Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene (11 page)

“Looking at it another way you might say that the world was too small for him and some other person. You have apparently jumped to the conclusion that he was murdered. Why?”

“You said you’re from Homicide. Why else should you be here?”

“Of course. As you put it, another fair assumption. Do you know of anyone who might have had reason to kill your husband?”

“I have told you that Captain Westering was a remarkable man. He created turbulence. He was a catalyst. He aroused powerful emotions. Anyone who knew him might have killed him. Anyone, that is, with the capacity to kill at all.”

“In my experience that includes most of us, given the right time and place. Your husband, however, died of a lethal dose of poison. Not exactly the method of a person driven by strong emotion. It suggests a deliberate and calculating killer. I might even say that it suggests a woman.”

“Captain Westering knew many women. They found him fascinating.”

“If you’ll excuse me, let’s take that in reverse. Was Captain Westering susceptible to the women who found him so fascinating?”

“He was a man of strong appetites.”

“Do you know specifically of any women he was involved with?”

“There are seven women on this yacht. All are young. All are attractive. Captain Westering could not abide ugly women. They disturbed him.”

“Maybe the pretty ones disturbed him, too. In a different way. But you evaded my question. I asked if you knew of any women specifically.”

“I can name no names. I do not indulge in jealousy and spite, Captain Kelso. The relationship between Captain Westering and me was an exalted one. Passion is purified by love. If it isn’t, it is not significant.”

“That’s exalted enough for anybody. But what purifies murder? Your husband was murdered, Mrs. Westering. He was poisoned. Don’t you want his murderer found and punished?”

“That’s not my affair. It’s yours.”

“I’m bound to say that you’re pretty casual about it.”

“In the midst of life we are in death. He who doesn’t die today will die tomorrow.”

“I’ll take tomorrow. I’m sure Captain Westering would have preferred it, too. What’s more, it’s against the law to push. The poison that killed Captain Westering was in a decanter of sherry. It could have been put there any time between his death and the time that wine was last drunk from the decanter, which is uncertain. Anyhow, it means that anyone on this vessel had plenty of opportunity. Or anyone in this area, for that matter. The murderer obviously didn’t have to be at the scene of his crime when it took place, and it makes it difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to establish an alibi. Tough luck for me. No easy way to cull this flock of rare birds. You’ve been staying, I understand, with your sister in Sausalito. Just for the record, when were you last aboard this vessel?”

“Today. Or is it now yesterday?”

“Still today. Just barely. Did you come alone?”

“No. Alura brought me.” She turned her golden head and looked back and up at her sister, who reached out a hand and lightly touched for a moment Aletha Westering’s shoulder. “This is Alura.”

Miss Withers was conscious of a feeling of delicious completion, a delighted sense of absolute rightness. Aletha and Alura. Golden morning and dusky twilight. She would have been disappointed if the sister’s name had turned out to be, say, Sarah or Gertrude. It would have marred the comic-opera character that this absurd affair was beginning, in a grim sort of way, to develop. Not, of course, that she ascribed anything but the sheerest fantasy to the libretto. It was surely the creation of a lunatic imagination.

She had a curiously detached sensation of standing aside in a dream to watch herself dreaming. There had been no Captain Westering, and therefore no Captain Westering had been murdered. There was no Aletha Westering, golden as morning, with a sister Alura as dusky as twilight. There was no runaway girl named Lenore and no UCLA drop-out named Aloysius. Maybe there wasn’t even a Hildegarde Withers. It was all a florid nightmare of psychedelic colors created in her heated mind by an indiscreet pepperoni pizza eaten at midnight.

But running concurrently through her mind with the sensation of unreality was a very real conviction based soundly on long experience with grade-school delinquents and various homicidal personalities. It was the conviction that the golden Aletha, whatever her real name and wherever she came from and whatever she had done or would do, was the most superbly gifted liar on earth. As pedagogue and sleuth, Miss Withers had smelled too many liars to be deceived. She smelled one now.

“Did you see your husband while you were here?” Captain Kelso asked.

“Yes. Certainly. That’s why I came.”

“In this stateroom?”

“Here and on deck. He went up with me when I left.”

“Was your sister with you all the time?”

“No. She waited for me in the lounge on deck. She wasn’t there when Captain Westering and I came up, and so we waited together on deck for a few minutes until she appeared. If you are trying to discover if I had opportunity to put poison in the decanter, Captain, I did. I could have done it easily without detection several times.”

“Well, I can’t see that you’ve incriminated yourself by admitting it. So could fifteen or twenty others. What did you talk with your husband about? Anything special?”

“Numerous difficulties have developed in connection with our projected voyage. We discussed them.”

“What kinds of difficulties?”

“Mostly financial. Captain Westering and I and Alura were to bear most of the expense, but we were dependent in part on the contributions of our amateur crew. Most of them have very little to contribute, and some of them nothing at all except their work and good faith. Besides financial problems, there has been difficulty in securing experienced personnel to command the others. Two or three, plus Captain Westering, would have been sufficient, but no one has been eager to commit himself to our cause. To be candid, we discussed the advisability of calling the voyage off.”

“What about the contributions? Would you have been able to refund them?”

“I’m afraid not. Not, at any rate, in full.”

“Was this ever discussed with anyone else? Did any of the amateur crew suspect it, I mean? People committed to a cause can kick up pretty nasty if they smell fraud.”

“It was not a question of fraud. Anyhow, no one suspected. As a matter of fact, Captain Westering and I were unalterably opposed to any change of plans. We discussed the possibility to appease Alura.”

“Exactly what was the nature of this proposed voyage?”

“Ostensibly, we were making a philosophical-religious pilgrimage to India and Japan. Actually, it was to be a peace mission to Hanoi. It was essential, of course, to keep the true nature and destination of the voyage a secret. Now, however, the voyage will be abandoned and there is no further purpose in secrecy.”

“Holy God!” Captain Kelso stared at Aletha Westering with an expression of open-mouthed idiocy, exploring his naked head with the fingers of one hand in a massaging motion, as if he were searching for soft spots. “Do you mean to tell me in all seriousness that you were going to try to sail this tub halfway around the world and into hostile waters with a crew of wild-eyed amateurs who don’t know fore from aft or port from lee?”

“Miracles are performed by innocents, Captain.”

“Maybe. But ignorance and innocence aren’t necessarily the same thing. By all that’s sacred, I swear there hasn’t been anything so absolutely crazy, planned or performed, since ... since ...”

Captain Kelso, unable to think of anything so crazy, lapsed into sputtering silence, leaving Miss Withers to complete his sentence silently. Since the Children’s Crusade, she thought. And that had ended as this would have ended, over seven centuries later, in the destruction of the innocents. She stared at Aletha Westering with something like awe. Aletha sat unperturbed and impervious, her head lifted and canted, perhaps turned toward the remote voice of God, her hands folded in her lap.

Miss Withers, heretofore, had been restraining herself with a herculean effort. Several times in the course of the exchange between Captain Kelso and Aletha Westering, she had opened her mouth to butt in, but each time, not having tested the extent of Captain Kelso’s tolerance of amateur assistance, she had submitted to second thoughts and quietly closed it again. It was a traumatic experience. Sustained indefinitely, it would surely have resulted in some kind of neurosis. Still, she had bided her time in dread of Kelso’s irascibility, not wishing to be banned from the scene as well as the action, until her time was opportune. Now, with the detective reduced through unintelligible sputtering into inept silence, she decided that it was. Risking the chance of being bounced, she butted in.

“Mrs. Westering,” she said, “do you know a girl named Lenore Gregory?”

The golden head of Aletha and the naked head of Kelso turned slowly toward her in unison. The little eyes of the latter, though still slightly wild, expressed no belligerence at her presumption, far from it, and in fact seemed to offer dumb thanks for the chance to take a break and recoup. In the golden slanted eyes of the former there was a momentary flicker of surprise, as though the rather conspicuous figure of the spinster had until then gone completely unnoticed, and presented, now that it had introduced itself, an appearance as striking, albeit inversely, as Aletha’s own.

“Of course,” Aletha said. “She is one of our most dedicated pilgrims. A lovely child.”

“So she is. She is also, I understand, a comparatively heavy investor in this venture. Is that so?”

“It is. Comparatively. She is blessed with a greater share of the world’s goods than most of our poor pilgrims.”

“She has a wealthy father, if that’s what you mean. He is, incidentally, most anxious to get in contact with her. If you’re curious, that’s why I’m here.”

“I wondered.” Miss Withers, watching intently, wondered if the serenity of the golden eyes was disturbed for an instant by a glitter of icy appraisal. “There is always a gap between the generations. What father understands his child?”

“Most of them, I think, keep trying.”

“It’s distressing that you found her in such unfortunate circumstances.”

“Her circumstances may be more unfortunate than you know. She was with your husband when he died. Tell me, what was the personal relationship between Captain Westering and Lenore Gregory?”

“He was greatly attracted to her. There was an affinity. He admired her spirit and her intellect.”

“She has other admirable qualities. Are you sure his admiration was limited to her spirit and her intellect?”

“Captain Westering was a vital and questing man, as I’ve tried to indicate. He lived in his own world, by his own code. One doesn’t expect such a man to observe conventions.”

“What I’m getting at is this. Do you know of anyone aboard this vessel who hated Lenore Gregory because of her position as the captain’s favorite, whatever that position entailed exactly?”

“No. Not I, certainly, if that’s what you’re suggesting. Why do you ask?” Again Miss Withers wondered if there was a flash of appraisal in the golden eyes. “It was not the girl who died. It was Captain Westering.”

Captain Kelso shifted his considerable bulk with an ominous grunt, which Miss Withers interpreted as a warning that she was flirting with an indiscretion. It gave her, indeed, a solid sense of satisfaction. It meant, after all, that he was taking seriously her contention that the murderer had made the egregious error of killing the wrong person, and that he didn’t for reasons of tactical advantage, want that knowledge, or possibility, prematurely revealed. It was time, she wisely decided, to withdraw.

“That’s true, isn’t it?” she said meekly.

She subsided with an ineffectual flutter of hands, a monstrously deceptive gesture of ineptitude, and Captain Kelso resumed command. This time his attention was directed to the woman standing by, the twilight sister at the shoulder of morning.

“You are Mrs. Westering’s sister Alura,” he said. “I don’t remember that your last name was mentioned.”

“It’s O’Higgins.”

Her voice, in contrast to her sister’s, was a throaty alto, filled with shadows. Miss Withers, who would have given odds, was delighted. The casting continued perfect.

“You live in Sausalito?”

“Yes.”

“Your sister has been staying with you?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“Since she arrived in San Francisco with her husband.”

“You are married?”

“No. I’ve never been.”

“You heard what your sister said about your movements earlier today. Do you have anything to alter or add?”

“No. Nothing.”

“She said you waited for her in the lounge on deck. When she came up later with the captain, you weren’t there. Where did you go?”

“I went to see if a friend of mine was on board. I couldn’t find her, but I wasn’t surprised. She doesn’t stay here on the yacht.”

“What is your friend’s name?”

“Leslie Fitzgerald. She’s an artist with a studio in San Francisco. I own a restaurant in Sausalito, and she did a couple of murals for me. That’s how I became acquainted with her.”

“Were you going on this so-called peace mission?”

“No. To please Aletha, I agreed to give it limited support. Reluctantly. In my opinion, it was a wild and hazardous venture.”

“That’s putting it mildly. Do you share your sister’s opinion of Captain Westering?”

“Captain Westering was an unusual man. I don’t care to elaborate on that.”

“All right.” Captain Kelso slapped a huge palm against a thigh with a sharp smack. Jerking around, he lumbered away three paces and, turning again, back two. “That’s all. That’s enough. The night’s getting away, and I’ve still got the fascinating prospect of going through this shipload of maniacs. Mrs. Westering, you and your sister are free to go back to Sausalito. I advise you to stay there until we contact you. Captain Westering’s body will be released to you as soon as possible.”

He moved to the door, opened it, and stuck his head into the passage. He growled briefly at the detective there and drew his head back into the room.