Death in the Middle Watch (11 page)

Then Mrs Stick added a few observations of her own which roused a keener interest in Carolus.

“You know that young plump party with the blonde hair, don't you?” The description was adequate and Carolus nodded. “Well, I may be mistaken but you can't help noticing things, can you?”

Carolus waited.

“It's the man whose wife's been done for,” said Mrs Stick, and once again was silent.

“What about him? Or her?” Carolus asked obligingly.

“They were together all yesterday evening, that's what. Sitting together as though they couldn't take their eyes off each other. Mind you, she is an attractive girl, whatever anyone says. But it's a bit quick, isn't it, when his poor wife's only just been murdered. I mentioned it to Her, but She doesn't think there's anything in it. She says people only come on a cruise like this to have a good time. So I said, ‘Not when their wife's been murdered, or shouldn't do,' I said. She's very funny in that way. If anyone else notices something She won't have it.”

Carolus seemed to be considering Mrs Stick's observations.

“You're quite sure?” he asked.

“Sure as I'm sitting here. That Mr Darwin, it was, and the young party they call Rita, though Rita What I don't know. They were sitting side by side looking at each other. Whatever happened afterwards I don't know.”

“Afterwards?”

“When we all went to bed, I mean. But by the way they were looking at each other—well! You'd never have thought he'd come on the ship to find his wife done away with. Not
that he doesn't seem quite a nice fellow when he talks to you. It may all be on that Rita's side. But what I say is, it didn't look like it.”

Carolus felt that a comment was being demanded of him and did his best. “You never know,” he said. It was enough.

“Of course you don't,” said Mrs Stick. “Not when it's one of those blonde girls like that. Perhaps she's after his money.”

“How would she know he has any?”

“She told me that. He's got ever such a big business, She said. Something to do with television, She said, so he's bound to make a lot. This Rita only had just enough to book her passage, She says. So there you are.”

And there in fact Carolus was and there was Mrs Stick when the two of them decided to go to bed and, as Mrs Stick said, “wait and see in the morning.”

B
Y BREAKFAST TIME IT
was all over—the coffin had gone ashore followed by Guy Darwin and before midday Mr Porteous, who had accompanied the bereaved husband, reported to Carolus that he had seen them both, Darwin and the coffin, on a plane taking off for London.

“So I hope we shan't hear any more of that,” said Porteous.

Carolus did not share the aspiration.

“You don't seriously think that you can get rid of the situation as simply as this, do you? The thing is only beginning, and you must surely be aware of it. Just because Darwin has shown himself understanding of your problems, you needn't think they don't exist.”

“What problems? I think you take a very gloomy view of it all, Deene. Holiday cruises have been interrupted by unfortunate circumstances of this kind before now, you know, and the company organizing them has survived.”

“If you mean by ‘unfortunate circumstances of this kind' the murder of a woman passenger in her cabin, I doubt it. There was a famous case once, I remember, when a steward murdered a young woman who had acted in films. But that was on a transatlantic crossing, not on a holiday cruise. And certainly not when the husband of the same woman had died on the same ship just a year earlier.”

“That was unfortunate, as I told you at our first meeting, but there is no evidence, that I know of, to connect it with this.”

“No? You have the wonderful faculty of deliberate blindness,” said Carolus. “Sometimes I envy you. But not now. It's through your blindness in this case that you are walking into danger.”

“Danger? What kind of danger?” asked Mr Porteous, with more concern than he had hitherto shown.

“Just danger,” said Carolus airily, and left the impresario of holiday pleasures to think it over.

After lunch, Carolus ignored Mrs Stick waving with some agitation from the door of the Sun Lounge and went in search of Dr Yaqub Ali. Perhaps something Mr Porteous had said had suggested a line of thought to him or perhaps he had intended, when a suitable moment arrived, to interview the Pakistani ship's surgeon.

Dr Yaqub Ali was a youngish rather handsome man who looked well in uniform and seemed to know it.

“I have wanted for some time to have a chat with you,” Carolus began. “You know that I'm trying to get at the truth about this murder.”

Dr Ali spoke in a clipped voice and did not sound too friendly.

“I understood that you had been employed to prevent a murder, not to solve the mystery of one,” he said.

“Both,” said Carolus. “And both murders, for that matter.”

“I don't follow you.”

“The murder of Mrs Darwin and that of her first husband a year ago.”

“Really? You doubtless know more about the circumstances of the death of Mr Travers than I do. I only examined the body and signed a death certificate,” said the doctor sarcastically.

“Yes. That's about all. And you were too seasick to do either of them conscientiously. So let's get down to realities. What do you really think Travers died of?”

“Coronary thrombosis, as I wrote in the certificate I gave him. And I'd like to see you prove it was anything else.”

“Prove, no. Suspect, yes. But you may not have realized it fully when you wrote the certificate. Seasickness can be a terrible thing.”

“So can a suspicious detective. Perhaps you are going to tell me what killed Mrs Darwin?”

“Yes. Strangulation. Very quickly and violently carried out as it had to be, to be unheard. An entirely different case. Travers was probably poisoned.”

“You know everything, Mr Deene. Perhaps you also know who administered the poison?”

“Yes. I think I know that too. But I admit to being unsure in that case. I was hoping you would help me. Who do
you
think it was?”

Dr Ali smiled, but not amiably.

“Really. You have a nerve. You come to tell me that I gave a dishonest or at least a mistaken death certificate, a very serious matter to a man in my position, though a trivial one it would seem in the eyes of a private detective, and you then ask me to assist you in your wrong-headed investigations.”

“That's it,” said Carolus blithely.

“Then,” said Dr Yaqub Ali, losing his temper, “do you know what I say? I say, go to hell.”

“Quite. That would be most convenient for you. In the meantime I must remind you that you have entered into a dangerous conspiracy with Porteous and others and will certainly have to answer for it when we reach London. Mrs Darwin must have some relations apart from her recently acquired husband.”

“You put that very crudely. I was present at the wedding, and can assure you …”

“Oh, yes. It was a love-match on one side anyway. I don't dispute that. I only said ‘recently acquired' because you, and perhaps only you, doctor, know the exact circumstances of her widowhood.”

“Let us stop beating about the shrub,” said Dr Ali, voicing his first Orientalism. “You think Mrs Darwin was murdered, don't you? Perhaps you suspect me of the murder?”

“I always suspect unnecessary secrecy in such a matter.”

“Yes. I thought so.”

“What I would like to know is what took you to Mrs Darwin's cabin? How did you discover that she was dead?”

“There, I fear, you touch on the Hippocratic oath. It was a fellow doctor who called me.”

“You mean Dr Runwell?”

“Since he is the only other doctor on board, you must be correct. But I prefer that the matter should not be made public. Dr Runwell, I gather, had known Mrs Darwin before her second marriage …”

“But during her first?”

“Possibly, yes. I have no information except what he told me, that he and Mrs Travers, as he called her, had been friends for some years. Whether or not they were lovers is not for me to say.”

“If they were, the woman must have had charms which were not obvious to others. Go on.”

“It seems, not to put too sharp an edge on it, that they had arranged that Runwell call at Cynthia Darwin's cabin during the night, for what he described as a chat. I did not ask him to go into any further detail. It was not my business.”

“But it damned well will be, when a coroner gets his teeth into you. Or haven't you thought of that? Your Hippocratic
oath will go out the window and you'll have to speak the truth. What did he find?”

“Just what I found not long after. The woman was in her bunk. She had been strangled before she could call for help.”

“By someone whose knock she had mistaken for Runwell? Or by Runwell himself?”

“I think you can dismiss that from possibility.”

“Why?”

“Because he would scarcely have called me if he had strangled Mrs Darwin, would he?”

“It's hard to say. At all events, that's how you came to find the body?”

“Exactly. Are you satisfied now? Or do you still think I killed her?”

“I have never accused you. I'm glad you've cleared up one thing that mystified me. It may well be that you're unable to clear up more.”

“Just as, in your particular line, Mr Deene, you're unable to account for things that to a simple medico like me would seem to demand explanation.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the cry of ‘Man Overboard' on our first night out. That, so far as I know, has never been satisfactorily explained.”

“No. It hasn't. Can you explain it?”

“I know the deckhand Leacock to be a drunkard.”

“Yes? Then why is he put in a position of trust?”

“Ask me a new one,” said the doctor, confusing his colloquialisms.

“It's an interesting point,” said Carolus. “Do you think he knows something which Porteous does not want known?”

“Could be. He's a bit of a sly shoes, I think, But it seems certain that if anyone went overboard it was a stowaway.
Everyone else was accounted for. Leacock may have seen something and certainly there were the clothes. I should have thought your job was to question Leacock instead of wasting your time on my humble self, as you say.”

“I haven't wasted my time, doctor, and you are not humble. But you have given me an idea. Thank you and good-night.”

Mrs Stick was still waiting near the door of the Sun Lounge. She showed signs of impatience, but by a wave of her hand told Carolus that she was still anxious to tell him something.

“Wait till I tell you what's happened,” she said excitedly, and Carolus, who seemed to have no option in the matter, waited obediently.

“It's a sailor this time,” she said, then in her infuriating way, having thrown her grenade, waited for results.

“Not dead?” asked Carolus.

“He might as well be for all the good it will do him. It's that sailor who's always round the decks with a vulgar name, if you take it that way.”

“Leacock?” suggested Carolus.

“That's him. What do you think he was on to Stick about?”

Carolus knew when in his turn to remain silent.

“First it was harmless enough, about the man who went overboard on the first night and how he'd stared at this sailor with his eyes all fiery and looked as though he was going to stick a knife in him.”

“That's quite new,” commented Carolus.

“So it may be but it isn't the terrible part.”

“Don't say he pushed the man over the side?”

“He may well have done but he didn't tell Stick that. He began to get on to this place we're going to next.”

“Tunis. What about it?”

“Everything about it if you ask me. He told Stick he always goes ashore there. It seems they're only allowed ashore
in one of the places we stop at and quite enough too, when you hear what I have to tell you. It seems he always chooses this next place where the dates come from. Not that he has much time for buying dates when he gets off of the ship and in one way I don't blame him, I've always said they were nasty sticky things. They say the Arabians can live on a few of these dates for days if they get lost in the desert. Well, let them, is what I say. I shouldn't care for it myself. But what I was going to say was what this sailor told Stick he always did when he got ashore in this place.”

“Yes?” prompted Carolus.

“I don't hardly like to tell you, sir, even though we are aboard a ship where there is liable to be a murder at any moment. This sailor with the vulgar name told Stick he goes to a place called Madame Fifi's and you can guess what that is. And the worst part of it is he asked Stick to go with him. Can you imagine it?”

Carolus was bound to admit he could not.

“Just think of it, every time this ship comes into this place, where they say the Arabians step on the boxes of dates with their bare feet, if you can take my meaning, sir, this sailor goes to this Madame Fifi's. You can guess what goes on there.”

“I can, yes,” admitted Carolus.

“And what's more tries to get Stick to go with him.”

“What did Stick say to that?”

“Stick comes from a respectable home and when it comes to anything like that he'd no more dream of going with this sailor than flying to the moon. He told him straight. ‘You can go after these fancy women,' he said, ‘but leave me out of it,' he said. ‘I'd rather have a pint of beer,' Stick said. And d'you know what this sailor said to that? ‘You can't get it,' he said, ‘so you might as well have the other.' That's what he said. I was right down disgusted when Stick told me.”

“No wonder,” said Carolus.