John MacDonald - The Good Old Stuff

“Where was Miss Severence when you went back to the bridge?”

“She followed along. Stayed down on the deck as I climbed up the few steps to where I could yell in the chap’s ear. Quinn, I think his name was.”

I had run out of questions. I sat silently, nursing the lost feeling of a man who has run down a dark alley and crashed into a blank wall.

He held up his drink and squinted through it. He was a great white monolith of a man. He spoke in a surprisingly gentle voice. “The bloody war is long gone, Yank, and you’re raking around in the ashes. Why not forget the whole thing. I’m guessing that you’re trying to clear him — trying to find some mysterious reason for someone to shove him into the water. It won’t wash. He got drunk and he drowned. As simple as that. Why not forget it? You’ll only wear yourself out. Remember, I was there. If anything odd had happened, I’d have seen it and raised a stink. I like to make a fuss. The people here expect it of me. I’ve been creating disturbances for over thirty years in this city.”

I sat for an hour, sipping brandies while he rambled on about his spotted career in Colombo. I gathered that he had, at one time or another, been thrown out of every club in the city. He talked and I sat and sulked. It seemed to be the end of the trail. Finally he began to yawn and mumble his words. His huge head fell forward, his chin on his hairless chest. I stood up and tiptoed out. I didn’t see the servant. I walked back down the Galle Road to my hotel, weary and dispirited.

I didn’t sleep well. In the morning I felt tired and dull. I phoned the Royal Naval Headquarters after breakfast and eventually located a Miss Constance Severence. I told her that I was an acquaintance of O’Dell’s and made an appointment for cocktails at five thirty at her hotel, the Princess.

She was late. I was on my second stinger when she walked into the small lounge. She was a tall woman, and from a distance she looked fragile and delicate. I jumped up and she noticed me and smiled. She walked over and I pulled the small table out for her. She looked cool and fresh, but not fragile. Her hair was silvery blond, very fine, her eyes pale gray and her skin faintly sallow. I guessed her age at about thirty-two. She was built well but wore clothes more designed to conceal the fact than to reveal it. There was a strange look of hidden coarseness, hidden sensuality, about her. It was caused by a few small things about her that didn’t match the rest of her appearance. Her cheekbones were too high and too wide, her fingers too plump and spatulate, her thin mouth too moist. I noticed, as I held the table out, that though her feet were rather short they were far too broad. I didn’t like her.

She asked for a sling, and I ordered it from the boy. When he left to get it, she turned to me and said, “Don’t you feel it? There seems to be something clandestine about this meeting — something that reeks of intrigue. Maybe it’s the way you look.”

That jolted me. “How do I look?”

“Now you’re looking offended and stuffy. I meant that you’re rather a dark and mysterious type. That scar might have come from a knife. Your eyes are wary.”

“Maybe it is intrigue, Miss Severence, but I—”

“Call me Conny like that hulking O’Dell, the mad Irishman, does. Surely if he can you have the right. What shall I call you?”

“Howard or Garry. Take your choice.”

“Garry it is. Now, Garry, my lad, what do you want?”

I turned so that I faced her. We were sitting side by side on a cushioned bench that ran along the wall. I looked hard into her eyes and said, “Who drowned Captain Christoff?”

It was a change from the technique I had used before. I had given O’Dell too much time to adjust, to prepare himself. If there was any guilty knowledge in her, I wanted to blast it out.

She looked back into my eyes. I had the impression that there was a lack of focus. They looked very slightly crossed. I remembered a trick from grade school days. If you wish to stare another person down, don’t look into their eyes. Look, instead, at the bridge of their nose. I realized that she was doing just that. Her eyes didn’t waver. There was no expression in them. I glanced down at her fingertips on the edge of the table. She had clear polish on her nails. She was holding the table just tightly enough to make whitish semicircles near the ends of her nails. As I glanced down she relaxed the pressure and the blood flowed back, turning them pink again. She laughed, a low musical note as phony as a singing commercial.

“Why are you laughing, Conny? What amuses you?”

“You do, Garry. You’ve sold yourself a plot for the flicks. True friend seeks inside story of chum’s disgrace. You’re trying to turn a clumsy bounder’s sticky death into straight Edgar Wallace.”

“You just made a mistake, my dear.” She looked at me blankly. “How did you know that he was a friend of mine? How did you know that I wasn’t investigating it in an official capacity?” Again I glanced down at her hand. The whiteness was back. She put her hand in her lap.

Again she laughed. “Don’t be so dull, Garry! I know official investigators. They have hundreds of beastly little forms and a wretched stub of a pencil which they keep licking. They start by asking you your name even when they already know it.”

“Not good enough. O’Dell must have phoned you. Why?”

The boy brought her drink. She picked it up without a tremor and sipped it. “Really, you know, I should tell you to buzz off. You’re being rude. I’m not a complicated type. I went on a boat trip with a drunken American officer, and he fell off the boat. I was very sorry about it, but it happened a long time ago. If you can consent to change the subject and stop acting so grim, I’ll forgive you and you can buy me another drink. Otherwise, it was most pleasant meeting you, Garry.”

I shrugged. I couldn’t make her talk. But for the first time I felt the inner sense of excitement. The trail was warmer. She did know something. But she was clever. I had to make the next move. I grinned as warmly as I could. “I’m sorry, Conny. Maybe I’ve got a fixation on this thing. Dan was my friend — maybe he was too good a friend. Maybe you shouldn’t get so close to another person. Forgive the melodrama, will you?”

“Drink on that,” she demanded. We clinked the glasses together, and she looked into my eyes as we drank. For all her slim coolness and composure, I could see something primal behind her eyes, a latent viciousness that was coiled like a sleeping cat.

We had another half hour before she had to leave to get ready for a dinner date. She made the time pleasant with small talk about the Colombo social group. I asked her about the January Club.

She curled her lip a bit. “Not the cream, Garry. There’re much finer clubs in the city. A very mixed group at the January. Whites and Burghers and Eurasians and a few Singhalese. High stakes bridge and sloppy tennis. They spice the food too much. Why do you ask?”

“O’Dell said that you and he and Christoff were there before you went down to the harbor. I wondered about the place.”

“Oh, yes. I’d met the captain at a party. He happened to be at the January. O’Dell and I had been playing a set partners game against another city bridge team there. As I remember, we won, and the ride was to celebrate the victory.”

I walked with her into the lobby, and she gave me her hand just before she got into the elevator. It was very warm and moist. I walked out onto the street, realizing that I liked her and disliked her. She was desirable in a faintly unclean way. I found a public bench in a shaded spot. I sat and thought. As far as the investigation was concerned, I was through. There was nothing else I could do, and yet I was more certain of something odd about Dan’s death than ever before. I knew that there’d be no point in talking to O’Dell again. I had sensed his cleverness. Constance wouldn’t tell me anything further. I realized that unless I could stir up trouble for either or both of them, I had best leave the island. I wanted proof. I wanted to clear Dan officially, somehow, and I didn’t know how it could be done. I felt dumb, stubborn, and bitter.