“If I might risk rudeness, I would like to ask a rather personal question.”
He looked at me curiously; an eyebrow lifted. He was a little drunk.
I asked my question. “You didn’t actually see that steward, Leach, come out of my room, did you?”
His eyes tightened. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Your friend Williamson saw it, but asked you to report it. Do you know why?”
Vanderbilt’s defensiveness vanished; he shrugged. “He told me what he’d seen, and that he was concerned—asked if I would go to Captain Turner about it. He was afraid to.”
“Afraid?”
“Well, he knew Turner wouldn’t turn me away—that I’d be taken seriously.”
“I see,” I said, as if that made sense.
The phone’s ring was almost lost in the cocktail chatter, but I heard it, and went to answer; but Frohman’s valet, William, reached for the receiver before I got there.
I said, “That will be for me.”
He made a face and said, “I’m sure . . . Frohman suite!” He listened, then turned to me with surprised confusion, handing me the phone, saying, “It is for you, sir.”
“Mr. Williamson has arrived at the party,” Miss Vance’s voice said into my ear, over the sound of festivities on her end of the wire. “He’s making the rounds—no one will miss the fact that he was here.”
“Time for you to leave.”
“Yes it is.”
I hung up, because it was time for me to leave, as well. Making no good-byes, I slipped out, and I reached the door to Madame DePage’s suite just as Miss Vance arrived, looking fetching in her low-cut green silk gown, a small purse in hand.
We did not speak. She used her key in the door—these were her quarters, as well as madame’s, after all—and we went in to wait in the lavish suite, with its Louis XVI decor and walnut panelling, its residence-like windows covered in black.
We did not have long to wait.
Dressed in a steward’s uniform, Charles Williamson—a large satchel in hand—entered the suite’s living room; he had just begun to search when I emerged from where I’d crouched behind a green settee, and said, “You look good in white—but you’ll look better in stripes.”
His eyes hardened—he was frozen in the middle of the room—and his hand dipped into the satchel, which was unlatched, and emerged with a revolver . . .
. . . but another revolver, a smaller but no less deadly one (compact enough for a purse), had inserted its snout in the back of his neck, before his own gun could become much of an issue.
“As ship’s detective,” Miss Vance said, “I’m placing you under arrest, Mr. Williamson. . . .”
I took the gun from his right hand and, from his left, the satchel—in it were Mr. Kessler’s stocks and bonds, and Hubbard’s five thousand.
“I suppose C.F. Frohman’s cash would have had to wait,” I said, “till his party was over and he was off attending the concert.”
He made no denials. His blue eyes flicked from one of us to the other, his lips curled in something between a smile and a sneer.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” he said, hands raised, “how did you know?”
“Klaus had a list in his shoe,” Miss Vance said accommodatingly—training her gun on Williamson, as I covered him with his own weapon. “Your name was at the top of it—and the names below were in alphabetical order. Quite straightforward, really—the stowaways’ contact first, followed by a listing copied from a passenger’s register, provided by your friend, the late Mr. Leach.”
“And you knew, from that? No court would accept such thin evidence.”
“No court has to—you’re nabbed red-handed, sir. But there are other matters—your inclusion among those who received warning telegrams, for example. You are hardly worthy of inclusion on such a celebrated list—why would a mere art dealer be included among the prominent likes of Hubbard, Vanderbilt, Kessler, DePage and Frohman?”
The sneering smile settled in one corner of his mouth. “Why indeed?”
“You sent those wires—you or your associates. A fairly venerated ploy, the villain hiding amongst his victims . . . giving himself access to all the famous personages on that list, by becoming one of them. We asked your intended victims if any stranger on the ship had gone out of his way to make a friend of them. . . . Your name came up, but only once. . . yet you no doubt got next to all of them—though they didn’t think of you as a stranger. No, not Vanderbilt’s friend—you had something in common, after all . . . you were part of the group warned with those threatening telegrams!”
His smile had begun to fade.
I said, “You planted that bomb in my room—Vanderbilt admitted to me that you asked him to report seeing Leach do it, to Captain Turner. You meant to distract us, while you gave your accomplice a friendly drink of cyanide-laced tea; and in creating his ‘suicide’ you also meant to further cement in our minds Leach as the culprit. . . . Staging suicide is a specialty of yours, isn’t it?”
Now he frowned.
“Your cabin is just down the corridor,” Miss Vance pointed out sweetly. “On the portside of the ship . . . the hallway where you stuck a knife into your cohort’s back.”
His laugh was hollow. “Why do you care? He was just a German—they were all just a bunch of damned Hun spies, and I took care of them. I deserve a medal.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “but not a satchel of money.”
“Alert the master-at-arms,” Miss Vance said to me. Then to Williamson she said, “You’re checking into new quarters—the brig.”
Williamson only smiled. “I hope they’ve cleaned it out. That blood can get sticky.”
Chilled, I used the telephone.
FIFTEEN
Sinking Feeling
I suppose I have been frank enough about our relationship to reveal that Miss Vance and I spent Thursday night together in her cabin. After our shared exploit, we craved each other’s company in the manner of adults of free will and progressive thinking. We were happily and snugly slumbering in each other’s arms in a bed designed for one when the bellow of the ship’s foghorn rudely awakened us—and I damned near fell off the bed.
There was no getting back to sleep—the foghorn was simply too insistent—and, after I’d returned briefly to my cabin to freshen up and dress, we joined the DePage group at the first breakfast seating. Only Madame DePage herself had been informed of last evening’s melodramatics, largely because, after all, they had been staged in her quarters. Captain Turner himself had told Vanderbilt of his friend’s transgressions, and what was said between them I do not know—the millionaire made himself scarce, and I did not see him at all until much later that Friday.
Otherwise, a cloak of confidentiality as thick as the morning fog enveloped the ship.
Jaded, at this time, by the Lucy’s embarrassment of gastronomic riches, neither Miss Vance nor myself ate what could be called a hearty breakfast—tea and scones with marmalade being about the extent of it. Perhaps we felt that letdown that follows any great adventure—Miss Vance even commented that she was reminded of the day following the closing of a play’s successful run.
A walk on the Boat Deck’s open-air promenade presented an experience both surreal and ghostly, the air chill for May, the view past the railing one of swirling mist. The Lusitania might have been the Flying Dutchman, a specter ship at home in dense fog—perhaps I should have run this theory past the paranormally inclined Miss Pope. And even a landlubber like me could tell we’d slowed—the engine’s deep thrum had shifted significantly in amplitude and tempo.
Again we sat in the Verandah Cafe, sipping hot tea, saying little, wrapped up in an ambience that was both eerie and strangely restful.
Out of the fog, down the deck, emerged Staff Captain Anderson. He brightened upon seeing us, and strode over.
“Just the man I was looking for,” he said to me.
“Really?” I replied, surprised. “Please join us.”
He sat,
removing his cap. “I have a request. I feel somewhat abashed, asking . . . since in retrospect you and Miss Vance were right about so much, and I was so wrong.”
“Nonsense. What is it?”
He shifted in the chair, still uneasy. “Well, all attempts to question Williamson have failed. He won’t give us any sort of statement, much less admission, despite being caught in the act.”
“Won’t talk,” Miss Vance said, between tea sips, “without his solicitor.”
Anderson nodded. “Nearly his very words.”
The Pinkerton operative shrugged; she wore a gray linen morning suit and, of course, no hat. “Common among criminals of all classes.”
“You see,” the staff captain continued, “we’re concerned about the sabotage aspect of this affair . . . that there may still be some sort of small but deadly explosive device tucked away somewhere.”
“You’ve got him locked up,” I said. “Surely if such a device had been planted, he’d be in as much danger as the rest of us.”
Anderson sighed. “Or he might feel he could make his escape in the resulting tumult.”
“Locked away as he is?”
“He might hope for release. That would be the humane thing, in such a case.”
I decided not to offer an argument on the merits of letting the fiend drown in his cell, and instead asked, “Could a pipe bomb, such as the one you found in my quarters, really do a ship this size much damage?”
“That depends upon its placement. You see . . . and Mr. Van Dine, I am trusting your discretion—what I am about to reveal is not for publication, you understand.”
“Certainly.”
He spoke softly and deliberately. “We do have a small cargo of what might be considered munitions aboard—four thousand-some cases of rifle ammunition. . . some five million rounds . . . and over a thousand cases of three-inch shrapnel shells, along with their fuses.”
“Might be” considered munitions?
At last I had fulfilled my mission for my employer Rumely: discovered the presence of contraband aboard the Lusitania. But somehow I felt no sense of victory.
“How much of a danger does that present?” Miss Vance inquired.
“Well, that’s fifty-one tons of shrapnel alone. I would say a bomb, even a small one, might ignite a larger explosion. We’ve searched that area of the ship, but . . . I still have a certain trepidation about what Mr. Williamson and his conspirators may have done.”
“I can understand that,” I said, with a dry sarcasm that Anderson may have missed.
“In addition,” he said, “we are near the end of our voyage, and our coal bins are nearly empty . . . a coal dust explosion is another possibility, should such a device be ignited.”
“You haven’t made your request as yet,” I reminded him.
With a world-weary sigh, Anderson shook his head and said, “The bastard . . . excuse me, ma’am . . .”
“You may call the son of a bitch a bastard if you like,” Miss Vance allowed.
“Thank you, ma’am—the bastard says he’ll talk to you, Mr. Van Dine . . . and only you. And in private.”
That set me to blinking. “Why, in heaven’s name?”
“That,” Anderson said, with a puzzled shrug, “he will not reveal. Are you willing to speak to him?”
I responded with my own shrug, more resigned than puzzled. “With iron bars between us, I am willing—though Lord knows what he might want of me.”
And so it was that I came to stand in the ship’s brig, staring into the smug face, and the intelligent and dare I say evil blue eyes, of Charles Williamson . . . like the late and unlamented prisoners before him, still attired in his purloined stewards’ smock.
He had been stretched out on the lower bunk, and now walked over to me, and stood—in traditional prisoner style—grasping the bars with both hands and staring at me through an opening between them . . . displaying a disturbingly self-possessed smile.
“What do you want with me?” I asked, impatiently. “I have no particular interest in finally getting around to our discussion of art, if that’s what you have in mind.”
Half a smile carved a hole in his left cheek. “Are you sure, Mr. Wright?”
For a moment, it went right past me—then I realized:
He had just called me by my right . . . Wright . . . name!
“Of course I recognized you,” he said to me, with a haughty laugh. “We have been at several functions, though we were never introduced. But everyone in art circles in New York City knows of the astringent Willard Huntington Wright. Don’t you have a new book on art theory coming out or something?”
I said nothing—I admit I was shaken.
“Can you really be so thick?” he asked patronizingly. “Didn’t you know I was needling you, when I criticized your brother’s work? Did you really think that was a coincidence?”
“So you know my real name. So what? I’m travelling under a pseudonym, in order to interview people who might not grant me an audience, if they knew my real identity.”
“Like Hubbard—whom you have skewered in print, several times, I believe.”
I shrugged. “Perhaps . . . and how does this make a private audience with me a desirable thing, for a goddamned murderer and thief like you?”
He took no offense, merely laughed, and dropped his hands from the bars. “Have you a smoke?”
I removed the cigarette case from my inside jacket pocket, handed him a Gauloises—and lighted it up with a match. He inhaled the rich tobacco greedily, waiting long moments to exhale a blue-gray cloud.
“I know your politics,” he said. “Everyone does, in our world. . . . You’re a prolific one, aren’t you? Two books coming out . . . one of them on Nietzche, I believe.”
I said nothing to confirm the undeniable correctness of his statement.
“You’re as pro-German as I am,” he said suddenly, the smile gone, the eyes flashing.
So that was it!
“I should think you’re chiefly pro-Williamson,” I said.
His eyes tightened, and his smile was small yet satanic. “I can be a valuable ally.”
“Can you.”
“Just don’t forget about me, down here.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Should anything untoward occur, in these treacherous waters . . . just remember your fellow pro-German down in the brig. That’s all.”
I stepped closer, my nose near the iron bars. “Is there another bomb somewhere on this ship?”
He backed away. “I didn’t say that. I merely point out, we’re in the war zone. Should we fall prey to a U-boat, I shouldn’t like to go down with the ship, trapped behind these bars—I would find dying on a British vessel most distasteful.”
I sneered at the rogue. “Just because my tastes run to Wagner, Goethe and Schopenhauer, don’t assume I wear a photo of the Kaiser in a locket near my heart.”
He shrugged, wandered over to the bunk, stretched out on it again, arms winged behind his head, cigarette bobbling in his lips as he said, “That’s all I have to say . . . Mr. Wright. I’ll keep your silly little secret, too . . . as a show of good faith.”
In the corridor I was met by Miss Vance and Staff Captain Anderson.
“What did he want?” Anderson asked.
I snorted a wry laugh. “The fool thinks this Kaiser Wilhelm beard of mine suggests a pro-German heart beating in my chest.”
Miss Vance frowned. “And that’s all?”
“He asks that I not forget him, down here in the brig . . . should a U-boat try to sink us.”
Her frown tightened. “He could mean, if a bomb goes off.”
“Yes, he could . . . Captain Anderson, I would suggest you redouble your efforts to search the ship for such a device.”
Glumly, Anderson nodded. “That’s good advice . . . and we’ll take it. But a vessel this size has many a nook and many a cranny.”
Miss Vance was shaking her head. “He must be bluffing,” she sa
id. “He must be. . . .”
“I’m sure he is,” I said.
Neither of us, however, seemed terribly swayed by our own argument.
By mid-morning, the fog had burned off and the weather turned clear and warm, revealing a flat lake of a sea, disturbed only by the lazy roll of a ground swell from where the shore should be. Land took its time revealing itself, the direction of the coastline offering nothing but a gathering flock of filthy gray seagulls flapping alongship the ship, heads turning greedily from side to side.
Then just before noon, the murky shadow of land teasingly materialized off the port beam. From the rail where the lovely Pinkerton agent shared her binoculars with me, we watched it grow, becoming more distinct, revealing itself as a rocky bluff. Around one-thirty, the coast took on a more definite configuration—trees, rooftops, church steeples, sweeping by. Miss Vance and I exchanged relieved expressions that the crossing had been safely made. What if a saboteur’s bomb were to explode? The shore was so near.
Oddly, the flat, blue-green waters seemed to belong to the Lucy alone—no other vessels, commercial ones or warships either, presented themselves. Where was the Irish Coast Patrol, for one? Hadn’t we been promised protection from the British Admiralty?
We returned to the Verandah Cafe for a rather late and light luncheon—both Miss Vance and I had decided the dining saloon with its endless food and mawkish orchestra could wait till this evening—and, by two o’clock, had finished our little crustless sandwiches and a dessert of assorted petits fours.
Sitting idly, enjoying the view of the bright blue sea, I noticed a white-gold glimmering swirl of sunlight on the water’s dimpled skin.
“Is that a porpoise?” I asked, pointing.
Miss Vance sat up and squinted toward the sunny sight. “I’m not sure. . . . They usually leap.”
“Whatever it is,” I said, “it’s spreading. . . coming closer. . . .”
“That’s a torpedo, isn’t it?” Miss Vance asked, frightfully calm.
I stood, looking toward the forward end of the ship. “Have they noticed it on the bridge, I wonder? Can’t be a torpedo . . .”
The Lusitania Murders Page 19