Puzzle of the Silver Persian (7 page)

No one went to bed on that Sunday evening, for the little
American Diplomat
was slipping in the fog past clusters of shore lights to port, past the white chalk cliffs of Dover, and then, miraculously, pushing on up a narrowing river that smelled as Miss Withers had always known the Thames would smell. The lights to port and starboard closed in steadily, and then, shortly before midnight, the throb of the engines stopped. The anchor went down with a roar of chain, and through portholes misted with rain Miss Withers could see a mammoth electric sign announcing the virtues of “OXO.”

“Passengers in the social hall, please!” a steward was shouting. His gong rang endlessly up and down the corridors. Miss Withers opened her porthole and saw that a slim black launch, with one staring eye, was coming down the river from where the glow of the city shone brightest. She tidied her hair and joined the excited, nervous gathering.

Everyone wanted to know if there was a chance of getting ashore tonight, and everyone was assured several times over that the British Customs close at 6
P.M.
“Not until morning,” the purser was saying, in his thin and worried voice.

“Then what are we here for?” the Honorable Emily demanded. Nobody told her, but through the half-open door that led to the deck Miss Withers heard the muffled beating of a powerful motor. There were voices on the deck, the motor rose to a roar and died away, and then Captain Everett entered the social hall. He seemed to have regained the weight he had lost the night that Rosemary Fraser disappeared. Behind him was Jenkins, the first officer, and last of all came a tall, bulky man wearing a bowler hat and a dingy yellow trench-coat.

In spite of his bland, innocent face, in spite of his slick blond hair and the brown spats he affected, Miss Hildegarde Withers was instantly aware of the fact that she was staring at an operative of the C.I.D. She knew it by the pale hazel eyes that looked once—and saw everything. She knew it by the neatly blacked shoes, bump-toed as are the shoes of any man who has ever walked a beat, in any city of the world.

The three men disappeared through the curtain of the smoking room—the bar had been locked since the ship entered British waters—and there was a long silence. “I’m a British subject,” the Honorable Emily once began, and failed to finish her protest. The passengers were restless, but nobody felt like talking. Even the terrible Gerald was silent, staring intently at his unsmiling parents. Andy Todd pretended to read, and smoked cigarettes chain fashion.

At last the curtains opened, and Captain Everett showed his face. He beckoned to Peter Noel, who stood near by in his best uniform, and whispered something to him.

Noel nodded. “Miss Hildegarde Withers,” he called. He held open the curtain, and Miss Withers entered to see the two ship’s officers on the settee, and the Yard man facing her across a bridge table. She was not asked to sit down.

“This is Chief Inspector Cannon of New Scotland Yard,” said Captain Everett gently. “He’d like to ask you a few questions…”

Miss Withers started to say something, but the Yard man leaned forward. “You were the last person to see Rosemary Fraser?” he asked. He began writing in his notebook before she had worded her answer. Whatever ideas the good lady might have held regarding the telling of her story in her own way were instantly dispelled. She answered question after question, and in less than five minutes had told everything that she knew and nothing that she suspected about the passing of Rosemary Fraser. “Thank you,” said Cannon, without obvious interest. She went back into the social hall.

“Miss Candida Noring,” announced Peter Noel, after another prompting from Captain Everett.

Candida rose, ground out her cigarette, and walked to the curtains like Joan of Arc to the pyre. Her hands were buried in the deep pockets of a camel’s-hair coat, and her knees did not seem as steady as usual. When Noel held the curtain aside for her, she swayed suddenly against him, and he smiled reassuringly. The smile was wiped from his face as if with a sponge.

Miss Withers saw him look quickly toward the three exits of the room. In each of them a ship’s officer was standing. Noel frowned thoughtfully as he took up his former position a short distance from the curtains of the smoking room. She wondered if the fixed terror of Candida’s face had spoiled his innocent pleasure in holding the office of master of ceremonies. His hand went to his coat pocket and was suddenly withdrawn. He straightened his necktie and waited…

They all waited, waited interminably. Loulu Hammond looked at her husband, and when she caught his eyes looked suddenly away. The minutes dragged on forever—and then the curtains parted and Candida came forth. Every eye was upon her, searching for signs of hysteria, but Candida Noring was smiling. In her fingers a dark cigarette glowed.

Another pause ensued, and then Captain Everett showed himself again. He beckoned to Peter Noel, but this time he did not speak a name. And suddenly, Noel knew!

He drew a long, deep breath and straightened his shoulders. Then he went through the curtain. The thick draperies closed behind him, while little surprised murmurs rose among the passengers. Miss Withers strolled part way across the room, but she could hear nothing.

Inside the smoking room Chief Inspector Cannon was standing quietly, his notebook put away. The captain and the first officer were also standing.

“Well?” said Noel.

The Yard man spoke in a rapid singsong. “Peter Noel, in the light of information which has been laid before me, it is my duty to arrest you for the murder of Rosemary Fraser, and it is my further duty to warn you that if found guilty of this charge you may be sentenced to death.”

Noel’s handsome face was a mask of blank surprise. His mouth opened foolishly and closed again. But his brain was working swiftly.

“Do you wish to make a statement? It is my duty to warn you that you do not need to make a statement, and that if you do it may be used against you.”

Peter Noel laughed suddenly, the fear soaking out of his heart. His hand was in the pocket of his blue uniform jacket, and as his laughter changed to a fit of coughing, he covered his mouth.

“None o’ that!” cried Cannon, stumbling against the table. His methodical mind framed an entry for his notebook. “Prisoner upon arrest attempted to dispose of evidence by swallowing.”

Noel was smiling. He held out his hands for nonexistent handcuffs.

“I have nothing to say except that this is a lot of bloody nonsense,” he told them quickly. “Take me on shore if you’ve got to, but somebody has filled you full of poppycock. If Rosemary Fraser was murdered, this is the first I knew of it…”

Chief Inspector Cannon had a sudden misgiving. This confident, calm voice was not that of a guilty man, not even that of a worried man. “I shall have a jolly good chance of making a charge of false arrest,” went on Noel.

“Come along, then,” he was told. The Law laid its hands upon him, and he was very briskly searched. Captain Everett fidgeted, and Jenkins protested in a loud whisper: “I tell you he was shooting dice with the doctor!”

Noel was coughing again, more realistically this time. He held back against the large brown hands of the detective. “Wait a minute,” cried Peter Noel. “Wait a minute…”

“None of tha’ tricks, now!” boomed Cannon. He realized that he was holding the prisoner’s entire weight. In his excitement the Yard man reverted to his native Lancashire. “None of tha’ tricks, lad!”

But this trick of Peter Noel’s was beyond the power of Scotland Yard. He clutched at the curtain, and staggered forward.

Women screamed in the room outside as a dead man, with his face twisted in an expression of complete and horrified surprise, plunged headlong among them.

B
LACK THAMES WATER LAPPED
softly against the stout iron sides of the
American Diplomat,
its ripples now faintly touched with dawning light from the east. In the ship’s tiny smoking room Chief Inspector Cannon fluttered the closely scrawled pages of his notebook and sighed.

Facing him stood a smaller, grayer man, who chewed savagely upon a walrus-like mustache. Superintendent Harrington was in no pleasant mood. “It’s a bloody disgrace,” he told Cannon unpleasantly.

“Yes, sir,” said the chief inspector, who actually thought so.

“You permitted a prisoner in your custody to take his own life.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If one of your men pulled such a trick, you’d call him a bloody fool.”

“Yes, sir.”

The two men were alone behind the curtains of the smoking room, but Cannon had a suspicion that his superior’s words could be heard by the little group of uniformed men and detectives who lingered outside in the social hall of the ship. Long since, the passengers had been questioned and sent to their staterooms—if not to sleep, at least to ponder over Cannon’s promise that they could jolly well stop aboard until they were told to go.

Harrington pulled his green cloth hat over his eyes and began to put on his gloves.

The chief inspector imperceptibly brightened. “Then you’re not going to take over yourself, sir?”

“Take over? Of course not. The gov’nor will want a full report on this business when he gets down to the Yard at nine o’clock. See that you ring me up before then. But it’s your case, Cannon.”

The superintendent was halfway through the curtains when Cannon spoke. “Which case?”

“Meaning?” Harrington stopped short.

“The disappearance or the suicide?”

“They’re one and the same,” cried Harrington testily. “Can’t you see? You were assigned to the disappearance of Rosemary Fraser—but the suicide of this Noel fellow was a confession of guilt. He threw her overboard and had poison all ready in his pocket in case he was arrested for it. All you’ve got to do is to tie the loose strings together.”

Cannon said something under his breath. But his superior went on. “If you like, take young Secker as your associate and turn the disappearance end of the case over to him. It’s time he had something to do beyond haunting police courts. And he can’t be much duller as a detective than you’ve shown yourself tonight, Cannon.”

Superintendent Harrington disappeared in the direction of the waiting launch, which bore the “TI” insignia of the River Police. When he was well out of earshot, Cannon took a deep breath, let it go, and then stepped out into the social hall.

Across the room a tall, thin young man, dressed negligently in brown tweed coat and dark flannels, was watching the removal of the body of Peter Noel, now neatly covered with a blanket.

“Sergeant!” boomed the chief inspector. Young John Secker looked up and smiled. “What are you mooning at? As if you’d never seen a dead body before…”

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t,” said the young man placatingly. “You forget, sir, that I’ve been a sleuth for just eight weeks come Tuesday. I was only wondering, sir, do all suicides have such a surprised look on their faces, as if they hadn’t expected it was going to be exactly what it was?”

“Eh?” said Cannon. “Well, you may come along with me, anyhow. You’re to have a chance at helping me with this affair, the superintendent says. Now we’ll see whether passing examinations will make a Yard man or not.”

There was a faintly concealed bitterness in the older man’s voice, for John Secker, along with a dozen other very young and well-bred men, had come into the Yard under the new policy of Lord Duggat, the recently appointed commissioner. He had served his six months’ uniform service as a Bobby, passed detective examinations with flying colors, and now rated the sergeants stripes that Cannon himself had earned only after six years of intense struggle. Cannon secretly considered the introduction of “kid-glove ’tecs” as an effort on the part of the government to find a place for the younger sons to whom the colonies, the army, and the merchant marine were no longer open. He was doubly suspicious of Secker because the young man had admittedly been to Cambridge. He had been sent down, but still he had been there.

“Right-ho,” said John Secker. His voice was extremely casual, but he moved with alacrity.

“We may as well make an attempt to find out where the johnny got his poison,” Cannon volunteered as he led the way down the corridor.

“You don’t think he brought it with him from the States, then?”

Cannon mellowed a bit. It pleased him to have such an excellent opportunity of demonstrating his flair for sarcasm. “Not,” he said, “unless Peter Noel knew beforehand that on this voyage he would meet a girl who would move heaven and earth, as her roommate says she did, to make him marry her just because he compromised her in the blanket locker.”

Sergeant Secker said nothing. Cannon went on. “We can bank on it that Noel provided himself with the cyanide—which is what the police surgeon is sure was used, from the smell—in order to be able to cheat the hangman in case he was nabbed. It struck me that just possibly the ship’s doctor—”

They were descending the main staircase, near the open door of the pantry whence issued delectable smells of coffee. The chief inspector stopped before a door marked “Doctor’s Office” and hammered with his fist.

There was no answer. He knocked again, and finally tried the knob and found that the door swung inward.

“Anyone here?”

There was a sleepy answer from the cabin beyond, and finally an inner door opened, and Dr. Waite’s bald head appeared, his eyes red-rimmed. He was clutching a flannel robe around his mauve pajamas.

“We’ll have a look at your medicine cabinet,” he was told. The chief inspector walked over to the cabinet which loomed between the two portholes and opened the glass door. A triple rack of neatly labelled bottles faced him.

The cryptic symbols meant nothing to Cannon. “Make a note to discover if Noel had any knowledge of pharmacy or chemistry,” he ordered. The sergeant was already writing busily.

Dr. Waite’s teeth chattered audibly behind them. “Where’s your cyanide?” Cannon demanded.

Dr. Waite wanted to know which cyanide. “Cyanide of potassium, I suppose,” Cannon told him testily. The doctor pointed to a slender bottle near the end of the second shelf. The chief inspector took it gently in his thick pink fingers. It was full to the brim.