Five Passengers from Lisbon, page 3
Mickey said: “May I tell her, Captain?”
But Captain Svendsen’s hand remained firm until Marcia sat down. Then he replied shortly: “I will, Mr. Messac.” He resumed his own seat, and said: “Miss Colfax, did you know the third officer on the Lerida?”
“The third officer...” began Marcia, puzzled, looking to Mickey for enlightenment and Mickey said quickly: “Castiogne. I told them, of course, that you had never seen him before we got on the Portuguese ship....”
“Mr. Messac.” The Captain’s voice snapped out like a whiplash. He leaned forward. “I’m master of this ship, Mr. Messac. The responsibility for this is altogether mine.”
“You are making it unnecessarily hard for Miss Colfax,” said Mickey.
“Mickey, what is it? What is wrong?”
“Castiogne...” began Mickey, and the Captain said: “That is all, Mr. Messac. I’ll talk to Miss Colfax alone. Major...” He nodded toward the door. The slim young Major advanced imperturbably and opened it. Mickey said: “Oh, nonsense, I’m going to stay. Miss Colfax and I are to be married as soon as we get to America. I have a right to stay....”
“You have no right that supersedes mine on my ship, Mr. Messac,” said the Captain.
Mickey shrugged, started to speak, stopped, finally said: “I beg your pardon.”
The Captain leaned back in his chair. His thick, white eyebrows were drawn angrily together above his deep-set, shrewd eyes. “I’ve no objection to your remaining, Mr. Messac, if you’ll be so good as to keep quiet. Answer my question, please, Miss Colfax. Did you know Alfred Castiogne?”
She glanced at Mickey who was now staring at the rug, his hands linked behind his back as if to hide the deformity of tortured fingernails. She said: “He was on the lifeboat.”
“Did you know him before you left Lisbon?”
“No. To my knowledge, I had never seen him before.” Mickey made a movement of impatience and checked it. The Captain said: “You know, of course, exactly who was in the lifeboat?”
“Why, I—yes, of course. Myself and...” She started to say Mickey and sensed something very still and waiting about Mickey’s bent head and quickly substituted “and André. Mrs. Cates and her husband. Gili—that is, Gili Duvrey. This man, Alfred Castiogne. I think two seamen, but I don’t remember their faces and I don’t know their names. That’s all.”
“Who of them knew Castiogne best?”
“We were all passengers, that is, except the seamen.”
“Please answer my question.”
“But none of us knew him!” Suddenly she remembered Gili’s flirtation with the dark, garlicky third officer. Was that what he meant? But why? She said slowly: “I think Miss Duvrey saw something of him on the ship. We were only three days out when the storm struck. She couldn’t have known him well. If you’ll tell me, Captain Svendsen, why you are asking...”
The Captain leaned forward. “It is no secret, Miss Colfax. This third officer, this Alfred Castiogne, was murdered.”
It had no reality. She repeated, “Murdered...”almost politely, as if she had not heard it rightly.
“He was stabbed,” said the Captain slowly. “He died of hemorrhage from a knife wound in his back. Obviously...”
He frowned and said: “Obviously he was murdered in the lifeboat.”
It was very quiet. No one moved; for a second or two it was as if no one breathed; as if the word itself had a paralyzing effect. But that, thought Marcia strangely, finally, was the thing they had left behind. Murder and more murder. Violence, terror and betrayal; bombs and guns and knives and torture. Her hands were digging into the red arms of her chair. The young Major over by the door moved suddenly, got out a package of cigarettes, glanced at the Captain and shoved it back into his pocket. Mickey was staring silently again at the carpet, his hands knotted behind him. Mickey who had seen so much of the blood and horror of Nazism.
“But I don’t understand...” A small blurred memory of the night returned to her. She cried: “He was rowing! He was directing everybody. And a dead man floated past and he—Alfred Castiogne—looked at him. I saw it. He lifted the body from the water.”
“When was that?”
“I don’t know.” It was confused, horrible, all of it. She looked at Mickey for confirmation and Mickey was trying to tell her something. She could see it in the look he gave her; but what was it?
The Captain insisted. “When did that happen, Miss Colfax? Try to remember.”
“I don’t know. I can’t possibly say. But Castiogne was alive then.”
“You say you saw him lift the dead man from the water. It must have been light enough to see objects and movement. It must have been nearly dawn.”
She nodded, still aware that Mickey was trying to communicate some message without words, without motion, with only that steady yet somehow warning look in his clear gray eyes. She replied to Captain Svendsen: “Why, yes. Yes, I suppose so. I can’t remember much of it.”
“When did Castiogne collapse, then? How much later?”
She tore her gaze from Mickey’s urgent look and met the Captain’s intent, shrewd eyes. “I don’t know exactly. I believe that I noticed that he had collapsed about the time we sent up rockets.”
The Captain turned to Mickey. “Is that as you remember it?”
Mickey shrugged. “It’s as I told you. I remember thinking that he’d collapsed and somebody tried to revive him, one of the other seamen, I think. It was about the time we sighted your ship. But everything was very confused.”
The Captain looked again at Marcia.
“Miss Colfax, let me put a frank and pointblank question. It will save time and trouble for everybody if you’ll answer it frankly. Is there anything at all that you know or saw in that lifeboat which might have something to do with the murder of this man? Take your time. Try to remember.”
But there was nothing; she shook her head.
“Everything was terribly confused. Time didn’t mean anything. People moved about; we had to. But the only thing we thought of was the storm and the waves, and keeping the boat from being swamped. I cannot believe that he was murdered....”
Captain Svendsen interrupted. “Miss Colfax, I want you to tell me everything you can remember of the lifeboat; everything that happened....Don’t be in a hurry; take your time. Start with abandoning the ship. Who put you in the lifeboat? Who sat beside you? Who in front of you? What was said and done? Who saw the Magnolia first? Everything.”
“I didn’t know Castiogne was dead. I didn’t see anything....”
Captain Svendsen sighed; he had a deadly patience; it angered him to be obliged to draw upon it, but he never quibbled with necessity. He began: “Who sat nearest you?”
His patience, though, had few results, beyond the small details Marcia remembered from the night. Replying to his questions, she told how they had left the Lerida; how they had rowed and bailed and hung onto life; the way they had huddled in the boat. She had sat for the most part beside Mrs. Cates; but there had been moving about, change as the men changed places.
“After you sighted us?”
She thought back as one tries to pierce the convolutions of a long and shifting dream. “Yes. We hunted for rockets. Everybody seemed to shift and move about.”
“Castiogne, too?”
“I don’t remember.”
“But it was after that that he collapsed?”
She corrected him: “It was after that that I saw he had collapsed. One of the seamen tried to help him.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know their names. He was short and thick.”
“Go on.”
Go on? Well, what had happened then? They had sent up rockets. They had rowed and watched the waves and rowed and looked when they could, when they dared, when there was no curling black wave rising between, for the red glow that was the Magnolia. Somebody—Mrs. Cates, she thought—had said it was a hospital ship. She remembered being carried upward, aboard the Magnolia and the wild rocking of the lifeboat. That was all.
Again the sounds of the ship, the small sighs and creaks, the rush of distant water, the ticking of a clock on the long, solid table were the only sounds in the cabin. Mickey did not move; his eyes, as clear and gray as the sea, looked straight ahead. The young Major stood by the door, his face without expression, an unlighted cigarette now in his hand.
The Captain watched her thoughtfully. Finally he leaned back in his chair. “Your name is Marcia Colfax. Right? You claim to be a United States citizen?”
“I am an American citizen. My passport...”
“I have here.” He pulled open the deep drawer of the table beside him and then, as if he did not after all require to refresh his memory, closed it again. “You came to Lisbon from where?”
“From Marseilles.”
Captain Svendsen reached for a pipe which lay on an ash tray near him and began to fill it carefully, his great pink hand looking extraordinarily powerful. “How long had you been in Marseilles?”
“Since the first summer of the war.” The Captain’s thick, queerly bleached eyebrows seemed to await further explanation. He pushed and packed the tobacco in his pipe. Impelled by that waiting, Marcia went on, again giving the bare facts. “I had gone from New York to France, to Paris, the summer the war began. I stayed on in Paris that winter. Then when the Germans occupied Paris I went to the South of France. To a villa outside Marseilles, as a matter of fact.”
“You were there all that time?”
“Yes. Until about three weeks ago when I went to Lisbon.” He had filled the pipe now and was lighting it; he shot a shrewd glance at her over the small flame. “Where is your present home in the United States?”
She thought of home. It was a swift, flashing picture of the big old house with the wisteria and maples and sunshine across the hills beyond—a picture that had haunted her through those grim and troubled years. She thought of the pleasant, high apartment overlooking the park. She said: “Maryland and New York City.”
“Why didn’t you go directly to the United States? Why did you set out for Buenos Aires?”
“Because we could get passage to Buenos Aires; it would have meant waiting to get directly to the United States.”
“We?” said Captain Svendsen. “You mean yourself and Mr. Messac?”
Mickey said suddenly: “I’ve told you all this, Captain. We were going home to be married....”
Without replying, the Captain turned toward the table, wrote quickly on a memorandum pad, tore off the paper and held it toward Major Williams. “Thank you, Mr. Messac. I’ll not require your further presence,” said the Captain as the young Major took the paper, read the scribbled note briefly and turned toward the door. “Oh, Major, take Mr. Messac to the officers’ lounge, if you please. Or his own quarters, if he prefers it.”
“Yes, sir.” Major Williams paused, eyes on Mickey. Mickey, looking white again and strained, said: “But I’d like to stay, Captain, I’ll not interfere...”
“Please remain here, Miss Colfax.” The Captain nodded abruptly toward Major Williams, who waited for Mickey. “Very well,” said Mickey. He stopped beside Marcia. “Don’t let them upset you, Marcia. Castiogne was nothing to you and me. I promise you, darling, as sure as my name is André Messac that all our trouble is in the past. Forever.” He smiled, but his eyes were very clear and gray and intent. So she saw then what he’d been trying to tell her. She ought to have realized it when she first heard them address him as Mr. Messac.
He had been André Messac on the Portuguese ship; he was still using that name, the name on his passport, and wished her to do so. There was no time to consider the reasons. She said quickly, to show him that she understood: “Yes, André, I’ll see you when the Captain is finished.”
Mickey nodded, giving an almost imperceptible wink. Major Williams cleared his throat and Mickey turned to follow him. The door closed behind them both. Captain Svendsen leaned back in his chair again.
“I don’t think you have quite understood the situation, Miss Colfax,” he said. “There were only a handful of people in that lifeboat—you and André Messac, Gili Duvrey, two seamen, Mr. and Mrs. Luther Cates.” He paused and added on the same level tone as if merely checking another fact: “One of you murdered that man. Which one was it?”
3
She heard everything he said; she did not think beyond the incomprehensible fact of murder.
It is one thing to state a truth; it is another thing for the mind to accept it as truth. Or perhaps the mind accepts where understanding rejects. It wasn’t possible that during the horror of those hours in the lifeboat another horror had added itself quietly to the night, and that was murder. She rejected it and yet had to accept it as true.
After a moment, Marcia said slowly: “If he was murdered in the lifeboat, if there is no other possible explanation for his death...”
The Captain looked ahead, showing a hard, strong profile. After a moment, he said flatly: “He was murdered.”
“Well. Then I see, of course, that someone in the boat must have done it. But we were so preoccupied with a struggle for life, all of us, that it is hard for me to believe that anybody could have cared enough—to—to murder anybody.” Suddenly murder itself, the fact of murder, became tangible, as if it had a stealthy and furtive and horrible being. Then and there, in that cabin, so she moved uncomfortably, suddenly chilled and cold. Suddenly aware again of the slight motion and creaking of the ship.
But murder, if it had existed, was in the lifeboat, not the hospital ship. The seeds of that murder had been sown on the Portuguese ship. She said suddenly: “The two seamen...”
“Did you see either of them kill Alfred Castiogne?”
“No, no...”
“Why, then, do you imply that one of them killed a man? It is a grave charge, Miss Colfax.”
“I don’t know anything of the murder, Captain. It is very difficult for me to believe it; that is, to understand how it could have happened.”
The Captain rose abruptly, paced across the cabin and back again and stopped before her, looking down. “That part of it seems fairly obvious,” he said, his thick white eyebrows jutting out over his shrewd, sharp blue eyes. “Almost any one of the people in that boat could, I believe, have managed to stab Castiogne without being seen. You were all, as you say, confused, preoccupied, changing places when necessary, each aware mainly of his own danger and his own discomfort. If the murder occurred after you sighted the Magnolia, it is even easier to understand its being done without any of you seeing it, for you were all watching the Magnolia—nothing else. No, how it was done is easy; the question is who did it? Why did you mention the two seamen?”
“Because they knew him; they must have known him. There may have been some—oh, some grudge, some quarrel. The rest of us were passengers only.”
“In other words, you are deliberately blaming one or both of these men?”
“No, I didn’t say that.”
“Listen, Miss Colfax, every one of the passengers in that lifeboat has suggested that solution. It is so unanimous a belief on the part of the five of you that one might be inclined to think that you actually knew of the murder and mutually agreed to blame the seamen.”
“No, no, you are wrong. Don’t you see, Captain Svendsen, how confusing it is, how terribly shocking and...?”
He interrupted: “How long have you known the Cates couple?”
“I met them in Lisbon for the first time. That is, of course, I’d heard of them. I knew their name; everybody knows that, I suppose. They were always in the papers.”
“Where in Lisbon did you meet?”
“At the hotel, while we were waiting to get some sort of passage.”
“What about Gili Duvrey? How long have you known her?” “She was at the hotel, too. I saw her, here and there, in the cocktail lounge or the lobby. Then, when we reached the ship, we—Gili and Mrs. Cates and I—shared a cabin.”
“Do you know anything of her other than that?”
“No.”
The Captain lighted his pipe again, with slow deliberate puffs, watching her closely with those bright, shrewd blue eyes. Again incredulity caught at Marcia. She tried to see Gili, or Daisy Belle, or Luther, creeping forward in that lurching mad lifeboat, knife in hand, stabbing at the hunched figure of the third officer, but it was a picture which she simply could not summon up in her mind. All her instincts rejected it as completely and finally as if she had tried to fit herself into that fantastic picture. The Captain said suddenly: “Miss Colfax, look at that thumb.”
She saw with a start that he was holding out his great fist toward her, the thumb upward, wide and powerful. “There are hundreds of lives under that thumb,” he said, “all the time—lives in my care. I am responsible for the ship and every life upon her. I can marry people and bury people. And I can kill people if need be.”
He smoked for a moment and said simply: “I am the master of this ship. You and all those people from the lifeboat are now on this ship and under my care. I am particularly responsible because of the load I carry—sick and wounded men who have fought for America. For you, for me. It is my job now to see to them. I had to pick you up last night. I had to circle as I did, in case there were other lifeboats; I found none and continued my course. A short time after I picked you up the doctor who examined the body of Alfred Castiogne reported the murder to me. There are two things I can do; I can put you all under arrest and in confinement until we reach home. Or I can induce you to tell who murdered him. I don’t propose to let a murderer run at large on my ship. Do you understand me?”
His honesty, his force of character, something enormously solid and strong in the very way he sat, a thick blue bulk in the chair, and looked at her with those deep-set, steady eyes, compelled respect and a kind of liking. She said: “Yes, I think I do understand. But I...”
“You still cannot quite believe this man was murdered. Never mind that now. The point is the Magnolia is not a fast ship; it will be some time before we reach port. For the sake of my ship and of everybody concerned I want to settle this thing now. It is my duty.” He said it so simply that it was a mere statement of fact and thus convincing. “Now then”—he tapped the pipe against the ash tray, neatly and precisely—“why did you not return to America before now?”
