Five Passengers from Lisbon, page 19
And you knew, thought Marcia, that I had said I loved him and was to marry him. You could not strike me like that, through Mickey.
He would not look at her. He continued quickly, as if to cover any possibility of question on the part of the others. “Besides, it was a very serious charge I had to make. It was based on nothing but my own imaginings, really, and it was a charge that would stick to him all the rest of his life, and to his wife. So...” he shrugged and finished in a very impersonal and quiet tone. “So naturally I had to be sure that my suspicions had more than a grain of fact before I reported them.”
“You said you believed him to be a Nazi war criminal. Why?” asked the Captain.
Gili had not moved or spoken; neither had Daisy Belle and Luther. Yet it seemed to Marcia that, almost perceptibly, their tense stillness sharpened.
Josh said: “I think he was a war criminal because he was so frantically determined to escape Europe. I think he may have been used, possibly in some minor way by the Nazis. I think he was afraid of revenge—perhaps by someone in Germany whose relative he had injured; certainly he was afraid of being caught by the Americans.”
“But would the Germans have trusted him?” asked Luther suddenly. “Did you get any proof?”
Josh looked at Marcia. I’m afraid I’ve hurt you very much, Marcia. I’m afraid I’ve got to hurt you more,” he said, and turned to Gili. “Where is the cigarette case?”
She wasn’t going to answer. For a moment the decision, sullen and unmistakable, was in her face. Josh said: “We know you have it. It was Banet’s. Where is it?”
She still hesitated for a moment. Then, with a sulky gesture, she pulled the case from the pocket of her uniform. She said, half muttering, eyeing Josh: “I borrowed it. I—borrowed it....”
He took the thin gold case which flashed in the light. Again Marcia had a swift and fleeting memory of that case and dappled sunlight on a table and Mickey’s smiling, candid and terribly blank gray eyes.
Josh said to the Captain: “This case belonged to Michel Banet. How could an expensive trinket like this have been permitted to remain in the possession of a prisoner in a German concentration camp for five years?”
The Captain took the case in his hand and looked at it and said judicially: “Well, it couldn’t.” He looked at Marcia. “Did Banet own this before the war?”
“Yes.” Her voice was almost a whisper, as light as the soft autumn breeze in those bronzed chestnut trees in Paris. The Captain weighed the case in his hand. “No,” he said thoughtfully. “They wouldn’t have let a prisoner keep a trinket like this. But it’s not proof, you know,” he looked at Josh. “It’s not proof.”
Josh turned to Gili. “You knew him in Germany,” he said. “You came to Lisbon to wait for him. You were both getting out of Germany as fast as you could. But you couldn’t use German money. So you had to get money. You planned the whole deception with him....”
Gili had leaped to her feet and stood there, trembling and white and cried at the top of her voice, shrieking: “You are lying. That’s not true. They said a woman killed him. It was Marcia. She did it because she thought he loved me. We quarreled and she struck me. She was beside herself. And you”—she whirled around to Daisy Belle—“you saw it. You heard it. You know I’m telling the truth. She murdered him. Marcia murdered him! Mickey said it was a woman. Why don’t you arrest her?”
18
Curiously, it was almost in the very moment that Gili spoke—so wildly and yet with at least one ingredient of truth—that Marcia perceived a change which had taken place in the relationship between Josh and the two ship’s officers. Up to then there had been a definite feeling of confidence between them that, in some intangible yet perfectly marked way, was now gone.
But Josh was now on the other side of the fence. He was one of the suspects, she realized suddenly. He had wanted to kill Mickey. He had admitted that; he had admitted attacking him. So he was now suspect.
But then she was suspect, too. It was not credible. There is an innate faith in the power alone of truth to reveal itself which is like a protective shield.
It is also, however, a deceptive faith. She was not really frightened by Gili’s words or by that fact—again incomprehensible—that Mickey had said a woman shot him. But when she saw the long look that the Captain and Colonel Wells exchanged—and pointedly excluded Josh Morgan—she felt something very like fright.
If Mickey had spoken the truth, if a woman had shot him, then there were only herself and Gili and Daisy Belle who could conceivably have had a motive for doing so.
And immediately Daisy Belle came to Marcia’s defense. In doing so she naturally confirmed the portion of Gili’s accusation which was true, but it was her obvious design to defend Marcia. Without waiting for that long look between the two ship’s officers to turn into questions, she leaned forward, her hands linked tightly together. “Captain,” she said, “there was nothing about that so-called quarrel that was serious or that would give rise to murder. It was like a hysterical explosion between two schoolgirls and it stopped as quickly and easily as it arose. Nerves are unpredictable. It was...” She drew herself up. She was a dignified, poised and experienced woman disposing of a childish storm of temper. “It was nothing,” said Daisy Belle, calmly and impressively.
“She slapped me,” said Gili vindictively. “She attacked me. You saw her.”
Daisy Belle’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “You needed it,” she said to Gili.
The Captain looked at Marcia. “But you did quarrel? You did strike her? What did you quarrel about?”
Josh said suddenly: “I expect Mrs. Cates knows.”
Daisy Belle gave him a flicker of approval, and said quickly: “I do indeed.” Gili started to get up, angrily, and settled back again, eyes lambent and shining, face sullen. Daisy Belle continued: “I’ll tell you exactly. Gili said that this Banet person had only wanted money from Marcia and that”—her eyebrows lifted again—“and that Gili wouldn’t give him up. That I believe was the main theme of her declaration.”
“Did she say,” asked Captain Svendsen, sticking heavily to the point, “that she had known him anywhere else?”
Daisy Belle thought for an instant. “I’m not sure she said exactly that. It was a very strong implication. I mean the few days on the Lerida and the Magnolia could scarcely have given her the—well, proprietary rights she seemed to feel that she had.”
“But she didn’t definitely say how long or where she had known him?”
Gili had relaxed a little. The sullenness in her eyes was giving way to a gleam of triumph. Daisy Belle said: “I’ll try to tell you exactly. I may not be able to remember the words precisely. But she seemed very angry about something. She told Marcia that she could tell her anything she chose to tell, to account for having a cigarette case, that one, I suppose, and to account for having spoken to Mickey by name like that; calling him Mickey, I mean. I did not see the significance of that then and paid no attention to it. I couldn’t help, however, hearing the whole thing. She said she could tell Marcia anything she chose to tell her and that Marcia would believe it, owing, I suppose, to Marcia’s faith in André—that is, Banet. But that she—Gili—didn’t intend to, that he had only wanted money from Marcia and that now he was through with her. Or words to that effect.” She paused. “As I say, the implication is inescapable. There was no question in my mind but that Gili had known him for a long time and that she was accompanying him on this trip and making her position with regard to him known to Marcia.”
“What did you think of it?”
“What did I...” Daisy Belle gave him an astonished look. “I thought what was undoubtedly the truth. This Banet person had deceived Marcia. He had pretended not to know Gili beyond the casual acquaintance all of us had there in Lisbon and on the Lerida. He was using Marcia; and Gili, through jealousy or bad temper, told Marcia the truth. Perhaps she hoped to separate Marcia and Banet. Perhaps,” Daisy Belle shrugged and said, with a fine edge to her charming voice, “Perhaps Gili was afraid she was losing him. Certainly she could only have embarked upon that fervent little flirtation with Castiogne on the Lerida in the hope of arousing Banet’s possibly flagging interest in her.”
She paused very briefly and Gili started forward with a defiant and angry motion and then, as if she saw the bait barely in time, drew back with a sort of gasp and shut her lips tightly together. Daisy Belle said: “In any case, I felt perfectly certain that what Gili said was the truth. She knew all about him. Ask her...”
“I didn’t,” said Gili suddenly. “That is not true. I knew nothing of him. I—I said all that because I—I liked him. And I hate Marcia. She thought she owned him. Well, I—I said all that to tease her. To—yes, I liked him and I thought she might leave him alone. He didn’t love her. I could see that. I thought I might make a quarrel between them.” She looked around with short, sharp glances at everyone as if to test their credence and said: ‘That’s it exactly. Why not? A girl has to get along. I’ve nobody....”
“Why were you on the Lerida?” asked Josh.
“Why...?” She caught her breath, eyed him smolderingly for an instant and said: “Because I wanted to go to Buenos Aires, of course.”
“Why?”
“Because...” She bit her lip. Then with a flash of those shining green eyes she turned to the Captain. “I’ve done nothing. Marcia killed him. She was furious. She struck me. She went straight and stole the revolver and shot him. Mickey said it was a woman. And she had a motive. It was a...” She seemed to hunt in her mind and then flashed out triumphantly: “It was a crime of passion. That’s what. A crime of passion.” She gave a vigorous nod, so her long, streaked blonde hair fell over her face.
And Josh gave a short hard laugh. “You really are a fool, Gili,” he said. “You know the truth about Banet. Tell it for God’s sake, and save yourself.”
“I didn’t kill him. She did. And I have nothing more to say.”
Josh turned to Captain Svendsen. “This was not the first time she told Marcia all this. The first time, though, she was more specific. Marcia, tell them what she said to you.”
She thought it would be difficult to tell. It was not. She told the ugly little story quickly and as impersonally as if it happened to someone else. Gili had said about the same thing that Daisy Belle Cates had heard her say on the later occasion, except she was more specific. Marcia remembered the words too well. “She said that they wanted to leave Europe, that they had no money. That he came back to me in order to get money for both of them.”
“When was that?” asked Colonel Wells.
She told him, the first day they had been on the Magnolia. About noon. “And you believed her?”
“For a moment. Then I didn’t.”
“Did you question Banet about it?”
“After I thought about it, I could not believe it. Then I asked him about it, yes. He said it was not true.”
“And you believed him?”
She nodded. Suddenly she was drugged with weariness and shock. The motion of the ship, the lights, the white faces around her, beyond everything the knowledge of Mickey’s murder and of the things that Josh suspected of him seemed all of it to weigh together too heavily to be supported.
Perhaps everyone felt something like that. It was late and growing later. The Captain, however, gave it words.
He questioned Gili bluntly. It was a curious, dogged struggle between them and for the moment Gili won. “I’ve told you everything I know. Everything...”
“Was Banet a Nazi?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where did you know him?”
“In Lisbon. And on the Lerida. That’s all.”
“Why did you say he belonged to you?”
“I told you that.”
“But he was a Nazi?”
“I don’t know.” And then she added: “Ask her. Ask Marcia. She killed him.”
Colonel Wells said: “As Colonel Morgan points out, today is not the first time Miss Duvrey made her claims about Banet to Miss Colfax.”
Josh picked it up quickly. “So if Marcia had been going to shoot him, she’d have done it then. Not now.” He said it as if it were obvious, but he watched the Captain with, it seemed to Marcia, a too-well concealed anxiety. And the Captain said doubtfully: “Perhaps only today she was convinced.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get back to the bridge. The ship is as safe with my first officer as with me, but I’ve never left the bridge in a fog in my life before!” Anger crossed his face again. He looked at them and said shortly: “Well, on land there are police, and fingerprints and laboratories and all that. I’m no detective and no psychiatrist. I don’t know about clues. But...” he paused for an instant. His sheer physical strength and solidity was as impressive just then as the deep anger that was in his eyes. “But,” he added, “I am master of this ship. And I’ll see that whoever did this hangs. Whether Banet deserved it or not, it was murder; those two Portuguese were murdered. Urdiola is still locked up. I do not believe that there was any way for him to have escaped and murdered Banet.”
Colonel Wells interrupted. “I beg your pardon, Captain. The patient with the bandaged face. I inquired about him. He has an incontrovertible alibi for the whole day. Usually he’s a little hard to check on; that is, it seems that he has rather a habit of taking advantage of the sympathy everybody feels for him and wandering about the ship when and as he pleases. But except for his meals he spent the entire day in one of the wards playing bridge with three other boys. He went to mess with two of them who are also ambulatory. They’ll all swear to it. So he could not have gone to Miss Colfax’s cabin just before lunch and he could not have murdered Messac—that is, Banet. He is out as a suspect.”
“He was never in,” said the Captain bluntly again. “Now then, there’s something that you people may not know about a ship. I said I am no detective. I wouldn’t know what to do with a fingerprint if I had one. But on a ship, no matter what happens or when, some time, somewhere an eyewitness turns up. I have a long experience at sea. You can count on that as being true. So any information that any of you have intentionally or unintentionally concealed might just as well be given to me now. It will come sooner or later, some way.”
Oddly he actually seemed to feel the confidence that was in his words. It radiated strongly and rather terrifyingly from that solid, thick blue figure. He turned to leave the lounge and then turned back. “And I might add,” he said briefly, “that I have wirelessed home a full report together with an urgent request for all available information about every Lerida passenger I picked up. I did this the day we rescued you. I have already reported Banet’s real name and murder. I should very soon begin to receive any facts which the State Department or the F.B.I., or any other source is able to secure.”
He moved toward the door.
And Gili said: “Stop.”
She got out of the corner of the sofa in one motion it seemed and across the lounge to the Captain. “Will you promise me protection?”
“So you’re going to confess,” said the Captain.
“No, no!” She cried. “I have nothing to confess. I don’t know who murdered Castiogne or Para. I didn’t kill Mickey. But if you’ve wirelessed for information...” She stopped and sucked in her lower lip and, her eyes sullen but frightened, cried: “I didn’t mean to be a Nazi. I couldn’t help it. I had to be a Nazi to—to live!”
“That is what they all say,” said the Captain. “What about Banet? Hurry up. Tell me anything you know.”
Suddenly she was willing. Too willing—now that Mickey was dead, now that she believed they would know anyway as soon as the replies to the inquiries the Captain had sent out were received. Now that she had decided to throw herself on his mercy.
Mickey as André Messac probably would have been reasonably safe, at least for some time, from those inquiries; he would not have been safe as Michel Banet.
This emerged at once. She talked rapidly, loudly, repeating herself, disclaiming responsibility—a torrent of words so frankly designed to ingratiate herself by accusing Mickey that even Daisy Belle with her civilized tolerance for human frailty looked rather sickened. Gili told everything she knew, apparently, not once but many times.
Mickey had been a Nazi. He had turned Nazi immediately, and to convince his torturers of his sincerity had betrayed André Messac and others. Gili knew that. He had boasted of it in the early, egotistically triumphant days of the Nazis. Gradually he had worked into a position of some small eminence among them, in a branch of the Gestapo, as a matter of fact. His business was that of informer. Gradually the Nazis began to trust him. He was bitter about his hands, but apparently had no thought of revenge. Instead, he seized every opportunity to solidify his standing with the Nazis—probably he believed that if he had a future it lay now with them.
He was by no means a major war criminal. Still, he had achieved enough importance in a small way so, when the war was over, somebody was sure to inform the Americans, or at least so he feared, which amounted to the same thing. And his real name was known in America, perhaps not as well and familiarly as Mickey, with his artist’s naive egotism believed, but well enough to offer danger.
So he had to escape. He had to hide his identity. It was an added touch of cold cruelty that he really had got André’s passport from his mother, who believed Mickey, as Marcia had believed him.
And he had to have money.
“He made me come, too. He loved me,” said Gili, with even then a sidelong glance of triumph at Marcia.
