Murder by Latitude

by Rufus King

  “You can point until you’re sick, Valcour, but you’ll never do it.”

  “You’re a business man, aren’t you, Mr. Stickney?”

  “I’ll say I am.”

  “Then why adopt the attitude of an hysterical woman?”

  “What?” The word was a shout.

  “Well, aren’t you?”

  “What in the hell—excuse me, ladies—are you clean crazy, Valcour?”

  “Almost.” Valcour smiled pleasantly. “We’ll all be crazy in a day or two if this business isn’t cleared up. What is the reason for your not wanting it to be cleared up, Mr. Stickney?”

  “Mad—he’s cuckoo—”

  “Completely; but apart from that, Mr. Stickney, why, if you do want it cleared up, won’t you help us?”

  “How in the—”

  “Hell,” said Miss Sidderby. “You might just as well say it, Mr. Stickney. I know how dreadfully hard it is, in moments of stress, to keep repressed. I’m sure that Mrs. Sanford and Ella won’t mind, in view of the distressing circumstances, if you indulge in—well, a few outlets.”

  Captain Sohme was staring at Miss Sidderby’s pale little face with a thunderstruck look amounting almost to adoration, and Mr. Stickney was saying stiffly, “I don’t have to say hell, I’m sure. What I’m getting at is how in the hell I can help in getting this mess cleared up.”

  “You can do so,” Valcour said, “by dropping this attitude of purposeless belligerence and by eliminating yourself as one of the suspects.”

  Mr. Stickney clamped his teeth down on the cigarette and a small portion of his tongue. “Hell!” he said, and Mrs. Sanford, for the third time, drew in a sharp breath and closed her eyes. “All right, Valcour, start right ahead and pin this stuff on me.”

  Valcour’s smile continued pleasant. “I wish that I could,” he said. “Not from any personal animosity to you, Mr. Stickney, but in order to have the unpleasant affair settled. None of us likes to know that somewhere on this ship there is a person so utterly debased as to have committed that filthy crime.” His voice went carefully on through the gray stillness, like a curious weapon that was reaching for its target. “Committed it, and watched its pitiable result this morning. People who commit crimes like that must have a very limited vision. If they were to think for a single minute of the consequences, I don’t believe they would ever commit them.”

  Mr. Dumarque’s voice sifted softly from his distant corner. “Surely, Mr. Valcour, you are not claiming that any amount of advance thinking concerning the electric chair has ever proven to be a deterrent to murder?”

  “I am not referring to the consequences to the criminal, Mr. Dumarque.”

  “But of course not.” Mr. Dumarque’s smile was a pale flash. “I am stupid. You are picturing the scene when, as in so many of your popular ballads during a past decade, the news was broken.”

  “Yes, Mr. Dumarque. I am thinking of the picture, as you call it, when the family and friends of Mr. Gans are informed that, because he momentarily obstructed some egotistical plan or desire, the life was choked out of his body and his body, bundled in canvas, was chucked for shark food into the sea. That’s a picture for Gans’s family and friends to remember—to go to sleep with—to wake up and live with every wretched day of their lives. Gans, you see, was lucky. It might have happened to some member of his family or to a friend, instead of to himself.”

  “You will forgive me, my dear Valcour, if my remark appeared in bad taste. I was viewing the subject academically.”

  “Wicked man—that wicked, wicked man,” Mrs. Sanford was muttering, and Mr. Sanford, in whispered twitters, was saying, “Be still, Sue—be still—I beg of you be still—”

  “And so as I said,” Valcour’s voice dominated the murmur, “everything is known on board a ship. Our community is like the most intimate of little villages, and being cut off entirely from our normal daily contacts and from broader affairs, we naturally focus sharply upon ourselves, our own little doings. That telepathy for gossip which is reputed to exist so acutely in small country communities becomes antiquated when compared with the system thriving on a ship: Miss Sidderby loses a thimble and a pair of sewing scissors, and it becomes important news—Mrs. Poole makes a will and an Extra is published about it—Mr. Dumarque finds conversing at night with one of the engine crew’s oilers amusing—Mr. Force has a taste for French literature and reads it in the original, which is annoying, when the rest of us pick up his books and are unable to translate them—Mr. Wright drinks straight gin in his cabin before going to sleep in order, theoretically, to put himself to sleep but really because (everyone else believes) he’s a victim of dipsomania—you see what I mean?”

  “Quite,” said Mr. Wright, not unbitterly, “but what are you driving at?”

  “Just the lack of necessity for going into the facts on which this inquiry is based in detail. They are already familiar to all of us. We will begin by establishing as clearly as possible the location of each of us for the thirty minutes or so preceding Miss Sidderby’s scream. That was at nine thirty-three last night. I looked at my watch just before leaving the bridge table. Mr. Swithers has testified that he left Mr. Gans in the wireless room at nine o’clock. It will simplify matters a good deal if each of you will let us know what you were doing between those periods. How about it, Mr. Stickney?”

  Mr. Stickney, with a why-pick-on-me-first look, cleared his throat. “Starting at nine?”

  “Yes, please; at nine.”

  “Well, at the risk of being set down as slated for a drunkard’s grave, I’ll admit that Charley had just brought me a highball in the smoking saloon. ‘Two bells, Mr. Stickney,’ I remember him saying—that’s how I know it was nine, see? And I said, ‘Well, you must have been thinking about bells instead of fingers, Charley, when you mixed this drink—go raise it to ten o’clock.’ Well, Charley’s sort of dumb when it comes to catching hot ones like that, so I had to explain it to him, see? Then Charley went off to shoot some more poison into the highball.”

  “You stayed in there, Mr. Stickney?”

  “Yes. What would I leave for?”

  “Was anyone else in there with you?”

  “Nobody but Sanford over there. He came in for a minute, and I might add, seeing as how we’re letting our back hair down, for a shot of straight rye.” (“Horace!”—“Hush, Sue—just a little lapse—I will explain—all shall be explained.”)

  “Was Charley long in fixing the highball?”

  “No—two minutes, I guess, and a couple of minutes for Sanford’s pony.”

  “That carries you up to about five minutes past nine. Did Mr. Sanford stay with you while you finished your highball?”

  “No. He sank his pony and went right out on deck.”

  “You still stayed in the smoking room?”

  “Sure. What would I leave for?”

  “Was Charley with you?”

  “Charley was out in the pantry shooting craps with the chief steward. He’d only come when I’d ring.”

  “Did you?”

  “Ring?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll say I rang.”

  “How frequently, Mr. Stickney?—if you don’t mind letting us know.”

  “Proud to. Three times. Three highballs, brother, and not out.”

  “At fairly regular intervals?”

  “Like clockwork.”

  “Then the last highball must have coincided fairly well with Miss Sidderby’s scream?”

  “I’ll say it did. My throat’s still sore from having to make up its mind whether to swallow or spit.”

  “What did you do, besides choking, when you heard that scream, Mr. Stickney?”

  “Beat it right out on deck.”

  “By the starboard or port door?”

  “Starboard.”

  “The side on which Mr. Gans’s body was found.”

  “Check.”

  “Now the smoking-saloon door is about fifty feet aft of that spot. When you went on dec
k, Mr. Stickney, did you see anyone?”

  “No.”

  Valcour stared at him curiously. “What is it that you do not care to add to that, Mr. Stickney?”

  “What makes you think I should add something, Valcour?”

  “Your manner.”

  “Well, I did hear the port door of the smoking saloon open and slam shut, just before I hit the deck.”

  “Did you look back to see who it was?”

  “Yes; I looked back.”

  “Who was it, Mr. Stickney?”

  “You’ll think I’m crazy, Valcour.”

  “Well, if I do, it will only even things up.”

  “I didn’t see anybody, but I did see a hand.”

  “Was there anything peculiar about it?”

  “Only the ring.”

  “Ring?”

  “One of those mummified scarab rings.”

  “In fact,” Mr. Dumarque said softly, “my ring.”

  CHAPTER 29

  LAT. 35° 12' NORTH, LONG. 64° 29' WEST

  “Which brings us,” Valcour smiled, “to Mr. Dumarque.”

  “And,” Mr. Dumarque murmured, “to his mummified ring.”

  “You have an explanation, I suppose?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.” Mr. Dumarque’s soft voice, with its indefinable Latin accent, sifted clearly through the stillness. “You are familiar, my dear Valcour, with the difficulty of locating exactly any sudden sound at night, when one is at sea? A general direction, of course—but that is all.”

  “Yes, Mr. Dumarque?”

  “So it was with me, upon hearing Miss Sidderby’s compelling scream. It was, if Miss Sidderby will forgive me, a disembodied sound, and I assure you that it seemed to be coming from directly on top of me.”

  “Which naturally confused you.”

  “Yes, my dear Valcour, as you state so succinctly, the astonishing fact confused me.”

  “Just where were you at the time, Mr. Dumarque?”

  “Reclining in a chair on the aft deck, Mr. Valcour.”

  Miss Sidderby drew in her breath sharply, and stared with wide eyes directly at Mr. Dumarque. Her lips tightened into a thin line.

  “The aft portion of the boat deck, or of the main deck, Mr. Dumarque?”

  “The boat deck, Mr. Valcour.” Mr. Dumarque smiled faintly. “I could scarcely, unless winged like Mercury, have reached the smoking saloon door in time to astonish Mr. Stickney with my mummified ring had I been seated on the main deck.”

  “Flow long had you been sitting there, Mr. Dumarque?”

  “Since immediately after supper.”

  “Alone?”

  “I prefer not to say.”

  “That is of course as you think best.”

  “Well, I’ll say,” said Mrs. Sanford.

  Mr. Dumarque, with the tips of his white fingers, kissed his reputation into shreds. “I was afraid, dear lady, that you would.”

  “He was sitting there talking,” Mrs. Sanford went on, “with that dirty oiler.”

  Captain Sohme was startled into a “That is against regulations.”

  “So I presumed, Captain, which is why I did not care to mention the matter. I should have stated, in fact, that I had been sitting there quite alone, were it not for a premonition that Mrs. Sanford had so expertly observed us as she passed.”

  “I cannot have oilers sitting on deck with passengers. Really, Mr. Dumarque, you astonish me. Why sit with oilers?”

  “Why not? Have you ever sat with one, sir?”

  “Dear God, no.”

  “Then you are a very fortunate man. You still have something left you in life to look forward to. My own poor emotions are odorless flowers that no amount of artificial perfuming will make truly fragrant again. Yes, Mrs. Sanford”—Mr. Dumarque just beat her to it—“I am a wicked, wicked man.”

  “What was this oiler’s name?” Captain Sohme was only agreeable to one idea at a time, and the one thing he wanted at the moment was to get that oiler up on the carpet.

  “I wasn’t aware, Captain, that he had one. I rarely bother with names, unless I have to dine more than once with a person. But aren’t we blinding ourselves with trifles? Let us advance upon the mountains, my dear Valcour. My distaste for the electric chair amounts almost to a vice.”

  “Our advance is somewhat limited, isn’t it?” Valcour said. “You left us with the scream coming down on the top of your head.”

  “Ah yes. It lifted me almost bodily from the chair, and for several seconds I was transformed into a freshly decapitated hen. It was, I believe, during that brief and astonishing phase that I opened the smoking-saloon door, exhibited my mummified ring (I shall always, from now on, think of it as such) for Mr. Stickney’s bewilderment, and then permitted the door to slam shut again.”

  “You saw Mr. Stickney when you opened the door?”

  “I did, and realized at once that that shriek,” Mr. Dumarque bowed gracefully in Mr. Stickney’s direction, “could never, under any conceivable circumstances, have emanated from him.”

  “Yes?”

  Mr. Dumarque circled a slender hand in the air. “I searched elsewhere.”

  “Did you get to the starboard side of the boat deck, where the body was lying, by going aft or forward?”

  Mr. Dumarque hesitated slightly, smiled, and then said, “Forward.”

  “You met someone?”

  “Decisively. I was running, you see, and Mr. Wright was running, too.”

  Valcour paused for a moment and then said, “In which direction was Mr. Wright running?”

  “Inasmuch as we collided, my dear Valcour, my impression is that Mr. Wright must have been running in the opposite direction from myself.”

  “Mr. Wright was running aft?”

  “Aft.”

  “About where did this collision take place?”

  “Just before one reaches the forward end of the port side, I should say.”

  “Did either of you say anything?” Valcour said carefully.

  “I believe so. I personally rarely miss an opportunity for speaking. We were both rather upset.”

  “Do you remember what was said, Mr. Dumarque?”

  “Always, my dear Valcour. It is a habit that I was cursed with at birth. My worst nightmares are inevitably composed of the preceding day’s conversations. I believe that my opening remark was an exclamation, due to Mr. Wright’s shoulder having just come into violent contact with my chest. It was”—Mr. Dumarque smiled reassuringly at Mrs. Sanford—“either ‘Ah!’ or ‘Ha!’ Mr. Wright, if I remember correctly, audibly listed several important members of the—but I am sure that that is inconsequent to this investigation.”

  “But was nothing said, Mr. Dumarque?”

  “We did not, as you can imagine, actually stand there and converse. I was myself still under the spell of that shocking scream. We were together only during that brief period which it took to straighten ourselves out. Mr. Wright made only one lucid remark that I could recall.”

  “Yes?”

  “‘Somebody,’ Mr. Wright said—the word, of course, was not precisely ‘body’—‘just pulled my asterisked cap down over my eyes.’”

  CHAPTER 30

  LAT. 35° 12' NORTH, LONG. 64° 29' WEST

  Cable from port authorities at Bermuda to Commissioner of the New York Police Department:

  WEATHER CONDITIONS EXISTING WITHIN WIDELY

  EXTENDED AREA OF PRESENT PROBABLE LOCATION SS EASTERN BAY REPORTED AS HEAVILY OVERCAST WITH LARGE AREAS FOG AND DRIZZLE STOP REGRET ANY ATTEMPT TO LOCATE SS EASTERN BAY BY AIRPLANE FROM THIS BASE WOULD BE COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE

  * * * *

  “Why didn’t you mention that fact to us before, Mr. Wright?” Valcour said.

  Mr. Wright, with a handkerchief, removed some of the shininess from his pudgy face. He smiled weakly about the saloon. “After I got over being mad about it,” he said, “it seemed kind of foolish.”

  “But surely you must have realized the importance of it, Mr. Wright?
”

  “Well now, come to think of it, maybe I did.”

  “You saw who it was who did it?”

  “No, sir. I was sort of—well, mooning, I guess you’d call it, over the rail, and the first thing I knew some smart alec just reached and pulled my cap down over my face so I couldn’t see a blessed thing.” He cast a pair of first-class sheep’s eyes towards the ladies. “I get kind of sentimental at night.”

  “Didn’t you hear anybody approaching you?”

  “Well now, sir, I was all wrapped up in my thoughts.”

  “I don’t understand this, Mr. Wright.”

  “Well, I should feel foolish if I had to tell you what I was thinking about, Mr. Valcour—”

  “No, I don’t mean that. Just where were you standing at the rail?”

  “Right in the corner of it, up front.”

  “On the port side?”

  “That’s always been a mite confusing to me, Mr. Valcour—this port and starboard business, sir.”

  “Was it the corner opposite to the side on which the body was found?”

  “Yes, it was that all right.”

  “Then what I don’t understand is this: we will momentarily take it for granted that the person who pulled your cap down had just finished strangling Mr. Gans, had heard or seen Miss Sidderby coming forward along the starboard side of the deck, and was making his escape by going around to the port side. Why should he stop to go over to the corner where you were standing and pull your cap down? Your back was toward him, wasn’t it, if you were leaning on the rail?”

  Mr. Wright’s blush was plainly visible even in the dim obscure light. “If you must know,” he said, “I was singing.”

  “Singing?”

  Mr. Wright went the whole hog. “With gestures.”

  It was a little confusing. “Singing, Mr. Wright, with gestures?”

  “Yes, sir. You see, I don’t get many chances to sing right out loud. I haven’t got what anybody would call a real good voice, and when I let it out it’s usually in the vestibule of a train, say, where there’s a lot of other noises, or maybe in the woods someplace, or like last night on the corner of the deck where there wasn’t anybody it would bother.”