Murder on the Lusitania (24 page)

“It was a dramatic move to break off the engagement.”

“As an actor, you would have appreciated it.”

“Why?”

“Because I wasn’t reckless enough to throw a valuable diamond ring into the river Thames. What I took off my finger was a paste ring I inherited from my mother. For sentimental reasons, I was sorry to lose it, but it had no commercial value.”

“What happened to the engagement ring?”

“This,” she said, indicating the cabin. “I sold it to pay for my passage and to stock my wardrobe. I felt that I’d earned that ring. It was the least Nigel could give me in return for the loss of my good name. So I booked a passage on the
Lusitania
,” she continued. “At the back of my mind was a silly idea that, during the voyage, I might even find another gentleman to dance attendance on me.”

“With or without a monocle.”

“I want to forget Lord Carradine.”

“Do you?”

“He was
my
fall down the stairs.”

“Then we have more in common than I thought.”

“At least my life isn’t in danger,” she said with concern. “Yours is. You could have broken your neck when you fell. Don’t you have any idea at all who could have pushed you?”

“I think so,” he said, “though I can’t be certain yet. When I first regained consciousness, I had this ridiculous idea that it might have been her. Acting out of jealousy when she saw me rushing to your aid. I almost believe that she’s capable of it.”

“Who?”

“Ellen Tolley. She seems to have developed a strong interest in me.”

“It’s much more than that, Mr. Dillman.”

“Is it?”

“She’s been breathtakingly frank on the subject. Miss Tolley even cornered me in the ladies’ room for cross-examination. She thought I might be a potential rival for your affections.”

“Was she that blunt about it?”

“Oh, yes.”

“That’s very disturbing,” he said, pursing his lips. “I think I shall have to start dodging her in future. Both of them.”

“Both?”

“Ellen and her father.”

“But Caleb Tolley is not her father.”

Dillman gaped. “What do you mean?”

“I shared a table with them. It took me a while to work it out, but I got there in the end. Ellen may have fooled you, but I’m a woman. What you would probably call a designing woman. The advantage is that I can recognize one of my own kind.”

“I don’t follow.”

“The Tolleys are not father and daughter.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she said confidently. “Because if they are, you’ve got a nasty case of incest aboard.”

Dillman needed only a second to assimilate the information.
He reached out impulsively for her. This time the kiss was on the mouth.

As the message came in through his earphones, the operator scribbled it down on his pad with pencil. When the Morse code stopped clicking in his ear, he turned to his colleague.

“Message from the
Haverford
,” he said with a cynical laugh. “She’s sailing east and wanted to wish us Godspeed. I bet she does! Since when does a steamer from another line want to see a Cunard ship get the Blue Riband back?”

“Why not send a witty reply?” suggested his companion.

“I’ve sent enough messages for one day,” said the other, vacating his chair so that the other wireless operator could relieve him. “My favorite was an old lady who wanted an urgent message sent back to her daughter in Liverpool. It was to remind her to feed the canary. I ask you!”

Dillman burst in while they were still laughing. He had smartened himself up and removed the makeshift bandaging from his head but his face still made them both stare. The ugly red gash on his temple was glistening and there was a dark bruise flowering on his chin. His hair was unkempt.

“I wasn’t looking where I was going,” he said by way of explanation. “Look, this is important. When I came in here before, you showed me some messages sent by a Mr. Barcroft.” He pointed to the man who had just come off duty. “Remember? You told me you kept every wireless sent from this room. Is that true?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I need to go through them all.”

“But there are hundreds!”

“No other way,” said Dillman, “unless you happen to recall a Mr. Caleb Tolley. You couldn’t miss him. Uses a stick.”

“Passengers don’t come directly here, sir. Their messages are brought in. Most of them, anyway. We do get the odd passenger who tries to jump the queue by sneaking in here in person. That Mr. Barcroft was a case in point, but I don’t remember any Mr. Tolley. Victor?”

“Nor I,” said the other man.

“Then let me see those messages.”

It was a long search. Aided by the two men, every message that had been dispatched was checked, then set aside. Since they worked backward chronologically, they took time to find the one short message sent by Caleb Tolley. One of the operators read it aloud.

“Here it is, sir. ‘Wonderful trip. Everything is fine.’ Man of few words, isn’t he?” He handed the piece of paper to Dillman. “Take it.”

“Did you see where this was sent?” asked Dillman, studying it. “Not to Liverpool or New York. But to the
Deutschland
.”

“That’s right, sir,” said the man. “She passed us in the dark last Sunday. Case of ships in the night, eh? She’s part of the Norddeutscher Lloyd Line. Mr. Tolley must have a friend aboard.”

Dillman saw the time at which the message had been sent. His mind went back to the nocturnal meeting with Ellen Tolley on Sunday night. She told him that her father had gone back to his cabin with a headache. Their encounter took on a new meaning. It was not the coinicidence he had assumed. The friendly young American girl with whom he had collided was not lost at all. She was deliberately preventing him from continuing his pursuit of Barcroft. Dillman believed he knew why.

He thanked the operators and charged off. Caution advised him to seek help from the purser, but he was in no mood for a sensible option. His blood was too hot for that. Dillman wanted revenge. A deliberate attempt had been made to disable him. Someone wanted him out of the way while they made a decisive move. That thought was enough to send him racing off to the chief steward. Startled by his appearance, the man willingly gave the detective the information he wanted, and Dillman went off to the cabins allotted to Ellen and Caleb Tolley. He knocked hard on the first door but got no reply. The other cabin also seemed to be empty when he tapped repeatedly on its door.

Dillman was glad that he had kept the master key provided by the purser. It let him into the first cabin, which he immediately identified as belonging to Caleb Tolley. Expecting to find damning
evidence, he was dismayed to see nothing even remotely incriminating. When he went into the adjoining cabin, however, it was different story. Nominally belonging to Tolley’s daughter, the room bore few indications of a woman’s touch. What Dillman first noticed was the sketch pad, pencils, and ruler on the desk. He recalled seeing Ellen at work on deck and admiring her draftsmanship. Further examples of her skill with a pencil soon came to light. When he opened a drawer, he found exact copies of the diagrams that had been stolen from the chief engineer’s cabin. There was a bonus and it gave Dillman a surge of pleasure. On the wiring diagram was an obliging little cross.

The search was not yet complete. In the wardrobe, concealed behind Ellen’s dresses, was a large black valise. He flicked the catch and opened it up. Dillman could not resist a little shout of delight.

Charles Halliday was looking more haggard than ever. Too anxious to enjoy his dinner, he had returned to his cabin immediately afterward to brood on the vicissitudes of life as a purser aboard an ocean liner. Pressure was being applied from all sides and it was threatening to squeeze him to a pulp. Captain Watt was pushing him hard for results, so was Fergus Rourke, so was Itzak Weiss, and so were the dozens of other passengers with more minor concerns. The accumulated pressure was stifling. A tap on his door promised no release valve.

“Come in!” he called, sitting up. “Mr. Dillman!”

His visitor stepped into the cabin with fire in his eye, blood on his temple, and a bruise on his chin. Draped over his arm was a large towel embroidered with the Cunard emblem.

“What in God’s name happened to you, man?”

“They tricked us, Mr. Halliday.”

“They?”

“The couple who’ve been behind us all along. The raid on Itzak Weiss’s cabin was partly a ruse to bring me out into the open. Once they knew who I was, they could choose their moment to pick me off, as you see. Luckily, I survived the fall.”

“What fall?”

“One of them pushed me down a companionway.”

“One of whom?”

“The Tolleys. Father and daughter. Man and mistress. Whatever their relationship, I’m sure of one thing. They’re in this together. They killed Barcroft between them.”

“How?”

“Think back to those two glasses with the bottle of Champagne,” said Dillman. “They weren’t for Barcroft and a male friend. He had an assignation with Ellen Tolley. Set up by her, I’ve no doubt. According to what I’ve heard, he propositioned a number of young ladies and must have thought he finally hit the jackpot with Ellen.”

“Who are these Tolleys?”

“First-class passengers. And first-class performers,” admitted Dillman with reluctant admiration. “They took me in. Ellen is clever enough and cunning enough to take in any man. She obviously hypnotized Barcroft. He invited her to his cabin, but she took someone along with her. It wouldn’t have been difficult to distract Barcroft. In the state he was in, he probably wouldn’t have heard a cavalry charge coming through the door behind him.”

“Yet they didn’t get what they came for, Mr. Dillman.”

“Oh, yes, they did, sir.”

“But they didn’t find that brown envelope.”

“They didn’t need to, Mr. Halliday. They took it into the room with them. Think back. The body was positioned in the one place from which that envelope would be spotted. We were meant to find it there so that we would assume it was Barcroft who stole the diagrams from the chief engineer’s cabin.”

“And he didn’t?”

“No. They copied what they stole, then planted it on him.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve just seen concrete proof in Ellen Tolly’s cabin.”

Halliday sprang to life. “Let’s arrest them at once!”

“Stay where you are, sir!” warned Dillman. “Going after them is the worst thing you can do. It would not only cause a scene in
public, it would end in violence and some of the other passengers might get hurt. Caleb Tolley is a strong man. He uses a walking stick because he claims to have a bad leg but I don’t believe there’s anything the matter with him. I have a horrible feeling that he used that stick to batter Henry Barcroft to death. Do you want him flailing it around in the lounge?”

“Of course not.”

“Then play this quietly, sir. Let him come to us. I know exactly where the rendezvous will be. I’ll tell you where to station your men. If we plan this with care, we may be able to tidy up this whole mess in one night and none of the other passengers would be any the wiser.” He gave a broad grin. “How does that sound?”

“Too good to be true!”

“Won’t anything put the color back in your cheeks?”

“Yes, Mr. Dillman.”

“What?”

“A stolen violin.”

“I was forgetting that,” said Dillman, removing the towel from his arm. He held up the Stradivarius. “This was hidden away in a valise in Ellen Tolley’s cabin. Why don’t you do yourself a supreme favor, sir?” He handed the instrument over. “Take it back to Itzak Weiss now and win yourself a friend for life.”

* * *

Violet Rymer was more distressed than ever. The afternoon’s meeting with Philip Garrow had started so well but ended so badly. Money had once again been the stumbling block. It was his turn to be shocked this time. When she told him that her marriage to him would jeopardize the payment of the trust fund to her, his manner had altered completely, and before they could talk the matter through properly, the third-class lounge had been invaded by a fancy-dress contest. Driven out, they parted in the most unnerving way, Violet seeking assurance that looked like it was never coming from him. Pulsing with frustration, Philip Garrow, the young man she loved and with whom her whole future was entwined, had pushed her away and run off. Violet had been spurned. It was demeaning.

Another gap had suddenly opened up between them. Yet it was not irremediable. In her heart, she knew and believed that. Philip loved her. All that she had to do was to demonstrate the full strength of her love for him and everything would be all right. That was the thought that helped to sustain her through dinner and through the long conversation that followed. When the guests departed, she retired to her own room and left her parents in the parlor. They would not remain there long. Her father had drunk quite heavily and her mother, a woman of delicate constitution, did not like late nights, preferring instead the solace of a sleeping pill prescribed by the family physician.

Violet waited, listened, and bolstered her resolve with thoughts of what lay ahead. Philip would be so pleased that she was ready at last to sacrifice herself wholly to him. It would bind them forever. Lying fully clothed in the dark, she watched the light under her door go out. Her parents had left the lounge and gone to bed. Another half hour would be a sufficient safety zone. Each minute was separate torment. When she felt certain that the coast was clear, she let herself back into the lounge and went out through the door to the passageway. In giving her a key of her own to the suite, her parents had never imagined it might be used during a bold escapade at night.

A mixture of elation and foreboding took her onward. She was stepping into the unknown. It was not at all as she had hoped or envisioned but there was no helping that. Only by throwing herself into Philip’s arms could she prove what he meant to her and receive the answering assurances from him. It seemed an age before she reached his cabin and she was trembling like a leaf as she tapped on it. There were sounds from within. She tapped harder. Afraid that someone might see her, she banged on the door with more purpose. A lock clicked and the door inched open. Two dark, guilty eyes peered out at her.