Charles Ardai - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 102, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 618 & 619, October 1993

Sishane had reappeared and she told Rand, “I think my father is behind this somehow. They’re taking me off the ship as soon as it’s daylight.”

“What for?”

“Further questioning. At least that’s the term they used. I have to pack my things.”

Rand suspected she was right about her father’s involvement. Claquer would have reported on the ship’s passengers, and Efes Kemal could have passed the word to keep her out of harm’s way. Perhaps he hadn’t trusted Rand to do the job.

“There were no drugs?” Rand asked the American, McNeil.

“Nothing. We opened every one of those crates in the hold. I suspected if we didn’t find morphine base or cannabis we might discover a shipment of Russian weapons coming from Afghanistan. No such luck.”

“Why are you taking Miss Kemal?”

“Her father is a high-ranking Turkish official,” he said, as if that explained everything.

As dawn came up over the Mediterranean, the last of the searchers prepared to leave the Happy Moon. Sishane came out of her cabin, following Fandul, who was carrying her suitcase. Rand saw Gunther Sallis coming down the steps from the upper deck to intercept her. Out in the water, a small motor launch had pulled alongside to carry her to the waiting destroyer.

“Goodbye,” she said, turning to the first mate to shake his hand. “I’m sorry—”

Sallis moved instantly. Before Rand fully realized what was happening he’d looped his arm around her throat and pulled her against him as a shield. His right hand held a razor-sharp knife against her throat. “All of you stand clear or she dies!” he warned. “We’re taking that launch!”

Rand took a careful step forward, trying to block their path to the gangway. Sishane, looking terrified, was stumbling as Sallis pushed her forward. The captain and McNeil seemed frozen to their spots. It was Pierre Claquer who acted, almost without a second thought. He raised his Luger and put a bullet through the side of Sallis’s head.

Efes Kemal had changed little over the years. A balding man in his fifties with a heavy black moustache, he still conveyed to Rand the appearance and demeanor of the quintessential diplomat. “How is your daughter?” Rand asked after they’d greeted one another at Kemal’s office in Istanbul.

“As well as could be expected after her ordeal. I’m pleased you were there, old friend.”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t much help. Pierre Claquer, working with the American Drug Enforcement Administration, is the one who really saved Sishane’s life.”

“And I’m grateful for it. What’s that you have there?”

Rand lifted the leather pouch he carried and placed it on Kemal’s desk. “This, I fear, was the cause of it all.”

Kemal unzipped the pouch and stared at the dozen bottles of vitamin pills. “I don’t understand.”

“You told me your daughter was in trouble with drugs and I leaped to the wrong conclusion — that she was taking or dealing in illegal narcotics. The drugs you referred to were pharmaceuticals. I finally realized that when she told me she met Gunther Sallis, the ship’s first mate, while visiting a pharmaceutical house in India. It was then that he suggested she return here on board the Happy Moon. She’d heard you mention the ship, probably in connection with suspected narcotics trafficking, and it seemed like a good idea to her. She thought it would be easier to get through customs than on a plane, where searches can sometimes be very thorough.”

Kemal tapped one of the bottles with his pencil. “What do these contain?”

“I asked myself that, too. It had to be something that would drive Sallis to kill two men — I’ll get to that in a moment — and threaten your daughter’s life as well. Then I remembered the captain telling me that Sallis was in the early stages of AIDS. There are a number of medications being developed around the world to combat this scourge, though they haven’t yet been approved for use in America or most European countries. Sallis went to the Indian pharmaceutical house to obtain a supply of a new drug for himself, but Sishane got there first. Your daughter is an enterprising young woman. Somehow she obtained these pills, disguised as vitamins, and was transporting them for sale abroad. Each of these dozen bottles contains more than two hundred pills — some twenty-five hundred in all. I’m told there are AIDS sufferers in America and Europe who would pay two hundred dollars apiece for these pills, to be taken once a day. Perhaps even two hundred pounds apiece. You’re looking at a half-million dollars or more right here in this pouch.”

Efes Kemal nodded sadly. “A black market in AIDS medication. That’s what my daughter was involved in.”

“I’m afraid so. Sallis knew she’d gotten the medication he needed, and he was searching her cabin when Multan came in and caught him in the act. Sallis cut his throat, and then changed the blanket and sheets to dispose of the bloodstained ones. He carried the body to the empty cabin in hopes of delaying its discovery. All of this, the changed sheets, the transported body, pointed to a crew member rather than Sishane or Claquer.”

“Can you be so certain the sheets were changed after the murder?”

Rand nodded. “There was blood soaked into the mattress but the sheets were clean. Your daughter didn’t notice it till morning. Sallis was in charge of such things on board. He’d have known where to find new sheets and a blanket.”

“You told me on the telephone that another man was killed back in Karachi.”

“He’d just told me that Sishane was sailing on the Happy Moon. The wound in his throat was so similar that I’m certain Sallis was in the crowded café too. When he heard her name mentioned he walked by the table and slashed this man Grantor. Perhaps he feared Grantor could tell about the pills as well.”

Efes Kemal nodded and stood up. “Old friend, thank you. This will be a secret between us. Let the police have their own theories for Sallis’s actions and his assault upon my daughter. I will speak to her.” Rand reached out for the pouch but Kemal waved him away. “I will handle these.”

They shook hands one more time and Rand departed from the office. He would catch a plane back to England that evening. Thinking about it all on the way to the airport, he had only one regret. He may have made a mistake when he left that half-million dollars’ worth of pills sitting on his old friend’s desk.

© 1993 by Jon L. Breen

Trying to define a mystery subcategory can be tricky. For example, Mary Higgins Clark’s introduction to Malice Domestic 2: An Anthology of Original Traditional Mystery Stories (Pocket, $4.99) quotes Mary Morman, a knowledgeable fan and founder of the Malice Domestic mystery convention held annually in the Washington, D.C. area, as follows: “The root of the word ‘domestic’ is the Latin domos, meaning ‘home’ or ‘house.’ Books and stories that fit the Malice Domestic genre involve the protagonist not in a professional capacity but through home relationships. They involve sisters, brothers, friends, and lovers. In addition to home relationships, Malice Domestic often breaches the sanctuary of the home itself. Bodies in the bathtub, corpses on the hearthrug...” (pages ix-x).

My suspicion that Morman’s definition is a bit too narrow was borne out with the first story in the collection, Amanda Cross’s “Who Shot Bryon Boyd?”, a case for English professor Kate Fansler that doesn’t fit under the definition at all, involving a crime not in the home and professionally motivated. The Cross story is far from the high standard of her novels, a weak volley in detective fiction’s wearying gender wars. But after that, things begin to look up.