Chapter 15 #2
“Judas Priest,” he groaned. “Whaddaya want?”
“Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher, Scotland Yard,” Alec introduced himself. “I’m sorry to disturb you, sir.”
“What’s the big idea? I’m an American citizen,” Riddman protested. “You Limeys can’t …”
“You’re on a British ship, sir.”
“Look, I know gambling on board is against your rules, but there’s no need to make a federal case of it. It was just a friendly game with a couple of pals.” He reached for the wallet on the bedside table. “Can’t we just …”
“I must advise you not to complete that sentence.” Alec put steel in his voice, his gaze frigid.
“Jeez, just a little contribution for the widows and orphans fund,” the American said feebly. “Forget it.”
“I shall, sir. Your gambling is not my affair, except insofar as it may bear upon the death of one of your ‘pals.’”
Riddman closed his eyes and sank back, his thin face screwed up. “Oh punk, it was Pertwee, then!” He looked very young. To Alec’s dismay, a couple of tears squeezed out from beneath his eyelids.
Alec had met with enough weeping witnesses, suspects, and criminals in his professional life for his mother always to pack several extra handkerchiefs when he travelled.
Feeling in his pocket, he hoped she and Daisy between them had made sufficient provision.
He had not expected to come across witnesses, suspects, and criminals on this trip.
Accompanied by Daisy, he ought to have known better.
“I didn’t mean to do it!” Riddman cried.
Daisy could not concentrate on her work for thinking about Alec and Riddman. In the end, she decided to kill two birds with one stone and go to talk to the Purser about gambling on board ship. Besides understanding the situation more clearly, she might be able to fit the subject into her article.
Catching Mr. Timmins in a rare moment of leisure, Daisy explained her dual purpose and hinted that she needed the information as much for Alec as for herself.
“We don’t get boatmen on the Talavera,” Timmins said defensively.
“Boatmen?”
“That’s what we call professional gamblers who regularly go to sea.
They can get away with it on the big liners with thousands of passengers, but we spot ‘em pretty quick. As I told your husband, we had Pertwee marked as possibly one of the fraternity. There’s not much we can do though, unless the mark complains, and most of ’em are too embarrassed.
Gambling’s against company rules, though we’d have to put half the passengers in irons to enforce it and most of the crew.
We put up signs warning against gambling with strangers. ”
“I’ve seen them,” Daisy agreed. “Apparently, Pertwee found Mr. Riddman’s wallet on the quay and returned it intact, a convincing display of his honesty.”
Timmins nodded knowingly. “He’ll have a confederate who’s a ‘file,’ an expert pickpocket. They have any number of tricks. One fellow I know of dresses as a clergyman and makes friends with children. Often they let the mark win until they go ashore, then fleece him in one final game.”
“I gather Riddman lost and kept playing in hopes of his luck changing. Pertwee promised not to cash any of his cheques before New York.”
“And hasn’t done so. They’d have let Riddman win in the end, so he had no cause for complaint, then pretended to tear up the cheques.
A good file would have no trouble substituting worthless paper before his eyes.
Then they’d rush to a bank as soon as they landed and cash them before he got a chance to put on a stop order. ”
Daisy didn’t have a current account. She had heard of stopping payment on a cheque, but it had not crossed her mind in relation to Riddman. No doubt Alec, the son of a bank manager, had worked it out long since.
“Since Pertwee is dead,” she said slowly, “Riddman has all the time in the world to stop payment before his heirs try to cash them.”
The Purser met her eyes and winced. “I’m afraid so,” he agreed.
“Thank you, Mr. Timmins. You’ll keep this to yourself, won’t you? I’ll be sure to put a bit in my article warning of the dangers of gambling with strangers.”
“You do that, Mrs. Fletcher.” With a shrug he added sadly, “But they all think they’re too clever to be caught.”
And the same applied to murderers.
Daisy returned to the library, hoping that Alec would be waiting there for her. He wasn’t.
He’d be furious if she went to check that Riddman hadn’t done him in and stuffed his body out through the porthole. She decided to go and see Wanda. Perhaps Miss Oliphant had succeeded in persuading the blooming bride to give her medicines a try.
Baines opened the door. With a nervous glance towards the bedroom, she whispered, “I’m sorry, madam, but madam already has a visitor.”
“I’ll wait.” Daisy stepped in.
The bedroom door was shut. Daisy heard raised voices
and recognized them, though she could not make out the words. Wanda and Miss Oliphant were at it hammer and tongs.
“Oh dear, perhaps I shan’t wait!”
“Might be best not, madam. It takes madam awhile to settle down after she’s got herself excited.” The maid flinched as Wanda’s voice rose in a screech.
What on earth could the mild Miss Oliphant have said to rouse such fury? Curiosity, Daisy’s besetting sin, warred with discretion. She was dithering when the bedroom door flung open and the witch stalked out.
Miss Oliphant’s round, normally placid face was bright red, her mouth set in an inflexible line. She closed the door behind her with a deliberate restraint as expressive as a violent slam.
Seeing Daisy, she let her rigid shoulders relax a bit.
“Mrs. Fletcher,” she said, “I fear Mrs. Gotobed and I have had a severe disagreement. Perhaps you can convince her that my mind is not to be changed by shouting, even if it were not a matter of principle. I am sorry,” she added, turning to Baines, “to have put your mistress out of temper.”
“If it wasn’t you, madam, it’d be something else.” The maid shrugged. “What can’t be cured must be endured.”
“A very sound sentiment,” Miss Oliphant said warmly, and with a slight bow to Daisy she left.
Daisy lapsed into vulgarity: “Whew! If that was a disagreement, I wouldn’t want to hear them quarrel.”
Baines gave her a perfunctory smile and started towards the bedroom. “I’d better see if madam wants anything.”
“Don’t go and put your head into the lion’s mouth. I expect I can calm her down a bit.”
Wanda was in bed, sitting bolt upright and glaring at herself in a gold-backed hand-mirror. She glanced up as Daisy entered. In the bright daylight pouring through the porthole,
her face was blotched, her eyes small and hard within circles of puffy flesh.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said flatly. “That bloody woman’s made me look a perfect fright. What a bitch! And I was going to let Dickie come in today.”
“You must be feeling better then. I’m so glad. I expect you can repair the damage.”
“S’pose so.” Wanda threw back the bed-clothes and slipped her feet into high-heeled, pink mules adorned with fluffy marabou feathers dyed to match.
The quilted silk bed-jacket she wore over her pink satin nightdress was similarly trimmed.
She threw it off and wrapped herself in an embroidered kimono before sitting down on the stool at the dressing-table.
“I was only sick first thing in the morning yesterday,” she said, with a sly glance at Daisy, who, since she had not been thrown out, had found herself a seat.
“First thing?” Daisy absorbed the information, watching Wanda open bottles and jars and start dabbing creams and lotions on her face. “And today?” she asked cautiously.
“Today, too. It wore off an hour ago. You know what that means, don’t you?”
“Y-yes.” Daisy was rather surprised that morning sickness would develop so soon. Wanda had only been married for a week or so. However, she was no expert, though she hoped to learn by personal experience one of these days.
Then she recalled that Arbuckle had assumed Wanda to be Gotobed’s mistress before they married, so time was irrelevant. Or was Gotobed not the father? Had Curtis Pertwee been Wanda’s lover, as Daisy had surmised?
She had been silent long enough to be noticeable.
“Cripes, you are the innocent, aren’t you?” Wanda sneered, watching Daisy in the looking-glass while continuing to mess about with her cosmetics. “Do you know where babies come from? Well, I’ve got a bun in the oven, if you’ll excuse
the expression. And that old bitch, that witch, won’t help me get rid of it!” she added, with sudden venom.
“Miss Oliphant?” Startled, shocked in spite of her past residence in Bohemian Chelsea, Daisy understood the herbalist’s outrage. “No, I’m sure she wouldn’t.”
“Bloody self-righteous old bag. Never had a man of her own. What does she know about it?”
“I expect Mr. Gotobed will be delighted,” Daisy ventured.
“Don’t tell him! Gawd, Daisy, swear you won’t tell him. I’m not going through with this, starting having kids at my age!”
“I won’t tell him,” Daisy promised reluctantly. “But there’s no need to have more than this one, you know. When you get back to England, go to Marie Stopes’s clinic in Holloway, and they’ll explain how to avoid conceiving scientifically, not in the old hit-or-miss ways.”
Before Daisy’s wedding, Lucy had insisted on her going to the clinic started by Marie Stopes—Mrs. Roe as she was since her second marriage.
“You don’t want to get preggy right away,” she had argued.
“Get settled first, get things sorted out with Mrs. Fletcher. You are going to ask me to be godmother to your first, aren’t you, darling? ”
Daisy was glad she had complied. She wouldn’t have wanted to be traipsing around America suffering from morning sickness.
Thus far, she sympathized with Wanda. And she could comprehend not wanting to start a family at her age.
Wanda had looked nearer forty than thirty when Daisy came in a few minutes earlier.
By now, her face in the mirror had taken on its accustomed painted pulchritude. She did not answer Daisy because she was tilting her head back to put some drops in her eyes, a delicate task requiring concentration. When she turned, her eyes were once more large, dark, and lustrous.
“I’m not going to argue about it,” she said. “Send Baines
in to do my hair, will you? And if you see Dickie about, say I’m dying to see him.”
Whatever her social inadequacies, Wanda had perfected the art of the indirect dismissal. Daisy departed.
She wondered briefly whether Wanda had succeeded in extracting a promise from Miss Oliphant not to tell Gotobed about her condition or her request. But a spinster of that vintage was probably virtually incapable of broaching such a subject with a man, and Wanda was canny enough to know it.
On her way back to the library, Daisy saw neither Gotobed nor Miss Oliphant.
In the sporadic sunshine, the deck-chairs on the port side of the promenade deck were in demand, in spite of the icy draught every time some hardy soul opened a door to go out to the open deck or came in, wind-blown and red-nosed.
Among the latter were Brenda, Gloria, and Phillip—Daisy had just reached the library when she saw them enter together by the far door.
She was going to wave to draw their attention when Mr. Harvey followed Phillip.
She ducked into the library. With the second officer present, she couldn’t very well draw Brenda aside and attempt to prepare her for the shock in case Alec arrested her fiance.