Holiday Homicide

by Rufus King

  “Here’s the rum, Mrs. Smith,” and sat down beside her and started to peel the foil cap from the bottle.

  Then I took another quick look at her eyes and got that feeling. They were very set and expressionless, and the smile on her lips was very set and expressionless, too. In fact she looked like a stand-in for one of Madam Tussaud’s better waxworks. Anybody who’s ever had that feeling will know what I mean. The feeling that somebody was around who shouldn’t be around. Who shouldn’t be around because, by his being so, he was there to do you no good.

  Nobody knows what it comes from, I guess, but it starts with a quiet, cold prickle at the base of the neck and then fans down the spine like a needle spray of ice.

  “Hustle up with that cork, Mr. Stanley,” she shouted good and loud. “Then beat it out of here because I want to dress.”

  The “Mr. Stanley” confirmed the feeling. Mrs. Smith had called me practically everything under the sun, but never that. She couldn’t have flashed a surer danger signal if she’d turned a bright red.

  “Don’t be impatient, Heartthrob,” I shouted back, which was my way of letting her know that I was on, as never, never had I called her anything but Mrs. Smith, and certainly not to her face.

  Well, the lead foil was off the bottle by then and it seemed a good plan to take a few minutes and size things up, so I ignored the corkscrew which is always in my pocket on a sterling silver horseshoe dingus engraved: To Bert from the Duchess; she being a good-hearted old waterfront tramp who would drop in at Harrigan’s for a beer whenever she had a dime, and would get one on me whenever she didn’t and cut up for thousands when she died, including willing me the sterling dingus and her thanks.

  “I have,” I shouted, “no corkscrew. Am I dumb!”

  “Yes,” shouted Mrs. Smith. “Go and get one.”

  “Nonsense,” I shouted. “My old bartending days taught me many a trick. Watch this.”

  She looked at me as if I really were dumb while I pounded the bottle with the heel of my palm to force out the cork and sized things up. Nobody could hide under the bed, unless it was a snake, and Mrs. Smith would have told me so if it had been a snake. Nor was there anything bulky in the cabin that a man could crouch behind, even if it would stay still long enough for him to do so. Which brought my casual eye to the bathroom door. It was ajar about an inch. What was more, that inch stayed put.

  Common sense told me that no door was going to act like that, what with everything else doing Big Apples, unless somebody was holding it there steady.

  I caught, even in that one casual glance, what looked like the small muzzle of a gun and again common sense told me it was being held on Mrs. Smith and that she was slated to receive lead if she made one false move.

  Any more corkscrew gag was out. You couldn’t leave her there to get one, because Annie Oakley would certainly have polished her off and then vanished into his usual mist. Even if I had waited for him outside in the passageway my charge would be dead inside, and this time no fooling.

  Strategy, Moon insists, is not one of my major points. A lot of the bulldog, he says, yes; loyalty, a pile-driver technique, yes; but strategy, no. That is just nonsense, of course, and he only says it because he wouldn’t want me to get a swelled head. The situation certainly called for finesse, and my plan was to slam Mrs. Smith flat on the floor, then charge the bathroom door and shoot it out, while trying to make the first part of the move look as natural as I could. So I shouted at her:

  “Look, Honey Bunch, I guess I’ve lost the answer. Maybe there’s a corkscrew in the bathroom.”

  With which I slammed her flat.

  Well, everything would have been in order if Mrs. Smith’s reflex actions hadn’t made her rip out a good workmanlike curse and grab my ankle as I leaped across her toward the fray. I realized later that the poor woman was simply tired out from too many unexpected contacts with floors and was in no condition to reason things out.

  I did do the best I could, by rolling over and reaching for my gun, but a voice from behind me shouted: “No, no, Mr. Stanley! Stand up and raise your hands, please, and put the palms flat against the bulwark.” Now possibly in a reasonable sort of storm you could put your palms flat against the bulwark, but right then no matter when you reached for a bulwark it left you, as did anything else.

  I tried the next best thing, which was a sort of patty-cake arrangement and, again, not very good for my nose. It satisfied Voice, however, because he staggered closer and ripped the gun from my hip pocket. His frisking me for further weapons had a touch like Gorilla Larsen’s at my favorite Turkish bath, the one in Stockholm where they pound you on a marble dais.

  “All right, Mr. Stanley. Sit down.”

  I did this with ease, after turning around and getting a shock that must have lopped years from my life. I’d been talking with the guy only a couple of hours before in his home on Long Island by radio-telephone. That in itself was one reason why I refused to believe it was Wallace Emberry. The other was because his old-school neatness was lost in a soggy pulp of clothing and matted soil and leaves that seemed to cake in a crust all over him. His pan was streaked with dirt, and there was a jungle smell about him instead of the usual scent of lavender.

  I had landed alongside of Mrs. Smith when I sat down, and she said, “Sorry, Old-Timer,” and I said, “Forget it, Mrs. Smith,” so we were back on a normal basis again.

  Not that it looked like doing us much good. Emberry was braced against the wall across the cabin from us, and the gun which he held ready to plug us with had a silencer on its end.

  You could tell he was thinking how best to lay us out, to plant some doubt as to how it had happened, to repeat, if he had to, the murder-suicide setup he’d used with Mrs. Smith and McRoss, possibly with her being the suicide this time and me the murdered corpse. He sidled around us rapidly and locked the cabin door; then returned and braced himself again against the opposite wall.

  Just then the tail of my eye caught the handle of the door he’d just locked turn, stop, then turn quickly three times. There wasn’t any follow-up knock so I knew it was Moon. I knew, too, that he’d got the fact that I was in a spot, and would make some play to get me out of it if any man could. I tried to fight for time, in order to give Moon time. There was always the last chance, of course, of slamming Mrs. Smith flat once more and plowing into Emberry with the hope of getting him before his lead would slow me down.

  “Listen, Mr. Emberry,” I shouted, “let’s bargain.”

  The idea seemed to interest him. At least he listened while I talked. I talked for five minutes, and I swear I don’t know how my tongue did it to this day. I promised him a fair trial in the States. I pointed out how clever he himself had been at criminal law.

  I argued that with his money he could get the best mouthpiece in the country. It was all a lot of prize Westphalian bologna, but he listened, at least he didn’t shoot, and, even if he wasn’t paying any attention, my voice did keep his mind from solving the suicide-murder setup too quickly.

  The motion of Trade Wind was still wild, but you could tell that Captain Plummet was holding her on the best point to keep her from wallowing over in the mountainous seas. My tongue started to dry up, which sunk my hopes down to a new low, even though I should have known that Moon would dope out the one trick that would have worked. Emberry had it set by then—you could tell that from his eyes—and I was just ready to stake everything on a lunge, when Moon persuaded Captain Plummet to shoot the works.

  Trade Wind veered sharply and took one broadside sea.

  It was a brilliant piece of seamanship, bringing her back, but Plummet did it, and during that sickening moment while she keeled on her side every movable thing aboard her was in the bag.

  That included my gun and Emberry’s gun and Emberry.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  AFTER THE STORM

  Trade Wind reached Key West by four in the afternoon. We had left the storm area behind, with its path curving out to sea, but four
things made it necessary for a layover in port of several days.

  McRoss’s body had to be turned over to the Florida state authorities and held for an inquest on his death, after which Miss Jettwick wanted it prepared for burial and to be brought with us back home.

  Buzzard Emberry also had to be turned over to the authorities, arraigned and put in jail until it was decided which of his three murders he was to be tried for, or all of them, and when and where. You could also add his attempted strangulation of Mrs. Smith and his later intentions to blast both her and me, after which the civil courts could get busy if they wanted to for odds and ends in malpractice, chicanery, and bribery to the right and to the left. He was, in fact, one of the most all-round villains I had ever known, and the smell of lavender has always given me the jumps from then on.

  Trade Wind’s superstructure had to undergo quite a few vigorous repairs from damage by the storm.

  Lastly, all of us on board her had to undergo some similar vigorous repairs, both of a physical and mental nature, which could best be accomplished on the welcome solidity of dry land.

  We checked in at an attractive joint on the waterfront, complete with swimming pool, sweet-smelling flowers, all of the fancier palm trees, a good bar, when you got to see it through the blaze of chromium and mirrors, and a worried, nail-biting manager who looked on our party as a godsend and signed us up at twenty-five bucks a day each. We had, of course, the whole place to ourselves.

  As the joint was run on the American plan, the first thing we naturally had to do was to have a dinner party, which Miss Jettwick wanted to sling, somewhere else. She wanted, bless her, to take our minds off our recent worries, which seems a mild way of tabbing same. The manager was delighted almost to death, as it not only saved on the meals, but gave the cook a night out, and suggested that we go to Raoul’s Garden of Scented Roses where, he said, shrimps were shrimps. I phoned the orders through to Raoul, who was also almost delighted to death, and said we’d meet the first shrimp at eight. Then I submerged in a good cold tub and slept for two hours.

  The dinner party turned out fine. The girls had all freshened up into human beings again, and I had collared a valet in time to have a white mess jacket pressed back into shape. Moon simply raised his eyebrows when he saw me and went right on getting into his sober black.

  It wasn’t a dinner party so much as it was a minor convention, because Miss Jettwick had invited the officers and men of Trade Wind to join us, too. We sat at small tables in Raoul’s, which was located just outside of town.

  Why he called it Garden of Scented Roses I never did find out, as there were no roses, and all the smells were on the tuberose and gardenia order and they certainly smelt.

  There were plenty of trimmings such as stars in the clear, dark sky, very good daiquiri cocktails, languorous dusky waitresses rigged out in straw this side of a hula, and a rumba band of Cubans with their usual effect of hot-syrup strings and loose teeth.

  Miss Jettwick and District Attorney Seward sat with Moon and me and Moon gave them a brief précis of the case while we ate shrimps and shrimps, and the other tables grouped, danced, drank, and had themselves a time.

  “That business about the sapucaia nuts,” Moon said, landing a pun below the belt, “was the kernel of the case. If you accepted Bruce’s innocence, which I did, the picture of the killer required certain characteristics which were a familiarity with Trade Wind, a knowledge of Myron Jettwick’s intention to confess publicly his sins before he died, and a fair knowledge of medico-legal procedure. I mean by that, Miss Jettwick, a knowledge specifically of post mortems, which Emberry had from his early practice in criminal law.”

  “But when you considered his present position in the bar association, Mr. Moon, how could you have suspected him?”

  “Nowadays? When governors are being impeached? Just consider the men in high positions of trust who have fallen recently and it becomes feasible to suspect anybody.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is.”

  “Emberry knew that he had to kill your brother from the moment the holiday cruise was planned and the invitation was sent to Mrs. Jettwick and Bruce to join it. He saw in Bruce a perfect suspect for the crime. He sought some definite evidence which would plant Bruce at the scene of the crime while, presumably, the victim was still alive. Hence that fiendish and too clever business with the sapucaias.”

  Moon smiled at Seward and said:

  “Both of us knew, Mr. Seward, that your main purpose in establishing the fact that no sapucaias could have been stolen from Bruce on the yacht was to force him into a confession should he have been guilty. I’m sure you knew as well as I did that the nuts could have been taken before Bruce came aboard. Both McRoss and Emberry had an opportunity to do so when they went to Mrs. Jettwick’s apartment to persuade her to accept the cruise invitation.”

  “That will clinch premeditation, of course,” Seward said.

  “Exactly. New Year’s Eve offered Emberry a perfect moment for the crime, with the night watchman of the landing stage drunk and the deck watch drunk. One point, I think, might be enlightening to your case. Primarily, Emberry stood on the aft-deck, after telephoning Bruce, to observe Bruce’s reactions through the open porthole. He was detained there, however, after Bruce had gone, by some revelers returning to Wharf House. When he looked again into the bedroom he saw Mrs. Schuyler standing there with the black steel box in her hands.”

  “How had she located it?”

  “During a brief conference with Jettwick before dinner. The box, then, was on a table in the living room, but she had noticed through the open bedroom door that the books on botany were not on the shelf and realized that the space offered a good hiding place for the box.”

  “Was she dressed for the street then?”

  “Yes. Her intention was to take the box ashore and leave it at her house. Finding Jettwick dead naturally shocked her terribly. She took the box into her cabin, feeling faint from shock. She knew that she would shortly be unconscious and didn’t dare risk being found with the box in her possession. She managed to throw it into the river through a porthole before she fainted. She remained in this coma until the sailor’s shout brought her to, which was why her hat was still on when she first opened her cabin door. She was still confused, and had forgotten the hat and her costume until she saw Mrs. Jettwick looking at her speculatively.”

  “Emberry saw her get rid of the box?”

  “Of course, hence the dragging expedition in the rowboat after it.”

  “Can we prove he himself was in the rowboat?”

  “Yes. Mr. Stanley gave me a very detailed account of that operation. He said that one of the men had removed his mittens in order to draw a gun. This man had also fended the rowboat away from Trade Wind’s side with his bare hand. I was certain he had left both fingerprints and palm marks on the yacht’s paint. One of Jimmy Singer’s men dusted with powdered graphite and then photographed them the following day. They were Emberry’s. I’ll turn them over to you when we get to New York, Mr. Seward.”

  You could detect a faintly acid touch in Seward’s “Thank you very much.”

  Moon told Miss Jettwick of our method of having retrieved the box.

  “Mr. Seward,” he said to her, “was also informed of this by me immediately after the murder of Jeffry Smith. I told him of certain papers I had removed from the box before having it thrown back into the river. They included Jettwick’s confessions for his numerous sins. They opened up the field of suspects disturbingly. They gave Emberry a motive for the crime in that they exposed his part in planning the Leviathan thefts, in engineering the divorce, and also showed his hand in the general list of bribery and corruption of officials throughout the later years of Jettwick’s operations in big real estate. They gave Mrs. Schuyler a motive on similar lines; specifically, of course, the Staten Island project. They gave several powers in the city and state administrations motives, too. This last angle also gave me a lever with which to bargain with Mr. Sewar
d.”

  Seward’s face remained politely interested but perfectly blank.

  “The case became too diffuse. I thought it best to smoke Emberry out into the open. I hoped that the ten-thousand-dollar reward would start things going. It was a tempting bait for Emberry’s accomplice in the rowboat expedition to turn state’s evidence. It was a tempting bait for anybody familiar with Emberry’s criminal side or his unethical side. As, for instance, Jeffry Smith had been familiar with it.”

  “Who was his rowboat accomplice?”

  “His servant Plymouth, Miss Jettwick. Plymouth also was to cover Emberry’s alibi for the murder of McRoss and the attempted murder of Mrs. Smith by taking phone calls at the estate on Long Island as Emberry, while Emberry was flying down to Tortuagas and back.”

  “Emberry had some hold on him?”

  “Yes. Jimmy Singer ‘borrowed’ a silver tea service which Plymouth had polished and got his fingerprints from that. His record showed that he was wanted on a ten-year-old murder charge in Buffalo. He had been immune from suspicion, of course, while in Emberry’s service, due to Emberry’s standing and position.”

  “How did Mr. Emberry know that Jeffry Smith was about to give you information concerning the divorce?”

  “He had kept in general touch with Smith’s movements, as he had with those of Mrs. Jettwick and Bruce. He knew as soon as the ten-thousand-dollar reward appeared that Smith might possibly jump for it. He put Plymouth on Smith’s tail. Plymouth overheard from an adjoining booth Smith’s phone call to me and drove Emberry to the bar on Fifty-fourth Street. The getaway was most simple, because of the blizzard and the general lack of pedestrians on the street.”

  “He was then afraid that Mrs. Smith would talk, too?”

  “Very much so, which is why Singer had her change her hotel.”

  “Why didn’t you have Mr. Emberry arrested at once. Mr. Moon?”

  “There was no definite evidence against him but his fingerprints on the side of the yacht. They proved nothing beyond his presence there and a minor assault on Mr. Stanley’s head.”