Voyage into Violence Read online

  Not so many of the Old Respectables were now in uniform. Some seemed to be shedding it gradually—a jacket replacing tunic, but the uniform trousers remaining in their place. (One of them did, to be sure, wear his tunic, with Bermuda shorts.) Not nearly so many wore their caps to lunch; it was possible that word had been passed. The officer of the day made two appearances on his rounds, and wore no sword. He did, however, wear white gloves as compensation. The apple tart looked naice today and, within reason, was. Having tried coffee the night before, Pam essayed the tea. Jerry was of sterner stuff and said so; he would fight on the coffee line if it took all cruise.

  The four drifted apart after luncheon. Confronted by entertainment unlimited, Bill Weigand decided to take a nap. Dorian went to the boat deck, with drawing pad and pencils, since the holidays of commercial artists are likely to be a little like those of busmen.

  Jerry North, after having changed his shirt again, and resumed the slacks which did not need pressing, made one circuit of the promenade deck—but at not over two knots—and joined Pamela, who was merely sitting. She had changed back to a bathing suit, but this time only for tanning purposes. They sat contentedly, saying little, toasting slowly. The bow of the ship rose lazily; it subsided dreamily and the stern apathetically arose. “It’s wonderful to have nothing—nothing at all—to do,” Pam said, at one point, and Jerry said, “M-mm” in agreement, since a sound was simpler to come by than a word. “I suppose,” Pam said, some time later, “I really ought to go into the pool.” Jerry said, “M-mm” again. “Probably you’re right,” Pam said. “Take things easy to start with.”

  Respected Captain Folsom was, presumably, at the Respectables’ cocktail party; Mrs. Macklin did not appear—it could, by one with that kind of mind, be assumed that she was drinking in her cabin. (And that’s the kind of mind I’ve got, Pam admitted to herself.) Hilda Macklin did not appear; possibly she was also in the cabin, pouring. Captain Cunningham probably was at the wheel, peering from it into the distance. It was comforting to know that they were in strong hands. Nothing untoward could happen; ahead stretched days of peace. Pam North dozed in the sun.

  Aboard a cruise ship one can attend a movie, or play shuffleboard or doze in the sun. But it is inevitable that, as time goes on, one will sit at a table in the smoking lounge, and there prepare, in the only proper fashion, for the subsequent consumption of further food. The Norths do not contend against the inevitable.

  At a quarter of six, when the inevitable caught up with them, Pam wore a white dinner dress—and wished, mildly, that its décolletage coincided more exactly with that of her bathing suit. Even with oil, one reddens in the sun. Jerry had changed his shirt again—he wore a white dinner jacket and black trousers and even a cummerbund, and a dress shirt which would dry overnight and did not need pressing. They sat, at a table which would accommodate four, and was expected to, and began to prepare for dinner. The bartender made admirable martinis; it was clear he was American trained.

  Bill Weigand and Dorian were tardy. But the Norths were only started on their drinks when J. Orville Marsh appeared, also wearing a white dinner jacket, tall and heavily handsome—a man of distinction, bound toward a drink before dinner. He nodded his gray head, and smiled pleasantly and said, “Good evening,” and was about to pass on.

  “Join us,” Jerry said, to Pam’s surprise.

  Mr. Marsh said, “Why, thank you,” and that he didn’t mind if he did. He did.

  “Talking about you before lunch,” Jerry said, when Marsh had ordered. “Seems the Old Respectables have lost their sword. Case of the missing weapon.”

  “Oh,” Marsh said. “Of me?” His drink came. He had ordered a daiquiri. He sipped it. “Oh,” he said. “I see.” He was, Pam thought, content to let it lie there. But Jerry was not—

  Talk about busmen’s holidays, Pam thought, although nobody had been. Publishers are just the same, the dears. Looking for books in the oddest places.

  But as J. Orville Marsh was led on—and once started he led easily—and as Bill and Dorian still tarried (gone to sleep, probably) Pam began to doubt whether Mr. Marsh was really the oddest place. Mr. Marsh told stories, and he told them well. He had never, to be sure, carried a gun. He had never shot a man, or been shot at. Murder was, naturally, not his line. He had never happened to run into a private investigator whose line it was. But people disappeared under odd circumstances, and sometimes with odd completeness. There was the man who, three years before, had taken his own two children, after a quarrel with his wife, got with them onto a bus and vanished from the face of the earth. “Difficult with kids,” Mr. Marsh said. And there was the wealthy woman who had turned somewhat peculiar and similarly vanished, leaving worried children. There was—there was always—Judge Crater who had been, Marsh was almost certain, alive several years after he had vanished, although there was another theory about that. There was the man found, after an absence of two years, during an afternoon when Marsh had not left his office, and had made not quite a hundred telephone calls.

  Mr. Marsh was by no means boastful, or so it seemed to Pam. When he said, “Edgar called me about that,” it was unnecessary to believe that Edgar had not. Led to it—yes, there was a good deal of wiretapping; not so much as some people said, probably more than there should be. One trouble with wiretapping was that, in getting what you wanted—and not always getting that—you got, in addition, a great deal of information which was none of your business—which wasn’t too bad, if you were scrupulous, which it could not be argued everybody was.

  But, although he had carried on—“before I retired,” Mr. Marsh made a point of saying; several times made a point of saying—a variety of investigations, he had been concerned mostly with those people who vanished. A former actress, for example—now here, now nowhere; traced finally to a hotel room where she seemed to be under the rather strange control of a lawyer and a practical nurse. And where, which was the trouble, she was firm she would remain. Mr. Marsh, who didn’t like the situation—the former actress had had a good deal of money once—had thought of going to the authorities on that one but—He shrugged. There was nothing to pin on anyone, nothing tangible to get hold of. No law had been openly transgressed, and there was no one to make complaint.

  “Of course,” he said, “that is our only excuse for existence. To investigate—” He apparently sought a word. “Oddities,” he said. “Matters which concern individuals, not society. Matters which need a kind of discretion the authorities can’t, of course, promise. And—negotiations, of course. For the—well, the return of money, say. Amicable settlements. Not against the law, of course. But, say, beside the law. And—”

  Dorian and Bill Weigand arrived, then. Dorian wore a gray dinner dress; she moved down the room, ahead of Bill, with that singular grace which always made Pam think of a cat’s grace. The cat named Gin, for example, walked in much the same fashion, if one took additional legs into account. It must, Pam thought, be something about the way Dorian’s put together. Bill, who looked rested, finally, wore a white dinner jacket. (I wish they’d wear them all the time, Pam thought.) “We’re ahead of you,” Pam said, as Jerry and Marsh stood up.

  The dignified licensed investigator—it was flatly impossible to think of him as a “private eye,” although Pam tried to—remained for another drink; insisted, indeed, on buying drinks around. Then, unhurriedly, he got up, said it had been very pleasant, and went toward the bar.

  “Jerry’s been looking for a book,” Pam said, to Dorian and Bill. “You think he is?” she said to Jerry, who shrugged, who said, “Could be.”

  The big lounge filled with second sitters, preparing themselves. The bar, which ran along one bulkhead, became lined with Old Respectables, who were he-men and drank standing. They were not, now, in all cases distinguishable by uniforms, or even parts of uniforms. A few retained regalia, complete to cap. But others, in dinner jackets, in business suits, were recognizable only by what Pam, reverting to the nautical, called “the cut of their
jib.”

  “In other words,” Jerry said, “middle-aged businessmen on convention.”

  Pam supposed so. If one wanted to make things easy. “Although,” she said, “with rifles.”

  The steward who had been serving them approached, although he had not been summoned. He said, “Captain Folsom’s compliments, and he would be ’appy to buy you drinks.”

  They looked toward the bar. J. Orville Marsh and Respected Captain Folsom stood there side by side. Folsom, who remained in uniform, but wore a white shirt and a black bow tie, smiled at them, and nodded vigorously.

  “Thank Captain Folsom very much for us,” Jerry said, and they all beamed in the respected captain’s direction.

  “In Nassau,” Bill said, “they’re going to parade. Hence the armament. They are going to present something to the governor general—a plaque of some kind—as a token of international friendship.”

  They looked at him.

  “That’s all I know,” Bill said.

  “In this form,” Dorian told him, “it is a somewhat barren bit of knowledge.”

  Bill grinned at her. He said he was sorry. He told her it was all he had to offer.

  “And you a detective,” Dorian said, sadly, and the steward brought their complimentary drinks. They raised glasses toward the respected captain, who raised his in return.

  They sipped, and awaited summoning chimes. The chimes sounded and, after a decent interval—they preferred not to clamor at the doors—they left the pleasant air-cooled place and went aft through passageways. It was only then that they noticed increased motion in the ship. She still rocked gently fore and aft; now also she rolled amiably port to starboard. The corridor bulkheads had a mild tendency to push at those who walked between them. It would, Pam said, give the Old Reliables, or such as needed it, an excuse for any untoward movements.

  Captain Cunningham, in a white mess jacket, for the first time presided at his table—a table for the captain, the first officer and eight selected passengers. How selected? Pam wondered, and decided that for them, also, there must be a list. Possibly the pleasant young couple—perhaps from Kansas—on the captain’s right were starting their married life on the Carib Queen. They looked as if they might be. She hoped the young man would continue to like his wife in that particular shade of blue. The couple on the captain’s left were, almost certainly, retired—now that all their children were married, their grandchildren clustering—and taking their ease in a ship. They had had, Pam thought, at least three children—two boys and a girl. The woman wore a soft gray dress and orchids were pinned to it—of course! A wedding anniversary trip. How nice—how nice, indeed, everything was.

  Respected Captain Folsom sat next the man who had brought his wife orchids for their anniversary. (How different, Pam thought, some men were from Jerry.) Marsh, a little late, sat next Folsom. They needed better assortment; they did not come properly two by two. It would have been easy to arrange, since Mrs. Macklin and her daughter sat across the table from Folsom and Marsh. They could have been split.

  It was true that, this evening, they were not both there to split. Hilda was, in a dinner dress which seemed not so much to have been designed as to have happened. Mrs. Macklin was not. Pam, resolutely, decided to be charitable. No doubt the motion of the ship had diminished her appetite—for food at any rate.

  “It would be pleasant,” Jerry said, gently, “if you would make up your mind which table you’re sitting at. The man says the roast” beef looks very naice this evening.”

  They ate. They sat on the afterdeck, enjoying the cradling motion of the ship. They danced, later, and then the cradling movement was less desirable; Pam found herself always backing downhill, which seemed obscurely unfair. The anniversary couple danced, gently, once; the honeymooning couple danced briskly, often. The dark young man danced with a blond young woman, and they both danced noticeably well.

  Elsewhere in the ship work was done. A seaman stood at the wheel; the second officer got a fix, moved parallel rulers to the compass rose, adjusted the course. Dish-washing machines ground in the galley; in the dining saloon, waiters set up for breakfast and speculated about tips to be received. And Stewardess Felicia Brown found the Old Respectables’ missing sword.

  She was not looking for it. She was doing her nightly chores. When she got her chores done, she would go below decks to the cabin she shared with Mrs. Palsey and Mrs. Fish and young Miss Pratt—a bit of a flibbertigibbet, Miss Pratt—and get the sleep she had earned. It would be fine to get her feet up. Her feet were killing her. It was a pity some of these people with nothing to do but stuff themselves and sit in the sun, couldn’t turn down their own beds.

  Mrs. Brown knocked on the door of Cabin 84, forward on the starboard side of A Deck and, being unanswered, opened the door and went in and turned down the beds. One of them had been napped on, and had to be smoothed out. You’d think, what with deck chairs, they’d manage to stay off the beds in the daytime. For any purpose, she thought, and mildly dusted the dressing table, on which powder had been spilled. She held a bottle of perfume to her nose and shook her head and put it down again.

  She went aft to Cabin 86 and knocked, and waited, and went in and turned down the beds. Most nights, it went on like this, never meeting anybody to pass the time of day with. Like as not, most of them thought the beds turned themselves down; from the tips one got, one’d think that. The breakfasts in were different. Then you could make yourself felt. This way—

  She went out of Cabin 86, and knocked on the door of Cabin 88. Again there was no answer. She pushed on the door and there was resistance. One of them had left a valise or something in the way, which was like some of them. She pushed harder and the door partially opened, and she began to wedge herself through the opening. She got far enough to see—far enough to find the sword.

  The sword was in J. Orville Marsh, who lay on his back on the floor. He had bled on the carpet. The sword was not all the way in, but far enough. It didn’t take a doctor to know it was far enough. The amount of blood told that.

  Mrs. Brown wanted to scream. She also wanted to be sick. But it was not her place to scream, or to be sick. Leave that sort of thing to “them.” She went, as fast as heavy old legs would carry her, to authority. Authority was not the highest—it was an assistant purser. It served.…

  It was a little after eleven. Dorian Weigand was propped up in bed, looking extremely lovely, reading—but not as if hopelessly engrossed. There was a telephone in the room, Bill Weigand thought, hanging his white dinner jacket in a closet, reaching to loosen his black tie. There was a telephone, but this time it would not ring, as so often it rang. The policeman’s life is an interrupted one, but not tonight—not here, far from land, in the snugness of this cabin, on this gently rocking ship. There would be no sudden calls—no sudden canceling of leave. If they wanted him back, tonight, they would have to come after him. By helicopter. Half of New York could kill the other half, and Captain William Weigand, Homicide, Manhattan West, would help worry about it another time. In, say, a week. Now—

  Now somebody knocked at the cabin door. The knocking was not loud, but it was insistent. Pam or Jerry, presumably, with some sudden idea. Not that it would be like either of them. But still—The most reliable people may relax on vacation, and give exaggerated value to sudden ideas. Like, even, joining together for a nightcap.

  Bill Weigand went to the door and opened it, fixing on his face a smile as cordial as he could manage. The knocker was not a North. The knocker was Cholly, captain’s steward. Cholly’s face was, for it, a little pale. Cholly’s white teeth tugged at his lower lip.

  “Captain’s compliments, sir,” Cholly said. “He’d appreciate it if you could come to his quarters.”

  “Now?” Bill said.

  “He’d appreciate it, sir,” Cholly said. “He said to tell you it’s urgent, sir.”

  Bill looked at him.

  “Very urgent, sir,” Cholly said. “The captain would very much appreci
ate it, sir.”

  Bill continued to look at the boy, who wasn’t beamish at all at the moment.

  “It’s about the sword, sir,” Cholly said. “The captain said I could tell you they’ve—they’ve found the sword.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “Wait a minute.”

  He closed the door. He looked at Dorian.

  “Damn,” Dorian Weigand said, not loudly but with conviction.

  “Right,” Bill said. “But—there we are.”

  He leaned over the bed and kissed her.

  “Oh,” Dorian said. “I know it isn’t your fault. Go find out about the sword. Nevertheless—damn.”

  Bill followed the steward along the corridor of A Deck; to the elevator and into it. When the elevator stopped, he went up a short flight of steel stairs, still following Cholly. Cholly knocked and Captain Peter Cunningham, RNR, opened the door at once.

  “Oh,” he said. “Glad you could make it. Appreciate your coming, Weigand.” He led the way back into the cabin. He said, “Scotch?” Bill shook his head.

  Captain Cunningham nodded. His long, intelligent face was not particularly expressive. He did not look worried. On the other hand, he looked by no means happy.

  “As a matter of fact,” Captain Cunningham said, “a rather sticky situation has come up.” He considered this. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “quite a sticky situation.”

  It was not often, Bill Weigand realized, that Captain Peter Cunningham, RNR, went, thus, into superlatives. All hell had, apparently, broken loose.

  “Your boy,” Bill said, “tells me the sword’s been found.”

  “Quite,” Captain Cunningham said, and told him where.

  Bill listened.

  “You don’t,” Captain Cunningham said, “seem greatly surprised.”

  “You send a steward for me, fairly late at night,” Bill said. “He says the matter’s urgent, and mentions the sword. In effect, I said, earlier, that the sword would concern me only if it was found in someone. I supposed it had been.” He smiled, faintly. “In short,” he said, “I’d already had my surprise.”