Down Among the Dead Men

IV

“I’ve told you all I know.” Beads of moisture crystaled on the Captain’s eyebrows. “I... I’m sure of that.”

“I can’t wait around while you cross-question yourself. Show me young Ovett’s cabin.”

Cardiff led him down the companion-way, opened a stateroom door at the foot of the steps. “He wasn’t on board a great deal... so he used this guest cabin.”

Koski grunted. There wasn’t much to indicate the owner’s habits. Military brushes on the bureau; a copy of Hosmer’s Navigation; some old copies of Yachting. On the wall a water color: the Tarpon Springs sponge fleet at anchor. In the hanging locker, a couple of suits, some crew-neck sweaters, a long-visored fishing cap, a pair of knee-high rubber boots. Automatically, Koski picked them up. One was heavier than the other. There was a red tin can about sixteen inches high in it. The tin was labeled:

He opened the can. In it were only three of the wooden sticks with the redpaper ends.

“You use flares much, on this yacht?”

Cardiff scratched his nose. “Never use any. Didn’t know there were any on board.”

“Mmm.” Koski tucked the rubber boot under his arm. “Where’s Gjersten’s bunk?”

“Fo’c’sle. Up forrad.” Cardiff seemed relieved. He led the way to a wedge-shaped cubicle up in the eyes of the yacht.

Koski noted the narrow pipe berth, the pint-size lavatory, the solitary porthole. The white paint of the hull planking was generously covered with tacked-up pages torn from magazines. All the illustrations were of the female form in various degrees of undress.

“Guy had a one-track mind, didn’t he?” Koski opened a hanging locker, saw a worn melton jacket, white ducks, sneakers.

“Cheesecake, they call it nowadays.” Cardiff grinned, weakly. “Used to have a different name for it, when I was chasing around.”

“Yair.” A thin packet of letters was stuck behind the thumb-screw of the porthole; the envelopes were all postmarked Waterford, New York and were addressed to Mr. Ansel Gjersten, care Yacht Seavett, General Delivery, City Island, New York, N. Y. Koski took out a couple of the letters. Woman’s handwriting began: “My dear son,” the contents were devoted to what a hard time she was having, how terrible the war was, how much she wanted to see him. “With all those pictures, there ought to be one of him around.”

“Never saw one.”

“What’d he look like?”

“Square face. Sort of flat. Black eyes.”

“Hair?”

“Brown. Lot of it. No mustache or anything.”

“Wouldn’t stand out in a crowd.” Koski pulled out a drawer beneath the berth. A little stack of laundered underwear, a few pairs of woolen socks, some shirts. In another drawer, below, Koski found a cheap, shore-going suit of gray flannel, a pair of tan oxfords, a necktie and an expensive hat of dark blue velours. “You know this stuff was here, Cardiff?”

“Well, now. I didn’t go over it carefully.”

“You didn’t have to make an inventory to dope out no yacht-hand’s going to jump ship and leave all his clothes aboard.”

“When I said that, I didn’t know he’d been murdered.” Cardiff shoved his hands deep in his coat pocket, flexed his neck muscles uneasily. “I figured it was either he’d fallen overboard or else ducked out on account of... expecting trouble.”

Koski examined a pile of books and magazines on a bulkhead shelf. Strubel’s Internal Combustion Engines; four old copies of Physical Culture with pages cut out; an ancient blue volume entitled Hvem, Hvad, Hvar, which seemed to be a Norwegian Who’s Who; an advertising booklet, Keep Your Motor Young, put out by an oil company. Some duplicate carbons of ship-chandlers’ bills made out to L. Ovett, Seavett, Y20741, and countersigned Okay to pay, C. Hurlihan.

“This Hurlihan gent. When’d he come aboard?”

“Saturday afternoon.”

“Stay Saturday night?”

“Yuh.” Cardiff coughed behind his hand. “All according to Emily Post. He had the guest cabin.”

“Merrill’s cabin?”

“That’s right.”

“Then he must have had a suitcase.”

“And a brief case.”

“Take it with him when he left?”

“Absolutely. Carried it himself. Frankie was going to carry it up the dock at Wall Street for him, but Mr. Hurlihan told him not to bother.”

“Notice what kind of a suitcase it was?” Koski’s glance traveled across colored cartoons of wenches wearing little more than seductive smiles, to a double-page spread from Life displaying a rear view of the legs and buttocks of a row of damsels entered in some beauty contest and bearing labels telling which city they represented.

“Tan leather, as I remember. To match the brief case.”

“Not the same one the body was in, then.” The double page was fastened above Ansel’s berth with red thumbtacks; the tack at the lower left-hand comer had been pulled out and replaced many times, according to the numerous punctures in the paper. Koski wondered why, — pulled the tack out. A snapshot which had been hidden behind the magazine page slipped down to the blanket on the berth.

“Mmmmm!” Cardiff’s exclamation had an up-and-down inflection.

Koski picked the photograph up. It was a nude girl stretched out on her stomach, head turned to one side and pillowed on her forearms. A striped bath towel was laid across her backside, but no attempt had been made to conceal her face. She was lying on a lounging pillow; a couple of deck cleats showed at one edge of the print.

“Who’s she, Cardiff?”

Cardiff inclined his head aft.

“Yair? She pass these around to the crew?”

“Not to me, anyway. I never saw it. Must have been taken last summer, sometime.”

“Was Ansel around then?”

“No. Hired him at the end of last season. He couldn’t have taken that.”

“You don’t think her husband gave it to him, do you?” Koski slipped the print in his pocket, pulled a pillow off the berth. There was no laundry mark on the slip unless it had been made with the invisible ink some laundries use for identification. “Ship’s wash done on board?”

“No. We send it ashore.”

“Where to?”

Cardiff scratched his ear, looked puzzled. “Now I ought to be able to tell you. But I can’t. Frankie takes care of the bedmaking.”

“Let’s see Frankie.”

Cardiff led the way aft through a steel door in the watertight bulkhead. To starboard were more crew quarters; to port, a galley gleaming with copper and monel. The Filipino, in a starched jacket and white monkey-cap, was slicing bread. A jar of anchovy paste stood open beside a yellow bar of butter.

The Captain put his head in the galley door, jerked a thumb at Koski. “Gentleman’s from the Police Department. Inquiring about Ansel.”

Frankie poised the knife, regarded the two men with alert black eyes. His skin was the color of lubricating oil; there was a suggestion of oil about the black-enamel hair.

“Inquiring about last Sunday dinner, right now. What’d you feed the folks for the big meal?” Koski gauged the steward to be about twenty-one.

“Roast lamb, baked sweets, lima beans, pear salad, chocolate pudding.” The steward cut halfway through a slice of bread, stopped. “There was nothing wrong with the food!”

“Tchah, tchah. Didn’t claim there was. Everybody eat hearty?”

Cardiff said: “Ansel didn’t. Least not on board. He had leave to go ashore Sunday until four.”

“Oh.” Koski waved casually. “Think nothing more of it, Frankie. Tell me, where you have your boat laundry done?”

“Pelham Shore Hand Laundry.” There was no expression on the Filipino’s face. “Four twenty-nine City Island Avenue.”

Koski made a notation in his leather book. “You make up the bunks today?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All the sheets and pillowslips present and accounted for?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You didn’t check all the berths, though? Only those that’d been used this week?”

Frankie laid down the knife. “None of the berths are made up, except those that are in use.”

“Anything gone from the linen chest?”

“No.” The jet eyes slitted. “Are you claiming I had anything to do with... whatever happened to Ansel?”

Koski rubbed his chin, reflectively. “What makes you think something happened to him?”

“She said so.” The steward’s lips compressed as if he had said more than he meant to.

“Yair? You didn’t know anything about it before that.” Koski made it as a statement.

“No, sir.”

“Where’s Mrs. Ovett, now?”

“In her cabin, sir.”

“Which one is that?”

Cardiff edged past. “Double stateroom there. At the stern. I’ll show you.”

“Never mind.” Koski moved through a carpeted saloon with knotty-pine paneling, hunting prints over a fireplace mantel, red leather club chairs. Before he knocked at the door of the aft cabin he glanced over his shoulder.

Cardiff was standing at the foot of the main companionway; he started up the steps hastily.

The Captain looked worried.