Bert and Mamie Take a Cruise by John Keyse-Walker

Author:John Keyse-Walker [Keyse-Walker, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2022-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-ONE

History and romance meet in the sunny streets of Cape Town.

– Round Africa Cruise brochure

Bert – February 26, 1939 – Cape Town, Union of South Africa

Old Sheriff Bill Marley, who I had served as a deputy until he slapped around that suspect, used to say that any crime committed by mortal man could be solved by just keeping your eyes and ears open.

True, that was a county sheriff in a place where you knew everyone. And you knew everything about everyone. You could figure who’d stuck his hand in the till at the New Philadelphia Drugstore by seeing who turned up with a new suit in town the following Saturday night. But I still thought the eyes-and-ears method would work in the situation of Major Heissemeyer’s death, even if we were on a ship making its way around an uncivilized continent with over two thousand passengers and crew, some of whom I already suspected were more sophisticated criminals, in one way or another, than anyone Sheriff Marley had ever come up against in his thirty years of winning elections – always – and enforcing the law – sometimes – in Tuscarawas County, Ohio. So, after Mamie’s and my discussion at high tea in Cape Town a couple days ago, I started watching and listening.

It didn’t take but a day to learn the first thing about some underground workings on the Columbus, though not of a criminal nature. You see, soon after Mamie and I had been in Cape Town that day and returned to the ship, I noticed Steward Grap was acting strange. He was hovering like a daddy watching his sixteen-year-old daughter on the porch swing with a handsome date who couldn’t be trusted.

I finally confronted him. ‘Grap, is something wrong?’

‘Why, no, sir. What would be wrong?’ The steward was all innocence. ‘I was just wondering, sir, if you would like to have your trousers pressed before dinner this evening?’

‘No, son, they’re fine.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Grap said, and didn’t leave the open cabin door. ‘Can I do anything else for you or Mrs Mason?’

Mamie, feet up after a difficult tourist day of tramping around the sedate avenues of Cape Town, said, ‘We’re fine, Mr Grap. We’ll just be taking it easy today.’

‘Ah, yes, madam, I see,’ he said, tipped his cap, and closed the door.

An hour later I went out for air. Grap was a few feet from our door, loitering in the passageway. And loitering was something I had not seen Steward Grap do all the way across the Atlantic Ocean and down the west coast of Africa.

‘What’s going on, Grap?’

‘Sir?’

‘Why are you hanging around like a tom cat waiting for the sun to go down?’

‘Sir?’ There was true puzzlement on the steward’s face now.

‘Don’t you have someone else to attend to?’ I let a touch of frustration creep into my tone of voice.

‘I, er …’ Grap hemmed, then straightened his shoulders. ‘No, sir, I do not.’

‘What do you mean, Grap? I thought you had half a dozen cabins under your loving care.

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