Compartment K

by Helen Reilly

  It wasn’t that simple, Todhunter said, stroking his chin reflectively. In the first place, Daniel Font was not the type, didn’t fit the part of outraged husband taking summary revenge on a rival for his wife’s affections, at pistol point. He was too highly civilized, there was very little natural violence in him. Neither was there any proof that Candy Font had been emotionally involved with the dead man, to any serious extent. He had observed her closely afterward. She had been shocked, and bewildered, but not grief-stricken. Moreover, as far as Font went, Davidson’s elimination wasn’t the result of a sudden flare-up of passion. It was a cool-headed, well thought out murder. Armed with a gun with which he had provided himself before boarding the train, the killer had watched and waited for the opportune moment, and had seized on it when it came. The storm was a godsend. It had been building up for hours. All that was needed beside the storm was an empty corridor, and Davidson alone. The actual job of shooting him and beating a safe retreat wouldn’t have taken as much as a full minute.

  In all probability the gun wasn’t going to be of any use to them, certainly no one was going to come forward and admit ownership, and a foreign job like that would be next to impossible to trace, nor would there, in Todhunter’s opinion, be any revealing fingerprints in Davidson’s compartment. The crime was as simple as it was daring—and it was the simplest ones that were the hardest to crack.

  It was at that point that the army officer on board, a Colonel Eden, arrived in the dining car. There had been a woman with Davidson in his compartment shortly after he entered it for the last time. The Colonel said so.

  Robert Hugh Eden was a lean stockily built man in his late forties, with thick dark hair just beginning to be touched with gray, steady eyes with a twinkle to them, and a quietly authoritative manner. As an officer he would inspire confidence. As a witness he was frank and to the point.

  Todhunter hid sharp interest at the Colonel’s second statement. Eden was a friend of Elizabeth Questing’s, and he also was on his way to visit Mrs. Questing at Amethyst Lake.

  He said the ship, to which he was temporarily attached on special duty, was in dry dock in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and he had a month’s leave. He had called Mrs. Questing from the Yard and when she asked him out she happened to mention that her sister-in-law, Mrs. Pilgrim, and the Fonts were leaving for Amethyst on the Montrealer the following day. The journey was a long one and knowing someone on board would help make the time pass.

  Todhunter reflected that so far the Colonel had made little use of his palliative for boredom. He had paused at the Font table in the dining car earlier that evening, but only for a moment.

  Colonel Eden had known Davidson for years, casually. He made no attempt to conceal his dislike of the dead man. He said unequivocally that he was lazy, decadent, a social climber, a snob, and a poseur. “Clever, I’ll admit that, and entertaining—to some people, he knew how to sing for his supper—but a genuine dyed-in-the-wool son of a witch.” He was interested only in himself and the gratification of a well developed appetite for luxury and soft living. He had gone through a modest fortune left him by his mother before he was twenty-five. After that he had lived abroad for some years, in Paris and on the Riviera—in other people’s houses. It couldn’t go on forever. He came back to the States in 1952, his wings clipped, and had actually gone to work. “I think,” Eden said, “he was with some insurance company. He probably brought in his rich friends as clients.”

  This jibed pretty well with what Mrs. Pilgrim had told them, except that it was the other side of the shield. She had met Davidson at a smart cocktail party at the Saint Regis in February, had brought him to her daughter’s house during the spring. Both women had liked him very much and the acquaintance had ripened into friendship. Mrs. Pilgrim said that Davidson had plenty of money and didn’t really need to work for a living, he did it more for amusement and to keep himself busy than for anything else. Neither of the Beldings knew much about Davidson’s affairs, except the name of the firm who had employed him—Elizabeth Questing had given him some business—and that he had left the firm in early June.

  The Colonel had had no conversation with Davidson on board. He said, “I was going to talk to him early this evening, before dinner. We’ll be in Calgary tomorrow. Mrs. Questing didn’t mention on the phone that Davidson would be at Amethyst and I was curious as to why he was going.” The Colonel had left the lounge car after the others. Rose O’Hara and the Fonts and Mrs. Pilgrim and the Beldings had already gone. He said, “When I got to the door of Davidson’s compartment there was a woman with him, I could hear their voices in a lull, so I walked on.”

  The time was a little after six. Not much after.

  Eden hadn’t recognized the woman’s voice, hadn’t the slightest idea who she was. As far as was known Davidson had been acquainted with only three women passengers before boarding the train, Loretta Pilgrim, Candy Font, and Gertrude Belding.

  At 6 o’clock, when the woman was with Davidson in his compartment, Mrs. Pilgrim and her daughter were together in their own quarters farther down the car and Mrs. Belding was with her husband. The information was as important as it was inconclusive. First, one of them could be lying; second, the woman with Davidson could be a stranger, someone who hadn’t yet entered the picture, who was lying low.

  Constable Duvette then asked the Colonel a question that was to crop up in other shapes again and again later on. “You say you were curious as to why Davidson was going out to Amethyst Lake to see Mrs. Questing—she is a very wealthy woman and he was currently unemployed. Did you think he was going to ask her for money?”

  The Colonel smiled and leaned back. “I did. I don’t think he’d have got it, though. Mrs. Questing isn’t soft. She’s had to learn not to be. She’d give to anyone in need, yes, she gives largely, at the drop of the hat, to charity—but Davidson would scarcely come under the head of a hardship case.”

  Eden had no information about the dead man’s missing camera. He had noticed Davidson had one slung over his shoulder, had never seen him use it, but then, except for an occasional nod, he had taken care to give the fellow a wide berth. “I didn’t want any part of him as a traveling companion. Besides, he seemed very well occupied with Loretta Pilgrim, and with her daughter, Mrs. Font.”

  For a man of Eden’s broadness, his kindliness and geniality, it was a waspish remark, out of character. Todhunter was conscious of deep feeling below the surface. The Colonel definitely didn’t care much for Elizabeth Questing s relations by marriage, just as he very definitely cared a great deal for her. Also his antagonism towards the dead man was much stronger than should have been produced by mere personal dislike, distaste. Interesting as background, unproductive at the moment; file it for reference.

  Eden had never owned a gun of the make or caliber of the one found in Davidson’s compartment. His service revolver was in his locker on board his ship in the Navy Yard. He had nothing more of moment to contribute. He said good night, and left them.

  It was after 11 o’clock. Most of the passengers slept. Duvette went to superintend the removal of Davidson’s body to a special cubicle in the baggage car in which it would remain until they reached Calgary where an autopsy would be done. Todhunter made a tour of the train rocketing north and west across the last lap of the great plains in rainy darkness. The soft swish of the rain overhead, the clack of the rails under the flying wheels, the corridors were dimmed, the closed doors and drawn curtains were blank, uninformative. Behind one of them there was a killer, no one had left the Commonwealth since Davidson was shot.

  Balancing himself in half light, through a succession of surging, swaying tunnels, the little detective thought about the woman who had been shut up with Davidson in his compartment at shortly after 6 o'clock. If she was innocent, if she hadn’t pumped a bullet into him, why hadn’t she admitted her visit? He thought about Elizabeth Questing's house guests journeying to meet her. They were a variegated lot, wouldn’t ordinarily have come together under thei
r own steam. . . . And he thought about the dead woman in New York, who had been killed in the courtyard of Elizabeth Questing’s house on Murray Hill, a nameless, faceless woman. All the king’s horses and all the king's men—her features had been destroyed beyond recognition.

  He found Nils Gantry in the lounge car, slumped deep in a chair, drinking Scotch from a flask on the table in front of him. A lock of hair hung over his forehead. He wasn’t drunk. He looked angry, and very much alive. He had probably had a dust-up with the O’Hara girl. It was only to be expected after what had happened. It was a pity. Todhunter had an eye for a pretty girl and in his opinion Rose O’Hara could knock the spots off Mrs. Daniel Font any day in the week. He sat down opposite Gantry and said yes, he would have a drink, and the porter brought him ginger ale into which he poured a tablespoon of Scotch. Gantry shuddered. “That’ll poison you.”

  Todhunter sipped tranquilly. Gantry was in a bad mood. Davidson’s murder had lost interest for him. “So the guy’s dead, and who cares?” Mrs. Questing? He had met her once, briefly, in New York, months ago. He said that was a funny thing. It was at a new exhibition at the Metropolitan, half New York was there, including the Fonts and Loretta Pilgrim and the Beldings and Elizabeth Questing and Rose O’Hara, in two separate parties of course. No, Font wasn’t married to Candy then. His eyes glassed up when he mentioned Daniel Font and he said abruptly that he was getting off the train at Calgary and flying back to New York.

  “I’ll probably be seeing the inspector. Anything I can do for you?”

  Todhunter said no, finished his drink and ambled off. He took the problem of Davidson’s missing camera, the unidentified woman with Davidson just before he died, and the presence of six prospective house guests on board the same train to bed writh him, and woke early the next morning with nothing resolved. The pattern changed an hour or so later. It began to take a recognizable shape. Its first manifestation was not too productive.

  Loretta Pilgrim’s and Candy Font’s compartments were entered and searched while the two ladies were breakfasting in the dining car.

  At the time the search took place Todhunter was in his own cubicle, a narrow slit of a bedroom next to the compartment occupied by Harry and Gertrude Belding. On boarding the train at Montreal, the couple who were to have occupied the bedroom had been informed that a mistake had been made and given a drawing room in another car at no extra charge. So far the instrument Todhunter carried, a circular disk no bigger than a silver dollar with attached car pieces, had been of little service. If it magnified voices, it also magnified blanketing train noises. It didn't do much better by him that morning.

  When he returned from an early breakfast with Duvette and the conductor, the Holdings were up and dressing. They talked in such low tones that he could only get a word here and there. “Might . . . try . . . Davidson . . . won’t make any difference . . . Elizabeth never changes . . . careful ... If she . . —bits in a whirling kaleidoscope, meaningless except for one thing. In public Harry Belding was the dominant partner of the combine, in private, the dowdy colorless clumsy Gertrude seemed to take the lead. After a few minutes the talking stopped and the Beldings' door opened and closed.

  A brace of good mornings in the corridor. Loretta Pilgrim said, “Isn’t it nice to see the sun?” and Harry Belding said it certainly was, and Loretta asked her daughter to get her a sweater, “My yellow one, Candy, it’s almost cold.”

  The voices receded in the direction of the dining car.

  Todhunter finished a report for McKee, and then shaved. He was knotting his tie when the alarm was raised.

  Loretta Pilgrim and her daughter had returned from the dining car to find their compartments ransacked. They stood just inside the door staring helplessly at the wreckage. Wardrobes gaped, bedclothes had been thrown to the floor and suitcases were open, their contents tumbled every which way.

  The porter and Belding were there. Belding had come back from the dining car just ahead of the two women. His wife hadn’t been with him. She came out of her compartment hastily, her faded blue eyes wide, her startled air intensified, clutching folds of a negligee with one hand, shoving hairpins into the untidy bun of hair at the nape of her neck with the other. It was terrible . . . she didn’t know . . . she was right next door all the time and she hadn’t heard a sound ... it was the aspirin. She had a headache and took an aspirin and lay down and fell into a doze . . .

  Nothing had apparently been stolen. Candy Font’s string of cultured pearls were in their box, Loretta Pilgrim’s rings on her fingers. Their money and Traveler’s Checks wTere in the purses they carried. No one had seen anything suspicious. People passing by at intervals had been intent on food, and the porter had been busy making up berths. Gertrude Belding looked as though she had been lying down, but Todhunter wondered.

  So did someone else. Madame Flavelle, the Frenchwoman who had discovered Davidson’s body, had come out of her compartment down the car and joined the small crowd. Under full lids her black eyes, round and shrewd and very bright, were fixed on Gertrude Belding with a peculiar glint in them. She transferred her glance to Candy Font, standing just inside the door gazing helplessly at the wreckage while her mother picked things up and shook them out. People hurrying off to examine their own belongings, the Frenchwoman walked away.

  Todhunter looked after her trim figure thoughtfully. Had she seen something, did she know something—or was she just generally suspicious? There was, at any rate, no doubt of her interest in the Fonts and the Beldings, particularly Gertrude Belding, an interest he more than shared. Daniel Font came striding along with a brow of thunder, he had evidently just heard what had happened. He went into his wife’s compartment and the door closed.

  Constable Duvette was flabbergasted, and slightly maddened by this fresh assault. A murderer on the train and now a sneak thief, the thing was anticlimactic, ridiculous—unless the murderer was the thief.

  Todhunter said gently, “He—or she.”

  Duvette conceded that impatiently. If whoever had killed Davidson had ransacked the two compartments, what was he looking for? A clue to the killing, something Mrs. Pilgrim or her daughter had in their possession without knowing it, that might point a finger, provide a lead? Nothing in the testimony indicated such a possibility. He gave his head a shake like a horse trying to dislodge a stinging fly. Speculation was useless. The truth was that they hadn’t enough to go on. Davidson had come from New York, lived in New York. Meanwhile the train was a bombshell. If a robbery could be pulled off in broad daylight without anybody’s catching a glimpse of the thief anything could happen. Anything.

  Todhunter agreed grayly. The constable was an efficient officer who proceeded logically, step by step, from a sound premise. In this case there was no such thing. The killing of Davidson was not a crime of passion, a spur of the moment shooting by an enraged husband. That was out the window. Moreover there was a darkness to the case, as though beyond and behind the surface presented by the various people so far under observation, other, different, phantoms moved industriously on unknown business, towards an unknown goal.

  Duvette was more than right about the train flying on through bright sunlight under a high blue sky. In a house, an apartment, on a street, there were only so many doors, here there were doors everywhere. Lavatory and washroom doors, bedroom and compartment doors, doors to the vestibules, that ottered sanctuary, a base of operations for swift action. One of the peculiarities of these doors was that they couldn t be locked from the outside and, if a space was untenanted, it would be accessible for the necessary moment so that an attacker could slip out unseen to become one of the desultory flow' of people drifting through the long velvet covered corridors from the dining car five forward to the lounge car at the rear. There were too many hiding places, not too few.

  A little later on in the morning, Todhunter was alone in the corridor outside the door of the empty compartment that had been Davidson’s, denuded now and unsealed since it had been examined by Duvette. Th
e door was firmly closed. The only fingerprints found were those of the porter and Davidson himself. Calgary lay out ahead. The country had changed, there was a roll to it now, the fields were smaller, and there were low hills. The speeding train went round a curve. Todhunter lunged against the door of compartment K. It didn’t open. It would have been natural for the killer to have closed it firmly behind him, the longer Davidson’s body remained in situ, the better. He tried again, and was interrupted. Someone had come along behind him, although he hadn’t heard a sound.

  It was Colonel Eden. The Colonel pulled up looking puzzled.

  Todhunter blinked. “I was just—trying something.”

  “A criminologist?” Eden was faintly amused.

  People were often amused by Todhunter. He didn't mind. "Oh, no,” he protested, “it was just an idea.” The idea, incidentally, hadn't proved anything. The killer could have been too flustered to close the door properly.

  The Colonel went on to Rose O'Hara's compartment and pressed the buzzer. The girl opened the door. She looked tired, as though she hadn’t slept well. Her eyes were big in her emphatic face, had shadows under them. Eden introduced himself. “You may have heard Elizabeth speak of me. I’m on my way to Amethyst Lake now . . “Oh, yes, of course, Colonel. I remember you now—” Somberness went out of her and she smiled pleasantly and stepped back. “Come in.”

  The door remained open. Rose O’Hara had breakfasted in her room, there was a tray on the floor. Todhunter listened to an interchange between the girl and Eden concerned with Elizabeth Questing. In the middle of it his eyes opened wider. When Mrs. Questing had broken her ankle weeks earlier, tripping and falling down a flight of stone steps at the lodge, Davidson had been at Amethyst Lake. It was a short visit, he had flown out, had stayed only one day. The Colonel had had a letter from Elizabeth Questing recounting the incident. Eden was still curious about the purpose of Davidson’s trip west this time.