Chapter 23

The Other Corpse

At 11:30 we had been playing poker exactly an hour, and I was a few dollars ahead, to my surprise. I had not been playing to win. Mesh-Gloves said, “We should have champagne.”

He did not ask if anyone wanted it or preferred something else. He summoned the steward, ordered two bottles of ’59 and seven glasses.

Cotton-Hair Pennypacker picked up his hand, looked at it, put it down, and said, “Well, in spite of everything, and that includes the weather, this has been a pleasant voyage.”

“I think it has been dull,” said Mesh-Gloves.

“Even with that girlfriend of yours?” said Steak-Lover. He didn’t quite smack his lips. “She’s cute.”

“You like her?” Mesh-Gloves asked.

“She’s a beautiful girl,” said Steak-Lover fervently.

“She bores me. Would you like her tonight? I will send her to you.”

There was a little silence after that.

Tom said, “Why don’t you bet her in place of twenty blue chips?” and the tension was broken.

But only momentarily, as far as I was concerned. What was going to happen in the next ten minutes was chancy, and could fail horribly. Meanwhile, we bet our hands, and I won a small pot with a pair of kings.

The first officer came into the smoking room, looked around anxiously, and then strolled carelessly toward our table. He leaned over my shoulder and whispered.

“The money was delivered. The man’s gloves, they shone. And there were little spots, also red. Of blood, the doctor thinks.”

“Merci,” I said aloud. “I will see the purser the first thing in the morning.”

He moved away from our table, but not very far, and pretended to watch the play at another table which was embroiled in chemin de fer.

Giorgione said, “Open for a dollar.”

Everybody met Giorgione’s opening bet. While I waited to draw to a four-card spade flush, I said, “The thing that has disturbed me on this trip is the disappearance of Miss Moore.”

“I think it has disturbed everybody,” said Cotton-Hair. “Very, very much. Such a lovely girl.”

I looked around the table. Steak-Lover, swaying slightly (he must have been on his fifth whiskey), had been joined in his position as official kibitzer by the tall Indian, who was overseeing every hand that he could inspect.

“I got to know her a bit,” I said. “So I feel more than a little sorry for her.”

“You think she actually went over the side?” asked Widow’s-Peak. “I fold.”

I folded also. “I don’t think there’s any doubt, since the ship has been thoroughly searched twice. But more than that, she had considerable reason for killing herself. She was a very haunted person.”

“Haunted?” That was Giorgione.

Tom laid down three sevens, and scooped up a fair pot.

“Her mother had told her that she would drown if she ever tried to cross the ocean,” I said, “and Merrilee believed that her mother had extrasensory perception.”

Giorgione was dealing. “Stud, nothing wild.”

I picked up my hand, saw a king, and said, “Open for a dollar.”

Steak-Lover was leaning over my chair. “You must be nutty,” he said.

I had never seen Cotton-Hair angry before. “If you’re going to watch the game, Mr. Johnson,” he snapped, “you’ll have to eliminate all comment.”

We played the hand out, and I drew nothing. Widow’s-Peak won with a pair of tens. Then I caught Tom’s eye, flexed my shoulders, and rubbed my left eye. That was our signal.

Tom was dealer. As he scooped up the cards, he dropped one, and had to bend down under the table to pick it up; and when he came up again I knew the decks had been switched.

“Five-card draw, deuces wild,” he said, and distributed the cards. It was a little hard not to grin at the hand he dealt me. It was a full house, sevens on treys. Giorgione opened, and I wondered what Tom had given him. Everybody stayed except Widow’s-Peak. Everyone took three cards except myself and Cotton-Hair, who took only one, as I knew he would. Giorgione checked, and Cotton-Hair bet five dollars. Mesh-Gloves bumped him five, and so did I. Tom and Giorgione both went along and Cotton-Hair said, “Up twenty.” Mesh-Gloves folded, and I said, “Up another twenty.” Tom looked unhappy but threw in eight blue chips and said, “I’m game—for the time being.”

Cotton-Hair looked at me and said, “I’ll see you, but that’s all.”

I laid down my hand. “Full house.”

“Wins,” said Cotton-Hair. “But just look at this, gentlemen. I almost made history.”

He laid down his hand, which consisted, as I knew it would, of a four-card royal flush in hearts, with only the queen of clubs replacing the queen of hearts. Mesh-Gloves made a whistling sound of sympathy. “And it’s really only a straight,” he said.

“Right, but how close,” said Cotton-Hair. “I’m sure I’ll never come that close again in my lifetime!”

I looked at Tom. “Where is the queen of hearts?” I asked.

“That’s a good question,” said Tom. “Where is she?” He looked through the remainder of the deck and said, “She’s not here.”

“Where’s the queen of hearts?” I asked again. “Who has her?”

No one replied, but Cotton-Hair began sorting through the discards. There was no queen of hearts.

“What happened to the queen of hearts?” Giorgione demanded.

“What the hell kind of a deck is that?” said Steak-Lover. “There’s no queen of hearts?”

I said, “It’s almost symbolic, isn’t it? The queen of hearts is missing, and the queen of a great many movie-goers’ hearts is also missing.”

The table became quiet.

I saw Betsy’s nose pressed white against the window across the room. I got up, stretched, and rubbed my left eye. Then I talked fast.

“Wasn’t it odd that Mr. Pennypacker should come so close to a royal flush by not drawing the queen of hearts, when the queen of hearts is missing from the deck, and also a girl who is the queen of hearts in another way also has vanished from the deck of the ship? What I really mean is—” I was rattling on, saying anything to hold their attention for ten seconds.

Where was she? Tom looked nervous. I suppose that I did, too. Betsy was gone from the window.

I had to keep the talk going. “Another thing that is a puzzle. That hand was a real puzzle.”

“It was a kind of Rorschach test,” said Cotton-Hair. “I had a four-card royal flush from the start, and needed the queen of hearts. Instead, I drew the queen of clubs.”

“Rorschach test is right,” I said. “How long have you been teaching psychology, anyway?”

“I got my doctorate at thirty-one,” he said. “Thirty-three years ago last June.”

Then he looked at me, and saw I was looking at him. Something happened inside of him.

“But what the hell became of the queen of hearts?” Steak-Lover demanded.

By then it did not matter.

Merrilee had come through the far door, and was walking to our table. As people caught sight of her, they stared, and I still have the memory of some woman uttering a shrill scream. I can’t blame her.

I had told Merrilee merely to wet her hair and come to our table. The idea had been that she would seem to be a visitation from a watery grave. But I hadn’t taken sufficiently into account that she was an actress.

Now she was playing it to the hilt. Her evening dress was dripping wet. Her face and bare arms were festooned with green seaweed. She walked toward us without seeing anything, like an eyeless ghost. Her face was paper-white.

It was so startling that for a second I forgot the lines I had assigned us. Then I leaped to my feet, and said, “Holy Christ, she’s come back from the dead.”

Tom cried out, “It’s her ghost!”

She came slowly to the poker table, looking at everyone around it. She said nothing. I had time for only a glimpse of Cotton-Hair Pennypacker’s face, but it was enough. It said everything—except one thing.

He leaped to his feet, hissed words that sounded like, “This is insane!” and reached inside his jacket. He pulled out a thin, blue-steel automatic. He pointed it first at Merrilee and then fanned it around the table.

No one moved. The gun looked efficient.

“You can take us with you, if you want to,” I said. “But you can’t escape. You can’t.”

We stared at each other.

“You won’t take all of us,” said Tom. “That gun doesn’t hold that many bullets.”

“And besides,” I said, “the safety catch is on.”

Pennypacker looked down at the gun, and I cannot tell you whether the ship lurched first, or whether I upset the table against him first and then was helped by the rolling sea. But the single gunshot went into the ceiling (I had not seen any safety catch), and he fell over on his back with the heavy table on top of him, and I grabbed the pistol while Tom grabbed his throat.

“There’s the murderer,” I told the first officer. “You’d better search him. He may have something else on him besides that gun.”

Everyone in the room was on his feet, except Pennypacker. Merrilee was looking dazed. Betsy and Twit-Twit were beside her. The first officer and two solemn stewards got Pennypacker up and led him out. He was laughing to himself, his white head rolling.

I breathed deeply.

“For the love of God, take that make-up off,” I told Merrilee. “You even scared me—how did you get the seaweed?”

“That’s watercress,” said Betsy. “From the kitchen.”

“That was my idea,” said Twit-Twit. “Not bad, eh?”

“And the wet dress?”

Merrilee smiled a chalk-faced smile. “After all, I spent two years at the Actors Studio.”