Voyage into Violence (20 page)

“Nothing he could make stick,” Folsom said. “Oh—say somebody came in from the outside. Didn't know the ropes. Until I got him squared away—maybe—” He stopped and looked at Weigand, his gray eyes very sharp—very cold in his hot face. “It could have been rigged so it didn't look so good,” he said. “That's all. So, apparently, he hires this Marsh fellow. To—make it look bad. See what I mean?”

Bill saw what he meant.

“And,” Folsom said, “Marsh gets himself killed. You see why I wanted to stay out of it.”

“You didn't,” Bill said. “You went to Marsh's stateroom.”

“We were drinking, like I said,” Folsom told him. “Seemed to me he was getting a little nosy. About the company. I said to myself, ‘Nobody's that interested in boxes.' I said to myself, ‘Lil Abner's up to something and this Marsh is in it.' So, I thought it over and decided I'd have a showdown. Put it up to Marsh. So I went to his room and—there he was. There you and the captain were.”

“Right,” Bill said. “There we all were.”

“And that damned sword,” Folsom said. “Sticking up out of the middle of him. Sword I'd had sharpened up.”

“Disconcerting,” Bill said. “If you didn't use the sword.”

“Would I be telling you this, if I had?”

“Perhaps,” Bill said. “Since you began to realize I'd find out anyway.”

“Anybody can make a mistake,” Folsom said. “I didn't kill the guy.”

“Or,” Bill said, “search my room, and the Norths' room, trying to find the letter and the check—or whatever you thought you might find? And push Mrs. North around while you were about it? Or slug the captain's steward, so you could search Marsh's room? Or—search Mrs. Macklin's room?”

“Nope,” Folsom said. “I didn't do a damn' thing. Anyway—” He stopped and looked at Bill. “I stopped by Mrs. Macklin's room to see if I could buy her a drink.”

“A bit of detective work?”

“So?”

“I don't know, Mr. Folsom,” Bill said. “But I'll find out. The ship sails around ten tomorrow morning. I'd be on it, if I were you.”

“Captain,” Folsom said, “didn't you know? We're having this parade in Nassau.”

Clutching her knobby alligator, Pam went into the square. She encountered Miss Springer, who said, “You're Mrs. North,” and said it accusingly. “You are not supposed to wander off,” Miss Springer said. “People ought to stay together.”

Pam said she was very sorry. She said, “Do you know where my husband is?”

“At the cathedral,” Miss Springer said. “Looking for you.”

It was a short distance to the cathedral by cab. Jerry, in the square, was talking to a member of the tourist division of the police department, who had an armband which said he was. Jerry said, “Well!” to Pam, and Pam, again, said she was sorry and would explain, and where was Dorian?

“Looking in crypts, probably,” Jerry said, but they found Dorian in the nave of the cathedral, which was, now, by no means so gaudily lighted. Together again, the three found Mike and his cab, and Mike did not chide. He said, “Now we catch up.” They got in. “Wait,” Pam said, “it merely leads to alligator bags. Like—” she showed them. “How much?” Jerry said, and she told him. He said, conventionally, “Ouch!”

“We'll merely have to wait until everybody sees everything,” Pam said. “It takes some people a long time. Mike?”

“Señora?”

“You can just drive us around, can't you? Where the others would go, except not the alligators, but faster?”

“You do not want the bags?” Mike said.

“No,” Pam said.

“Then,” Mike said, “we see the cemetery, sí? The cemetery is very beautiful.”

They saw Colon Cemetery, which, tabled in marble, is not only beautiful but oddly gay. Happy boys were shooting dice on one of the great white slabs. They saw old Havana, passing through it like a whirlwind, with Mike turning back, steering with a hand on the center of the wheel, over the horn button, to advise of beauties passing. They saw new Havana, where much is modern and bright and from the point of view of the climate obviously ill-advised, and now and then not a little funny. They whirled madly through Marianao and past the country club, and in the winding roads on which fine houses wear many colors. Returning, Mike's cab coughed tiredly and stopped on a busy bridge, was pushed to seclusion and repaired with, apparently, a few pieces of old wire kept handy for the purpose. It darted on, speed and voice alike restored, and roared to a stop outside a spreading building. “Rum-factory,” Mike said, in triumph. “Trocadero.” Then the remainder of the American Express tour descended like a flight of locusts. They, with others—and now with Mrs. Macklin who could, Pam noted, be trusted to turn up at the right time—sat on small kegs around large barrels made into tables and drank banana cordial. It was, in its way, remarkable. And Bill came, with a policeman escorting him, and said this was a way to spend their time, while he was slaving over murder, and sipped banana cordial—which was certainly remarkable—with them. He agreed with Pam that it was hard to keep one's mind on murder. They recaptured Mike and whirled to a restaurant of his advising—“where,” Pam insisted, “we can get martinis” and scrubbed banana sweetness from her lips with her teeth. It was on the way that Pam said, suddenly remembering, “We've lost Mr. Folsom.”

They had not, Bill assured them, over
paella
, and told of Mr. Folsom. In return, he heard of Hilda Macklin and Jules Barron and alligator bags. He left them for a telephone, after Pam had described the street—somewhere near the cathedral, in a labyrinth—where Hilda had disappeared. He returned. “At a guess,” Bill said, “it was what they call The Street of Fences.”

“Oh,” Pam said, and Bill Weigand said, “Right,” and they were, once more, out of the brightness of holiday into the darkness of murder. “Checkers must feel like this,” Pam said, “or chessmen, of course,” and after she had explained they agreed that either might well.

In mid-afternoon, heavy with
paella
, they went back to the
Carib Queen
, where the others rested and Bill Weigand did not.

Gloomily, since he had still no hunch, and could see none in immediate prospect, Bill Weigand went again to the telephone. He had never, he thought, while waiting the connection, tried to discover who had killed and why under conditions less satisfactory. The past remained obscure; the present was in a state of flux; unaccustomed
paella
lay heavy on the stomach and seemed to weight the brain.

“Stein, Homicide West,” a distant voice—and a weary voice—said and then, “Oh, hello, captain, where do I begin?”

“Anywhere,” Bill said.

Then—the signature on the letter, and on the check, was that of one Abner Baldwin, president of the Worcester Paper Box Company. Bill said, “Right,” and Stein, somewhat disappointed, said that it sounded as if his news were old. Bill told him. And what had Mr. Baldwin to say?

Baldwin had been at first reluctant, had ended somewhat vociferous. Or so, as reported by a Worcester detective, it appeared. “We're a long way from everything,” Bill said, wearily. “Go ahead.”

Baldwin had said it was something he didn't want the police in. He was told why the police were in. He agreed that that changed matters. He agreed that he had employed J. Orville Marsh to investigate Folsom. It was then he had begun to grow vociferous; had said he was pretty sure the damned crook was robbing him. He had then turned cautious. He had said that maybe he shouldn't say what he couldn't prove—couldn't prove yet. He had diverged to remark, bitterly, that Marsh had been a sap to get himself killed with the job half done. That now he would have to get somebody else to start over.

“Too bad he's been inconvenienced,” Bill said, and Stein said it sure was.

Baldwin failed, or said he failed, to see what Marsh expected to gain by following Folsom on a cruise—particularly as he supposed that eventually, from somewhere, there would be an expense bill to cover the cruise. Pressed—but not hard enough; not nearly hard enough; that much was evident—Baldwin said that Folsom seemed to have been juggling his accounts, in cahoots with a supplier of cardboard. At least, it appeared that there ought to be a lot more cardboard around than there really was. But he didn't have enough on Folsom to take it to the police. That had been where Marsh came in.

That, so far, was all from Baldwin—from Worcester and the Worcester Paper Box Company.

“Too bad you couldn't have gone up yourself,” Bill said, and was agreed with. “Take it up with Arty when you get back,” Stein suggested. “Oh,” Bill said, “sure. I can see myself. The other things?”

The photograph found among Marsh's effects was of Mrs. Winifred Ferris of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her son and her daughter agreed to that. It had been taken some time previous to her disappearance; had been given to Marsh to direct him in his search. The jewelry of the photographs also was hers. Mrs. Ferris's son had had the photographs made. “Why? Or didn't they think to ask?”

The detective assigned had thought to ask. He had been told “as a safeguard,” and had waited. Ferris had hesitated; finally, with apparent reluctance, had said his mother was “sometimes” a little irresponsible. The pieces were very valuable; it might, he thought, some time be necessary to identify them.

“Meaning?”

Stein supposed that, in an “irresponsible” moment, Mrs. Ferris might lose her jewels. Or give them away. Her son and daughter had wanted to be in a position, if the pieces subsequently were found, to prove their identity. “Hmmmm,” Bill said. “It's all he could get,” Stein said. “He seems to know his way around. The cop, I mean.” Bill knew what he meant. The son and daughter presumed that Mrs. Ferris had taken the pieces with her. She had kept them in a safe deposit box, to which she alone had access.

“They haven't tried to get a court order?”

They had, the investigating detective thought, been thinking of it, but then the letter came from their mother in California. With that proof of her existence, and good health, nobody would give them an order.

Bill said, “Mmmm.” Then he said, “The Ferrises. How do they seem to be fixed? Tycoon types?”

Not that, Stein had gathered; not anywhere near that. Ferris—Walter Ferris—was an office manager; held a good-enough job, but not the sort on which one grew rich. All the same, Stein gathered—although the point had not sharply arisen—that the Ferrises were well-enough heeled.

“Otherwise,” Stein said, “what would they—the family, that is—be doing with this here now fortune in jools?”

“You'll be coming around the mountain when you come, sergeant,” Bill said. “We don't really know there is one. Any other thoughts?”

“Only,” Stein said, “that if she's in California, she's not your Mrs. Macklin. I suppose that's what you're after?”

“I'm damned,” Bill said, “if I know what I am after. The sketch?”

The Ferrises were of two minds about a sketch Dorian had made—in which Dorian had tried to visualize a face as it had been before plastic surgery had relentlessly tightened skin over bone. Walter Ferris had thought it might be his mother's. His sister—and his wife—had thought not.

“It isn't too much like the photograph,” Stein said.

“Dorian tried to keep the photograph out of her mind,” Bill said. “There'd have been no use in it otherwise. She may have tried too hard, I suppose. Go ahead.”

“That's about all, so far,” Stein said. “He asked again about the possibility of another child—Mrs. Ferris's, I mean. Nope. Just the two. Asked around a little among neighbors, that sort of thing. Got a few of them to agree that Mrs. Ferris might be considered a little eccentric. Nice way of putting it. But—not forthcoming. Don't like people's affairs pried into. And—”

He stopped. Bill could hear him, faintly, face obviously turned from the receiver, say, “All right. Let's have it.” Bill waited. “Something from L.A.,” Stein said. “Hold on.” Bill held on.

“Well,” Stein said, on the telephone again, “looks like our Mrs. Ferris is in L.A., all right. Or was, anyhow, as late as Saturday.”

Bill Weigand, his tone resigned, told Sergeant Stein to go ahead. Then—

Approximately ten days before, a Mrs. Winifred Ferris, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, had checked into the Midtown Plaza in Los Angeles. The previous Saturday—“day before yesterday, that is”—she had checked out again. The hotel was large. The Los Angeles police had not, as yet, found anybody who remembered Mrs. Ferris in any detail. A chambermaid had seen her once or twice, and recalled her as middle-aged. The clerk to whom she had paid her bill, and surrendered her key, did not remember her at all. Why should he? People came and went.

“We can wire the photo out,” Stein said. “Probably won't come to anything. Trouble is, people don't look at people.”

That, Bill agreed, was a trouble. But a more immediate trouble was: If Mrs. Ferris was checking out of a Los Angeles hotel on Saturday, she could not very well be Mrs. Macklin, who had sailed aboard the
Carib Queen
from New York on Friday.

“Funny business,” Stein said, but he said it doubtfully.

There was always, Bill agreed, a chance of funny business. Funny business they had always with them. But—why? What would make it worth the trouble?

Sergeant Stein had no answer. Nor had he, for the moment, further information. He left Bill Weigand to his thoughts, which were discouraging. Things seemed constantly to slip through his fingers. It appeared, now, that Mrs. Ferris had slipped, leaving him with Respected Captain Folsom. Folsom was, certainly, a possibility. But Folsom did not “feel” right. The more Bill thought of it, looking at, without seeing, the silent telephone, the more unpleasantly possible seemed the chance that he was on the wrong track altogether. (Not, he thought, with waxing irritation, that he was on any clear track whatever, or had been.) Neither Mrs. Ferris nor Mr. Folsom might have anything to do with the matter. Marsh might have been killed for reasons quite unknown, by persons undreamed of. Miss Springer, the social hostess, for example. Perhaps Mr. Marsh had spurned Miss Springer. Bill Weigand was stern with himself. Undoubtedly, overindulgence in
paella
was to blame.