The Mammoth Book Of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits Part 48

Everyone turned.

"Shut up, Howard!" Judith snapped.

"Shut up! Go away! Be quiet! I'm sick of your orders, Judy. You can't treat me like that anymore."

Means saw his opportunity and sympathetically asked the man, "Like what, Howard? Does she treat you badly? Women can be so . . ."

"She's a b.i.t.c.h! She lies to me; she treats me like a dog."

"But you love her anyway, right?" Means asked.

"Yes, but she loves someone else."

Means turned to Arbuckle. "Did Miss McKeon ever confess her love for you in any of her letters?"

"Well . . ."

"Come on, man, no one can hold you responsible for what another person writes."

"Occasionally she would say something along those lines."

"And you told me you loved me, too," Judith said. "Tell them. Tell everyone now how much you love me and how we're going to be together. Forever! That's what you said . . . forever!"

"And just how did you expect that to happen, girlie, when you was with me?" Howard shouted. "All the time telling me how that b.i.t.c.h boss of yours was the only thing keepin' us from being together and now I find out you was writing this fat man, planning to be with him. But I was the one who got rid of . . ."

Silence.

"Continue, Mr Pearson," Means insisted. "You were the one who got rid of who?"

"No one."

"Call the police," Means told Judith.

She didn't move. It took a moment but when she spoke, she erupted. "You, Howard? You killed Mrs Armstrong-Smith?"

"For you, Judy. For us."

Howard jumped over the bar and started for the cliffwalk. Arbuckle and Novarro were on his heels. The smaller man tripped him and Arbuckle pinned him to the ground.

Judith ran inside for the phone.

"Gaston Bullock Means," he told the reporter. "M . . . e . . . a . . . n . . . s."

"I've heard that name before. Wait a minute. Don't tell me." The pretty young thing was anxious to get all her facts straight.

"I used to work with the President; I was with the FBI." He beamed.

"And now you've solved a murder!" she said.

"I guess I was just born to be of service to my fellow man."

"Well jeepers, Mr Means, I can't thank you enough for talking to me. None of the other people at Mrs Armstrong-Smith's party will give me the time of day."

"Don't mention it, my dear. Don't mention it."

Without Fire TOM HOLT.

Tom Holt's best known for his comic fantasy novels, which began with Expecting Someone Taller (1987), but he's written much else besides including historical novels, such as Goatsong (1989) and The Walled Orchard (1990) and the continuation of E. F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia books, Lucia in Wartime (1985) and Lucia Triumphant (1986), which brings us back to the Roaring Twenties.

I was dragged out of blessed sleep by a ghastly thumping noise outside my cabin.

At first I a.s.sumed it was just the unspeakable Brindesley-White woman again. She had barged in the night before, an exotic but fairly monstrous spectacle in a beaded and fringed evening dress that for some reason reminded me of a Crusader on a church bra.s.s; waved a half-empty champagne bottle under my nose and told me, superfluously and with bad grace, that I wasn't Bunny Delahey. I'd acknowledged the truth of her accusation and pointed out that Major Delahey's cabin was number 106, next door. She had peered at me sideways, just to make sure I wasn't the major trying to be funny, and drifted unsteadily away; that she eventually reached safe harbour, so to speak, I deduced from the wail of a portable gramophone reverberating through the cabin wall ten minutes later.

On this occasion I was feeling distinctly fragile, on account of broken sleep and sundry other factors, and in no mood to cope with inebriated females. Accordingly, I lay still and waited. A moment or so later, a man's voice called out my name. "Are you there, sir?" he added, which ruled out Major Delahey as well; I'd only spoken to him once, and he'd addressed me as "old son".

I grunted inarticulate permission to enter, and my tormentor took shape before me, a stocky figure in a white jacket with horribly shiny bra.s.s b.u.t.tons.

"Sorry to disturb you, sir," the purser said, "but the captain would like to see you right away."

For a moment, I thought the poor fellow was talking a foreign language, because he wasn't making any sense. Why would the captain want to see me, in the middle of the night?

I fumbled my way into a dressing gown and followed him out down the corridor. "Quickest way's through the c.o.c.ktail lounge, sir," the purser said, "if you'd care to follow me."

As it so happened, I knew where the c.o.c.ktail lounge was; in fact, I'd spent rather more time in it than was good for me since we'd cast off from Liverpool. That in itself was remarkable, since it was a singularly unattractive place; slightly smaller and less ostentatious than St Mark's in Venice, painted white with pickled wood panelling, littered with those awful chrome bar-stools covered in red leather; whenever I see them, I can't help thinking of Mr Wells' Martian war-machines. As I trailed through like a prisoner under escort, a long, bald fellow in a white dinner jacket was crouched, almost hiding, behind the piano, valiantly singing the very latest hit while n.o.body listened. I winced at his performance but couldn't help a vestigial salute to the dexterity of the lyrics; one tradesman acknowledging another.

As we left the room, a man and a girl blocked the doorway, coming in as we were leaving. He was stout, pudding-faced, evening-dressed and gripping a bottle like a 'keeper dispatching a wounded pheasant; she was shingled and practically skeletal, her jewelled headband slipping down over one eye in the manner favoured by the pirates in the storybooks of my childhood. Neither of them was looking particularly well; he was bright red and she was pale green, so they clashed unforgivably into the bargain.

"Don't want to go out there, old man," the youth told me. As it happened he was quite right I wanted to be in bed, asleep, back in dear old England where the floor stayed still but I wondered how he knew; intuition, I supposed. He weaved past me, towing the girl by the wrist like a coal barge, and lunged into the scrum of black mohair backs and bare, fish-belly-white shoulders. It was like watching bees returning to the hive, because a moment later the two of them had been absorbed into the swarm, and I don't suppose I could've told them apart from their peers if my life depended on it. My brother in arms the pianist had finished with "Let's Do It!" and embarked on "Bye, Bye, Blackbird." I shuddered from head to toe. There are few sights more revolting to a man with a delicate head than the scenes of joy and youthful exuberance he left four hours ago with a view to sleeping it off.

We carried on up onto the boat deck (uncharacteristically deserted), through an undersized steel door, down one flight of confoundedly awkward steps and up another. I have precious little sense of direction at the best of times (a failing which, on one notable occasion during the War, both endangered and saved my life) and it wasn't long before I was hopelessly lost. Fortunately, the purser paused from time to time to allow me to catch up.

The captain's office was smaller than I'd antic.i.p.ated, but rather more magnificent; a pleasant contrast, to my old-fashioned eye, to all the chrome and smoked gla.s.s with which the rest of ths ship was festooned. The panelling was a rather splendid dark wood, possibly teak, and the desk wouldn't have looked out of place in the lair of some American merchant prince. The captain was a short, round man with cropped white hair and bright blue eyes. He was, he told me, frightfully sorry to have troubled me, but he needed my help.

The mystery again. "That's perfectly all right," I lied. "What can I do for you?"

The captain shuffled, as if painfully aware that everything was somehow his fault. "I regret to say," he said quietly, "that's something rather dreadful has happened. A woman's been murdered."

"Good G.o.d," I said. I was still, of course, two thirds asleep. In fact, I was reminded of an unfortunate occasion when I was a boy, and had the misfortune to doze off in the middle of a maths lesson, to be woken by the crisp, harsh voice of the maths master repeating my name and a problem in mental algebra. The helpless, frustrated feeling of panic as I struggled to apply to the problem a mind still furred up with sleep came back to me at that moment with most unwelcome vigour. "I'm terribly sorry to hear it," I said, "but what possible help can I be to you?"

The captain frowned, as though I was being deliberately obtuse. "It's quite simple," he said. "As I told you, a woman's been killed. But we have no idea who did it, and clearly it's of the utmost importance that we find the killer as quickly as possible. For all we know, there could be a homicidal maniac loose on the ship, and obviously we must make sure he doesn't kill again."

I was about to say, "Then why in G.o.d's name don't you call the police?" but mercifully I managed to stop myself in time. We were at that time three days' out of Liverpool bound for New York.

"I take your point," I said. "But what can I do? I'm not a detective."

The captain may have sighed, very faintly. "Of course not," he said. "But I've checked the pa.s.senger list, and I have to say, you're the nearest thing to one that we've got."

"Nonsense," I said. "I'm nothing of the sort. You must be confusing me with someone else."

"I think not."

This was ridiculous, and I fear my manners were beginning to fray. "Does your precious pa.s.senger list happen to tell you what I do for a living? I'm a writer. I write song lyrics for musical comedies."

The captain frowned. "It says on your pa.s.sport," he replied, "that you're a barrister."

That deflated me a little bit. "Used to be," I corrected him. "Before the War, actually; I was in practice for about six months. If I remember correctly, my entire earnings amounted to a shade under five pounds."

I could see myself tumbling a degree or two in his estimation, not that I cared unduly. "Nevertheless," he said, "a trained legal mind "

"My field was Chancery work, not criminal cases," I said. "And I was hopeless at it, too."

"Even so," the captain said, sitting up a little straighter. "Your military service; a captain in the Gloucesters, and the DSO "

I sighed. "Let me tell you about that," I said wearily. "Having been ordered to lead my men back from the front line to prepared positions, I lost my way. It was raining, murky but not dark, and I set off in entirely the wrong direction. I found what I took to be my a.s.signed destination, only to find it was full of Germans. Fortuitously, they were even more surprised than we were. With respect, if you want someone to help you find something, I think you've got the wrong man."

The captain was starting to look worried, but I could tell that he'd already made up his mind. "There's n.o.body else on the ship even remotely qualified to investigate the matter," he said sadly. "Furthermore, we know for a fact that you couldn't possibly have done it. You can see the relevance of that for yourself."

That aspect of the matter hadn't even occurred to me. "I'm delighted to hear you say so," I said.

The captain smiled thinly. "At the time the murder took place," he said, "you were excuse me in no fit state to harm anyone, except possibly yourself."

"Ah, yes," I said. At least that helped me put things in context. Earlier that evening, a very kind and polite steward had helped me make my way from the bar to my cabin. "Seasickness," I explained.

"Quite," the captain replied. "The point is, you can be eliminated as a suspect straight away. I can also eliminate myself and eight members of the crew, who were with me on the bridge." He scowled; keeping his patience was plainly costing him a good deal of effort. "Well, will you help me or not?" he said. "If you positively refuse, of course "

"No, of course not," I replied, sounding perhaps a little more resigned than was polite under the circ.u.mstances. "If you believe I can help you, I'll certainly do my best. I hope you won't be disappointed."

He declined to express an opinion on that score. "Come with me," he said.

You'll have gathered that I earn my living in the theatre. The truth is, I'm what's known as a play doctor. A musical comedy is put into production, at great expense; at the eleventh hour, it becomes painfully obvious that the music is adequate but the words aren't, and they send for me. I spend ninety-six hours in a darkened room, poisoning my system with nicotine and coffee, and with luck the show is saved. It's a pretty grim sort of existence, but I'm good at it. I can rhyme "gadabout" with "lad about" and "yes, sirree" with "Tennessee" as well as any and better than most, and like a bull terrier, I won't let go until my prey is dead. n.o.body has ever heard of me, but I've saved the money and reputations of a good many household names. Accordingly, when it finally dawned on Mr Ziegfeld that his latest extravaganza was little short of an affront to human dignity, he cabled me with an offer no sane man could refuse and ordered me to New York by the first available ship.

It's understandable, therefore, that I tend to see things in theatrical terms; positions on the stage, exits and entrances, a stratified cast of characters. In the melodrama that unfolded as the captain explained the situation, the unenviable role of victim fell to Lady Julia Harkness. Actually, there was a certain sweet irony in that, since Julia Ormerod (as she then was) made a name for herself in the mid and late 1990s as the most perfectly adorable victim ever to grace the West End. She was reviled and snubbed by Shaw's hypocrites and Barrie's insensitive husbands, turned out into the snow by Maeterlink, driven mad by Ibsen and hounded into decline and the grave by Lewis and Pinero. After a decade of this unceasing abuse, she quit the stage to marry Sir George Harkness, shortly after he made his first million selling spavined horses to the cavalry during the South African war, and settled down to a life of refined tranquility in Berkshire.

Why she was sailing to America n.o.body could tell me; the general view seemed to be that a wealthy and respectable widow didn't need a reason. As far as we knew at that point, she died her last death shortly after lighting a cigarette on the boat deck, in company with a group of other ladies, not long after dinner. The witnesses all agreed that she lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply, choked violently and fell over; after a few ferocious convulsions she became still, and by the time the ship's doctor arrived at the scene she was already dead. Almost immediately, the doctor diagnosed the cause of death as cyanide poisoning.

Here the mystery began. According to witnesses, including the captain himself, at whose table she had dined, it was impossible for the poison to have been in her food. Her appet.i.te had been poor, on account of seasickness; she had taken a little soup and a few mouthfuls of salmon, and drunk maybe half a gla.s.s of wine. Everyone else who had had soup from the same tureen, salmon from the same dish and wine from the same bottle was still very much alive. The cigarette could also be ruled out; one of the young ladies in the group had handed round her cigarette case, and four others had smoked from it. The doctor had recovered the body to his surgery and was carrying out a post-mortem, though he couldn't vouch for the conclusiveness of his results given the rather basic facilities at his disposal.

As for a possible motive, the captain had nothing to offer. Lady Julia was, he said, not the most pleasant person he'd ever met; she seemed to have a low opinion of many people and little compunction about sharing it with anybody who'd listen. On the other hand, the captain said, if that sort of thing was enough to provoke murder, the first cla.s.s lounge would've been two-thirds empty before we were out of sight of Ireland. As for specific grievances against her, he didn't know of any. She was rich, of course, but a few discreet questions among the pa.s.sengers she'd been keeping company with revealed that her heirs were three nephews, all at home in Berkshire. Her circle aboard ship were all slight acquaintances or people she'd met for the first time on the voyage. If robbery was the motive, she'd been killed for nothing, since her pearl necklace and the Harding sapphires were still in place when the doctor took away the body, and were currently in the ship's safe.

As far as the means for the crime were concerned, there were over five hundred pa.s.sengers, quite apart from the crew, and a small quant.i.ty of cyanide would be easy to smuggle aboard. For obvious practical reasons, he didn't propose to search the ship unless it was absolutely essential.

"Well," I said, when the captain had finished his summary, "at least we know one thing."

He looked at me. "Do we?" he said, rather hopelessly.

I nodded. "Whoever killed the wretched woman must've planned to do it before he left England. People don't tend to carry doses of cyanide about with them on the off-chance that it might come in handy along the way." The captain's expression tightened a little; I suppose I was being rather flippant. "As far as I know," I went on, "the only thing cyanide's any use for is killing people, or killing things, at any rate; so we can rule out the possibility of someone having it with them for a legitimate reason and subsequently deciding to use it as a weapon. This can only be a premeditated murder, which leaves us with two possibilities. Either the killer is a lunatic killing at random, or the crime was deliberate and premeditated, and therefore designed to achieve something. Occam's razor " The captain raised an eyebrow, but I ignored him. "Occam's razor argues against a millionairess being the victim of an indiscriminate maniac. Either there's a personal grudge involved that we don't know about which is far from unlikely or she was killed for her money."

The captain shook his head slowly. "As far as we know," he said, "n.o.body on this ship stands to profit from her death, and the people who were in a position to give her the poison were all relative strangers." He rubbed the tip of his nose against the back of his hand; I knew a lieutenant in France who used to do that when he was puzzled about something. "Are we looking for a hired a.s.sa.s.sin, do you think? I have to say, that seems a bit far-fetched to me."

I pulled a face. "It's one of those confounded puzzles that gets worse the more you think about it," I said. "And I don't think we're going to make any progress sitting here, more's the pity. I suppose we'd better go and have a look at the place where it all happened; and then we'd better begin talking to people. To be honest with you, the most we can hope to achieve is to keep everything pretty much as it is until we reach New York, and hand the whole business over to the authorities there."

"I suppose so," the captain replied. "But I was hoping we could resolve matters before then. There's still the distinct possibility that whoever did this could kill someone else."

He was looking at me again, and I didn't like it. In my life I've had to take responsibility rather more often than I'd have liked, and usually very little good has come of it. My career record as a failed barrister and an inept infantry officer didn't strike me as sufficient justification for entrusting me with the safety of five hundred people; particularly when I was feeling distinctly fragile, and still wearing my pyjamas. "I really wish you'd find someone else to look into this," I said. "Pretty well all I'm qualified to do with the evidence you've given me is turn it into verse and set it to music, and I don't think that'd help matters very much."

He looked at me some more. "Perhaps you should go back to bed for a while," he said.

I don't know how real detectives can stand it.

Perhaps if I'd ever met a real detective, I might have a better insight into the way they cope. I haven't, of course, and what little I know about them derives from the theatre, the movies and sensational fiction. My understanding is, however, that they somehow contrive to spend hours at a time interviewing witnesses, and still remain calm and positively civil British detectives, anyway in the face of unremitting vagueness, deviousness and affronted dignity. After four hours the next morning asking what I thought were perfectly reasonable questions, politely expressed, my admiration for the professional guardians of the law knew no bounds. For my part, I wanted to strangle somebody.

A wise man knows his own breaking point. I sent a steward to convey my apologies to the last three people on my list; I was running behind schedule, (a lie) and would therefore be obliged if their appointments could be deferred for half an hour. Then I got out of the poky little cabin I'd been using as an interview room and headed for the fresh air.

To legitimise my truancy, I made for the boat deck, scene of the crime, of which I had so far made only a cursory examination. Fictional sleuths, I knew, made a great performance of examining the mise en scene; they crawled about on their hands and knees like Boy Scouts following a spoor, peered through lenses, picked up hairs and fragments of cigar ash and packed them carefully away in clean envelopes. My head was still a bit too delicate for crawling about on decks, but there was one thing I knew I had to look for; something obvious and fundamental, which ought to provide the key to the whole affair.

It wasn't there, of course.

This meant that I had to ask a steward to take me to the bridge (no, I explained, I didn't know the way), and when I arrived, I learned that the officer I needed to see had gone off duty ten minutes before I got there. Another long walk; he was in his cabin, getting ready for bed. Fortunately, he was able to answer my question with a single word. Largely for the sake of appearances, I went back to the crime scene and made a show of looking round. I didn't get down on my hands and knees, but I did lean over a few times, and even stooped to pick something up (I should have been looking for it all along; but attention to detail was never my strong point, as my old master in chambers would be delighted to confirm); the rest of the time I spent leaning against the rail looking thoughtful and broody. I don't suppose I fooled anybody. I may mix with actors in the course of business, but I've yet to master the art of protective mimicry.

My brief furlough over, I went back to that miserable little cabin and waited for the next witness to arrive. Before she showed up, the captain bustled in, looking very pleased with himself. He asked how I was getting along, and didn't wait for an answer.

"I think we may have a lead," he said excitedly. "One of the stewards Brewer, a most reliable man came to me a few minutes ago and told me that shortly before the tragedy took place, he noticed a pa.s.senger on the boat deck acting in a most suspicious manner."

I nodded gravely. "Promising," I said.

"I believe so," the captain replied. "Luckily, Brewer is a most observant fellow, and happened to notice that the suspect " my expression didn't change, although people tell me I'm a hopeless poker player "was wearing a rather unusual and distinctive hat, a fedora is the term, I believe; the latest thing in New York, but hasn't caught on yet in England."

"Excellent," I said. "So we're looking for an American."

The captain nodded, pleased by my ready grasp of the evidence. "Furthermore," he continued, "Brewer described the individual as tall and thin, by his movements young or at most in early middle age. I consulted the pa.s.senger list with the help of Mr Standish the purser, you know."

"We've met."

"Of course, yes. Anyway, only three pa.s.sengers fitted the description, and two of them had reliable alibis. Accordingly, I've sent three stewards to look for the third man and bring him to my office as soon as possible. I'll let you know as soon as he arrives, and you can take it from there."

I smiled warmly. "Splendid," I said. "Though really, I don't suppose you need me there. I mean to say, you appear to have the whole thing under control, so "

He shook his head. "I'd rather you conducted the actual interrogation," he said. "Your barrister's training, and so forth. If you don't mind, of course."

I made a graceful gesture of acquiescence. "My pleasure," I said.

He left; and my next interviewee hadn't shown up yet, so I slipped back up on deck and poked about around the lifeboats for a moment or so, until I'd satisfied myself on a couple of points. By the time I got back, my witness was ready and waiting.

"So sorry to have kept you," I said. The woman I forget her name didn't bother to acknowledge my apology, so I sat down and steepled my fingers on the desk in front of me.

"First," I said, "I should just like to rea.s.sure you that we have no grounds whatsoever to suspect that you had anything at all to do with this dreadful business."

"So I should hope," the woman replied; but I couldn't help noticing that she seemed to deflate very slightly, like a leaky tyre, and the red glow faded gradually from her face as the interview went on. "Nevertheless," I continued briskly, "it would be most helpful if you could just answer a few simple questions, to help us build up a picture of what happened. Would that be all right?"