eat anything at lunch. She’s gone to have a lie down.’

  ‘Probably the best thing for her,’ I said. ‘She has been through rather a lot lately. The bomb. The attempted robbery. And those letters too.’ I shot Sir Richard a knowing look. If I had to talk to the fellow just now, I might as well find out what he knew.

  His expression darkened. Sir Richard had a thin, grey face which matched his short, close cropped hair. ‘Oh, you’ve heard about that?’ He adjusted his spectacles. ‘Dastardly business. It’s put a pall on the whole trip.’

  ‘It’s not just Mrs O’Neill who’s been receiving poison pen letters?’

  ‘No, we all have, ever since we arrived in the Americas. It’s a damn foolish way to conduct yourself. In my day, if you took against someone, you’d jolly well tell them to their face. Anonymous letters, not the done thing at all. A woman’s way of fighting.’

  I suppressed a scowl. I was not in the mood for such blatant male chauvinism. ‘You think a woman sent the letters?’

  ‘As to that, I couldn’t tell you. But they’ve caused no end of upset.’

  ‘What sort of things do they say? If you don’t mind me asking?’

  Sir Richard growled. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope. ‘This is the first one I received, back in October. Don’t know why I hang on to it. I’ve destroyed the rest. But this one. I don’t mind telling you, Mr Buxton, it makes my blood boil.’ He handed me the envelope. It was a regulation post office affair. The address was type written on the front.

  I pulled out the letter inside. Again, it was standard issue note paper, the kind you could pick up in any “dime store” in America. The capital letters, however, were instantly familiar.

  “SIR RICHARD, YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A LEECH. YOU COME HERE AND RUIN OUR LIVES. YOU TEAR OUR BUSINESSES APART, YOU LEAVE OUR WORKERS DESTITUTE. YOU STRIP AWAY THE WEALTH AND TURN YOUR CHEEK WHEN PEOPLE ARE DYING IN THE GUTTER AND YOU KNOW IT IS YOUR FAULT. BUT YOUR SINS WILL FIND YOU OUT AND YOU WILL PAY FOR IT. ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD CANNOT PROTECT YOU IN THE FACE OF THE ALMIGHTY.”

  I looked up. ‘Religious sort?’

  Sir Richard shrugged. ‘Apparently.’

  My mind flashed back to the Reverend Hamilton-Baynes, sitting at a typewriter in the writing room. Could he have something
to do with this? ‘It’s pretty grim reading,’ I admitted, staring down at the paper. The typeface was somewhat familiar too. I had half a mind to pull out Mrs O’Neill’s note and compare the two, but I thought better of it with Sir Richard looking on. I read through the text again. ‘It sounds like a disgruntled employee. What does it mean, tearing businesses apart?’

  ‘That’s an odious phrase.’ Sir Richard puffed at his pipe. ‘What I do is perfectly legitimate. I’m a businessman. I buy up failing companies, strip away the dead wood and sell them on. You can’t blame me for the companies failing in the first place. That’s their own damned fault, if they don’t run the things properly. In my day, people took responsibility for their failings.’

  ‘But people have ended up in the street?’

  ‘It’s unavoidable, with the economic downturn. But I discharge all the responsibilities. A week’s notice. References where appropriate. Then sell off the assets and make use of them in any way I see fit. It’s business, old boy, purely business.’

  ‘But somebody’s obviously aggrieved.’ I returned the letter to its envelope and handed it back to Sir Richard. He pocketed it sourly. ‘And this was the first note?’

  ‘Yes, a few days after we arrived.’

  ‘And Lady Jocelyn...she’s received a couple of these as well?’

  ‘More than a couple. They’ve been very unpleasant.’ He scowled. ‘Not the sort of thing I could possibly discuss with anyone. But Jocelyn’s a brick. She can handle anything. She’s the exception that proves the rule where women are concerned. But they were pretty near the knuckle, I can tell you.’

  ‘And neither of you received any letters before you arrived in America?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you inform the police?’

  ‘Heavens, no. We don’t want to involve anyone else. Far too upsetting. All sorts of unfounded allegations being thrown about. But we did make a few discreet enquiries. Had a proper look at the envelopes. Each letter was posted in a different post box, all within a three mile radius of the house.’