Death of an Angel (26 page)

“Is that—” Pam asked, indicating the officer with four stripes.

“Staff captain, ma'am,” the steward told her. “Captain Smythe-Hornsby, ma'am. A bit of the fish, ma'am?” Pam had a bit of the fish. The others had bits of the fish. “Ship's captain's on the bridge, ma'am,” the steward said. “Some of the sprouts, ma'am?” Pam had some of the sprouts. Jerry turned away in horror; Dorian shook her head; Bill had some of the sprouts. “Trifle looks nice today,” the steward said.

A tall man, notable for grooming, for the neat fit of a sports jacket, stood by the table over which Respected Captain Folsom presided. The tall man was an assured man, late on in his fifties, with a heavily handsome face. “Sit anywhere, I guess,” Captain Folsom told him, in the accents of New England. “Skipper's on duty, they tell me.”

The tall man said, “Thank you,” and sat.

“Well, well,” Bill Weigand said. “Well, well, well. J. Orville in the flesh.” He spoke in a low voice, but now, as the room filled, conversation rose in it, so that there was little danger of being overheard.

They looked at Bill and waited.

“J. Orville Marsh,” Bill said. “The well-known private—” He hesitated momentarily. “Licensed private investigator,” Bill said. And he looked again at the tall and dignified man, who presented a well-tailored back. “I wonder—” Bill did not finish. Instead he looked, and the others looked, at a short round man, red-tunicked, strapped in white webbing, wearing a white cap with a red band, who marched between the tables. As he marched, the scabbard of his gold-hilted sword tinkled against the legs of chairs. He looked very hot under his white cap and, Pam thought, slightly embarrassed. But he kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, and his plump shoulders back as well as he was able. The strain could be observed.

He marched—there was no other word for it—to the table over which Respected Captain Folsom presided. He stood where Folsom could see him, and stood at attention.

“Duty Officer Magumber reporting, sir,” he said. “All present and accounted for, sir.”

“
Or
, Magumber,” Folsom said. “Present
or
accounted for.”

“Sir,” the man with the sword said.

“Carry on,” Folsom said.

“Sir,” the man with the sword said, and did an about-face. The sword swung with his movement; it banged into a shin of Respected Captain Folsom.

“Ouch!” Folsom said, in the aggrieved tones of a New England businessman of middle years. “Watch that damn' thing, Teddy.”

“It was your idea, J.R.,” Magumber said, in equally non-military tones. “Think I like lugging it around? Banging into things?”

“Officer of the Day,
carry on
,” Folsom said, reverting to Respected Captain.

“
Sir
,” Theodore Magumber, of Theodore Magumber, Inc., Wholesale Produce, said, and went off, in a military manner, to carry on.

Jerry North choked slightly on his trifle.

“I think,” Dorian said, as if she had been considering the question for some time, “that this is going to be a great deal of fun. I think the Ancient and Respectables will help.”

“For short,” Jerry told her, “they call themselves the Old Respectables.”

“There will,” the public-address system said, after a preliminary click, “be a cocktail party in the Coral Café this afternoon, to which all are invited. Thank you. Click.” There was a momentary hush in the big room, in which upward of a hundred civilians and Old Respectables lunched, in which the lights were soft and the white-jacketed stewards quick. “Click,” the public-address system said. “We are presently dropping the pilot. Thank you. Click.”

A woman with improbably red hair went past the table for four at which Norths and Weigands toyed with trifle. Her movements were resolute, and somewhat more military than had been those of Officer of the Day Magumber. She was followed by a much younger woman with hair of no special color, who wore a linen suit, which had no special color either. The suit hung flatly, in straight lines.

The younger woman was, in turn, followed by the assistant chief steward, in a blue uniform. The red-haired woman, who was clearly in her sixties, the skin of whose face was tightly stretched and almost wrinkleless, stopped by a chair at Captain Folsom's table, and turned. She turned imperiously.

“Yes, Mrs. Macklin,” the steward said, speaking quickly. “This is the captain's table, ma'am.” He stepped around the thin youngish woman, and pulled out a chair for the woman with red hair. She looked sharply at Respected Captain Folsom, at J. Orville Marsh—who certainly, Pam thought, doesn't
look
like a private eye—and sat. The steward pulled out the chair on her right, and the thin young woman started to sit in it.

“Other side, man,” Mrs. Macklin said, and her voice was sharp. “
Other
side.
You
ought to know, Hilda.”…

It took all kinds to make a cruise, a fact upon which Pamela North commented some time later, standing with Jerry and Dorian in the swirl of a cocktail party in the café. Ancient and Respectable Riflemen in uniform (and not a few wearing their caps); staff captains; sharp-tongued, elderly women with improbably red hair. And, it was evident, a hundred or so more.

Among the kinds it also took was, most evidently, a hostess. She was a little tall, and just perceptibly angular, and what she wore Pam and Dorian, conferring by glance and, apparently, osmosis, considered a bit fussy. It was generally pinkish in hue, with blue accents at unexpected places, and it had perhaps been designed for a woman of whom there was more, here and there, than there was of Miss Springer.

“Now I am Miss Springer,” she said, landing beside the Norths and Dorian like a friendly, if largish, bird. “I'm here to help everybody—
everybody
—have a good time. We must all
meet
people.”

“Well,” Pam said, “I'm Pamela North. This is my husband, Mr. North. This is Dorian Weigand.” Pam paused momentarily. “Her husband's asleep,” Pam said, feeling that she had left a gap. “He just arrested Killer McShane.”

“What?” Miss Springer said. “Oh, of course. How nice.”

“The killer didn't think it—” Pam began, with what sounded precisely like innocence. But Jerry looked at her. Jerry said he was sure they would all have a wonderful time. He said it was a very fine party.

It was. The waters through which the
Carib Queen
steamed were placid—she was a sparkling thing on a still sparkling sea. The setting sun danced into the starboard windows of the café lounge, on the sun-deck level, with french doors standing open to the after-deck, above the swimming pool. There was still a net over the swimming pool, which might, Pam thought, prove as well. Some of the Old Respectables—but one should not be censorious. The poor things, Pam thought. Their wives weren't with them. Only their rifles.

“
Have
you,” Miss Springer said, “met Captain Smythe-Hornsby? I
know
he'll want to meet
you
. So
much.
” She looked at them, blue eyes roundly bright; pinkened cheeks glowing with cordiality. “
Come
, dear people.”

Unprotestingly, they went. Seen close, Captain Smythe-Hornsby was even younger, even more handsome, than he had seemed at table. Also, he was taller. He had changed to a white jacket. He was charmed at meeting Dorian Weigand, charmed anew at meeting Pamela North. Jerry's hand was taken in the firm clasp of friendship, and Jerry's eyes were looked forth-rightly into. The captain was glad to have them all aboard and he hoped they were finding their way around our little ship. He hoped that they were, as he was, finding this little do a passable show.

“Oh, most,” Dorian said. “Most charming.”

“Quite,” said Staff Captain Smythe-Hornsby. “Quite, Mrs.—” He hesitated. Dorian told him again.

“Silly ass,” Captain Smythe-Hornsby said, apparently of himself. “Weigand, of course.” He paused. “Of course,” he said, “Weigand.” And he spoke the name, the second time, as if it had a special meaning. “Hope the captain—” he said, but Miss Springer had returned. She had returned with the red-haired woman and, in the background, the girl with hair of no special color.

“You must, captain,” Miss Springer said, with girlish enthusiasm over the treat in store, “you
must
let me introduce you to Mrs. Macklin. And her daughter, of course. Miss,” she hesitated just perceptibly—“Macklin,” she said, in triumph.

Captain Smythe-Hornsby was charmed. He hoped they were enjoying our little get-together.

Mrs. Macklin had very bright black eyes. She pointed them at the captain.

“There could,” she said, in a high voice with a crack in it, “be more to drink.”

She had something there, Pam North thought—not tact, certainly, but something. The stewards were doing all they could. That was evident. But there would always be more to drink at a party large as this. Waiters who seemed to be approaching were waylaid, wandered into bypaths. Or, quite simply, ran out of cocktails. But one did not—unless one were an Old Respectable or, apparently, a Mrs. Macklin—come to such parties as this to drink. One—

“Terribly sorry, you know,” Captain Smythe-Hornsby said and then, in the tone of command, “Steward!” Instantly there was not merely a steward; there were stewards. Mrs. Macklin was supplied; so were the Norths and Dorian. Pale Hilda Macklin reached, or seemed to reach, toward the tray, but she withdrew her hand before the gesture was defined. “Nothing for me, thank you,” she said, in a neat, pale voice.

“You may if you like,” Mrs. Macklin said.

“Of course,” Miss Macklin said. “Of course, mother.” But she shook her head and did not reach toward the tray.

“Then,” Mrs. Macklin said, “I would appreciate your getting me a wrap. Or perhaps the knitted stole.”

“Of course,” the younger woman said, in the same pale voice, and went off through the crowded room, walking straight and stiff. Pam watched her oddly rigid progress, and watched with sympathy. To be so domineered over by a mother so much more formidable. From small things one could perceive their lives, Pam thought, doing so—the washed-out young woman, all her pale life at beck and call; afraid to take a drink, to rouge lips; squeezed dry by the imperious hands of a selfish mother; transfixed, as bird by snake, on the cold arrows of black eyes. And she can't, Pam thought, indignation growing, be older than the late twenties. No wonder the poor thing was straight up and down as a broom-handle, and with similar allure. How could she be expected to burgeon? How—

Having thus filled in the picture, Pam was surprised—was almost aggrieved—to see that, when she was near a door leading out of the lounge, Miss Macklin was intercepted. At least, she seemed to be intercepted, and by a man—by a man evidently young, darkly good-looking (almost Spanish, really) wearing a light sports jacket with noticeably wide shoulders, showing white teeth in a smile. Or—was she intercepted? Certainly it seemed that the man moved up to her, moved for a moment beside her. But it was less certain that Miss Macklin responded. Perhaps there was a slight motion of her head, but Pam could not be sure. And almost at once the young man moved aside and away, and Miss Macklin went on through the door which led her into a foyer with corridors running forward on either side of the ship.

If there had actually been a meeting, Pam thought, it had been oddly surreptitious. Lovers parted by circumstance, meeting for the briefest of words, of glances? Pam tried to think so. She remembered Hilda's pale face, her unrelenting straightness of outline under the meaningless linen suit, and abandoned the effort to think so. As Juliet, Miss Hilda Macklin simply wouldn't do.

“No, this will be the first time,” Pam North said, catching a polite question by the tail when it was all but past her. “I'm sure we'll love Havana.”

“Fascinating place,” Captain Smythe-Hornsby told her. “Fine place to buy—” He was interrupted; Miss Springer had caught another, and brought him proudly. “I
know
you'll want to meet—” Miss Springer said, and offered Respected Captain Folsom—J. R. Folsom—still contained in red tunic and, it seemed to Pam somewhat unfortunately, wearing his cap. Captain Smythe-Hornsby did not, perhaps a little carefully did not, notice the cap. Or perhaps he thought cap-wearing in an enclosed place, while drinking cocktails, merely another curious American habit. He noticed the rest of the respected captain cordially.

It was then that Pam discovered she had at some stage—probably during her preoccupation with poor Hilda Macklin—been deserted by her husband and her devoted, green-eyed friend, Mrs. William Weigand. Of all things, Pam thought, and vanished from Captain Smythe-Hornsby's circle, leaving not even a smile behind. She found them. She found Bill with them—Bill and a tall, heavily handsome man who was—oh yes. A private eye. And who still did not accord with anything Pam knew of private eyes, admittedly almost nothing.

“So you tore yourself away,” Jerry said, getting in first, and looking with meaning toward the handsome staff captain of the
Carib Queen
. “I'll have to get me a uniform.”

“Do,” Pam said. “You'd be cute as an Old Respectable.”

With those formalities out of the way, she was introduced to Mr. J. Orville Marsh, whose dignity of speech proved to match his dignity of appearance. It seemed hardly possible.

“Are you really a private eye?” Pam North said, going to the point.

Marsh looked at Bill Weigand.

“Right,” Bill said. “I did.” Bill looked rested, now. He also looked somewhat amused.

“Yes,” Marsh said to Pam. “At least, I used to be. Retired last year.”

Pam was a little disappointed. It was bad luck to catch her first private eye just when it had closed.

“Do you call yourselves that, or is it like veterinarians?” Pam asked, then, and J. Orville Marsh looked gravely perplexed. He grasped the last word and repeated it, as one clinging to a final straw.