Louise's Crossing Read online

  ‘Someone needs to clean this up,’ I said, noticing the messy floor. The spilled coffee and litter from Grace’s tray covered the passageway.

  ‘The chief will send a messman down to clean,’ the master said.

  ‘Will there be an inquiry?’ I asked.

  The master shrugged. ‘No. It’s not necessary. My report will read that Grace died when she fell down the stairs. It was an accident. There’s nothing else to say.’

  Now that Grace’s body had been moved, I began to feel the physical impact of her death. I felt woozy and grabbed the stair handrail. The master put a hand on one of my shoulders and squeezed it. ‘You look quite pale, Mrs Pearlie,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you rest in your berth for a while? The messman will have all this cleaned up very soon.’

  ‘There’s Nigel,’ I said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Nigel, the British boy, Mr Bryant’s orderly, who sneaked on board the ship pretending to be a seaman,’ I said. ‘He and Grace were sweethearts.’

  ‘Swell,’ he said. ‘Another complication. I’ll call him to the bridge. Maybe I’ll be able to tell him before he hears the news.’ He ran his hand under his cap through graying hair. ‘I’ve never been good at delivering bad news. I hate it.’

  By the time I reached the door to my berth, I could feel the tears coming, but I managed to get inside before breaking down. I don’t know how long I lay curled up on my bunk, crying. Poor Grace. What a waste of a life. She’d had so many hopes and plans. Stupid, stupid war. I thought of all the families, worldwide, Axis and Allied, who’d lost loved ones. It was a wonder the earth hadn’t collapsed under the weight of their grief.

  It was dark outside when someone knocked on my door. I recognized Olive’s knock and thought of not answering but didn’t want to worry her. ‘Come on in,’ I said.

  Olive sat down on my bunk next to me and took my hands. ‘How are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Awful. I don’t feel well.’

  ‘You’re in shock. Come with me; you need food and drink to recover from it.’

  ‘The last thing I want to do is go to dinner.’

  ‘I’ll bring you a sandwich and some milk, OK?’

  ‘I’d appreciate that. Does everyone know about Grace?’

  ‘Yes. Ronan and Gil ran into the chief steward and me carrying Grace’s body to the first-aid room. Of course, they were horrified. Blanche turned up just as the messman was cleaning the passageway. She was so upset; I was surprised to see her showing that much feeling, I didn’t think she had it in her.’

  ‘Where had she been?’

  ‘Said she’d been on the boat deck looking at the iceberg with everyone else.’

  I didn’t see her there, but then the deck was jam-packed, everyone wearing dark coats and hats. I could have missed her easily.

  Olive left me to go to dinner.

  I exchanged grief for worry. I didn’t agree with the master that there was no need to conduct an inquiry into Grace’s death. I didn’t think the circumstances of her accident were as simple as he did. In fact, it wasn’t reasonable to me that Grace would have fallen in the first place. She’d lectured all of us on how to go up and down our staircase and the ladders on the ship. I’d seen her many times coming down, her left hand gripping the rail, her right holding her tray or a stack of linens up against her hip, ready to drop if the ship lurched and she needed to hang on to the rail with both hands. And the ship hadn’t been lurching; the sea had been calm. And if she had fallen, how did the tray and its contents wind up in the passageway below? She would have had to fling it over the rail. If she’d fallen down and dropped it, as the master speculated, the tray and its contents would have scattered on the stairs.

  I pulled my musette bag out of the drawer under my bed and drew out a small notebook and a pencil. I was not much of an artist, but for this purpose stick figures would suffice.

  So I drew the scene as I remembered it. Short parallel horizontal lines down the left side of the page were the stairs, as though a witness was looking at the scene from its foot. A long vertical line edging the stairs on the right represented the stair rail. Grace’s body lay face up at the foot of the staircase. The tray and its contents were scattered in the passageway. I stuck the pencil in my mouth while I contemplated my rudimentary drawing.

  What I saw didn’t jibe with the master’s and the chief steward’s conclusion that Grace had fallen down the stairs to her death. It seemed more likely to me that she had reached the bottom of the stairs and turned to go down the passageway when she was struck from behind by someone. Hard enough to fracture her skull. She’d dropped to the floor, dead, and her tray and its contents spilled all over the passageway floor. Then her killer positioned her body at the bottom of the stairs so that it looked as though she had fallen from above. And fled. He, or she, would have had time, both to do the deed and to escape, because everyone was on deck admiring the iceberg. No matter how I went over my drawing, this scenario seemed the most feasible. I was determined to discuss this with the master. After all, I was not without experience. I was practically a spy.

  I slipped outside my berth into the passageway. A messman had cleaned after Grace’s body had been moved, but still I examined the stairs and the passageway for any marks that might indicate how Grace had fallen. I’d brought my flashlight with me. I went up the stairs and worked my way down them. Pausing at the brass finial on top of the newel post, I wondered if she could have smacked into it in a fall. But I couldn’t picture how she might have hit the back of her head. There were no marks on the knob either.

  The passageway was spotless, mopped by the messman. From where Grace’s tray had landed, I looked up at the staircase. The gaps between the posts supporting the handrail were too narrow for the tray to pass through as Grace fell. If she’d fallen, I didn’t see how the tray could have found its way over the handrail. It should have fallen down the stairs with her.

  If, as I speculated, someone had hit Grace on the back of the head as she turned from the staircase to go down the passageway, what might he or she have hit her with? Just about anything, I thought. The ship was full of hard metal gear that could have been used, then wiped and replaced. Everything from a fire ax to a wrench.

  The only thing I noticed that might prove useful was that the lavatory was at the end of the section of the passageway that would have been behind Grace. Someone could have heard her coming, hidden in it and then attacked her when she turned her back. Of course, it would need to be a person who wasn’t on deck admiring the iceberg.

  ‘Oh, Louise,’ Olive said. ‘I’m sure you’re wrong.’

  Olive had brought me a ham sandwich and a glass of milk. She studied my primitive drawing while I ate the sandwich.

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘Because it makes no sense. Who would want to murder Grace? I was fond of her too, but she was just the colored stewardess. I’m sure she fell. Maybe not exactly the way the master speculated, but she wasn’t killed by anybody.’

  I tapped the paper she held in her hand. ‘Is this a decent representation of what the scene looked like?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Then explain to me how the tray, coffeepot and food got on to the passageway floor. Grace would have dropped it on the steps. She would be grabbing at the rail with both hands to try to stop her fall.’

  ‘I don’t know, Louise, I wasn’t there, but I’m sure you’re wrong. No one saw what happened, but there has to be an explanation for her fall that doesn’t involve murder. That’s a loony idea. Why would anyone want to kill Grace?’

  That question again. I had no answer.

  I was about to argue when someone knocked on the door. It was the chief steward.

  ‘Come in,’ I said. ‘Please.’

  The chief steward stood, with his cap in hand, in the entrance of the door. ‘I’m glad you’re both here,’ he said. ‘I have a favor to ask.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  ‘We want everything to be done pro
per for Grace. The funeral is tomorrow afternoon, and, well, we want her to be … you know …’

  ‘You want us to prepare her body and dress her?’ Olive asked. My ham sandwich turned somersaults in my stomach. I couldn’t, I just couldn’t.

  ‘Yes, ma’am, it wouldn’t be right for, you know, a man to do it. And I thought you being a nurse, and Mrs Pearlie being her friend, you might be willing.’

  ‘Of course we are,’ I said.

  The chief steward was intensely relieved. ‘After breakfast tomorrow I’ll unlock her berth for you,’ he said, ‘So you can choose her clothes and such. And then I’ll take you to the first-aid room. It’s private there.’

  After he left, Olive took my hands again. ‘I can do this by myself,’ Olive said. ‘I’ve prepared corpses for burial before.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I want to help. I can do it.’ I would do this final thing for Grace. Besides, this would give me – us, because Olive was going to help me even if she didn’t know it yet – the chance to examine Grace’s body. Maybe we could find more physical evidence as to how she died.

  It was a one-egg day. With waffles. Maybe the cooks were trying to cheer us up. Except that every person in the mess hall and wardroom was profoundly conscious that Grace would never again enjoy a fried egg with bacon and waffles. It reminded me that there were small pleasures in life that made it worth living, even in the midst of a world war.

  As I carried my tray through the mess hall to the wardroom, I saw Nigel valiantly trying to eat something, encouraged by a couple of his fellow seamen from England. He looked stricken. Occasionally, someone would come up to him, squeeze him on the shoulder and say a few words before passing by. Poor man.

  I put down my tray at the table with the Smits, Olive and Blanche. Every eye was red-rimmed from crying. We ate in silence; even Alida had nothing to say. Gil, who’d been sitting with Ronan and Tom nearby, brought the coffee pot to our table.

  ‘Coffee?’ he said. The Smits drank tea, but the rest of us were happy for him to refill our cups.

  I had slept little. I had spent the night fighting myself, one minute sure that Grace’s death had not been an accident, the other that she fell in some manner that scattered her tray in the passageway and I just didn’t understand how. I sipped my fresh cup of coffee and told myself I’d simply concentrate on getting myself through this day.

  Gil pulled up a chair. He awkwardly patted my hand. ‘How are you all doing?’ he asked. None of us said anything, although Corrie sniffled. After a minute he cleared his throat. ‘Does anyone know if there will be an inquiry into Grace’s death?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Olive said. ‘The master said there wasn’t any time for that, since the fall was an accident. He’s going to write an incident report.’

  ‘The proper authorities must be notified,’ Smit said. ‘And the child’s poor parents.’

  ‘Since no one saw what happened, I suppose that makes sense,’ Gil said. ‘We were all on deck, gawking at the iceberg, except for the crew on watch.’

  As casually as I could, I said, ‘Where were you, Gil? I didn’t see you.’

  He didn’t hesitate. ‘Ronan and I were on the boat deck.’

  ‘Ronan was at the rail with us.’

  ‘He left the deck to get closer to the berg. I’ve seen icebergs before. After you and Olive left, I joined him and smoked a cigarette until he finished his pipe, and we went below.’ Gil didn’t mention running into the chief steward and Olive carrying Grace, I supposed to spare the feelings of the Smit girls. I hadn’t seen Gil at the rail of the boat deck myself, but it had been so crowded I could have missed him.

  The chief steward stood up from his table and caught our eye. Olive and I joined him as he left the wardroom.

  Chief Pearce unlocked a small metal door not far from the galley and ushered us into Grace’s berth. He stood in the doorway, since there wasn’t room for all of us to stand inside. There was barely room for Olive and me. Two bunks took up almost all the space in the tiny berth, which must have been designed for a couple of messmen to share. Since Grace was a woman, she had had the space to herself.

  ‘OK,’ Chief Pearce said. ‘I’ll meet you at the first-aid room in half an hour? Will that give you enough time to take care of her things?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘We’ll see you then.’

  Grace had kept her duffle bag on the top bunk secured to a hand grip. There was no place else to put it. Her pocket book was in the drawer under the bottom bunk with her clothes and other items. A toiletry bag, hairbrush, rollers and a makeup kit. Two books, both by Zora Neal Hurston. She had the usual underclothes, trousers, sweaters and work clothes. Two nightgowns. Her coat. And the matching Dutch bonnet and scarf she was wearing when I first met her. At the very bottom of her drawer we were surprised to find a woman’s merchant mariner uniform. Officially, the merchant marine was under the command of the US Navy during the war, and mariners did have uniforms. So far, I hadn’t seen anyone wear one, even the officers. It just wasn’t part of their tradition. Many of the crew didn’t bother to purchase one.

  I held the uniform up for Olive to see. ‘Do you think we should dress her in this?’ I asked.

  ‘Absolutely,’ she said.

  I wrapped the uniform, a pair of black pumps and the appropriate undergarments in a bundle while Olive packed Grace’s suitcase with the rest of her things. A square of paper fell out of one of the paperbacks and Olive picked it up. ‘Oh, God,’ she said.

  ‘What is it?’

  Olive handed the paper to me. It was a photograph of Grace and Nigel taken at a photo booth somewhere. Two happy young people mugging at the camera. I tucked it into my sweater pocket. ‘I’ll give it to Nigel,’ I said.

  The chief steward was waiting for us outside the first-aid room. He unlocked the door for us. We handed over Grace’s suitcase to him and he gave us a package. ‘It’s a shroud,’ he said. ‘Once you’ve dressed the body, zip it up in this. We’ll load ballast into it later. I’ll give you a key to lock up when you’re done.’

  We went into the first-aid room and closed the door behind us. Grace’s body lay under the blanket she’d been wrapped in after her death. Olive pulled it off her. The sight wasn’t awful, just desperately sad. Grace’s lifeless body, with its soul departed, lay there like an abandoned doll. The bruise on the back of her neck and head had darkened since we had first seen her body.

  ‘Well,’ Olive said. ‘Let’s get this over with.’ She began to unbutton Grace’s sweater.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ I said.

  ‘It’s OK; if you don’t feel well, I can do it.’

  ‘It’s not that. Before we dress her, I’d like to look at her body. Closely.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘There’s no doctor on board to do a post-mortem. I think we should look her over for any evidence of how she died.’

  ‘She died from a head injury. Look at that bruising – it’s clear.’

  ‘It won’t take long. I think it’s important.’

  Olive rolled her eyes. ‘All right, why not.’ We undressed her quickly. What we saw was not what we expected. Her skin was clear and flawless. Not a mark on it, no scar, no birth marks. ‘Roll her over and I’ll look at her back,’ Olive said. I did, and Olive looked. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘This young woman didn’t fall down any stairs. There’s not a bruise on her body.’

  I was surprised. Despite my worries, I’d fully expected to find some evidence of a fall on Grace’s body. Olive covered Grace up to her neck and we turned our attention to her head wound. Olive directed me to hold Grace’s head up while she examined it. I turned away. When I turned back, Olive was washing her hands.

  ‘She had a skull fracture, I can feel the depression. The injury was at the base of her neck and caused blood vessels to rupture.’

  ‘So she could have been hit hard from behind, with a heavy object?’ I said.

  ‘Or taken a serious fall, but with no ot
her bruising or marks on her body.’

  ‘You said that wasn’t possible.’

  Olive rubbed the back of one of her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. Let’s get her dressed.’

  We bathed Grace and dressed her neatly in her uniform. Then Olive lifted her and I tucked the open shroud under her. The room went dark. I saw bright spots in front of my eyes and heard a roaring in my ears. The next time I was aware of anything, I was sitting on the floor. Olive was next to me pressing hard on the back of my neck. ‘You fainted,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you out of here.’ I let her help me to my feet and ease me into a sitting position in the hall outside. ‘I’ll be right back.’ Olive went back inside.

  I had never fainted before. I was drenched with sweat, shivering, and had a headache threatening.

  Olive came back out, locking the door behind her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be silly. You’ve had enough to deal with for one day, that’s all. Let’s get you into your bunk. You need to rest.’

  TEN

  ‘We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out,’ the master read to the crew assembled for Grace’s burial. ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’

  The entire crew of the Amelia Earhart, except those on watch, had assembled for Grace’s burial. Usually rough and world-weary seamen stood solemnly in orderly rows, watch caps in hand, heads bowed. The master and his officers wore their merchant marine uniforms, the first time I had seen them. Tom and the rest of the Navy Armed Guard were wearing their Navy dress blues. No one seemed to feel the cold.

  A bugler stepped forward from among the Navy men and lifted his instrument to his lips. The first chords of the Navy hymn, ‘For Those in Peril on the Sea’, sounded as Grace’s body, wrapped in her shroud and draped with an American flag, was carried on a wooden plank toward the side of the ship by Nigel, the chief steward and four colored seamen. They walked steadily from amidships until they could lift the plank and rest its foot on the side rail of the ship. As the last notes of the hymn faded away, the master stepped forward.