The Case of the Grinning Gorilla

“Yes. I have some stuff that I take when it’s going to be rough, and it works pretty well, but it makes me terribly sleepy. I...”

“You didn’t have any dinner that night?”

“Dinner? Heavens, no! I began to feel miserable and then the medicine took hold and I went to sleep and I don’t think I woke up until around midnight. It was pretty bad then. I took some more medicine, and went to sleep, and about, oh, I don’t know, about seven or eight o’clock in the morning I woke up and found it was calm. We were coming into the island then.”

“And then what happened?”

“Well, it was shortly after that that we discovered Helen was missing. Mr. Addicks went down to her stateroom and... well, I guess you know the rest. The bed hadn’t been slept in.”

“She could have accidentally washed overboard?” Mason asked.

“She could have, yes.”

“She could perhaps have been standing out on deck?”

“She could have, but it was rough and we were making heavy weather of it until we hove to. I was down in my room myself, but I talked with some of the sailors afterwards. I guess we were taking a bit of water over the decks. It can get terribly rough out there in the channel.”

“All right,” Mason said, “Helen kept a diary. You knew that?”

“Yes.”

“Now then,” Mason said, “I have four volumes of that diary. Volume number five is missing. Volume number five would have started in about two weeks prior to Helen’s disappearance. That is, volume four ends exactly two weeks before her death. Do you think she gave up keeping her diary?”

“No, I’m sure she didn’t. She had a brief case. She used to carry that diary with her all the time. I remember that I remonstrated with her a couple of times.”

“Why? What was wrong with keeping a diary?”

“It’s all right if a body just puts in a few things about where they are and what they’re doing and things of that sort, but Helen just pored over her diary, she put in hours on it. Hours when she should have been out with other people.”

“That’s the point,” Mason said, “that’s what I want to know about. What friends did she have?”

“Mr. Mason, I don’t think she had any.”

“Then what was the idea of keeping herself so beautiful, and getting that beautiful sun tan?”

“She was ambitious. She wanted to go to Hollywood and become an actress, and she thought that sooner or later there would be an opportunity through some of the connections she would make through Mr. Addicks.”

“Was Addicks friendly with the Hollywood crowd?”

“No, that’s the trouble. He wasn’t. He was in a position where he could have been, but Mr. Addicks — I don’t like to talk about a former employer, Mr. Mason, but Mr. Addicks is very, very unsocial. I think his life became dominated by... well, I suppose you know about his brother.”

“What about him?”

“He committed a murder.”

“Where?”

“In some foreign country. I think it was Australia.”

“And was executed?”

“I presume he was. All I know is that he committed murder and that Mr. Addicks was very, very much attached to his brother, and apparently Mr. Addicks has... well, if you ask me, I think Mr. Addicks is afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Afraid of himself. Afraid that there’s some sort of a curse in the family, some kind of a homicidal complex that he has — the same thing that his brother had. I think he’s trying to find out something about that.”

“And so he experiments with monkeys and apes.”

“Mostly gorillas. He says gorillas are the closest to man in their psychological reasoning; that chimpanzees are friendly and all of that, but he is interested in the lowland gorilla.”

“And they’re kept in cages?”

“That’s right. Of course, you have to have very strong cages for them because...”

“And there’s a trainer?”

“There are several trainers, and one psychologist who...”

“Where do all those people live?” Mason asked. “Who does their housekeeping? Who cooks for them?”

“They live in their homes. They work in a completely separate house that faces the back street. They come and go as they please. They’re not permitted to have the run of the grounds at all. They can come to the main house through a corridor, but only if they’re sent for.”

“Who takes care of the gorillas at night?”

“No one. They’re caged in strong, heavily barred cages.”

“What would happen if there’d be a fire at night?”

“That’d be just too bad. If you want to bring that up, what would happen if there was a fire in the daytime? You can’t just open the cage of a gorilla and say, ‘Come on out.’ ”

Mason thought that over.

“Those gorillas are mean?”

“I guess so. I only petted one of the smaller ones. He loves me. Some like people, some don’t. Some of the experiments were for the purpose of confusing them. They’d be trained to take food from a box when a bell rang. At other times they’d get an electric shock when they tried it. Then the trainers would change the signals all around — something about a confused orientation they called it. I didn’t like it. Neither did Helen.”

“Well,” Mason said, “I couldn’t help but be interested on account of the diary. Thanks a lot.”