Murder On “B” Deck Read online

  “We were awaiting the advent of the Baroness Borsolini. By neither word nor sign had she indicated that she would seek us out, but there was that in her manner that told us something had happened. All day she had dogged Lavender’s steps, but without an opportunity to speak. It was certain, however, that she was upon the verge of a revelation that could no longer be delayed.

  “An occasional steward drifted past in the darkness, and once the second officer of the ship stopped for a word and a cigarette, but for the most part we were left, as we had wished to be, to ourselves.

  “‘I believe, Lavender,’ I said at length, breaking the silence, ‘that we have given her every decent opportunity’; and at that instant the Italian baroness fluttered into view.

  “She came forward uncertainly, wavered in passing, passed on, and in a few minutes was back. She was quite alone and obviously she wished to speak with us. On the third trip she had made up her mind.

  “‘You are Mr. Lavender?’ she murmured, coming swiftly to our side. ‘I must speak with you. May I sit down, please?’

  “‘Of course,’ said my friend, ‘please do!’ He moved to assist her. ‘Something is worrying you, I fear.’

  “‘You have noticed it, then,’ said the baroness. ‘You are right. I am very much afraid.’

  “Her English was perfect; her manner pretty and appealing.

  “‘Somebody has frightened you?’ asked Lavender gently.

  “She leaned forward and studied his face in the darkness. ‘You are a good man,’ she whispered at length. ‘I think you must be a poet…. Yes, I am afraid. Last night—after I had retired—someone was in my cabin!’

  “‘A thief?’

  “The words came eagerly from my lips, even as I sensed my friend’s displeasure.

  “‘I think so. But nothing was taken. He did not find what he sought.’

  “‘You know, then, what he sought,’ said Lavender quietly. ‘What was it?’

  “‘My jewels,’ replied the Baroness Borsolini. ‘What else?’

  “My friend’s cap came off to the breeze. His black hair, with its single plume of white, blew back from his high forehead and his eyes shone in the darkness. ‘Tell me,’ he ordered softly, ‘how you know that there was someone in your cabin last night.’

  “‘I awoke—suddenly—I do not know why I awoke. I suppose I felt someone there beside me. There were little sounds in the room—soft, brushing sounds—and breathing. Light, light, so light that I could scarcely hear them. It was only for an instant, then the man was gone. I must have made some little noise that alarmed him. As he went, I almost saw him—you understand? He seemed to glide rather than walk through the door, yet he must have opened it to escape. He made no sound, and what I saw was only black against’ black as he went out. I only half saw him—you understand? The other half I felt!’”

  For the third time the novelist paused and looked around him. It wasn’t so bad, after all. His eyes were gleaming. “It begins to move a bit, eh, Walter?” He was thirsting for praise and not from Walter Ghost.

  “I like that ‘black against black,’” said Miss Harrington. “It’s like a Whistler, isn’t it? But you’ve made it theft, Mr. Mollock, and I thought it was to be murder!”

  Dunstan Mollock smiled craftily. “Have I?” he retorted. “Wait and see. This is only the second night out, remember; and there’s a whole novel to do. Besides, it was necessary first for the thief—”

  At that instant there was a knock on the panels of Stateroom 67.

  “Hello, inside,” called the voice of Jennings the purser. “Are you there?”

  Todd Osborne sprang to his feet with suspicious alacrity and flung open the door, revealing two men in the aperture. The second man was the first officer of the ship.

  “Come in, Mr. Jennings,” cried Osborne cordially. “Come in, sir! Everybody welcome. The story was just beginning to get good. Will you have a drink?” He caught himself up and glanced in horror at Miss Harrington’s Aunt Julia. “Not that anybody has had one!”

  But Jennings, curiously agitated, was looking at the man upon the bed. It was the first officer who replied. “I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said, “but could you give us a minute, Mr. Ghost? There’s been a—a sort of an accident—and the captain would like to see you, if you will be so good.”

  “Indeed, yes,” answered Ghost, surprised. “Excuse me, please, all of you. I’ll be back as soon as possible. An accident, you say? Don’t wait for me, Duns, old man. I can hear the rest of it later. Sorry….”

  Without finishing, he left the stateroom on the heels of the ship’s officers. For a moment the voices of all three could be heard in the passage, Ghost’s quick and eager, the purser’s cautioning, the first officer’s low and urgent; then silence fell upon the corridor and the company.

  In another moment Miss Harrington was upon her feet, her face alight with eagerness. “Something has happened,” she said. “Something unusual.”

  Mavis Osborne had laid a hand upon her husband’s arm. “But why should they call Mr. Ghost away?” she asked. “Do you suppose there’s—any danger?”

  Mollock, a bit miffed, was fuddling with his papers. “Oh, rot!” he observed. “Walter’s a court of last resort, that’s all. Everybody goes to Walter when there’s trouble. He’s a sort of high-class trouble-shooter. That’s all. I remember, at school—” He stopped and asked, “Well, shall we go ahead?”

  “Something very unusual has happened,” insisted Miss Harrington. “They wouldn’t have called Mr. Ghost if it weren’t something—”

  She, too, stopped and listened; and in a moment they heard the footsteps of Walter Ghost returning. He tapped lightly and, entering, closed the door with curious care.

  “I’m afraid, Duns,” he said quietly, “that the rest of the reading will have to go for the moment. It’s—if nothing else—a bit untimely. I came back to say that I shan’t return later, as I promised; and I’ve been asked by the first officer of the ship, speaking for the captain, to request you all to keep silence about the—the accident he mentioned. It would be unfair not to tell you more, so I shall tell you; but you must give me your word that not a whisper of it will get around. The Countess Fogartini is dead—murdered, the captain thinks—in her stateroom.”

  He added, “Not a word, please, to anyone.”

  Chapter Three

  In life the Countess Fogartini had been an attractive woman. Even in death she was not unbeautiful. It was possible to look with admiration and regret upon the bruised face with its wide-open eyes, and impossible not to wonder what horrible necessity had urged so wanton a destruction.

  But it was a dreadful beauty that confronted the beholder. Most heads, even the heads of the dead, are normally adjusted, the eyes facing ahead in the direction the feet would be following if their owners were walking. The eyes of the Countess Fogartini looked out almost from between her shoulders, behind, and upside down. The sharp little chin thrust upward. Steel fingers had settled upon her throat, squeezing out life, and ruthless hands had snapped back the handsome head until it hung limp upon a broken neck. The eyes viewed the doorway as a contortionist might, bending his body backward in a quarter circle. It was as if the dead woman, with terrible agility, had swung her head completely over to watch the departure of her murderer.

  The body sat upon a chair, confronting a small mirror in a dressing table, whose glass gave back the shocking semblance of a headless trunk. Fully dressed in a sea-green dinner gown of tulle, cut daringly in front and back, and ornamented with flashing rows of sequins, the countess seemed to have been about to rise upon her satin toes. A knee had caught and braced itself against a leg of the table. An arm, half raised, had failed to complete its arc, arrested by a curtain fixture of the neighbouring bed; the little finger of the hand thrust outward from among its fellows in a gesture startlingly lifelike.

  Across the bed, a formless green and gold monster, sprawled a discarded negligee of metallic cloth, and on the floor beside the chair drooped French-heeled mules with glistening pompoms of ostrich feather. A wardrobe trunk stood open in a corner of the chamber, revealing delicate intimacies and garments that few men might have named. On the dressing table a small travelling clock ticked with intolerable distinctness.

  Ghost, entering the room on the heels of the purser and the first officer, found three men already in possession—Captain Porter, the ship’s doctor, whose name was Dakin, and a small, alert individual in a steward’s uniform. The latter was introduced to him as Mr. Gignilliat.

  “Got him, sir!” said the first officer with a certain triumph.

  The captain shook hands warmly. “It’s good of you to come, Mr. Ghost,” he said. He hesitated and his eyes swung to the body of the Countess Fogartini, contorted upon its chair. “Mr. Keese, of course, has told you what has happened?”

  “Briefly. I had not looked for anything like this.” The newcomer stood quite still for a minute, looking down upon the corpse. He noted the popping eyes, the discolourations on throat and face, the incredible arc of the head. His eyes, at first full of pity, were suddenly bleak.

  The quartette of officials watched him with a mingling of curiosity and respect that, although his face was averted, he could not help but feel. Insensibly he resented it. It was as if they expected him, now that he was there, to produce cigar ashes from a cologne bottle or pluck the murderer from beneath the bed. He suspected that Jennings had been romancing about him. Only the little man called Gignilliat seemed unconscious of his imminence. Seated upon the wall bench opposite the bed, the steward was whistling softly under his breath a melody that by no stretch of the imagination could be mistaken for a dirge. Ghost turned a curious glance upon the man. His eyes were bright and shrewd, a bit furtive, and restless as bal
ls of mercury. Without prejudice to his ribald tune, indeed almost in time with it, they were in every corner of the room at once. His profession was obvious. Disguised as a steward, he was a member of the secret service that is part of the equipment of every large liner on the ocean.

  Ghost’s eyes returned to the murdered countess. “Strangled?” he asked at last, and glanced at the ship’s doctor, whose opinion of the newcomer instantly collapsed. To Dakin the cause of death was absurdly beyond question.

  “I imagine there is small room for doubt on that score,” he shrugged.

  Ghost’s voice became slightly acid, but he smiled. “Strangulation and a broken neck are certainly evident,” he retorted, “and either is a condition, it must be admitted, that tends to shorten life. Still, an appearance of violence may often mask a less obvious form of murder. What I meant to ask is: are there no other indications?”

  “None that I have found.” The doctor was now somewhat abashed. “I have made no complete examination as yet.” He added: “There will have to be one, I realize. Mr. Jennings tells me you are a physician yourself, Mr. Ghost. I shall be glad to have you verify my opinion.”

  “It won’t be necessary, I’m sure,” said Ghost. “I have little doubt that the cause of death is the obvious one.” He smiled faintly. “Yes, I believe I am a sort of physician. That is, I am a graduate in medicine and surgery. It’s not exactly the same thing. Except in an emergency, I have never practised.”

  The ship’s doctor became more genial. “Well, that’s all right, too.” The admission, however, did not raise his opinion of the man who had made it.

  Ghost bent over the body, still closely watched by the four officials. He placed a hand gently beneath the sagging head and endeavoured to raise it. Bending closer, he examined the brutal thumb marks on the throat. “How long would you say she had been dead, Doctor?” he asked.

  “A few hours only—possibly three or four.”

  “She was at luncheon,” contributed the captain. “She’s at my table, you know.”

  “I saw her,” nodded Ghost. “That would be about one o’clock, I think. But she was not at dinner. She was dressing for dinner when this occurred. That would be about six, possibly. Possibly a little later. It is now after ten. Who found her?”

  “Her stewardess—Mrs. Cameron.” It was the purser who answered. “Barely an hour ago.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “She had asked not to be disturbed, the stewardess says. That was after luncheon. Presumably she was going to lie down for a time. When she didn’t appear for dinner, Mrs. Cameron wondered a bit; but remembering her instructions she made no investigation.”

  “She might have knocked,” said Ghost thoughtfully. “I suppose she heard nothing inside, at any time? Voices?”

  Gignilliat spoke for the first time. “Nothing of the sort, sir, she says. H’i’ve examined’er pretty closely on that point.” His rich Cockney accent betrayed at once the city of his birth and the curious anomaly presented by his French name.

  “Yet there must have been some conversation before this occurred,” mused Ghost, “even if the man were a stranger. She was facing a mirror. She must have seen him enter. There would have been time at least for an exclamation. Unless the body was placed upon the chair. But it doesn’t seem likely. Well, possibly, possibly.” He appeared to be thinking aloud.

  The captain cleared his throat. “You mean it is possible that she didn’t hear him enter?”

  “Just possible; but it would be extraordinary if there had been no sounds whatever. I wonder whose deck chairs are just beyond these ports? And who occupies the adjoining stateroom?”

  “I can tell you that,” said Keese. “It was the first thing I thought of. Of course, I haven’t spoken to any of them yet.”

  “No doubt when you do, you’ll find that they were getting ready for dinner or were otherwise absent. The hour was well chosen. Would you say that a powerful man had committed this murder, Doctor?”

  “Yes,” answered the doctor; “fairly powerful, I should say.”

  “But not necessarily a large man, I think. Almost any vigorous fellow can strangle a woman. As for the broken neck, a quick backward snap, with a firm hand on the forehead, would be sufficient. Indeed, that is the way it must have occurred. Had there been much resistance, much of a struggle, the woman’s face would be quite black and bloated.”

  The physician nodded. “It’s black enough as it is; but decidedly it might have been blacker. Yes, a quick snap backward, with the man’s hand on her chin or forehead.”

  “On her forehead,” said Ghost. “He had one hand on her throat, you see. The other would naturally seek higher ground, so to speak.”

  He was quite detached. The body of the Countess Fogartini was no longer a murdered corpse calling upon his sympathies, but a problem as fascinating in its way as a palimpsest or a Rembrandt forgery.

  “Of course she knew him,” he continued. “There’s no proof; it’s one of those things one feels to be true. Mere robbery, with the slightest care, can always be accomplished without murder. He knew her. He may even have been expected, if—as Mrs. Cameron asserts—the countess had asked not to be disturbed. They talked briefly, and suddenly his hand was at her throat. Doubtless it was the broken neck that killed her. He may have grasped her throat merely to silence her.”

  He swung slowly on his heel and allowed his eyes to rove over every inch of the stateroom. “Everything here is just as you found it, I suppose?” he asked, and was annoyed by his own question. It sounded like a sentence out of one of Mollock’s novels.

  “Exactly as it was,” agreed the captain. “Mrs. Cameron reported to her chief, who reported to Jennings, who reported to me. All within the hour.”

  There was little disorder about the place. The porthole stood partly open, as apparently it had stood throughout the day, for ventilation. On an upholstered wall bench stood the dead woman’s minor bags, and a larger container projected a few inches outward from beneath the bed. The curtains blew gently with a faint swishing melody. Beyond them, on the promenade, could be heard the voices of late strollers—tireless trampers that neither the card table nor the bar could entice. A girl’s laugh came to them, curiously incongruous in the stateroom silence. The air from the water was fresh and cool.

  Ghost turned to the purser. “Jennings,” he said, “you probably know more passengers by sight" than anyone else on the boat. Slip out and stroll around the deck for a bit. See who the pedestrians are to-night; particularly any who may seem to be interested in this stateroom. Our light has been visible now for some time.”

  The purser nodded and left the room. The captain raised his eyebrows.

  “Just a notion,” smiled Ghost. “If somebody happens to be interested in us, I think we should be interested in him.” He hesitated. “If you will allow me to make a suggestion, Captain, I think it might be as well for you not to pay too much attention to this quarter of the ship. Your movements are more likely to be remarked than mine.”

  “I wonder what you mean by that?”

  “Only that if this is to be kept a secret from the ship at large, your interest must not be too obvious. I’m afraid comment is inevitable; but better later than sooner.”

  Captain Porter nodded vigorously. “I agree with you.”

  “Another thing,” continued Ghost. “Since you have been flattering enough to ask me to make an investigation, I should like to see every wireless message that is sent or received, if you will give the necessary orders. They might be brought to Jennings, if you like, or to Gignilliat, who would then hand them to me.”

  “Very well. I’ll do it at once. But—” The captain was curious—“what do you expect to learn, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I don’t know. It’s conceivable, I suppose, that the murderer may attempt to communicate with someone ashore—even with someone on another vessel. He may have a report to make. It’s just an idea.”

  “I see. Naturally, the message—if one were to be sent—wouldn’t be an open secret: ‘I have committed the murder as agreed!’” The captain smiled ruefully. “No such luck as that.”