Murder by Latitude

by Rufus King

  Valcour broke the indecisive pause. “I believe it is a case of murder, Captain.”

  The small white faces of the knotted groups were very still—little pinpoints in a darkness and in a vastness that would ever remain beyond the limits of their special knowledge, until it claimed them as it just had claimed their shipmate Gans; that would ever remain uncomprehendingly loved and hated and feared, as if it were of flesh and blood, rather than of forces, noises, winds, and waves, and things…and things…

  “Murder?” Captain Sohme was confused and deeply upset; the word rattled about in his head.

  “I should say so, Captain. There are those marks about the throat made by fingers—note the condition of the lips—the eyes. I think that somebody strangled him.”

  A Portuguese wiper, whitely bare from a slender waist up, with a corner of his loosely meshed sweat cloth caught lightly between his lips, started weeping noisily.

  “Shut up,” said Captain Sohme, into the darkness.

  “Shut up,” said the wiper’s neighbor.

  The wiper stopped weeping in order to begin a complicated and audible prayer in Portuguese.

  “Send that man—” Captain Sohme’s bilious-getting eye singled out the chief engineer. “Mr. McGurk, please send all of your men down below.”

  McGurk, who considered every request from the bridge a veiled insult, stiffened his Aberdeen body and, with a “Down you go, lads,” started his shuffling flock toward their quarters.

  “I suggest the wireless room at once, Captain.” Valcour’s voice was urgent.

  Captain Sohme was making an effort to get himself in hand. It had to come, then, this thing which Valcour had been warning him of after lunch… “Mr. Swithers, stay here with the deceased.”

  “Yes, sir. Shall we move him to his bunk?” Mr. Swithers, who originated few ideas, was very tenacious of it when he bore one.

  “Wouldn’t it be better if things were left until we could examine them?” Valcour said.

  “See that nothing, including the deceased, is touched, Mr. Swithers.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And clear this clutter.” Captain Sohme’s large hand inclusively indicated the remaining knotted little groups.

  “Yes, sir.”

  They started aft along the boat deck for the wireless shack, and Captain Sohme felt unhappiness resting emptily in the pit of his stomach. It had come, this bitter business called murder, like a pestilence upon his ship… “What do you expect to find in the wireless room?” he said.

  “Messages are usually taken down in duplicate, Captain.” Valcour opened the wireless-room door. They went inside. He closed the door, and said, “I believe that the man who did this would realize that too.”

  There was no duplicate. There was no pad of message blanks on the table in the wireless room at all. There were some new pads that had never been used in the rack.

  “What substitute have you for the wireless operator?” Valcour said. “We must have that message repeated at once.”

  The pit of Captain Sohme’s stomach was unhappier than ever. His thoughts would not coordinate. “What message, Valcour?”

  Valcour explained the bit of paper found between Mr. Gans’s thin, damp, tight-closed fingers. “I believe that message contained the description from headquarters of the man we’re after,” he said.

  “He killed Sparks to get it?”

  “To prevent me from getting it.”

  The immaculateness of the early vision was somewhat soured. “We must go to Mrs. Poole and demand that she tell us who this man is. I will not have a murderer loose on board this ship.”

  Valcour blocked the door. “Would it offend you if I were to ask that I handle Mrs. Poole alone? I dislike dramatics, but we are dealing with quicksilver. You have perhaps tried to pick up a piece of quicksilver, Captain?”

  It was no moment for metaphysics. “Yes, yes, but surely there is something to do?”

  “If we can get a repeat on that message which I think Gans had in his hand when he was killed, I believe the affair can be closed at once. You haven’t told me yet who your substitute wireless man is.”

  “We have none.”

  It was about him again: this fog which had so impalpably blanketed the case in strangeness. Valcour felt blinded in it. He wanted innumerable things: the resources which would have been offered by the police system had he been ashore, experts, instruments of precision, trained underlings, records… “Then we are cut off from communication with land,” he said.

  “Yes, Valcour, we are.”

  “We can of course communicate with passing ships by means of the international flag code?”

  “That is a laborious business. I think, however, that Mr. Swithers knows how to blink. I have watched him doing it at night when he was jabbering with Sparks on the bridge.”

  “Then he may understand wireless. If he’s familiar with the blinker he must know the Morse code. If he could get a message through at all…”

  “I will ask him at once.” Captain Sohme’s eyes were harried. “And if he can’t, Valcour?”

  “We still have Mrs. Poole.”

  “But should this crazy letter mean nothing to her?”

  Valcour was exceedingly grave. “There’s liable to be some more trouble, then,” he said.

  CHAPTER 7

  LAT. 33° 53' NORTH, LONG. 64° 39' WEST

  Valcour stood near the doorway after Captain Sohme had gone. He looked reflectively around the empty, brightly lighted wireless room. His reasoning was simple: the man who had strangled Mr. Gans had done so in order to destroy the message which Mr. Gans had been on the point of delivering. Of that much he felt certain. It was reasonable to suppose that the man had become aware of the contents of the message and had suspected their menace to himself. He could not have read the message on the unlighted deck. The most logical place for him to have read it was right there in the wireless room. Mr. Gans would hardly have handed it over for him to read, therefore he probably had read it while Mr. Gans had been taking it down. That would have placed the man alongside of the swivel chair clamped to the floor before the table.

  Valcour stared at the determined spot. He walked over and closely inspected the surface of the table. It was a curious, curious case, and his hands had never been so tied. He regretted that he had none of the implements necessary for the proper detection of fingerprints.

  There was a small bottle on the table, half filled with red ink. Its label was discolored where ink was smeared across it. It looked as if the bottle had been upset, stained, and then wiped dry. Valcour picked the bottle up and felt the label. It was still, very faintly, damp. A slight trace of red came off when he rubbed his finger across the smeared part of the label. He put the bottle back on the table and examined the table’s surface. One part seemed well and recently wiped. The ink bottle could have been upset there.

  A wastepaper basket under the table contained numerous torn and crumpled scraps of paper, but no rag or handkerchief stained with red ink, nor were there any stains of red in the basket or on any of its contents. He shoved the cork down carefully, wrapped the bottle in a piece of paper, and put it into his pocket. His back was to the door. He did not start when a voice coming from behind him said: “You are searching for clues, sir, by means of which to solve this crime?”

  It was a soft voice, tinged with an indefinable Latin accent; very precise, very well modulated. Valcour turned around.

  “Yes, Mr. Dumarque,” he said.

  Mr. Dumarque, with the heels of his shoes quite slender and very tall, and with his fine black lisle stockings showing between the shoe tops and his plain gray soft woolen knickerbockers, stood motionless in the doorway. Mr. Dumarque smiled slowly with his lips.

  “Crime has always interested me,” he said. “Especially should the crime be bizarre.”

  Valcour smiled back at him. “There is nothing bizarre about this one, Mr. Dumarque. I think that that poor devil out there was simply strangled.”
>
  Mr. Dumarque did not precisely sigh, but suggested the effect of having done so. “So I have been given to understand,” he said. “On the other hand, one finds traces of the bizarre in the crime’s entourage.”

  “You have reference to the people who surround it, rather than to its physical setting?”

  “Yes.” Mr. Dumarque, with sleepy eyes, gazed out onto the deck and then back again. “Mrs. Poole is bizarre. That very young, dark-eyed, rather beautifully featured Mr. Force is bizarre. I,” he concluded, accepting one of the cigarettes which Valcour offered him, “am bizarre.”

  Valcour continued smiling above a lighted match. “Why do you include young Force?” he said.

  “Have you remarked his hands?”

  “Not especially.”

  “Ah. Sometime you will remark his hands.”

  “Perhaps you have met Mr. Force previously to this voyage?”

  Mr. Dumarque trailed a thin line of smoke elegantly through the air. “On the contrary, it has not been my pleasure, or pain, to have met any person on board here previously to our sailing. In addition to being bizarre I am a recluse who observes, dissects, but does not mingle. I have come to dread the inevitable erasure of casual acquaintanceship’s soft patina by prolonging such chance meetings into friendships.” Mr. Dumarque inhaled deeply. “There should be no such thing, Mr. Valcour, as friendship. It is nothing but an institution for the coupling of compatible bores with whom the rest of the world has grown fatigued.”

  “I’m inclined to agree with you. When one thinks of Damon and Pythias—”

  “Let us not.” Mr. Dumarque’s eyes shot fleetingly toward heaven. “One dreads to think on what subjects they conversed after the first six months. You are somewhat iconoclastic yourself, Mr. Valcour.”

  “Not exactly; it’s just that I’ve been emptied of illusions.”

  “Ah—those.” Mr. Dumarque lightly touched his lips with the manicured tips of soft and very slender white fingers. “I would give one thousand pounds at this instant for the repossession of one single little illusion.”

  “I say, Valcour”—Captain Sohme had returned to the doorway—“Swithers says he only knows how to blink. He says if he could find somebody to run the damned set for him he probably could send and take down messages slowly, but he doesn’t know which of the damned switches to pull. And what about the deceased? We can’t let him lie out on deck all night. I don’t want the men and passengers looking at him any longer than is necessary. It is bad business.”

  “Coming right along, Captain.”

  Mr. Dumarque stepped out onto the deck. “We must continue our discussion later, Mr. Valcour,” he said.

  Valcour took the key from inside the wireless-room door, closed the door from the outside, locked it, and put the key in his pocket. Then he stared almost absently for a moment at Mr. Dumarque and said, “We will.”

  CHAPTER 8

  LAT. 33° 53' NORTH, LONG. 64° 39' WEST

  Young Swithers was alone with the dead body of young Gans. Swithers, who was totally unacquainted with it, did not like death, and with no audience any longer present his expression betrayed it. It was discomfort that he felt, rather than fear: a prickling, chilled discomfort.

  But there was an audience. Gans’s body with its strained staring eyes was an audience. Silly nonsense not moving the poor devil to his bunk…leave him staring on his back there up at the swinging stars, as flat and thin and as much a part of it as if he had been glued to the deck. A heavier wave struck the Eastern Bay’s quarter and she sank back with a soft sucking shuddering sound into its trough. Gans’s head moved slightly and Swithers felt like screaming. The Eastern Bay resumed her methodic gentle roll and Gans’s head, in its new position, stayed still.

  Captain Sohme and Valcour were coming along the deck, and Swithers started aft gratefully to meet them.

  “His head moved,” Swithers said. “I suppose it was just that heavy roll, but his head just moved.”

  Valcour placed a friendly hand on Swithers’s shoulder. “It was the heavy roll,” he said. “Mr. Gans is dead.”

  Captain Sohme himself felt better at Valcour’s quiet and reassuring voice. There was no orderliness in a person once pronounced dead not being dead. “Let us get on with this,” he said.

  Valcour took a small flashlight from his coat pocket and knelt beside the body. He examined the thin cold hands and could find no trace of red ink on either of them. He removed a handkerchief from the jacket’s breast pocket. It showed no stain, nor were there other handkerchiefs in any other of the pockets.

  He examined the bruise marks on the body’s neck, and felt reasonably satisfied that the man had been standing behind Gans when he had strangled him. It was probable that Gans had been leaning against the rail, staring, perhaps, at something that the man had pointed out to him. There was, on the skin of the neck, no trace of red ink.

  Gans’s uniform was not especially mussed. Valcour decided there hadn’t been much of a struggle. He gently felt the body’s upper arms. They were weak and pipelike, with not much force in them to put up a struggle. Gans wouldn’t have had much of a chance against even a moderately strong man. Funny that the man hadn’t thrown Gans’s body overboard…interrupted, of course: that Sidderby woman’s approach just before her scream. There was nothing of interest on the surrounding deck, or on the near-by sections of the rail.

  “I wonder who was the last person to be with him,” Valcour said.

  “I guess that I was, sir.”

  Valcour looked at Swithers’s worried, unhappy young face.

  “When was this, Mr. Swithers?”

  “Well, I was with him in his shack up to two bells.”

  “Talking?”

  “Talking.” (It was incredible that shortly over a brief hour ago that poor flat thing there on the deck had been talking.)

  “About anything special?”

  “Just a lot of bull, sir.”

  “How did he seem?”

  “Seem?”

  “Yes, was he natural—not nervous, or depressed, or ill or anything?”

  “Just natural, sir. We were”—young Swithers, because of a nasty thick feeling that was bothering his throat, found a momentary difficulty in pronouncing the words—“just talking. Same as usual.”

  “And when you left him at nine o’clock he was quite all right?”

  “Yes.” Monosyllables were easiest.

  “Did anyone else come into the wireless room while you were there with him?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know of anyone who went in later, after you had left?”

  “No.”

  “See anyone hanging around outside of it when you went out?”

  “No.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Turned right in and went to sleep, sir.” (Damn pig to sleep while Sparks was out on deck in darkness being made dead!)

  “Mr. Gans kept the wireless-room door unlocked, didn’t he? I notice there was a key in it. Did he ever use it?”

  “Only in port, sir.”

  “Then anyone could have gone in after you left who wanted to?”

  “Yes, but who would?” That lousy stuff in his throat was getting thicker. “No one ever did. Except me.”

  Valcour said carefully, “People didn’t like Mr. Gans?”

  “Oh sure; they just didn’t bother. Except me.”

  “Mr. Gans had no one on board who actively disliked him?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Swithers.” Valcour’s voice was very gentle. “It is a detestably pitiable thing.”

  “You think he was killed, Mr. Valcour, don’t you, sir?”

  “Yes, Mr. Swithers, I do.”

  Young Swithers thought hard for a moment. “It’s a good thing,” he said.

  Captain Sohme was startled into a snort, and Valcour said sharply, “What?”

  “It’s a good thing,” young Swithers repeated, trying to focus his eyes a little more clearly on
that flat white splash on the deck, and not being able to, “that the louse who did it can’t get off the ship.”

  CHAPTER 9

  LAT. 33° 54' NORTH, LONG. 64° 38' WEST

  Miss Sidderby was still too excited to taste the essence of her shock. She still skimmed the surface of it, carrying with her, on its exciting enough if superficial surface, the other passengers who were with her in the lounge. Her younger sister was beside her, securely fringed by the limelight, and Mr. Stickney had had the initiative to collar a steward and procure for her a lemonade laced with rum. He, too, was beside her and graciously fringed by the limelight.

  The Pooles and Sanfords were in near-by chairs, and young Mr. Force was somewhat enveloped by Mr. Wright, whose pudginess overflowed from the arm of Mr. Force’s chair, on which he was resting. Lieutenant Valcour, they knew, was out on deck and busy. It did not occur at the moment to any of them that, with the exception of Valcour, Mr. Dumarque was the only absentee from their list. Later, of course, when surfaces had stopped being skimmed…

  Perhaps to vary the monotony of repetition, Miss Sidderby discovered several new reactions and effects on her third recounting of her experience. Valcour stood just outside the open doorway of the little lounge and listened. With the exception of Mrs. Poole, everyone was looking at Miss Sidderby. Mrs. Poole wasn’t. She was looking at Valcour, where he stood out there just on the fringe of darkness, and Valcour, although his ears were attending to Miss Sidderby, was looking at her. Across the twenty-odd feet or so of the little lounge they looked, without smiling, at each other.

  Miss Sidderby brought her third version to a close with her scream, and Valcour tabulated two inconsequential (inconsequential because of their necessary obviousness) grains from the chaff: the faint sound of something falling—Gans’s body, of course—which had dragged Miss Sidderby from her self-alleged musings on astronomy; and the equally faint impression of running footsteps, which might naturally have been the strangler clearing out when startled by her astronomical approach. Valcour felt that there was no value to her tale, except for the slender confirmation that it gave of things which he already believed must have been.