“So you’re a man of the world.”
“As you’re a woman of the world.”
“And we need partake of no pretense.”
“Not by my way of thinking.”
It took a while to get out of all those clothes, but we managed, and the wrought-iron bed for one accommodated two, nicely, particularly since sleep was not what we had in mind.
Nonetheless, afterward she did fall asleep in my arms, clinging close, and I dropped off, as well, into a contented slumber. Madame DePage must have returned at some point, but I did not hear her come in, out in that adjacent suite. Something else, later, did wake me-I was not sure what, I merely sensed noise, perhaps a commotion in the hall-and I slipped from the bed and gathered my clothing.
I held my pocket watch near the sliver of light from the hallway door and saw that it was five minutes after two a.m. After getting back into the monkey suit in a rather half-hearted, half-buttoned fashion, I bent over the bed and kissed the slumbering goddess.
She smiled and murmured something, and fell back into a deep sleep.
I left her bedroom feeling giddy as a schoolboy with a new crush. Miss Vance was a lively, sophisticated woman, and I could hardly have hoped for a better partner in a shipboard romance. . let alone for said romance to have blossomed so quickly, so fully.
So distracted was I that I almost tripped over the corpse that lay on its side in the hallway.
SEVEN
When she replied to my knock, Miss Vance peered through the cracked door and at first seemed as confused as she did sleepy; then, seeing it was me, she smiled in a lazy, half-lidded manner that normally would have struck me as quite endearing.
“Miss me already?” she almost drawled, opening the door a bit, her curvaceous form barely concealed in her camisole.
“Put something on,” I told her. “There’s a dead body in the hallway-and I suspect foul play.”
She said nothing, her lethargy replaced at once by alertness. Leaning out into the hall, she saw-a few paces down, toward my cabin-the slumped figure of what appeared to be a ship’s steward.
Frowning, she asked, “Is that-?”
“It’s not a steward I killed, coming out of your room, to save your virtue. . No indeed.”
“The ringleader,” she said breathlessly.
Klaus, the burly blonde stowaway-still in his stolen stewards’ whites-lay on his side on the shining linoleum, his blue eyes staring at nothing, his expression one of disappointment and surprise. . a common enough one, at the point of death, I should think. Who among us won’t be naively disappointed, and bitterly surprised, when the inevitable arrives?
She sealed herself within her quarters, and I returned to the body. At this time of the morning, the corridor was otherwise deserted. Kneeling over the man, I noticed a wound in his back, a blossom of crimson, still dripping.
I remembered the vague sense that there’d been a commotion outside the stateroom-that had been, after all, what stirred me from my slumber. I’d quickly dressed and exited, so if that commotion indeed had resulted in the violent death of the blonde stowaway, this was a freshly created corpse. . born within the past ten minutes or less.
Proving that a woman could indeed dress as quickly as a man (should the situation call for it), Miss Vance emerged in a simple blue-gray gingham morning dress-well, this
Or such was the case until she knelt next to me, eyes narrowed, unhesitant to achieve a close proximity to the corpse.
“Have you touched anything?” she asked.
“Somehow I managed to resist. Is that a bullet wound?”
She leaned in, her pretty nose damn near touching the blossom of blood. Then she drew back, her eyes meeting mine and holding them. “No-that’s a knife wound. Possibly a hunting knife-judging by the width of the tear in the fabric. . nearly two inches.”
“Couldn’t the cloth have been torn in the struggle?”
She shook her head. “I don’t believe there was a struggle-this is the classic example of a man stabbed in the back.”
I disagreed-telling her I had heard a to-do in the hall. Surely this was the result of a scuffle escalating into tragedy.
She shrugged. “Perhaps there were two other men. . two assailants, let us say. One is arguing with our late friend here, facing him, and the other is behind him.”
“I see-one keeps him busy, the other stabs him in the back.”
“Or one is arguing with the victim, and as the argument seems about to get out of hand, the accomplice ends the discussion with a two-inch blade of steel.”
She stood and so did I.
“Of course,” she said, “what immediately comes to mind is his two friends-the other stowaways.”
“Yes! If Klaus escaped the cell, so must have the others-and there was tension between them. . I witnessed it.”
Nodding, she said, “The other two seemed more likely to cooperate, to talk-wasn’t that your opinion, after interrogating them?”
“It most certainly was. . Shouldn’t we alert Staff Captain Anderson, or perhaps Captain Turner himself?”
“We should. But I’d like a few moments, here, at the scene of the crime. . before too many well-meaning fools come tromping through.”
I was doubtful this was wise. “We may have two stowaways at large, remember-one of whom is armed with a hunting knife.”
“Van, I scarcely think they’ll be trying to take over the ship with it-they are probably seeking a new hiding place, not looking for another victim.”
Miss Vance requested that I stand near her doorway, and she returned to her quarters and emerged moments later with a magnifying glass.
I had to laugh. “How Sherlock Holmes of you!”
“What may seem a cliche in Conan Doyle,” she said, “is a valuable tool in real detection. . Physical evidence has put many a guilty neck in the hangman’s noose.”
The detective in gingham knelt to examine the linoleum in the area of the corpse, an activity that took several seemingly endless minutes.
Finally she turned toward me, her eyes glittering in a predatory fashion. “Droplets of blood,” she said.
Walking along, half-bent over, gazing through the magnifying glass, she followed a trail of tiny scarlet globules. She stopped at the mouth of the short corridor next to my cabin.
“Come,” she said, motioning to me. “Hug the wall, as you do.”
I joined her-and there on the floor, halfway down the short corridor so near where I slept, was a black- handled hunting knife, smeared crimson. Blobs of blood trailed toward where it lay. Miss Vance said this indicated the knife had been flung there-by the murderer.
Gesturing back down the hall, toward the corpse, she said, “The murderer walked along with the bloody knife at his side-probably held out, a ways, to prevent getting any blood on his clothing. Then, seeing this corridor, impulsively pitched the murder weapon away.”
“Then this was not a carefully calculated affair-rather a killing by impulse?”
