Murder by Latitude

by Rufus King

  “Good-night, Mrs. Poole.”

  “Good-night, Mr. Valcour.”

  He went outside and closed the door. He beckoned to Anna Wickstod who was leaning passively against the wall of the passage. She moved with deliberate steps to him and stopped.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You are spending the night with Mrs. Poole?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are you afraid of a gun?”

  “No, sir. In the country where I come from we have guns.”

  “Then take this.”

  Valcour took a small flat automatic from his pocket and gave it to her. She held it in the palm of her hand and stared at it with stolid curiosity. “You know how it works?” he said.

  “Yes, sir. This is the safety catch.”

  “There is no need for alarming Mrs. Poole. Have you a place to keep it?”

  Anna Wickstod turned her back. She stooped and raised her dress and an elastic snapped distinctly in the silence of the passage.

  “What is it I am to be afraid for, sir?” she said.

  “Of anyone,” Valcour said quietly, “who attempts to injure Mrs. Poole.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You are not nervous?”

  By stretching the imagination her lips could have been said to smile. “I have lived with her for twenty years.”

  “You’ll bolt the door?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good-night.”

  “Good-night, sir.”

  She watched him until he had disappeared at the turn of the passage. She opened the cabin door and went inside. She closed the door and bolted it. She noticed, when she turned, that the curtain had been drawn across the lower bunk. She looked at Mrs. Poole. And Mrs. Poole, flushing faintly, looked at her.

  CHAPTER 36

  LAT. 35° 14' NORTH, LONG. 65° 31' WEST

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

  REPORTS UP TO NINE THIRTY TONIGHT FOLLOW COLON CANADIAN TANKER SS IMPERMAN PROCEEDING HALIFAX TO BERMUDA PARALLELING NORMAL COURSE SS EASTERN BAY PASSED APPROXIMATED POSITION SS EASTERN BAY SEVEN THIRTY PM STOP RECEIVED OUR ADVICES AND KEPT EXTRAORDINARY WATCH STOP SS IMPERMAN REPORTED AT NINE PM NO RANGE LIGHTS WRECKAGE SMALL BOATS OR DISTRESS SIGNALS OF ANY NATURE VISIBLE STOP SS IMPERMAN REPORTS OVERCAST DRIZZLING WEATHER AND VISIBILITY POOR STOP BRITISH FREIGHTER SS PORTSHAVEN BOUND CHARLESTON CUTTING DIAGONALLY ACROSS APPROXIMATED POSITION SS EASTERN BAY AT FIVE PM DUPLICATES REPORT SS IMPERMAN STOP WILL CONTINUE BROADCASTING INFORMATION REQUEST ON REGULAR CQ CALLS THRUOUT NIGHT AND WILL IMMEDIATELY ADVISE YOU OF ANYTHING DEFINITE

  * * * *

  The passage felt muffled and Valcour, as he stood before the door to the cabin shared by young Force and Mr. Wright, thought of it as a tunnel. He looked at his watch. It was a few minutes before ten. He opened the door and went inside. He turned on a light, and closed the door.

  It was a small cabin, as were most of them on the ship, and suitcases and clothing filled its settee. Valcour lifted the lid of a suitcase (The steamer-cabin tag marked it as belonging to Mr. Wright) and his practiced fingers examined its contents. Mr. Wright, he decided, was not one of your neat men. Soiled clothes were mingled with clean—a collar box, its tie string loose, and half the collars sticking out—a clothes brush—a pair of dancing pumps in a flannel bag—and a small leather case, folded once, and which, when opened, displayed two photographs.

  Valcour stared curiously at the pictures—an elderly woman with gray hair, with a round vague face; the other, a young girl (the photograph was full length) in an unattractive evening dress. He carried the picture to the light, to examine the small face more closely. It was a petulant face, and weakly pretty, beneath dark ringlets. He closed the case and put it in his pocket. There was nothing else in the rest of Mr. Wright’s luggage that interested him.

  He looked at his watch. It was six minutes after ten. He opened a satchel belonging to young Force. Clothes again: ties—a pair of soft slippers—something at the very bottom, round and hard…a watch…a case watch… He took the watch out and stared at it. It was over-elaborately initialed on its chased case with an F. There hadn’t been any sound of footsteps from the passage, but Valcour stiffened suddenly, closed the satchel, and slipped the watch into his pocket. Before the door had opened to admit young Force and Mr. Wright, Valcour was at the lower bunk and removing its bedclothes and mattress.

  “You see that I am at it, gentlemen,” he said. He smiled agreeably at them and continued probing the bunk’s mattress and pillows.

  “What’s up, Mr. Valcour?” young Force said, as he followed Mr. Wright into the cabin and closed the door.

  “If you think this is my famous impersonation of a chambermaid,” Valcour said pleasantly, “you’re entirely wrong. You would never suspect it from looking at me, but I’m searching for gold.”

  “Again?” Mr. Wright took off his coat and vest and hung them on a hook.

  “Still, Mr. Wright.” Valcour started to repeat his mattress-and-pillow operations on the upper bunk. “Captain Sohme isn’t satisfied. After all, you’d hardly expect him to be. He wants his gold.”

  “Well, I haven’t got it,” young Force said, starting to undress, and with an eye toward beating Mr. Wright, for once, to the wash basin. “Wish I had.”

  “Commercial art not so profitable, Mr. Force?”

  “Oh, it’s profitable enough, Mr. Valcour. I made enough during this past year to take me on this little holiday. But I guess everybody could do with more.”

  “I thought somebody did go through our things here this afternoon,” Mr. Wright said.

  “They did. Mr. Swithers and the chief steward covered the entire ship, but that’s rather a tall order, don’t you think?” Valcour stared casually at Mr. Wright’s chest, which was partially exposed through an opened undershirt. Hair covered it thickly. No Toody there… “I hope that you’ll both look upon this business as a matter of routine?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “O. K. with you, too, Mr. Force?”

  “Glad to see how you work, Mr. Valcour.” Young Force removed his undershirt and sat on the lower bunk to wait, as he had so far always had to wait, while Mr. Wright used, and used, the wash basin.

  “Well, there isn’t any mystery about it. This is just a check-up, more than anything else.” Valcour felt a curiously leaden feeling of disappointment as he stared at young Force’s body, naked to the waist. Like some indefinable and troublesome myth, the girl Toody was eluding him… Not Wright, certainly, nor Force…but what about Dumarque who had, for his greater comfort and convenience, a cabin for himself alone?… “I’m sorry to mess things about, but the steward will fix your bunks up again.”

  “Finished, Mr. Valcour?” young Force said.

  “Quite finished, and this time I don’t think there’ll be any return engagements. Good-night, gentlemen.”

  They echoed his good-night, and young Force said, just as Valcour opened the door, “I don’t think you’re looking for gold.”

  “No, Mr. Force?”

  “No, Mr. Valcour. I think you’re looking for evidence with which to convict the murderer of Mr. Gans.”

  CHAPTER 37

  LAT. 35° 14' NORTH, LONG. 65° 31' WEST

  “But this is charming, my dear Valcour—come in.” Mr. Dumarque, in a dark dressing gown of flowered silk, waved a lighted cigarette toward an armchair. He was himself stretched out full length on the settee. The cabin, a fair-sized one, was immaculate and apparently devoid of luggage, with the exception of one closed steamer wardrobe trunk standing in a corner. Valcour lighted a cigarette and sat down.

  “I am searching,” he said pleasantly, “for stolen gold.”

  Mr. Dumarque’s rather expressionless eyes contracted a little. “That is interesting. Yes, my dear Valcour, that is very, very interesting indeed.” Valcour felt singularly alert. “What is so specially interesting about the fact, Mr. Dumarque?”


  “It is interesting that you should occupy your time with searching for something that has already been found.”

  Valcour continued staring thoughtfully at Mr. Dumarque. “The curtains across the ports of Captain Sohme’s cabin?” he said.

  “Yes.” The word was a satisfied sigh. “One pair was incompletely drawn. I am an insatiably curious man.”

  Valcour smiled. “Another of your vices?”

  “Yes. It follows in importance an unconquerable passion for chilled endive in oil surmounted by hot macaroni au gratin, and directly precedes my fancy for high-heeled shoes.”

  “Well, Mr. Dumarque, you know what it’s reputed to do to cats.”

  “That is simply because cats, having nine of them, are careless about their lives. I, my dear Valcour, having only one, am never careless.”

  “I would appreciate your saying nothing about what you saw, Mr. Dumarque.”

  “I have had no intention of doing so, nor shall I manufacture any reason for having looked between the curtains. Motivation for anything is such an incredible bore, and life is entirely too full of ‘becauses’ to leave time for enough results. Could I choose it, my millennium would be an endless shower of sky rockets against a night so black that no one could discern their source or how they worked.”

  “You are a professional man, Mr. Dumarque?” Valcour said suddenly.

  “I am nothing. My immediate role is simply that of a gentleman who is indulging himself in a small and inexpensive holiday. If I have a profession, it is the art of attempting to keep myself alive while I live, for I think that most people, my dear Valcour, permit themselves to die so very many years before they are buried beneath the earth.”

  “I could offer, of course, the familiar adage about burning the candle at both ends.”

  “But that is an extravagance which is better, surely, than saving it wrapped up in tissue paper until one’s eyes are too old to enjoy its light? No, no, I am partial to extremists, provided they are not enthusiastic about their—well, emotional hobbies. Enthusiasm is an emotion which I detest; it is so frequently just a strong fortress erected to conceal and to protect essential weaknesses of the mind. You will smoke one of these cigarettes, my dear Valcour?”

  “Thank you, but I have lost my taste for Turkish tobacco. I find it too strong.” Valcour took a fresh cigarette from his own case and lighted it. He stared speculatively at a bottle standing on the shelf above the washstand, with its label towards the wall.

  “I observe that you are wondering whether or not that bottle contains hair dye.” Mr. Dumarque’s smile was quite placid. “Cease to wonder, my friend—it does. I have, no longer, the slightest faith in Nature. She has betrayed me, in spite of which I manage to keep my hair black, because I prefer it so.”

  “You’re rather young to have gray hair, Mr. Dumarque.”

  “I am.”

  “In your twenties?”

  Mr. Dumarque’s smile continued serene. “That is whatever you may please. I have always held it as my friends’ prerogative to select, for me, whatever age might appeal to them best.”

  Valcour crushed out his cigarette and stood up. “I am going to make a curious request, Mr. Dumarque,” he said.

  “Good. I was sure, my dear Valcour, that you would never be so banal as to express a desire to go through my luggage. What is it you wish?”

  “I should like to examine that dressing gown.”

  “This? But certainly. It is charming, is it not?” Mr. Dumarque stood up and turned slowly. “I am partial to dull greens when worked into an arabesque.”

  “My interest doesn’t lie in the pattern. Would you take it off, please, and let me see it?”

  Mr. Dumarque’s expressionless eyes rested on Valcour. “You must forgive me,” he said, “but I am undressed, and I have a distaste for exposing my person. I received, many years ago, a wound which has left an unpleasant scar. If you do not mind stepping into the passage, my dear Valcour, I will pass this interesting dressing gown out to you, and you may examine it in your own cabin at your leisure.”

  Valcour returned Dumarque’s steady stare. “Scars don’t shock me,” he said.

  “I must insist.”

  Valcour smiled and left the cabin, and the dressing gown was passed out to him at once. He held it loosely crushed in his hand. Faint scent of violets drifted upwards from its fold. He knocked on the cabin door. It opened just sufficiently enough for a pale slender hand, into which he placed the dressing gown.

  “Are you satisfied, my dear Valcour?”

  “I am completely satisfied, thank you, Mr. Dumarque.”

  He walked thoughtfully along the passage and up a companionway to the main deck. He went outside and mounted a ladder to the dark boat deck. The air had cleared a little and seemed more fresh. He saw, somewhat to westward, a small break in the clouds; it lingered for a moment, and then the clouds closed up again. He reached the starboard ladder leading to the bridge and went on up it. He joined a heavy mass of blackness that was gripping, with big hands, the dodger.

  “Clearer weather, Captain,” he said.

  Captain Sohme did not move. His body was that of a man who has been stunned. Its muscles held it rigid and its eyes, with terrible intensity, were pinned on the western sky. His voice, when he spoke, was a shell.

  “There is something the matter,” he said, “with the stars.”

  CHAPTER 38

  LAT. ?° ?' NORTH, LONG. ?° ?' WEST

  There is something the matter with the stars.

  That phrase epitomized for Valcour the sense of a dreadful strangeness which had run as a rapacious undercurrent beneath the surface waters of this curious case.

  “I don’t understand you, Captain,” he said.

  Captain Sohme’s eyes were still heavy with shocked fright. “There was a patch of clear sky, Valcour, not over a moment ago—over there, it was, above our starboard bow.” The hand which he placed on Valcour’s shoulder was not steady. “I think I am too old a dog to be mistaken,” he said. “The constellations which I saw there should not have shown from that quarter at all. On our present course they should have shown about at right angles to our port beam. Come with me.”

  Valcour followed Captain Sohme into the wheel-house and watched him as, with puzzled eyes, he examined the card and made certain that the soft iron correctors in the binnacle were in their proper places.

  “Everything all right, sir?” said the man at the wheel.

  “Everything is all right, son.”

  They were outside upon the bridge again and walking down the ladder through the darkness to the boat deck. Captain Sohme said, as he opened the door to his quarters, “Panic spreads quickly on ships. We will keep this to ourselves, Valcour.” They went inside and closed the door, and Captain Sohme, opening a locker, poured out two glasses of brandy.

  “Our course is all right, Captain?”

  “We are holding true to our course. For a moment up there, Valcour, I was completely unnerved. I do not think that I have ever been so astonished in my life. I see now that I must have been mistaken. It would have been a different matter with the moon or with the sun, but with the stars it is quite possible to grow confused, especially when only a small area of the heavens is exposed.”

  Valcour accepted a glass of brandy. He sipped it slowly. “Is there any way of checking up?”

  Captain Sohme set down his empty glass. “Unless the sky should clear again, which is problematic, there is nothing we can do. I can feel fog in the air. We must proceed as we have been doing by dead reckoning, until the heavens clear and permit us to take proper observations.”

  Valcour felt a depressing sense of unease. “It’s safe?”

  “Safe, man?” Captain Sohme’s great laughter sounded a little hollow even to himself. “I have proceeded with this old tub for five days on stretch by dead reckoning and have never got more than a point or two off our course.” There was a punctured effect about his voice, however, as he added, “I think I will
establish a lookout at the bows.”

  Valcour recognized it as a tacit confession that Captain Sohme was feeling ill at ease too. He offered no comment and they sat in silence for a while—that curious silence which at night time on a ship is not a silence at all, but a whispering stillness made up of gentle throbbings, creakings, strainings, and that all-pervading melody of water plashing, ripping, singing, surging tirelessly on plates of iron. He felt as if they were entered upon that short slow middle movement which, in earlier symphonic forms, afforded an emotional lull between the moderately quick beginning and the finale’s swift and dramatic crash.

  Captain Sohme’s great red hands lay loosely on his knees. “I am tired, Valcour,” he said, “and yet I do not wish to go to sleep. My head is tired, and my body it is tired too, but my nerves, each single one of them is wide awake.”

  “You are going to post a man at the bows, Captain?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you anyone you could also detail as a guard, to stand watch in the passage near the door to Mrs. Poole’s cabin?”

  Captain Sohme’s tired brain was drugged with sea, with sky and ship, and with unnatural stars. “I will speak to the steward, if you think it should be so, and have it done.” His depression swelled over into an irritated outburst. “Dear Gott, but we are the central point of danger—within the ship and out—everywhere it stares at us from hiding. Like a pestilence, Valcour, it lies hidden. Once, in the China seas, they dropped about me, one by one, like dead and bloated flies, my men. And there was nothing to fight. We could not, you see, fight the air.”

  “I think I can promise you some definite results by tomorrow night, Captain.”

  “I hope so, Valcour.”

  “I’ll say good-night.”

  “Good-night, and perhaps tomorrow will bring us better things.”

  Valcour stood up and went to the door. He opened it upon a thin fine mist that drifted from the darkness, and from above him, shredding the stillness with its dreadful melancholy wail, came a prolonged blast from the ship’s siren. He waited until the night was still again.