“Accident nothing,” Mrs. Merriwell bayed. “I don’t believe it was suicide. That awful nigger was up in that very room. I saw him in the hallway coming out.”
“When was this?” Baker said. “And who are you talking about, Madam?”
“That horrible black steward, the one with the crumpled ears. He’d have frightened me out of my wits up here if I didn’t know how to handle niggers. I believe he raped that girl and hanged her to cover up.”
Baker looked at me and then at the door to the inner room. I nodded, and he opened the door wide enough to slip through. The door opened again a moment later and Eric came out awkwardly as if propelled from behind. He looked at the little crowd in the doorway like an amateur actor facing his first audience. I told them that if they had to wait it would have to be in the hall. Mary got up and moved out with them.
“What right have you, young man?” said Mrs. Merriwell. I shut the door in her face.
Eric sat down in front of the dressing table on a stool covered with cheap yellow lace. He examined his face in the mirror with profound intensity, as if he was seeing it for the first time. Grief has curious gestures, and this was one of them. His face didn’t please him, and he turned away.
“I don’t look so good,” he said tonelessly.
“No.”
“Why do you suppose she did it, Sam?”
“I don’t know, I hardly knew her.”
“Could she have killed herself because she loved me? I mean because I couldn’t marry her?”
“She could have. But if that’s true don’t ever let yourself be proud of it.”
“You’re pretty brass-tacks tonight,” Eric said, with a thin wire of self-pity running through his tone.
“I found her. If you helped to put her where I found her, I’ve got a grudge against you. If you didn’t, I’m sorry for you. I’m sorry for you anyway.”
“I’ll be all right tomorrow,” he said. But he said it as if he knew that certain kinds of pictures fade slowly even in sunlight.
Dr. Savo came out of the inner room with Baker, the petty officer, who looked a year or two older.
“There’s no sign of assault,” the doctor said. “There are a couple of bruises on her back, but she must have got them climbing out of the window, or swinging against the wall when she dropped. It’s funny nobody saw her or heard her. They usually go into pretty violent convulsions.”
“Thank you, sir,” Baker said. “I’ll have to call the civilian police, and I guess they’ll be holding an inquest on the body. I never had anything like this come up before. I’ve seen a couple of guys knocked out, but–”
“Forget it if you can,” Savo said. “That’s one thing I learned in medical school.”
There was a loud bickering noise in the hall, of several voices raised in argument. I opened the door and saw the Negro, Land, standing in the hallway surrounded by Mrs. Merriwell and her little group. He was directly under a ceiling light, and I had my first good look at him.
His ears were convoluted and frayed like black rosebuds after a hailstorm. His nose was broad and saddled, his eyes bright black slits between pads of dead tissue. It was an old boxer’s head, powerful and scarred as if it had once been used as a battering ram, set forward on a columnar neck as if it was ready to be used again. But there was no power in the posture of his body. His shoulders drooped forward and his belly heaved with his breathing. His wide hands were half-curled and turned to the light, which shone on the polished dark-pink palms. He looked like a frightened bear caught in a dog-pack.
“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” he was saying. “I didn’t even know she was up here. I swear to God I didn’t.”
“What were you doing up here?” said an aging lieutenant whose face drooped like a hound’s.
“I wasn’t up here, boss – sir. I never set eyes on the young lady.”
“I saw you,” Mrs. Merriwell said, apparently not for the first time. “I saw you coming out of that door. He killed her,” she said to the others, “I know he did. You can see that he’s guilty just to look at him.”
Land glanced at the ceiling, the whites of his eyes glaring.
His eyes shifted right and left, and stopped on me and Eric Swann standing in the doorway. His white steward’s coat was turning dark with sweat. He must have given himself up for lost, for he said to Eric:
“I was up here, Mr. Swann, I admit that–”
“You see?” said Mrs. Merriwell. “He admits it.” She looked at Eric triumphantly as if to say: You needed a lesson in race relations, my little man, and now, by God, you’re getting it. “Officer,” she said to Baker, “I demand that you arrest this man.”
“What were you doing up here?” Eric said.
“I was looking for a drink. I know I did wrong, but that’s all I was doing, looking for a drink.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I was looking for somebody’s bottle to take a drink out of. Sometimes some of the young ladies leave their bottles up here, and that’s what I was looking for. I didn’t find any, and then I heard somebody coming. I didn’t see Miss Sholto at all.”
“Come in here, Land,” Dr. Savo said from the room behind me. “I can settle one point anyway. I’ll ask the rest of you to leave the room, eh?”
“I wouldn’t stay alone with him, sir,” the manager said. “We wouldn’t want anything else to happen.”
“You wouldn’t, eh?” Savo said as he shut the door of the dressing-room.
Mary was standing behind Mrs. Merriwell, looking tired and wan. I moved to her side.
“That’s a ridiculous story,” Mrs. Merriwell was saying. “Looking for a bottle!”
“Sue had a bottle in there,” Mary said, and bit her lip as if she regretted saying it. More carrion for the jackals, I thought.
“Perhaps she did,” Mrs. Merriwell said. “Perhaps she invited the boy in there with her. You never can tell what a nigger-lover will do.”
Nor what Mrs. Merriwell will say, I thought. Eric looked at her with something like incredulity, but said nothing. Mary took hold of my arm, her fingers clenching painfully, and leaned her weight on me. For the first time in my life I began to see clearly what Dante saw, that hell is largely composed of conversations.
Dr. Savo opened the door and said briskly to Mrs. Merriwelclass="underline" “What you suggest is out of the question. Shall I give you the physiological details?”
“Certainly not,” said Mrs. Merriwell. She lifted her nose and tremulously sniffed the air. “But I think some disciplinary action is called for. At best, he came up here to steal.”
“He’ll be taken care of,” Eric said. “Don’t worry.”
Mary’s grip on my arm had relaxed, but she said: “I’m very tired. Do you think I can get home now?”
“I imagine we’ll have to wait for the civilian police. After all, we were the ones.”
“That found her, you mean?”
“It’s after curfew, anyway. Before we can get back to Pearl we’ll have to get a pass.”
“You’ll be able to get it through the police.”
“It’s queer they haven’t come yet.”
I looked around for Baker but he had disappeared. Nearly everyone had left the second floor. But Hector Land was still in the dressing-room when I looked in. He was sitting incongruously on the little yellow stool with his knees spread and his arms hanging straight down between them. In his face only his eyes seemed alive, but they were bright and moving.
Eric was standing in front of the door to the inner room, staring at Land without seeing him. He was staring harder with eyes at the back of his head which could look through doors. Dr. Savo was watching him.
“You should go back to the ship and get some sleep,” he said to Eric. “You took an awful beating from the bottle before this happened.” Eric didn’t seem to hear him.