The Pleasure Cruise Mystery (7 page)

“Sound psychology, my dear Ricky. The public demands omniscience from the hierarchs of healing. The only way you can prevent the public from discovering that a certain amount of knowledge is not omniscience is to be mysterious and authoritative. Assurance is the greater part of suggestion, and suggestion the greater part of most cures.”

“So that's the simple explanation, is it? Well, I wish Macpherson wouldn't try to work the spoof off on me. Any fool could twig that he hadn't the haziest notion of what had happened to Mrs. Mesado, and he didn't take the slightest trouble to ask us anything about the business. Promptly took the attitude that the matter didn't concern us at all, and told us to run away and play. Ergo, Macpherson's an ass, and a Scots ass at that. He ought to have been brought up on carrots instead of oats.”

“You're annoyed because you didn't get more of the spotlight, Ricky. After all, the matter doesn't really concern you. You were an accident.”

“I never was an accident, Algernon. My parents considered even my birth an answer to prayer. I claim to be a protagonist in this drama. Didn't I find Mrs. Mesado's body?”

“Yes, and your vanity's hurt because Macpherson ignored that minor fact in his general concern about major things. A death's a pretty serious business on a pleasure cruise when you come to think of it.”

“I suppose it is. When they find out, half the company, with smug hypocrisy, will go about with long faces as if they were deeply grieved. They'll discuss it eagerly and pretend it has cast the inevitable gloom—yes, gloom's the word—over the ship. They'll have a high old time with condolences, and after fairly wallowing in a burial at sea they'll forget all about it. In any case, that doesn't justify Macpherson's heavyweight manner with us. If I hadn't given him my word I'd chastise him by blowing the gaff to all the passengers tomorrow morning. That'd cook his goose—I mean his porridge—for him!”

“Forget your grouch against Macpherson for the moment, Ricky, and tell me just how you came to discover Mrs. Mesado's body lying on the deck,” asked Vereker calmly.

Ricardo promptly opened Vereker's cupboard and produced a bottle of whisky and glasses. Having poured out a liberal dram for his friend and himself, he flung off his cap, muffler and overcoat and sat down.

“Phew! I feel as if I were disrupting. This business has shaken me badly,” he exclaimed and drained his glass. Replacing the glass on the small cabin table, he once more sat down, thrust his hands into his pockets and stretched his legs out in front of him.

“Let's begin at the beginning,” he said. “Do you remember the exact time I left your cabin for a stroll round the deck, Algernon?”

“Well, not the exact time, Ricky, but it must have been about quarter to one; perhaps a few minutes before.”

“Very good. I immediately got out on deck and began to pace round the usual course. There's a brass plate fixed up somewhere which tells you that so many times round the deck is one mile, but I never compute distance by such an abstract thing as measurement. Mathematical abstractions are the bane of modern thinking because they're so illusorily concrete. I measure distance by feeling and know that I've walked far enough when I'm tired. My intention was to get thoroughly tired and then go to bed and fall asleep in spite of the ship's siren. Well, I began to pace round the course, and around me was a globous world of mist, eerie and wonderful but damned cold. I don't know how long I'd been tramping when I ran into one of the ship's officers. I think it must have been the chief officer from the number of gold stripes on his sleeve. He looked a perfect zebra. He had evidently come down from the bridge, and after a cheery word disappeared into the officers' quarters, which are, as you know, situated on this deck some distance nearer ‘the neb of the ship' as Macpherson would probably say. There were no further interruptions to my pensive circumambulation until about one-thirty or perhaps a little later. As I came along the starboard deck, which is the right side looking forrard, in case you're not sea-minded, I was surprised to see a man and woman locked in one another's arms standing against the outer wall of our cabins not six paces from the door leading on to the deck. I couldn't see them very clearly in the gloom, and with my customary delicacy I naturally didn't go up and ask them what they thought of the political situation in Europe as a conversational gambit. I soon recovered from my surprise because it's quite irrational to be surprised at anything lovers may do under divine impulse…”

“I wish you'd cut out the embroidery, Ricky; I want to get at the facts,” interrupted Vereker impatiently.

“Sorry you object to my narrative style, Algernon, but you must remember it's my profession to make dull facts interesting. A gripping serial isn't a bald statement of facts; it wouldn't pay at two guineas a thousand. Half the fun of eating a nut is cracking the shell.”

“Well, get along and don't make the shell too thick. What did you do after finding the couple—interlocked, so to speak?”

“I proceeded on my way. I remember thinking that I might dig out Rosaura and ask her to come up and admire the fog. Concluded it was out of the question, so I wandered round to the port deck. Not wishing to embarrass the lovers on the starboard deck, I began a kind of sentry-go instead of completing the usual lap. I got tired of sentry-go, had enough of it during the war, so I glanced at my watch and found it was nearly two o'clock. I know half an hour's a very short time to tell a girl you love her and persuade her you're a superman, but I wasn't going to let the couple make a golden age of it. Thought I'd reappear as a memory tickler. Remind them that life's brief and one side of the promenade not long enough for exercise. When I turned on to the starboard deck I was surprised to see that the lovers had gone, and promptly quickened my pace. Then came a painful shock. I caught my foot in something soft but inert and found myself full length on the deck. Picked myself up quickly, almost apologised and investigated. Struck a match and discovered that I'd tripped over the body of Mrs. Mesado. Even then I didn't realise the seriousness of the affair. I thought at once that she had fainted and that her companion had vanished in search of a restorative. I automatically stooped and felt her heart. It was not beating, or rather I couldn't feel it beating. I listened for her breathing: there was not the faintest sound. I experienced a quick start of fear. Death in any circumstances has a tendency to put the wind up you, but when you stumble over it on a pleasure cruiser's deck you get panicky. Comparable to meeting the devil in Paradise. My first thought was to spring up to the bridge and bring down the skipper or shout for help. Then I noticed I was standing exactly opposite your lighted cabin window. I could just see your mug through a chink in the curtain. I hammered on the pane, and it seemed ages before you deigned to take the slightest notice.”

“To tell the truth, I thought you were up to one of your usual silly pranks and wasn't going to be caught. Then I concluded you weren't good enough an actor to put on such a scared look, and I jumped to it. But tell me, Ricky, was it Mrs. Mesado you saw in a lover's embrace on the first occasion?”

“How the devil should I know? I only looked at the pair through the tail of my eye, but now you mention it the lady of my first encounter was certainly wearing a light-coloured dress. That's as much as I can say for certain; it wasn't a moment for kit inspection.”

“That of course means nothing. Seventy-five per cent of the evening gowns worn at dinner tonight were pale tinted affairs. You couldn't see who the man was?”

“No, but he was much taller than the woman was as far as my recollection goes, His head was certainly bending down over her. I took it to be the conventional osculatory pose.”

“It wasn't Colvin, was it?” asked Vereker as if his thoughts were following some definite line of conjecture.

“I don't see how it could have been Colvin,” replied Ricardo. “In the first place he's a very short, thick-set fellow, and certainly not much taller than Mrs. Mesado, though she's a pocket Venus. Secondly, it's not likely he'd be making love to his sister-in-law in such dangerous proximity to his wife. There are remoter nooks to make the world safe for infidelity. Still that's an obvious point of view. Colvin may be of a different temper, like a street bookie I knew who used to work right in front of a police station.”

“Was there anything unusual about Mrs. Mesado that caught your attention, Ricky?”

“Well, I didn't expect to find her lying full length on the deck to say the least of it.”

“Yes, I know, I know, but was there anything about her clothes, shoes, face and general appearance that you found in any way remarkable?”

“Let me see. I'm being put through a test for observation. In the first place, her dress, blue georgette, was the same as she wore at dinner last night. Her shoes were blue satin; I hadn't spotted them previously. Her face had, of course, changed terribly; it seemed thinner, the cheeks were more sunken and it wore that indefinable expression which seizes a human face in death. As for her general appearance, her clothes looked as if they had been pulled about... she looked badly mauled.”

“As if she had been struggling?” interrupted Vereker.

“Exactly! But do you think there had been a struggle, Algernon?” asked Ricardo eagerly.

“I was wondering. I noticed that her hair was all over the place.”

“Yes, now that you mention it, I remember the fact distinctly. But, my hat, I nearly forgot a major point! She was wearing a pair of chamois leather gauntlets!”

“Yes,” drawled Vereker in his pensive way, “I had a good look at them.”

“But, Algernon, surely a woman doesn't wear chamois leather gauntlets with an evening gown?”

“I'm not a fashion expert, but I should say not. In Mrs. Mesado's case, however, she had slipped them on for a definite purpose. While you were searching for Doctor Macpherson and I was alone with the body I yanked off those gloves, which by the way were much too large for her, and found the knuckles and fingers of both her hands cut and smashed very badly.”

“Good Lord, that's strange! How could she have come by her injuries?”

“I'd like to know. The point, however, is when did she come by them. Did she wear those gloves at dinner?”

“I didn't see her at dinner tonight. I only met the lady once at close quarters, and that was in the alleyway. I was much too interested in her necklace to notice her hands.”

“She wasn't wearing that necklace when you found her lying on the deck, in any case, Ricky!”

“No, by Jove, she wasn't. I say, Algernon, do you think…?”

“Tell me, Ricky, could you identify that necklace if you saw it again?”

“Without fail. There was an emerald pendant attached, and the clasp on the back of her neck was a large emerald butterfly. I took particular notice of it.”

“That's satisfactory,” remarked Vereker, and rising from his chair began to pace slowly up and down the cabin. “It's a great pity,” he added almost in soliloquy.

“What's a great pity?” asked Ricardo eagerly. He knew that his friend's preoccupation was a sure indication that a significant problem had presented itself to him, and that he had encountered some difficulty.

“It's a great pity I never got the chance of seeing Mrs. Mesado close at hand. She always seemed anxious to avoid being seen too closely by her fellow passengers. Do you remember when I almost ran into her as she was about to leave her cabin?”

“Very clearly. She damned you incontinently and swiftly disappeared. Didn't you see her face on that occasion?”

“No, merely the parting in her hair, the curve of a permanent wave, the line of a fine figure and a beautiful left hand holding a box of Players cigarettes.”

“The hand was not in a glove?”

“No. I saw it very distinctly even to a signet ring she wore on her little finger.”

“Are you quite sure that it was Mrs. Mesado?”

“I had no reason to think otherwise. Why?”

“Because it may have been Mrs. Colvin. The latter's not unlike her sister and wears a signet ring on the small finger of her left hand. I noticed that point when I was dancing with her.”

“But does Mrs. Colvin wear a shepherd's tartan tweed suit?”

“Oh, yes, she was wearing one on the promenade deck this morning. A brown and white check; very smart I thought it.”

“That complicates matters,” murmured Vereker as he slowly lit another cigarette, “but I'm almost certain that Mrs. Mesado's was a black and white check, though it'd be dangerous to be positive considering the brief glance I got of her.”

For some minutes the two men sat in ruminative silence. Then Ricardo, after helping himself to another whisky and soda, exclaimed: “Look here, Algernon, I know this mood of yours. You smell a rat. Personally I've never wanted to smell a rat, but I can see you think there's some hugger-mugger behind the sudden death of Mrs. Mesado.”

“I've gone beyond mere thinking, Ricky. I'm certain of it. I'm convinced there's been murder!”

“Good heavens, Algernon, you don't mean to say it's as serious as all that! What makes you suspect murder?”

“Several incidents that have occurred since we started on this cruise. To avoid being mysterious about the business I've overheard remarks passed in Mrs. Mesado's cabin by her and by Colvin, words spoken in distress or in anger, which at once roused my curiosity. To tell the truth, the bally cruise was boring me till I ran into the fringes of this mystery.”

“Tell me exactly what you overheard, Algernon. I may be useful…”

“Be patient, Ricky. You're going to be useful all right. I shall ask you to help me as I've done on former occasions. There's a mystery on board this ship, and I'm not going to rest till I get at the bottom of it.”