Voyage into Violence (8 page)

“Nothing has come up to change the situation, so this will confirm our verbal agreement, terms and all. But for God's sake, use kid gloves.”

The note was signed. It was signed in a swirl of circling lines, which conveyed precisely nothing.

“It looks,” Captain Cunningham said, “as if Marsh weren't so retired as he said.” He studied the signature. “Pity,” he said, “that people never learn to write their names.”

It was. Bill agreed to that. It was a great pity. He leafed the notebook, slowly at first, then more quickly. He handed it to Captain Cunningham, who looked, too, at several pages; who shook his head over them.

It might be—it might well be—that here, on these pages, was all they needed to know. J. Orville Marsh, private investigator—who still, it might be assumed, was investigating when he died—had kept notes. He had cannily kept them in shorthand.

It was doubly unfortunate that the shorthand method was not one of those commonly in use. A detective has a smattering of much knowledge. Bill Weigand had, of shorthand, enough to tell him this.

It is difficult to empty the pockets of a heavy man who lies, fully clothed and fully dead, in a cramped space. It can be managed; two men can manage it, but it is not easy, particularly when the man lies in blood. Weigand and Captain Peter Cunningham did it. Neither enjoyed it, but they got it done. Afterward they washed their hands. Then they looked at what they had.

They had keys, in a case. They had two clean handkerchiefs, one from the breast pocket of a dinner jacket which had been white, and was no longer white. They had a half-empty package of Camels, and a Zippo lighter and a dollar and thirty-seven cents in small change. They had a Cyma automatic wrist watch on a leather strap, and a pair of glasses in a leather case. Weigand held the glasses up to the light and moved them back and forth. He decided Marsh had been far-sighted, and needed corrective lenses when he read. They had a folder of American Express checks—four hundred and fifty dollars, in denominations of fifty, one torn out on the perforation. And they had J. Orville Marsh's billfold, initialed “J.O.M.” in gold leaf.

The billfold contained two hundred and thirteen dollars in bills. It contained an identification card, showing that Marsh had been duly licensed as a private investigator by the New York Police Department. It contained a pistol permit, allowing Marsh the possession of a .38 police positive, of recorded serial number. It contained a permit to operate a motor vehicle and passenger vehicle registration for a 1954 Chevrolet sedan. An insurance service card showed that the car was insured with Aetna. A credit card proved that Marsh had, at least in 1952, been authorized to charge what he liked at the Buckminster Hotel in West Forty-third Street. For good measure, Marsh had joined the Diners' Club.

And in the billfold there was a check for five hundred dollars, made out to J. Orville Marsh, drawn on a Worcester, Massachusetts, bank—and signed with the same indecipherable twist of circling lines which was at the bottom of the letter which confirmed a “verbal” agreement.

And at that, Bill Weigand swore softly, in helplessness and exasperation. Some hundreds of miles away, across much water and parts of three states, there were people—any number of people, from operators of bookkeeping machines to bank presidents—who could glance at this meaningless scrawl and say, “of course, Mr. Smith. Or Mr. Brown. Or Mr. Ezekial Jerome Winterbottom, the Third.” And then a policeman, tactfully, could ask Mr. Smith-Brown-Winterbottom what he had agreed on “verbally” with J. Orville Marsh, and afterward confirmed both by letter and by check. And that would be that, for what it might be worth.

It might have nothing to do with the death of Mr. Marsh, upon whom somebody had fallen with a sword. (Perhaps, Bill thought, more or less literally.) It might have everything to do. The exasperating thing was that they had no means of finding out. If the
Carib Queen
were equipped for the dispatch of radio photographs—but that was absurd. He nevertheless mentioned it to Captain Peter Cunningham. It was absurd. The
Carib Queen
was equipped for many things, some rather more complex than picture transmission. She could look through darkness, farther than the eye could reach. Electronically, when near the coast—as she was now—the
Carib Queen
could tell herself precisely where she was. But she could not dispatch the convoluted signature on note and check to Worcester, Massachusetts, where it would mean something.

“Folsom's merry men come from Worcester,” Cunningham said, and looked at Bill Weigand and said, “Sorry, old man. Realize you know that.”

“Right,” Bill said. He put the contents of Marsh's pockets into the attaché case. “It can be coincidence, of course.” He picked up the confirming note and gazed at it again. He handed it to Cunningham, who gazed at it, too—who held it under a lamp on the dressing table and gazed at it long, who handed it back and shook his head. “Could be damn' near anything,” Cunningham said.

Bill used the telephone again. There was, at any rate, that. He added a few points for Sergeant Stein, who had got things moving from a desk, its edges scarred with cigarette burns, in West Twentieth Street. Tomorrow—which unfortunately would be Sunday, when information is hard to come by—they might find out whether there was a Clover Club in Worcester, Massachusetts, and whether one of its members had a peculiarly meaningless signature. The following day, they might enquire, to the same effect, of the Bay State-Farmer's Trust in Worcester.

He didn't, Stein said, without reproach, give them much to go on. A good many men hid their identity in their signatures. Bill realized that. He said, “It's a sort of circular squiggle,” and listened to Stein and smiled, and said he realized it didn't, but that there it was.

“Marsh lived at the Buckminster,” Stein said. “Had for years. Highly valued guest and all that sort of thing. The boys are going through his room. It'll be slow going about the rest. It's the middle of the night, here. In fact, it's Sunday, here.”

“It is here, too,” Bill told him. “Unless you get something hot—and you won't—call me in the morning.”

“O.K.,” Stein said. “I'll get on with it.”

Bill could see him, in the small, familiar, distant room, with a cigarette smouldering on the edge of the desk, reaching out for a telephone. He could see “the boys” going through Marsh's room; checking out on the passenger list—if they had got hold of it, and they would have got hold of it. It was consolation, of sorts. It would have been more consolation to have Sergeant Aloysius Mullins aboard the
Carib Queen
. Bill picked up the attaché case and, since it no longer had a lock, put it under an arm.

“There's nothing more to be done tonight,” Bill said, and Cunningham looked, momentarily, as if he had been expecting a rabbit from a hat, and was let down at seeing none. But he said, “Right you are,” and then, “anything I can do to help.” He looked at Marsh. “Aside,” he said, “from the matter of refrigeration.”

“I don't—” Bill said, and stopped. “It might,” he said, “be an idea to keep somebody in here after you've removed the body.” Cunningham raised eyebrows. “On the chance,” Bill said, “that somebody might want to tidy up.”

Cunningham said, “Folsom? You think he'd—”

Bill only shrugged. He started for the door, and stopped.

“The Norths,” he said, “have somehow—I've not always known quite how—been involved in several cases with me. Been—” He paused for the word. He chose “helpful,” which was decidedly a compromise.

“Whatever you say, of course,” Captain Cunningham said. “I'd rather hoped—”

Bill Weigand realized what the captain had rather hoped. But he shook his head.

“They'll probably help,” he said. “In—one way or another. And they'll find out anyway. Mrs. North especially.” He opened the door and started through it. “She always does,” he added over his shoulder, and left Captain Peter Cunningham with the corpse which cumbered his bright, gay ship. And with a bloody sword to lock up somewhere—somewhere out of reach.

Since it was inevitable that Dorian be told what had happened, it was after two on Sunday morning when the Weigands slept. They were awakened a little after six, by the telephone on the stand between their beds.

“It's just the way it always is,” Dorian said, sadly, as she watched her husband dress. “Damn,” Dorian Weigand added.

5

But he was a baby, Pam North said. “Just a
baby!
” she said, and spoke hotly. “What was he thinking of?”

It was a little after ten o'clock on Sunday morning. They were in the Norths' cabin, Dorian curled on one made-up bed; Pam leaning forward, sitting tailor-fashion in slacks, on the other. Jerry sat in a chair and Bill Weigand stood by one of the portholes, now and then looking out to where, beyond the moving shadow of the ship, the early sun sparkled on the water. The water was very blue to the westward, where the Gulf Stream flowed toward the north.

Charles Pinkham was twenty, Bill said. He was almost twenty-one. Grant he looked younger—had the round pink face of youth, and was called “Cholly,” an appellation calculated to minimize maturity. Nevertheless, he was almost old enough to vote. He weighed better than a hundred and fifty; behind his beamish expression and steward's gentle manners, he might well be tough. Men younger than he had sheltered themselves in fox-holes—had died in them.

As for what Captain Peter Cunningham had been thinking of, he had been thinking of keeping what rein he could on rumor. Cholly already knew where the sword had been found; he had acted as messenger. He was trustworthy, as young men went—young men with a great secret.

“I asked him to have somebody stay there,” Bill said. “He picked young Pinkham. I would have done the same, probably.”

“And the boy,” Pam said, “the baby, is dying of it.”

She would not, for the moment, be argued with. Jerry North looked at Bill and shrugged, just perceptibly. The shrug was meant to reassure. “It's no good to humor me,” Pam said, darkly. “I think what I think. He had officers take the body away. Why not have one of them stay?”

“He's not dying of it,” Bill said. “At least—the doctor hopes he isn't. The officers have fixed duties, I suppose. He's got a concussion, and perhaps a fracture. The immediate point is—he's unconscious.”

“I suppose,” Pam said, “there's no use crying over broken heads? All he amounts to is a witness who can't talk? Is that it?” She was not answered. “Oh, all right,” Pam North said. “Now that we're official, we have to take the official stand.”

They were, at any rate, more official than they had ever been before. Before, officialdom—in the choleric person of Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O'Malley—had snorted at the mere mention of their names. Now, insofar as Bill Weigand was official—deriving from the ship's captain, who derived from British maritime law—they were too, at only one remove. They had even been asked; such evidence as there was was spread before them.

The evidence was, to put it conservatively, incomplete. It was especially incomplete on the slugging, probably with a blackjack, of young Charles Pinkham, captain's steward, in the cabin formerly occupied by J. Orville Marsh.

Cholly—no longer beamish as he lay in a bed in what Captain Cunningham referred to as sick bay, but still likely to recover—had been slugged sometime between two and six in the morning. That much was clear. At two, junior officers of the ship, equipped with a stretcher, had taken Marsh's body out of the cabin and, quietly, down passageways to a place of refrigeration. They had left Cholly in the room, advising him to keep his wits about him.

That he evidently had failed to do. He was found at six by an assistant purser. Young Pinkham was lying on the floor, much as Marsh had lain on the floor. But Pinkham was breathing heavily and the carpet was no more bloodied than it had been.

He had been hit on the side of the head, above the right ear. The skin had not been broken, which suggested a blackjack expertly used. (Or something with sand in it.) How long he had been unconscious when he was found, the ship's surgeon could not say. Possibly, several hours. He was dressed, except for his white jacket. One of the beds had been lain on; probably it had been slept on. Pinkham had been told to keep the cabin dark; he had been up since six the morning before. He had not been warned that there was any real likelihood of intrusion; he had realized he was there on an off-chance.

The cabin had been searched and there had been no effort to hide that fact. Marsh's clothing had been taken off hangers and gone through, and tossed asides. Drawers had been dumped, and their contents tossed about.

Since they had no way of knowing what had been sought, they had none of knowing whether it had been found. They could hope not—they could hope they had it here. Bill indicated Marsh's belongings, from attaché case and pockets, which were on the bed in front of Pam. But Bill had not made a careful search the night before. He had planned on a careful search today, and the guarding of the stateroom overnight.

“Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing at once,” Pam said, heaping the last coals of her resentment on Bill Weigand's head. “But you couldn't know,” she added, scraping them off again. “I'm just hindsighting.”

“Of course,” Dorian said, “it may not have been there at all. There may not actually have been anything. Somebody may merely have been afraid there was.”

They had their alternatives—what was sought existed, shapeless, only in someone's fears; it had been overlooked by Bill Weigand and found by someone else; it was among the things on the foot of the bed, just beyond Pam North's toes. If it remained in the stateroom, it was unrecognizable. Bill's examination, if late, had finally been complete. If the secret was in Marsh's notebook, it was likely to remain there, at least for a time.