Puzzle of the Silver Persian (6 page)

That was motive enough for suicide, certainly—given a sensitive, emotional type such as Rosemary, for the first time in her life away from parental overseeing. Yet—

Miss Withers came back around the deck, talking to herself, and then she suddenly stopped short. A man in a natty blue uniform was leaning over the rail near the door of the social hall, and from his fingers bits of something white were snatched by the wind, which whipped them back toward the ship’s wake.

She approached and saw that it was Peter Noel. He bade her a good morning. “Cleaning house?” she asked casually.

Noel nodded. “That’s one advantage of a ship,” he informed her. “Anything you don’t want you can throw over the side. I just got rid of some playing cards… they should have gone weeks ago. They were like shuffling pancakes.”

He ventured a polite grin and stepped back inside. Miss Withers still stood at the rail, staring back at the oily, tumbled trails of uneasy water churned up by the powerful screws. Back there to the westward lay America—somewhere nearer the curve of the horizon a proud, slim girl in white had found a chilly grave…

Miss Withers was very thoughtful. Then her keen eyes noticed that a scrap of paper, smaller than a postage stamp, was staring at her from a looming iron stanchion, held firmly by the wind against the damp metal. She took it idly in her fingers, and then turned and walked forward again.

Locked in her stateroom, she began to study it, for lack of anything better to do. It was worth studying. Never before in her life had Miss Withers seen a fragment of a playing card made of cream paper with a blue rule lined across it. Never before had she seen a bit of playing card bearing the scribbled letters “—osem—.”

For half an hour she tried to think of a word in English or any other common language into which that fragment would fit. Finally she put the scrap of paper safely into her handbag and rang for Mrs. Snoaks.

The stewardess became instantly voluble about the disappearance of Rosemary Fraser, but Miss Withers cut her short. “Please draw me a hot bath at once,” she requested. Then, as the woman turned to go, “Just a moment.” Miss Withers took a crisp five-dollar bill from her bag and crinkled it. “I want you to do something for me.”

Mrs. Snoaks would have done anything, including arson, for a five-dollar bill. Her eyes widened when she heard her instructions, but there was that in the manner of Hildegarde Withers which prevented questions. “No matter where I am or what I’m doing,” the school teacher insisted, “come and tell me.” Mrs. Snoaks swore, and departed.

Half an hour later, refreshed in spite of her sleepless night, Miss Hildegarde Withers climbed out of the tub, dried her angular body, and donned a serge suit. Then she went to the top deck and knocked at the door which bore a brass plate—“Captain.”

The master of every vessel, no matter what his age, is known on board as “the Old Man.” Today Captain Everett looked the part. He sat at his desk, his eyes circled with dark rings, and stared at those fateful words—“Unaccountably Missing.”

His face did not light up at the sight of Hildegarde Withers in the doorway. “Well?” he rasped. In his hand was a wireless form which Sparks had just handed him, from the line’s moguls in New York.

MAKE EVERY EFFORT CLEAR MYSTERY OF FRASER GIRL STOP PARENTS DISSATISFIED AND VERY INFLUENTIAL STOP UNFORTUNATE YOU DID NOT TURN BACK AND LOWER BOAT STOP MAKE FULL REPORT HERE AND TO LONDON.

“I’d like to make a suggestion,” said Miss Withers hurriedly. “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to find out where various members of the passenger list were at the time Rosemary Fraser is supposed to have gone overboard?”

“What?” Captain Everett had an unpleasant feeling that this meddlesome woman was implying something frightening and unthinkable. “You mean to tell me that you suspect—that you think somebody had a hand in—”

“I’m not suspecting anything, yet,” Miss Withers told him. “But if we knew where the passengers were, we might learn something from someone’s hearing the splash—or not hearing it.”

But Captain Everett shook his head. “It will only alarm the passengers,” he decided. “They’ll think they’re being asked for an alibi, and I’ve done enough asking questions for one day. Besides, if any of them had heard anything, they’d have come forward.” He turned back to his desk as a sign that the interview was over.

“There’s more ways to kill a cat than by choking it with butter,” Miss Withers told him somewhat cryptically, and withdrew in injured pride.

As she stood thoughtfully on the deck outside the captain’s door she heard the clanging signal of the luncheon gong. That gave her an idea. She hastened below, and such was her promptness that she very nearly, but not quite, got into the dining saloon ahead of Dr. Waite, who had just emerged from his combined office and sick bay at the foot of the stairs.

Instead of avoiding discussion of the tragedy of the previous night, Miss Withers welcomed it. As the others straggled in, each contributed his own theory. Most of them agreed that it must have been a shame suicide, though Leslie Reverson surprised everyone, including himself, by venturing to suggest that perhaps Rosemary had fallen overboard.

“I’ve got an idea,” said Miss Withers innocently. She was in a hurry to get this over before Candida Noring, the only absent member of the table group, should join them. “Suppose each of us tries to remember whereabouts on the ship he or she was between quarter of eleven and five after—which must have been the time the girl went over board? Perhaps the estimated hour is wrong—if one or more of us was near the right-hand rail—”

“Starboard,” said Tom Hammond.

“The starboard rail, thank you… and if that one did not hear a splash, as I did not, it will prove either that the girl went overboard at another time or from the other side of the ship!”

The various individuals at the doctor’s table looked at each other. Loulu Hammond broke the silence. “I heard nothing,” she admitted. “Because I had gone to bed and was sound asleep.” She smiled. “And so was the pride and joy of the Hammond household, our darling Gerald.”

Leslie Reverson tried to account for himself, but was very vague about it. He had wandered into the bar about that time, looking for a nightcap, but had found it unaccountably closed. He had taken a book from the ship’s library in the social hall and read himself to sleep in his stateroom. The Honorable Emily stated that at approximately eleven o’clock she had been down below decks importuning the night pantryman for some crumbs to give her new pet.

“I myself was drowsing on the boat deck, as you all know,” Miss Withers said. “Miss Noring was looking for her roommate, and came up the forward ladder at approximately eleven. She heard nothing, she says.”

Only Tom Hammond had not spoken. He looked at the doctor. “I was three dollars ahead of the crap game,” he said dryly, “at approximately eleven. Isn’t that so, Doctor?”

Dr. Waite nodded, “Yes—I guess so—there were five or six of us in my diggings,” he explained. “The purser, the third officer, Mr. Hammond, and the Colonel. Later in the evening Noel, the bar steward, wandered in and lost a couple of dollars.” He turned to Leslie Reverson. “That was after you left, I guess.”

“Oh, yes,” said Reverson. “I forgot to mention that I went down there.” He reddened a little.

Dr. Waite was conscious of Miss Withers’ disapproval. “Just a little game for dimes and quarters,” he hastened on. “It passes the time away. The boys were in and out of my place until one o’clock or so, but I couldn’t set any exact hour. Anyway, we were too busy wooing the goddess of luck to hear anything.”

He had finished his lunch, and Miss Withers rose and walked out of the saloon with him. “I’d like to see your office,” she suggested. He held the door open and ushered her into a spick-and-span suite, surprisingly well equipped with hospital and medical apparatus. Along one wall was a medicine cabinet holding hundreds of neatly labeled bottles.

Miss Withers tried the handle and found the door unlocked. “You have quite a stock of drugs,” she observed.

“Have to keep ’em,” said Waite. “Can’t send out to get a prescription filled here, you know.”

There were two portholes on either side of the cabinet, above the thick soft rug upon which male members of the party had hazarded their dimes and quarters. This was the starboard side of the ship, and very nearly at the point amidships where Miss Withers had last seen Rosemary Fraser two decks above.

Upon pressure, the doctor admitted that in the course of the dice game several of the players had stepped out from time to time to get sandwiches and coffee at the near-by pantry. He was thus very inexact as to hours, except that he remembered that young Reverson had wandered in and out again shortly after ten. “The kid seemed nervous about something,” recollected Dr. Waite.

Miss Withers nodded and pointed to the tightly fastened portholes. “Were these open last night?”

“Fresh air is bad for gambling,” explained Waite. “They were just as you see them now. We couldn’t have heard a foghorn through that thick glass.”

“I don’t suppose—” began Miss Withers. Then she stopped as a rap came on the door. It was Mrs. Snoaks, afire with tidings.

“Miss Noring is taking a bath!” she shouted, as soon as she saw that her search for Miss Withers was over. Then she departed, and after an uneasy moment the school teacher followed her, concealing a certain eagerness.

Dr. Waite sat down at his desk and prescribed three fingers of brandy for himself. His brow was wrinkled with perplexity. “Why in blazes
shouldn’t
Miss Noring take a bath?” he asked himself aloud.

Something was going on that he did not understand. He walked out of his office and saw Loulu Hammond going up the stair. On a wild impulse he tried the news on her. “Miss Noring is taking a bath,” he hazarded.

“Amazing!” said Loulu Hammond, and passed on out of sight.

At that moment Miss Hildegarde Withers, the most eminently respectable passenger on board, was on her knees before the keyhole of Candida Noring’s stateroom. She had brought a twisted hairpin with her, but her own key turned with only slight difficulty in the lock. Miss Withers entered, locked the door behind her, and drew the curtain across the portholes. Then she looked at her watch. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and she had fifteen minutes, perhaps, to do what she had come to do. Swiftly and methodically she set to work.

She went through baggage, both Candida’s and that of the missing girl, with the speed of a customs official and with considerably more neatness. The result—apart from showing her that Rosemary had liked frilly things and that Candida went in for more sensible apparel—was exactly nothing.

In the rack above Candida’s berth were three books:
Swann’s Way,
Philip Macdonald’s
Escape,
and the collected sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay. In the rack above Rosemary’s berth were Colette’s
Young Woman of Paris
and a copy of
True Story.
A pressed bunch of violets marked a place halfway through the Proust book.

Miss Withers thumbed through them all. She lifted mattresses, poked behind pictures, and even scrutinized the carpet very thoroughly. Last of all she went through Candida’s pocketbook, finding only a packet of brown cigarettes, some silver and bills, and a pocket lighter.

Nowhere within that stateroom, she could have sworn, were the pages torn from Rosemary Fraser’s diary. Feeling considerable prickings of conscience, Miss Withers replaced everything exactly as she had found it, stepped out, and locked the door behind her. She looked at her watch. It was sixteen minutes past two.

As she came down the corridor, hurrying a little, she saw a door open. Steam floated out, and then Candida Noring, in a brown bathrobe, came toward the school teacher.

Her dark hair hung stringily on her tanned forehead, and she looked both tired and ill.

“Heavens, child,” Miss Withers accosted her. “You’d better let the doctor give you a sleeping potion. You look worn to nothing.”

Candida stopped. “Do I? I haven’t been to bed, for I know I shan’t sleep.”

“Nonsense!” Miss Withers patted her shoulder. “Don’t feel that you have all the responsibility. Tomorrow night or Monday morning we’ll be in the Thames, and Scotland Yard will soon straighten out the mystery. They’ll know how to—”

“Scotland Yard?” Candida’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know—”

“The purser says that they always handle the formalities in case of a death at sea,” Miss Withers told her.

“Thank heavens for that,” said Candida, with real relief in her voice. “Now all I have to worry about is just what I shall have to cable to Rosemary’s people. I believe I
will
go down and let the doctor give me something…”

She hurried on, and Miss Withers sought her own stateroom. She lay down, intending to rest while she let her mind occupy itself with the intriguing puzzle of the missing pages of the diary. In a few moments she slept, so soundly that she heard nothing of the bitter family quarrel in the next stateroom—nothing of Loulu Hammond’s soprano monosyllables and Tom Hammond’s gruff bewildered phrases. Not even the shrill, joyful participation of the fat-faced Gerald could waken the weary school teacher this afternoon. She slept through dinner, wakened late in the evening, when the steward brought her soup and toast, and wandered for a short while through the oddly deserted ship. No one felt like dancing or bridge that night. The bar closed for lack of trade at ten o’clock, and there was no light beneath the doctor’s door.

On deck she saw Tom Hammond sucking on an empty brown pipe and thinking his own thoughts as he strode endlessly up and down. A light fog drifted wetly against her face, and on the bridge she could dimly make out that Captain Everett had no less than two officers beside him as his hushed and saddened ship rolled smoothly on toward Land’s End and the Lizard.

It was a hush which somehow lingered through the next day, in spite of vague efforts on the part of some of the older passengers to hold hymn-singing services on the Sabbath morning. The sound of the distant voices came faintly to Miss Withers in her cabin. They finished, as always on shipboard, with “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep.” It was a feeble, belated funeral service for Rosemary Fraser, Miss Withers fancied. Had the girl laid her down in peace to sleep, then?