Murder in Pastiche Read online

  First published by Macmillan, 1954

  Copyright © 1954 by Marion Mainwaring

  Previously published by Macmillan, Victor Gollancz, Penguin, Pandora, Periwig, Collier, Rowan Tree, Hayakawa Shobo, Sven-Erik Berghs, Garzanti, and Rowohlt Verlag

  Cover design by Scott D. Mainwaring and Nathaniel R. Mainwaring

  Ship graphic based on “Ship” by Karen Arnold, www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=71693

  Background photograph “Blooming buzzing confusion” by Nathaniel R. Mainwaring

  This electronic edition produced by Scott D. Mainwaring, 2014

  In grateful appreciation of the nine masters of detective fiction without whom Murder in Pastiche would have been impossible—

  Miss Agatha Christie, Mr. Erle Stanley Gardner, Mr. Michael Innes, Miss Ngaio Marsh, Mr. Ellery Queen, Miss Dorothy Sayers, Mr. Mickey Spillane, Mr. Rex Stout, and Miss Patricia Wentworth—

  and in hopes that this reader’s trespass may be forgiven by them and by the millions of their other readers. And with thanks for assistance from A. D. Healey, Jr., 2nd Officer, U.S.M.M., and from several officers of the British Merchant Navy.

  Contents

  I

  Prelude in Liverpool

  Detectives

  Murder

  II

  Atlas Poireau

  Sir Jon. Nappleby

  Jerry Pason

  Broderick Tourneur

  Trajan Beare

  Miss Fan Sliver

  Spike Bludgeon

  Mallory King

  Lord Simon Quinsey

  III

  Explications

  Postlude in New York Harbor

  Prelude in Liverpool

  The Captain stroked his forked, wavy beard and gazed out over the foredeck of the R.M.S. Florabunda: his wild melancholy greenish eyes seemed to penetrate beyond the ship, beyond the oily waters of the canal, sullied with waste paper and scraps of food, to the Mersey, the Irish Sea, and the broad Atlantic.

  “We shall make the tide after all, Mr. Waggish,” he said.

  A piercing blast from the whistle prevented any answer. The First Officer, a lean man in his late thirties with dark hair, bright blue eyes, and a smooth tanned face, merely nodded.

  “And in seven days—” The Captain left this sentence unfinished.

  He sighed heavily and looked down at the sailing orders he was holding:

  RMS Florabunda, Liverpool (Dock 4-b) Oct. 3, 195—

  Due New York (Ruggarty Pier) Oct. 10, do.

  A ruddy, yellow-haired young man with a Purser’s stripes on his sleeve appeared and held out a sheaf of papers. “The schedule, sir. Passengers all present and accounted for.”

  The Captain glared at the papers as if they were unclean. With a prolonged snort, rather like the whistle on a smaller scale, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the wheelhouse.

  The Purser shrugged and handed the papers to Mr. Waggish.

  A chubby man with red and gold stripes on his sleeve, the ship’s Doctor, came in from the boat deck where he had been smoking his pipe and watching the last stages of cargo-loading. “How is the Skipper, anyway?” he asked idly; the Doctor was just returned from three weeks’ leave.

  “Same as ever, I should say,” the First Officer replied indifferently, running his eye down the passenger list. “Wouldn’t you say, Tom?”

  “No change,” agreed the Purser. Glancing sidelong at the First Officer, he inquired with the caution of one who performs a necessary but slightly perilous social obligation: “Had you a good holiday, Doctor?”

  The Doctor’s pudgy face lighted up. “Oh, aye,” he said eagerly. “Very fine, thank you. Very successful. My fifth canto is nearly completed. Ah, there’s a magnificent bit towards the end.” Taking his pipe from his mouth, he declaimed:

  “As when the fierce Hyrcanian Tiger greedy for his prey

  Deep-crouchèd in his jungle lair doth milky lambs waylay—”

  “Oh, damn’ good,” said the Purser loudly. “Yes. Damn’ good. What—” But his words were lost in the flow of the Doctor’s recitation:

  “As when the vengeful Lion Wild with elemental rage

  Doth Elephant or Crocodile in gory duel engage—

  As when the savage ebon Pard at sight of foe

  Doth pounce upon the Billy-goat, or tender Buffalo—

  So Tipptop with his flashing sword at Saracino came,

  His wrongs t’avenge, and publicize the fair Gazella’s name!”

  The Doctor delivered this remarkable passage with his eyes closed, making little jabbing motions with his pipe; as his ardor grew, so did his Tyneside accent. “You must hear it all,” he said. “Perhaps this trip you’ll have time.” He looked at the Purser wistfully: his last suggestion appeared to be based on optimism rather than experience.

  “Oh, definitely, one day, if only there’s time,” the Purser said politely. “Or the First will listen to you; he’s more of a literary bloke than I am, you know. Eh, Waggish?”

  The First Officer did not answer; he was still scanning the schedule.

  “Some promising material,” the Purser observed, nodding towards the list of passengers. “There’s a Yankee blonde who looks like a film actress. There’s a very pretty little dark-haired girl. There’s a number of real celebrities—”

  “Good heavens!” Mr. Waggish interrupted. His eyes were round in his dark, suave face. “Look here!”

  The others followed his finger down the columns of names; it tapped nine times.

  “Aye?” The Doctor’s face was blank.

  “Look, you clot!” said the First Officer vehemently. He pointed to the names again.

  “I thought you’d be interested,” said the Purser.

  “Some of them do sound familiar.” The Doctor spoke rather doubtfully “Isn’t that Lord Simon Quinsey the famous detective—”

  “Familiar! And you call yourself a literary man!” began the First Officer, with some scorn; but before he could continue, he started and looked at his watch. “I shall be late,” he said. Tossing the papers back to the Purser, he hurried off toward the bow.

  The names he had indicated were:

  Mr. Trajan Beare

  Mr. Spike Bludgeon

  Mr. Mallory King

  Sir Jon. Nappleby

  Mr. Jerry Pason

  M. Atlas Poireau

  Lord Simon Quinsey

  Miss Fan Sliver

  Mr. Broderick Tourneur

  Twenty minutes later the Florabunda, with one prolonged blast from her whistle and then three shorter ones, was under way.

  Detectives

  SIR JON. NAPPLEBY shifted his gaze. the fog sadly wanted individuality. Whereas the man who leaned against the rail some six feet astern, frowning gloomily over Nappleby’s head into the monotonous brume which was all a sulky Atlantic afforded the eye, was distinctly out of the ordinary. Even, Nappleby thought (permitting himself a scrutiny discreetly veiled by vacuity of expression), fantastic. A lusus naturae.

  The head, regrettably pyramidical, suggested some previous quasi-geological catastrophe in the course of which the brains had slidden sluggishly down into the jowls and the skull collapsed in order to prevent that vacuum so distasteful to Nature. A smaller pyramid was unimaginatively attached to the spot normally occupied by noses; the eyes and mouth were such triangular gashes as children make in Jack o’Lanterns. Just such a head, Nappleby thought, might some Cubist Frankenstein have manufactured from stray conic chunks of flesh, and poised it thus on an inverted pyramidal trunk. Or, the devotees of certain purveyors of “science fiction” might have seen in this being the forerunner of an extraplanetary invasion: an ambassador from the inhabitants of Mars or of the moist and radiant Venus;
the glass of fashion and the mould of form for a populace cuneiform, triquetrous, bald.

  But, Nappleby reasoned more soberly, this was no Martian, but a fellow passenger. An American, by his clothing; a rich one, by— By what sign? One did not achieve greatness in Scotland Yard (where Nappleby was Assistant Commissioner) and retain any naїve and obsolete belief that mere transatlantic cadences, bulk, and assurance denote wealth. Yet something persuaded Nappleby that it was a millionaire who shared his vigil—but a millionaire not wholly at his ease: disturbed, indeed, by battering waves from the depth of some pyramidical despair.

  Nappleby sighed. He had looked too long at his fellow voyager. The triangular man had observed his interest—was approaching. An acquaintanceship—in the very precincts of the foghorn, which even now let out a loud and tremolant wail—was about to be struck.

  “—Paul Pry!”

  “I beg your pardon?” Nappleby was uncertain. Admittedly his speculations had transgressed the complimentary; but surely their course had not been visible? An instant’s reflection informed him, however, that the intonations had been those of inquiry rather than arraignment; and, in fact, the triangular lineaments were now being disposed in a pattern presumably intended to ingratiate.

  The fog-blast vanished with an upward twist.

  “Mr. Paul Price?”

  “Oh. No.” Nappleby shook his head.

  “Oh.” His interlocutor appeared to have lost all interest.

  “My name’s Price.” A third man emerged from the fog, which was now swathing even the promenade deck.

  “Mr. Price!” The pyramids swung about on their axis.

  Nappleby considered the newcomer. Here, at least, one need not resort for similitude to realms of geometry or the pseudoscientific. Here the most inveterate abstractionist must defer to the banal but insistent claim of the animal kingdom, and grant the deplorable resemblance of this Price to the common rat, Rattus norvegicus—or rather, one deduced from the voice and, again, the clothing—americanus.

  “Mr. Price!” The pyramidical millionaire had evidently no prejudice against the rodentine. Propitiation was becoming servility; the blubbery jowls quivered and flapped in frantic desire to oblige. “I’m Anderson. Homer T. Anderson. I’ve been hoping to meet you on board, Mr. Price—”

  They walked away. The foghorn blew again, dispiritedly. Nappleby returned to contemplation of vaporous inanity. In this intrigue, if intrigue it were, he would not be involved. He would hope for a peaceful voyage, free from plots.

  Nappleby sighed.

  So few of his voyages had been that.

    

  JERRY PASON said cheerfully: “Well, it won’t be long now, Stella. One more week, and we’ll be back in the good old U.S.A.”

  Stella Deet, Pason’s attractive secretary, nodded. They stood looking into the fog from the promenade deck of the R.M.S. Florabunda.

  “You certainly got a lot done in England, Chief,” she said. “No one but you could have handled that case so well!”

  “I had to do it well,” Pason said, “when they sent to Los Angeles for me all the way from Peckham, England! But this trip home will be a holiday.”

  “You need a rest, Chief,” Stella Deet said tenderly.

  “Shucks,” the lawyer said, grinning, “I don’t know what a rest is, Stella. I—”

  “I wonder who that officer is,” Stella Deet said as a man went past.

  “The ship’s Doctor,” Pason told her. “He is a great poet.”

  “Gosh, Chief,” said Stella Deet. She looked at him with wistful admiration. “How can you tell these things just by looking?”

  Pason smiled. “Practice accounts for it in part,” he told her. “And concentration. But this time I had help. I know from the kind and number of stripes on his sleeve that he is the Doctor, and my cabin steward told me the rest. I—” He broke off.

  “What is it?” Stella Deet asked quickly.

  “Don’t turn around,” Pason told her, tensely. “But I’m curious about a man who’s walking towards us. I have a feeling I’ve seen him before, or possibly seen his photograph.”

  Stella Deet opened her handbag, whipped out a vanity case, and held it up to powder her nose. In the mirror she watched a small, ratlike man who was coming along the deck in their direction.

  “I don’t know, Chief,” she said in a quick, low voice. “But I think I’ve seen his picture somewhere.”

  “Someone else is interested in him too,” the lawyer said.

  A large man with a cone-shaped head hurried up behind the small, ratlike man. He said, panting a little, “Do you mind if I walk along with you again, Mr. Price?”

  The small, ratlike man shrugged. “The deck’s free,” he said.

  They disappeared from sight.

  “Now I know who he is,” the lawyer said. “He’s Paul Price.”

  “The columnist?” asked Stella Deet.

  “Yes,” said the lawyer. “I remember hearing he was on his way back to New York.”

  “And do you know who the other man is?” Stella Deet asked.

  “No,” Pason said. “But he certainly seemed anxious to talk to Paul Price. I wonder—”

  “Why,” Stella Deet asked, “do you think there’s anything fishy about it, Chief?”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Pason told her. “Iust a hunch, that’s all. Price has a bad reputation. I wouldn’t be surprised if there should be some kind of trouble ahead.”

    

  MISS FAN SLIVER looked about her cabin contentedly. Surprisingly large, really, and most comfortable. At first, perhaps, it had seemed a trifle stark. But she had spread her travelling rug, with its cheery stripes, over the berth, and had hung on the walls small colored prints of “Bubbles,” “Cherry-Ripe,” and “The Black Brunswicker.” She could not, of course, hope to have many of her photographs about her on a sea voyage, but thirty or forty were placed here and there on the desk and on the little chest of drawers, where her Bible also reposed; and, all in all, the cabin now seemed almost homelike.

  Miss Sliver, like her prints, was a little old-fashioned in appearance. Her mousy hair was fringed in the fashion set by Queen Alexandra. She wore a pink, grey, and orange merino dress, fastened at the throat by a large cameo brooch with the head of Minerva in intaglio. Over the dress she wore a black coatee. Her stockings were of wool.

  Miss Sliver was deeply grateful to Providence for this opportunity to travel. An unexpected legacy took care of the passage, and a young American whose life she had once saved insisted, positively insisted, upon entertaining her in New York; so she need not be kept at home by the currency restrictions which made travel so very difficult for most Britons. And now she could enjoy the voyage itself! One was certain to meet delightful people, from various backgrounds and with varied experiences; really it would be something to look back on for the rest of one’s life.

  Miss Sliver gathered up her knitting and opened her door. She hesitated for a moment with her hand still on the knob. A man stood with his back towards her. There was something furtive in his attitude. He was very evidently trying to see what was going on inside the next cabin.

  Miss Sliver gave a dry little cough.

  The man turned round sharply. Miss Sliver recognized him. The stewardess had pointed him out as a famous American gossip columnist, a Mr. Price. He did not seem to mind Miss Sliver’s having seen him, but brushed by her with a cold, indifferent stare from beady eyes.

  Miss Sliver was not offended. Her appearance had too often stood her in good stead. Mr. Price might have been startled to know just how many malefactors had been foiled by that dowdy, prim, insignificant air which had led him to disregard her.

  An elderly woman came out of the cabin he had been peering into—a redoubtable woman with heavy iron-grey eyebrows and elaborately waved hair of a lighter grey. Miss Sliver felt a stir of curiosity. This passenger, also, was known to her by name. What interest could a gossip-monger have in the Honorable Mrs
. Chip- Ebberly?

  Miss Sliver checked herself firmly. She was not engaged upon a case. As private gentlewoman, she must not be inquisitive. Gripping her knitting-bag, she made her way carefully, noting the various turns and stairways (so easy to become lost!), towards the Lounge.

    

  (FROM THE MEMOIRS OF SPIKE BLUDGEON)

  The steward put his head in my door and asked, “Did you ring, sir?”

  “I’ve been ringing for the last five minutes,” I told him. I said it coldly, because I was pretty tired of waiting. Five minutes are a long wait when you want a drink the way I did.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t hear you before,” he said.

  “If you’re not sorry now, you’re going to be,” I told him. I reached out and grabbed him by the arm. I dug my fingers in till I felt bone. His tray clattered to deck, and a surprised look came over his face. A little muscle in his cheek gave a twitch. You could tell he was yellow.

  “Next time, come when I ring,” I told him. Still gripping him with one hand, I jammed the other into his gut just above the navel, nice and hard, and followed up with a slap across the face. You could hear two or three teeth crack.

  His eyes shut. He sank down and slid through the doorway and across the passageway with the rolling of the ship.

  I stepped out into the passage after him. Five or six fluffs were peeking out their cabin doors. They looked at me like I was God. I could tell what they wanted, but I wasn’t in the mood.

  A man’s voice behind me said, “Nice work!”

  I whirled to face him. It was Paul Price.

  “The service on this tub is too damned slow,” he said. “Maybe that will help things a bit, speed them up. You must be Spike Bludgeon?”

  “That’s me, Mr. Price,” I said.

  “I’d like a little talk with you,” he said. “Maybe we can work a trade. I’ve been thinking of running a story about you in my column. Spike Bludgeon—great detective, great lover.”

  “Yeah?” I was pleased. My guts felt warm. A man likes recognition, and when it comes from a world-famous guy like Price …