Chapter 17

The Beginning

I walked down a deck or two, the taste of her lipstick still on my mouth, the look of her body still in my eyes, the curve of her back still on the tips of my fingers.

The smoking room was gloomy, despite all the subdued lighting they could turn on. It took a moment to make sure Tom was not here. Cotton-Hair Pennypacker, was though. He and his wife were playing bridge with two men and, when I saw who they were, I did a fast double-take. One man was Mesh-Gloves (and he still wore his gloves playing cards). The other was Dr. Cyclops. Even as I looked, Mrs. Pennypacker stood up and waved a protesting hand.

“No, no more,” she said. “I must bathe and rest. Last night was strenuous you know, for an old lady.”

Cotton-Hair Pennypacker caught sight of me. “How about it?” he called. “We’re losing a player here. Won’t you fill in for just one last rubber?”

I hadn’t played bridge for five years. But this was one game I wanted to get into. Mrs. Pennypacker smiled at me, Mesh-Gloves and Cyclops each bowed to her stiffly and rather grumpily, making me wonder if she had won all the money, and Pennypacker performed introductions as she limped away. What had become of the Steak-Lovers?

“Mr.—ah, Deacon, right? It’s your pal who is Dolan, isn’t it? Yes. This is Mr. Bu, Mr. Deacon.” Mr. Bu was Mesh-Gloves, and what nationality did that make him? He bowed, and did not shake hands. Maybe the gloves meant he had a painful skin disease.

“And Mr. Giorgione.”

I felt like saying, “I’ve admired your paintings.” Instead I shook hands and said I was glad to meet him, which was about half-true. He had an iron handshake that almost cracked my knuckles, but his hand was slimy-cold. Cyclops, or rather Mr. Giorgione now, said he was charmed. Maybe he was. One thing he surely wasn’t, and that was Italian, despite his name.

“We have been playing for a cent a point,” said Pennypacker. I was his partner now. He gathered in the cards and shuffled them with an easy, sure-fingered professionalism that made me remember Las Vegas. I began to wonder what I had let myself in for. Newt had said I would have an expense account. I suspected I’d need it.

As I said, I hadn’t played bridge in some time, and I never was much competition for Charles Goren.

“For the last rubber,” said Mr. Bu, and he looked down at his little mesh-gloved fingers clasped before him, “couldn’t we go to five cents and make it a little more exciting?”

The accent was faintly oriental or Near Eastern.

Giorgione said nothing. His good eye was on Pennypacker’s hands, shuffling the deck. The bad one was off in space.

“Choose?” said Pennypacker, fanning the deck out face down across the middle of the table. Every card overlapped the next by a mathematically perfect quarter of an inch.

I shrugged. “A nickel is fine.”

“A nickel it is,” Pennypacker said, and we picked cards. I drew the five of diamonds—a portent. I hoped Newt’s bank had lots of money.

Bu won the deal with the queen of clubs, gathered in the cards, and presented them to me to cut. Then he passed them around with swift grace, the gloves obviously troubling him not at all.

I saw a waiter and waved. “I’d like a drink,” I told the others. “Perhaps you’ll have one with me.”

“A Coke would be nice,” said Pennypacker.

Giorgione merely nodded no, and frowned at his cards. I looked at Bu.

“No, thank you,” he said. “I usually have sexual intercourse around six, and I never like to drink just before that.”

I looked at him, then around at the others. No one seemed to have heard him or, if they had, paid him any particular attention. Then Pennypacker looked up at me quickly from his hand, grinned, and winked. Live and learn.

The rubber went fast—and badly for us. But halfway through I made a little progress.

* * * *

It came as it was my deal. I shuffled slowly and pretended to make conversation.

“That was quite a party last night. Or were you there?” I asked the question generally, and pushed the cards to Giorgione for cutting. “I know you were,” I told Bu.

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t close the place up like we did. You were wise.”

“We left quite early.”

“That’s the trouble with parties like that,” said Pennypacker. “You want to stay on and on. Mama and I just looked in about ten o’clock, danced a few minutes, and then went below and read. We’re that age, I guess.”

I threw the cards around. “And you, Signor Giorgione? Dealer passes.”

So far he had hardly opened his mouth. When he had his hand sorted, he studied it a moment. “One heart,” he said and added absently, “I was not there.”

“Another reader of books, no doubt,” said Pennypacker. “Two diamonds, partner.”

“And what were you reading?” I asked Giorgione, knowing the question would bother him.

“Two spades,” said Bu.

“I wasn’t reading,” said Giorgione.

I had to look at my hand. I’d forgotten most of the rules for counting tricks. And I had no hand anyway. To hell with it—I wasn’t here to win nickels. Just don’t trump any of your partner’s aces, Deacon.

“Three diamonds.”

Giorgione said “Three hearts.” Then he unexpectedly became voluble. “After dinner I went out on deck. It was beautiful—so dark and stormy. I ran into another passenger, an Indian, Mr. Vishnolar. We walked and talked. We have common interests. Some of the things he said excited me. And so, when I went below, I could not sleep. Even from the distance I could hear the orchestra playing for the party. Especially when they played the Dixieland music. I said my prayers twice, but for a long time I could not sleep. I think they should not have the parties so late.”

His good eye glared indignantly, first at me and then at Bu.

“Five diamonds,” said Pennypacker.

I wasn’t paying much attention to him. How lucky can you get, I wondered. Two hours before, Tom and I had divided up some of the suspects for an alibi check, and now I had a pretty good idea where three of them were at the time of the maid’s murder, or at least where they said they were, and Cotton-Hair Pennypacker to boot. If Tom had nailed down the other Pennypacker’s alibi, as he surely must have, we were making progress.

Fortuitous progress.

Too fortuitous? Was it an accident that Giorgione and Vishnolar, the Indian, could alibi each other? Or that Bu sat near me for a time during the gala?

Everyone was looking at me. “I passed,” said Bu impatiently.

What was the bid? I said, “Oh, yes,” and pretended to study my cards. Pennypacker was smiling at me with bright-eyed encouragement. I had two diamonds in my hand, the higher being the five. I had the king of spades and the ten of hearts. Those were my high cards.

“Six diamonds,” I said.

“Double,” said Giorgione.

We went down four, doubled and vulnerable.

While Giorgione dealt, Pennypacker said philosophically, “Well, bridge is the great leveler, no matter who you are or what you do.” He seemed not at all mad that I’d lost us fifty-five dollars each. “What else do you do, Signor Giorgione, aside from playing bridge very well?”

“I travel,” said Giorgione.

Pennypacker looked at me and opened the bidding. “I pass.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “Giving up?”

He laughed back. “No. It was an honest appraisal of this hand.”

“Never play cards with a magazine writer,” I said. “We’re totally ignorant of everything. Except what we’re working on at the moment.”

“Someone said you were with a magazine,” he said.

I told him which one.

“Two spades,” said Bu.

“You must travel a lot on stories,” said Pennypacker.

“Yes. Pass. But right now it’s for pleasure. Thank heaven.”

“I know how you feel.”

“Three hearts,” said Giorgione.

“And you?” I said. “I gather you teach economics or business administration or something.”

“Yes. Not now, though. I pass. On sabbatical. From Grinnell College. As you say, thank heaven.”

“Amen.”

“Five spades,” said Bu, and Giorgione gave him the most frightful look I have ever seen at a bridge table.

Bu’s hand played itself. He had everything, and made a grand slam in spades. It was so automatic that Pennypacker and I talked during the play.

“Maybe you can explain something to me,” I said, just to keep the conversation going because I hoped to get to Bu. “Years ago I shared an apartment with another guy who was a broker. He claimed the best way to make money in the market was to deal in puts and calls and he even made it clear to me what those were. And he said the really great sure way to make money in the market was to straddle.”

Pennypacker chuckled. “Puts and calls can save you a lot of grief,” he said. “And make you a fair profit too, whichever way you go.”

“But what’s a straddle?”

“A straddle—” he glanced at his cards, then played one “—a straddle consists of buying two stocks of approximately the same value. It is based on certain technical evaluations of the stocks. They are never in the same category—two motors or two oils or anything like that.”

“And then?”

“And then you play the rise or fall of one against the rise and fall of the other.”

“I see. Maybe. Sounds intricate.”

“It is.”

“Slam in spades,” said Bu.

Another hand ended the rubber. Pennypacker figured the winnings and losings. It turned out I had lost $105 of Newt Harlow’s money.

Ho-hum.

With his winnings from the previous rubbers, Giorgione had won just under $210. “You play a beautiful game, sir,” said Pennypacker, and I knew he meant it.

“I am half-asleep,” said Giorgione. “Last night the party kept me awake. The night before I was awakened by some drunken lout arguing with his wife in a cabin nearby. Then they went out. I go back to sleep. They come back, and he is loudly complaining about the ship and its food and bumped into my door as he passed.”

“You must be on the boat deck,” I said.

“The boat deck,” said Giorgione.

“I heard them roll in, too.”

He and Pennypacker shook hands. Then he and I did. Then Pennypacker and I did. It was as formal as the preliminaries to a duel. Mesh-Gloves—Mr. Bu, I should call him now—did not. He bowed formally to all of us and left.

Anxious to get to his girlfriend, I thought. I went topside to the suite.

* * * *

A note on the table in Twit-Twit’s handwriting said all three of them were at the movie. A snore from a bedroom told me Tom was making up for last night. I dropped down on my bed and thought that tonight Merrilee would be sleeping in it, and that made it difficult to even doze off.

But I did. Some time later, something was touching my hand. I awoke slowly, in darkness. My arm hung over the side of the bed, and something cold and wet was moving against my lingers. I thought of Giorgione’s handshake.

It stopped and, at the same moment, it hit my chest with all four feet.

Stowaway, somewhere on the floor, had scented the food smells on my hand, started to lick it, and then leaped up and landed on my chest. Now she began walking up and down on me, like Captain Bligh striding the bridge, occasionally switching her tail in my face, and sometimes breathing sardine fumes at me.

“Lie down,” I said. When I stroked her, she began to purr. She only purred when somebody stroked her. We both went to sleep.

The phone’s jangle made both the cat and me jump; I found the phone in darkness.

A woman’s voice said, “M’sieu Day-ah-cawn?” and I recognized the French pronunciation of my name.

“Oui.”

“You should come, please, to le chambre de Mademoiselle Moore. Something wrong.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Please come.”

“Who is this?”

“The maid, m’sieu. After last night, the captain issue orders we are to pay special attention with Mademoiselle Moore. I come to check phone ringing. And she is not here. But I see something. There is something—”

“Something what?”

“There is a knock now at the door—it is the officer, I think. Please come, m’sieu. Mademoiselle told me you were the first to call if she had the trouble.”

“She’s not in the bathtub?”

“No, m’sieu.”

When I got to Merrilee’s cabin, the first officer was also there. He looked worried.

“What’s the problem?”

“The maid heard the phone ringing in here,” he said. “Repeatedly. So she came in, after knocking several times.”

“All right. But what’s the trouble?”

“The trouble is Mademoiselle Moore is missing. The phone was the hairdresser. She had an appointment and did not arrive. She is not here, either. I ordered a check of the public rooms. She was paged. She is nowhere.”

“She was going to the movie.”

“She is definitely not in the movie.”

“She is not in the bathroom?”

“No.”

“How about the bedroom?”

“Marie knocked, then looked in.”

I didn’t knock, or look in. I opened the door and walked in. There was no one on the bed or in the room. It was very dark; the curtains had been drawn. But that is not what I first became aware of. There was a dressing table with a big mirror over it, partly behind the door. Just in front of the mirror, a candle was burning. Behind the candle on the mirror was Merrilee’s face.

But it wasn’t her face. It had been once. Now it was scarred and slashed, the sunken, dark-ringed eyes weirdly askew, the golden neck twisted and mutilated.

Then I recognized what I was looking at—a life-sized photograph of her face that had been cut out, retouched, and pasted on the mirror in horrid, sadistic caricature. In the candle’s flickering, it was the first thing she would see when she walked into the room and closed the door. She would think she was seeing herself.

The first officer had not followed me into the bedroom. He said from the parlor, “I want to show you what alarmed the maid.”

I went back out, closing the door behind me.

He was pointing to a place on the floor under a window. There was a little dark clot on the carpet. I leaned over it. It was blood. It was fresh.

I have never been so frightened.

What in God’s name had they done?

Had they killed her? I couldn’t believe it. But what was a girl’s life against twenty-five or fifty million dollars, and a psychopath’s enormous, revengeful bitterness?

“And if this is not enough,” said the first officer, “the m’sieu Jones—her publicity man, yes?—he also ’as not been seen. His bed was not slept in. His steward reported it. And a passenger reported that a meat slicer—”

“Never mind the meat slicer. She is the important thing to find.”

“But the meat slicer ’as been found, m’sieu. Outside a passenger’s door. A M’sieu Pennypackair. He reported it to us. With a piece of rope—all sticky with green paint—someone left in his room. M’sieu Pennypackair was most indignant.”

“You’d better search the ship. Right away.” I think my voice sounded odd. “Completely. If she is not on it—I don’t know where we go from there.”

I thought of something else. They obviously did not know what was in the bedroom; the maid had only glanced in and not looked behind the door. It was better if they did not know. And Merrilee surely must not see it.

“I’ll start the search right now,” I said. “I didn’t look in her closet.”

I went back into the bedroom, snuffed out the candle, and stripped the photo from the mirror, trying not to handle it any more than necessary for the sake of fingerprints. The rubber cement that held it was still fresh-smelling. I folded it and put it in my pocket. Then I looked in the closet, saw only clothes, came out, and said, “Nothing doing.”

The maid looked terrified.

The first officer and I stepped out into the corridor.

“You are right,” he said. “We must search every part of the ship. At once.”

“At once.”

The maid came out into the corridor. “I called the coiffeur again,” she said. “She has non arrive.”

“Let’s get going,” I told the officer. “What can I do to help?”

“Nothing, m’sieu. The search is for the crew. I will call you within thirty minutes in your cabin.”

He looked frightened. I suppose I did, too. Things were coming to a climax, and I had a feeling I wouldn’t like the climax.

In the suite, I heard Tom’s snores and saw our whiskey bottle. But I didn’t want a drink. I didn’t want anything except the knowledge that Merrilee was somewhere aboard and somehow okay.

I began pacing the floor.