Murder in Pastiche by Marion Mainwaring

Author:Marion Mainwaring [Mainwaring, Marion]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Marion Mainwaring
Published: 2014-04-19T04:00:00+00:00

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Tourneur found a visitor waiting in his cabin. Dolores Despana had changed her style from the chic to the delicate. She wore a coral lipstick, a pale green chiffon gown, and the air of a woman frail, defenseless, but brave. Very possibly she could not act, he thought; but she could at least look the part of a heroine from Pinero or Henry Arthur Jones. She carried a tiny, glittering evening bag and a lacy handkerchief which she occasionally remembered to touch to her eyes. She began in a faltering voice, one hand laid confidingly on Tourneur’s, “I should have known better than to fib to a famous detective like you!”

“Thank you very much,” he said formally.

“But the way it must look! Being in that cabin so late at night!”

Tourneur could think of no really civil answer to this; he made an encouraging noise.

“Not that there was anything wrong! Like I told you, Paul promised to write a plug for me, only he said I’d have to come to his stateroom for a conference about it. So, of course I thought twelve-thirty was pretty late; but it couldn’t hurt to go. So I knocked and went in and waited for a while, and when he didn’t show up after five minutes I went away.”

“After smoking,” Tourneur murmured vaguely, “nine cigarettes.”

“I—yes,” she said rather flatly. She put the handkerchief to one eye and then, after consideration, to the other.

“So that it was, perhaps, rather more than five minutes?”

“I— Oh, hell,” said Miss Despana in a welcome burst of candor. “He was a rat. But a plug from him means— It was a case of my career! And besides, if I’d refused to go—” She stopped.

“Yes, Miss Despana?’

“Nothing.”

“Perhaps I know already,” he said, not unkindly. “Price was not a generous man. He may have threatened to print excerpts from the London reviews—”

She cried: “They had a grudge against the director! It was all dirty politics. Why, the—”

“Yes. Well,” Tourneur said cheerfully, “since we’ve got over all that, suppose you tell me what happened in Price’s cabin as you waited?”

“Happened? Why, nothing happened,” said Dolores Despana with devastating gaucherie. “He got killed, didn’t he? He never came.”

“Quite so,” Tourneur said hastily. “I meant to inquire as to anything—er—else that may have taken place. Did you notice anything remarkable about the cabin?” At her blank stare, he experienced a spasm of irritation; her slowness of mind appeared to be genuine. He suggested: “Was there anything on the floor?”

“Oh, that’s right. There was an envelope.”

Tourneur nodded: that would be Anderson’s check. He asked slowly: “Did anyone knock, or try to enter?”

“No. Nothing happened, only I got sleepy waiting. I was mad, too, naturally,” she added in another disconcerting flare of frankness, “but next morning when I heard he’d been killed I knew why he hadn’t showed up, so that was O.K.”

Tourneur looked at her speculatively as she produced this sufficiently inhumane sentiment. He asked: “Do you mind telling me just what Mr. Price

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