The Case of the Turning Tide

Chapter 16

“What’s the sheriff doing?” Milred asked as Frank Duryea drove his car around the turn to the waterfront. “Leaving it all up to you?”

“Oh, he’s going through the motions, picking up witnesses here and there, and uncovering clues. But he isn’t furnishing any flashes of inspiration. He’ll ride along. If the case naturally gets solved, he’ll be in on it. If it doesn’t, he’ll find some way of squirming out from under. He’s a good politician, and he takes the position that after he’s unearthed the people who had contacts with the murdered men, it’s up to me to take their statements and... well, you know how Lassen is.”

“I know.”

Duryea swung the car into the parking zone by the yacht club. “Any guards?” she asked.

“No. We took them off and locked the yacht. Miss Moline’s been appointed special administratrix. She wants possession, and we’ll probably surrender the keys to her tomorrow.”

Duryea took his wife’s arm, led her across a strip of roadway to the narrow macadamized walk which led to the yacht club. “I’ll have to stop in at the club,” he said, “and get permission to use one of the skiffs. They...”

She said, “Why do that? You’ll just make the whole thing so conspicuous. Why not do it all under cover?”

“Are you suggesting that I, the district attorney of Santa Delbarra County, violate the law by stealing a skiff?”

“Uh huh.”

“If we get caught, I’ll prosecute you,” he warned.

“Would the judge let me argue my own case to the jury?”

“Perhaps.”

She smiled up at him and said, “I think I’d have you at a disadvantage. Shhhhhh, Frank. Let’s tiptoe. There’s someone in the yacht club.”

Duryea looked through the big lighted windows. Half a dozen persons were gathered in a little group, sitting in reclining wicker chairs, drinking and chatting. The air was blue with tobacco smoke. “Bet they’re discussing the murder,” Milred said.

“Why don’t you bet on something that isn’t a cinch?”

“Never give a sucker a break,” she said. “Frank, I suppose I’m a frightful nuisance. You’ve had enough to put up with, with Gramps messing around, but I want to do this.”

“It’s okay, babe.”

“You aren’t mad — or bored at my tagging along?”

“No. I’m getting a kick out of it.”

“What’s wrong with this boat?” she asked, stopping in front of a skiff which was tied up to the float.

“No oars, no oarlocks,” he pointed out.

“There’s one up ahead,” she said.

“Not so loud,” he warned.

They walked quietly along the float to where the painter of a skiff had been wound around a cleat.

Duryea said, “We’ll take a chance. Hop in.”

She jumped into the skiff. Duryea untied the painter and pushed off. “What I don’t know about handling a boat,” he apologized, “would fill my whole law library.”

She watched him with a critical eye. “You play a swell game of tennis, Frank.”

“Uh huh.”

“And you ride well.”

“Uh huh.”

“I know now why you played tennis and took me riding with you while you were courting me. You never did take me rowing.”

“My father was a smart man, too,” he admitted modestly.

“He must have been. Think of how history might have changed. Watch out, you’re going to hit that other yacht. Pull on that — no, the other oar. The other one! My gosh, don’t scare me like that again... Is that the Gypsy Queen?”

He turned his head, said, “Uh huh. Thought I was headed for it.”

“Why don’t you get up in the bow so you can take the painter and jump aboard, and let me row?”

“Don’t you like my rowing?”

“I’m crazy about it, but I would so like to get home before daylight. And it looks as though we’ll never make it.”

He laughed and moved up to the bow of the skiff. She slid into the rower’s seat, braced the heels of her shoes, picked up the oars, and swept them back in a long, clean stroke which sent the little skiff fairly boiling through the water.

“Been holding out on me, eh?”

“I won a race once — for women. That was in college. Now listen, landlubber, when I come up on the beam of that boat, grab that painter and jump aboard, and don’t miss it.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“There should be a landing ladder on the thing somewhere.”

“It’s on the other side.”

“Don’t say ‘other.’ Say ‘starboard.’ ”

“Starboard.”

“That’s better. Which side is port?”

“That’s easy.”

“I bet you don’t know.”

“Why, of course I do. It’s the exact opposite of starboard.”

“All right, which side is starboard?”

He laughed, then suddenly peered out over the bow of the boat and said, “It’s the side the landing ladder is on the Gypsy Queen. That’s the right side. That means port is left.”

She gave one last quick sweep of the oars, sent the skiff alongside the Gypsy Queen II. Duryea jumped up to the deck, started to tie the painter.

“Not there,” she said. “From the stern. And I’d better watch the knot you tie, because it would be unhandy to swim back.”

Duryea raised his hand in a salute. “Aye, aye.”

She fastened the painter with a quick, deft twist of the rope.

“Where did you learn so much about seamanship?” he asked.

“Girl and woman,” she said, “come this Michaelmas, I’ve sailed on yachts for nigh onto two weeks, stranger.”

“I’ll have to look into this. Aren’t yachting parties pretty wild affairs?”

She said demurely, “You’ll have to ask Gramps about that.”

“One of these days, I’m going to become very, very suspicious of that Wiggins strain in your blood.”

She sighed. “As though I didn’t know that. Why do you think I’ve been keeping Gramps away from you all these years?”

“That is an idea,” he admitted.

“You have a key to this padlock?”

“Supposed to have. I’d hate to think we’d made this voyage across the briny deep in vain.” He fumbled through his pockets.

She said, “Don’t tell me it’s in your other pants.”

He triumphantly produced a key and fitted it to the padlock which held the sliding doors at the entrance to the companion-way in place. A few moments later they were in the pilothouse cabin. Duryea opened an unlocked door, and they descended into the lower cabin where the murders had taken place.

He said, “I hope this will get you over this idea of yours that crime is something romantic. The place stinks of death, and in case you’re interested, that’s dried blood on the carpet.”

“Gosh, Frank,” she said, “the... the darned thing really does fascinate me.”

“What’s fascinating about it?”

“I don’t know. The idea of trying to deduce what’s happened from little clues that have been left behind. Was there anything in the position of the bodies to support this murder and suicide theory?”

“It’s a pretty fair inference that Stearne died first. A part of Right’s body lay across Stearne’s legs.”

“Were they both killed with the same gun?”

“Apparently. I haven’t a complete report from the post mortem yet. Dr. Graybar wanted to have some assistance. A friend of his has been called up from Los Angeles, a Dr. Petterman. He’s something of an authority.”

“Was this where the bodies were found?”

“Right there. You’re standing just about where Addison Stearne’s body lay.”

She looked down at the bloodstained carpet, said, “How interesting. I suppose you wanted me to jump or give a little scream, didn’t you?”

“I’m afraid you’re a bloodthirsty wench.”

“Jumping and squealing wouldn’t bring him back to life,” she said. “If it could do any good, it might be different. And you think he dictated that letter to Right, do you?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“And Mrs. Right feels her husband wrote a long statement on the typewriter, confessing what he’d done, and telling all the reasons? Was there a typewriter near the bodies, Frank?”

“I think there was. The photographs show it. It was moved when they... There it is, on that little taboret in the corner.”

“Oh, yes. A portable. Did the sheriff examine it for fingerprints?”

“Oh, yes. He told me he went over everything he thought would be important. He would... Hey, wait a minute! There’s something on that platen!”

Milred said, “There is... a string of letters? No, it’s...”

“Let’s take a look,” Duryea said, dropping on his knees in front of the typewriter. “Don’t touch it, Milred. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What’s this?”

She bent over his shoulder.

Duryea gave a low whistle.

Milred said indignantly, “How do you suppose Sheriff Lassen could possibly have overlooked that?”

“I don’t know. Of course, he’s no Sherlock Holmes. To tell you the truth, Millie, I probably should have done a little more looking around here, but I just can’t stomach scenes of violence. I took over the examination of the witnesses, and left it up to the sheriff and Bill Wiegart to make an investigation of the cabin itself.”

“That’s a new platen on the typewriter,” she pointed out. “And, of course, that could have been written at any time.”

“Of course,” he said, “only the yacht has either been guarded or locked ever since the discovery of the bodies.”

“This Moline girl hasn’t a key?”

“No. The sheriff bought the padlock. There were only two keys to it. The sheriff has one, and I have the other. I was supposed to keep mine in my office. I intended to put it in the safe. To tell you the truth, I forgot all about it until those people came.”

“It’s been in your pocket all day?”

“Uh huh. Well, let’s call the sheriff.”

She laughed. “Boy, oh, boy! Won’t Gramps burn when he finds out what’s happened?”

Bill Wiegart straightened from an examination of the type-writer with a magnifying glass. “Not a fingerprint on it any-where,” he said.

“Isn’t that unusual?” Duryea asked.

“Well,” Wiegart said cautiously, “I’d say it was. To tell you the truth, Mr. Duryea, I haven’t had much experience with typewriters. I’m going to do a little checking up.”

“You can’t find a single fingerprint on any part of it?”

“No. It looks as though someone’s gone over it with an oiled rag. Now, that might be all right. Just keeping the typewriter in condition. I suppose the salt air raises the devil with metal parts, and a good caretaker would keep it pretty well cleaned and oiled.”

“How about the keyboard?” Milred asked.

“Well, you’ve got to bear in mind that a person banging his fingers down on a keyboard doesn’t hold his fingers still. There’s a certain twisting motion.”

“Well,” Duryea said, “let’s concede that Stearne used it in writing some letters, that he either wrote them himself, or had them written by someone to whom he had dictated the correspondence. Then let us suppose he went over the typewriter with an oiled rag, cleaning it up preparatory to putting it away. What I can’t understand is why there aren’t fingerprints on it from that last message. If he crawled over to the typewriter and tapped out that message just as he was dying, be certainly should have left fingerprints.”

“You’d think so,” Wiegart said thoughtfully.

“You didn’t go over this before for fingerprints?”

“No, I didn’t. I don’t believe I paid very much attention to the typewriter. Lassen said to concentrate on door-knobs, bits of the brass work around the ship’s rail, catches on the windows, and places of that sort where you’d expect to find prints left by someone who’d broken in or who was escaping after a murder.”

“Get anything?” Duryea asked.

“I got a few prints that don’t tally with those of the two dead men. Of course, you can’t tell. Some of them may be fairly old.”

Sheriff Lassen, who had been prowling around the yacht, came down the companionway. “Find anything, Bill?”

“Not a sign.”

“It may be a plant,” Duryea said, “something to throw us off the trail. Or, more likely, something that would assist one of the claimants in the estate matter.”

Lassen said, “Well, I guess that covers things. Huh?”

Duryea nodded.

“Then let’s go,” Lassen said.

Riding back down California Avenue. Milred, strangely subdued and thoughtful, said, “Frank, put yourself in the position of a dying man. Isn’t it rather odd that he’d try to leave a message on a typewriter?”

“I’ve thought of that,” Duryea said, “but the bullet struck against his spine. He was paralyzed from the waist down. He couldn’t walk, but he could have reached the keyboard of the typewriter. The photographs show that.”

“And he died while he was typing the message?”

“Not necessarily. He was dying when he typed it. The effort was probably too much for him. He thought he could rest and then finish it. When he started to type, he thought he had more strength than he did have. Thought he was going to be able to write a longer message. That frequently happens with persons who are suffering from internal hemorrhage. They don’t realize the extent or gravity of their injuries. They concentrate on doing something and don’t appreciate the fact that they’re dying until their strength gives way entirely.”

She made a little shivering gesture with her shoulders and said, “Well, I guess I haven’t what it takes, after all. I never thought murder was quite as — as gruesome.”

Duryea said, “Murder is a tear across the whole fabric of life. It isn’t just the snapping of one thread. It leaves unmistakable clues if a person has the patience to unravel all of the threads. How about driving me to the office, hon, and then taking the car home? Sheriff Lassen will drive me home when we quit.”

“What are you going to do?”

“The doctors are working. I may find out something from them.”

“And we have a date for a movie tomorrow?”

“Absolutely.”

She drove him to the courthouse. He kissed her, said, “Don’t wait up for me. I may be late.”