The Pleasure Cruise Mystery (28 page)

“Let me continue the story, Colvin, and if I'm wrong in my particulars correct me. Beryl Mesado, thinking that Amy had been the cause of her husband's infidelity and of her estrangement from him, decided to make sure of her facts. She probably did this in a fit of remorse, because she loved Guillermo and began to fear that she might have acted hastily in reproaching him. She invited her sister to Firle House and, finding that Gautier's story was true, decided to revenge herself on her sister. She inveigled her downstairs under pretence of showing her the refrigerating chamber and locked her in. In my investigation I surmised that you and your wife were not at home on Sunday evening. I should like to know if that's correct.”

“Damned smart, Vereker. We were over at the Mortons to dinner and didn't return till midnight. When we arrived back at Firle House Beryl told us that Maureen had left the house after an angry scene between them. She didn't know where

“Where was Gautier?” asked Vereker.

“She had gone to bed early after laying a cold supper for her mistress and Maureen. Dobbs and his wife were up in London.”

“It looks as if Beryl had planned this business.”

“I can't say. She was a very difficult woman to understand. I'm inclined to think she acted on impulse and that circumstances were favourable by mere chance. I may be biased in her favour because I was very fond of her.”

“How did you eventually find out what she had done?”

“Gautier, who was troubled with sleeplessness that night, came down in the early hours of the morning to make herself a glass of hot milk, and went into the refrigerator for the milk. She found Maureen unconscious and made her a cup of tea to warm and revive her. She recovered sufficiently to tell Gautier what Beryl had done and then snuffed out. Gautier promptly came upstairs and wakened Beryl first and then ourselves.”

“I see, and then there was a council of the four of you to settle what you were going to do about it.”

“Exactly. I was all for us agreeing to say that it was an accident.”

“Certainly that was one way out of the trouble, though one of you might have weakened and made a mess of things at the inquest. There would naturally have been a lot of uncomfortable explanations to make and questions to answer. It looks a water-tight story at first glance, but I'm not so sure it wouldn't have sprung a leak. I take it that you and Constance were going to save your sister's neck at all costs?”

“Naturally. What else could we do? Constance and I would have gone through hell-fire for Beryl. In spite of her many faults she was one of the most fascinating women I've ever known.”

“Gautier, I presume, was not so eager.”

“Well, she said she would do all in her power to shield her, but she got the wind up when we began to discuss the inquest.”

“Who suggested concealing the whole affair and getting rid of the body at sea?”

“Gautier. At first Constance and I and Beryl were dead against such a risky course, but Gautier pointed out the advantages of the scheme and Beryl was immediately won over. Everything seemed so favourable for its success. After a long discussion of ways and means Constance and I agreed to the suggestion. I was the last to succumb because I saw that the act of getting rid of the body would fall on me. When Beryl said she'd carry out that dangerous bit herself and twitted me with being a funk, I said I'd carry it out. After that we all set to work to arrange the details of the enterprise.”

“I worked it out that you were to carry the body from Beryl's cabin and fling it overboard in the early hours of the morning. I also surmised that you had made some hasty arrangements to counter untoward happenings. If you were caught carrying the body up the companion you were going to say Mrs. Mesado had fainted and you were taking her up on deck for air.”

“By jingo, that's good, Vereker. It's exactly what we arranged!”

“And on it being found that the lady had died of heart failure the real Mrs. Mesado was to be shut up in the duplicate trunk in your cabin and be taken ashore at Lisbon.”

“Yes; it was a desperate alternative, but the whole plan was a desperate one. It meant that Beryl would have to lie doubled up in the trunk while the stewardess tidied up her cabin every morning, and as soon as possible Constance would return, bolt the cabin door and let her out. We had arranged an opening to allow for sufficient air; a very neat flap in the back of the trunk which took me all morning to make. She would only have to do this for three mornings at the most.

“You'd have had to run her through the Customs,” remarked Vereker.

“That we foresaw would be the biggest risk of all, and we were going to nobble the Customs with fifty thousand escudos—about five hundred pounds—if the occasion arose. Our scheme might have failed, but we had to take our chances. On board it would have worked all right, I think, because Constance was going to feel seasick and keep to her cabin till we reached Lisbon. As long as she and Beryl kept the cabin door bolted they would have been safe against detection. Still we were now thoroughly worked up, and the more we thought things out the more sanguine we became. We didn't meet trouble half-way and all hoped for the best.”

“It might have worked if you hadn't lost your head at the critical moment, Colvin. Ricardo happened to come round the corner of the promenade deck and you promptly dropped the body and returned to your cabin.”

“Yes, it's all very well looking at the affair in retrospect; but I'm not blessed with nerves of steel. I ran down to tell Beryl she must vanish into the trunk in my cabin and that we must pretend that she—that is the body on deck—had died of heart failure. There was no one on board who could say that Maureen's body was not Beryl's except the Penteados and Dias, and we would not have allowed them to view it.”

“It was your trump card and won the trick, but what went wrong? Did Mrs. Mesado lose her head?”

“She did. In spite of my efforts to persuade her and a violent struggle that followed she rushed up on deck and flung herself overboard. You can imagine my consternation when I discovered you had her necklace. I guessed she had thrown it in your open cabin window in mistake for her own.”

“And Maureen's necklace had vanished from the body in the trunk?”

“Yes. Neither Constance nor I cared a damn about Maureen's necklace until Beryl found that it had been stolen from the body in the trunk.”

“You suspected Gautier?”

“No, or rather Beryl was certain Gautier hadn't stolen it. Constance and I were not so sure. It was a horrible quandary, for if some one else had stolen it it was clear that our plan had been discovered by a stranger.”

“When the necklace was returned to you at Lisbon it proved to be a paste duplicate?”

“Yes. That scoundrel Dias, whose tool Gautier was, got the disappointment of his life. Constance said that the real necklace must be the one Beryl locked up in a drawer in this room.”

“It's here all right, Colvin. I took the liberty of opening the drawer in my search for clues.”

“Let's see if it's the genuine one!” exclaimed Colvin with a faint show of eagerness.

“Your sister-in-law was careless about valuable jewellery,” remarked Vereker as he extracted the key from the Satsuma vase and opened the right-hand top drawer of the chest. Taking out the jeweller's case he handed it to Colvin, who opened it and swiftly examined the necklace.

“Good Lord!” he exclaimed after a brief but careful scrutiny, “this is a paste duplicate, Vereker. How the hell…?”

His words were cut short by a burst of bitter laughter from Vereker.

“Well I'm damned!” the latter exclaimed at length. “Of all the fools in this world, Colvin, I think I must be the biggest!”

“I don't see what you're driving at,” said Colvin slowly as he stood gazing at Vereker in blank bewilderment.

“Dias has substituted this paste duplicate for the genuine one after all. I didn't think he'd had time to do so. I was a simpleton not to take immediate steps to find out,” replied Vereker, and then related in full to the astonished Colvin the story of his recent midnight encounter with Dias as a burglar.

“A clever devil,” remarked Colvin with the first smile that had lighted his sunken features since his return. “You got the better of us, Vereker, and I must say I'm just a little pleased that for once some one has put it across you. I think he has earned that necklace, and he's welcome to it.”

“I suppose it's good to get the conceit taken out of one at times,” said Vereker, acutely chagrined at the neat way he had been tricked, “but it's an unpleasant experience.”

At this moment the gong sounded for lunch and the two men descended to the dining-room. Over their meal they reverted to the topic of the desperate plan to conceal Beryl Mesado's crime, and Vereker pointed out to Colvin the curious fact that Maureen had only expired after he had left her body on the promenade deck of the “Mars”.

“In spite of your mishaps your luck held,” said Vereker, “for if she had been dead when you packed the body in the trunk Doctor Macpherson would certainly have discovered that your story of heart failure was all bunk, and then the fat would have been in the fire.”

“We hadn't thought of that snag,” said Colvin reflectively. “The words rigor mortis were never mentioned by any of us. They say all murderers make one silly blunder, and that was ours.”

“And now I suppose you know you are guilty of being accessories after the fact to a murder,” said Vereker gravely.

“Yes, yes, I know all about that, Vereker. I don't care a continental either. I only did what I could to help Beryl because I was fond of her, and because Constance loved her. I'd do it again if the occasion arose. You're the only man who knows the truth about our conspiracy, and you can jolly well do your damnedest for all I care.”

“Chief Inspector Heather of Scotland Yard also knows,” said Vereker.

“Then the sooner he gets on with the job of arresting us the better. Constance is in a mental home. God knows where Gautier is, but I'm here, and here I'll stay until the inspector turns up.”

“You took a chance, Colvin, and apparently you've lost. I must say you're taking defeat like a well plucked 'un. I'm going to see Inspector Heather this afternoon. In the meantime I should keep my tail up if I were you. I'm afraid we've not arrived at our journey's end yet and no one knows what's round the bend of the road.”

It was about a week after Vereker had returned to his flat in Fenton Street, W., that Heather found time to pay him an eagerly awaited visit. The inspector had been engaged on the case of a young woman of the demi-monde who had been brutally strangled with a silk stocking in her rooms at Maida Vale, and he had at last been able to take an afternoon off from his exacting work. He arrived shortly after lunch, and Vereker, who had been putting the finishing touches to a picture intended for one of the spring shows, promptly flung down palette, brushes and marl stick and at once broached the topic of the Pleasure Cruise Mystery.

“You've brought the photo-micrographs, Heather?” he asked eagerly.

“Yes, here they are,” replied Heather, producing them from an attaché case, “and they fully bear out your theory. The finger-prints on the refrigerator door tally with those of the dead body on the ‘Mars' and are indubitably those of Maureen O'Connor.”

“Eminently satisfactory,” remarked Vereker excitedly; “and these two stones, an emerald and a ruby which I picked up on the refrigerator floor, corroborate the assumption. They are the stones that were missing from the dead woman's marquise ring and were doubtless knocked out when she made frantic efforts to open the door or attract attention to her terrible plight.”

With these words he produced a twist of tissue paper from his pocket and displayed the gems for Heather's inspection.

“And the finger-print on the sealing wax from Mrs. Mesado's envelope, does it tally with any of those from her celluloid comb which Mascarenhas developed for me?”

“It's a thumb-print, to be correct, and does agree,” replied Heather. “The blood on the refrigerator door was human, and now we've got all the facts the question is, who murdered Maureen O'Connor?”

“We've come to that point at last, but before I ask you for your answer or give you mine, Heather, I must add two very important sections to the story,” said Vereker and briefly narrated his experience with Dias at Firle House and gave an account of his recent interview with Richard Colvin.

“Let me see, Mr. Vereker—er—h'm—I'm feeling very thirsty—er...”

“Oh, damn, it's beer you want, I suppose. Ring the bell. Albert will do the rest; he knows your habits. In the meantime carry on with your yarn.”

“From your very interesting narratives, Mr. Vereker, I'll first make an attempt to list the probables in the case. To begin with, Maureen O'Connor was Dias's mistress. Dias may have got all he wanted out of her in the shape of money and tired of her as far as affection is concerned. He's a nasty bit of machinery and from all accounts doesn't hesitate to kill, but if he's the culprit I can't see why the Colvins and Mrs. Mesado had anything to do with the disposal of the body. Besides, he wasn't at Firle House at the time as far as we know, and it's clear that the young lady met her death there. Secondly, Guillermo Mesado was in love with Maureen and probably sick to death of her extravagance as well as jealous of her love for Dias. She may have been Dias's tool in blackmailing Mesado, and the latter may have been driven to killing her to prevent his wife from discovering the story of his guilty passion. Mesado has vanished and no one apparently knows where he is. This looks very suspicious, and I'd like to know whether the gentleman was in the neighbourhood of Firle House during that week-end. Could he have entered the house and done the job without the occupants knowing he had any hand in it? In that case the disposal of the body was a conspiracy entered into by the family after they had discovered the author of the crime to save his neck and their own reputations. Colvin's story contradicts this, but it may now suit his book to keep Mesado out of danger of hanging. I can't see Colvin as a suspect unless there were relations between him and the dead woman which your story hasn't revealed. As for Dias's statement that Colvin committed the murder, I can only say that in my opinion it's pure bunk, but I'd like to know the motive behind the lie.”