by Peggy Gaddis
“Of course I did, you silly.” Claire’s tone was light, mocking. “You hop out of bed now and scamper along to your own room and get ready for breakfast. I’ll wait for you, if you don’t take too long. I’m famished.”
Nora scrambled out of bed, a boyish, plump figure in her cotton pajamas, and caught up the terry-cloth robe that lay across the foot of the bed.
“Oh, I’ll hurry like the dickens, Claire, if you’ll wait for me,” she promised eagerly, and was gone.
Claire dropped the pretense of gaiety the moment the door closed behind the girl. She let the hairbrush drop to the table top and got up, to stand at the porthole looking out at a gorgeous tropical sky.
The thin grayness that had presaged the coming of dawn had been swallowed up in an almost violent burst of color against the sky, where the sun was just making itself ready to rise. There were purples such as she had never seen before: roseate pinks, blues — and none of it mattered in the least, she reminded herself grimly. Because inside of her, in her heart, there was an ugly, ashamed darkness. Twice now she had gone through this ordeal of losing someone she deeply loved; and in all honesty she had to admit that the pain of losing Curt was much stronger than what she had felt for Rick. And that in itself only added to her feeling of deep humiliation. She had known Rick for so long that their lives had almost been one. She could have married Rick, she knew now in this moment of bitter self-analysis, and been moderately happy with him. But Curt! Much as she hated to admit it, marriage to Curt could have been something utterly glorious! She had been accustomed to Rick, she had known him a long time, they were used to each other. But Curt! She chopped her thoughts off short, her teeth setting as Nora came in, fresh and youthfully attractive in the brief white linen shorts and halter that constituted her daytime garb.
“Ready, Claire?” she asked eagerly. “Mother has already gone to breakfast. At least she’s not in the cabin, so I imagine she’s gone to breakfast.”
“Fine! Then come along,” said Claire, and linked her arm through Nora’s as they walked down the corridor toward the dining salon.
Most of the other passengers were already at the table, and Curt stood swiftly as he saw Claire, and his eyes blazed a joyous welcome as he smiled and spoke her name. But the warm, eager light in his eyes was followed by surprise and bewilderment when she gave him the briefest of good mornings and went to her place beside the Major.
“Did you see the sunrise?” the Major asked eagerly, as Carl, smiling at Claire, placed an iced melon on her plate. “Wasn’t it glorious?”
“Oh, yes, wasn’t it?” Claire agreed with an enthusiasm so specious that even the Major was somewhat dashed.
Nora looked swiftly up and down the table, and as Carl brought her melon, asked eagerly, “Has Mother already had her breakfast, Carl?”
“No, miss,” answered Carl, and glanced swiftly at Curt, who looked at Nora and then at Claire before he returned his attention to his breakfast.
“Did she ask for breakfast in her cabin?” Nora wondered.
“No, miss,” Carl answered politely. “I haven’t seen her since dinnertime last night.”
“Have you?” Nora asked Curt.
“I’m afraid I haven’t, Nora,” Curt answered with a smile.
Puzzled, Nora asked, “But where can she be? She wasn’t in our cabin when I went in to dress — ” She caught herself, looked swiftly at the others and bent her head above her breakfast.
MacEwen came in late, and Claire saw that his eyes went first to Nora and then to the empty seat beside her. There he paused, looked down at Nora, and with his hand on the back of her mother’s chair, asked, “Hi, Nora, mind if I sit here?”
“Mother’s late this morning, Mac,” Nora apologized. “She may be here any minute, so maybe you’d better not — ”
“You’re not wearing your necklace,” MacEwen said accusingly.
Nora’s hand went up to her bare throat, and color poured into her young face.
“Well, of course not, silly!” She managed to make her voice sound gay and care-free. “I’m wearing shorts and a halter. And one doesn’t wear necklaces and bracelets and high-heeled pumps with shorts!”
“Well, of course I wouldn’t know.” MacEwen grinned and moved around the table to his accustomed place.
Major Lesley was rattling on to Claire as usual. Now and then Claire, feeling Curt’s demanding gaze on her, glanced up, met his eyes briefly and coldly and looked back at the Major.
When breakfast was over, Claire came out of the dining salon to find Curt waiting for her, his face stern and set.
“Why the brush-off this morning?” he demanded without preliminary.
Claire lifted her chin and eyed him levelly.
“And why not? What’s changed?” she asked.
Puzzled, angry he said very low, “Surely, after last night — ”
Claire’s smile was thin-lipped, mirthless, and her eyes met his straightly.
“After last night,” she told him coldly, deliberately, “I find I like you even less than I once thought I did!”
“Oh, now wait a minute,” Curt protested, and drew her aside so that they were not blocking the door to the dining salon, “I don’t know what this is all about. Last night you gave me to understand that you didn’t dislike me at all, quite the reverse — ”
“Oh, really, Curt!” she mocked. “For a veteran of shipboard romances, you sound impossibly naive.”
“A veteran of shipboard romances,” he repeated as though he could hardly believe she had really said that, and his jaw was set hard, his eyes blazing. “Are you trying to tell me that’s all it was — a shipboard romance?”
Claire widened her eyes at him in pretty astonishment.
“But, goodness, what else could it have been?” she mocked. “Surely you aren’t going to tell me you didn’t know that?”
“Claire, for some reason I can’t understand, you’re pretending as though last night meant nothing to you.”
“But why should it?” Her tone was brittle. “Of course I think we rather rushed the thing a bit, don’t you? After all, there are still weeks to go on the trip, though I will be leaving in Honolulu — ”
“Claire, what’s wrong?” His sharpness cut through her brittle amusement.
“Wrong?” Her wide eyes were mocking, bitter. “Why, what could possibly be wrong? You’ve done your duty by the company, and I’ll be happy to give you a citation, if you like, that will convince them you really are their very successful glamour boy!”
He met her eyes straightly, frowning, deeply hurt, bewildered.
“Then last night meant nothing to you?” he asked at last.
“Oh, really! How could it? We were both just having fun.”
“I wasn’t!”
“Oh, weren’t you?”
“And somehow I don’t believe you were, either. You’re not cheap and frivolous — ” The words came from him with painful force.
“That’s very kind of you, but after all, how could you possibly know? How could either of us know anything about the other? What could it possibly have been but just another shipboard romance in which once again you demonstrated your skill to amuse a susceptible feminine passenger?”
She could not somehow meet the look in his eyes that was at once blank with fury and helpless with a deep hurt. She turned away from him, moving swiftly toward the deck where Major Lesley was waiting for her.
She dared not look back. She kept her head high and her eyes straight ahead, and she joined Major Lesley with a relief that made her clutch his arm so tightly the little man looked at her in puzzlement.
The passengers were midway through lunch and apparently no one had noticed the absence of Nora and MacEwen when, to everyone’s surprise, Captain Rodolfson strode into the salon and paused behind his chair at the head of the table. Seeing him there at any meal save dinner was a surprise that centered all attention upon him.
“I’m afraid I have some rather alarming news,” he a
nswered their startled, surprised glances. “One of our passengers is no longer aboard the ship.”
There was a scattered murmur of amazement and eyes swept the table, checking who was absent. Captain Rodolfson went on, “Mrs. Barclay is missing.”
Without waiting for anyone to ask the question uppermost in all their minds, Captain Rodolfson seated himself and his eyes swept the table from end to end.
“I would like to ask each of you some questions.” Now he was every inch the stern-jawed, cold-eyed man of the sea, in supreme authority. “Mr. Wayne will make notes of questions and answers. Later, if it seems necessary, copies of statements will be typed and you will be asked to sign them. I must ask for your complete co-operation.”
There were little shocked murmurs of assent, and Captain Rodolfson went on.
“Miss Barclay came to me shortly after ten, saying that she was unable to find her mother. A search was made of the ship from stem to stern. It was proven that Mrs. Barclay was no longer aboard.”
“But, Captain,” Mrs. Burke cried out, “what could have happened?”
“I’m hoping that we can find out something of what happened, anyway,” he told her curtly. “I’ve radioed the shipping line, and they are conducting a search of these waters by every available means. And now I would like to know when Mrs. Barclay was last seen. We’ll begin with this side of the table and come back the other side. Ready, Curt?”
“Ready, sir,” Curt answered, pencil poised above a pad of paper.
“You, Mrs. Burke,” Captain Rodolfson began, “when did you see Mrs. Barclay last?”
“Why, here at dinner last night, Captain,” Mrs. Burke answered at once. “Remember how upset she was when she learned we were putting into port again?”
Captain Rodolfson nodded. “You didn’t see her after that?”
“Why, no, Captain.”
Captain Rodolfson nodded and moved on to the next passenger, whose answers were the same. The questioning had gone halfway around the table when Nora and MacEwen came in, and all eyes turned to them, shocked, sympathetic, yet deeply puzzled.
Nora was white, her face swollen with tears, and MacEwen’s arm was about her, guiding her to her accustomed chair. He sat down in the one her mother had used and kept his arm about her shoulders and held one of her hands.
Captain Rodolfson’s cold eyes warmed a little, as did his voice.
“I’m sorry, my dear child,” he said gently, “but I think you’d better tell all of us just what happened after dinner last night, when you followed your mother to your stateroom.”
Nora lifted shamed eyes to meet his.
“All of it?” she spoke so softly it was almost a whimper.
“I’m sorry, dear. I’m afraid we must have the whole story,” the captain told her.
MacEwen’s arm tightened about her, he murmured something in her ear, and Nora braced herself to face a bitter and humiliating ordeal.
“We quarreled,” she said huskily. “Mother was very angry when she saw a trinket Mac had given me, and she jerked it off my neck and stamped on it. And for the first time in my life, I talked back to her. That seemed to make her even more angry, and she struck me — ” Her voice broke off. She struggled to regain it and glanced up and down the table before she managed to say, “She was — she had been — she was — ”
“Drunk,” MacEwen supplied the ugly word. Nora flinched from it, but they saw her accept it.
“She rarely ever drank,” she said faintly. “She would never have struck me — please don’t believe she made a habit of that — ”
“And after that, Nora?” asked Captain Rodolfson gently.
Nora drew a long, hard breath and tilted her chin, tears slipping unheeded down her face.
“And then she opened the door of the stateroom and pushed me outside and locked the door on me,” she whispered piteously. “I was in the salon when Claire came for me and took me in with her. And this morning when I got up, the cabin door was unlocked and I went in to get dressed. And Mother wasn’t there. She isn’t anywhere on the ship — not anywhere at all!”
It was a cry of such childish grief and at the same time such adult heartache that there were murmurs of sympathy around the table, and MacEwen said huskily to Captain Rodolfson, “May I take her out now, sir?”
“I’m truly sorry, MacEwen. I’m afraid not. Not quite yet.”
There was a babble of voices, and Captain Rodolfson had some difficulty in quieting them so that the questioning could be resumed. Apparently no one had seen Vera since dinner last night, until the question reached Claire.
For a moment she sat very still, and then she turned her eyes on Curt and said quite clearly, “I think, Captain, that Mr. Wayne must have been the last person to see Mrs. Barclay.”
Curt stared at her, frowning, and Claire managed the faintest of smiles that was scarcely more than a grimace as she went on relentlessly.
“I saw him leaving her cabin at two o’clock this morning,” she stated so quietly that for a stunned moment no one seemed quite to realize what she had said.
Chapter Seventeen
Claire saw the astonishment melt from Curt’s eyes, to be replaced by an anger so blazing hot that she almost, but not quite, quailed beneath it.
“So that’s what you believe!” His voice was a thin thread of sound that barely reached her ears above the sudden hubbub about the tale.
“Well, Curt?” demanded Captain Rodolfson, managing to silence the hubbub, his face showing something of the amazement Claire’s words had brought to him.
“Miss Frazier is partly mistaken,” said Curt clearly. “I was leaving Mrs. Barclay’s cabin door, not her room. I had not been inside the room, nor had I seen her since dinner.”
“And what had taken you to the cabin door, Curt? Speak up, man — you know as well as I do that we’ve got to get to the bottom of all this.”
“One of the crewmen, swabbing the decks, heard a woman crying in the salon and came to summon me,” Curt answered quietly. “He knew something should be done about it and quite right he was. I went into the salon — ”
“But I didn’t see you!” Nora stammered, wide-eyed.
Curt smiled at her. “Of course you didn’t,” he told her gently. “I knew you must have quarreled with your mother, and I went down to see what I could do about it. When she wouldn’t answer the knock at her door, I went back to my own quarters to arrange a place for you to finish the night. When I came back, I saw you and Claire going down the corridor to her room, so I knew she could do a much better job of taking care of you than I could. And I thought you need not find out that anyone except Claire had known about whatever it was that you and your mother were on the outs about.”
Captain Rodolfson had listened with the closest attention, scowling.
“So you didn’t see Mrs. Barclay after dinner?” he probed. “I did not.”
“When you knocked at her door, there was no answer?”
“None at all, sir.” There was no doubting the firmness, the utter conviction of his voice.
The questioning moved on, and Claire leaned closer to Curt and asked softly, “Is that the truth?”
Curt’s eyes were cold and bleak.
“Would you like me to take an oath on it?” he asked.
Color poured into her face and her eyes were shamed.
“I’m sorry, Curt,” she whispered unsteadily.
There was no softening of his hard, set face or warming of the bleak look.
“I should think you would be,” he told her savagely, and returned to his note-taking.
It was not until Major Lesley was reached in the inquiry that there was any break in the steady flow of denials that anyone had seen Vera since dinner.
Major Lesley was in obvious distress when the captain asked the question.
“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” the Major’s voice was almost a wail, “I’m so terribly afraid, sir, that I know what must have happened. And worst of all, I know why!”
He looked piteously at Nora, who was staring at him.
“I’m so terribly sorry, my dear,” he said softly.
“Then you did know all along,” Nora whispered as though even now she could not make herself accept that fact.
“Not from the very first, my dear,” Major Lesley told Nora, as though only they two were concerned. “Later, I became sure. But I tried to tell her, Nora, that I was no longer on duty, that I’d keep the secret. I gave her my word. Since she was leaving the country anyway and I had retired from active duty, I couldn’t see that any good purpose would be served by revealing what I knew. But she became overwrought when she discovered we were putting in at a British port because, of course, extradition is possible under British law — ”
The captain was becoming more and more puzzled, and his color was rising.
“What the devil are you talking about, Major? Speak up, man, if you know what happened to Mrs. Barclay,” he demanded in a voice that his crewmen had long ago learned meant they must step lively.
“Oh,” said Major Lesley innocently, “Mrs. Barclay went overboard, sir.”
There was a stunned moment as though, with horror piling on horror, surprise on surprise, no one could manage any answer or make a sound.
“You mean she was murdered?” cried the captain sharply.
“Oh, dear me, no, sir, no! I mean she went overboard of her own will.”
Nora gave a little moan and hid her face against MacEwen’s shoulder.
“Suicide, then? But why?” thundered the captain.
Major Lesley looked once more at Nora, pleading for her forgiveness.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to tell them, Nora,” he said piteously.
“You’d better, Major and be quick about it,” Captain Rodolfson raged.
“Mrs. Barclay, sir, was a notorious confidence woman and she knew I’d recognized her,” said Major Lesley with painful brevity.
“A what?” cried the captain.
“You see, sir, before I retired I worked for a firm of private investigators,” Major Lesley said quietly, having himself under better control now that he had mentioned his former work. “One of the best in the business, if I may say so. Mrs. Barclay cut a wide swath. She was very clever, even brilliant. She would appear in a city, establish herself as a wealthy matron with a young daughter, enter the daughter in a fashionable school and then manage to get a job somewhere where she could have the handling of considerable sums of money, always explaining that she found it very tiresome to be idle and letting it be known that she worked for career satisfaction, not for the money. And then one day, Mrs. Barclay and her daughter would be strangely missing — along with a very large sum of cash.”