Murder by Latitude

by Rufus King

  “Thank you, Miss Sidderby. We won’t have to ask you anything else—perhaps if you went with your sister to your cabin and rested for a while until supper…?” Mr. Valcour was talking so very fast, and Ella was lifting her from the chair, and her body was shaking, shaking, shaking, and her eyes, which were so cold, would surely melt in so much blinding hotness—and Mr. Valcour was saying to Ella, “If there is anything we can do to help, Miss Sidderby?”—and Mrs. Sanford was standing too, and drifting after her like a soft thick cloud, and somebody (it couldn’t be herself) was screaming, “Don’t let her come, Ella—don’t let her come!”…“No, no darling—she shan’t, I promise you she shan’t”…and Ella was turning just when they went through the door and saying, with a bitter hard little laugh such as she’d never heard her use before, “Our holiday,” and cold wet drizzle met them as they closed the door.

  “Damn it, Valcour, but surely we are through here? That little woman, she has had me crying.” Captain Sohme, who cried whenever and wherever he felt like it, took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose soundly.

  Valcour said nothing for a moment. He was staring at Mrs. Sanford, who was sitting in her chair again. He did not like the color of her skin. There seemed to be no blood beneath it at all.

  “Well, Mr. Valcour,” she said, “is there nothing that you care to ask me?”

  “Did you stay in your cabin, Mrs. Sanford, after Miss Sidderby had left it?”

  “Yes, Mr. Valcour. I stayed there until people started running past my door, and I followed them upstairs.”

  “Then there’s nothing to ask, Mrs. Sanford.”

  She stood up heavily. Her body was heavy, and everything about her looked very old. “It may seem funny to you,” she said, as she walked with feet that were weights to the door, “but I’m on a holiday, too.”

  CHAPTER 34

  LAT. 35° 12' NORTH, LONG. 64° 30' WEST

  Telegram from Commissioner of the New York Police Department to government radio station at Cape Hatteras:

  AS CHECK ON OUR TELEPHONE COMMUNICATION OF PAST HOUR COMMA NEW YORK AGENTS MERCANTILE TRANSPORT LINE ESTIMATE PROBABLE LOCATION SS EASTERN BAY LATITUDE 35 DEGREES 30 MINUTES NORTH LONGITUDE 64 DEGREES ZERO MINUTES WEST STOP CODE MESSAGE ADDRESSED TO LIEUTENANT VALCOUR TO BE TRANSMITTED BY VISUAL SIGNAL OR OTHERWISE BY ANY VESSEL SIGHTING SS EASTERN BAY FOLLOWS QUOTE CABKA LKCLB 5513O TTGYR IILHS RPEZZ UNQUOTE STOP

  * * * *

  The tea was hot, scaldingly so, and the biscuits, although nothing to cause a real chef anything to worry about, were numerous and substantial. A large platterful rested on the table by his side, and Valcour attacked them systematically. Captain Sohme, in no mood for either tea or biscuits but evacuating them absently just the same, brooded heavily in his chair (they were in Captain Sohme’s cabin) and waited with poor patience for the arrival of Mr. Swithers who was, the steward had given him to understand, on the point of completing his search for the stolen gold.

  “I think we should put that Sanford man immediately in irons,” he said.

  “On what grounds, Captain?”

  Captain Sohme, who had almost reached the point where he had to have somebody in irons or burst, was indifferent to grounds. “Because I do not believe a word he said; and guilt, Valcour, was written all over his face.”

  “There is no evidence against him at all, Captain. Take my advice and go easy for a while longer. This business is coming to a head. I can feel it as definitely as a man who is rheumatic can feel the approach of a storm. There is a tenseness in the air.” He shrugged. “It is unpleasant. It is dangerous. And until we discover the true significance of why that wheel was lashed, we must wait. I do not refer to a personal menace to any individual, but to a sense of danger to this ship itself and to every person on her.”

  Captain Sohme was jolted into the fullest attention. “What do you mean, Valcour?”

  Valcour gestured helplessly. “Captain, I don’t know. That is a thing which falls under your department and not mine. I can be of no help to you there.”

  “But what could you mean, Valcour? This ship is well found—she is young for the age of ships—I have never found her anything but sturdy and dependable. I have taken her through two gales, and although I do not believe we have any slant of fair weather ahead of us, there is nothing to indicate any cause for alarm. For another day—possibly two—we shall have overcast skies—some drizzle—some mist—calm seas—disagreeable, maybe, but safe as a mill pond. We are pursuing our course steadily. What do you mean, Valcour?”

  “Why was that wheel lashed, Captain?”

  “Did we not decide it was because this thief should want the time to rob the safe?”

  “That isn’t the reason.”

  The bit of biscuit, which Captain Sohme had been absently munching, ended up on his bunk. “Then dear God alive, man, what is?”

  “We can do nothing but wait.”

  “We can go mad while we are doing that—Come in!”

  Captain Sohme knew from his first look at young Swithers’s face, as Swithers came inside and closed the door, that there was no gold. It was not the sort of face that comes bearing tidings of refound gold.

  “Nothing doing, Captain,” young Swithers said.

  “Gott!”

  “We carried the search into each department, Captain, as well as the passengers’ quarters and the decks.”

  “Yes, yes, Mr. Swithers. I am sure that you did your best.”

  Young Swithers laughed nervously. “Chips was robbed, too.”

  “The carpenter?” Valcour said sharply.

  “Yes, sir. He had a lump of sailmaker’s wax stolen from him.”

  “When?”

  “Guess it must have been sometime this morning, Mr. Valcour.” Young Swithers’s fine eyes clouded slightly. “He remembers leaving it in Gans’s cabin after he finished sewing the canvas. He remembers leaving it right on the wash basin, and when he went back to get it this afternoon it was gone. Some theft, Mr. Valcour.”

  “Gentlemen, let us not bother with trifles!” Captain Sohme, goldless, was getting shooting pains in his head. His accurate vision of the reception that would be accorded him by the owners when he announced that (among all the other wretched things which had cursed this passage) he had left the safe door open and the ship’s money had been stolen was a little too painful to bear.

  A silver thimble—a pair of sewing scissors—a lump of sailmaker’s wax…why? why? A will is signed and young Ted Poole, almost so instantly afterward, is dead…of what? how? why? Some gold is stolen and the wheel is lashed and Mr. Sanford, as a witness for his alibi, triumphantly offers a man who is dead—and the end, Valcour told himself, plunging deep into foggy futility, was far from being yet. “We must bother with trifles, Captain,” he said. “If we don’t, there’s nothing left to bother with at all. Mr. Gans’s cabin was unlocked all day, Mr. Swithers?”

  “There isn’t any lock on it, sir. There’s just a bolt on the inside of the door.”

  “Then anybody could have gone into it?”

  “Yes, Mr. Valcour, anybody.”

  “And stolen,” Valcour said reflectively, “a lump of sailmaker’s wax.”

  “Shall we keep on with the search, Captain? We’ve looked in about every place there is.”

  “Why not defer it for a while?” Valcour said. Captain Sohme’s head was splitting, and the important immediate question, beyond either lost gold or anything else, was whether to take two or three tablets of aspirin. “Yes, yes, Valcour, for the present we will defer it. That will be all, thank you, Mr. Swithers.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  The door closed behind young Swithers, and Captain Sohme got heavily up from his chair. “My head hurts me like the devil, Valcour,” he said. “I am going to take three pills of aspirin at the least.” He walked over to the locker and opened its door. “No, Valcour, I do not feel so good—Dear God in heaven, man, but here it is!” Gold coins slipped from his plunging fingers to the fl
oor. “Valcour! Valcour!” His relief sent great laughter booming through the little room. Valcour was beside him, picking up the ten- and twenty-dollar gold pieces that had dropped to the floor, and adding them to the little mound piled carelessly on the locker’s shelf. “Call back Swithers, will you please, Valcour, and we will tell him that no longer need there be any search. Quick, Valcour, I am as happy and as excited as a child.”

  Valcour stood quite still for a moment. He stared at the loose little heap of gold. “I’m going to ask you to say nothing about this for a while, Captain.”

  “About what, man?” Captain Sohme’s burst of joy was subsiding into a calm contentment, and the pains in his head were completely gone.

  “About the fact that the gold has been found.”

  “But why, Valcour, why?”

  “Because I still want a leverage and an ostensible reason that will permit me personally to search the passengers’ cabins tonight. Will you forgive me for not expanding?”

  “Just as you wish, Valcour.” Now that he had the ship’s money again, Captain Sohme felt a tolerant and immeasurable relief. Other things had been out of his control, but the loss of the money had resulted from nothing but bad carelessness. “I will lock it up in the safe and we will say nothing about it at all.” He opened the safe door and started transferring the gold in large handfuls. “I shall count it later and see that it is all there. Why, Valcour, should anyone be such a damn fool as to do this crazy thing?”

  “I was wondering when you’d get to that.”

  “It’s very nice to get it back again, but it is beyond reason.”

  “Nothing, Captain, that has occurred on this trip is beyond reason. What was that gold in?”

  “In?”

  “Yes—it wasn’t left lying loose in the safe, was it?”

  “No, there should be a sack—a small canvas sack—”

  “Is there?”

  “Why no, Valcour—you are right, that sack is gone.” Gold dazzled his eyes again. “Does it matter?”

  Valcour’s voice was very quiet. “Yes,” he said, “I think it matters.”

  CHAPTER 35

  LAT. 35° 14' NORTH, LONG. 65° 30' WEST

  No stars or moonlight filtered through the humid murk, and the sea was an enigmatic glass that broke with delicate crashes before the ship’s sharp-pressing stem. One shaded lamp was the only cabin light that Mrs. Poole had turned on, and she sat, beyond its radius, in black. A startlingly white handkerchief rested like a petal on her black crepe-de-chine-covered lap. She wore, Valcour imagined, what had been intended for an evening dress and which, through some trick of additions about the shoulders, had been given an effect of deep mourning.

  She had sent her maid from the cabin at Valcour’s request. They were alone in it, and Ted’s young body was sheeted on the lower bunk as far up as his chin, and his profile, carved from cold hard wax and colorless, was nothing human.

  “He doesn’t look the same at all,” she said. She could think of no reason for it—this emptiness. Just a little while ago she had been filled with him; each moment of day and night her heart, her mind, her body had been filled with him. She stared at well-carved wax and felt empty. “It’s because he isn’t moving.”

  “You don’t mind talking about him, Mrs. Poole?”

  She looked at him queerly. “No, Mr. Valcour,” she said, and added, “I wish that I did.”

  “Then will you tell me, please, whether Mr. Poole said anything to you last night as to how he spent the evening?”

  “Why no—how did he?”

  “Mr. Sanford has stated that he talked with him for quite a while up by the bows. Mr. Poole said nothing about it?”

  “I don’t believe so. I don’t think it would have struck him as anything important, do you? We naturally talked for quite a while about Mr. Gans, but I don’t think we talked about anything else.”

  “I dislike bothering you at such a moment, but have you that copy of the will which Captain Sohme brought you this afternoon?”

  “It’s there, Mr. Valcour—that paper on the rack above the basin. I had intended having it buried with Ted. My ideas, for a while, were rather hysterical, Mr. Valcour.”

  “You have changed your mind, Mrs. Poole?”

  “I think it seems a little absurd, don’t you? Gestures like that—hysterical gestures—should be spontaneous and acted upon immediately. They seem stupid if you don’t do them right away, and think about them.” Her lovely agate eyes returned to carved wax. “That isn’t Ted,” she said.

  “What are you going to do with the will, Mrs. Poole?”

  “It’s useless, isn’t it? If you’ll give it to me, please, I’ll tear it up.”

  “Certainly, Mrs. Poole.”

  Valcour stood up and went over to the wash-stand. He took the will and gave it to Mrs. Poole. The rip of paper was loud in the quiet room. “It was too bad to have bothered you about it, Mr. Valcour,” she said. “Do you mind throwing these out of that porthole?”

  He took the scraps of paper from her, and they were momentarily white against black windless reaches of the murky night. He felt incensed at her hardness, as he always felt whenever he encountered strange hardnesses in human behavior. He could never quite get over being a little astonished about it. He went back to the chair and sat down again.

  “I understand, Mrs. Poole, from a remark you made last night, that there is a will on file in your lawyer’s office. I am correct in supposing that, now that this will is torn up, the one in New York is again effective?”

  “I see no reason why it shouldn’t be.”

  “When was it drawn, Mrs. Poole?”

  “Quite a while ago.” …That incredible, unrecognizable thing on the bunk that had once been Ted…

  “How many years, about?”

  “About ten or so, Mr. Valcour. There has been no occasion to alter it since then—until this—”

  “Do you remember what its provisions were, Mrs. Poole?”

  “Perfectly. I’m leaving the estate to my family. I haven’t the slightest idea who half of them are. I’ve nothing closer than a third or fourth cousin or two whom I know about. That will be entirely up to the executors, won’t it, Mr. Valcour?” …The world was of wax and she alone was alive in it. Why was it everything she touched, everything that all her life which she had ever touched had turned to wax?… That story (in the Bible?) about a pillar of salt—she found herself wondering, with insane seriousness, whether Lot’s wife were a blond…

  “Are there no personal, or specific, bequests that you remember?” Valcour was saying.

  Her eyelids contracted a little, and Lot’s wife changed into a buzzing gnat. “There are, Mr. Valcour.” She tried hard to restrain her impatience; it was alone that she wanted to be, to close this chapter headed “Ted.”

  “The only large one is a bequest for Toody.” She had aged fifty years since (when was it?) lunch, and nothing would bring her back her youth again but swift submersion of that incredible waxen thing beneath the waters—she was as passionately eager now for haste as she had been, during her first intoxicating hour of hysteria, for delay.

  “Would either Toody or her aunt have any way of finding out about this bequest, Mrs. Poole?”

  “I think—I remember them saying something years ago about an aunt having called at the office one day… Yes, that was it, Mr. Valcour—the aunt wanted to know whether any definite provision had been made for Toody in case anything were to happen to me.”… You couldn’t change your mind, could you, about a thing like that? You couldn’t, she wanted to know, go up to Captain Sohme and say: “Quickly, quickly, you must stop the ship and do it—I want it over with—I want it quickly and forever over with—now—”

  “But surely, Mrs. Poole, the lawyers would not advise her as to the contents of your will?”

  “I don’t believe they did. On the other hand, I had given them very explicit instructions that I didn’t want to be bothered any more about the matter, and they told
me they were afraid the aunt would force herself on me—make a scene, I believe they called it. At any rate they simply reassured the woman that Toody was taken care of. I think they even went so far as to say ‘handsomely.’ But I’m certain they weren’t specific.” (If that curtain were not drawn instantly across the bunk, she intended to scream.) “Would you think it rude of me, Mr. Valcour, if I suggested that we continue this in the morning?”

  Valcour stood up. There was a queer, speculative look in his eyes. “I don’t think we need touch upon the subject again,” he said. He went to the door. “I hope that you will get some rest tonight, Mrs. Poole. You look tired.”

  Her smile was molded steel. Old—old—old—not tired—she wanted to yell it at him loudly. “Thank you, Mr. Valcour,” she said.