Neither the Captain nor Daisy Belle glanced at Marcia, yet somehow, irresistibly she had to explain. "I was on deck," she said. "I'd had breakfast late. I did not go to lunch."
Daisy Belle took a breath of smoke and went on. She had returned immediately to the lounge and read again until a young officer came to find her. He told her of the murder and the Captain's orders for her to return to the cabin. She paused again, imperceptibly, and then added: "Any number of nurses were in and out during the time. Some one of them must have seen me. Some of them must remember seeing me."
Gili's green eyes flashed. She cried: "Oh, you are afraid! That is a—what do you call it . . . ? It is legal. A legal word . . ."
Daisy Belle gave Gili a fraction of a glance and said coolly: "Never mind. You know what it means, all right," and put out her cigarette.
The Captain's blond head jerked around toward Gili. "What about you? What's your story?"
Mickey and Luther, more sophisticated, treated Gili as if she might have been a duchess. To the Captain, black was black and white was white. There were no shades between, and simply and cruelly his manner put Gili on the black side. Unexpectedly, and somehow rather pathetically, she accepted it and replied with unaccustomed meekness: "I didn't do anything, really, all day. I went on deck and walked and then I had breakfast. A nurse took me down to the salon. And then I —oh, I went around over the ship, looking at things, talking to"—she lifted one shoulder m a ghost of a shrug—"talking to this one or that one. Nothing much. They all seemed very"—a shade of discomfiture crossed her face—"very busy," said Gili, somewhat regretfully. '"So many handsome men, too."
Daisy Belle's mouth twitched. The Captain said: "Continue, please. Where were you when the murder occurred?"
"I don't know when that was. I know nothing. . . ."
"When you heard of it then?"
"Oh, well. That." Gili glanced at Marcia. "I had met you on the deck. You remember?"
"I remember," said Marcia.
Gili went on rather hurriedly: "And then—you remember —the handsome officer, the Colonel, came. And I—oh, I thought you might wish to be together, you and he. So I—I went into the ship. And in a few minutes I . . ." she hesitated. Her eyes slid to Marcia and then away. She caught her lower lip in her teeth for a second and suddenly said: "I met Andre and we went on deck, that is, on the other side, the— the left . . ."
"Port," said the Captain automatically. And Marcia thought swiftly, so Gili went straight to Mickey after making the claims she had made.
"We were there smoking and talking for—oh, it must have been for an hour or longer. A long time. Then, well . . ." she shrugged. "People were running. We heard about the murder."
Daisy Belle said dryly: "The word is alibi, Gili. I felt sure you understood it."
Major Williams said: "That agrees with Andre Messac's statement, sir."
"I know." The Captain turned to Marcia. "Does that square with your opinion about the length of time that passed while you were on deck and after you spoke to Miss Duvrey?"
"Yes. That is, I wasn't thinking of time. It seems about right."
The Captain looked at Gili again. "You were on B deck?"
Gili bit her lip. "Yes, but we knew nothing of the murder. Nothing. It is a big ship. How could we know anything of what happened on the other side of it?"
The Captain for a moment looked rather hopeless, as if, in spite of himself, he agreed. And certainly owing to the fact that the exact time when Para was murdered was not known, owing to the layout of the ship and the accessibility of the deck to any portion of it, any attempt to rule out any of the Lerida survivors by means of proven alibis was a forlorn hope at best. Probably it seemed so to the Captain, for he gave a sort of angry sigh, stared bleakly at the gray port opposite for a moment and finally said: "Two men from the Lerida lifeboat have been murdered. It stands to reason that one of the others in that boat did it. I've questioned all of you. I've got all your statements. So far, I'm bound to admit I've found no discrepancy."
He paused briefly. Marcia thought, then Mickey was with Gili, for his statement obviously had agreed with Gili's. What had they talked of, there in the fog, for an hour or more?
The Captain went on: "Since it is not likely that two murderers are on this ship I have to conclude that the person who tried to kill you, Miss Colfax, and who attacked Monsieur Messac a few minutes earlier that same night, is the person who succeeded in killing Castiogne and, today, Para. So far I can find no motive linking you together. If you know of anything of the kind you'd better tell me now." He looked at her sharply and must have seen in her face a complete denial, for he did not even pause. "If any of you knows of any suspicious circumstance, or anything at all which is an inaccuracy, a discrepancy as you see it, any time or anywhere, it is your duty to tell me. Now." He paused then. So long, indeed, that the waiting silence in the little cabin seemed freighted with things untold.
Yet there was nothing more that Marcia could tell him, except, of course, Mickey's real name and identity, and that had nothing to do with two murders, or with the attack upon Mickey and herself. She looked at Daisy Belle, whose fine-drawn face was lifted frankly and openly, but who also did not speak. She looked at Gili, who was equally still, but whose look suddenly to Marcia seemed secretive and listening. It was so strong an impression that she thought swiftly, why is she listening; what does she expect me or Daisy Belle to say? And then she knew.
Gili had accused Daisy Belle and Luther Cates of being Nazis. To Marcia, at least, it was an impossible story to accept. She thought that Mickey and Josh Morgan found it equally difficult to credit. Certainly all three of them had tried to persuade Gili to tell no one else; certainly, so far Gili had let herself be persuaded.
But suddenly that very acquiescence seemed, somehow, wrong. It was not like Gili. It did not fit what Marcia knew of her. It was as if something in a familiar picture had swung suddenly awry. And that thought brought her to another. Some time, not long ago (just before she'd walked down the stairs, wasn't it, and found Para?), something else had suddenly and obscurely seemed wrong. For a moment there had been that same curious and troubling sensation of something, some very small thing that was askew, that was again wrong. Whatever it was, it had eluded her. She could not pin it down and identify it.
She could, however, with Gili now. It would have fitted the picture of Gili if, under pressure of the investigation into murder, she had blurted out her accusation of the Cateses again. She did not do it and that was wrong. It was not so easy, though, to understand why.
The pause had lengthened. Captain Svendsen's bleached eyebrows were drawn heavily together. Major Williams was fidgeting nervously. Still no one spoke. Suddenly the Captain opened his straight-lipped mouth, closed it again with a snap, whirled around and walked out of the cabin without another word. Major Williams gave them a worried glance, mumbled something and disappeared behind the Captain. The door closed.
Daisy Belle reached for a cigarette. Gili stared at the floor. Marcia sat down slowly. She must be cool and calm, like Daisy Belle. But Daisy Belle hadn't seen what she had seen there in the fog under the stairs.
Well, she wouldn't think of that.
She wouldn't think of Gili.
But she must find a way to see Mickey.
After a long time Marcia decided also that she would not think of Josh Morgan and the way he had held her while she sat in the deck chair, in the fog, before he left her alone, and suddenly, unexpectedly, kissed her. So, for a queer short space in time, everything but his nearness, his mouth upon her own, was blotted out. She got up restlessly, walked to the port, stared into the fog, came back.