Puzzle of the Pepper Tree (32 page)

“B
UT DARLING, NO ONE
knows
that it was you,” Candida Noring was saying. “There are dozens of other girls on the ship, and for all that anybody can prove, it might have been almost any of them. There’s a lot of difference between guessing and knowing.”

Rosemary Fraser lay sullenly in her lower berth, not even making a pretense of reading. “Oh, if people would only mind their own business!” she cried out. “If they—”

“You’re on shipboard,” Candida reminded her. “You should have remembered that before you let some man put you in such a ridiculous position. There’s nothing else for people to do aboard ship but gossip and guess. What they don’t know they imagine. But it’s all a tempest in a teapot. Forget it, and just remember that in three days—less than three days more—we’ll be in London and booking passage around the world!”

“I don’t care what you say, I’m not coming down to dinner,” Rosemary retorted. “Why, I’d die of shame when I came to sit down at the table.”

Candida pulled a tarn over her straight brown hair. “But it’s not just dinner. Tonight’s the captain’s dinner with wine on the table and balloons and horns blowing and gifts…”

“The gift I’d like,” Rosemary told her dully, “would be that Todd person’s head on a silver charger.”

Candida was patient. “But, my dear, you can’t spend the entire voyage in your stateroom. Why, even the funny old-maid school teacher with the horsy face tottered out on deck today! The sea’s calm as a millpond.”

Rosemary still shook her dark curls. Candida’s brown eyes narrowed. “Tell me—is it that you’re afraid to meet the man in the case, whoever he was? Afraid of something he might say?”

“Him?”
Rosemary laughed unpleasantly. “No, heavens, no! He wouldn’t
dare
say anything!”

Candida nodded. “Because of his wife?”

And then Rosemary was furious. “You promised, Candy! You swore you’d stop trying to find out who it was!”

Candida Noring said that she was sorry, and softly closed the stateroom door behind her. She was the last person in the world, she told herself, to throw stones.

She walked slowly aft, toward the social hall. Today was Friday—a week since sailing day. And Rosemary had spent most of it in the cloistered seclusion of their cabin. If only she had cloistered herself a little earlier! Candida thought to herself. When Rosemary failed to show up at the
captain’s dinner,
now that the sea had calmed down to a rippled mirror, the last shred of doubt on the part of the gossiping passengers would be dispelled. That would be an admission of guilt—if it
was
so terribly wrong to have crawled into that warm and blanketed locker with a man that she fancied. Candida wasn’t sure.

For lack of any other objective, Candida Noring wandered into the bar. As she came through the curtain she heard Andy Todd’s high tenor: “You don’t suppose they crawled into the blanket locker to play checkers, do you?”

He was still harping on his own pet scandal, this time for a group consisting of Loulu Hammond, the Honorable Emily, and Leslie Reverson. Peter Noel was rattling things behind the bar.

“I must confess that I hadn’t thought much about it,” Loulu Hammond told him.

But Andy Todd couldn’t be squelched. He leered at her wickedly. “Oh, haven’t you!” said he. Loulu’s teeth clicked against her glass, and the Honorable Emily tried to think of something to say.

“I saw some porpoise this morning—” she began. Then they noticed Candida. Andy Todd muttered something about fresh air and left.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” said Candida Noring. “I just wanted a pack of cigarettes.”

Peter Noel opened the case and offered her a meager choice. “No black ones,” he grinned. Noel was in good humor this afternoon.

“We were thinking of some bridge,” suggested Loulu. “Care to join us, Miss Noring?”

Candida Noring said that she only played poker. Noel cleared his throat and leaned on the counter. He saw a chance to act Munchausen again.

“Poker—that reminds me of the tightest spot I ever was in,” he began. The five drew a little closer, for they were bored with seafaring, and listening was easier than talking.

“It was when I was with the Goldfields outfit in Alaska,” said Peter Noel. “Little poker game one night at the Frenchman’s Place in Nome, about five years ago. I’d spent a season up-creek and had come back to Nome to pay off my crew of dredgers and wait around for the old
Victoria
to steam in and take us back to Seattle and civilization. Even today Nome is a fast town in the fall of the year, and the card games are steep. That night at the Frenchman’s a Russian vodka-runner dealt me a pat hand—an ace-high straight flush in hearts!

“Yes,” said Peter Noel. “There she was, the highest hand in poker. I kept a straight face, and the betting started off brisk. The others dropped out after a while—the Frenchman brought back a plate of ham sandwiches and stood gaping at the money piling up in the middle of the table—and finally I came to the end of my roll. I knew I had the Russky beat, even if he did have quick, clever fingers. He dug up all the money he had, two thousand, and put it into the middle of the table. I had to
see
him, or drop out. In my pocket I had payroll money for my firm, and I risked it. A man’ll do anything when he gets a royal flush.

“Well, he threw down a measly full house. When I showed him my hand there was a long silence. As I raked in the money, another Russky behind the dealer yelled: ‘It’s an illegal hand! Christmas has got six cards in his hand.’ (They called me Christmas because of my name bein’ Noel.) I was waiting for that.

“‘Six cards my eye,’ I said. And I showed ’em the cards. Then they accused me of pocketing one. Get the idea? I’d been dealt two cards stuck together, so I’d bet big and then lose everything according to the rules because of the extra card. Well, the Frenchman is a straight guy. He helped ’em search under the table and through my pockets and everywhere else. But they couldn’t find the sixth card the Russky card-sharp had dealt me. Finally they had to give up, and I took the dough, just as I finished my ham sandwich.”

Peter Noel smiled reminiscently. “That was my narrowest escape,” he said.

“But what
happened
to the other card?” Leslie Reverson insisted.

“I ate it in the ham sandwich,” Peter Noel told them. Loulu Hammond let go her breath in a long sigh, and forgot to feel of the smooth place on her finger where for nearly ten years she had worn a rather fine diamond—until today.

“We ought to have a drink on that one,” suggested the Honorable Emily. She had a dislike of signing bills. “Leslie, run and get my handbag off the berth in my room. Careful, now, and don’t let Tobermory slip out of the door.”

Young Reverson was back in a moment, bearing the handbag. With him was Tom Hammond.

“Any of you people care to get in on the pool this afternoon?” Hammond wanted to know.

The Honorable Emily shook her head, and Candida Noring said, “I’ve never guessed the ship’s run yet within fifty miles.”

“This isn’t the ship’s run,” Hammond told her. “The Major won that hours ago. This is a private pool that Andy Todd is doing. The stewards, the sailors, everybody is in it. You see, there’s a land bird of some kind fluttering around the deck, and the ship’s cat is stalking it. Person who guesses the time within fifteen minutes of the kill gets the pool.”

Loulu Hammond stood up and faced her husband. “Are you in on this?”

“Yes, for a dollar. Why not?”

“I rather think I hate you,” she told him. She started out of the smoking room, but the Honorable Emily was before her.

They came out to the rail and forced their way through a small crowd of passengers who were staring down at the well deck, where a lean black tomcat was pretending not to notice a plump, bewildered bird which fluttered aimlessly above his head. Again and again it came to rest on a winch bar or a bit of rigging, and ever and again the black torn sidled closer.

“Rotters!” The Honorable Emily gave tongue. “Catch that bird, somebody! Oh, cruel, cruel!” She was startled entirely out of her usual phlegm. “Poor little sea gull!”

Loulu Hammond stared at the fluttering creature. “Why—why, it’s a robin!” she cried, much as she might have said, “It’s Uncle John!”

Dr. Waite was at the rail, and he turned toward the women. “Not much use to try and save it,” he said. “Happens every trip. Lots of land birds are driven out to sea by storms, and they fly until they’re exhausted or they see a ship. They come and roost around the deck until the tomcat gets ’em, as he always does. We used to take ’em in sometimes and try to save ’em, but they always die. They’re too tired to care about living when they once get on the ship.”

“Well, I’m going to save this one!” announced the Honorable Emily. Amid the protests of the bettors and the high tenor objections of Andy Todd, she set off down the steep iron ladder intent upon upsetting the law of the survival of the fittest. Loulu Hammond started to go with her and then thought better of it.

For half an hour the intrepid lady pursued the tired robin without once getting within reach. The black tomcat withdrew and watched from a discreet distance.

Finally the Honorable Emily saw the robin flutter forward into the foremast rigging and had to give it up. Darkness was approaching—and, anyhow, the “pool” had been effectively stopped.

Andy Todd had to return their dollars to the twenty or so men who had signed up for it. “Damn the S.P.C.A., anyhow,” said Andy Todd.

Tom Hammond took his refunded dollar and went forward to dress for dinner. He was forced to give it up to his scapegrace son in order to have peace in which to don his dinner clothes. Tonight, for the first time in their married life, Loulu had not put the studs in his shirt.

She came into the stateroom, already dressed in a soft black velvet gown that made her look, Tom thought, like a Medici virgin. If there were any such. The silence which had marked most of their moments alone together during the past five days still stood, like a pane of plate glass, between them.

Tom threw away a collar and whirled on her. “Loulu!” he said.

“Yes?”

“Loulu, I don’t know what’s got into you.”

“Don’t you?” asked Loulu Hammond. She chose a string of Técla pearls.

“Loulu, if you think that I and that round-heeled Fraser girl—I mean, if you want to know where I was the night that you all played peekaboo on deck, why don’t you ask me?”

“I’m not interested,” she said softly.

“Well,” he plunged on, “I was shooting dice in the doctor’s office, with Waite and the Purser and the mate!”

“I saw Gerald headed for the bar with a dollar bill a moment ago,” she interrupted. “Perhaps I’d better go and prevent him from killing himself on candy.” She closed the stateroom door behind her, leaving her young husband to mangle his collar in sulphurous silence.

In the next stateroom Miss Hildegarde Withers was sadly surveying the wrinkles in her one evening gown of plum-colored crêpe de Chine. Someone beat a furious tattoo on her door, and the school teacher, still weak from her days in the grip of the sea, started violently.

“Wha-what is it?”

The door opened, and the Honorable Emily poked her head in. Her face was a mask of worry.

“Have you seen him?” she demanded. “I’ve looked everywhere. I thought he might have slipped through your door and gone to sleep under the berth…”

The two women had a nodding acquaintance due to the fact that their staterooms opened off the same short corridor. Miss Withers regained her composure. She had not seen much of her fellow passengers, but she was quick to understand.

“Why,” she inquired, “do you imagine that your nephew would slip through my door and go to sleep under my berth?”

“Not my nephew!” said the Honorable Emily impatiently. “Tobermory, my Persian cat. Is he here?”

Both women looked under the berth. There was no Tobermory. “When I came back to my stateroom just now I found the door ajar and Toby gone,” went on the worried woman. “There are many nephews, but only one Tobermory. He’s traveled all the way to the World’s Fair with me, and now that we’re almost back home…” She bustled out of the place, deaf to Miss Withers’ sympathy.

The school teacher shook her head and resumed dressing. Except for her short stay on deck in the noon sunshine today, this evening was her first appearance on board. She looked forward to the dinner, having had nothing but sketchy and unappreciated lunches on the voyage, which resulted usually in increased qualms and in crumbs on her bedclothes. But she wished it were not a gala dinner. Such things bored Hildegarde Withers, bored her to tears.

However, no one was to be bored at the captain’s dinner that Friday night. The passengers entered the dining saloon to a welcoming din which rose from the table next the wall where the unlucky Mrs. Snoaks attempted to cope with the younger generation. Gerald Hammond, his fattish face alight with joy, blew interminably upon a particularly horrible tin horn, while with one hand he spun a discordant clacker, and with the other wielded a pin against the balloons in the hands of his milder companions. Yet there was nothing importunate about the demon Gerald. He let one chubby girl of four blow her balloon until it reached the proportions of a watermelon before he stabbed it and sent her into convulsions of tears.

At the doctor’s table the group gathered slowly. Dr. Waite, in his best dress uniform, was the first, as always. The Honorable Emily, in a ludicrous pink taffeta gown, came next, adjusting her eyeglass and loudly bewailing the passing of Tobermory.

“He’ll turn up!” the doctor assured her.

But the Honorable Emily was not so sure. “Toby has been trying to get off the ship ever since we sailed,” she announced. “If I were superstitious, as of course I’m not, though I did have a Scotch grandmother…”

Loulu Hammond, still the Medici virgin, sank into the chair which was held for her by two eager table stewards. She surveyed the brilliant table, laden with flowers, confetti, and favors. “How
nice,”
she remarked.

A moment later—hardly long enough to show that they had not come down together—Tom Hammond arrived, in splendid dinner clothes but with a tie which drooped sadly. He glared at the heap of balloons which lay in front of his plate.