Death of an Angel (25 page)

Mrs. Hemmins' discovery of the wadded tea-towel, her identification of it as characteristic of Strothers' habits—“we already knew he was in Fitch's apartment a lot”—had not been fortunate for Strothers. Presumably, she had tried to blackmail him; they had no way of knowing, since Strothers did not talk. Possibly, she had merely been giving him a chance to explain before she went to the police. In any case, he had killed her, and the cat Toby.

“To make it look like Mr. Wyatt, of course,” Pam said. “Although it didn't, really. Why didn't he take the tea-towel?”

Presumably, Bill said, because with Mrs. Hemmins dead, he thought it meant nothing—nothing, at any rate, which pointed at him. Also, to get the towel, Strothers would have had to risk getting blood on his shoes, perhaps on his clothing. Getting it had not been worth that chance.

“Also,” Bill said, “in case we might be getting ideas, he went to a good deal of trouble when I was at his apartment to spread a tea-towel out smoothly on a rod. Only—he went to too much trouble. Overplayed the scene. Because—the tea-towel wasn't damp, didn't need to be spread to dry. Otherwise, he played the scene very well. His explanation of his visit to Mrs. Hemmins was entirely reasonable. Volunteered, too, which is supposed to be disarming. Also—he had seen Wyatt, who kept blundering in where he would do Strothers the most good—and realized Wyatt might have seen him.”

Bill Weigand finished his drink. He raised his eyebrows at Dorian.

“I suppose we'd better,” Dorian said. “Get down, Gin.”

Gin looked up from Dorian's lap to Dorian's face. Gin purred loudly, as if in entreaty.

“All right,” Jerry North said. “I'll ask nicely. I'll say please. The stag party?”

They looked at him in surprise. Bill Weigand was gentle with an old friend, whose mind was numbed by Braithwaite.

“Oxalic acid,” Bill said, “has a very bitter taste, which is one reason it is almost never used in homicide. The taste is easy to detect, and since a comparatively large quantity is necessary to kill quickly, the taste has to be disguised. But hangover remedies—some of the more drastic, anyway—will disguise the taste of anything. Right?”

“Yes, teacher,” Jerry said.

“So Fitch was killed by someone who knew he had hangovers. And—knew he would have on Saturday morning. Right?”

“Oh,” Jerry said.

“His hangover resulted from the party the night before. It was a stag party, so only a man would know Fitch had drunk too much at it. Wyatt left the party early, and Fitch was reasonably sober when Wyatt left. Strothers admitted that himself, presumably because he knew he couldn't get away with denying it. And—Strothers admitted he himself had stayed late, because he couldn't get away with denying that, either. So, he knew Fitch was drunk at the end. So—”

“All right,” Jerry North said. “I suppose there were others who stayed late, but all right.”

“Several,” Bill said. “But, nobody who saw the success he had been working for for years wiped out by Miss Shaw's marriage. Nobody who lived in a third-floor walkup in a run-down building in the wrong part of the Village. Nobody—”

“All right,” Jerry said. “I said all right.” The Weigands did not, on close inspection, look like people about to depart. Jerry mixed another round of drinks.

But they must, Pam said, be very careful not to drink too much, even to celebrate. Because hangovers are so dangerous.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Mr. and Mrs. North Mysteries

1

Pamela North stepped out into the passage-way and encountered a man wearing a sword. The sword was long, and its hilt was gold-encrusted. The man wore, also, a red tunic, belted and criss-crossed with white webbing, and blue trousers, striped with the red of the tunic. He wore a peaked white cap, banded in red. This was not at all what Pamela North had expected to see; she had rather hoped to see Jerry. Pam withdrew into the stateroom and closed the door slowly, but very firmly.

“What,” Pam North said, speaking aloud to the cabin's emptiness, “what kind of ship is this, anyway? Where the officers wear swords? What have we got ourselves into?”

She waited briefly for an answer, and received none. She went carefully to the door and, carefully, opened it again. The man with the sword was receding along the corridor. He appeared to be walking with purpose, and he was, clearly, looking straight ahead. There was no doubt that he was wearing a sword; no doubt of the red tunic. Pam averted her eyes, looked in the other direction along the corridor. Jerry North approached, not wearing a sword. Pam went several steps to meet him.

“We,” she said, “have been boarded. Men with swords. They're all over the place. Pirates? Before we even leave the pier? Or is he the captain?”

Jerry North looked at his wife, an activity in which he usually found pleasure. He looked at her, now, with uneasiness, and ran a hand through his hair. He spoke very slowly, forming each word clearly.

“Are you,” Jerry said, “all right?”

“I saw a man with a sword,” Pam North said, with equal clarity. “Right here. A minute ago. A sword, and a uniform all colors and if captains wear swords, I'm not going.” She paused. “Binoculars,” she said. “Not swords.”

“Oh,” Jerry said, “an Old Respectable. What we've been waiting for.”

“Not I,” Pam said. She looked at Jerry with doubt. “Does what you just said mean something? If you're saying I'm old. And respectable isn't anything to make a point of.”

They would, Jerry said, go where it was quiet. They would sit down. They would have cigarettes. He put an arm around Pam's shoulders and led her back to the stateroom. He closed the door. He lighted her a cigarette. He said it was very simple, although perhaps a little unexpected. He said they were, indeed, all over the ship. The Coral Café, where he had gone to see about a table, was full of them.

“With swords?” Pam said.

Not commonly with swords, Jerry North admitted. But with uniforms of all colors, as she said. They had come aboard with rifles. “Because,” he said, “they are the Ancient and Respectable Riflemen. On their annual encampment.”

“On a ship?” Pam said. “This ship? Why?”

“Yes,” Jerry said. “Yes. I don't know. Probably, it's like a convention. A get-together. Last year they had it at a hotel in the White Mountains. But that was in late July.” He paused. “I stood in line between two of them,” Jerry said. “They explained themselves.”

“They might well,” Pam said. “A—a kind of Boy Scout troop? They're old for it. The man with a sword—late-ish fifties, if a year. And lower two hundreds, if you come to that. And, you haven't explained the sword.”

He could not, Jerry said. Those in the café, arranging as he had been arranging for assigned seats in the dining saloon, had been innocent of swords. But he could guess—the sword was a symbol of authority. Presumably, therefore, the wearer was on a tour of duty, set apart from his duty-free fellows. It could, therefore, be assumed that he was on watch.

“Probably,” Jerry said, “as Respected Officer of the Day. The chap who heads them up is a Respected Captain. Respected Captain Folsom. There are ten more coming. Their bus went to a wrong pier. Wrong river, actually. They're the ones we're waiting for now.” He paused. “I was in line quite a while,” he added, in explanation.

He had made good use of his time, Pam admitted. Bill Weigand could not have done better. Which brought up the point—where were the Weigands? She was told that they would be along, that—

There was a knock on the door of stateroom 93, A Deck, S.S.
Carib Queen
, cruise ship about to sail—as soon as ten Ancient and Respectable Riflemen found their way to her—on an eight-day voyage to Havana and Nassau. Jerry opened the door. Dorian and Bill Weigand said they were reporting in. Dorian said that there seemed to be a good many soldiers aboard. “Or something,” she added.

“One of them has a sword,” Pam said. “They're riflemen. Jerry's got us seated. Anyway—” Jerry nodded. “And,” Pam said, “we've got a bottle somewhere in a bucket, because we have to get outside before the bars open. Outside the limit, I mean.”

Bill said they knew what she meant, and that they would be right back. They went into their own cabin, next that of the Norths'. They were right back, and a steward brought, from “somewhere,” a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice. They toasted their own brief freedom, at a little after noon of a Friday in early October—freedom from an office and from authors, from an apartment and cats, from a sketch pad (although that freedom was unlikely to be exercised), from the indefensible crime of murder.

Pam was, to be sure, uneasy—when she thought of it—over her freedom from cats. But Martha had promised, and Martha was reliable. Daily she would feed the cats; she would even, from time to time, converse with them, explaining that it would be only a few days, really, before all would be as it had always been. The cats would be impatient—since for cats all change is bad, and the absence of selected humans the worst of all—but they would survive. On the next day week they would be profane in greeting, but they would forgive.

“Table for four,” Jerry was telling Bill, while Pam thought briefly of her cats. “Near the captain's table. Quite choice, from the diagram. You must know a man who knows a man. Norths and Weigands, I said, and they said, ‘Oh. Captain
Weigand?
' Fame? Or influence?”

There was a man he had run into once, Captain Weigand admitted. He admitted it almost drowsily. He had mentioned to the man that he and his wife, and a Mr. and Mrs. North, were cruising on the
Carib Queen
. Bill looked tired, Jerry thought; very often he looked tired. “Right,” Bill said, as if Jerry had spoken, “the first two days, I sleep. If somebody sticks somebody with this sword of Pam's, don't wake me up.”

“Bill!” Pam said. “It's a toy sword. And they're Boy Scouts, really. Only older and, of course, fatter. Jerry found out all about them. They're camping out.”

“Meanwhile,” Dorian Weigand said, “we're moving. Should we go and watch the skyline pass?”

For answer, Jerry held up the champagne bottle. It was still half full.

“I only asked,” Dorian said, and swung one slim leg so that she sat on her foot. “I'll be as blasé as anyone. Try me.”

Jerry filled her glass.

A loud-speaker, with a British accent, announced the first luncheon sitting.

“We're second-sitting types,” Pam said, and looked at Jerry and said, “I hope?” Jerry nodded.

They sipped champagne, while the
Carib Queen
pulsated gently under them. They finished the champagne. It was Pam who suggested that, while they waited, they might go “topside” and see the ship. She was looked at. “I mean upstairs,” Pam said. “Or do we go up a ladder?” She was looked at again, and admitted she had been reading up. She had, Jerry told her gently, been reading the wrong things. She had not, as she seemed to think, joined the Navy. But, nevertheless, they went.

They got lost at first, which is inevitable at first. But they found a staircase leading up, and went up it; they found the promenade deck and walked around it, and the
Carib Queen
progressed tenderly through the Narrows. She was a small and bright and perky ship, done in green and white, and everywhere she shone. Aft, on the promenade deck, was the swimming pool, empty of water and with a netting over it of heavy rope. There were also deck chairs, standing in good order. They paused to rent chairs from a deck steward in a white jacket. Already, there was no hurry about anything, and the sun was shining brightly.

They had left the deck, and were in a wide corridor separating the forward lounge from the smoking lounge—there were, Pam noted, going to be plenty of spaces to sit down—when the public-address system cleared its metallic throat and announced the second luncheon sitting. They went aft again, and down, and sat at a table for four near the center of a big room—and near two large round tables, which were in the center of the room. One of them, forward of the other, was presided over by a handsome youngish man with the four stripes of a captain on his sleeves. The table aft appeared to be presided over by a gray-haired man, with a red face. He was compressed into a red tunic. “Respected Captain Folsom,” Jerry told them, and Folsom looked at them—his hearing seemed acute—and beamed pleasantly. Jerry nodded and the others smiled with the detached politeness of the unintroduced.

“Does he,” Pam asked, in a much lower voice, “get to captain a table? Like the real captain?” She indicated, with a just perceptible motion of her head, the “real” captain at the other big table. Jerry doubted it; Bill Weigand shook his head, underscoring doubt.

A white-jacketed steward hovered, advised in agreeable cockney. Already, New York seemed distant, although Brooklyn still progressed slowly past them to port. (Or they could presume it did; the dining saloon was windowless.)