Puzzle of the Silver Persian (12 page)

Filsom was holding a single empty quart bottle. He added it to the collection on the bureau, which comprised a few books, two cameras, and other odds and ends. Then he looked up and saw he had callers.

“This is the lady who was so helpful to Chief Inspector Cannon on the boat,” said Secker. But the superintendent was unimpressed. He surveyed Miss Withers with a cold and fishy eye.

“Good of you t’trouble,” he said. “Don’t believe I’ve any questions after all. Just another case of a skylarking Yankee lad who went off his head.”

“Of course,” agreed the school teacher. “Excuse me asking, but you’re sure that this was the bottle he drank from?” She pointed to the single “dead soldier.”

“Eh? Of course. No other bottle of liquor in the room. One was enough to put him off his course, I’m afraid.” As a sign that the interview was over, Filsom turned back to his examination of the dead man’s effects. He picked up the smaller camera. “Remember to have these films printed in the lab,” he reminded the inspector.

Miss Withers was turning away when she heard a sharp click. Filsom had touched the spring of the camera, and from where its lens should have been there leaped a rather lifelike imitation of a wriggling snake, which struck the inspector in the pit of the stomach. He did not flinch, but he turned two shades paler.

Sergeant Secker vented a small sound which was very like the choked-off crow of a rooster at daybreak. But Miss Withers only smiled, a little sadly.

“He was the Life of the Party,” she said softly. “Poor Andy Todd—that should be his epitaph.”

The two Yard officials were trying to get the serpent of wire and cloth back into its box. “If I can be of any further help—” Miss Withers suggested hopefully.

Filsom shook his head. “No, no, not at all. Sorry you were troubled. But it was the sergeant’s idea. Secker here is a new man, and he doesn’t believe yet that as far as the police are concerned two and two always make four.”

The superintendent and his attendant inspector shared a booming laugh, and Sergeant Secker, flushing a bit, led Miss Withers out into the hall.

“Thinks I’ll spread the story of his mistaking a jack-in-the-box for a camera,” said the young man. “Well, just to pay him for getting so windy, I shall!”

“Never mind,” Miss Withers comforted him. “I’ve learned that sometimes a detective has to make two and two into six, at the very least.”

The sergeant stared at her. “Pardon? You’ve been mixed up in this sort of thing before, then?”

Miss Withers did not wish to enlighten him. “As an observer, you know. I rather enjoy the excitement.”

“Then you don’t blame me for dragging you out of bed before you’ve had your tea?” The sergeant was apologetic. “You see, perhaps I’m getting overanxious and all that, but Cannon has solved his Noel suicide and Filsom has solved his Todd suicide—and I’m left with the Rosemary Fraser disappearance. And I’m not so sure that it has been explained, in spite of what is happening…”

“I could suggest one alternative,” said Miss Withers wickedly. “Why not decide that Rosemary Fraser committed suicide, too?”

“And make it unanimous? I wish I could,” said Secker sadly. “But somehow I feel that there must be a murder mystery mixed up in all these deaths. There’s got to be!”

“Don’t you worry,” Miss Withers advised him as she prepared to take her departure in search of a belated breakfast, “there’s murder enough hereabouts. I’ve been close to homicide before, and I can smell it.”

The sergeant looked hopeful. “I don’t suppose you can smell a murderer or so in the neighborhood?”

“Too many cold trails,” Miss Withers told him. “But I’ll make you a promise: if I strike a hot scent, I’ll go into full cry.”

“Bargain!” said the worried young sergeant. He was about to say something more when he heard his name bellowed from the doorway where Filsom lurked. He strode away, whistling an old tune that Miss Withers recognized with a smile:

“Our feelings we with difficulty smother, when constabulary duty’s to be done,

Ah, take one consideration with another—a policeman’s lot is not a happy one!”

That afternoon saw the inquest into the death of Peter Noel, soldier of misfortune and bar steward. A police constable called upon Miss Withers shortly before lunch time to remind her that her presence would be necessary. She found that the court at which the inquest sat was far out in Stepney, and although she started out early enough, armed with a folding map of the city, it took her two tube rides, three buses, and finally a taxicab, to get to the ugly little red stone building, arriving just after the ceremony had begun.

She was buttonholed in the hall by Sergeant Secker. “I say,” he greeted her, “you’re late. Coroner Maggers’ll be harsh with you. He’s a great one for keeping up his dignity.”

“Well, then, hadn’t I ought to be getting in?”

Secker shook his head. “I’ve a message,” he told her quickly. “From the D.I. Cannon tried to get this affair postponed, on account of the business that happened this morning. But Maggers wouldn’t allow it. Necessary, he said, to get on with it before the
Diplomat
sails for the States on Friday. So I was told to ask you if the question should arise, as it probably won’t, not to mention any more than you can help about the disappearance of Rosemary Fraser. And most particularly not to mention any doubts you may have as to Noel’s killing her.”

Miss Withers scrutinized his open countenance. “You mean that the Yard has doubts of its own in that respect?”

The sergeant shook his head noncommittally. “Very well,” said Miss Withers. “I can guess as well as the Yard—perhaps better. But tell me one thing. You know of the pages that were torn from Rosemary Fraser’s diary. You also know that they disappeared, supposedly carried along with her or destroyed by her. But was the terrific combing that the Customs gave my baggage an attempt to find those pages, on behalf of you people at the Yard?”

The sergeant put on a glazed and slightly worried look. But Miss Withers, who was a little nettled at discovering the London police more alive than she had imagined, pressed on.

“Tell me that, or I’ll see that the coroner and the newspapers get all the facts and fancies that I have,” she threatened.

“As a matter of fact,” Sergeant Secker stiffly admitted, “we did request that the baggage of the passengers be scrutinized a bit more than usual. On my word, you got it no worse than the others.”

“And you found—?”

“I say,” protested the sergeant. “I can’t spill things to you, you know.” But, all the same, Miss Withers knew by the look in his face that in spite of the fine-comb treatment of the luggage, the police had drawn a blank.

“And the sheets torn from Rosemary’s diary would have made a bulky packet in anyone’s clothing, too,” she thought aloud. “Yet—I’ll stake my bottom dollar that they came off the ship.”

The sergeant nearly nodded, but caught himself in time and tried to become very official indeed. “You’d better be getting inside,” he advised her.

She found the small courtroom well filled with spectators, a crowded table for the gentlemen of the press, and on the front rows of wooden benches so many of her recent shipmates that a certain air of reunion and intimacy pervaded the grim occasion. The guardian at the door escorted her to a seat between Dr. Waite and the Honorable Emily.

The doctor looked more than a bit seedy, she thought. He was staring at Coroner Maggers, a rotund and Tweedledumish figure with a roaring voice, who just at the moment was engaged in giving Captain Everett a rather bad time of it.

“You haven’t missed much,” the doctor whispered to her as she sat down. “They’re still arguing over the fellow’s identity.”

“Captain Everett,” roared Maggers, “you have identified the body of the deceased as that of one Peter Noel, bar-steward and assistant steward aboard your ship. Will you tell the jury just how long he has been in your employ?”

Captain Everett said testily that he did not “employ” the personnel of his crews. “Noel has been with the ship since early in January,” he explained. “Making eight voyages in all.”

“Was his conduct entirely satisfactory to his superiors and to you?”

The captain paused. “Yes,” he said. “And again, no.”

“What? What do you mean by that?”

“Satisfactory to me,” said the captain. “But there was some trouble on our July voyage. We make the round trip between New York and the Port of London once a month, you know. On that trip, as I learned later, Noel became friendly with a passenger, a wealthy widow from Minneapolis whose name I would rather not make public. They became engaged, I understand, and since she had two grown sons of Noel’s age, the family tried to make trouble. Lawyers got in touch with officials of the Line, and an investigation was made, during which time Noel was laid off from his regular duties.”

The coroner seemed interested, if no one else in the room did. Miss Withers saw Candida Noring stifle a yawn at the end of the aisle.

“Aha!” cried Maggers. “But he was reinstated?”

The captain nodded. “Investigation showed that there was nothing to show that he had done anything discreditable. The lady involved was certainly old enough to know her own mind.” There was a murmur of laughter in the court, instantly hushed by the coroner, who liked to make all the witticisms that were made.

“And that lady, she was not a passenger aboard the
American Diplomat
on this present voyage?”

Captain Everett shook his head. “She’s safe and sound in Minneapolis, surrounded by sons who are trying to make her forget her shipboard romance,” he announced.

The coroner glared. “Please confine yourself to answering the questions.” He consulted some notes. “Oh, Captain. Is it true that there is a rule in your shipping line that only Yanks—I mean, citizens of the United States—are employed?”

Captain Everett hedged a little and admitted that he believed so.

“We have shown that Peter Noel was born in Montreal, a British subject,” said the coroner quickly. “How do you explain that?”

Captain Everett was unable to explain that and clearly thought it unnecessary. He gave it as his opinion that Noel carried an American passport.

“Then how do you—” began Coroner Maggers. He was interrupted by Chief Inspector Cannon, who had a seat at the inner table. They conferred for a moment.

“I understand,” said the coroner testily, “that Noel carried British and American passports, as well as those of several other countries. Was this known to you?”

“It was not,” Captain Everett snapped. “I am master of a ship, and haven’t the leisure to rummage through my crews’ duffle boxes, as your police seem to have.”

He was told that he might step down but must remain for further testimony later on. Much ruffled, Captain Everett sank onto a bench so heavily that the floor trembled. He folded his arms and waited. The Honorable Emily turned to Miss Withers and expressed a fervent wish that “the man would get on with it.”

A dour and elderly police surgeon was called, very evidently a man to whom inquests were an everyday occurrence. He testified that he had made an examination of the body of Peter Noel and had found that the deceased came to his death through the absorption into his system of more than six grains of potassium cyanide, taken through the mouth. Such a death would be practically instantaneous.

Said Coroner Maggers: “In your opinion, was the poison taken in liquid or in powder form?”

The surgeon avoided an opportunity to plunge into abstruse and technical points. The poison had not been administered in liquid form, else it would have been found in the throat. Nor had it been in the form of an open powder, which would have remained in the mouth. “It seems clear that the cyanide was wrapped in a folded bit of paper and swallowed,” he admitted.

“Was such a bit of paper found in the stomach of the deceased?” It was. The police surgeon stepped down.

Candida Noring was called. Miss Withers was interested to note that the transformation which had come over the girl still remained. She had dressed herself carefully and well for the ordeal, in smart woollen coat and tarn, and she went to the witness chair without visible perturbation.

Coroner Maggers established rather quickly her identity, and the fact that she had had a room mate, one Rosemary Fraser, on board the vessel
American Diplomat.

“On the morning of September 21st, did your room mate, Rosemary Fraser, disappear from the ship?” Coroner Maggers spoke with an unwonted delicacy, and Miss Withers wondered if he had not been coached a bit by the Yard official who sat just behind him.

Candida nodded, and then said “Yes” in a low voice.

“At the time of the ship’s arrival in the Port of London, did you give certain information to Chief Inspector Cannon of the C.I.D. in regard to the disappearance of Rosemary Fraser?”

“I did,” admitted Candida. “It was about—”

“Answer the questions, please. Did this information implicate Peter Noel, bar steward of the ship?”

Candida bowed her head. The jury was wide awake now, visibly stirring with uncertain suspicion. The young men at the press table began to make marks upon their blank white notebooks. Miss Withers leaned forward, intrigued and puzzled. But Candida Noring was permitted to step down. Cannon himself took the stand, made his oath with the ease that had marked the police surgeon before him, and sat down.

“Chief Inspector,” began the coroner quickly, “you have heard Miss Noring’s testimony. As a result of information given to you by her, did you arrest Peter Noel aboard the vessel
American Diplomat
shortly after midnight on the morning of September 23rd?”

“I made an effort to arrest him, yes,” said Cannon. “I gave him the usual caution and was about to lay hands upon his person in formal arrest when he snatched something from his right-hand coat pocket and put it in his mouth.”

“You made no effort to prevent him?”

The policeman paused. “It was too sudden,” he said. “I moved toward him, and so did Captain Everett and his first officer, but the man collapsed as we reached him.”

Coroner Maggers nodded, and as a little hum arose from the press table, he plunged on.