Puzzle of the Silver Persian (8 page)

Waite was apologizing. “You don’t think that I—that this was—naturally, we keep a complete pharmacopoeia on board, but—”

The chief inspector took the bottle, removed the glass stopper, and sniffed gingerly. “You are prepared to swear this stuff is potassium cyanide?”

Dr. Waite pointed to the neat symbols, “KCN,” and grinned feebly. “If you’re in doubt, you might taste it.”

His mouth dropped when he saw Cannon wet his finger and touch a bit of the dull white powder to his lips. “Look out, man!” The sergeant kept his look of mild interest.

Cannon smiled and handed back the bottle. “Epsom salts,” he decided.

Waite, horror-struck, sniffed. Then, very amazed, he tasted. It was all too true.

He reached for a lower shelf and brought up a much larger bottle bearing a characteristic label. It was about half full. “You mean, somebody stole the cyanide and filled up the bottle with this?”

The chief inspector was busily writing in his own notebook. He nodded wearily. “Are you in the custom of leaving this place unlocked?” he demanded.

Waite shook his head. “I must have been a bit flustered,” he admitted. “What with everything that happened last evening. Usually I—”

“Not always?”

“Always I keep it locked,” insisted Dr. Waite without conviction.

Cannon nodded. “All the same, Peter Noel got in here somehow and stole enough poison to kill everybody on shipboard. Was he in here, to your knowledge, within the last few days?”

“Since the death of the Fraser girl?” added Sergeant Secker softly.

Dr. Waite denied this. Then he added to his testimony. “The only time Noel was in my office was for a little while on the night that the Fraser girl went overboard,” he declared. “Four or five of us were shooting craps in here…”

“Craps?” inquired the chief inspector doubtfully.

“A dice game popularized by the American negro,” the sergeant informed him.

“Gambling, eh?” Cannon seemed satisfied. “Well, that’s it. Noel took advantage of your interest in the throw of the dice and stole the poison, substituting the nearest thing he could lay his hands on so that the cyanide would not be missed. Thank you, doctor.”

But Doctor Waite was not satisfied. “Why, he couldn’t have done that without my seeing him…”

“May I ask a question?” said the sergeant. “Doctor, was Noel in your office before or after the hue and cry resulting from the Fraser girls going overboard?”

Dr. Waite was positive. “Before,” he insisted.

The sergeant looked at Cannon. “Then he couldn’t have taken it then, sir, unless, as you say, he knew beforehand…”

The chief inspector grunted. “Or,” added the younger man, “unless he stole it, not for himself, but to use in getting rid of the girl. And then changed his mind.”

They went out of the surgery, leaving Dr. Waite shivering alone. He rubbed his shiny poll thoughtfully and then went over to his desk. A prescription of three fingers of brandy was indicated, he decided. From the top drawer he took a tall bottle and poured his much needed drink into a glass.

As he raised the glass to his lips, the outer door of the surgery was thrown suddenly open, and the pale thoughtful face of Sergeant John Secker appeared—so suddenly that the startled medico let glass and all go crashing to the floor.

“Sorry,” said the sergeant. “But the chief said to tell you that the inquest will be tomorrow afternoon, and your presence is requested. In fact,” the young man added as an afterthought, “your presence is jolly well demanded.” The door closed.

Dr. Waite had planned upon utilizing his precious four days in London otherwise—a plan which included several bottles of brandy and a not-too-married lady who lived in Maida Vale. A thwarted and unhappy man, he put the bottle away and went disconsolately to his bunk.

Out on the promenade deck Chief Inspector Cannon was pacing back and forth, his heavy tread unmuffled for the benefit of any of the passengers who might be sleeping. Sergeant Secker paced beside him.

It was full morning now, and the river was coming alive. A string of coal barges went past, with a small dingy dog barking vigorously from the roof of a shanty. A rusty red freighter bearing the name
Inchcliffe Castle
steamed seaward, bound out on the tide for Africa, and a madly sculling fat man went upstream on a high-pooped dory which looked like a floating leaf. On either shore the city was arousing itself, but Chief Inspector Cannon did not pause to admire the scene.

Rapidly he ran over the case, as he knew it, more to refresh his own point of view than from hope of getting any help out of the young man who trotted along beside him.

“That’s the story,” Cannon finished. “Noel was sick to death of the girl. She was pleading with him, maybe threatening him, to marry her. He threw her overboard and then funked out.”

“But you say the school teacher person was certain that the Fraser girl was alone at the rail? How could Noel throw her overboard when both exits from that stretch of the deck were covered—one by the drowsing school teacher and the other by the roommate who was coming in search of Rosemary?”

The chief inspector considered this an intelligent question and stopped at the rail to ponder it.

“Suppose she was leaning over the boat-deck rail, and Noel was up in the rigging somewhere? If he’d thrown something and hit her, she’d have gone right over, headfirst…”

Cannon stopped and shook his head. “Too easy,” he said. “He wouldn’t have chanced a miss.”

He looked up. “She must have been standing at the rail right over our heads,” he observed. “It was somewhere amidships, anyway. This lower deck, we’ve found out, was deserted. Suppose Noel had been standing here and had reached up with a boat hook or something, and pulled her down?”

Sergeant Secker ventured to suggest that he had never seen a boat hook used on an ocean liner—not even on a half-pint vessel like the
American Diplomat.

Cannon was forced to admit the justice of that. “Or even a walking stick,” he went on. The rail of the boat deck was only a few feet above their heads.

“It would be easy if she’d worn a long scarf…” began the sergeant. He stopped short and nearly fell overboard as an acidulous voice cut in from a point seemingly just behind his ear.

“Rosemary Fraser
did
wear a long scarf!”

Both men whirled to see the New England face of a lean New England spinster, which had materialized miraculously almost between them. Miss Hildegarde Withers, her hair neatly braided, was leaning from her porthole.

“Don’t look so indignant,” she said. “If you’re going to shout at each other outside my window all morning, you can’t blame me for butting in.”

“My dear madame—” barked the chief inspector.

But Sergeant Secker clung to one idea. “You say that Rosemary Fraser wore a scarf?”

“It was as characteristic of her as the coat she affected,” said Hildegarde Withers. “All through the voyage she wore a gray squirrel coat and a long, dangling scarf, dark blue. When I saw her at the rail, she had no coat, but she was wearing the scarf.”

“There you are,” said Sergeant Secker to his chief.

Cannon was not sure just where he was. The young man plunged merrily on. “Noel had seen the scarf, hadn’t he? He was carrying a dose of poison which he had stolen from the doctor earlier in the evening, wasn’t he? Well, as he stood at the rail down here, wondering how he was going to get a chance to administer the cyanide, he saw the blue scarf dangling. On an impulse, he yanked at it—and Rosemary Fraser plunged past him—down into the water.”

The chief inspector chewed this for a while, and Miss Withers very nearly clapped her hands in applause. Yet she realized immediately that some tiny detail, half remembered from the night when Rosemary Fraser disappeared, stubbornly refused to be fitted into the sergeant’s ingenious explanation. It was temporarily lost in the bottom of her mind, and there was nothing she could do about it until she could remember just what it was. Something to do with the deck and the wind and the night—and the wind—

Chief Inspector Cannon, to do him credit, was not hesitant in his recognition of good work. He smote his assistant so heavily upon the shoulder that the young man winced a little. “Now tha’s talking, lad!” He stopped suddenly and snapped his thick fingers. “It’s my turn now.” Forgetting that Miss Withers still formed an uninvited member of the party, Cannon went loudly on: “All along one thing has been bothering me—the splash!”

“What splash?” interrupted Hildegarde Withers from her porthole. “There wasn’t any.”

“Right you are! That’s what bothered me. But I should have remembered a case that came up three or four years ago. Murders aboard the
Countess of Teal
—which was a dirty little tramp steamer anchored off Gravesend. Look it up in the files sometime, sergeant.”

Secker interposed to say that he had read through the old files. “Captain and mate went overboard while the ship was at anchor, and the bosun swung for it, didn’t he?”

“Right! Two men went overboard without a splash, because the bloody Lascar bosun strangled them and then lowered them gently into the water. Let go the rope—and that was that. Well, now you see how this Noel fellow got the girl into the sea without anybody’s hearing a splash.”

Sergeant Secker looked over the rail and down at the water, twenty feet or so below. “How long is a scarf anyway?” he inquired.

That reminded Miss Withers of the ancient conundrum, “How long is a piece of string?” But she hurriedly withdrew from the porthole and tore open her battered suitcase. She threw almost everything she owned out upon her berth and came finally to the object for which she was searching. She thrust it out of the porthole.

“I’ll loan you this old scarf of mine,” she cried. “It’s nearly as long as the one that Rosemary Fraser wore. One of you put it on and stand at the rail of the upper deck—”

Chief Inspector Cannon was not in the habit of receiving assistance from middle-aged school teachers, or for that matter from any of the general public. But this was an unusual situation. He accepted the purple wisp of silk and rubbed it in his fingers.

Then he handed it to Secker. “Tie it around your neck, sergeant,” he ordered. “Then go topside and see if I can catch hold of it.”

“Oh, I say,” protested the young man. “What if anyone sees me? That—that’s a loathsome color to go with my jacket…”

“Wait a moment,” gasped Miss Withers. “Let
me
wear it…”

But it took her a considerable interval to change her dressing gown for a suit and hat. When she finally rushed out on deck it was only to see Chief Inspector Cannon standing at the rail, and stretching frantically in an attempt to grasp a wisp of purple silk which hung just out of reach.

“If you stood on the rail you could make it,” she suggested. Cannon grunted inhospitably, but he followed her advice. He caught the end of the trailing scarf and gave a mighty tug.

Looking up, Miss Withers could see white hands grasping the boat-deck rail and a glimpse of the sergeant’s face.

“Sing out if you feel that!” boomed Cannon, and tugged again. The sergeant did not sing out. Miss Withers craned her neck and saw that his face was of an extremely odd color. And he was leaning very far over the rail.

She was no respector of persons. The Yard official felt himself shoved aside, and a sharp command was snapped in his ear. “Let go, you fool!”

The chief inspector let go, but before he could give vent to the displeasure that filled his heart, he saw Hildegarde Withers running along the deck. “Hey!” he shouted, but nobody answered him.

He mounted to the boat deck as rapidly as he could and found the meddlesome school teacher kneeling beside the prone figure of a young man, who still kept his tense, desperate fingers clenched around the rail. Miss Withers was tearing at his throat, and as Cannon uncomprehendingly approached, the noose of silk came away.

Sergeant John Secker let go the rail and began to breathe again, shudderingly. Finally he could speak.

“A bit close, that,” he said.

“Why didn’t you sing out?” demanded Cannon.

“Why? Why didn’t I sing out? With a blasted, bloody, be-damned snare around my throat? It was all I could do to keep from being thrown overboard, that’s why.”

“Oh,” said the chief inspector.

“And now,” Hildegarde Withers told him very sweetly,
“now
perhaps we know why Rosemary Fraser didn’t scream.”

There was something of a pause, after which Cannon picked up the purple scarf and handed it back to its owner.

“Much obliged to you, madam,” he announced stiffly.

Sergeant John Secker smiled rather feebly. “I’m more than obliged,” he said. “Thanks awfully.” He dusted himself off very carefully. “Cheerio.”

They moved away and left her there. “But—” began Hildegarde Withers. She followed quickly after them. “Can’t I be of any further assistance? I’ve had a certain amount of experience at this sort of thing back in the States…”

Chief Inspector Cannon was in a very bad mood. He felt that he had placed himself in an exceedingly unfortunate position. After all, if the young fool hadn’t known any better than to tie the scarf in an ordinary slip-knot…

“This isn’t the States,” he said shortly. Then, to temper his gruffness: “You see, this completes our case. The rest is purely official.”

“Oh,” said Hildegarde Withers.

She watched them go forward, to where Captain Everett was issuing from his cabin, and heard the officer somewhat indignantly inquiring as to when he could put his passengers ashore.

“Sooner the better,” she heard Chief Inspector Cannon say. And then she hurried aft and went down the ladder to the lower deck. She rushed rapidly toward her own cabin, but as she turned into the short passageway she saw that it was blocked by the well-starched back of Mrs. Snoaks, the stewardess. She was in hot argument with the Honorable Emily.

“I’ll do it and keep me mouth shut,” the woman was saying. “But two quid isn’t enough, what with all the police hanging about. If your ladyship will make it four…”

“Done!” came the voice of the Honorable Emily. There was the snap of a handbag, and then the stewardess brushed past Miss Withers with four unmistakable pound treasury notes disappearing into her capacious bosom.