A Witch On The High Seas: Merryweather Mysteries

by Bankhead, Jenny

  “It would,” Lorna said. She was starting to feel faint due to all the talk about splattered blood, so she looked up, away from the dead body at her feet.

  “Above us to the left, I can see the railing where we were standing this morning while we listened to the screaming. I can just barely make out the double doors into the bar beyond that.”

  “What else?” Betty asked, tilting her head upwards as she listened.

  “There’s a railing all the way across. Right above us, there’s a section of the walkway that has ‘CREW ONLY’ signs posted on it. Then, it’s over to that little meditation room that we sat in early on.”

  “A very peaceful room, I remember,” Betty said with a smile. “Do you see the snow globe anywhere?”

  Lorna’s queasiness had passed, and she felt ready to look down around the body again. She spotted the snow globe immediately, in the place that it had rolled to, under a plain plastic chair.

  “Yes,” she said, stooping as she spoke. “It’s right here where it was this morning. It looks like it rolled a little bit. It’s about two feet from Leon.” Or what remains of Leon, thought Lorna as she glanced over at the lifeless form.

  Leon’s spirit had clearly departed. He was now a mass of bones and blood; his essence had gone elsewhere. Where to? she wondered. Where does the Spirit or Soul go when a person dies?

  This question would have to remain unanswered for the time being.

  “Is it cracked?” Betty asked, her voice lively with curiosity. The grogginess of her post-dinner nap had passed, and she was now wide awake.

  Lorna turned the globe over in her hands. “I don’t see one single crack,” she noted aloud.

  “Hrmph,” Betty said. “I’ve dropped glasses before, and they usually crack or shatter when they hit the kitchen floor. I’ve had to throw many cracked glasses in the rubbish bin.”

  “So have I,” Lorna said. “It’s always when I’m cooking with greasy foods… Melted butter, olive oil, bacon grease. Just last month, I was pouring melted butter into my cookie dough, and the measuring cup slipped right through my fingertips. Whoosh! It was a shame. There’s nowhere in Tweed-upon-Slumber to buy a decent measuring cup.”

  “There’s Crabtree Antiques” Betty countered. “I’ve found decent cups there. But my last one was tin.”

  Lorna scrunched up her nose. “Oh, no. I don’t want tin. Unless it’s truly vintage. Then, I might consider it. But a new, tin measuring cup? I’d feel like I was out camping with a Girl Scout troop in the woods.”

  “Do Girl Scouts use tin measuring cups?” Betty asked.

  “Oh yes,” Lorna said. “They use tin everything. Coffee mugs, dinner plates, you name it—” She stopped abruptly, and furrowed her brow. “I think we’re getting off track. What were we talking about?”

  “Your measuring cup breaking,” Betty said.

  “Oh, right. My poor measuring cup. Yes, and other cups too. It’s happened more than once. They slip out of grasp, and…”

  “And right onto the floor,” Betty said. “And that’s the end of it. Cracked. Broken. But the snow globe didn’t crack… Doesn’t that seem odd?”

  “It does,” Lorna said. “It should have cracked on impact. It’s smeared with blood. Whoever killed Leon must have killed him with this. So why didn’t it crack when he was hit over the head with it?”

  “The impact was hard enough to kill him,” noted Betty. “So it must have been mighty forceful. Here, let me hold it.”

  Lorna handed the globe over to her sightless friend, curious about how Betty might examine the item without the use of vision.

  Betty turned the globe in her hands, just as Lorna had done. Then, she flipped one of her hands over so that the back of her hand was against the clear bubble of the snow globe. With the gem on one of her rings, she gave the globe a rapid succession of taps. Tappity-tap-tap-tap. Her ring struck the globe.

  Betty hunched over the globe with her head tilted, her ear poised to hear the sound.

  Lorna closed her eyes and focused on the sound as well.

  Tappity-tap-tap went Betty’s ring against the globe. Then, silence hung in the air.

  “Did you hear that?” Betty asked.

  “Your ring, striking the glass?” Lorna asked.

  Betty shook her head. “No. Listen again.”

  Tappity-tap-tap! Silence.

  “I don’t hear anything other than your ring against the glass,” Lorna said.

  Betty smiled as she held the globe back out to Lorna. “People say that my condition is an impairment,” she said, “but sometimes I think that it is people who can see who have the impairment!”

  Lorna did not know what to make of this. “What are you getting at?” she asked.

  “You rely far too heavily on your vision,” Betty said, the corners of her eyes crinkling as she smiled. “I, on the other hand, am not blinded by what I see. I can gather information without the impression of sight.”

  “And what kind of information did you gather?” Lorna asked. It was her turn to sound curious. Indeed, she was very curious at this moment. Her friend clearly knew something that she did not, and it was driving her crazy in a way that might very well kill a cat. She imagined Lord Nottingham keeling over from the overwhelming curiosity.

  “This is one of my favorite rings,” Betty said, holding her hand up. “It’s made of jasper. Do you know how jasper sounds when it strikes glass?”

  Lorna frowned. “I haven’t a clue,” she said.

  “Well then, I’ll tell you. It sounds very high-pitched. A clinking sound, like an icicle falling onto the pavement on the coldest day of the year. Clink, clink!” Here Betty imitated the sound with uncanny accuracy.

  Lorna could imagine a pointed icicle hitting the pavement with such clarity that a shiver ran up her spine and her teeth chattered together five times in a row.

  Betty continued. “Is that the sound we just heard?”

  “Definitely not,” Lorna said.

  “Correct. So, my ring did not strike glass. It struck something else entirely.”

  Lorna looked at the globe in her hand. The clear bubble that encased the water, white flakes, and ship within looked like glass. She’d assumed it was glass.

  She held the globe in her left hand by the base, and now she used the knuckles on her right hand to give the globe a rap. The low thumping sound was definitely not a sound that knocking on glass would make. If she hadn't been thinking about sounds, she never would have noticed this.

  “Why, it’s plastic!” Lorna exclaimed. “I can hear it now when I tap it with my knuckle. This thing is made of a very durable plastic—not glass at all!”

  “Very durable,” Betty said, “if someone used it to smash Leon’s skull in.”

  “Yes.” Lorna shivered again. This time it was not because she was thinking of icicles. She inched away from the dead body and took a deep breath to calm her nerves. Then she continued examining the globe in her hand. “There are words,” she said as she flipped the globe over and noted an inscription on the base. “They’re engraved in this brass base.”

  “What does it say?” Betty asked.

  “It reads: ‘Son, may your voyages always bring you home. Love from your father.’ That’s all it says.”

  “A gift from father to son,” Betty said.

  Lorna looked up into the sky, thinking this over. The stars were twinkling, completely oblivious to the drama that was unfolding millions of miles from them. The sky was now deep purple and navy blue. It was getting late.

  Pajamas would feel nice, Lorna thought, suddenly exhausted.

  “It’s been a long day,” Betty said, reading her friend’s mind. “Why don’t we retire to our room and think all of this over? These clues are like puzzle pieces. But if we’re always running around, we’ll never get the chance to sit down and put the pieces together.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Lorna said. “We need to think all of this over. I’ll bring the globe with me so that I can exam
ine it in the light of the room.”

  “Won’t that be disturbing the crime scene?” asked Betty.

  Lorna pushed through the Hawaiian shirts and then stepped through the gap. She held the shirts apart so that Betty could follow. “I think it’s up to us to solve this case,” she said. “Someone on this ship took a life. The police aren’t here yet, and Charlie is a mess.”

  “He’s not getting very far with this investigation, is he?” Betty asked with a light laugh.

  Lorna joined in, giggling with her friend. “I’m afraid not,” she said. And then she added, “Poor Charlie. He really does try, I think.”

  “He does his best,” Betty said. “We all do.”

  With that, they headed back to their sleeping quarters.

  The first thing that Lorna did upon arriving into the suite was to deposit the snow globe on the table. It gave her the creeps to hold onto it. It was a murder weapon, after all. Second, she went right to the bathroom and began scrubbing her hands. This felt so good that finally she stopped scrubbing and decided to pour herself a proper bath.

  An hour later, when she emerged from the bathroom dressed in her softest, most cruise-worthy jammies—a crushed satin pant and button-up top set that she’d purchased just for the occasion—she found that Betty was already in bed on the opposite side of the room.

  The room was very large, and Lorna had to raise her voice to speak to Betty. “I was doing some thinking, in the bath,” she called out across the room.

  “A wonderful place for thinking,” Betty said. “What did you come up with?”

  “The globe is made of plastic. That means that Lou lied to us.”

  “How so?” Betty asked.

  “He said that the globe was very valuable. You and I know enough about antiques and valuables to know that a plastic snow globe can’t be worth very much at all.”

  “Maurice at the antique shop wouldn’t get much for it, that’s for sure.”

  “No one pays for plastic,” Lorna said. “It’s too modern. Truly valuable items are made out of finer materials than that. Lou said that the globe was so valuable that someone broke into his room to steal it while everyone was distracted by the fireworks show. He must have been making that up.”

  “Why would he lie to us?” Betty asked.

  “Good question,” Lorna said. “But that was as far as I got. Then I started to feel woozy from all of the heat from the bubble bath, and I had to get out.” She reached for her lotion, which sat on her nightstand table, and began applying it to her arms. Then she folded back the covers of her bed and climbed in.

  “Let’s sleep on it,” said Betty. “I think that’s a good thing to do. Whenever there’s something I can’t quite figure out, I sleep on it. Sometimes I wake up with the most wonderful, wise answers to my problem.”

  “Really?” Lorna asked. “I usually wake up hungry and in need of caffeine—that, and the sensation of Lord Nottingham kneading the covers. He likes to be fed at six a.m.”

  “You might be surprised,” Betty said. “If you just give a problem a little bit of thought before bed, answers bubble up in your subconscious while you sleep.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Lorna said.

  She finished rubbing in her lotion and then clicked off the bedside lamp. The room turned pitch black.

  Soon Betty began to snore.

  Lorna waited for sleep to come. Her eyes began to adjust to the dark, and shadows around the room took on foreboding forms. The armoire became a lurking figure, the table across the room his crouched accomplice.

  This is silly, Lorna told herself. I’m a grown woman. I don’t have to be afraid of the dark.

  But her heart would not stop pounding in her chest.

  Just then, she heard the doorknob begin to turn. It was the subtlest sound of metal sliding against wood. She looked at the faint outline of the door in the dimly lit room. It looked perfectly still. Ah! she thought. Now I’m imagining sounds as well. I should just go to sleep. She turned in the bed so that her back was facing the door.

  Then came a sound that she knew was not her imagination.

  There was a definite scraping sound of the door against the suite’s thick wall-to-wall carpeting.

  Lorna froze. She felt a draft on her back through the blankets, coming from the open door. She was paralyzed.

  The room was silent now except for Betty’s snores. The opening door had not woken Betty. Slowly, fearfully, Lorna began to turn.

  Chapter 14

  Lorna shifted under her covers until she was facing the door. She held the comforter up to her chin nervously as she peered across the room towards the now open door. Must have been a gust of wind, she told herself. Nothing but wind. There’s no one there.

  The entrance to the double suite was wide open. She could see out to the hallway beyond, where a soft light was shining. The light pooled on the carpeting inside of the suite in a perfectly rectangular shape.

  “I’ll just get up and push the door shut,” whispered Lorna to herself. “Betty must have forgotten to lock it, and I assumed she had. I must stop assuming so many things. Assuming makes an—” she was muttering to herself, but now she stopped mid-sentence.

  She had the distinct, overwhelming feeling that someone was staring at her. Goosebumps rose over both of her arms, under the satin fabric of her new pajamas.

  “Who is there?” she whispered.

  No answer.

  Lorna could barely see. Besides the rectangle of light from outside, the room was dark. She looked in the direction where the awful staring sensation was coming from. There, just a few feet from her, stood the unmistakable figure of a man. This was no outline of an armoire, twisted in her imagination. This figure had wispy hair, square shoulders, and distinctly bulging biceps. It was a man all right.

  Lorna opened her mouth to call out for Betty but found that she could not speak. Her vocal chords were frozen with fear. She scrambled out from under the covers and stood by the bed.

  The man was approaching her. Panic rose up in Lorna’s chest. This is the killer, she thought. It must be! He’s already taken one victim, and I’m about to be victim number two. I’m about to find out where Souls and Spirits go when the body dies!

  She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling a bit like Charlie when he thought very hard. It was odd, but it actually helped.

  There was a cracking sound. Was that my head? thought Lorna in a state of confusion. It sounded like a thump to the skull. Amazing that it didn’t hurt. It must have been fast. Am I dead now?

  A second thumping sound filled the suite. This was the sound of a body hitting the floor.

  Lorna opened her eyes, half expecting to see her own body lying in a crumpled heap. But no! What she saw was, in fact, the man’s body, lying on the floor.

  Above the body, hovering proudly, was her broomstick.

  Lorna Merryweather, in all her years with the ancient broomstick, had never felt so happy to see it. A gift from her powerful mother, the broomstick had never quite taken to Lorna. He usually displayed a tricky attitude that made Lorna laugh on the good days and boil with frustration on the bad days. Whether he was going out for jaunts on the countryside solo or knocking around the house late at night just to drive her crazy, he always seemed to find ways to be less-than-helpful, in Lorna’s humble opinion.

  “You’re here!” Lorna said happily, acknowledging the broomstick, who gave a happy and proud wobble in Lorna’s direction. He looked a bit like a dog wagging its tail.

  “Oh, you dear, you!” cried Lorna ecstatically. She was frightfully happy to be alive, and quite overcome with emotions. If she knew how, she would have run up to the broomstick and given him an enveloping hug. But how does one hug a broomstick? Try it one day, and you’ll find that it’s nearly impossible. Instead, she stroked the broom’s handle as she might pet Lord Nottingham’s back when he was all arched up, weaving around her ankles.

  Betty’s voice was raspy with sleep. “Of course, I’m here!” she sai
d. “I haven’t gone anywhere, except for dreamland. Why, I was with Sean Connery, having a picnic on the banks of the Slumber. We were about to tuck into a beautiful spread—scotch eggs, sausage rolls, Eton mess. What’s your broomstick doing here?”

  “He saved me,” Lorna said. She was now walking briskly towards her bedside table, where a lamp was perched. When she switched it on, the room was flooded with light.

  Betty moved to sit on the edge of her bed. She wore a sweet little nightcap over her silver curls, and the tip of the cap poked out at an angle. “Something’s not right,” Betty said. “There’s someone else here.”

  “It’s a little late for that,” said Lorna in a huff.

  Her happiness at being alive was wearing off, and now she encountered some residual bitterness. If Betty had been more awake instead of drifting off into dreamland with Sean Connery, she would have sensed the intruder before he even arrived. As it was, Lorna had endured an extremely harrowing situation. Imagine, a man creeping into their room! Who was it, anyway?

  Lorna approached the crumpled figure. He was groaning a little now and reaching for his head where the broomstick had smacked him.

  “He’s coming to!” Lorna said to Betty.

  The man was lying face-first on the carpet. His hair was wavy and black. He was very fit and strong looking, and his muscular tan arms were covered with tattoos. Lorna picked out an anchor that she recognized. He wore a white polo shirt and distinctive, short, bright red sport shorts. Lorna had a mounting suspicion that it was Al, the tennis coach, but she could not be one-hundred-and-ten percent certain without seeing his face.

  “Careful now,” said Betty. “I’m sorry for slipping off to sleep while all this was happening. I should have been on my guard—what with a murderer running around and all. But now that he’s in here, we’d better be sure he doesn’t hurt us!”

  The simple apology was all that Lorna needed. Her bitterness evaporated, and she once again felt entirely warm feelings for her friend. “Right,” she said. “Let’s make sure his arms are tied back before he comes around.”