Murder on the Minnesota

by Conrad Allen

  Genevieve looked at the drawing with the utmost interest. Though the figures were only drawn in outline, she recognized Father Slattery’s distinctive pose, a finger raised in condemnation. Facing him was a short, neat figure in a suit, waving an arm in anger. A few deft lines from the artist indicated an Asiatic cast of feature.

  “Who is this man?” she asked.

  “You must tell me that. I don’t know his name.”

  “How can I help you?”

  “Because he was sitting at your table yesterday,” he told her. “A Japanese gentleman and his wife. That’s what puzzled me earlier when I mentioned Father Slattery. You know him better than I do. Why did you pretend that you’d only seen him around when you were seated right next to him during luncheon?”

  Genevieve suddenly felt very uneasy. David Seymour-Jones smiled hopelessly.

  “I never take my eyes off you in that dining saloon,” he confessed.

  When he returned to Father Slattery’s cabin, Dillman was able to carry out a more thorough search. The presence of the dead man had been inhibiting. As he went through Slattery’s belongings, he felt that he was trespassing. There was nothing to hinder him now. He was systematic, working his way steadily through each part of the cabin and putting items of special interest on the table. He was forcibly struck by the lack of any luxuries. Other first-class cabins had wardrobes bulging with expensive clothes and drawers full of costly accessories. Father Slattery owned nothing of real monetary value. His belongings had a sobering simplicity to them. While he might have briefly enjoyed the facilities of first-class travel, he embraced poverty willingly. Dillman noticed how many times his vestments had been repaired and his socks darned. During his short occupation, he had made the cabin his own. A crucifix stood on the table, a framed image of the Virgin Mary hung on the wall, and a pile of Catholic tracts was in a drawer. Another drawer contained a well-thumbed Chinese-English dictionary.

  The item that was most useful to Dillman was the priest’s diary. It was a large volume, bound in black leather and devoting a whole page to each day. Father Slattery was a conscientious diarist. He not only filled every available inch of space with record and comment, he also noted times of writing. Dillman saw that the final entry was at 11:15 P.M. The priest gave a summary of what he believed had been a productive day. The fact that it was his last one alive added a poignancy to the account. Dillman was about to read the diary more carefully when he heard a sound outside in the corridor. He tensed immediately, wondering if the phantom observer had come back. Crossing to the door, he unlocked it and inched it open so that he could peer through the crack. Dillman relaxed when he saw that Rutherford Blaine was letting himself into his cabin farther down the corridor. Dillman closed the door and locked it again. He was soon going through every line that Slattery had written since coming aboard.

  A tap on the door made him sit up. If someone had come in search of Father Slattery, it was safer to ignore them and wait until they went away. But the caller did not wish to be ignored. The second tap was accompanied by a familiar voice.

  “George? Are you still in there? It’s me.”

  Dillman unlocked the door to admit his friend. Roebuck looked harassed.

  “What’s the trouble, Mike?” he asked.

  “Who’d be a purser?” complained the other. “It’s a dog’s life.”

  “More problems?”

  “I’m afraid so. Someone left a tap running in a bath on the promenade deck and it overflowed like crazy. The couple in the cabin below are livid. They didn’t expect to have a waterfall through their ceiling.”

  “That’s a reasonable complaint.”

  “The next one wasn’t,” said Roebuck. “A Russian woman on the upper deck reported a missing dog. How do you lose a Borzoi, for God’s sake? It’s almost as big as her. The worst thing was that she seemed to think I was responsible. She demanded to be taken to the captain. The skipper would have thanked me for that!”

  “Anything else?”

  “A string of complaints about the smell from the kitchens, and then the trickiest thing of all. That’s why I came in search of you.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Some jewelry’s been taken from a cabin on the boat deck. The wife is in tears, apparently. We do advise everyone to leave anything of real value in our safe but some people never listen. Anyway, this man insists on seeing you, George.”

  “Me?”

  “He wants the ship’s detective in person.”

  “How much is the jewelry worth?”

  “Over five thousand dollars, apparently.”

  “What’s the passenger’s name?”

  “Mr. Hayashi. He was hopping mad. That’s unusual in my experience. The Japanese have such rigid self-control as a rule. Anyway, Mr. Hayashi won’t deal with anyone but you.”

  Dillman sighed. “Then I suppose I’ll have to see him. It’s the last thing I want to do when we’re in the middle of a murder investigation, but Mr. Hayashi is entitled to our best efforts. We can’t let someone get away with five thousand dollars’ worth of…” He broke off as a memory was triggered. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Mr. Hayashi?”

  “That’s right, George.”

  “How many passengers of that name do we have aboard?” asked Dillman, taking a slip of paper from his pocket. “There can’t be many.”

  “There are only two, Mr. Hayashi and his wife.”

  “Then this must be him,” decided Dillman, looking at the piece of paper. “This is the list I showed you earlier. The one that Genevieve compiled after she’d dined with Gilpatrick and his cronies. There you are!” he declared, pointing at a name on the list. “I knew it. Mr. Hayashi.”

  “Even friends of Gilpatrick want their jewelry recovered.”

  “Do they, Mike?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “People with that kind of money to throw around know how to safeguard their valuables. I’m wondering if there really has been a theft from the boat deck.”

  “Why else would Hayashi report it?”

  “To smoke me out,” said Dillman. “I detect Gilpatrick’s hand behind this. He’s using Hayashi in order to make me break cover. When you know who the ship’s detective is, it’s much easier to dodge him. I smell a rat, Mike.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Find out the truth.”

  “How?”

  “I take it that you didn’t tell Mr. Hayashi my name?”

  “Of course not,” said Roebuck. “But I promised him that you’d be along directly.”

  Dillman grinned. “Then let’s not disappoint the man.”

  Needing time to compose herself, Genevieve Masefield went back to her cabin and reviewed what she had found out. The meeting with David Seymour-Jones had been highly embarrassing, but it had yielded one result. The argument between Father Slattery and Tadu Natsuki that had started over a meal had been continued elsewhere. She had seen pictorial evidence of it. Natsuki seemed an improbable killer, but the incident had to be reported to Dillman. The fact that Slattery had some command of Chinese also seemed significant to her. Genevieve made notes of what she had learned, wincing when she recalled the way that the artist had caught her lying about the priest. Though she felt that she had retrieved the situation slightly, it was a bad mistake. More worrying to her on a personal level was the confession from David Seymour-Jones that he watched her so obsessively. It was his clumsy way of making a declaration of love.

  When there was a knock on the door, she was startled at first, fearing that it might be him. Slipping her notepad into a drawer, she crossed tentatively to the door.

  “Who is it?” she called.

  “Me,” said Maxine Gilpatrick. “Got a moment, honey?”

  “I was about to have a bath.”

  “This won’t take long, I promise.”

  Genevieve opened the door to see her friend standing there with a pile of sheet music under her arm. Maxine stepped into the cab
in and put down her booty on the table.

  “There!” she announced in triumph. “The full repertoire.”

  “Where did you get it all?”

  “From the orchestra. I batted my eyelids at the conductor.”

  Genevieve laughed. “It obviously worked,” she said, glancing at the pile.

  “I thought you should have a look through it before we have our first rehearsal tonight. I’ve marked the ones I want to sing. But I’m no prima donna,” she went on. “If something doesn’t work, out it goes. Is that fair?”

  “Very fair, Maxine.”

  “Good. I’ll let you get on with your bath.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Oh, I forgot,” said Maxine, pausing at the door. “I met your suitor earlier.”

  “My suitor?”

  “The self-appointed one. Mr. Willoughby Kincaid.”

  “Ah!”

  “I’ll say this for the guy. He’s got the nerve of the devil.”

  “I gathered that.”

  “When I met him, he was nibbling at the hand of some woman he claimed was his bridge partner. That’s the trouble with him, Jenny. I wasn’t sure what to believe about the debonair Mr. Kincaid. He can sure shoot a line.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, he tried to pump me about you, but I gave nothing away.”

  “I’m relieved to hear that.”

  “In fact, I turned the tables on him,” said Maxine proudly. “I asked him how well he knew you and what sort of a man this Lord Wilmshurst was.”

  Genevieve became wary. “What did Mr. Kincaid say?”

  “Very little. He wasn’t even certain where Lord Wilmshurst lived.”

  “Chelsea.”

  “He thought it was Mayfair. Is that another part of London?”

  “Yes,” said Genevieve, “and parts of it are much more exclusive. I’m afraid that Lord and Lady Wilmshurst couldn’t afford to live in Mayfair. It’s beyond them.”

  “That proves it! Kincaid said they were very wealthy. Know what I think, Jenny?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t believe that he met either you or Lord Wilmshurst. He only pretended to in order to be close to you. Watch him, honey,” she warned. “I reckon that Mr. Willoughby Kincaid was lying his head off.”

  When Dillman found the cabin, he adjusted his cap before knocking on the door. Voices were heard inside and then the door was opened. Hayashi was a tall, thin man in his fifties with a gaunt face. He peered at the uniformed visitor over his eyeglasses.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Mr. Hayashi?”

  “Can I help you?”

  “I believe that you reported a theft to the purser,” said Dillman, deepening his voice to disguise it. “My name is Peter Carroll, sir. I’m the deputy purser and I act as the ship’s detective as well. Perhaps you could give me the details of the crime.”

  Hayashi flashed a toothy grin. “It all a mistake, Mr. Carroll,” he said. “My wife to blame. The jewelry not stolen at all. She mislaid it. We find it again. So sorry to give you any trouble. Please to thank Mr. Roebuck for me.”

  “Of course, sir. I’m glad it’s all ended so happily.”

  “Yes, yes. Good-bye.”

  Backing into the room, Hayashi closed the door behind him. Dillman stayed long enough to hear a snatch of the conversation from within. He didn’t recognize the voices but he distinctly heard the name of Rance Gilpatrick. His suspicions were confirmed. Adjusting his belt, he went off in the direction of the deputy purser’s cabin, wishing that the man had a thicker waist. The discomfort, however, had been more than worthwhile.

  EIGHT

  Genevieve Masefield found the prospect of dinner that evening rather daunting. She would not only be sitting in the same room as a killer, she would be stalked by two wholly undesirable men. Willoughby Kincaid was by far the more cunning of the two, and she knew that he would try to ambush her at some stage. In his own way, however, David Seymour-Jones posed even more of a problem. Genevieve had somehow ignited a spark inside the man and become the unintended object of his passion. Kincaid was patently impelled by a kind of well-bred lust, but the artist was truly infatuated. While she could keep the former at bay, she would find it more difficult to cope with her other admirer. Genevieve was anxious not to hurt his feelings. Seymour-Jones was a sensitive man who would be crushed by blunt rejection, and she wanted to avoid that. At the same time, she could do nothing that might be construed as offering him encouragement. She liked him as a person and admired him as an artist, but his awkward courtship had made any friendship with him impossible. The moment she stepped into the dining saloon, he would be watching her like a hawk. It was disconcerting.

  But it was the murder that really preoccupied her. The news that Father Slattery had been involved in a public altercation with Tadu Natsuki had shocked her. When she sat at the same table with them, Natsuki had been a most congenial companion, alert, intelligent, and extremely courteous. Even during the long debate with the priest he had shown immense self-control, though Genevieve did recall the moment when his eyes had flashed with anger. She wondered what had prompted Natsuki, later on, to confront a man whom he could never win over by reasoned argument. Even though Seymour-Jones had sketched at speed, his drawing had caught the ferocity of the exchange. Was the artist providing crucial evidence? Had the enmity between the two men driven one of them to commit murder? It was a chilling thought.

  Dillman had told her to look more closely at the people around her table at the time when she sat beside Father Slattery. The women could obviously be discounted as the killer had to be strong enough to overpower a sturdy priest who was bound to put up some resistance. That left three possibilities. Genevieve eliminated Bruce Legge at once. He was too old and inoffensive a man to resort to physical violence. Horace Langmead was far more robust and, being younger, would have the necessary strength, but he lacked any real motive. His were essentially social skills. He was much more likely to snub someone he disliked than seek to kill him. Dillman was certain that they were dealing with a trained assassin, and Genevieve could not believe for a moment that Langmead was practiced in the art of garroting someone. Tadu Natsuki might be a different proposition. A compact figure, he was a man of quiet determination. She was forced to the conclusion that Natsuki had to be a suspect.

  Eager to pass on her findings, Genevieve knew that she would have to wait until much later before she could confer with Dillman. He was pursuing his own lines of inquiry. One of her tasks, she reminded herself, was to find out if Rance Gilpatrick was involved in any way in the crime. That meant establishing some connection between him and Father Slattery, and she was not quite sure how to do that. Dinner became steadily less enticing. Her only source of comfort would be the friendship of Maxine Gilpatrick, but that was founded on deception. A relationship that gave her privileged access to Gilpatrick’s circle brought severe misgivings with it. When she looked down at the pile of sheet music, she felt a sharp pang of guilt.

  An idea struck her. In the hour before dinner, the Ladies’ Boudoir would be relatively empty. Genevieve could practice on the piano without interruption. It would keep her occupied and help to relax her. Accordingly, she got dressed, selected a few items of jewelry to wear, then picked up the sheet music. Five minutes later, she was playing her way through “Greensleeves” and humming the words to herself. There were only two people in the room, a pair of ancient German sisters in almost identical evening gowns. They ignored her when she entered and made no objection when she began to practice. Someone else eventually came into the room.

  “Oh, it’s you, Miss Masefield!” she said, clapping her hands together. “Don’t stop playing,” she urged as Genevieve broke off. “It’s so lovely to hear an English air.”

  “Not when it’s played so badly.”

  “You’re too modest.”

  “It must be years since I played ‘Greensleeves.’”

  Moira Legge was wearing a dress of cr
eam satin that was more suited to a younger woman. Its skirt was laid in pleats on the hips and finished with a thick ruche. Draperies of chine ribbon came to a point at the front and crossed with sash ends at the back. The sleeves were composed of a bandage of ribbon tied in a bow at the elbow. The bodice was softened by a chemisette of tiny frills of Indian muslin. Considerable money had been spent on a dress whose style was inappropriate for her and whose color made her already pale face look almost ghastly. Yet she was clearly very pleased with her appearance. Genevieve was tactful.

  “What a beautiful dress!” she said.

  “Thank you,” said Moira. “Bruce thinks that it makes me look youthful.”

  “It does, Mrs. Legge.”

  “One has to ring the changes on a long voyage. That’s why I always bring a large wardrobe. But don’t let me hold you up,” she went on, heading for a small table. “I only came to collect something I left in here earlier.” She snatched up a magazine. “I never travel without the Lady’s Realm.”

  “It’s an interesting periodical.”

  “I brought a dozen issues with me. You’re welcome to borrow them.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Legge, but I already have plenty to read.”

  “It’s the photographs that I enjoy most,” said Moira. “As it happens, I first saw this dress in an edition of Lady’s Realm. And it was an article on life in Japan that made us want to visit the country.” She held up the magazine. “Don’t tell Father Slattery, but this is my bible.”

  Genevieve winced slightly. “I see.”

  “Oh, incidentally, has that friend of yours made contact yet?”

  “Friend?”

  “A charming man whom Bruce met at the bridge table. I’m hopeless at cards myself,” said Moira with a giggle, “but my husband adores the game. Bruce has a system. It seems to work well. Anyway, he met this fellow and your name somehow came into the conversation. Mr. Kincaid was interested to hear that we’d met you ourselves. Has he been in touch yet?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Legge,” said Genevieve, hiding her distaste for the man. “Mr. Kincaid made contact with me earlier.”

  “A fascinating individual, isn’t he?”