Compartment K

by Helen Reilly

  Harry Belding had heard about the quarrel between Mr. and Mrs. Font, his wife had told him earlier. He wasn’t pleased that they knew. In spite of his easy quiet manner he was not an expansive man. His caution could be native. He didn’t think there was anything to the quarrel. Mrs. Font was a very pretty woman and Mr. Font might be inclined to jealousy, but certainly not to the extent of killing any man who looked sideways at his wife. The idea was ridiculous. He smiled to show how ridiculous it was.

  The conductor asked about the camera. “Mr. Davidson’s camera is not in his compartment. He didn’t leave it anywhere, with anyone —that you know of?”

  A pause. Stares. Both the Beldings said no. Their thoughts were busy with the camera, it engaged their attention, very much so! They could tell the conductor nothing about it. They had never seen it out of its case, had never seen Mr. Davidson take any pictures with it. They agreed that he generally wore it slung over his shoulder.

  Davidson had been killed between a minute or two of six when he entered his compartment and 7 o’clock, he had been dead at least an hour when his body was discovered at around 8 o’clock. Belding and his wife were both vague as to their whereabouts at any particular moment during that period.

  This was to be the case generally with most of the other passengers. Time meant little on board the through train. There was no place to go. One stretched one’s legs by strolling out into the corridor or standing on a platform, or going into the lounge car at the rear. To pinpoint any given moment was difficult.

  Todhunter reflected morosely that a big overland train was an excellent scene for a successful killing. Keep your eye on your intended victim, follow him into his private cubicle, shoot and slip away. Davidson had been on the train for almost two days . . . Had that particular night been chosen because of the storm, which would have more than covered the sound of the shot, or because Davidson was getting off at Calgary on the following day?

  The conductor then put several questions that the little detective had instructed him to ask. They were feelers in the direction of the woman who had been killed in the Questing courtyard in New York on the evening of the tenth.

  The Beldings had been in New York for a week before starting for Amethyst on the morning of the eleventh of August. They hadn’t opened the Questing house on Murray Hill. They had stayed at the Chadwick. Belding had not seen Davidson while he was in the city.

  Mrs. Belding had. She had run into Davidson in the hall of the Font apartment as she was leaving. lie was just coining in. She couldn’t recall the time except that it was late on the afternoon of the tenth of August. Belding said he had arrived at the Fonts’s after his wife had gone, with the train reservations for Mr. and Mrs. Font and Mrs. Pilgrim. No one appeared to be in. He was in a hurry, didn’t wait, he gave the reservations to the maid. Davidson was nowhere around. He thought the time was shortly after five.

  Husband and wife had both answered carefully. Neither of them showed any surprise at the turn of the interrogation.

  Todhunter had accomplished his purpose, which was to get an answer to their whereabouts on the afternoon of August the tenth, and a general preview of them before the Canadian police took over. 'Fhe reactions of Mr. and Mrs. Belding including their absorption with Davidson’s missing camera filed for reference, he followed the conductor to the door with a timid and apologetic smile to both husband and wife. The smile was not returned. The Beldings were upset, very upset indeed by the sudden death of a man who meant little to them and whom they hadn’t seen, and that at long intervals, more than a half dozen times in as many years.

  Lights were beginning to spring up outside the windows; they were coming into Moose Jaw where the Canadian police, a constable probably, would be waiting. There was a thirty-five minute stop at Moose Jaw. The storm had moved off a little. Passengers were getting ready to descend in the rainy darkness to mail postal cards or stretch their legs. White-coated porters were waiting with footstools; everyone was excited. Rumors flew. One woman said, “Beheaded. That’s what I heard, that he was beheaded. As soon as the train pulled in, and before joining the conductor at the far end of the platform, Todhunter made his way to the telegraph office-and sent a long wire to Inspector Christopher McKee of the New York Homicide Squad.

  FOUR

  “I think that about does it.”

  Constable Duvette of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police put down his pen. Duvette was in plain clothes. He was a sturdily built man in his thirties, blue-eyed and brown-haired, with a plain dependable face and a quiet manner. Calm. Nice. Not frightening, not a bully; Rose shifted against the cushions of her chair in the dismantled dining car the constable was using as an office.

  All the people who had known Davidson personally or who had come in contact with him on board the train were there, Daniel and Candy and Loretta Pilgrim and Gertrude and Harry Belding and Nils and the small man in the gray suit who knew shorthand and had been taking notes. Two hours had passed since Constable Duvette had boarded the train at Moose Jaw. They had been interviewed separately and together. There had been no discrepancies.

  A careful run-down of the whereabouts of everyone from 6 until 8 o'clock—the focus of attention was the long corridor of the car with Davidson’s compartment near the middle of it. Davidson had been seen entering his compartment at a minute or two of six by Nils, when Nils arrived at Rose's door with his flask. No one admitted having seen the dead man after that, no one had been seen entering or leaving the dead man’s compartment by any other passenger in the entire Pullman section.

  Thank God, Rose thought. We’ve gotten away with it. Her eyes sought Daniel fleetingly in the dark window opposite. He looked all right, somber and intent like the rest of them, but nothing more. She had followed each word of his testimony with strained attention. He was commendably vague about exact minutes. At sometimes after half-past five he had started towards the back of the train to join his wife and her mother in the lounge car, had met them returning, and had then gone to his roomette in the car ahead of the one Davidson was in, where he had remained until almost half-past seven when he joined his wife and his mother-in-law and they went in to the dining car for dinner.

  Candy sat between Daniel and her mother, white and still and lovely. Her eyes were cast down. There were marks of tears on her face. Davidson’s death had evidently affected her, but she showed no sign of any deep grief. She knew nothing. She and her mother had been together during the entire time in question.

  Nils was on Rose’s right. He had spent the intervals between hi? two visits to her compartment reading in the lounge car.

  Davidson's canicra had not been found. Nobody had seen it, nobody knew anything about it.

  Rose settled deeper into the soft chair and pulled smoke into her lungs. It was almost over. In a minute or two now they would be permitted to go. The constable was shuttling papers together when the door opened and the conductor came into the dining car with a passenger, a big rotund man in a rumpled suit of electric blue with a head as bald as an egg.

  Constable Duvette got up and went over to the two men. They talked for a minute inaudibly, then the bald-headed man came forward with the constable beside him.

  Rose’s heart slowed. The bald-headed man was looking around at the seated figures. His traveling gaze stopped, sharpened. He stared. He raised a hand and pointed. He was pointing at Daniel. He pursed his lips and nodded. He said:

  “That’s him. That's the fellow I saw in the corridor of Number Seven. He was outside the dead man's door, walking away from it fast, as I came around the corner. The time? It was exactly five minutes past seven, I know because I had just looked at my watch on account of having to put it back an hour.”

  Rose listened to the click-clack of the rails. The train was flying. Out ahead in darkness the Diesel blew for a crossing. Anguish gripped her. Daniel hadn’t wanted to go through with it. She had forced him to, putting her will on his, sweeping his objections aside. This man had seen him leaving her compartm
ent, not Davidson's, next door. She was responsible, she alone . . . What was Daniel going to say?

  He didn't say anything for a second or two. He sat staring in front of him. Then he shrugged.

  “I'm sorry, Mr. Duvette, but this man is mistaken. As I've already stated, I was in my own roomette in the car ahead from before six until almost half-past seven."

  The words were flat and without expression. They carried no conviction.

  The fat man snorted trumpetingly. “I met him all right, Constable. He's the one. Never forget a face—ask anyone and they’ll tell you Northrup never forgets a face. He’s the man I met. I'll tell you something else. He didn't seem to know where he was going, acted dazed. He would have bumped into me if I hadn’t stepped aside.”

  Rose gazed at the pile of the carpet, cloudy with the impression of feet, at a fallen flower petal. Daniel’s lie, the lie she had insisted on his telling, had boomeranged. It was deadly danger. It was proof of guilt, to all intents and purposes. They would ask why, if he hadn’t killed Davidson, he had lied as to his whereabouts. She had to do something. She could feel Nils beside her, his arm touching hers . . . Sickness gripped her. She fought it down. She raised her head and looked at the constable, spoke to him.

  “I believe I can explain this apparent mix-up, Mr. Duvette. My compartment is next to Mr. Davidson’s. Mr. Font was with me in my compartment. It was from my compartment that Mr. Font was coming, when this gentleman saw him.”

  The ugly little statement was out. It hung on the air for a perceptible instant. Shock, unbelief, incredulity—acceptance. Candy gave a cry and her hand went to her throat. The constable turned to Daniel.

  “Is Miss O’Hara’s statement correct, Mr. Font?”

  It took a long time for Daniel to say, “Yes,” stonily.

  The conductor and the fat man were gone. The train rocked gently, its speed undiminished. Beyond the dark windows thunder rolled. Duvette went on with it.

  “You say, Miss O’Hara, that Mr. Font left your compartment at around five minutes past seven. When did he enter it, how long was he there with you?”

  Nils’s arm no longer touched hers. Rose had felt his withdrawal. She had given him a blow between the eyes . . . Go on and clinch it, make this final in every sense, she thought bitterly. Take the last step, nail it to the mast. Nils had seen Davidson go into his compartment at almost six.

  “Mr. Font was with me from around five minutes of six until five minutes past seven.”

  At once then Candy was on her feet, outraged, stricken, a wife betrayed openly, held up to contumely and scorn, for public delectation, by her husband and the girl to whom he had formerly been engaged. The implications of the confession Rose, and Daniel, had been forced to make by the intrusion of an unexpected and damning witness were obvious.

  Candy cried, “Daniel,” on a wailing note, her mouth quivering,, and looked at Rose with hatred. “You're horrible, horrible . . . Couldn’t you let him alone? Couldn’t you?”

  And that was it. Loretta Pilgrim took Candy out of there. The others went one by one. Duvette detained Rose for a few additional questions; a quarter of an hour later she was alone in her own compartment.

  She sat upright on the edge of the seat, her feet side by side on the floor, her hands lax in her lap, as though she would only be there a minute before getting up and going on. There was no place to go. She had reached the end of the road—the road she had traveled up until then. And there wasn’t any other. There was nothing but trackless wasteland . . . this damnable, damnable journey, she thought dully. What vile luck that Nils had to be on board that train. If only he had joined her later at Amethyst Lake as they had originally planned. It wasn’t until the last minute that he could make it, when a piece he had to do had been canceled.

  Nils’s ring was still on her finger. How happy she had been the day he had given it to her. It was morning and the sun w’as out after rain and they were in Central Park watching the seals. Blue sky, the glitter of green leaves, wide washed empty spaces, one of the seals was playing with a ball. Nils had taken her hand and put the ring on. “I thought . . . for size?”

  The little man with the broom who stared entranced moved off with reluctance; they had stayed there a long while talking contentedly. That was w’hat they had had, a deep inner contentment that couldn’t be touched, broken into.

  It was over now.

  Rose drew the ring off. She was holding it on her palm when her buzzer rang. It was Nils. She let him in and returned to her seat. If he hadn’t sought her out she would have sent the ring back to him without a word, any words would be useless. Nils stood leaning against the closed door, as Daniel had stood earlier that night.

  She extended the ring to him.

  He didn’t move. He looked at the ring and then at her.

  “Is it—necessary, Rose? Must you?”

  His voice was lazy, a little bored.

  “Say it in English, Nils.”

  He went on looking at her thoughtfully as though he was on an assignment and she was a stranger he was essaying.

  “You’re still in love with Daniel Font, aren’t you, Rose? ‘Whistle and I'll be with you, my lad’—all Font had to do was whistle. I was only a stopgap, a salve for your vanity. You can’t resist Font. He can have you any time he wants, any time at all. Is that it? Have I got it right?”

  Rose sat motionless, her profile to him. She felt bitterly cold. Her silence drove him on.

  “Peculiar place to choose,” he looked around the compartment with a mocking glance. “Interruptions, you know ... I must have annoyed you greatly coming twice. Amethyst Lake would have been much better. Plenty of privacy there—or couldn’t you wait?”

  Rose’s nostrils pinched. It was difficult to breathe. Every word Nils said sent her deeper into the mud. She would never be able to free herself, wash it off, get clean again. Nils took two steps. He was standing over her.

  “I want the truth. I think I’m entitled to the truth.”

  The truth was what she couldn’t give him, the whole truth. And nothing else would do. He wouldn’t believe, the police wouldn’t believe, that Daniel hadn’t killed Davidson. Daniel’s bloodstained jacket was there, within inches, behind leather, in her bag. Nils would never help cover up murder, wouldn’t let her do so. He would go straight to the police. No, there was nothing she could say. All right then, get' this over and done with. She slid to the inner end of the seat, got up and stood facing Nils, her back to the mirror between the two windows.

  “Here’s your ring.” She tossed it to him.

  He caught it. “This is not an answer. I want an answer. Are you in love with Daniel Font? Have you been in love with him all the time?”

  Anger flooded Rose at his calm, his ruthless questioning. It was biting, salutary.

  “That is no longer any of your business. Now please get out of here.”

  Nils dropped the ring in his pocket without taking his eyes from her face. “Font was in here with you when you opened your door both times. The second time you had a negligee on. Your sleeve fell back. You have a pretty arm. I thought it young and innocent and touching—very touching.” He laughed. Redness surged up behind his eyes. He obliterated the distance between them, took her in his arms, found her lips.

  He was hurting her cruelly. Rose didn't make the slightest attempt at resistance. Her feeling of degradation was too deep for struggle. He let her go and she fell back against the mirror, braced herself against it. Her upper lip was cut. She could taste blood. Her eyes met his. Only the Nils she thought she had known wasn’t there. He had ceased to exist. This was a strange man, shrugging his coat into place, shoving hair back from his forehead, unrepentant, gazing at her with that oddly curious look, as though there were still questions he wanted to ask. She had had enough. She gave her head a shake to clear it, touched her cut lip with the tip of her tongue.

  “Just—go, will you, Nils? Please go.”

  ‘‘You have nothing more to say?”
/>   “Nothing.”

  The door closed behind him with a slam that was emphatic, final. Thunder growled along the horizon. Lightning Hashed distantly. Rose dropped down on the seat, put her head against the cushions and closed her eyes.

  In the dining car up front, companioned unobtrusively by Todhunter, Constable Duvette continued to interview stray passengers without getting any additional information, until he reached the final witness.

  Davidson had gone into his compartment from the lounge car at around six. It was the last time he was seen alive. Death had taken place within the next forty-five minutes or so, he had been shot at the very least a full hour before the Frenchwoman, falling against his door at around a quarter of eight, had accidentally discovered the body.

  Daniel Font was the only one who had been placed close to Davidson’s compartment during the interval in question. This would have meant little by itself but motive had been established by his furious quarrel with his wTife over Davidson’s attentions to her. He had been eliminated as a jealous husband by Rose O’Hara’s testimony. Neither official accepted her statement that Font had been with her from before six until well after seven as gospel, she could be lying in her teeth to protect him. But obviously, if Font was carrying on an affair with another young woman, his feelings where Davidson and his wife were concerned could not have been too deeply engaged.

  Constable Duvette was loath to give up Daniel Font as a suspect. Suppose, he argued, Font was just making use of the girl. After he shot Davidson he got panicky. Rose O’Hara’s compartment was right next door. He ducked into it and threw himself on her mercy. They were once engaged and she might still be in love with him, and might want to get him away from his wife. “So she gives him an alibi.”