“AND SO,” SAID MISS WITHERS, “having said so much, I shall say no more.”
She and Lenore and Al were in her room at the Canterbury, which had taken their delivery in the early hours of the morning by a Captain of Homicide with as superb aplomb as it had earlier taken the delivery of Miss Withers in the sidecar of a Hog. The captain had gone on his way, but Al, who had tagged along behind the police car, had been permitted to come up to the room which Miss Withers had secured at the desk in exchange for the one she had been occupying. This one was furnished with twin beds, and Lenore’s signature was on the register below.
As the above fragment of dialogue, or rather monologue, indicated, Miss Withers had explained her role in the events that had come last night to their grim climax, and had followed the explanation with a brief lecture on the foolishness of runaway girls who brought distress to their parents, problems to the police, and trouble to themselves. Lenore was properly contrite, but the tilt of her chin, the light in her eyes, and the slight flaring of the nostrils of her delicate nose betrayed the fact that her pride and independence were still not in utter tatters.
“I’m sorry, Miss Withers,” she said. “I’m sorry that I’ve been so much trouble to everyone, especially to Mother and Father and you, but this was something I had to do. I simply had to. It’s all right to sit and talk about things, but it’s no good unless you do something.”
“Nevertheless,” said Miss Withers, “it is possible to exercise good judgment about what you must do and how you should go about doing it. But we mustn’t sit here crying over spilled milk. The trouble you have caused others is no longer important. What’s important is the trouble you’ve caused yourself. You must realize that Captain Kelso, a reasonable man, suspects you, with good reason, of having committed murder.”
“I didn’t kill Captain Westering. What reason did I have?”
“That’s your question. I’d like to hear the answer.”
“I had no reason. Besides, I thought you were convinced that I was the one who was supposed to be poisoned.”
“So I was. And still am. Convincing Captain Kelso of that is another matter. Tell me, what did you think of Captain Westering?”
“He was a very strange man. He had a powerful personality. Sort of ... sort of mesmeric, if you know what I mean. When you were with him you had the oddest feeling that he could do anything, and that anything he did was right. He made you feel ... well, free and uninhibited, almost as if you were high on something.”
“And when you were away from him?”
Lenore Gregory hesitated. The silence stretched and grew taut as she sat looking down at her hands in her lap, an expression of puzzlement in her eyes. “It’s funny,” she said, “but when you were away from him, it wasn’t that way at all. At least, not for me. You had an uneasy feeling about him, and you began to have doubts about yourself and everything else. Like this voyage. It was a kind of fiasco, really.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, nothing seemed to go right. To be honest, I doubt if that old yacht could have made such a long voyage. There was a ship’s carpenter and a qualified marine engineer on board for two days, but they quit in disgust when they saw how things were. I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever get out of port. It was just a hopeless mess. But Captain Westering never seemed to lose faith, and when you were with him you believed yourself that everything would be all right.”
“When the people aboard the yacht were being questioned tonight, or last night, one thing was glaringly apparent. Some such view as you have expressed seemed to be common to all the females. The men, however, did not share it. On the contrary, I detected a strong current of resentment and even hatred. It’s difficult to understand such a sharp cleavage of opinion. Was this man a contemporary Svengali or something?”
“I don’t know what he was. I only know he’s dead, and all I can feel, now that he is, is a kind of relief.”
“That’s something else I noted. In spite of their extravagant opinion of the captain, none of the women, not a single one, including his wife, displayed the slightest sign of grief over his death. It’s odd. Very odd.” Miss Withers paused and took a deep breath, preparing herself to ask a crucial question. “My dear, it is now time to put something to you directly. It’s not, you understand, that I wish to be a prying old maid, but your answer may be critical in the light of events.”
“I know.” Color rising in her face like a shadow of roses, Lenore made an abrupt little gesture and shot a swift glance at Al, sitting patiently by. “You want to know how free and uninhibited the captain and I actually got. If we made love, that is. We didn’t. Maybe sooner or later, but we hadn’t.”
“Did any of the others think you had?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask them.”
“Had any of the others, as you say, made love with the captain?”
“Possibly. Probably. You saw how it was on the yacht. Everyone crowded in together day and night, sleeping all over the place with practically no privacy at all. What’s more, the passengers or crew or whatever you want to call us weren’t exactly bound by the old standards, you see.”
“I see,” said Miss Withers drily, “precisely. I also see that such circumstances, however liberated those involved may think themselves, give rise to a very unsavory emotional climate. Hatreds develop, and murder is committed.”
“If you ask me,” Al Fister interrupted cheerfully, “murder isn’t such a bad solution in the cases of certain people.”
“Nonsense!” Miss Withers pinned him with a severe eye. “Murder is never a good solution in any case. If you have nothing constructive to contribute, Aloysius, please be silent.” She turned back to Lenore. “When you left New York, did anyone know where you were coming?”
“No. I was told about the voyage by a man who worked with me on CAP. The Committee of Artists for Peace. He may have guessed later where I came, but I didn’t tell him before I left.”
“Then it’s a fair assumption that no one back East knew definitely where you were?”
“Not at first. Later. I wrote to my roommate at school and told her. And I wrote to a fellow I went out with sometimes when I was working for CAP. Bud Hoffman, his name is. The Committee took him on after I had been working there for a while. I treated him rather badly, to tell the truth, and I thought maybe I owed him an explanation.”
“Did you receive a reply from either of them?”
“From Addie. My roommate. Adelaide Linton. Not from Bud. My letter came back unclaimed. He’d left CAP and gone away somewhere. I guess he felt like I’d done him a dirty trick, but I can’t help that. Anyhow, he was getting to be a problem. He kept urging me to marry him, and he was so intense about it and everything that it worried me. But never mind. It’s all over now. Addie said my father had been on campus inquiring about me. I was going to write to him just before we sailed. You know. In time to let him and Mother know where I was going, but too late for him to do anything about it. So he wouldn’t have time to stop me or make a big issue or anything like that.”
“Well, it’s apparent now that you are not going to sail, and so I suggest, after you get some sleep, that you pick up the telephone and call him.” Miss Withers turned back to Al, indicating by her expression that she was both surprised and outraged to find him in her room. “Al, why do you continue to sit there like a dummy? Do you expect us to undress for bed with you here to ogle us? Go away.”
As a matter of fact, Al had already been ogling Lenore, to his pleasure and her secret delight, and now he heaved his weary flesh and bones to their feet, grinning at Miss Withers. “I go,” he said, “but, as a certain general said back in the Middle Ages, I shall return. Miss Withers, I’m in love. At last I’ve found someone I have something in common with. We’re both drop-outs.”
Miss Withers snorted, Miss Gregory almost leered, and Mr. Fister ambled out in style.
“There’s an impertinent, lazy boy,” said Miss Withers, “But I believe there is still hope for him.”
She and Lenore showered in inverted order, beauty before age, and tumbled into their respective twins. Miss Withers, it seemed, had hardly hit the pillow and closed her eyes before she was jerked upright, her heart in her mouth, by the ringing of the telephone. She stared through fog at the face of her travel alarm on her bedside table. A few minutes after one o’clock. She picked up the phone and spoke groggily into it.
“So sorry to disturb you, Miss Withers,” said a precise voice from the desk in the lobby, “but there is someone to see you. A Captain Kelso of the police. He’s quite insistent.”
Miss Withers shook the fog out of her head and was wide awake. “Tell Captain Kelso I’ll be down in fifteen minutes if he wishes to wait.”
She rolled out of bed and looked at the opposite twin. Lenore Gregory slept like an angel, undisturbed. If she had a guilty conscience, Miss Withers thought, it certainly didn’t show. The spinster stealthily gathered her clothes, retired to the bathroom, and emerged soon after fully dressed. Lenore slept on. She was smiling about something. Miss Withers crept out and made her way to the elevators.
In the lobby, Captain Kelso rose from a deep chair to meet her. “Good afternoon,” he said. His bald head shone. His face looked rested. He was apparently fully restored.
“Merciful heavens!” Miss Withers said. “Don’t you ever sleep?”
“An old sinner like me? I pay for a dissolute life with chronic insomnia.” He was almost gay in a lumbering sort of way. “I’m prepared to buy you lunch in this fancy gyp joint if you haven’t eaten. On a cop’s pay, that’s real gallantry.”
“As a superannuated gold digger, I accept. And it serves you right.”
They had lunch in the patio restaurant, Captain Kelso staunchly rejecting Miss Withers’ proposal that they go Dutch. Conversation avoided murder, or business related to murder, until they were having coffee.
“How’s your charge?” Captain Kelso asked then.
“Sleeping the sleep of innocence. Don’t fret about her.”
“I’m not fretting. I was on the phone this morning with your pal in New York.”
“With Oscar? How is he? I suppose, as usual, that he was very complimentary to me.”
“Not exactly.” Captain Kelso twisted his lips into a grin that he meant to be amiable. “He said you were a rare old bird, but that I’d better watch out or you’d have me up to my neck in corpses. He sent his regards.”
Miss Withers sniffed contemptuously. “I can imagine. Thank you for an excellent lunch. Did you buy it for me because you can’t resist my company, or do you have an ulterior motive?”
“Definitely ulterior. Since you dropped smack into the middle of this case, I thought you might be interested in going ahead with it.”
“I admit that I feel rather committed. At least so long as a shadow of suspicion hangs over Lenore Gregory. I’m determined to save you from making a serious mistake.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that. What did you think of our session aboard the tub last night?”
“Several things seemed apparent. First, anyone could have poisoned Captain Westering. Second, at least half of the suspects, namely the males, would have enjoyed doing it. Third, the other half, namely the females, were fascinated by him but didn’t feel particularly outraged by his murder. Fourth, the circumstances were ripe for murder. Fifth, as I’ve told you repeatedly, the murder of the captain, in spite of all the excellent reasons for it, was a mistake. Sixth, that was the most unlikely conglomeration of fits and misfits who ever planned to make a so-called pilgrimage together.”
“I’ll buy all your points except the fifth. I’m not convinced of that yet. I’ll add another point. The good captain may have been hot for peace and holy things, but he was no saint when it came to the ladies. To me, that points two ways. To the outraged consort of one of the ladies, or to home and mama. I’ve been thinking about mama, and she appeals to me. I’ve been thinking I’d run across the bridge to Sausalito and have another go at her.”
“I think you are mistaken. I have a feeling that the woman, despite her appearance, is practically sexless. I would give odds that she was completely indifferent to the peccadilloes of the captain. However, I am not an expert in such matters. I am deficient in personal experience. I could be wrong.”
“On the chance that you are, would you like to come along for a second diagnosis?”
Miss Withers folded her napkin neatly and stood up with alacrity. “I’d have made a dreadful scene if you hadn’t asked me,” she said.