Hoch's Ladies

by Edward D. Hoch

  Father Dempsey smiled at her. “This isn’t your first cruise.”

  “I’ve been on a couple for pleasure, but this is a working one. I have to write a report on Mayfield’s first shipboard shop.”

  They chatted awhile longer and then Father Dempsey went off with one of the other priests who wore a sport shirt with his black trousers. Susan checked in at the Mayfield’s shop and found that business was still brisk. Lisa Mandrake was waiting on customers while one of her assistants was restocking the selection of bathing suits. There’d already been a crowd at the ship’s pool.

  She was back in her stateroom well before ten and when Sid Cromwell phoned about that drink she was more than willing to join him. The Crow’s Nest was on the very top passenger deck, just below the ship’s bridge. It afforded a spectacular forward view of the ship’s progress. Even at night there was often something to see. “Look there!” Sid said while they waited for their drinks. “That’s lightning.”

  It was indeed, and for the next twenty minutes, over their drinks, they were treated to a rare view of a thunderstorm at sea, growing constantly closer until it veered off to the south and out of sight. “You don’t see those every day,” Susan commented.

  “I arranged it just for your first night,” Sid told her with a grin. “How about you? Are you keeping busy on security matters?”

  “Not yet. That usually comes around the third or fourth day, when the close environment of the ship starts fraying nerves and causing altercations. Of course, this is the Dawn Neptune’s first transatlantic voyage and things might be different.”

  “What about robberies?”

  “Ships usually have them, but no more so than a big Manhattan hotel. I know your Mayfield’s shop has closed-circuit TV to discourage shoplifters.”

  Susan nodded. “I suspect shoplifting might be less of a problem on cruise ships. All they could do with their loot would be to take it back to their stateroom where a search might uncover it. And just about everyone shares a cabin with a friend or relative who might become suspicious.”

  Cromwell nodded. “I have my own room in the crew quarters on the lower deck, but it’s pretty small. Yours is probably larger.”

  “Umm,” Susan replied, sipping her drink. She wasn’t about to invite Sid Cromwell to her room for any reason. He was a casual acquaintance, a nice guy but nothing more. She wondered if agreeing to this drink had been a mistake.

  At that moment the beeper on his belt came to life. He glanced at the text message and stood up. “They need me for something. Sorry to cut this short. I was enjoying it.”

  “Another time,” she said with a smile.

  In the morning, on her way down to breakfast, Susan stopped to check on the shop. Lisa Mandrake and the other girls were already there, an hour before opening, restocking the shelves and changing the displays around. It was Lisa who said, “Did you hear the news? One of the priests got killed last night!”

  “What?”

  “Yes. The priest he was sharing the room with found his body.”

  “Are you saying someone killed him? Murdered him?”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  Susan hurried down to breakfast, hoping to learn more. Across the room Sid Cromwell was deep in conversation with Captain Mason and two other ship’s officers. When he left them, she caught up with him as he headed for the door. “What’s this I hear about a priest being killed?”

  “Hi, Susan. It’s true. That was the page that interrupted our drink last night. His cabin mate came back to their room around ten-thirty and found him stabbed to death on the bed. This is a terrible thing for the cruise line. They’re trying to hush it up, but the word is spreading fast.”

  He kept walking as he spoke and she hurried to keep up with him. “Who’s in charge of the investigation?”

  “I guess I am, for the moment. Crimes on the high seas fall under admiralty law. If we were in port, the local police would be summoned, but for the moment it’s up to me to investigate and take statements. Since the victim is an American citizen, we’ve notified the FBI. They’ll have an agent meet the ship in the Azores, but that’s still two days away.” He was walking a few steps ahead of her but suddenly he stopped. “Come to think of it, maybe you should have a look at the stateroom. The body’s been removed.”

  “Why should I—?”

  “You may have met him. We found a Mayfield’s bag in the room. Looks like he was one of your customers.”

  Susan felt a chill run through her. “What was his name?” Cromwell consulted his notepad. “Father John Ullman from Omaha.”

  She nodded. “I was there yesterday when he came in for a sport shirt.”

  “Come along. Maybe when you see his things you’ll remember something about him that could help us.”

  The staterooms for the priests had been grouped more or less together in the 600 numbers. She remembered Father Ullman saying he was in 675. When they reached it, another man wearing black pants and a sport shirt was standing outside.

  “Are you finished with the room now?” he asked. “I spent the rest of the night sleeping on deck.”

  “Sorry, Father. Susan, this is Father Stillwell. He found the body.”

  She introduced herself and asked, “Did you share the room with Father Ullman?”

  “That’s right. We just met yesterday. I have a parish in Spokane.”

  Sid Cromwell unlocked the stateroom door. “I had the room dusted for fingerprints, but I expect the FBI will want to check it over in the Azores. I’ll arrange another room for you, Father.”

  “I hope so,” he muttered. “I don’t think I’d want to sleep in there.”

  “What did you do when you found him?” Susan asked.

  “I—I phoned for help and gave him the last rites. It was terrible. I’d only known him a few hours, but it was terrible.”

  ‘’Don’t touch anything,” the security man cautioned. “Susan, that’s your store bag in the corner, isn’t it?”

  It was indeed the very bag Lisa Mandrake had used for the sport shirt he bought. Susan could see a splatter of dried blood half obscuring the Mayfield’s name. “Was he wearing our shirt when he died?” she asked.

  Cromwell shook his head. “Just an undershirt and pants.”

  “So his visitor was probably male. A priest would have slipped on a proper shirt to receive a female guest.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” He’d donned a pair of latex gloves and was carefully opening the dresser drawers. The roommate, Father Stillwell, was standing in the doorway, afraid to come all the way in. Sid Cromwell lifted a large manila envelope from one of the drawers and asked, “Is this yours, Father?”

  “No. It must have been his.”

  He opened it and slid out a thick sheaf of paper. After a moment’s inspection he closed the envelope. “I’d better take this with me,” he said.

  They left the room and Sid locked the door, placing a seal over the slot for the key card. “When this is over I still owe you a drink,” he told Susan.

  She dined that night with Lisa Mandrake from the shop, who was assigned to a nearby table and easily made the switch. The conversation was about the murder, as it was throughout the ship. No announcement had been made, but the word had traveled fast. “They say the FBI will be coming aboard at the Azores,” Lisa told Susan.

  “I understand that’s routine on the high seas when an American citizen is involved. You know, he was one of your customers—the young priest who bought a sport shirt yesterday.”

  “Yes, his roommate, Father Stillwell, told me. He was just wandering around without a room, but I guess they found one for him.”

  “Have any of the other priests stopped in?”

  “None that I recognized. We’re attracting a lot of women, though.”

  Susan let her gaze travel across the large dining room. Since dress was more formal tonight, she spotted the tables of priests quite easily. They’d all worn their black suits and clerical collars for their photog
raphs with Captain Mason. Between courses, Susan went over to see how Father Stillwell was doing.

  “Did they find another stateroom for you?” she asked.

  “They have me right up next to Captain Mason,” he said with a smile. “He’ll have me steering the ship next.”

  She glanced around for anyone else she knew. “I don’t see Father Dempsey.”

  “His stomach was a bit off. He said it was nothing serious.” Sid Cromwell saw her standing by the priests’ table and came over to her. “Could I see you after dinner? Up in the Crow’s Nest?”

  “Sure.”

  She assumed he was going to buy her that drink, but when she joined him at the table an hour later he had something else in mind. “Captain Mason is concerned about this killing, especially since the victim was a priest on his way to Rome. He says it’s terrible publicity and bad luck for something like this to happen on a ship’s maiden voyage. To him it’s like the Titanic sinking. He says if we don’t have the killer in a cell by the time we hit the Azores it might mean his job. And by implication it might mean my job, too.”

  “In a cell?”

  “We’ve got an actual cell, with bars, down below in case it’s needed. Most big cruise ships have them these days.” He took a sip of his drink. “I remembered when I worked security for Mayfield’s you were involved in some crime investigations. You were quite successful in solving a few puzzles.”

  “That was years ago, Sid. Believe me, my job as director of store promotions has nothing to do with solving crimes.”

  “This job means a lot to me, Susan. If you could help out—” She sighed. “What can I do?”

  For the first time she noticed the large manila envelope on the seat next to him. It looked like the one he’d found in the dead man’s drawer. He opened it and said, “Look at these.”

  There were several dozen copies of a one-page form giving details of some sort of investment opportunity for clergymen, aimed at supplying extra income for their retirement years. At the bottom were spaces for a signature, address, phone number, and social-security number. “Interesting,” Susan commented, glancing through the stack of identical forms. “I’ll bet you counted them.”

  He nodded. “Fifty-five. Father Ullman had fifty-five fellow priests on the voyage.”

  “You suspect this is some sort of swindle?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “But a priest swindling fellow priests?” Susan protested.

  “Who’s to say he was a real priest? I’ve sent a message to the Omaha archdiocese to check up on him.”

  “I can talk to some of the others,” she volunteered, “to see if he approached any of them. But it was the first day of the voyage and there are no completed forms in here.”

  “See what you can find out. We’ll be in the Azores by Thursday morning and I need to have something before that.”

  After breakfast on a sunny Wednesday Susan walked past the photo gallery where passengers could purchase pictures of themselves with Captain Mason, then sought out the company of the priests. They were easy to spot beside the pool on the upper deck because Father Dempsey was with them in his usual black suit and Roman collar. “Are you feeling better?” Susan asked him.

  “Fine. I wasn’t really sick, just a brief bit of diarrhea. I’ll have to eat twice as much at dinner tonight.”

  She settled down in the deck chair next to him. “I thought you’d be in the pool with the rest of the clergy.”

  He chuckled at that. “Dear lady, no one would want to see this paunch in bathing trunks.”

  Father Stillwell, the victim’s roommate, came out of the pool with dripping hair and walked over to join them. “Any news on the killing yet?”

  Susan shook her head. “Nothing I’ve heard.”

  “I just thought of something,” he said. “You know that shirt he bought at your shop? When he tried it on it was a bit snug and he phoned the shop to see if they had a larger size.”

  “Oh?”

  “I think the woman there was going to drop it off at our stateroom and pick up the other one. I remember thinking Mayfield’s was very accommodating to do that.”

  “We like to be accommodating,” Susan murmured, wondering if she was missing something here.

  She left them at the pool and took the elevator down to the atrium floors. Lisa Mandrake was bagging a customer’s purchase and returning her credit card as Susan entered. When she’d finished, Susan motioned toward the small stockroom at the back of the store. “Could I see you for a minute, Lisa?”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  She closed the door so the other clerks wouldn’t overhear their conversation. “Did you go to Father Ullman’s cabin Monday night?”

  Lisa avoided her gaze. “He needed a larger size shirt and I took it to him after we closed. Nothing wrong with that.”

  “What was wrong was your not mentioning it. What time was this?”

  “I closed the shop at ten and went to his room then. But I didn’t even go inside. I think he had someone with him.”

  “Perhaps the killer. You should have told Sid Cromwell about it. His roommate found Ullman’s body around ten-thirty. You were probably the last person to see him alive.”

  “Except the killer,” she corrected. “You certainly can’t think that I had anything to do with his death.”

  “It would have looked better if you’d revealed this at the beginning. You’re sure you weren’t in his room? I don’t want Sid thinking he tried to molest you and you stabbed him.”

  “My God, Susan! The man was a priest! I know you read about those things sometimes, but Father Ullman was just a young innocent guy. He didn’t try to molest me and I didn’t stab him!’’

  “All right, keep your voice down. I believe you.”

  They exited the stockroom and Lisa returned to waiting on customers. Susan took the escalator down to the lobby floor, searching for Sid Cromwell, who was nowhere in sight. She asked at the desk for the security office and was directed down the corridor, where she found him at his desk. “I was going to come looking for you,” he told her. “Here’s a reply from my query to the Omaha archdiocese.”

  She took it and read quickly: Rev. John Ullman, 34, native of Little Rock, AR; ordained 1999, served in St. Michael’s and Sacred Heart parishes in Omaha. Intelligent; highly regarded. A photograph had been faxed along with the message and it clearly showed the dead man.

  “Well, there’s no doubt it’s him,” Susan admitted. “So much for that theory.”

  “I also checked that manila envelope for fingerprints. There were none. I wore gloves when I handled it, and apparently it had been wiped clean before that.”

  She thought about it. “Well, what do we have? A possible scheme to swindle priests out of their money. The only evidence is that envelope of forms. Maybe it didn’t belong to the victim. Maybe it belonged to Father Stillwell, his roommate. Naturally when you asked him, he would have denied any knowledge of it.”

  “I’m going to hold a meeting of all the priests on board. It’s probably something I should have done yesterday. This individual questioning is getting us nowhere.”

  “Some of them are on the upper deck right now. They could probably spread the word to the others.”

  Sid got to his feet. “Let’s go see if we can get them all together this afternoon. The captain really wants us to have something for the FBI tomorrow.”

  It wasn’t hard to do. Most of the clergymen were in the pool or the gym, while others were playing shuffleboard or Ping-Pong. Susan found Father Dempsey on the putting green. “They have everything here,” he said. “I may skip Rome and stay on for the return trip.”

  “The Pope wouldn’t approve of that,” she said. “No, I suppose he wouldn’t.”

  “The ship’s security officer has asked me to gather all the clergy together at two this afternoon.”

  “It’s about Father Ullman, of course.”

  Susan nodded. “We’re meeting in the
small auditorium, where you all say Mass in the mornings.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Next, she sought out Father Broderick, the senior priest on board. She found him at a more sedate bingo game on a lower deck. “You’re not wearing your colored socks, Father,” she said.

  He shook his head sadly. “It’s not a time for frivolity after what happened to Father Ullman. I’ll be saying Mass for him in the morning.’’

  “Mr. Cromwell, the ship’s security officer, wants all the clergy assembled where you have Mass. Be there at two this afternoon. We’re trying to determine if anyone might have seen Father Ullman speaking with other passengers.”

  “A good idea. I’ll tell the others when I see them.”

  Then Susan hurried through the atrium to Mayfield’s. She spoke to Lisa and arranged for her to be at the meeting, too. Time was running out. The FBI would be taking over in another twenty-four hours. She spoke to Sid again just before the meeting with the clergy began, then stood in the back of the small auditorium with Lisa while the priests filed in.

  “Fifty-five,” she said, doing a quick count. “The word got around to

  everyone.”

  Sid Cromwell opened the meeting with a few words about the killing and his investigation so far. “An FBI agent will be coming aboard tomorrow in the Azores, but I hope to have everything cleared up by then. We’re investigating two possible motives for Father Ullman’s murder. One involves the possibility that someone was trying to swindle the clergy with a questionable retirement scheme. Have any of you been approached while you were on board?”

  The priests glanced around at each other, shaking their heads. Father Broderick stood up so he could see them all, but no one raised his hand to offer any information. “How about Monday night?” Sid continued. “Did you see anyone with Father Ullman, especially around nine or ten o’clock?”

  Only his roommate, Father Stillwell, raised his hand. “I ate with him and we stopped at the bar for a bit of sherry. That was the last I saw of him.”