Murder on the Mauretania (25 page)

“By whom?”

“Mr. Dillman.”

She relaxed at once and opened the door, taking the letter from the steward and giving him a smile of thanks. When she closed the door, she rested against it to open the envelope, confident that she would have at least one note that would neither distress nor mystify her. Anything that Dillman wrote was always welcome. Simply to see his neat handwriting was a tonic in itself. Then she read the contents of the letter and gasped in astonishment. When she absorbed the impact of the news, she hurried back into the bedroom and began to get dressed.

The attempted robbery had been a fiasco. The plan had completely backfired. Bowen spent a sleepless night, blaming himself for having been drawn into committing the crime. He feared the consequences. All that effort had produced nothing more than a nasty shock. He and Price had been lucky to get away when they’d heard someone approaching. They were sweating even more by the time they let themselves into their cabin. Since it was shared with the two men from
Huddersfield, they could not even discuss what had happened or console each other. Night was one long torment for Bowen, and he could hear his friend gnashing his teeth in the bunk below. When the old man and his companion woke up, Price could not wait for them to go on their way. He sat impatiently on the edge of his bunk and watched the pair of them dress.

“You two were back late,” remarked the old man.

“What’s it to you?” asked Price aggressively.

“Nothing, nothing.”

“We didn’t want to come back here and find you playing that mouth organ. It drives me mad. You play the same tunes over and over again.”

“They’re all I know, friend.”

“Practice them somewhere else.”

The old man was about to reply, but his companion gave him a warning nudge, sensing that the truculent Welshman was in no mood for argument. Pulling on the last of their clothes, the two men mumbled a farewell and let themselves out of the cabin.

“Good riddance!” said Price. “I thought they’d never go.”

“There’s no point in upsetting them, Mansell,” said his friend, dropping down from his bunk. “I mean, we have to share with them for two more nights yet.”

“Don’t remind me!”

“What are we going to do now?” asked Bowen anxiously.

“Nothing.”

“But we broke into that security room, mun.”

“So?”

“They’ll come looking for us.”

“Who will?” retorted Price. “Nobody saw us, did they? Nobody knew that we nicked those tools. There’s nothing that leads back to us, Glyn. We’re in the clear.”

“Are you sure?”

“Trust me.”

“I made the mistake of doing that once before,” said the other despondently. “The plan couldn’t go wrong, you said. It was bound to work.”

“How was I to know those boxes would be filled with bricks?” snapped Price. “We got in, didn’t we? Exactly the way I told you we would.”

“But we came away with nothing.”

“That’s because we were cheated. I bet those boxes of bricks are just a decoy. They must have the gold stashed away somewhere else.”

“Well, I don’t want to know where,” said Bowen, asserting himself for once. “That’s it for me. I’m not getting involved in any more risks.”

“But it could so easily have come off, mun.”

“It didn’t.”

“Only because they tricked us.”

“No, Mansell. We tricked ourselves.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was doomed from the start.”

“No it wasn’t,” said the other, giving him a shove. “We had bad luck, that’s all.”

Bowen said nothing. He brooded in silence while he got dressed, trying to cope with a strong feeling of guilt. Price was untouched by remorse. He pulled on his clothes and sought to justify himself.

“It’s always the same,” he said harshly. “Whenever I set something up, you simply complain. It’s not fair. The least I deserve is some thanks. I mean, if everything had gone the way I planned it, we might be heroes who foiled a robbery by now. They’d be all over us. Would that have happened if I’d left it to you? No. What ideas have you ever come up with, Glyn? I’m the brains around here. All you can do is to bleat and whimper like some old woman. Honestly, mun!” he said, confronting the other. “Sometimes I don’t know why I bother with you.”

There was a long pause before Bowen had enough courage to spit out his opinion. “I think we should own up, Mansell.”

“What?” howled the other.

“They might go easy on us if we explain that we never meant to steal anything.”

“Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“We did wrong. It’s preying on me.”

“That doesn’t mean to say we rush off to the purser and confess everything. Do you want to spend the rest of the voyage locked up?”

“No,” said Bowen.

“Do you want to face a prison sentence in America and then be deported? Because that’s what would probably happen to us. We broke into that security room. They wouldn’t show us the slightest mercy.”

“They might if we cooperate.”

“Listen,” said Price, grabbing him by the shoulders to force him against the wall. “The only person you cooperate with is me. Got it? All right, the plan blew up in our faces. I give you that. But we escaped scot-free. They can’t touch us, Glyn. As long as you keep your big mouth shut, that is.” He slammed him even harder against the wall. “Understand?”

With no strength or willpower to resist, Bowen nodded sadly.

Dillman had breakfast in his cabin with Genevieve so they could compare notes.

“I couldn’t believe it when I read your letter,” she said, stirring her tea. “I thought that gold was in the safest place on the vessel.”

“It is, Genevieve.”

“So how did someone manage to steal part of it?”

“By careful preparation.”

“But they couldn’t hope to get ashore with that number of gold bars.”

“Why not?”

“Think of the weight.”

“Do you imagine they haven’t already considered that?” he said. “They weren’t expecting the crime to be discovered, remember. It’s one of the things that marks them as professionals. The longer you delay discovery, the more chance you have to get away with the loot.”

“But how, George?”

“By using accomplices to take it off the ship in small quantities.”

“We’re dealing with a gang?”

“I think so. One of them might even be employed on the
Mauretania
. They had inside help from somewhere. They knew where the keys to the security room were kept and how often a steward went past the place on patrol. We might be looking for five or six people altogether.”

“In first or second class?”

“Both probably. So that they wouldn’t be seen together on the voyage.”

“It won’t be easy to root them out.”

“That’s why I sent for you this morning—to devise our plan of campaign.”

He speared a piece of bacon into his mouth and munched it hungrily. Having been up for most of the night, he felt in need of sustenance. Genevieve drank her tea and tried to assimilate all he had told her about the situation.

“So where do we go from here, George?” she asked.

“The first thing we must do is to keep this to ourselves. Mr. Buxton is frightened that the press might get a hold of it. The cat will really be out of the bag then. Especially if a particular journalist stumbles on the truth.”

“Who’s that?”

“Hester Littlejohn. A one-woman tornado.”

“You’ve told me about her. She writes for an American magazine. Isn’t she the one who’s trying to uncover the seamier side of the Cunard Line?”

“That’s her,” said Dillman tolerantly. “Mrs. Littlejohn believes that almost everyone in the crew is being exploited by ruthless employers. If it was left to her, she’d divide that gold bullion between the stokers and the stewards. I can see the headline in her magazine—‘Cunard Makes Millions While Crew Suffers Misery.’ Whatever we do, we must keep Mrs. Littlejohn at bay.”

“I’ll stay well clear of her.”

“You may have to keep well clear of your friends for a while too, Genevieve. This is going to take your full concentration. You’ll have to scour first class for anyone who looks even faintly suspect. That trolley was stolen from your galley, so you have at least one of the gang operating there.”

“What about you?”

“I want to clear up the other crime,” he declared. “We have more to go on there. The finger points to third class in that case.”

“But there are over a thousand passengers there, George.”

“How many of them are strong enough to pry open a reinforced door with a couple of crowbars and a bolster chisel?”

“Very few.”

“Exactly. I think it was a two-man job, Genevieve, and I might just have met the two men involved. It takes guts to do what they did. Stupidity as well, of course, but we can’t deny them guts too. Leave them to me,” he said, slicing a corner off his fried egg. “If we can solve the second crime, it may give us clues that help us solve the first one also.”

“I hope so, George. We don’t have much to go on so far.”

“No,” he conceded. “That’s true.”

“And there’s still the problem of the missing passenger.”

“I’ve got a hunch about that. I think that Hirsch’s disappearance is linked in some way to the bullion robbery. Maybe he was an accomplice. Maybe they used him to get those keys from the purser’s office. Hirsch was obviously a master at getting into places that were supposed to be safely locked up.”

“So what could have happened to him?”

“Perhaps he and the others fell out,” suggested Dillman. “Or they simply decided to get rid of him once he’d done his part. Look at the time sequence, Genevieve. Hirsch vanishes on Monday afternoon. The gold—I’m quite certain—vanishes on Monday night. So does the trolley that was taken. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

“I agree.”

“The other thing we must do, of course, is to carry out a discreet search of all the unoccupied cabins. There are quite a few. I’ve already made a list of the ones in first class, and I got the master keys from the purser.”

“Is that where we’re likely to find the gold?”

“It’s possible. The thieves certainly won’t keep it in their own cabins. That would be an outright confession of guilt. No, they’ll follow Max Hirsch’s example and find a hiding place somewhere else. It may just be an unoccupied cabin.”

“I’ll take the list and get started immediately.”

“Finish your breakfast first,” he said, touching her arm with
affection. “The one good thing about this crisis is that it’s allowed me to spend a little time with you in private. Don’t rush, Genevieve. The missing gold bars are not going to go anywhere.”

“Then neither am I,” she added, blowing him a kiss.

They ate their food and discussed the various possibilities that the crimes had presented. After the meal was over, Dillman went into his bedroom to get the list of first-class cabins. When he came back, he flipped through the pages.

“I came across something rather surprising,” he said, stopping at the last sheet. “Do you remember that friend to whom you introduced me? That American woman who knows exactly how to make the most of her charms?”

“Mrs. Wymark?”

“That’s the one. What do you make of her?”

“It’s strange that you should ask,” said Genevieve. “She baffles me. I’m afraid that she saw through my disguise. I couldn’t fool her for a minute. Katherine Wymark likes to point that out. But there’s something odd about her. I can’t put my finger on what it is, but I sense it’s to do with that husband of hers, Walter Wymark. Why pick him when she must have had a hundred other suitors?”

“Why pick me when you must have had a thousand?”

Genevieve laughed. “That’s another mystery I haven’t yet solved.”

“Tell me more about Katherine Wymark.”

“There’s nothing more to tell. Except that she has half the men in first class gaping at her whenever she walks into the room. Harvey Denning is intrigued by her, I can see. She even makes Donald Belfrage’s eyes bulge, and he doesn’t like Americans. Mrs. Wymark is a very special woman.”

“With a not very special husband.”

“I find him quite repulsive.”

“But excessively rich, no doubt.”

“Katherine Wymark would never marry a pauper. She’s an expensive lady.”

“Obviously. What does her husband do?”

“She was evasive about that. All she would tell me was that he buys and sells.”

“That could mean anything.”

“Mrs. Wymark introduced me to a business associate of his, one Edgar Fenby. A real English gentleman of the old school. I’m surprised that he has anything to do with Walter Wymark. The two of them are like chalk and cheese”

“You clearly have a low opinion of Wymark.”

“He lets his wife down so badly, George. She must realize that.”

“She does. I have the evidence right here.”

“Evidence?”

“Look,” he said, handing the sheaf of papers over. “Bottom of the last page.”

Genevieve ran a finger down the list of names until she reached the right ones. “My goodness!” she said, mouth agape. “Is this true, George?”

“According to the passenger list.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Wymark are in separate cabins.”

“Quite close to each other.”

“But she gave me the impression that they shared the same bed.”

“That was deliberate,” said Dillman. “It might be instructive to find out why. I think that the Wymarks will bear further investigation, Genevieve, don’t you? Find out what sort of a marriage they really have.”

Ruth Constantine was seated at a table with Harvey Denning in the first-class dining saloon, waiting for their breakfast to be served. Ruth was wearing another nondescript dress from her wardrobe, but Denning was impeccably smart and preening himself discreetly. Donald Belfrage came over to join them. Greetings were exchanged as he lowered himself into a chair. He surveyed the room with a freedom that he never enjoyed when his wife was at his side.

“This
is
an honor,” said Denning sarcastically. “We thought you’d be having breakfast in the privacy of your regal suite.”

“Theo won’t wake up for hours,” explained Belfrage, “and I couldn’t wait that long. She took one of her sleeping tablets last night. It’s knocked her out completely.”