“That’s a possibility, of course.”
“Probability, more like. What about the other half, then?”
“When I left for Portsmouth this morning, it hadn’t been found.”
“There you are!”
“But if all the others have kept their embarkation notices—”
“Why should they?”
“May we tackle that one a bit later? Now, the body was found by the P.C. on that beat five minutes before you sailed. He’s a good chap and kept his head admirably, it seems, but he couldn’t do anything about boarding you. You’d sailed. As he talked to me on the deck telephone he saw your funnel slip past into the fog. A party of us from the Yard went down and did the usual things. We got in touch with your company, who were hellishly anxious that your sailing shouldn’t be delayed.”
“I’ll be bound!” Captain Bannerman ejaculated.
“…And my bosses came to the conclusion that we hadn’t got enough evidence to justify our keeping you back while we held a full-scale enquiry in the ship.”
“My Gawd!”
“So it was decided that I should sail with you and hold it, as well as I can, under the counter.”
“And what say,” Captain Bannerman asked slowly and without any particular signs of bad temper, “what say I won’t have it? There you are! How about that?”
“Well,” Alleyn said, “I hope you don’t cut up rough in that particular direction and I’m sure you won’t. But suppose you did and suppose I took it quietly, which, by the way, I wouldn’t, the odds are you’d have another corpse on your hands before you made your next landfall.”
Captain Bannerman leaned forward, still keeping his palms on his knees, until his face was within a few inches of Alleyn’s. His eyes were of that piercing, incredible blue that landsmen so correctly associate with sailors, and his face was the colour of old bricks.
“Do you mean,” he asked furiously, “to tell me you think this chap’s not had enoof to satisfy him for the voyage?”
“So far,” Alleyn said, “he’s been operating at ten-day intervals. That’ll carry him, won’t it, to somewhere between Las Palmas and Cape Town?”
“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe he’s aboard.”
“Don’t you?”
“What sort of a chap is he? Tell me that.”
Alleyn said, “You tell me. You’ve got just as good a chance of being right.”
“Me!”
“You or anyone else. May I smoke?”
“Here—” the captain began and reached for a cigarette box.
“A pipe, if you don’t mind.” Alleyn pulled it out and as he talked, filled it. “These cases,” he said, “are the worst of the lot from our point of view. We can pick a card-sharp or a conman or a sneak-thief or a gunman or a dozen other bad lots by certain mannerisms and tricks of behaviour. They develop occupational habits and they generally keep company with their own kind. But not the man who, having never before been in trouble with the police, begins, perhaps latish in life, to strangle women at ten-day intervals and leave flowers on their faces. He’s a job for the psychiatrist if ever there was one, and he doesn’t go in for psychiatry. He’s merely an example. But of what? The result of bad housing conditions or a possessive mother or a kick on the head at football or a bullying schoolmaster or a series of regrettable grandparents? Again, your guess is as good as mine. He is. He exists. He may behave with perfect propriety in every possible aspect of his life but this one. He may be, and often is, a colourless little fellow who trots to and fro upon his lawful occasions for, say, fifty years, seven months and a day. On the day after that he trots out and becomes a murderer. Probably there have been certain eccentricities of behaviour which he’s been at great pains to conceal and which have suddenly become inadequate. Whatever compulsion it is that hounds him into his appointed crime, it now takes over. He lets go and becomes a monster.”
“Ah!” Captain Bannerman said. “A monster. There’s unnatural things turn up where you’d least expect to find them in most human souls. That I will agree to. But not in my ship.”
The two men looked at each other, and Alleyn’s heart sank. He knew pigheadedness when he met it.
The ship’s engines, now at full speed, drove her, outward bound, upon her course. There was no more fog; a sunny seascape accepted her as its accident. Her wake opened obediently behind her and the rhythm of her normal progress established itself. England was left behind and the Farewell, sailing on her lawful occasions, set her course for Las Palmas.
“What,” Captain Bannerman asked, “do you want me to do? The thing’s flat-out ridiculous, but let’s hear what you want. I can’t say fairer than that, can I? Come on.”
“No,” Alleyn agreed, “that’s fair enough and more than I bargained for. First of all, perhaps I ought to tell you what I don’t want. Particularly, I don’t want to be known for what I am.”
“Is that so?”
“I gather that supercargoes are a bit out-of-date, so I’d better not be a supercargo. Could I be an employee of the company going out to their Durban office?”
Captain Bannerman stared fixedly at him and then said, “It’d have to be something very senior.”
“Why? On account of age?”
“It’s nothing to do with age. Or looks. Or rather,” Captain Bannerman amended, “it’s the general effect.”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite—”
“You don’t look ill, either. Voyage before last, outward bound, we carried a second cousin of the managing director’s. Getting over d.t.’s, he was, after taking one of these cures. You’re not a bit like him. You’re not a bit like a detective, either, if it comes to that,” Captain Bannerman added resentfully.
“I’m sorry.”
“Have you always been a ’tec?”
“Not absolutely.”
“I know,” Captain Bannerman said, “leave it to me. You’re a cousin of the chairman and you’re going out to Canberra via Durban to one of these legations or something. There’s all sorts of funny jobs going in Canberra. Anybody’ll believe anything, almost.”
“Will they?”
“It’s a fact.”
“Fair enough. Who is your chairman?”
“Sir Graeme Harmond.”
“Do you mean a little fat man with pop eyes and a stutter?”
“Well,” said Captain Bannerman, staring at Alleyn, “if you care to put it that way.”
“I know him.”
“You don’t tell me!”
“He’ll do.”
“Do!”
“I’d better not use my own name. There’s been something in the papers. How about C. J. Roderick?”
“Roderick?”
“It happens to be the first chunk of my own name, but it’s never appeared in print. When you do this sort of thing you answer more readily to a name you’re used to.” He thought for a moment. “No,” he said. “Let’s play safer and make it Broderick.”
“Wasn’t your picture in last night’s Herald?”
“Was it? Hell!”
“Wait a bit.”
The captain went into his stateroom and came back with a copy of the paper that had so intrigued Mr. Cuddy. He folded it back at the snapshot of piquant Beryl Cohen and Superintendent R. Alleyn (inset).
“Is that like me?” Alleyn said.
“No.”
“Good.”
“There may be a very slight resemblance. It looks as if your mouth was full.”
“It was.”
“I see,” said Captain Bannerman heavily.
“We’ll have to risk it.”
“I suppose you’ll want to keep very much to yourself?”
“On the contrary. I want to mix as much as possible with the passengers.”
“Why?”
Alleyn waited for a moment and then asked, “Have you got a good memory for dates?”