The Murder on the Enriqueta: A Golden Age Mystery

by Molly Thynne

  “Certain,” he said decisively. “My man sailed on the Argentina all right. And, as I say, I doubt if he had a confederate on board this boat. No, my money’s on the chap with the shaving tackle and the green pyjamas and I’m willing to bet that those pyjamas have gone overboard by this time. But I agree with you that they probably came from one of those staterooms on the upper deck.”

  CHAPTER III

  Shand was just finishing lunch next day when the captain passed his table. The Scotland Yard man was not so absorbed in the peeling of his orange that he did not catch the invitation in the other’s eye or the quick jerk of his head in the direction of the door.

  Five minutes later he was drinking his coffee in the captain’s cabin.

  “Well?” he asked. “Anything doing?”

  “Nothing much, I’m afraid, but I thought you might as well have it. I had a message from Lady Dalberry this morning.”

  For a moment Shand was at a loss, then he remembered. “Of course, I’d clean forgotten we had her on board. The English papers were humming with that little romance when I left London. A bit of a mystery, isn’t she?”

  “Seemed straightforward enough to me,” the captain said. “She’s supposed to be a Swede, isn’t she, according to the papers, and she looks it. Fair, good features, fresh colouring, and all that sort of thing. Foreign accent. Speaks quite good English, though. What they call a fine woman, I suppose, but a bit too much made up for my taste. I fancy she’s older than she looks. In deep mourning, of course, but I’ve an idea that she won’t take long to console herself.”

  “She’s taking the body back to England, isn’t she?”

  The captain nodded.

  “We tried to keep the thing quiet. It’s extraordinary what a feeling there is against traveling with a corpse on board. But the Press was hot on the whole story, and, of course, it got out that she was sailing on this boat. As a matter of fact, curiosity proved stronger than superstition in this instance, and our passenger list was as large as ever. Not that they’ve got much satisfaction out of sailing with her. She hasn’t shown up at all so far.”

  “Is she traveling alone?”

  “Yes. Hasn’t even got a maid. I fancy she’s a bit at sea still as to what her jointure will be, and she’s going slow with the money till she knows. It’s a curious position altogether.”

  “I shouldn’t imagine that she need worry about the money part of it. The first Lord Dalberry was one of the biggest coal-owners in the country, and even now they must be rolling in money. She’d have been a very rich woman indeed if it hadn’t been for that accident.”

  “She was lucky to escape with her life,” commented the captain. “Anyway, I had word from her this morning saying that she had heard from the steward that I had been questioning the other passengers on her deck as to whether they had noticed anything the other night, and that she would like to see me. As a matter of fact I’d decided not to bother her. Considering her position, it seemed a bit heartless, and it was most unlikely that she’d have anything of interest to report. As it happened, I was wrong.”

  “She had seen something?”

  “Not seen, but heard, apparently. According to what she told me, she’s been sleeping badly since the accident: the result of shock, and all that sort of thing. In consequence, she goes to bed late—about twelve, as a rule—and takes a sleeping draught before turning in. The night before last she sat up a bit later than usual, and it was close on one before she took the sleeping stuff. Apparently it takes a quarter of an hour or so to act, and she was lying in her berth waiting for it to take effect when she heard a noise outside her stateroom.”

  “Where is her stateroom, by the way?” interrupted Shand.

  “On the upper deck. Number eight, just about half-way down the row. She says the noise was so curious that she sat up and listened. What first attracted her attention was the sound of shuffling footsteps along the deck outside her door. They sounded so uneven that she came to the conclusion that the person, whoever it was, must be either drunk or ill. Then she noticed another noise—a scraping sound—as if something were being dragged along the deck. She listened as it passed her door, and then decided that it must be one of the deck hands with a sack or some other object too heavy to carry. Almost immediately afterwards she fell asleep, no doubt owing to the stuff she had taken, so that she never heard the man return, if he did come back. It’s a piece of sheer bad luck for us that she didn’t lie awake a few minutes longer, as she’d probably have been able to tell us which of the cabins he made for when he saw the steward. She’d have been bound to hear the door shut.”

  “She’s no idea where the footsteps came from, I suppose?”

  “None. I asked her that very question, but she says she heard nothing until her interest was roused by the sounds just outside her cabin. She thought no more about it until she heard of the affair from the steward.”

  “Did she strike you as a nervous, imaginative sort of woman? It’s extraordinary what some people will manage to remember after an event of this sort.”

  “No. I should say her account’s dependable enough. She didn’t even seem particularly thrilled by the thing. Just thought it her duty to let me know. In fact, she’s the only one of the passengers that hasn’t attempted to pump me as to what we’ve discovered.”

  Shand found his thoughts dwelling a good deal on Lady Dalberry that afternoon. Though he had been quite genuine in his statement to the captain that he had forgotten the presence of Lord Dalberry’s widow on board the boat, he had looked out for her with considerable interest during the first few days of the voyage, and had been disappointed to find that she evidently intended to keep to her cabin. He had caught sight of her once or twice, a spare, upright figure in deep mourning, pacing the deck in the early morning before the other passengers were about; and once, when there was a concert in the saloon, he had seen her sitting within earshot of the music, in a secluded corner of the deck, but he had been unable to get a closer view of her, and had never spoken to her.

  In spite of her tragic history and the curiosity it had aroused, it is doubtful whether he would have given her a thought had it not been for his association with Jasper Mellish. When Chief Detective-Inspector Shand was just starting his career in the uniformed Force, Mellish had already achieved the reputation of being one of the fattest, laziest, and most capable of the Home Office officials. When Shand entered the C.I.D. chance brought him and Mellish together, and they had taken an immediate liking for each other—a liking which had soon crystallised into a friendship which had lasted through the latter part of Mellish’s career, and which had persisted after his retirement five years ago.

  In spite of his indolence Mellish was a person of many unsuspected interests. He possessed a fine singing voice, and used it with the skill of a born musician; his collection of etchings, though small, for he was not a rich man, had made his name familiar to collectors all over the world; he was chairman of various charitable committees and played an important part in the management of at least two of the great hospitals. It had been no surprise to Shand to learn that, among other things, he was sole trustee to the vast Dalberry estates, and it was from Mellish’s lips that the detective had learned the details of the succession of tragic events that had brought the name of Dalberry so vividly before the eyes of the British public. Hence Shand’s interest in Lady Dalberry, which, if short-lived, had been keen enough when he first heard that she was on board.

  He was too occupied with the Smith affair, however, to waste much thought on her now. All through what remained of the voyage he moved unobtrusively among the passengers, quietly supplementing his meagre store of information. But as he stood on deck, waiting to land, on the day the ship docked at Liverpool, he admitted frankly to himself that his inquiries had brought him nowhere.

  He was inclined to the theory that Smith, if he had an enemy, had been unaware of his presence on board the Enriqueta until the actual night of the murder. None of the inform
ation Shand had been able to gather pointed towards any nervousness or anxiety on Smith’s part, and the few people who had seen much of him were unanimous in declaring that he had stated on various occasions that he had no acquaintances on board. They reported him to be a natural boaster and inclined to grow garrulous in his cups—the last person likely to conceal the fact that he had friends among the first-class passengers. And that the murder had been committed either inside or in the close vicinity of one of the first-class staterooms, Shand had no doubt. From Lady Dalberry’s account, the body had probably been dragged past her cabin, and the abrupt disappearance of the man the steward had seen pointed towards his having taken cover in one of the staterooms on that deck. Shand had kept a close eye on the occupants of that particular row of cabins, but his investigations had led him nowhere. A certain number of them—an elderly clergyman and his wife returning to England after a protracted pleasure cruise; a prominent London banker, so crippled with rheumatism as to be incapable of violence; one of the secretaries of the British Legation at Buenos Aires, on his way home on leave; and an American writer, well known in journalistic circles in New York—Shand dismissed as above suspicion. Of the remaining few, any one of them might have been an associate of Smith’s in the past and be possessed of sufficient motive for his removal. They were a heterogeneous lot, with little but their money to recommend them, but the detective was unable to find the smallest shadow of an excuse for connecting them with the crime.

  He stood watching his own particular little batch of suspects as they filtered slowly up from their cabins and grouped themselves on deck. There was a glint of humour in his speculative grey eyes. A dull lot, he reflected, and it was difficult to picture any one of them buying, much less wearing, the suit of green pyjamas that had figured so vividly in the steward’s story. And in all his long experience of criminals of all sorts he could remember no single case of a man who deliberately went to the trouble of purchasing a peculiarly gaudy addition to his wardrobe in which to break the law. Neither, for the matter of that, were murderers in the habit of lathering their faces heavily with shaving soap before embarking on a crime.

  If, as he felt convinced, some member of that inoffensive looking little group of first-class passengers was, at least, closely connected with the death of Smith, the murder was obviously unpremeditated, and, it would seem, the work of a man with an unusually exotic taste in undergarments.

  The boat had docked, and he was observing the passengers as they filed slowly across the gangway, when he was roused by a touch on his arm. Jasper Mellish, massive and imperturbable as usual, stood at his elbow.

  “You look abominably fit,” he drawled gently. “Have you got Lady Dalberry on board?”

  “To the best of my knowledge you’ll find her below,” answered Shand, making no secret of his pleasure in the encounter. “She hasn’t shown up yet. Glad to see you looking so well, sir.”

  The fat man gave a chuckle that shook his whole body.

  “Why not say ‘fat’ and have done with it,” he said. “I must go and find her. They tell me they’ve got poor Adrian’s body on board.”

  “The funeral will be at Berrydown, I suppose?”

  Mellish nodded, and crooked a finger at a young man who had been standing just behind him.

  Shand had already spotted a little group of people who had evidently followed Mellish on board the boat: a slim, graceful girl, who, even at a cursory glance, he could place as one of those fortunate people who combine personal charm with unusual beauty both of feature and colouring, and an elderly man in black, whose face bore the mournful but detached expression of one who is about to assist at a painful ceremony in a purely professional capacity. He had family lawyer written all over him, and Shand mechanically transferred his attention to the young man who had come forward in answer to Mellish’s signal. He took an immediate fancy to him. Indeed, he was one of those pleasant but unassuming individuals, with apparently little but youth and a certain air of general cleanliness and physical fitness to recommend them, to whom most people take a liking at first sight.

  “This is Chief Inspector Shand of New Scotland Yard, Gillie,” said Mellish, with a shrewd twinkle in his eye. “You may find it useful to have a friend at court one of these days. Lord Dalberry has come on board to meet his aunt,” he added, by way of explanation.

  Lord Dalberry laughed.

  “If I get roped in by one of your men on boat-race night, I’ll ask for you, inspector,” he said cheerfully, as the party moved on in the direction of the staterooms.

  Shand made his way slowly on shore. He had no pressing desire to reach London and make his report at the Yard. He was feeling anything but elated. In the first place, through no fault of his own, he had succeeded in just missing his man at Buenos Aires; in the second, his attempts to clear up the mystery of Smith’s death had proved singularly futile. Fortunately, murder on the high seas was unlikely to come within the sphere of New Scotland Yard, and there was nothing to keep Shand hanging about in Liverpool.

  He secured a corner seat in the boat train, and was standing smoking on the platform when the Dalberry party came in sight. It had to pass him on its way to the special mourning coach which had been attached to the rear of the train, and Shand, in common with most of the other passengers from the Enriqueta, found himself watching Lady Dalberry with considerable interest as she came slowly down the platform on the arm of her husband’s nephew.

  She had thrown back her heavy black veil, and, for the first time, he had a clear view of her profile. She was, as the captain had said, a typical Swede, and, in spite of the thick film of powder on her cheeks and the heavy make-up on her large, well-shaped mouth, carried with her that suggestion of life in the open air and general fitness which has become the hallmark of her race. Her erect carriage and clear-cut profile reminded Shand of a picture he had seen of one of the Norse goddesses. A fine woman, who looked as if she had always dealt adequately with life and had become a little hardened in the process.

  Shand reflected that if she and Mellish came to blows, as they very easily might in the course of time, he would dearly love to witness the encounter. The path of a trustee is not a smooth one, and Mellish, for all his kindliness, was a difficult man to lead and an impossible one to drive.

  On his way to London Shand gave himself up to the enjoyment of one of the captain’s excellent cigars, his mind running lazily over the annals of the Dalberry family as retailed by Jasper Mellish one blustering November evening in his cosy rooms in the Albany.

  It was a tragic enough tale in its way. The peerage, a recent one, dated from the days when coal mines really did spell riches, and had been founded by the grandfather of the present holder of the title. On his death he had left three sons and one daughter. The eldest of the sons, Maurice, was a widower with two small boys when, at the early age of thirty, he succeeded to the title. His brother, Adrian Culver, a rich man as second sons go, and endowed with a goodly share of his father’s energy, had visited the Argentine soon after his brother’s succession, and, falling in love with the life, had decided to settle out there for good. His younger brother, Oliver, after a brief career in the Guards, had been killed in the third year of the war, leaving one son, the present Lord Dalberry. Marian Culver, only sister to Adrian and Oliver, had married Conway Summers, a wealthy American widower with one child. She had gone with him to New York, where she had remained till her death. She left no children of her own, and Summers, already immersed in those huge undertakings which were later to make him one of the richest men in America, was only too glad to take advantage of Lord Dalberry’s offer and leave his motherless girl in his brother-in-law’s charge, with the result that Carol Summers had spent the greater portion of her life at Berrydown, the largest of the Dalberry properties, and had grown to look upon it as her home. On Lord Dalberry’s advice, Conway Summers had appointed Jasper Mellish trustee of the vast fortune his daughter would inherit on his death. Shortly after making the appointment he
had succumbed to an attack of influenza, leaving to Mellish the task of safeguarding the property of the girl who, at her coming of age, would be one of the richest women of the day.

  Shand guessed that it was Miss Summers he had seen with Mellish on board the Enriqueta, and he wondered idly what provision the fat man had made for his rather difficult charge, who was still under age and whose life at Berrydown had been brought to an abrupt end by the tragic death of her uncle and his two sons. All three had been killed instantaneously when the French air-mail crashed, half-way between the coast and Croydon. Indeed, it was only by a fortunate accident that Carol had escaped sharing their fate. She was to have joined them in Paris on the day before the accident, and would undoubtedly have been with them if she had not been persuaded to stay a couple of nights longer with the friends she had been visiting in Touraine.

  Thus it was that Adrian Culver, who had put every penny he possessed into a ranch in the Argentine, and who had fully intended to pass the rest of his days there, woke one morning to find himself one of the richest land-owners in England. Three years before his succession to the Dalberry peerage he had married a Miss Larssen, a Swedish-American he had met on one of his infrequent visits to New York. Realizing that, owing to the responsibilities of his new position, he could hardly continue to live in America, he had set to work to wind up his affairs there, preparatory to sailing for England. The sale of the ranch had taken longer than he had expected, and it was not till over six months after his brother’s death that he was free to leave America with his wife.

  It was then that the second tragedy occurred which was destined to bring the name of Dalberry once more before a voracious public. Sending the bulk of their luggage on in advance, Lord and Lady Dalberry started by road for the coast, intending to take the journey easily, stopping at various places on their way to Buenos Aires, where they proposed to take ship for England. But they never reached their destination.