John D. MacDonald

A Touch of Miss Mint

When the scheduled sailing of the cruise ship Margaretta from Port Everglades, Florida, was delayed a few hours, Miss Isobel Mint, one of the first aboard, posted herself in utmost comfort where she could watch the arrivals. As a cruise veteran she accepted the statistical reality that, among the three hundred and some passengers, there might be one or two capable of civilized conversation.

She had no doubt of her ability to single those few out at twenty paces. Instantaneous character analysis, Miss Mint believed, was a facility acquired only by veteran police officers and by maiden ladies who had spent their productive years operating fashionable schools for young ladies. Only these two professions were privileged to learn the depths of deceit, misdirection and cunning of which the human spirit was capable.

After her retirement, predated by an excellent investment program, Isobel Mint had cruised frequently for ten years, spurred by curiosities which knew no restraint. As a realist she accepted the fact that she looked rather like a very tall, thin, myopic rabbit. But she also sensed that kindred souls, whose minds also had some sting and flexibility, soon forgot to be depressed by her appearance.

As she watched them come aboard, she was able to file most of them into tidy categories, and she began to be mildly alarmed by the dearth of anyone who looked, in her sense of the word, amiable. It was not as serious as it would have been on one of the longer cruises. This was a mere ten days — St. Thomas, Curacao, Aruba, Jamaica, Nassau and back to Florida.

Then she saw a man who looked quite promising. Twenty years her junior. Middle forties. A rather good face, seamed with the right quizzical laugh lines — intelligence and irony and a scholarly introversion. And his clothes were right. But the girl with him put Miss Mint off. She narrowed her rabbit eyes in meticulous inspection. The girl was twenty years younger than the man. Quite a large girl, handsome and vital in an obvious way. She clung to his arm on the way to the gangplank, laughing toward him, showing more than the customary ration of teeth. Gold wedding bands twinkled on the two of them.

Too bad, Miss Mint thought. Found himself a second wife. Bought a bill of goods. That girl is not quite right. Trying to be a lady. Clothes are almost right. Walk is almost right. Entertainment world? Not quite that.

As they reached the bottom of the gangplank, a curious thing happened. The couple sobered. The girl said a furtive something and looked behind her. The man moved off to the side, awkwardly casual. The girl came aboard. The man lighted a cigarette. Miss Mint leaned over the rail and saw the girl present her ticket. She received a smiling greeting from the purser. A few minutes after she was out of view, the man came aboard. He presented a ticket.

Disconsolate, Miss Mint leaned back. Oh, dear, one of those tiresome little charades. Men could be such sacrificial lambs. Cross him out for this voyage. At least he had not committed the lesser sin but far greater disaster of marrying the hussy.

Yet something about it bothered her. The little scene did not seem quite right. It clung to the back of her mind long after she had given up the vain search for a kindred spirit and had reconciled herself to ten days of observation rather than conversation.

At dinner, after they had moved into the chop of the Gulf Stream and the last red of April twilight was almost gone, Miss Mint was assigned to a table for six. Two places remained empty. The other three were occupied by a trio of fresh young schoolteachers from South Carolina, all very sunburned and slightly queasy, and who spent the dinner hour talking about how much dancin’ there would be aboard.

The Margaretta was a small ship and a one-class ship, and the next morning when they were well through New Providence Channel and headed south, Isobel Mint, in her cotton print and her sneakers and her baseball hat, paced the deck areas and lounges looking vaguely for that rather nice man traveling with that slightly impossible girl.

At lunch the two extra places were filled. To her confusion it was the sizable and vital young woman she had seen with the older man, but now she was with a man her own age. He was, to say the least, unfortunate, Isobel Mint thought. A great brown muscular chap with a Tarzan haircut, wavy over the ears, unpleasant table habits, and a nasty bouquet of black hair erupting out of the top of his sport shirt. The two of them were slightly drunk and displayed no intention of introducing themselves. The three young teachers seemed cowed.

By introducing herself in a loud firm tone, as she had done with the teachers on the previous evening, Miss Mint elicited a startled look, and the fact that they were a Mr. and Mrs. Corto, Marty and Melinda. Mrs. Corto wore the same wide gold band. Mr. Corto had one also. One of the stewards came over and greeted them by name with all that false effusiveness which is related in direct proportion to the tip on some previous cruise. Yet it made the pair glow and look important. Miss Mint noted that Melinda Corto had given up the lady-like pretenses, and seemed much more in her own vulgar element with this young man.

The pair ignored their table companions and talked to each other in what Miss Mint thought to be some sort of contemporary argot, one she associated with musicians or criminals. She was prepared to accept that sort of rudeness, but at one point Marty Corto went too far. He glanced around the table and said something in a perfectly audible voice into Melinda’s ear, “...got to watch out, honey, the way they got me at a table fulla tasty broads...”

There are limits, of course. Isobel Mint placed her fork on her plate with exactly the right emphasis to attract the young man’s attention. She stared across at him with that dreadful smile which had intimidated several generations of the most arrogant young women the Eastern seaboard could produce. “Mr. Corto. Even in my better years, and I can assure you I had those years in full measure, I should not have touched a specimen like you with laboratory forceps. In the future, be so kind as to omit any reference to me from your witticisms.”

In a vivid silence Corto went white under his hero tan, then raw beef red when his young lady began to strangle on food and laughter. Miss Mint studied him, and when she saw that he would be no trouble in the future, she nodded, finished her tea and excused herself.

On a shady corner of the forward deck under the bridge, she frowned out across a sparkle of tropic sea and tried to make sense of what she had seen. The older man and Melinda had given the impression of an intimate relationship which was certainly not father-daughter or uncle-niece. At the same time the Corto relationship did not have a marital flavor. What kind of utterly mad triangle could it be?

Of one thing Miss Mint was certain. The actions of individuals were consistent with their capacities and, when all facts were known, made a congruent sense. And she had trusted her appraisal of the mysterious Mr. X. A decent chap. The fathers of her best girls had been in that mold.

She wanted the stranger’s name. And she wanted to find him. She went to the purser’s office. With vast professional patience he told her that there were exactly 311 passengers on board. No, they had no intention of publishing a passenger list this voyage. Too short. No, he was not authorized to let her examine his own list.

So she decided to make up her own. She did not mind being thought an eccentric. She went about with one of her notebooks. As she took down each name and cabin number, she gave that person one quick sharp glance. She had always known each young girl by name after the third day of school. This was far easier. Young girls had a forlorn tendency to look very much alike. Thus she could tell at a glance whether any passenger was as yet unrecorded. She gave no reason for asking. But no one questioned her. An air of absolute authority is seldom challenged.

By evening she had well over two hundred. By eleven the next morning she had reached three hundred. The sea was calm. That helped. The last eleven were difficult. Six of them were three honeymoon couples. She questioned room stewardesses in her fluent, grammatical and badly pronounced Italian, and got the names and room numbers, and eliminated the gentlemen on the basis of age. Four were desperately seasick — three ladies and one very, very elderly gentleman. The final male was in the ship’s infirmary, and he turned out to be twelve years old.

At three o’clock she went back to the purser. “Mr. Metucci, I wish to speak to you very seriously.”

“But of course, madame.”

“I have listed here every passenger apparently aboard. Three hundred and eleven. Here is my list. Names and cabin numbers.”

“My God, madame, you have covered them all? But why?”

“I watched the arrivals. I saw a man come aboard. He presented a ticket. Apparently he is not now aboard. I watched until the mooring lines were cast off. I did not notice him leave.”

“But... a moment of inattention... surely you...”

“Did anyone with a ticket leave the ship?”

“No, but...”

“Do you have 312 passengers?”

“Absolutely no. It has been checked and...”

“I saw you checking people aboard. You seemed to have a special greeting for Mrs. Corto.”

“Ah yes, of course. They have sailed with us before. But I do not see what—”

“Visitors use the other gangplank, further forward?”

“But yes. I do not—”

“Now I wish to ask you what is perhaps the most important question of all. On sailing, did you find one visitor’s pass had not been surrendered?”

He stared at her intently, in reappraisal. “You are quite right. We thought someone might attempt to hide aboard. We conducted a thorough search, in a quiet way. But how could you know that?”

“Mr. Metucci, I have seen Mr. Corto wearing two sports shirts which are not only too small for him, but are of a more sedate pattern than I imagine he would buy — or any woman would give him.”

Mr. Metucci wiped a hand slowly across his eyes. “Miss Mint, if you could possibly be more careful to stay on one subject at a time, perhaps I could—”

“Mr. Metucci. I am an observant woman. I seek reasons for everything.” She paused. “Once I have eliminated all probable explanations, I am then willing to accept the improbable. The Cortos eat like wolves and do not get seasick, yet they missed dinner on the first night out.”

“Please, Miss Mint!”

“If you would stop interrupting! I believe Mrs. Corto talked a lonely and vulnerable man into buying cruise tickets for the two of them under the supposedly assumed name of Martin Corto. Then Mr. Corto came aboard as a visitor, probably at a crowded moment. Mrs. Corto gave the lonely man a reason why they should not board together, possibly a jealous friend she was trying to avoid. They met in their cabin. Possibly she dragged a drink. Then the real Mr. Corto joined her. They locked the door. In the small hours of the morning, perhaps, they hurled the lonely man overboard. They missed dinner because they could not leave him there alone. Now Corto, both cheap and ignorant, wears the dead man’s shirts.”

Mr. Metucci hit himself in the forehead with his fist. “I beg you—”

“Mr. Metucci! Have you had police inquiries regarding men in their middle years who were reputed to have sailed with you, yet there was no trace of them in your records or your memory?”

The purser seemed to listen to distant sounds. His lips made a whistle-shape. “It has happened,” he said.

“And the Cortos were on those cruises.”

“Perhaps.”

She gave him that smile which had turned very lazy young ladies into straight-A scholars. “I believe your captain will invite the Cortos to the bridge while you and I see if their cabin contains anything... equivalently implausible.”

The stocky Captain of the Margaretta, in tropic whites, stood on the shoreward wing of his bridge with the curious Miss Mint and in silence watched the Cortos being bundled by proper authorities into a vehicle bound for the airport. The Captain sighed. “True villainy presupposes the imagination to comprehend the horror of the act. Those two are mindless urchins.”

“My dear Captain, the worst villainy comes from childish callousness.”

He smiled at her. “It could be argued at length, perhaps over wine. Please humor me. I so seldom find a passenger who can converse.”

“My pleasure,” said Miss Mint, with a rabbity smile, adjusting the tilt of her baseball hat.

Content

John D. MacDonald
A Touch of Miss Mint