Voyage into Violence Read online

  Bill shared the surprise. While they waited for Mr. Folsom, the sub-inspector lifted his dark eyebrows. Bill Weigand shrugged his shoulders.

  Respected Captain J. R. Folsom came in, wearing an orange shirt, and looking very hot.

  Pamela North, confronted by a dangling alligator, said, “eeHH!” on a rising note, and stopped, braced backward. The alligator revolved slowly, as if to regard her—as if in annoyance at this interruption of solitude. It was, however, only the skin of an alligator. “Huh,” Pam said, on a declining note. “Pretending to be—”

  But then she heard, or thought she heard, the door through which she had come, and had closed behind her, opening again. Pam North went around the alligator, brushing counters on which other alligators, or large sections thereof, were piled, and toward a door beyond. She went through the door briskly, and half a dozen men and women, sitting at tables, looked at her with dark eyes and with astonishment. The four women, and two men, were cutting up alligators.

  “Señora,” one of the men said, “you come by the back door? It is preferred to come by the front door. Sí?”

  “Sí,” Pam said. “Sí indeed. Oh—alligator bags!”

  “Sí,” the man said. “The best alligator bags. For almost nothing, señora. But—in front, sí?”

  He pointed. Pam North went between tables. She came into a larger room, opening on a street—a room festooned with alligator bags of many sizes, many shapes; of alligator bags suspended, lying on showcases, glassed within showcases. A middle-aged woman, who had been looking through the door into a deserted square, turned abruptly. Large dark eyes grew perceptibly larger.

  “Señora?” she said, as if doubting it. “But you came by the back door.”

  “I know,” Pam said. “It—well, I just came to it. That is, it was there.”

  The woman regarded Pamela North. As others had done before her, she shook her head, as if the movement were reflexive. Then she looked at the door through which Pam had come.

  “The others?” she said. “They also—”

  “Others,” Pam said. “Are there—?”

  “American Express,” the woman said.

  “Oh,” Pam said, “Looking at the cathedral.”

  The woman among the alligator bags continued to regard the door Pam had come through. She looked at it with an expression which mingled expectation and alarm. “It is not like the American Express,” she said. “Always they come by the front door. Sí?” She turned back to Pam. “However,” she said, “you wish a bag?” She held one up. But Pam did not look at it.

  She looked through the open door, into the square. Mr. Jules Barron was coming into the square from a passageway. He was looking around the square.

  “I,” said Pamela North, “do very much want a bag. Please.”

  There had never been so many alligator bags. One after another, as the large woman brought them forth, pointed them out, Pam looked at alligator bags. And, between one bag and the next, she looked through the door into the square, where it was clear that Mr. Jules Barron waited for someone. He appeared to wait patiently.

  “This one is beautiful, sí?” the large woman said, and produced another. “But perhaps the señora would prefer—”

  The trouble was that Pam North does not really much like alligator bags, regarding them as knobby and, in addition, requiring alligator shoes, which she likes even less. “Beautiful,” Pam North agreed. “But what I more had in mind was—”

  It could not be said that the middle-aged woman grew impatient. But she did, as minutes passed, appreciably warm to her task. This señora who came through back doors, who looked and looked but without real attention—this señora would leave with an alligator bag, or the reason why would be known. “Nowhere, señora,” the woman said, resolutely, “nowhere in Habana will the señora find such a collection as we have here.”

  Pam did not doubt it. She said she did not doubt it. She looked out the door where Jules Barron, a man with all the time in the world in his unhurried hands, leaned slightly against a column in the shade, and looked as if he belonged there—looked rather, indeed, as if he had grown there.

  “It is so hard to decide,” Pam said. “They are all so beautiful. This one, now. Or—perhaps this one. Although this one is so—”

  She stopped, and stopped pretending not to look through the door into the square. Because, from between two massive buildings, Hilda Macklin came briskly, her black bag—not alligator—clutched under her right arm. She walked across the square, which was cobbled, to Barron and, as she walked, Pam thought Hilda shook her head. Barron moved a few steps to join her, they talked for an instant; side by side, still talking, they walked through a colonnade and disappeared.

  “So that’s it,” Pam said. “Not me at all.”

  “Señora?” the large woman said. “Which one not you?”

  “Oh,” Pam said, and slightly shook the alligator she held. “This one, I think. I mean, this one is me.”

  It was not really very cheap. And Pam was sure, or almost sure, she could learn to like it. Or, it would make a nice present for—She could not think of anyone for whom it would make an especially nice present. Pam signed a traveler’s check.

  And, as she signed it, the square filled with taxicabs, as if they had fallen from the sky. The American Express had come charging to the rescue. The American Express was a little late. Pam looked reproachfully at the too-expensive, knobby bag.

  “So,” the large woman said, “by the front door, as I told the señora.”

  Respected Captain J. R. Folsom, looking very hot indeed—although it was comparatively cool in the office, behind massive walls—said that anybody could make a mistake. Bill Weigand did not challenge this statement of the obvious. He was asked to look at it Folsom’s way and said, “Right, Mr. Folsom. You recognized the signature. You said you didn’t.”

  “Look at it my way,” Folsom said, again. “I was rattled. I said I made a mistake.”

  “You realized,” Bill Weigand said, “that once I got ashore, I’d radio the signature to Worcester. That a hundred people there would recognize it. That, once it was identified as Baldwin’s, I’d know you’d been lying.”

  He was told he made it sound bad. Suppose Folsom had got to thinking it over afterward, realized he had made a mistake?

  “Like I say,” Folsom said, “anybody can. I thought maybe I could keep out of it. Until I thought it over.”

  “The signature,” Bill said, “is Abner Baldwin’s. He’s president of your company. He’d hired Marsh to—to do what, Mr. Folsom? You may as well—not make another mistake.”

  “Lil Abner,” Folsom said, “is a prize s.o.b. Ask anybody in Worcester.”

  “Suppose,” Bill said, “you just tell me what it’s about. Right?”

  It took Folsom time, and many suggestions that Weigand look at it his way. It took a history, not too brief, of the Worcester Paper Box Company, which had been the Folsom Paper Box Company—into which Abner Baldwin had “moved,” during the depression, after Folsom’s father, and the company’s founder, had “passed away.”

  “You have to get the background,” Folsom said, and Bill Weigand was patient.

  Yet it was not too clear, even when lengthily explained. Baldwin was trying to squeeze; that was what it came to. Trying to get Folsom out, and take over completely. “So, he rigged this thing up. Figures he’s got me by the short hair, when all the time he knows it’s a phony.” In short—but it was not in short—Baldwin had accused Folsom of embezzlement (“which is a g.d. lie and he knows it”) and was willing to let it slide if Folsom had consented to be squeezed out. “I told him to go take one,” Folsom said. “At you know who.”

  Bill knew who.

  “Put up or shut up,” Folsom said, amplifying. “See what I mean?”

  Bill saw what he meant.

  “He didn’t have anything to go on,” Folsom said, and Bill Weigand said, “Anything?”

  “Nothing he could make stick,” Folsom
said. “Oh—say somebody came in from the outside. Didn’t know the ropes. Until I got him squared away—maybe—” He stopped and looked at Weigand, his gray eyes very sharp—very cold in his hot face. “It could have been rigged so it didn’t look so good,” he said. “That’s all. So, apparently, he hires this Marsh fellow. To—make it look bad. See what I mean?”

  Bill saw what he meant.

  “And,” Folsom said, “Marsh gets himself killed. You see why I wanted to stay out of it.”

  “You didn’t,” Bill said. “You went to Marsh’s stateroom.”

  “We were drinking, like I said,” Folsom told him. “Seemed to me he was getting a little nosy. About the company. I said to myself, ‘Nobody’s that interested in boxes.’ I said to myself, ‘Lil Abner’s up to something and this Marsh is in it.’ So, I thought it over and decided I’d have a showdown. Put it up to Marsh. So I went to his room and—there he was. There you and the captain were.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “There we all were.”

  “And that damned sword,” Folsom said. “Sticking up out of the middle of him. Sword I’d had sharpened up.”

  “Disconcerting,” Bill said. “If you didn’t use the sword.”

  “Would I be telling you this, if I had?”

  “Perhaps,” Bill said. “Since you began to realize I’d find out anyway.”

  “Anybody can make a mistake,” Folsom said. “I didn’t kill the guy.”

  “Or,” Bill said, “search my room, and the Norths’ room, trying to find the letter and the check—or whatever you thought you might find? And push Mrs. North around while you were about it? Or slug the captain’s steward, so you could search Marsh’s room? Or—search Mrs. Macklin’s room?”

  “Nope,” Folsom said. “I didn’t do a damn’ thing. Anyway—” He stopped and looked at Bill. “I stopped by Mrs. Macklin’s room to see if I could buy her a drink.”

  “A bit of detective work?”

  “So?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Folsom,” Bill said. “But I’ll find out. The ship sails around ten tomorrow morning. I’d be on it, if I were you.”

  “Captain,” Folsom said, “didn’t you know? We’re having this parade in Nassau.”

  Clutching her knobby alligator, Pam went into the square. She encountered Miss Springer, who said, “You’re Mrs. North,” and said it accusingly. “You are not supposed to wander off,” Miss Springer said. “People ought to stay together.”

  Pam said she was very sorry. She said, “Do you know where my husband is?”

  “At the cathedral,” Miss Springer said. “Looking for you.”

  It was a short distance to the cathedral by cab. Jerry, in the square, was talking to a member of the tourist division of the police department, who had an armband which said he was. Jerry said, “Well!” to Pam, and Pam, again, said she was sorry and would explain, and where was Dorian?

  “Looking in crypts, probably,” Jerry said, but they found Dorian in the nave of the cathedral, which was, now, by no means so gaudily lighted. Together again, the three found Mike and his cab, and Mike did not chide. He said, “Now we catch up.” They got in. “Wait,” Pam said, “it merely leads to alligator bags. Like—” she showed them. “How much?” Jerry said, and she told him. He said, conventionally, “Ouch!”

  “We’ll merely have to wait until everybody sees everything,” Pam said. “It takes some people a long time. Mike?”

  “Señora?”

  “You can just drive us around, can’t you? Where the others would go, except not the alligators, but faster?”

  “You do not want the bags?” Mike said.

  “No,” Pam said.

  “Then,” Mike said, “we see the cemetery, sí? The cemetery is very beautiful.”

  They saw Colon Cemetery, which, tabled in marble, is not only beautiful but oddly gay. Happy boys were shooting dice on one of the great white slabs. They saw old Havana, passing through it like a whirlwind, with Mike turning back, steering with a hand on the center of the wheel, over the horn button, to advise of beauties passing. They saw new Havana, where much is modern and bright and from the point of view of the climate obviously ill-advised, and now and then not a little funny. They whirled madly through Marianao and past the country club, and in the winding roads on which fine houses wear many colors. Returning, Mike’s cab coughed tiredly and stopped on a busy bridge, was pushed to seclusion and repaired with, apparently, a few pieces of old wire kept handy for the purpose. It darted on, speed and voice alike restored, and roared to a stop outside a spreading building. “Rum-factory,” Mike said, in triumph. “Trocadero.” Then the remainder of the American Express tour descended like a flight of locusts. They, with others—and now with Mrs. Macklin who could, Pam noted, be trusted to turn up at the right time—sat on small kegs around large barrels made into tables and drank banana cordial. It was, in its way, remarkable. And Bill came, with a policeman escorting him, and said this was a way to spend their time, while he was slaving over murder, and sipped banana cordial—which was certainly remarkable—with them. He agreed with Pam that it was hard to keep one’s mind on murder. They recaptured Mike and whirled to a restaurant of his advising—“where,” Pam insisted, “we can get martinis” and scrubbed banana sweetness from her lips with her teeth. It was on the way that Pam said, suddenly remembering, “We’ve lost Mr. Folsom.”

  They had not, Bill assured them, over paella, and told of Mr. Folsom. In return, he heard of Hilda Macklin and Jules Barron and alligator bags. He left them for a telephone, after Pam had described the street—somewhere near the cathedral, in a labyrinth—where Hilda had disappeared. He returned. “At a guess,” Bill said, “it was what they call The Street of Fences.”

  “Oh,” Pam said, and Bill Weigand said, “Right,” and they were, once more, out of the brightness of holiday into the darkness of murder. “Checkers must feel like this,” Pam said, “or chessmen, of course,” and after she had explained they agreed that either might well.

  In mid-afternoon, heavy with paella, they went back to the Carib Queen, where the others rested and Bill Weigand did not.

  Gloomily, since he had still no hunch, and could see none in immediate prospect, Bill Weigand went again to the telephone. He had never, he thought, while waiting the connection, tried to discover who had killed and why under conditions less satisfactory. The past remained obscure; the present was in a state of flux; unaccustomed paella lay heavy on the stomach and seemed to weight the brain.

  “Stein, Homicide West,” a distant voice—and a weary voice—said and then, “Oh, hello, captain, where do I begin?”

  “Anywhere,” Bill said.

  Then—the signature on the letter, and on the check, was that of one Abner Baldwin, president of the Worcester Paper Box Company. Bill said, “Right,” and Stein, somewhat disappointed, said that it sounded as if his news were old. Bill told him. And what had Mr. Baldwin to say?

  Baldwin had been at first reluctant, had ended somewhat vociferous. Or so, as reported by a Worcester detective, it appeared. “We’re a long way from everything,” Bill said, wearily. “Go ahead.”

  Baldwin had said it was something he didn’t want the police in. He was told why the police were in. He agreed that that changed matters. He agreed that he had employed J. Orville Marsh to investigate Folsom. It was then he had begun to grow vociferous; had said he was pretty sure the damned crook was robbing him. He had then turned cautious. He had said that maybe he shouldn’t say what he couldn’t prove—couldn’t prove yet. He had diverged to remark, bitterly, that Marsh had been a sap to get himself killed with the job half done. That now he would have to get somebody else to start over.

  “Too bad he’s been inconvenienced,” Bill said, and Stein said it sure was.

  Baldwin failed, or said he failed, to see what Marsh expected to gain by following Folsom on a cruise—particularly as he supposed that eventually, from somewhere, there would be an expense bill to cover the cruise. Pressed—but not hard enough; n
ot nearly hard enough; that much was evident—Baldwin said that Folsom seemed to have been juggling his accounts, in cahoots with a supplier of cardboard. At least, it appeared that there ought to be a lot more cardboard around than there really was. But he didn’t have enough on Folsom to take it to the police. That had been where Marsh came in.

  That, so far, was all from Baldwin—from Worcester and the Worcester Paper Box Company.

  “Too bad you couldn’t have gone up yourself,” Bill said, and was agreed with. “Take it up with Arty when you get back,” Stein suggested. “Oh,” Bill said, “sure. I can see myself. The other things?”

  The photograph found among Marsh’s effects was of Mrs. Winifred Ferris of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her son and her daughter agreed to that. It had been taken some time previous to her disappearance; had been given to Marsh to direct him in his search. The jewelry of the photographs also was hers. Mrs. Ferris’s son had had the photographs made. “Why? Or didn’t they think to ask?”

  The detective assigned had thought to ask. He had been told “as a safeguard,” and had waited. Ferris had hesitated; finally, with apparent reluctance, had said his mother was “sometimes” a little irresponsible. The pieces were very valuable; it might, he thought, some time be necessary to identify them.

  “Meaning?”

  Stein supposed that, in an “irresponsible” moment, Mrs. Ferris might lose her jewels. Or give them away. Her son and daughter had wanted to be in a position, if the pieces subsequently were found, to prove their identity. “Hmmmm,” Bill said. “It’s all he could get,” Stein said. “He seems to know his way around. The cop, I mean.” Bill knew what he meant. The son and daughter presumed that Mrs. Ferris had taken the pieces with her. She had kept them in a safe deposit box, to which she alone had access.

  “They haven’t tried to get a court order?”