Five Passengers from Lisbon, page 9
There was a feeling of sudden stillness in the cabin. He knocked again, more firmly. There was the sound of quick movement and Mickey opened the door. He was still in the uniform that had been loaned him; there was a white gauze dressing across his temple.
“Marcia!” He gave a surprised glance at Josh Morgan and said: “Come in...” and stood aside so they could enter. Gili was sitting on the bunk opposite, perfectly composed, her long, beautiful legs crossed, her slanting green eyes bright and curious.
“I expect you don’t remember me,” said Josh Morgan to Mickey. “You were in a pretty dazed condition. The doctor and I helped you to the dispensary.”
“Oh, of course, Colonel Morgan. The doctor told me.” Mickey closed the door. “Gili—Miss Duvrey, Colonel Morgan.”
Gili’s eyes were suddenly very luminous and warm. She tossed back a lock of her long golden hair and smiled slowly and leaned forward to put her hand in Colonel Morgan’s. He said rather briskly: “How do you do,” and let go her hand. “Did Major Strong fix you up, Messac?” he inquired of Mickey. “He was just starting to work on you when I left.”
Mickey’s scarred fingers touched the dressing on his face. “Oh, yes, I’m okay. I’ve only got a thumping headache. Stupid of me! I was looking for you, Marcia. I got back to the deck where I’d left you. The Captain was busy and I couldn’t bother him just then so I wasn’t gone very long, really. You weren’t there and...Do sit down. Here’s a chair.”
“There’s room here. Sit by me, Colonel Morgan,” said Gili. She put her large white hand invitingly on the bunk beside her.
“Thanks,” Josh Morgan sat down, leaning forward, below the upper bunk. Marcia took the chair Mickey had pulled out. She said: “I had walked around to the port side. I met Colonel Morgan and we talked a while. Then I came back and you weren’t there. After a few minutes I walked aft and found you.”
“I don’t see how I could give myself such a knockout blow. I certainly wasn’t tight,” said Mickey with a shrug. “It’s as if somebody hit me.”
The ceiling light cast a white illumination directly down upon them, so every face and every detail was very clear and sharp. Gili seemed to have moved imperceptibly nearer Josh Morgan. Her shoulder almost touched his. She was sitting crouched forward a little too, to miss the upper bunk, but relaxed and graceful with her long legs stretched out, and one hand spread out on the bunk backward so as to support her. She had loosened her hair from its heavy knot and it fell now over her shoulders, bright gold at the ends and darker along the part. Her eyes were not made up as usual but were brilliant and green and her mouth crimson. The severe neatness of the nurse’s uniform that she was wearing seemed foreign to her, as if she were dressed for a masquerade. She was at ease, yet, as always with Gili, there was a suggestion of latent power, of muscles able to spring at an instant’s notice, as with a slumberous cat. She was watching now and listening—and shifted just then, gracefully and deliberately, and a little nearer Josh Morgan.
The officer under that strong, downward light looked rather white and ill. His mouth was tight, with a curious look of tension and his gray-blue eyes rather narrow and dark. He shifted his own position, only perceptibly, appearing to move in order to give his arm, supported by its sling, more comfort. The move was, however, a little away from Gili. Marcia thought quite sharply and unexpectedly, some time I’m going to slap Gili—which was an absurd thing to think; a fleeting, childish bit of irritation, altogether silly. Josh Morgan eased his arm again, his shoulders looking very wide and solid under that crimson bathrobe, his hair very black and curling upward a little over his ears. He said to Mickey: “Did anybody hit you?”
Mickey’s face, too, was too brightly illumined. It showed the sharp lines those years had brought, the hollows around his gray eyes. He went to sit on the edge of the opposite bunk and said, slowly: “I don’t know. I was walking along the deck....I just suddenly knew I was falling, that I’d hit my head, that everything was black and confused and—that’s all.” “Didn’t you see anybody?”
Mickey shook his head. “I tell you there was nothing.” He brooded for a moment and said: “I fainted once or twice. Maybe more. I mean while I was in prison.” His words and voice were matter of fact and even. His hands, as if they had a secret frightened life of their own, went out of sight, behind him, holding to the mattress. “Everybody did, from various reasons. That’s in the past. But that’s the way it seemed to me there on deck tonight. I simply blanked out. But it was with a kind of crash. I suppose that’s when I hit my head against the bulkhead. That is, understand me, I’m not sick. I’m perfectly well. But it was like that.”
Gili said: “Don’t, André. Don’t think of those horrible things. They are gone.” Her voice was warm and full of life and strength and yet was casual as if she had bestowed a pat to a wounded dog.
Marcia linked her own hands on her knee and said steadily: “André, there was someone on the deck.”
Josh Morgan cut in: “Miss Colfax had rather a bad experience, Messac. She came inside to get help and then decided to return to you, and on her way around the deck she either crashed into something there in the darkness or there was someone on deck who seems to have tried to—well, to push her overboard.”
Gili sat up and gave a queer, small scream and clapped her hand over her mouth. Mickey jumped up and stared down at Marcia. “What happened? Who was it? Marcia, tell me...” He put his hand hard on her shoulder. His face was white and drawn.
Josh Morgan said quickly: “Oh, she’s all right. The doctor looked her over. But it was rather a shock. The point is, Messac, if somebody tried to kill her, it was somebody from the lifeboat. At least...” He paused while Mickey’s white face blazed down at her, and his hand dug into her shoulder and Gili sat there with her hand tight over her mouth and her eyes wide and dark as a cat’s shining over it. Then Josh Morgan said: “At least nobody else on the ship could have done it. Nobody else on the ship would have a motive. Or so the Captain says.”
Gili slid out of the bunk in one long sinuous movement. Her face was glistening queerly and so white that it had a greenish tinge around the shadows of mouth and nose. Her eyes were blank and bright. She cried jerkily: “It is the murderer. None of us is safe! None of...He was killed. Alfred. He was big and strong and—then he was killed. Just like that. In a moment—under our eyes, he was killed. We are not safe. We...” Her eyes darted around and around the cabin, her head moved to and fro like a panther’s seeking a way out of its cage. A horrible kind of claustrophobia seemed to possess her. She cried, still gasping and hoarse: “I know who killed him. I know why...”
Josh Morgan rose suddenly, and André said: “Gili, what are you saying? What do you know?”
“What do I...?” Gili’s searching, bright eyes reached him and stopped and she caught her full lower lip in strong white teeth and held it so hard there was a tiny smudge of blood suddenly upon it. Josh Morgan said: “Go on. Who killed him?”
Gili still staring, let go her lip slowly. “That—that American woman did it. The Cates woman. She—she was afraid of him. She was a friend of the Nazis. Alfred knew it. She’s rich. He’d have got money from her. She killed him.”
8
The little cabin was perfectly silent, so again the ship made itself manifest and throbbed and pulsed around them. Humans might talk, might move and speak of murder, but the Magnolia had to go sturdily on her way, nosing along through the fog, meeting the heavy, rolling sea.
Josh Morgan stirred suddenly. “You’d better explain that, Miss Duvrey. What do you mean?”
Gili whirled around toward him. She shot one bright, cornered look at Marcia. Her long, strong hands doubled up as if they were claws, as if she might have to defend herself. She tightened her full lips stubbornly, shot another glance at Josh Morgan and said: “I won’t talk. I didn’t mean to talk. You can see for yourself it is dangerous. Murder...”
Josh Morgan said coolly: “Oh, come now, Miss Duvrey. You’ll have to explain all this to the Captain. You may as well tell us.”
This time those lambent eyes flashed green and frightened fire. “Do you mean you’ll tell him?”
Josh Morgan shrugged. “You can’t just make statements like that and let it go. You’ll have to take it back or explain what you mean. Why did you say that the Cateses were friends of the Nazis? How do you know?”
“Because”—she eyed him sulkily now—“because they were. And he knew it. Alfred Castiogne.”
“How did he know?”
Mickey’s hand released Marcia’s shoulder. He gave a kind of weary sigh and went back to sit on the edge of the bunk. “Don’t talk nonsense, Gili,” he said. “Don’t invent. Don’t embroider.”
Gili spoke English with such ease and fluency that you felt she must have lived in continental hotels all her life. Yet once in a while Marcia had already discovered, some colloquialism, some idiom or metaphor baffled her. She turned a puzzled look toward Mickey. “Embroider?”
“Tell the truth,” said Josh Morgan.
Her green, lustrous eyes slid toward him. “Oh, well, but naturally. I’ll tell you exactly how I know.” She stopped, bit her lip again, but this time in a perplexed way as if arranging certain events in her own mind and choosing her words. Then she shot another veiled glance at Josh Morgan and said: “I was with him. With Alfred, I mean. We heard them talking. It was on the other ship.” She bit her lip again and looked at the floor. “It was at night.”
The light was bright and too clear directly above her, so the lines on her face were deeply etched and she seemed older and her skin shone with faint, sudden dampness. Marcia knew that Mickey’s hands again had gone behind him. It was a mannerism, one of many sad and dreadful souvenirs that were like scars and that gradually she must heal. Gili said: “If you must know, we were sitting in a lifeboat! They didn’t know that we were there; they thought themselves alone.”
Mickey said impatiently: “You’ve told nobody about this before now....”
Her green eyes flashed his way.
“But I...”she began, and Mickey said less sharply: “This is a very serious accusation. You don’t realize how serious. If I were you, I’d keep it to myself.”
“But...” she began again, explosively, and then checked herself. “Perhaps you are right,” she said unexpectedly. “Yes, I’m sure—but it can do no harm. I mean if they are Nazis...”
“They?” said Josh Morgan.
“The Cates two. The husband and wife. They were talking.” Her voice sounded reluctant. Josh Morgan said abruptly: “Having told us this much, you’ll have to go on. What exactly did they say?”
She shot him a sullen look. “They—oh, they talked.”
“What about?” His voice was easy, his eyes inexorable.
Gili looked at her hands. “They—well, they said at last they were on a ship. One said to Buenos Aires. The other said, yes, and they might better stay there forever than return to America—they meant to the United States.”
As she talked, staring down at her hands, either her seeming reluctance to tell the little story diminished, or her inventiveness speeded up. She went on more rapidly and with a certain defiance: “Then she said, but there was nothing else for her to do. She said what was money, what was anything. Then he said, quite clearly, you understand, there was no mistake about it—he said, but we were actually collaborationists; we were friends of the Nazis; nobody will ever forget it. We can never go home. And after a long time she said in a quiet voice, it didn’t sound like her, it sounded as if she had”—Gili fumbled for words—“as if she had a plan, as if she wanted to persuade him, she said, oh, so softly, No one need ever know!” She stopped and examined one thick fingernail closely.
There was another silence. Mickey’s face was a mask, white and stiff. His eyes lifted to Gili’s face as clear and deep as the sea. Josh Morgan, seeming very tall and big and solid in the crimson bathrobe, said suddenly: “Did they say anything else?”
“No. No, I think they saw us.”
“Why? What did they do?”
“Well, Alfred made some motion, some movement. He understood English, you see, he heard the word Nazi. They were standing by the railing. They were very still for a moment and then they seemed to whisper and they walked away. But I think they knew it was Alfred. So I think they killed him. For fear of—of...”she hesitated, fumbling for a word.
“Blackmail?” said Josh Morgan.
“Blackmail. Yes, yes. Money from her to keep silence.”
“Did he ask them for money?”
Gili’s face clouded. “I don’t know that. I think he meant to.”
“Why do you think that?”
She shrugged. “Oh, I think so.”
“Did he say he intended to try to blackmail them?”
“N-no. But he said they were very, very rich. And he said, to himself, you know, as if he were thinking aloud, something about money; he used the word money. He said they’d never miss it. Then he thought of me, I suppose, and laughed and talked of something else. But that is what happened. She killed him. The husband wouldn’t have the courage to do it. He is a mouse, that man. She has the strength; she could have killed him. I think they knew I was there. I...”She hesitated and then said very rapidly: “So I was afraid just now. So I was frightened when you said someone tried to push you into the sea.” She turned to Marcia, flinging out her hands, speaking still very rapidly and somehow all at once, theatrically, so her words took on a falseness they had not previously had. “So you see, I screamed. I was terrified. I am afraid. Of the Cates woman. She killed him. She did it when she saw that this was an American ship. She knew that it was going to the United States. They are people of importance and of money. If their friends know they were Nazis, if it is in the papers, if anyone tells—well, they are kaput. Finished. All their lives. Do you see?”
It was, of course, true.
It did not square with anything Marcia had perceived or felt instinctively about Daisy Belle Cates, or about Luther. Yet it did square suddenly with certain other small facts. Daisy Belle had given the extra coat to Gili, and when Gili had said, but then, you’ll have all the coats you want, or something of the kind, Daisy Belle had replied with a queer, bleak look in her face that she doubted it. Yet they had had money, a great deal of money. Theirs was one of the famous, moneyed families and had been for several generations. Did she doubt whether or not they would be permitted to claim that money?
There was the care Daisy Belle took of her jewels; not, somehow, as if she liked them as ornaments, but rather as if they might represent—well, food and clothing and shelter, the necessities of life. She had not struck Marcia as a woman who would actually care for jewels as jewels. It was a small, faint impression, but now it took on a certain validity. And there was Daisy Belle’s solicitude about Luther. She loved him, obviously, and cared for him; but there was something else, something dimly felt that suggested trouble and anxiety.
But mainly there was the fact that they had worked so hard to get passage on the ship to Buenos Aires. With their money and connections, with their prominence as American citizens it would have been reasonable to expect them simply to stay on in Lisbon until their passage directly home and in comfort could have been arranged. Marcia realized suddenly that there had always been to her something incongruous, something a little questionable and mysterious about their presence on that ship bound for Buenos Aires.
All those things bore out Gili’s accusation in a way that had a certain ugly authority. Yet, to offset that, there was Marcia’s belief in Daisy Belle.
Neither of the men listening, of course, could have that belief. Mickey’s experience had been such as to lead him to suspect everybody. To doubt everybody; to question every motive—every impulse, every word. It would be a long time before Mickey could possibly recover any sort of faith in such simple things as goodness and honesty.
But he believed her. He had come to her; he had made her, he told her, a symbol and a talisman. Marcia turned to him: “Daisy Belle is honest. She couldn’t have been a Nazi. Ever.” Mickey got up, his white face taut and lined. Gili said with quick anger: “I heard it. That is what I heard. You don’t believe me.”
Oh, yes,” said Mickey. “We believe you. But”—he moved restively—“accusations, threats, all that—if only there were a little peace somewhere.”
“The man was murdered, Messac,” said Josh Morgan. “Someone attacked Miss Colfax; someone may have attacked you.”
Mickey rubbed his face wearily. “I don’t really think anyone attacked me. I think I slipped. And as for the Cates couple, I—well, I think Gili’s mistaken. She doesn’t understand English really well; she may have got things confused.” “I didn’t,” said Gili furiously. “I’m telling the truth....” Mickey said quickly and peaceably: “I didn’t say you were lying. I only meant it’s better not to do anything hastily.”
Gili subsided with another sulky flash of her green eyes.
Josh Morgan said: “If whoever murdered Castiogne thinks that you saw it, Messac, or have evidence against him, he might attack you, or Miss Colfax, for the same reason. Don’t you think we should tell Captain Svendsen Miss Duvrey’s story?”
“No,” cried Gili, rousing abruptly and changing her mind again. “No, I won’t. I’m afraid to. You made me tell you; but I won’t tell the Captain. I won’t tell anybody. I’ll deny it if you do.”
And Marcia said suddenly: “No, please don’t. Please wait. We can’t do anything tonight anyway.”
Josh Morgan said: “What about the two seamen? Who are they? Where are they? There were two seamen in the lifeboat, isn’t that right?”
“Oh, yes.” Mickey looked at the Air Force colonel somberly. “There were two seamen. Their names are Para and Urdiola. The Captain questioned them first. I don’t know what he did with them.”
