Ransom at Sea Read online

  “Emily, what is it?” Ransom asked with concern.

  “There is one other thing I think we can assume was exactly as it appeared to be. If we do that, it’s the answer to everything.” She told him what it was.

  He pondered this for a long moment. “But can we assume that?”

  “I think we have good reason to,” she said with finality. “Now, Jeremy, you must go back in there and talk to the sheriff. He has to tell Captain Farraday that we can sail tomorrow morning.”

  11

  The pall that had been deepening over the Genessee and its passengers had lifted somewhat at the news that they would be allowed to leave the following morning, despite the fact that the delay meant they would have to sail directly back to Chicago rather than continuing the trip. Not that any of them wanted to. The atmosphere at dinner that evening was one of reserved jubilation.

  Their number had further diminished: Claudia Trenton would be having to stay on for a day or so in Macaw, and had removed to the Lakeview Motel, made safe now that her tormentors had been taken into custody. Her absence allowed the mood aboard the boat to lift a bit more.

  After dinner, the passengers spent the evening on the white deck chatting and watching the sky grow dark. Now that they were going to be loosed from the town to which they’d been unwillingly moored for the past few days, some of the charm returned to it, and they spoke of leaving in surprisingly wistful terms.

  At a little after ten the passengers began to retire to their cabins one by one, disappearing from the white deck like stars quietly going out.

  Midnight found Emily sitting up very straight in her room in the chair beside the chest. She had changed into a robe of pearl gray silk, which she wore over a powder blue nightgown. The compass lamp was turned on, and she was reading, though she found it difficult to concentrate: every snap and thump of the boat snatched at her attention.

  The white deck was deserted and shrouded in darkness, the lone worklight having been switched off. The wheelhouse was empty, lit only by the dim light reflected from a quarter moon.

  It was nearly 12:45 when a thin ray of light appeared around the corner of the general store: its source was a penlight, thin and weak enough that it didn’t provide much illumination, just enough to be sure of one’s footing.

  The light proceeded down the dock and snapped off as it reached the foot of the gangplank. Catlike footsteps quietly padded up the plank, across the deck, and down the two flights of stairs. The figure then turned left, went into the short hallway, and with great care to ensure silence, very slowly turned the handle to the cabin door.

  Once the door was opened, the sound of a hand groping for the wall switch could be heard, followed by a sudden flood of light.

  Detective Jeremy Ransom was seated on the chair, which he had drawn up in front of the table so that he wouldn’t be trapped in the corner.

  “Good evening, Mr. Douglas,” he said airily.

  The steward stood in the doorway, a soiled parcel tucked under his left arm. His eyes bulged with surprise and fear, and he made a sudden move as if to bolt, but found his way blocked by Sheriff Barnes and Deputy Mitchell, who had silently stolen up behind him.

  “Damn that woman anyway,” Douglas said bitterly.

  Ransom wondered which one he meant.

  * * *

  “How did you finally figure it out?” asked Lynn as she folded Emily’s dress. She’d already packed the linens and was now in the process of adding the items from the closet. Emily was seated on the corner of the bed while Ransom leaned against the door.

  “It was simple, really, once one put aside the little sidelights that had nothing directly to do with the murder,” Emily replied.

  “I’d hardly call Claudia Trenton’s dilemma a ‘little sidelight,’” said Ransom.

  “True, but the only thing it actually had to do with Marcella’s murder was that it was responsible for bringing the parcel into the matter. It was as I’d said at the outset: Marcella was killed because she happened to walk in on someone.” She paused and sighed, not very pleased with herself. “I suppose I can console myself with the fact that there really was something terribly wrong on this tour, but I was utterly mistaken as to what it was. It wasn’t until Jeremy had discovered that the secretive meetings between Stuart Holmes and the stranger didn’t have a sinister connotation, and that what I overheard on deck had a logical explanation, that I realized my error.” She paused again and clucked her tongue. “I daresay I’m becoming a fanciful old woman, seeing plots all around me.”

  “Nonsense,” said Ransom. “You sensed something was wrong here, and there was. And it was something very dangerous. That fact is what made you suspicious of the other things. All you said was that if Rebecca hadn’t killed her aunt, then these little things might have significance. In a normal murder investigation, those are exactly the kinds of things we would’ve had to follow up.”

  She bestowed a benignant smile on him.

  “But how did you figure it out?” Lynn asked again.

  “Well, realizing those two things, I thought perhaps we should take everything at face value.”

  “And that meant Lily DuPree’s statement as well,” said Ransom.

  “Exactly. You see, Lily had said she’d seen Joaquin leave the boat before David Douglas. Well, everyone else said that David left first, so we chalked the discrepancy up to the fact that Lily had been dozing, and so wasn’t clear about what she’d seen. It wasn’t until I pressed her about which one had left first that she became vague about it—much in the way some people do when you challenge something they really believe to be true. If we took Lily’s original statement at face value, it meant that Douglas had left last, and that he’d lied about the fact.”

  “But what about the people who verified it?” asked Lynn.

  Emily shrugged slightly. “Well, you see, Mrs. O’Malley had been told by David himself that he was leaving, and Joaquin thought he had left because he looked for him and didn’t find him onboard. But Douglas had secreted himself somewhere.”

  “In the captain’s cabin,” Ransom chimed in.

  “How do you know that?” asked Lynn.

  “Because like most clever people with healthy egos, once Douglas knew he was caught, he got very chatty. He wanted us to know how clever he’d been. He hid in the captain’s cabin because he knew Joaquin wouldn’t look there.”

  Emily nodded. “Of course. So Joaquin looked for him, then left, and Douglas had a free hand.”

  “To do what? Search the cabin?”

  “No, he didn’t need to do that. He’d already found the package while cleaning the cabin … and he took it.”

  “But … but wait. That doesn’t make sense. If he took it while he and Joaquin were cleaning the rooms, then how could Marcella have caught him at it? She didn’t get back to the boat until they … well, at least Joaquin … had left.”

  “Ah, but you see, she didn’t catch him at that.”

  Lynn wrinkled her nose attractively and sat down beside her. “Now you’ve completely lost me. He had to have killed her in that ten or fifteen minutes between when Rebecca came back to us from the boat after looking for her aunt, and when we found the body.”

  Emily shook her head. “When Rebecca looked through the boat, her aunt was already dead.”

  “That’s impossible! Are you saying … are you saying that Rebecca lied about her aunt’s body not being there?”

  “Not at all, my dear,” Emily replied, giving the young woman’s leg a gentle pat. “Her aunt’s body wasn’t there because that is not where she was killed.”

  “What!”

  “Douglas told us what happened,” said Ransom, “or most of what happened, once we got him to the station. When he found the package, he thought it might be valuable—partly because of that middle-of-the-night scene Marcella Hemsley had caused. So he took it to his cabin, looked inside, and recognized the contents. Then he hid it there, planning to wait until the coast was clear, take
it off the boat, and hide it somewhere safer.”

  “Why would he do that?” Lynn asked.

  “Because he’s a very crafty young man,” Emily explained. “He fully expected that a fuss would be made when Marcella discovered the loss, and that the boat would be searched. When nothing was turned up it would naturally be assumed that it was just poor, dotty old Marcella, at it again.”

  “But Rebecca—”

  Emily was already nodding. “I know. Rebecca had seen the package. But what would everyone think? Just what Sheriff Barnes did: that Marcella had simply done something with it herself, and that the package was lost. After that, Mr. Douglas could safely retrieve it and keep it somewhere. Perhaps even in his own cabin.”

  “He carried it off the boat lengthwise, at his right side—it was, after all, smaller than a shoebox,” said Ransom. “So that if Lily DuPree happened to be awake she wouldn’t notice it.”

  “That was really a risk!” Lynn exclaimed.

  “Not really,” Emily said. “Remember that Lily was facing the opposite direction. Even if she was awake, it wasn’t that likely that she would completely turn around. When I first talked to her about the murder, Jeremy asked where everyone was—do you remember the difficulty she had in trying to look over her shoulder at the deck?” Ransom nodded. “Mr. Douglas was just taking the precaution that if she did try to look around, she wouldn’t see the box. And it worked. She did happen to look as he went past, and she didn’t see it. She just noticed what rigid posture he had.” Emily smiled at herself. “Something else that I missed at the time. When she told me she’d seen Douglas leave the boat she remarked on his posture. I thought it was just one of her little incongruities, but as it turned out, it was significant.”

  Ransom continued the story. “He then went south on the beach, holding the box in front of him, and hid it in the woods just off the path leading from the lake to the road. Then he continued down the road so that if anyone saw him it would look as if he was returning from the south, distancing himself from the murder. And it was just his luck that he came upon Brock and Langstrom, who thought just that.”

  “I still don’t understand,” said Lynn. “If all that’s true, then how was Marcella killed? And what did she walk in on?”

  “Absolutely nothing!” said Emily.

  Lynn curled her lips. “Emily, I’m beginning to think you’re pulling my leg.”

  “Not at all,” Emily replied. “She found absolutely nothing. And that was the problem.” She shifted in her seat as she began her explanation. “Of course, we can only conjecture about the first part of it, but we do know the outcome. You see, Marcella got back to the boat after Joaquin had left and before Douglas could get off. She went to her cabin, and in a fit of…” Emily paused, searching for the right word. “I don’t know what you’d call it—a whim, or whatever—decided to look in the package … or at it … we shall never know. But when she looked under the bed where she’d put it, it wasn’t there. So what did she think? She remembers that someone came into her room the night before—someone she believed to be David Douglas.”

  “That was Claudia Trenton,” said Lynn.

  “Yes, but you and I saw Marcella when it happened. She was convinced it was Douglas. Who can say why? Because she had a fleeting glimpse of light-colored hair, and a flash of blue. Douglas was wearing blue pajamas, and Claudia a blue robe. As I’ve said, I’ve known people with Alzheimer’s disease. Once they get something into their heads, it’s impossible to get it out, even if you have the chance.”

  Ransom said, “What we do know is that Douglas claims she came barging into his cabin and found him there with the package. He says she was like a madwoman, but whether or not that’s exactly true, he was startled and afraid because he’d been caught red-handed. And he knew that Mrs. O’Malley and Miss DuPree were still on the boat, and while they couldn’t hear much normal noise a deck or two away and on the other end of the boat, they were bound to hear Miss Hemsley if she started screaming again. So he grabbed up his lamp and struck her with it. He said he wasn’t sure whether or not he’d killed her then, but at that point he was desperate, and knew that if she came to, she would accuse him … and though her mind might’ve been foggy, she would have the gash in her head to prove that something had happened. So he strangled her with her belt.”

  “And Rebecca?” Lynn asked.

  Emily was the one to answer. “Ah, Rebecca! While David was trying to decide what to do with the body, what does he hear but Rebecca calling for her aunt!”

  “He watched through the part in the curtains as she went into her aunt’s cabin and her own,” said Ransom, “then he waited until she’d gone away, dragged Marcella’s body to her own cabin, and arranged the lamp by the body, smearing some blood on it to make it look as if it had been the weapon, knowing that this would confuse the matter. He surmised—as it turned out, rightly—that with things the way he’d arranged them in Marcella’s room, and given the fact that Rebecca had been to the boat around the time of the murder, that there would be no reason for the authorities to look elsewhere on the boat. So he had all the time in the world to polish his own lamp and make sure there were no traces of the murder in his cabin.”

  “Carrying the package off the boat like that was a very bold thing to do,” said Emily, “but it was the best he could do on the spur of the moment, and he hadn’t much time.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Lynn with a frustrated sigh. “Didn’t Lily Dupree tell you that Douglas left the boat before Rebecca came back to it?”

  “Yes, but it was after Joaquin left that she really started to doze. That was the time about which she was most confused—when I questioned her about it, she said it was difficult to tell with so many people coming and going, so many footsteps. Well, there were really only two she should’ve heard: Marcella returning, and then Rebecca, and Rebecca leaving again. But it was during that hazy period that she saw Douglas. The one thing she was sure about, until I foolishly pushed her, was that Joaquin left first.”

  “What exactly was in that package, anyway?” Lynn asked Ransom.

  “Two bricks of heroin. They have a very, very high street value.”

  “Good God! And those two idiots trusted it to Claudia Trenton? I’m surprised they would let it out of their sight!”

  He nodded. “Valuable, yes. But they couldn’t fill the box with something else and take a chance that she’d get curious and open it and find out it wasn’t drugs after all—they wanted her good and securely hooked, so they could bleed her of her money. And they probably wanted the drugs here anyway. My guess is they planned to continue on to the Upper Peninsula and sell it there.”

  Lynn slowly shook her head in amazement. “And to think that Marcella Hemsley was killed and Becky almost went to prison for good because of that little box!”

  “Rebecca might have gone to prison,” Emily said, “were it not for Jeremy.”

  “Huh!” Ransom said shortly. “Now I think you’re trying to pull my leg. You know I’ve been completely at sea up here on this case, with nothing to go on and no authority whatsoever. You, at least, had your brain working.”

  “Overtime, so it would seem,” Emily said ruefully.

  * * *

  Sheriff Barnes was waiting on the white deck as Emily, Lynn, and Ransom came up the stairs, the latter carrying the ladies’ suitcases. He put them down when Barnes extended his hand.

  “I want to thank you. I don’t know what would’ve happened without you.”

  “Don’t you?” Lynn said under her breath.

  If he heard this, he chose to ignore it. “But like I said, we don’t get cases like this up here.”

  Ransom flexed his hand after it was released from the firm grip of the sheriff. “You’re welcome, but Emily’s the one you should really thank.”

  “You’re damn right about that!” He looked down at her, a broad smile pushing up the ends of his mustache. “Miss Charters, I said it before and I’ll say it again: you’r
e one sharp old lady. And I hope you don’t take any offense to that.”

  “Not at all,” Emily said modestly. “Thank you very much.”

  “I’ll take these to the car,” Lynn interrupted impatiently. She picked up the suitcases and left them.

  Emily exchanged knowledgeable smiles with Ransom: Rebecca had chosen to wait for them at the sheriff’s station. Despite having been exonerated, now that she herself was out of danger, the loss of her beloved aunt had hit her full force. She’d chosen to ride home with Lynn and her friends, and Lynn was anxious for their journey to begin. In more ways than one, Emily suspected.

  “Well, I’m off now—got to go check the campgrounds,” said Barnes. “Thanks again, Detective, Miss Charters. I hope to see you again sometime.”

  “Under different circumstances,” said Emily.

  He laughed. “You said it!” He started to walk away, but stopped and said quietly to Ransom, “By the way, I gave the Millers back their negatives. I told them after we’d printed the first few, we’d found what we wanted, so didn’t do the rest. Thought I’d save them some embarrassment.”

  “Were they relieved?” asked the detective.

  Barnes smiled. “Damned if they didn’t look disappointed!”

  He left them.

  Ransom and Emily headed for the gangplank, but before they reached it Joaquin Vasquez came up to them, a bright smile on his face. “I want to say good-bye. It has been very, very nice meeting you, and traveling with you. I hope you come back again.”

  “I shall remember you,” Emily said kindly.

  He beamed at her, gave an awkward salute, and went his way. Captain Farraday and his wife were waiting for them at the plank. They thanked Ransom and Emily for their help.