Death in the Middle Watch

by Bruce, Leo

  “I’m so glad you haven’t lost anything. It was just alarmist talk,” said Carolus.

  “But I’ll tell you what isn’t alarmist talk,” said Lady Spittals. “Because my husband himself saw it and he’s the last man to make up anything like that. It was about this strange man on deck.”

  “Which one?” asked Carolus.

  “You can find it funny, Mr Deene, but when Charles tells me something I know it’s true. He saw this man coming up the stairs from the lower part—where the children play in the daytime. Only it was dark when he saw him.”

  “Then, you mustn’t mind my asking this, how did Sir Charles know there was anything strange about him?”

  “The eyes, for one thing. Like fire, Charles says.”

  “But could he see them in the dark?”

  “Of course he could. Charles has got eyes like a cat and he doesn’t exaggerate. Then the man was muttering to himself. Charles couldn’t catch the words but it was more like someone in pain, he says. Charles watched him walk the whole length of the deck, then disappear. Charles said it was uncanny. He was all in black, too, and wore a hood over his head.”

  “A sou’wester.”

  “I don’t know anything about that, but Charles said there was something horrible about him.”

  “One of the deckhands going on duty, I should think.”

  “Well you may, but I don’t. What was he muttering about? No, you can’t laugh this off, Mr Deene. There’s something queer about this ship and you know it. Ask Mrs Grahame- Willows. She’ll tell you.”

  “She seems to be an authority,” said Carolus.

  “It’s just that she keeps her eyes open and won’t be taken in by all this talk of there being nothing wrong. If there’s nothing wrong why was Mrs Darwin murdered?”

  “That is what I’m endeavouring to find out. But I’m not helped by sensational stories. We only need to sight the Flying Dutchman with all her lights blazing, running against the wind.”

  “Please stop that, Mr Deene. We’ve quite enough to upset us as it is. I hear the Captain’s had a stroke from all the worry.”

  “I suppose Mrs Grahame-Willows told you that, too?”

  “As a matter of fact she did. But that’s no reason to doubt it. With a dead body on the ship, as any seaman will tell you, there are bound to be strange happenings. I advise you not to go out on deck, Mr Deene. However sceptical you are, there are dangers about tonight.”

  Carolus had not had the least intention of going out on deck, but the silly woman had given him a challenge and, having put on a heavy overcoat, he went out to the covered part of the deck. At first he thought he was alone, but as he passed along the row of deck chairs he saw that one of them was occupied. As he approached, he recognized Alexander Carlisle and took the deck chair next to him.

  “Good evening,” said the West Indian civilly. “Come out for a breather?”

  He spoke in a pleasantly cultured voice.

  “Yes. I’m rather sick of the old wives’ tales going round the ship.”

  He could hear a chuckle from his companion in the darkness beside him.

  “You can’t really be surprised at that. They come on one of these ridiculous cruises in the hope of sunshine and all they get is a murder and foul weather.”

  “There’s no certainty about the murder,” said Carolus.

  “Isn’t there?” said the voice beside him in the near-darkness. The man spoke with scorn, as though Carolus was an ass to have any doubt at all. Then he added, “Mrs Darwin was murdered, all right.”

  “What makes you so certain about it?”

  “I know.” said Alexander Carlisle, as though that settled the matter for good.

  “I think I’ve heard your name before,” Carolus said, inviting confidence.

  “Quite likely. I’m considered a rather dangerous man, I believe.”

  “If I remember correctly,” said Carolus, recalling headlines, “you were up at Oxford? President of the Union?”

  Again that deep chuckle.

  “Does that make me dangerous?”

  “Not necessarily. But I wouldn’t trust you alone with our Mr Porteous for instance.”

  “No? You’d be wrong there. Porteous is just a figurehead. I’m more interested in those guilty of specific acts—however ignorant they may be.”

  “What kind of acts?”

  “Oh, just acts. I work alone, Mr Deene. I don’t belong to any movement or party. But I think I can make myself felt.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “You’re a private detective, aren’t you? Employed by Porteous.” He chuckled again. “I’m trying to help you”

  “Thanks.”

  “But don’t push your luck.”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “A worm can turn, remember. Sometimes before you can tread on it.”

  “You know, Mr Carlisle, I think this is one of the most pointless conversations I’ve ever had. Certainly on a ship’s deck in semi-darkness at eleven o’clock on a dirty night. Don’t you?”

  “Not altogether.”

  “But tell me something else. What brought you on this ridiculous cruise, as you call it?”

  “Shall we say curiosity?”

  “That’s a motive I can well understand. It was partly my own. But I think it was more than that.”

  “Perhaps I wanted the sunshine, too.”

  “Perhaps. Did you know either of the Darwins before you came aboard?”

  “Not personally.”

  “What does that mean?”

  They were interrupted by some angry shouting that seemed to come from the lower well deck. Carolus at once recognized Leacock’s voice raised in drunken fury. Between his four-lettered outbursts there was silence as though someone with him was trying to quieten him in softer tones. He went along to look down but in the darkness he could distinguish only Leacock. Before he had reached him whoever had been with him had gone.

  Leacock was certainly drunk.

  “Who were you shouting at?” Carolus asked him.

  “Mind your own bloody business.”

  Carolus, in the course of his numerous investigations was not unaccustomed to that warning, but it had seldom been voiced with such emphasis as now.

  Then Leacock said, “You ought to know. You know every bloody thing. I oughtn’t to need to tell you, the lousy bastard.”

  “I expect I do,” said Carolus. “But I’d like to hear it from you. Of course it could have been one of the officers who had found you drunk on watch …”

  “It could have been the Queen Mother,” said Leacock with a silly laugh. “But it wasn’t.”

  On that he lurched away and when Carolus returned to the promenade deck, Alexander Carlisle had disappeared.

  But Mr Gorringer, his yachting cap changed for a plaid tam-o’-shanter with a large pompom on its crown, was awaiting him.

  “I wanted a word with you, Deene,” he said rather gloomily. “It occurs to me that you are sometimes inclined to think that I treat with too much seriousness things that you may dismiss as trivial. You can scarcely hold me guilty of that today when we have almost been the very witnesses of a cruel and brutal murder. No one, surely, could be expected to pass that over lightly.”

  “Certainly not,” agreed Carolus.

  “Especially when the victim was a lady for whom I had already formed some esteem.”

  “Whoever the victim was. I never treat murder lightly.”

  “In that case I shall venture to make some observations. It is my fixed belief that the murderer was brought out to the ship for that very evil purpose.”

  “Oh. What makes you think that?”

  “Are we to consider it no more than a coincidence that the agent’s clerk, the man named, I understand, Costa Neves, came out in a launch at one o’clock in the small hours on that particular night when he had never done such a thing before? Was it chance that he brought two boatmen whom no one on board has been able to identi
fy with any certainty? That the unfortunate lady met her fate during the very hour that the agent spent on this ship? Are these no more than coincidences?”

  “Are you trying to tell me that you think Costa Neves was the murderer?”

  “I, my dear Deene, am the merest tiro in these cases, but I do consider that the likelihood should be taken into your consideration, since we have unfortunately no professional investigator who would doubtless form his conclusions at once.”

  “Oh, it’s taken into my consideration all right,” said Carolus. “So are a thousand other possibilities. But if I were you, headmaster, I should cease to bother your”—should he say “tiny?”—”head about it. Murder will out, you know, and I already have the beginnings of a theory about this crime.”

  “I’m extremely glad to hear it. What an abominable night it is. Cold, dark, windy—it would seem the very elements are involved in our misfortunes. And what …” Mr Gorringer clutched Carolus’s arm … “What is that?”

  “That” was the sound of Miss Berry suppressing her tears. She had come from the starboard side and stood in the shadows.

  “Have you seen the Second Engineer?” she asked. It was more than a question.

  “No. I’m afraid not,” said Carolus politely. “But Mr Gavin Ritchie is in the saloon.”

  “Who cares about him?” asked Miss Berry. “I want to find Douglas.”

  “Douglas?”

  “The Second Engineer. You know him. We saw him this morning.”

  “If you will heed my advice, young lady,” put in Mr Gorringer, “you will take what shelter and protection the ship offers you. Far be it from me to alarm you, but this is not the time to linger on deck without a trustworthy escort. You know there has been one dreadful event on this ship already.”

  “Oh, I don’t take any notice of that,” said Miss Berry. “Doesn’t anybody want a good time? I thought when I booked a passage for this cruise there would be some kind of entertainment. All we’ve had is an out-of-date film and that silly horseracing. Not a single dance.”

  “You can scarcely expect passengers to be frivolous and lighthearted when they have suffered such a pitiless blow as the death of a dear and respected …”

  “I thought you were rather gone on her,” said Miss Berry. “Well, there’s no accounting for taste.” She turned to Carolus. “Can’t you suggest where the Second Engineer might be?”

  Carolus resisted the invitation to say “in the engine room,” and Miss Berry returned to the shadows.

  “If I were that young lady,” said Mr Gorringer voicing an improbably hypothesis, “I should not wander about on deck alone.”

  “She doesn’t want to be alone,” said Carolus.

  Mr Gorringer ignored this.

  “Well, Deene, I have given you my views,” he said. “I hope you will make what use you can of them. I will leave you to deliberate.”

  And that is exactly what Carolus did, for half an hour, before going to his cabin, intending to turn in. But there was one more surprise for him on that night of surprises. Sitting in the one straight armchair, studying his face in the mirror, was the man whom the Purser had described as “crackers, barking, up the wall,” the powerful-looking passenger named Medlow.

  Carolus, as though meaning to humour him, showed no surprise at his presence.

  “Hullo,” he said.

  Medlow made a grimace which convinced Carolus that he was acting, rather than insane.

  “I know who sent those letters to Porteous,” Medlow said with in apish grin.

  “So do I,” said Carolus coolly.

  “Oh, you do. Who do you think it was?”

  “You,” said Carolus.

  Medlow appeared taken aback. Then he decided to dismiss it and grinned again. Finally he asked, “How did you know?”

  “I’ve no idea what your game is,” said Carolus. “But pretending to be soft in the head is part of it. You’re at least half sane. I suppose you’ve got your knife into Porteous. Is that it?”

  “Porteous is a cad,” observed Medlow, staring into the mirror again. “A bloody racialist.”

  “Yes,” agreed Carolus.

  “He’s got to learn a lesson and he will before this cruise is over. You, too. He has hired you as a watchdog. You’ve got it coming to you.”

  “Perhaps, having got that off your chest, you would be good enough to get out?”

  Rather to his surprise, the big man rose to his feet and made for the door.

  “Don’t forget what I told you.” he said. “I’d do it now, only I’m not quite ready.”

  Carolus sighed.

  “What an incredible bore you are,” he said to the broad retreating back of the other.

  And now, he thought, perhaps I really can get to bed.

  Nine

  ON THE FOLLOWING EVENING, though the wind had gone down and the passengers seemed to have lost the look of tension that some of them had worn on the previous night, Carolus himself did not feel reassured. There was in all probability. he reminded himself, a murderer on board since, as the Purser had told him, no one had remained ashore in Lisbon, and Carolus was not the man, even among the absurdities of a holiday cruise, to treat murder lightly. As he had shown in previous cases, he had an almost superstitious awe of the very word. He was ready to see the humours of human vanity and particularly of curious idiom, but he had never found anything in the least amusing about a man or woman who usurped the authority of God to put an end to the life of another.

  Cynthia Darwin, for all he knew, might have been an odious woman, might even have been involved in the death of her first husband: her character was irrelevant. Someone, someone perhaps known to Carolus, had gone to her cabin and having been trustingly admitted, had strangled the wretched woman. And although Carolus had boasted that he had certain theories or ideas about the identity of the murderer, he had to admit that they were too vague and remote to be formulated, even to himself.

  Sitting in the lounge, he could scrutinize the very people who might be suspected because they at least had the opportunity, and although many of them seemed hopelessly improbable by reason of their characters as far as Carolus knew them, he was too experienced to dismiss them from a list of the potentially guilty. Susan Berry for example. Could one imagine that rabbit-mouthed and frustrated nymphomaniac strangling another woman and quite a sturdy-looking one at that? She was compounded of jealousies and longings, but how could she feel jealous of Cynthia Darwin except perhaps for the money which enabled the woman to dress well? Susan Berry had not even seen Guy Darwin—so far as was known—at the time when Cynthia was murdered. Carolus was ready to admit that envy and frustration could carry women to extraordinary lengths, but Susan, like everyone else on board, escaped anything like real suspicion.

  Like Patty Spittals, for instance. A silly, kindly woman devoted to the husband she pretended to deride, and amused by his wealth rather than purse-proud or seriously pretentious. It was true that she had every opportunity and might easily have built up enough confidence between herself and the dead woman to be admitted to her cabin at once, as the murderer had been. But what possible motive could she have had? She had been on the cruise last year when Cynthia’s first husband had died and been buried at sea and nothing was yet known to Carolus of her behaviour at that time towards the widow, but Patty was a good-natured woman and it was difficult to imagine her in the more sinister role.

  The same applied to her husband. It was stretching the imagination too far altogether to imagine the ex-Mayor and millionaire with the solemn manner, which he often broke by a wink, feeling such animosity towards Cynthia Darwin that he would go to her cabin and strangle her, but there was, of course, the precedent of Macbeth and his wife and the power of Patty Spittals over her husband might account for some of that animosity. He, too, had the opportunity and the fact that his wife so firmly denied having heard anything at all from the next cabin, while Susan Berry supposed she had heard the murderer’s knock, kept Sir Charles in th
e circle of possibilities.

  Nor could Porteous be dismissed out of hand. He was a man with an obsession, and such men are dangerous. He had spent his life building up the business of Summertime Cruises and would obviously do anything to preserve it, as he had shown in his callous behaviour on two occasions already. What connection this could have with the murder of one of his passengers Carolus was at a loss to imagine, but he was convinced that if the existence of Cynthia Darwin threatened Porteous’s schemes, he would not scruple to rid himself of her in even the most violent way. Whether Ratchett would follow him, or even keep silence for his sake was extremely doubtful: Carolus had seen how deluded Porteous was when he spoke of the loyalty of such men as Ratchett. But Porteous was the “boss” and among men of Ratchett’s type that counted for a lot, whether he wished it to or no.

  When Carolus came to consider Captain Scorer as a potential murderer, he decided that he was beyond all probabilities. First, he could see no conceivable motive; second, the opportunity, though not entirely impossible, was far-fetched; and third, Scorer was certainly not a man who could ever be suspected by a sane observer of any such action. Carolus hesitated to erase him from his imaginary list only because the captain was, after all, on board his ship, and had, as Carolus had gathered from the Purser, not invited Cynthia Darwin to sit at his table. It would be ingenious to imagine a murder being committed for the sake of a place at the Captain’s table, and to Carolus, who had known equally strange motives, it was not impossible, but to suppose that the Captain himself might act against a woman who had once sat near him in the dining hall was idiotic. Yet there was something about Scorer that made Carolus keep him in mind.