Within five minutes Anderson had arrived, looking remarkably crisp in his gold-braided blue jacket with cap, for after two in the morning, anyway.
“Sorry to have disturbed you,” I said. Miss Vance had made the call. The master-at-arms was on his way, as well.
“I’d just returned to my cabin,” he said, his expression wide-eyed yet business-like as he surveyed the corpse on the linoleum, “having dispatched a second group of crew members to continue the search of the ship. We’ve found nothing thus far.”
“Until now,” Miss Vance said, with a redundant gesture toward the corpse. She quickly filled Anderson in, leading him for a look at the discarded knife that lay on the floor of the adjoining short corridor.
“I would like to take that weapon into evidence,” she said. “While I’m limited, I do have a kit with me that includes fingerprinting works.”
“Good Lord,” Anderson said, “what if you find prints on the handle? What would you compare them to? Would you have us fingerprint everyone on shipboard?”
“If need be. However, might I suggest, for the present at least, that we not advertise this matter.”
Anderson sighed in relief. “I’m very pleased to hear you say that. As soon as possible, I would like to arrange for the body to be taken to the ship’s hospital.”
Miss Vance nodded. “Splendid idea, Captain—I would like the ship’s doctor to have a look at the body. I would also like to examine all of the late stowaway’s effects.”
This was agreeable to the staff captain, who requested the use of Miss Vance’s phone.
“We’ll get the doctor up here,” Anderson said, “and a stretcher, and remove the deceased to a comfortable bed.”
“I’m sure he’ll appreciate that,” I said.
A voice said, “Good Lord,” which seemed to be the exclamation of choice here in the corridor; the master-at-arms, Williams, had arrived. The short, sturdy fellow had come from the direction of my cabin, and he stood a respectful distance from the dead man, gazing down with mouth and eyes agape, his thick dark eyebrows pushing his forehead into his scalp.
No one greeted the master-at-arms—it didn’t seem warranted.
“The captain will have to be woken, too,” Anderson said to no one in particular, rubbing his chin, apparently contemplating the various phone calls he would need to make from Miss Vance’s room.
“Mr. Williams,” I said to the master-at-arms, “who was guarding the stowaways?”
“No one,” he said with a shrug, still gazing at the corpse.
“And why is that?”
Anderson answered for him. “They were locked in the cells, and the brig itself is kept locked. No one sees them except the steward who brings them their supper.”
“Which,” I said, “would be Mr. Leach.”
With a nod, Anderson said, “I have to make my calls,” and was turning toward Miss Vance’s door when I spoke again.
“That’s all well and good,” I said, “but shouldn’t a priority be to check the status of those cells? Until we do, we won’t know for certain that all three stowaways are at large.”
Anderson glanced back at me, trying unsuccessfully to conceal his annoyance with my amateur’s question. “Mr. Van Dine, if the ringleader is dead in first class, it’s reasonable to assume the door to the cell has been unlocked . . . and, if so, that all three went through that open door.”
“Two open doors,” I reminded him. “To escape, both the cell door and the outer door had to be unlocked. I would suggest you have a security breach—some crew member may be in league with these Germans.”
Now he turned all the way around and did not hide the annoyance in either his expression or his voice. “Sir, my men—”
But I cut him off: “Consist of whomever you were able to round up from loose ends, with all the able-bodied seaman serving the Royal Navy.”
The staff captain sighed—he twitched a non-smile, which was as close as he could allow himself to acknowledge the truth of my statement.
An awkward silence hung between us, until Miss Anderson said, “Mr. Van Dine has a point about the brig—I suggest he and I go down and check out the scene, until you can arrange for our dead stowaway’s removal.”
The frustrated Anderson agreed to this, and went into Miss Vance’s room, the door of which had been left ajar.
Prior to attending to our task, Miss Vance took care of another one.
“Do you have a handkerchief I could borrow?” she asked me.
I said certainly, and gave her one.
Stepping around Klaus, she returned to the short corridor, disappeared down it, and quickly returned holding the knife by its bloody tip, her fingers shielded from the blood by my handkerchief. She took it into her cabin, deposited it somewhere, and returned to the hall.
Williams was on one side of the corpse and Miss Vance on the other, when she asked pleasantly, “Are you still carrying that revolver we shared earlier?”
Williams blinked; those thick dark brows seemed only to emphasize a certain vacuity about his eyes themselves. “Why, yes, ma’am.” He patted his jacket on the left side, where indeed a bulge indicated something heavy resided there.
“Might I borrow it, please?” she asked, as if requesting another hanky.
His forehead furrowed, but then he shrugged and said, “Certainly, ma’am.”
And he removed the revolver from his pocket, and passed it across the corpse to Miss Vance. There was something terribly unsettling about the one-handed ease with which she managed the weapon.
Though our destination was merely a floor down, we took the elevator, on which the pistol-packing Miss Vance posed several questions.
“You suspect someone among the crew, Van?”
“Don’t you?”
“Do you suspect someone specifically?”
“Mr. Leach and Mr. Williams have the easiest access to the brig—the steward in charge of food service, and the master-at-arms.”
She nodded, but the tightness around her eyes seemed not to agree.
“What bothers you about that theory?” I asked.
“A clever criminal would not lay the blame so near his own door.”
I shrugged. “Perhaps he isn’t clever—does either Leach or Williams strike you as a mastermind?”
“No . . . and that’s what troubles me. But I’ve already cabled my home office, and they’ll both be thoroughly investigated within forty-eight hours.”
We exited the elevator into the Shelter Deck’s Grand Entrance area, with its potted ferns and wicker furnishings. Without the usual milling of people, the ship seemed like a big empty house we were haunting, our footsteps echoing off the floor as we headed into the First Class Saloon, where the tables were already covered with fresh linen, china and silverware, ready for breakfast service. This tabernacle of a restaurant seemed absurdly vast, when only two people were in it, and we hurried across as if we were thieves trying not to get caught—that Miss Vance had a gun in her dainty fist only served to emphasize this sense.
We moved aft down a corridor with a galley on one side and pantries on the other; the hospital rooms, with the brig at the far end, were down a corridor to the left, bisecting the ship. The brig door was closed, but—when Miss Vance tried it—unlocked. The lovely detective seemed about to go in, when I inserted my arm between her and the door.
I shook my head. Even if she was the one with revolver, I would go in first. I was still, technically at least, the man here.
Opening the door quickly, I moved inside the same way, with Miss Vance and her gun following close. While I had not been expecting anything, really—other than perhaps an empty cell—what we did view was certainly not on either of our mental lists of possibilities.
The other two stowaways were still inside the cell, though the barred door yawned open. They were asprawl on the floor—the tall, skinny, brown-haired one to the left, the average fellow with lighter brown hair on the right. Even from just inside the room, the dark re
d—almost black—splotches could be seen on their white stewards’ jackets, over either man’s heart, like badges of blood.
Miss Vance and I exchanged troubled looks, and she entered and knelt over either man. Strangely, she leaned near and sniffed the open mouths of each corpse, as if checking their breath for the scent of something . . . although neither had any breath left, obviously.
She rose, and stood there surveying the carnage, pistol at her side.
“Knife wounds?” I asked.
She nodded and exited the cell, approaching me; I was standing near the unattended desk. “What would you say happened here, Van?”
I walked toward the cell, looked in through the bars, studied the position of the bodies, and tried to reason it through.
“Think out loud,” she suggested.
“Well, perhaps the knife . . . does it appear, from the wounds, to be the same weapon? The hunting knife in the corridor?”
She nodded.
I began again. “Perhaps the knife was smuggled in to them by a comrade among the crew . . . or possibly, somehow, they managed to sneak that weapon past the searches of their persons, unlikely as that might seem.”
“Continue.”
I offered a sigh, a shrug and the following speculation: “I would say Klaus and his stowaway associates had a falling-out—when I interviewed them, signs of such a conflict were apparent. My guess is that these two wanted to cooperate with the shipboard authorities, possibly reveal not only the nature of their mission but where . . . perhaps . . . a ticking bomb might be found aboard.”
Her expression indicated my reasoning seemed sound enough to her.
Encouraged, I went on. “So we have three stowaways and one knife—with two stowaways at odds with their leader. A struggle ensues, and one of them stabs Klaus in the back . . . but Klaus is a tough, brawny exemplar of the fatherland, and, though wounded, he manages to take that knife away, and stab his assailant . . . and then he stabbed the other would-be traitor, and left them to die.”
Miss Vance sighed; she began to pace. “This presumes that Klaus could have survived such a wound long enough to get to that first-class corridor.”
“Relatively speaking, it’s not that far away—one floor up.”
Still pacing, she said, “We’ll ask the ship’s doctor his opinion, based upon examination of the wound . . . but the blood droplets, and the apparently discarded knife, seem at odds with your theory.”
I raised a lecturing finger. “Perhaps you’ve read the evidence incorrectly. . . meaning no disrespect to your professional standing. Perhaps that trail of blood led in the opposite direction you assumed—perhaps it was Klaus who discarded the bloody knife, and staggered down the hall, in the direction of your room, his wound leaving a trail of liquid rubies for you to find.”
“And the commotion you heard in the hallway?”
I shrugged rather elaborately. “Klaus succumbing to the wound . . . losing his balance . . . falling unconscious, like the deadweight he had become, to the floor.”
She smiled. “That’s not bad, Van. . . . Very nicely deliberated. But you may be falling into a trap of sorts.”
“How so?”
Her eyes tightened. “I believe these bodies were meant to be interpreted as the aftermath of a falling out amongst our stowaways.”
“This is somehow staged? How do you ‘stage’ murdered men? They’re really dead, after all.”
“Oh, they’re dead all right. . . . Step inside that cell, Van. Take a closer look.”
With another shrug, I did as she suggested, and followed her lead and knelt over the skinny corpse, who—upon examination from this proximity—revealed an interesting further fact.
“His skin is a rather dreadful shade of light blue,” I commented.
“If you take a look at his friend,” she said, “you’ll see he shares the same condition.”
I did, and he did.
“Now sniff around his mouth,” she prompted.
I was with the smaller of the pair, the darker-haired corpse, whose mouth—like his vacant eyes—was open.
“Hmmm,” I said, and rose, doing my best to hide my revulsion at the examinations I’d just been asked to make. “I would characterize that scent as . . . well, it is familiar.”
“Almonds,” she said. “Bitter almonds.”
I exited the cell and approached her, where she stood near the desk. “You’re the detective—what’s the significance of that?”
“Well, I’m a detective, and we would need a doctor, willing and capable of performing a full scientific postmortem examination, to confirm my suspicion. But those symptoms—the blue-tinged skin, the scent of bitter almonds—would seem to indicate cyanide poisoning.”
I tried to process this information. “These men were poisoned, as well as stabbed?”
“I would say they were poisoned . . . and stabbed after their deaths, to cloud the issue.”
Now I was the one pacing. “But what can it mean?”
“I am not certain. But I have a suggestion that you may reject.”
I stopped and planted myself in front of her. “Let’s hear it.”
She raised a cautionary palm. “Let’s keep our speculations to ourselves. No, on second thought . . . you share your first impression of this scene of the crime, with Staff Captain Anderson, and anyone else from the ship’s staff who might ask your opinion.”
“Why on earth? Your analysis, bizarre as it is, makes a hell of a lot more sense.”
She walked to the cell and looked through the bars at our dead stowaways. “If those men were poisoned, it was by someone on the crew—possibly Leach bringing them food, or Williams, or someone else with access to this brig . . . Anderson himself, included. I would not like to alert our suspects, at this point, that we have these suspicions.”
“I see. . . . You wish to give them a false sense of security.”
Nodding, she said, “Yes, and as the only trained investigator aboard this ship, I am up against a murderer who is very likely also a German spy . . . a clever murderer, able to manipulate evidence in a most confusing manner. There may be, as you have indicated, a ticking bomb on this ship at this very moment . . . and I prefer to stay one step ahead of our prey, while seeming to be several steps behind.”
I saw the sense of this, and agreed to be her accomplice in cover-up as well as crime solving.
We heard some noise in the corridor, and stepped out to have a look—Williams and another crew member were carrying the deceased Klaus, covered by a white sheet commandeered from somewhere or other, down the corridor. A slender dark-haired, flush-cheeked boyish fellow in his early thirties—wearing a brown suit and no tie, indicating perhaps haste in dressing—was unlocking the door of the room next to the brig.
Anderson rounded the corner, picking up the rear of this little procession, and as the rosy-cheeked fellow opened the door, and the stretcher disappeared inside what was obviously one of the hospital rooms, the staff captain approached us outside the brig.
“So far,” Anderson said, “no sign of the other two stowaways.”
“I would have to disagree,” I said, and I gestured rather grandly to the open door of the brig.
Anderson stepped inside, and then exploded, delivering several salty phrases, before turning to apologize to Miss Vance, who had followed him in. I was just behind her.
Now it was Anderson thinking aloud, and he came to the same conclusion that I had: A falling-out among the stowaways had led to the “winner” of the struggle managing to stumble to first class, discard his knife, and stagger to his death.
“That’s a reasonable explanation,” Miss Vance said.
“And,” Anderson went on, adding a detail that frankly had not occurred to me, “I can tell you why he chose first class to die in—he was making for the lifeboats, to lower one and make his escape.”
Miss Vance was frowning. “Could one man manage that?”
The staff captain dismissed that with a wave. “Po
ssibly not, but he would have to try, wouldn’t he? That would be his only possible means of escape! . . . Let’s have the doctor have a look at these two.”
Anderson stalked out, and Miss Vance and I exchanged lifts of the eyebrow.
I said, “One man might not be able to lower a lifeboat and escape . . .”
“But,” she completed, “a man with an accomplice aboard the ship could certainly manage it.”
“Even so, Anderson’s wrong—the lifeboats are adjacent to first class, all right . . . but on the Boat Deck, another floor up. And the corridor Klaus died in is forward of not only the brig but the elevators—what was our stowaway doing in that corridor?”
Miss Vance was smiling at me, and there was nothing predatory about it. “Nicely observed,” she said.
Moments later Anderson escorted into the brig the slender baby-faced fellow wearing the thrown-on brown suit. The staff captain made his introductions—this was Dr. John F. McDermott, the ship’s physician.
McDermott must have read my mind—or perhaps my expression—because he said, “I know I look young. . . . I’ve only been practicing for a year. But I was not last in my class, I assure you.”
He was also not first, or he would have said so.
As McDermott entered the cell, and crouched over first one, then the other victim, Anderson said to us, “Our longtime ship’s doctor, a wonderful old boy named Dr. Pointon, James Pointon, couldn’t make the voyage, this time.”
“Rheumatism,” McDermott said, from within the cell, as if this is what had killed the two stowaways. “Dr. Pointon is suffering from a rather severe case, and I’m just filling in.”
“Quite a competent lad,” Anderson assured us, meaning McDermott.
But Miss Vance gave me a look that told me she hoped the opposite was true: that this young pup would not recognize what that “wonderful old boy Dr. Pointon” might have—the symptoms of cyanide poisoning.
“Just like the other fellow,” McDermott said, emerging from the cell. “Stabbed to death.”
The Lusitania Murders Page 9