by Rufus King
“Yes, Mr. Seward. I unlocked them, put my things away, and then put the bags in a cupboard. I showered, dressed, called at Mother’s cabin for her, and we went up to the main saloon.”
“Please, a lot more detail, Mr. Jettwick. You put the bags in a cupboard. Did you lock them before doing so?”
“I locked the small one, yes, but not the other two.”
“Did you lock the small one because of the opened box of revolver cartridges you had left in it?”
“Yes. There seemed no point in having the room steward come across them and start talking.”
“You had previously removed enough of them to load your gun?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“We shan’t bother with your reasons for carrying a gun on a friendly cruise aboard the yacht of a close relative, Mr. Jettwick. That is an angle which I will develop later. Right now I’m interested in the locked suitcase. The opened box of cartridges was in it when you put it away in the cupboard. What else?”
“Just a can of nuts, Mr. Seward.”
“Ah, yes. We must consider that can of nuts.”
“They’re sapucaias. I got to like them when I was a kid, during one winter that Mother sang down in Rio de Janeiro with some ghastly musical-comedy troupe. You can’t get them up here. A friend sends them up to me. He sent that can as a present for Christmas.”
“Let us follow that can from the moment when you came on board. Was it then locked in the small suitcase?”
“Yes.”
“So we have it under lock until you unpacked your things in your cabin.”
“That’s right, Mr. Seward.”
“Did you take it out of the suitcase?”
“No. I guess I’m selfish about sapucaias. I figured the room steward might develop a taste for them, too, so I thought they might as well stay locked up.”
“Did you eat any of them before doing so?”
“No. I did take some out and stuck them in a pocket, just to have.”
“In what pocket, Mr. Jettwick?”
“In my pants pocket.”
“Of your dinner clothes?”
“Yes.”
“Let this be quite plain, please. We now have some sapucaias in your pocket, and the rest are in the can in a suitcase which is locked, and in the cupboard. Is that right?”
“Yes, Mr. Seward.”
“That suitcase is fastened by a combination-lock type of an expensive make. Does anyone other than yourself know the combination?”
“No, nobody’s ever wanted to.”
Seward turned to Moon. There was no smile. His face was deadly serious and reminded you of the set look that a shepherd dog has on the trail.
“When it was examined this morning, Mr. Moon, the lock showed no sign of having been forced or tampered with. It took the department expert forty minutes to open it up.”
“Why on earth didn’t he ask me for the combination?” Bruce said.
“The department prefers its little mysteries, Mr. Jettwick. Personally, I have found such tactics a hindrance and believe that a straight line is still the shortest distance between two points. All right now, we have you with the sapucaias in your pocket and going up to the main saloon with your mother. Did you offer a sapucaia to anyone during the evening?”
“No.”
“Are you positive of that?”
“Quite positive.”
“Could anybody have taken one from you without your knowledge?”
“Scarcely, unless I’d been unconscious, and I definitely wasn’t unconscious.”
“Did you eat one yourself?”
“No.”
It began to hit me around then that here was a lot of pretty big to-do about some bits of shell. I looked at Moon and caught him in his Goya pose, the kind you see up at the Hispanic Museum, very don-somebody and reserved and looking straight down his nose. It was bad. It meant that he suspected a trap, too, and was worried as all hell.
Seward went straight-lining on, and concealing beautifully the Einstein twist.
“Mr. Jettwick, I understand from your statement to Commissioner McGilvray that the New Year’s Eve celebration in the main saloon broke up shortly after one in the morning and that you then went directly down to your cabin.”
“Yes, Mr. Seward.”
“Were you then alone in your cabin?”
“Yes.”
“Did you bolt its door?”
“Yes.”
“Were the sapucaias still in your pocket?”
“Yes.”
“Repeat, please, your movements after you had bolted your cabin door.”
“Just how detailed do you want this, Mr. Seward?”
“Pretty much.”
“Well, I took my coat off. Then I got a book and lay down on top of the bed and tried to read. I couldn’t read. I was thinking, or trying to, about too many things. Shall I go into them?”
“No, not now. You removed nothing but your coat?”
“Nothing.”
“Did you sleep at all?”
“Not sleep, really. I was too nervous for that. I must have dozed for a while, because when the boat telephone rang it gave me quite a start. I say dozing, because the bell has a soft tone and I don’t think I’d have heard it if I’d been sound asleep.”
Moon stirred faintly. Bruce had told us on Coquilla that he had finished smoking a cigarette after he had answered the telephone, and that the cigarette had been about half smoked at the moment when the bell rang. That didn’t gibe in anybody’s language with this new slant that the bell had jerked Bruce out of a doze.
Then Moon lapsed into a quiet blank again and I went back to spasmodic pothooks, while envying Mouse Wilbur whose pencil flew over his loose-leaf notebook with a streamlined ease.
“All right,” Seward said. “You answered the telephone and then what?”
“Well, I finished smoking a cigarette.”
Seward’s head jerked up, and it was a cinch that the slip was in the bag. Bruce must have caught the jerk because he flushed a deep beet red and stopped looking at Seward and looked over at Moon.
“The cigarette was burning on an ash tray beside the bed, Mr. Moon. I guess that’s another sign that I just must have been dozing.”
It was a neat recovery, and Moon came to bat and smiled reassuringly.
“Certainly it is, and an excellent one, too. It’s stupid to suppose that you could recall the length of the ash?”
“Gosh, no, I don’t remember that.”
“It’s inconsequential,” Seward said, without meaning it, and then added, “Again from your statement to Commissioner McGilvray, you finished the cigarette before starting for your uncle’s quarters?”
“Yes, Mr. Seward.”
“You were still completely dressed except for your coat?”
“Yes. I put the coat on before leaving the cabin.”
“The sapucaias were still in your trouser pocket?”
“They must have been, Mr. Seward. I hadn’t taken them out.”
“This question is simply for the record. I realize its improbability, but I want it down. Could anyone have entered your cabin while you were alternately dozing and worrying, and have removed a sapucaia from your trouser pocket?”
“Of course not. The door was still bolted, Mr. Seward.”
Again Seward turned to Moon.
“As you’ve probably determined, the bolt is of a type that cannot conceivably be unfastened from the outside.”
“I haven’t,” Moon said pleasantly, “but I’m convinced, if you say so, of the fact.”
“Now then, Mr. Jettwick, you unbolted your door, went aft along the passageway, and knocked on the door of your uncle’s quarters. You met or saw nobody in the passageway?”
“Nobody.”
“You received no reply to your knock. You found the door unlocked. You entered your uncle’s quarters. Right?”
“Sure it’s right, Mr. Seward.”
“Were you familiar wit
h them?”
“No, I’d never been in them before.”
“I suggest at this point, Mr. Jettwick, that you forget the statement which you gave to Commissioner McGilvray, and tell me what occurred. I suggest this most strongly for your own sake. I am a reasonable man and, frankly, would prefer to like you and believe you. But I insist on truth.”
“I did tell the truth, the absolute truth, Mr. Seward.”
Seward hardened and became politer than ever.
“Then repeat it, please, from the point when you entered your uncle’s living room.”
“The lights were on, and it was empty. I saw an open door, and went to it. It was the bedroom, and my uncle was sitting up in the bed, shot.”
“You are satisfied that the living room was empty and, except for your uncle, the bedroom was empty?”
“Perfectly satisfied.”
“Are you also satisfied that nobody other than yourself and your uncle were in, or entered, those rooms while you were in them?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say to your uncle?”
“Nothing, Mr. Seward. He was dead.”
“What did he say to your”
“Nothing—my God, Mr. Seward, I tell you he was dead.”
“Did he remain in the bed, or did he walk around while both of you were talking?”
“I tell you, I swear, I—Please, Mr. Seward, don’t go on like that. My uncle was dead.”
“Very well. We have your word, then, that your uncle said nothing, and made no physical movement whatever of his own volition while you were in his presence?”
“You’ve my word, yes, and anything you like. Don’t they swear things like that on a Bible? I’m not being sacrilegious. I’ll do it. I’ll swear it on a Bible if that will help convince you.”
“Just your statement is sufficient, thank you, for our needs.”
Moon didn’t like that “for our needs” crack one bit. He tried to force Seward’s hand.
He said:
“I cannot help feeling that there is an emphasis on sapucaias in your line of questioning. I admit that for a while they bothered me, too. I refer to a fragment of sapucaia shell which I found on the floor at the foot of the bed in Mr. Myron Jettwick’s quarters. As I remarked at the time to Mr. Stanley, the presumption that my client had stood there and cracked and eaten a nut might show a debatable mood of contemplation while regarding the corpse of his uncle. On the other hand, under the mental shock and horror of suddenly viewing a death by violence, the act of eating a nut undoubtedly was done subconsciously and completely forgotten. Such, I feel certain, was the case.”
“But I didn’t eat a nut,” Bruce said. “I’ll admit that I felt pretty knocked out, but I don’t think I drew a blank, and I don’t remember eating any nut.”
“Do you remember every cigarette you’ve ever smoked?” Moon asked.
“No, certainly not.”
“Well, both acts are comparable, in the sense that either could be done absently as with any habit. I again stress the emotional shock that had gripped you, Mr. Jettwick.”
“You—you’ve got me going, Mr. Moon. Maybe—I don’t know—it is the sort of thing you could do without knowing it.”
“Am I now to understand,” Seward said, much too patiently, “that you admit to a possibility, Mr. Jettwick, of having stood at the foot of your uncle’s bed, and having cracked and eaten a sapucaia?”
“Mr. Seward, yes. If there was a shell there it must be a possibility, but I don’t remember it.”
“I think that covers everything. In digest what you state is this: to your admitted knowledge, no sapucaia nut left your possession from the time you boarded the yacht until you were satisfied that your uncle was dead. Do you consider that a fair summary?”
“Perfectly fair, Mr. Seward.”
“Then I shall ask you to sign it, after Mr. Wilbur’s notes have been transcribed.”
Things loosened up on the surface during the quarter of an hour that it took Nimble Wilbur to type out an original and two carbons of his notes. But only on the surface. Seward still had that shepherd-dog look, and Moon stayed Goya.
Bruce, poor kid, was the only one who seemed relieved. He was so relieved, in fact, that he leaned back in his chair and fell sound asleep.
Moon brought up the subject of the autopsy returns, if any, and Seward became suspiciously frank and obliging. He said that a comparison test had been made between the murder bullet taken from Myron Jettwick’s skull and a bullet fired from Bruce’s gun. The bullets were totally dissimilar, and so Bruce’s registered gun was not the murder gun.
On the other hand, Seward pointed out with the good old Seward charm, the East River was a swift deep river, and the actual murder gun could simply have been tossed into it right after the crime. It could even have been tossed into it straight through the open porthole near Myron Jettwick’s bed.
Obviously, Seward held a cavalier attitude toward guns, and was willing to discuss them inside and out until the cows came home. And he did do just that until Wilbur whipped the last sheets from the machine and arranged the original and carbons in three very neat piles and then stapled them with fasteners along each top.
Seward woke Bruce up. He made him read a copy carefully and completely straight through. He asked Bruce to sign. Bruce did. Seward asked Moon and me to witness the signature. We did.
Then Seward fired his blast.
“Mr. Jettwick,” he said, “you are probably not familiar with the ordinary routine of a post mortem. One aspect of that routine is of vital concern to the situation in which you now stand. I warned you at the outset that evidence had been brought to my attention which convinced me that your uncle was still alive when you went back to see him in his quarters at three o’clock this morning. I am now confident that that evidence, when taken in conjunction with the statement you have just made, and signed under no compulsion or threat, will also convince a jury. For Mr. Moon’s sake, I will give you that evidence at once.”
It was so quiet that you could have heard even Wilbur drop.
“One of the routine procedures in a post mortem,” Seward went on, “is to list the stomach contents and the intestinal contents of the body. You must understand that during the early stages of digestion gross particles of masticated food are retained in the stomach, until they are later changed into chyme, which gradually empties into the duodenum from the stomach. Naturally, Mr. Jettwick, those gross particles retain their characteristics, and are identifiable.”
Seward let that sink before he went on.
“Unhappily for you, Mr. Jettwick, the medical examiner found in your uncle’s stomach some particles of sapucaia nut which had been swallowed immediately prior to your uncle’s death. I have your own clear admission that you alone were in possession of this rare type of nut. I am forced to conclude that you offered your uncle one, and that he accepted it, and swallowed it, immediately before you shot him. Dead men do not eat!”
I prefer to draw the veil. Seward said, of course, that Bruce would be taken down to the Tombs and detained for investigation, which was a polite way of saying he’d be kept in a cage until the grand jury handed down an indictment charging him with murder in the first degree.
Moon stood up. He faces jolts that way. He seemed to stretch, even taller than he naturally is, as if he needed every inch of stature in him. His response to that second-act curtain of Seward’s put more heart back into young Bruce than any long-winded speech of reassurance could possibly have done.
Moon looked directly at Seward and simply said, with none of that reverence which any reference to one-celled fruits with hardened pericarps always brings into his voice:
“Nuts.”
Chapter Nine
“BRING YOUR GUN”
The next hour was a mess. It always is, the one which immediately follows an arrest. Moon never endures it. He has a habit of gracefully retiring and letting me be the wailing wall, claiming that my bartender days have harde
ned me into a state of insensibility to all and sundry grief. He says it depresses him to a point where he loses his valuable ability to think clearly and with effect.
When he pulls that one I always pass.
He left Trade Wind, so that he could think clearly and with effect, and did not go back to Coquilla where we could have snagged him, but taxied over to the men’s bar in the Plaza and fought off being depressed with the assistance of Irish whisky and plain water.
In the meanwhile the bag was mine. The reactions to Bruce’s arrest were important and had to be collected, because I knew that Moon would want them after he decided to stop being sheltered and came back to work.
The good-by, good-by scene took place in the main saloon and it couldn’t have been drearier. It was about a quarter past five, and the bunch were going through some mechanical motions of being a well-bred group of pukkah sahibs wading through their regular afternoon tea. Even the snow was still falling.
Seward was very decent about it.
He went directly over to Helen Jettwick and said to her:
“I’m sorry to have bad news for you, Mrs. Jettwick. We are detaining your son for investigation. He will be perfectly comfortable and well cared for. I suggest that you disabuse your mind of the average person’s conception of such detention. I refer to rubber hoses and the paraphernalia usually attributed to third degrees. Both Mr. Emberry and Mr. Moon will have my permission to confer with him at any time they care to do so. I sincerely hope that one or both of them will succeed in convincing me that I have made a mistake. I will be equally sincere in telling you that I do not believe I have.”
“Where is he? May I see him?”
“Certainly, Mrs. Jettwick. He is in the library.”
I’d rather not remember the way Helen Jettwick found the door and left the main saloon. There’s a certain fumbling that it hurts too much to look at.
Old-England Emberry disentangled himself from buttered crumpets and oolong, and bore down on Seward in a faint cloud of lavender scent which drifted from cartographic tweeds and his apple-polished skin. I expected him to say: “Preposterous.”
He said, “Preposterous!” Then he hooked Seward by an arm and gusted him out of the main saloon on an added: