Death of an Angel

by Frances Lockridge

  “It doesn’t seem to be,” Pam said, beginning to rub in oil. “Is he really retired?”

  Bill boarded her train of thought with the ease of one who has had long practice. He said that he didn’t know; that he had not heard of it. But that there was no reason he should have heard. If J. Orville Marsh said he was retired, probably he was retired.

  “Not coming the innocent on us?” Pam asked, remembering that the Carib Queen was, after all, of British registry. “Lurking? Planning to pounce on malefactors?”

  J. Orville was not, Bill told her, of the pouncing type. He was—or had been—what he said: a specialist in the seeking out of missing persons. Now and then, he made discreet investigations on the instructions of, for example, corporations which had grown doubtful of highly placed employees, but preferred not to go out on limbs about it. If it became a matter for the authorities, J. Orville made the correct contacts.

  “A completely clean slate?” Pam said, in a voice a little tinged with disappointment. She began to oil her right leg, having finished with the left. Bill nodded, but without lifting his head. “Why not the Missing Persons Bureau?” Pam asked. She found that, already, she was getting sleepy. But she had come for an invigorating dip.

  “Because sometimes people want to keep things in families,” Bill told her. “When we move in, officially, a good many people get involved. Necessarily. And sometimes there’s no legal justification for searching people out and—” It appeared that the subject tired him. Or that he felt it finished. McShane must, Pam thought, have been extremely hard to come up with.

  There were at first only a dozen or so around the pool, and only two in it—a blond young woman with a blond young boy. But more came. Mrs. Macklin came. Mrs. Macklin wore a wide straw hat. She wore sunglasses, and a green wrap. She stood and looked at chairs, and at the sun, and at the other people, and at chairs again. Hilda Macklin came after her, carrying things—a large bag, towels, several magazines and a thermos bottle.

  “Here,” Mrs. Macklin said and selected a chair on the edge of the North-Weigand reservation. “This will have to do.”

  Her voice was high; there was still a crack in it. In the sunlight, her skin seemed to fit more tightly than ever on her bones. Hilda Macklin unloaded on the chair next the one Mrs. Macklin indicated. Hilda wore a loose robe over, presumably, a bathing suit—at any rate, slim legs were visible below the robe. She bent and looked at the tag on the chair.

  “I’m afraid,” she said, in a low and colorless voice, “that this one belongs to someone. A Mr.—Folsom.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” Mrs. Macklin said. “There are plenty of chairs, as anyone can see.” She sat in Mr.—in Respected Captain—Folsom’s chair. She slightly parted the green wrap. Under it she wore a pink sports dress, very short on elderly white legs; quarreling in color with the red hair, all but a little of which was concealed by the wide hat.

  Pam North oiled her left arm and shoulder.

  “Well,” Mrs. Macklin said, in the same high voice, “go if you’re going.”

  Hilda Macklin slipped out of the shapeless robe. Under it, she wore a bathing suit—an unexpectedly sleek bathing suit. And—well, for goodness’ sake! Pam thought. Who would have thought it? She looked at Hilda Macklin with generous surprise.

  Hilda Macklin, peeled out of linen suit, of loose-hanging robe, was by no means the shape of a broomstick. She was slender, not thin. Nowhere did she lack anything it was appropriate for her to have—from slender high-arched feet upward. Hilda walked toward the deep end of the pool. Unencumbered, she moved with fluid grace—moved, Pam thought, almost as Dorian moved. She poised on the pool’s rim, her arms lifted, the position lifting small and perfect breasts. She dove, cutting cleanly into the sparkling water.

  “Appearances deceive,” Bill Weigand said, softly, from the chair beside Pam’s. He was still lying relaxed, but it was quite evident he was not asleep.

  “But,” Pam said, as softly, “why? Why hide them under a bushel?”

  Bill had no answer. Jerry rounded into sight again. He wasn’t now, Pam thought, doing better than three knots. He flicked a hand, however, and rounded out of sight.

  “Once more, and we get him to keep,” Pam told Bill Weigand, and then Dorian came along the deck—came with almost a cat’s matchless grace. She wore a green swim suit darker than her eyes, and a short white jacket. She sat next Pam. She oiled. When she was ready, she said, “Well?” and Pam went with her to the pool, and into it. They came out, in time, and toweled, and Hilda Macklin remained, darting like a fish among half a dozen others in the water. Jerry was sitting next to Bill. Questioned, he claimed two miles, not one.

  There were now a good many people around the pool, and white-jacketed stewards began to move among them. Mrs. Macklin beckoned with decision; she was, in time, brought a drink deeply red, and downed it in two swallows. “Bloody Mary,” Pam said, “and I should think she’d need it.” They relaxed in the sun, and watched through dark glasses, and as the sun grew higher—and hotter—spoke less.

  Respected Captain Folsom came and peered at Mrs. Macklin, in his chair. The respected captain wore pink slacks and a mottled shirt, and tennis shoes. And his uniform cap. Observed by Pam, he nodded to her, and then, when Jerry said, “Good morning, captain,” he came to stand above Jerry. He said it was a swell day. He hoped they were having a swell time.

  “Where’s your officer of the day?” Jerry asked him, in lazy tones, keeping things going. “Walking his post in a military manner?”

  “Well,” Folsom said, “the fact is, one of the boys is up to tricks. Great little joke, one of the boys pulled. Hidden the sword.” He made a sound like laughter. “Swallowed it, maybe,” he said. “Some of the boys will swallow anything.”

  “Why?” Pam asked. “What would be the point of it?”

  “Bangs into things,” Folsom said. “I don’t deny that. But, damn it all—I’m sorry, ladies—darn it all, it’s an emblem. See what I mean?” He looked at them, and now there seemed to be anxiety in his ruddy face. “Part of the whole thing,” he explained. “Keeps up the standard of the whole thing. Just because it bangs into things—after all, nobody’s got the duty for more than an hour at a stretch.”

  “You rotate?” Dorian said. “All of you?”

  “All but me,” Folsom said. “And the adjutant. He locks things up at night. Counts and locks up. Can’t have weapons around loose.” He looked at them severely. “Those are real rifles,” he told them.

  “Real sword, too?” Pam asked him, and there was only polite interest in her voice.

  “Sure,” Folsom said, and then looked at them again, and it seemed—to Pam at any rate—that there was something almost wistful in his expression. “All right,” he said, “suppose it looks silly? We like it. We spend fifty weeks a year in offices and making contacts and what have you.” He looked particularly at Jerry North. “You get out with the boys,” he told Jerry. “Like anybody else.”

  “Sure,” said Jerry, who had found that getting out with the boys was for the most part a tedious business, but who knew better than to admit, publicly, so un-American an attitude.

  “Captain Folsom,” Pam said. “It isn’t silly at all. Nobody thinks it is. It’s just swe—I mean, sort of gay and jolly.”

  “The wife thinks it’s silly,” Folsom said. “I keep telling her—”

  But an Old Respectable, in full uniform—but sword-less—came to stand at attention before the respected captain, and to make an elaborate motion with his head. Folsom said, “Excuse me, folks,” and went away with the—diminished, unemblemed—officer of the day.

  “I wouldn’t have expected him—” Pam began, and was interrupted by the public-address system, which clicked clear its metallic throat and continued: “Will the following please communicate with the purser? Mr. or Mrs. Oscar Peterson. Mr. or Mrs. Gerald North. Captain or Mrs. William Weigand. Mr.—er Captain—J. R. Folsom. Thank you. Click.”

  It is disconcerting to have one’s
name called over a public-address system—bandied, as Pam thought of it—before the many passengers of a ship. It leads, or led with Pam, to an unaccountable sense of guilt.

  “Oh,” Pam said, “I wonder what we’ve done wrong?” She paused. Her eyes widened. “Do you suppose we’re on the wrong ship?” she asked the others. “Do something, Jerry,” she told Jerry, who looked at Bill Weigand, and Dorian, for alternative suggestions. “Just inside,” Dorian said. “A desk. Says ‘Purser’ on it.”

  Jerry said, “Oh, all right,” and got up and went.

  “Whatever in the—” Pam said, and did not finish. She was distracted; Hilda Macklin, who had long been in it, was coming sleek and glistening from the pool. She certainly had been wrong about Miss Macklin, Pam thought again. Why would she hide all that? Her mother, of course. Pam looked at Mrs. Macklin with disapproval. Mrs. Macklin’s black eyes were hidden by her sunglasses; possibly she was asleep.

  A darkly good-looking young man, in swimming trunks—a young man deeply browned, with extremely white teeth in a dark face—got up from a deck chair near the pool and started to walk among the chairs. His path intersected that of Hilda Macklin, bound away from the pool. He was—Pam was almost sure he was—the handsome young man who had (but had he really?) intercepted Hilda briefly, inconclusively, at the cocktail party. Now he was—

  But he was not; it was clear he was not. He stopped to let Hilda pass and now they were close enough to her for Pam to be sure that no sign of recognition passed between them. So—she had been wrong about that, also. It was more a pity than ever, now that Miss Macklin, viewed more fully, could very well do as Juliet. With, of course, a little lipstick. She and the dark young man, whose swimming trunks were white, would make a very nice-looking couple.

  Jerry North reappeared. His face was serious. It took even Pam a moment to realize that the seriousness was too heavily laid on. It was not like Jerry to shake his head dolefully; he should know it was not like him. But he managed a few portentous words. “It seems we’ve made a—” Jerry began, in a voice of moderate gloom. Pam looked at him.

  “All right,” Jerry said. “Captain Cunningham’s compliments, and he would be pleased if we could join him for cocktails in his cabin before lunch. One-ish, the purser said. I said it sounded like a jolly-ish sort of do.”

  “You didn’t,” Dorian said. “I surely hope you didn’t. ‘Jolly-ish,’ indeed.”

  “I said we’d be glad to,” Jerry said. “Taking it upon myself.”

  “Cunningham?” Pam said, and answered her own question. There were information brochures in the cabins; Pam had read hers. “Oh,” she said. “The real captain. Captain Peter Cunningham, RNR.”

  Jerry agreed that it was the real captain.

  “You’ll have to change your shirt,” Pam told him.…

  They had all changed their shirts, or the equivalents, when they went, one-ish, for cocktails with the captain (the real captain) of the Carib Queen. From the level of the sun deck, they went upward in an elevator labeled “Lift” and were released into a small foyer, where the captain’s steward met them. The captain’s steward was a rosy youth, immaculately white as to jacket. He ushered them up a short flight of steel stairs and into the quarters of Captain Peter Cunningham. And Captain Cunningham was as real a captain as anyone could wish.

  He was tall and lean and unassertively British. He had a long, tanned face and steady blue eyes; he was, Pam decided, precisely what Noel Coward had years before had in mind in that Navy picture during which Mr. Coward spent so much time under water. Captain Cunningham welcomed them to the most ship-shape of small sitting rooms. He was gravely cordial; if this mingling with selected passengers—and how, Pam wondered, selected—was in any sense a matter of duty, nothing in Captain Cunningham’s manner suggested that there were other things he would rather be doing.

  Pam and Jerry, Dorian and Bill, were first, but only by minutes. Respected Captain J. R. Folsom was next, and now he was in full uniform, complete with cap. A little unexpectedly, once in the cabin, Folsom stood to attention and saluted, as one officer to another. Pam looked for surprise on Captain Cunningham’s long face, and found none—found only grave courtesy. Captain Cunningham even returned the salute, although uncovered. Courtesy could hardly go further.

  The rosy steward—beamish if anyone ever was—served cocktails and canapés. The canapés were admirable, the drinks cold and as ordered. Captain Cunningham sipped sherry and they talked tentatively as people do, when met at cocktail parties. The room was small enough to be talked across, and the captain, who was clearly experienced in such matters, prompted conversation. And he seemed to listen to everyone, and to listen as if he heard.

  This was true even after Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Peterson arrived, to fill the small, neat room. Mr. Peterson was short and round, and wore a gray business suit—unexpectedly complete with vest. His wife was a little larger, but of the same general design; she wore a flowery print. Mr. Peterson operated a flour mill in Minnesota; it was the first time they had been on what Mrs. Peterson preferred to think of as a boat. And about this lack of wide experience they were in no way defensive. Some people lived in New York and went to night clubs (Mrs. Peterson didn’t doubt) and others were captains of cruise ships; some published books (apparently) and others milled flour. It was the way things should be, and nobody made a point of “living up” to anyone else—or even, Pam realized, thought of doing so. Mr. and Mrs. Peterson were very sweet, and Mr. Peterson was interesting on the subject of flour. It had never occurred to Pamela North that flour could be so interesting, and she got some very good advice from Mary Peterson about the making of cherry pie.

  In civilian life, Respected Captain Folsom made shoe boxes—paper boxes in general, but shoe boxes in particular. This momentarily surprised Pamela North, for reasons slightly obscure. Once thought of, it became evident that somebody—and Mr. Folsom as well as any—had to make shoe boxes; clearly boxes did not merely grow around shoes, as cocoons about larvae. Pam had merely never thought of it before. When you came to think of it, as Pam now did, somebody had to make rubber bands, too. The world is a varied place.

  The minds of Mr. Peterson and Mr. Folsom met briefly—one of these days the unions were going to go too far; not that they disapproved of unions, but—and were parted by Mrs. Peterson, who had the air of a person who had certainly heard that one before. Mrs. Peterson parted them by complimenting Respected Captain Folsom on his uniform. She had, she said, never seen a uniform quite like it. Pam looked at her, and decided that Mrs. Peterson meant it in only the nicest way.

  “Traditional,” Folsom told them. “Been the same since the Riflemen were organized. War of 1812, you know. Stood by to repel those damned—” He stopped, abruptly.

  “Quite all right,” Captain Cunningham said. “Threw our weight around a bit, probably.”

  “Er—” Folsom said. “Anyway, been going on ever since. Drills. Kind of a militia. Not that it is the militia. I don’t say that. Have a dinner once a month and when something comes up people ought to take a stand on, we take a stand on it. Know what I mean?”

  Pam was a little afraid she did. But she smiled brightly, at the same time warning Jerry with a quick glance. He smiled reassurance; he would not go into the matter of stands taken. One of them would probably turn out to be on books permissible to libraries, but this was vacation.

  “Very interesting,” Captain Cunningham said. (The place was certainly, Pam thought, full of captains, especially if one counted Bill, as she supposed one had to.)

  “Have you,” Dorian asked, “found the sword?”

  Somewhat gloomily, Folsom shook his head—from which he had, as an afterthought, removed his cap.

  “Sword?” Captain Cunningham said. The Petersons merely looked puzzled. “Oh, of course,” Cunningham said. “Officer of the deck’s sword.”

  “Day,” Folsom said. “Officer of the day.”

  “Much the same thing,” Cunningham said. “You’ve lost it? On t
he ship? Job for you there, Weigand. Your line of country, what?”

  “Not,” Bill said, “unless it’s found on somebody. More J. Orville’s.”

  The ship’s captain, and the Old Respectables’ captain looked blank at that, and the Petersons politely puzzled. Briefly, Bill explained J. Orville Marsh. Recognition dawned on Captain Cunningham’s long face.

  “Matter of fact,” he said, “got him on my list, I think. That is—” He stopped.

  “But of course, captain,” Pam said. “There would have to be a list. Because if you’d picked just anywhere, we wouldn’t have come in a—a set, would we?” She looked hopefully at Captain Cunningham. He looked hopefully back. “Bill and Dorian,” Pam said. “Jerry and me. We must have been in a bracket on your list.”

  “Oh,” Cunningham said. “As a matter of fact, yes. Comes from the head office, the list does. Special people the directors want to—er, honor. Awkward word for it, but there you are.” He paused. “Or,” he said, “here you are. Mrs. North could do with a cocktail, Cholly.” Cholly was the beamish boy; Cholly brought drinks. “One of the pleasures of my trade, as a matter of fact,” the captain said. He sipped sherry. He was still on his first glass, and the glass was still almost full.

  “Missing persons, eh?” Folsom said, and seemed much interested. “That all he does?”

  “Did, he tells me,” Bill said. “No. Some corporation work. Employee investigation. That sort of thing. Shortages which aren’t clear enough to sign complaints, for example. You still think one of the—one of your organization—hid the sword? So, I gather, as not to have to wear it?”

  For a moment, it appeared that Respected Captain Folsom was thinking of something else.

  “Oh,” Folsom said, returning. “Sure—that’s all it could be. Seems Jonesy forgot to lock up last night. The gun cases, that is. Jonesy’s the adjutant. Slipped his mind, what with one thing and another. So he doesn’t know if it was in. Old Riggsy says he put it there and he had the last tour. But—there you are.”