by Jack Treby
Miss Wellesley looked up, her dark brown eyes flashing happily at the sight of me. ‘Good morning, Mr Buxton. You’re looking cheerful this morning.’
She was not wrong. For the first time since leaving New York, I was feeling surprisingly chipper. ‘Just one more night and we’ll be back in the old country.’
‘Yes, won’t it be lovely? I’m looking forward to seeing England again. Albeit briefly.’
‘You’ll be heading off across Europe with Mrs O’Neill?’
‘Yes, for three months. And then back to England again to resume my studies at Easter.’
‘No rest for the wicked.’
‘Whereabouts do you live?’ she asked. ‘In England?’
I rubbed my chin. ‘Difficult to say just now.’ I had been away for some time. ‘I’m thinking of renting a property in Brighton. Or Bournemouth. Somewhere like that.’ I would have to avoid my old haunts in London and the Home Counties. I hadn’t given much thought yet to the practicalities of it all, but England was a much simpler proposition than the Americas. A nice seaside town somewhere, that would do me. I had spent a fair chunk of the past two years living near the sea and – the odd hurricane aside – I had come to enjoy the coastal ambience. ‘How is Susan this morning?’ I enquired. ‘Mrs O’Neill?’
‘I haven’t seen her yet. We’re due to meet up at eleven, in the garden cafe. What time is it now?’
I fumbled for my pocket watch. ‘A little after half past ten.’
She dipped her head. ‘Just time to buy a few things and get back to the Reynolds Suite.’
‘Oh, yes, of course. You’ve moved in there now.’ Mrs Hamilton-Baynes had passed on my suggestion and the younger woman was now sharing a room with Lady Jocelyn Wingfield. ‘How was it, sleeping with the dragon?’
To her credit, Miss Wellesley did try not to laugh. ‘You mustn’t call her that. She is rather severe, though.’
‘I’ll say.’
‘But very polite. She doesn’t talk much. I don’t think she’s used to sharing with strange women.’
‘That’s her own fault. Should have waited a few days before giving that girl her notice.’
Miss Wellesley’s face fell. ‘Jenny, yes. The poor lamb.’
‘She’s in with Susan now?’
‘Yes. I feel so sorry for her. No references. It does seem a little harsh.’
‘She’s young. I’m sure she’ll muddle through. What about you? What will you do, when you’ve completed your studies?’
Miss Wellesley smiled. She was in a good mood too, it seemed. ‘I don’t know. I might return to America. If I can find some work there.’
‘Perhaps Susan will put in a word for you. Find you a nice office job or something. Do you type?’ I couldn’t help but ask the question.
The girl grinned sheepishly. ‘Not properly,’ she admitted. ‘With two fingers, if I have to.’
‘I’m not far off that myself.’
‘I think it’s better to write by hand, if you can’ she said. ‘Which reminds me, I need to buy some notepaper.’ She looked down at the bottom of the magazine rack. There were several small packets of writing paper here, some plain and some with “RMS GALITIA” stamped at the head. Miss Wellesley bent down to pick up a set.
‘Well, I’ll leave you to get on. Any plans for this afternoon?’
‘Yes. The Reverend Hamilton-Baynes is giving me a lesson in shuffleboard after lunch. He’s lent me some equipment. Oh, I must pick that up. I left it in the other cabin.’
‘Shuffleboard, eh? That should be amusing.’
‘I hope so! I’ve told him I’m not very good at sport, but he wasn’t having it. He’s quite charming in his way, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, I suppose he is.’
‘Not like a vicar at all. And then Mrs O’Neill has invited me to play whist later on, with a couple of other passengers she met last night.’
‘Whist?’ I raised an eyebrow. I have always been a sucker for a card game. ‘I might be tempted to join her, if she has no objection.’
‘There won’t be any gambling,’ Miss Wellesley said; then flushed at her own presumption. ‘Harry...Mr Latimer...he said you were partial to the odd wager.’
‘He wasn’t wrong there.’
‘But I don’t think this will be your cup of tea, Mr Buxton. Elderly women. It’s just an excuse for gossiping, I expect. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.’
‘No. But you’re right. I think I may give it a miss.’ Far better to find my own game, if I could.
Miss Wellesley moved over to the counter to pay for her notepaper and magazine.
‘I shall see you at lunch,’ I said. And with that I made my way out of the shop.
I would have taken the elevator all the way up to A Deck, if I hadn’t spotted that retired colonel waiting outside the lift. My mood was not that much improved this morning that I wished to engage in conversation with a complete stranger. He would probably be heading for the smoking room, which was my intended destination, and I did not want to have to converse with the fellow the entire length of the ship. I headed for the stairs instead. It was six flights up to A Deck and a long walk to the Carolean at the rear. The stairs were not steep, but by the time I got to B Deck I was already starting to puff. I had eaten rather a lot at breakfast. The lift door opposite pinged open and the colonel barrelled out into the hallway, giving me a nod and heading off to his suite on the starboard side. I watched him go. I was about to head in the same direction – having decided to abandon the long walk and break out the Piccadillys in the comfort of my own room – when a sudden piercing scream ricocheted across the deck. I almost dropped my newspaper.
The sound had come from the far side of the elevators. With some trepidation, I rushed across the floor and rounded the corner into the port side corridor. A woman was standing outside the nearest of the cabins, her hand to her mouth. The door of the stateroom was open and she was staring in horror inside. At first, I took her to be one of the stewardesses, but she was not dressed in the traditional grey uniform. In fact, she was not in uniform at all, and it was this fact which prevented me from recognising her at once. She saw the movement as I appeared in the corridor and her mouth fell open again. ‘Oh, sir! Come quickly. It’s awful.’
‘What is it?’ I enquired. It was only as I moved in that I realised the young woman was Lady Jocelyn’s maid. ‘Jenny, what’s wrong?’
‘There, sir!’ She pointed a trembling finger through the doorway. ‘It’s Mrs O’Neill, sir.’
Oh, lord, I thought, as I took in the view. Susan O’Neill was lying across the length of the stateroom. Her eyes were wide open and the carpet around her head was stained with blood. She was quite dead.
Chapter Ten
‘What’s going on? Is everything all right?’ A couple of heads were poking out of doorways along the port side corridor. I was not the only one to have heard the maid’s scream.
‘I...yes. No...I...everything’s fine,’ I called out, trying to get a grip on myself. ‘Just a...small accident.’ The heads disappeared, but a steward was speeding around the near corner. I tore my gaze away from the bedroom. ‘There’s been an accident,’ I told him, waving my newspaper at the fellow before he could catch his breath. ‘You need to fetch a doctor. As quickly as you can.’ The steward gazed past me into the bedroom. His eyes widened at the sight of the body, but then he swallowed hard, nodded, and raced off back in the direction he had come.
Jenny Simpkins was continuing to stare, her hand clamped to her mouth. ‘She must have banged her head,’ the girl breathed, trying to make sense of the bloody scene. ‘Slipped and fallen.’
It was a reasonable conjecture. I folded up the newspaper and stowed it in my jacket pocket. The body was spread out across the carpet, the head lying beneath a washbasin on the right hand side. The stateroom was similar in size to my own, with its own private bathroom, but there was a separate sink as well, to the right of one of the beds. I shuddered, catching sight of a smear of
blood on the side of the bowl. Jenny was right. Mrs O’Neill must have tripped and struck her head, and then crashed to the floor. And there the poor woman was, her eyes staring upwards, a dribble of blood congealing at the edge of her mouth, the carpet stained red beneath her.
The last time I had seen Mrs O’Neill, she had been positively bursting with life, gathering herself up in the aftermath of tragedy. She had gone to the Palladian last night after supper and, by all accounts, had been up on the dance floor into the early hours, waltzing away. And now this. My God, was there no end to it? I slumped against the frame of the door. Everywhere I went, it seemed, people were dropping dead, on the Galitia and elsewhere. I closed my eyes and took a moment to gather my wits. All those letters, the bomb hoax and now another fatality. One dead body onboard ship might be considered an accident, but two in a row....that was simply not plausible. I had been through this sort of affair too many times now to believe in coincidences. Mrs O’Neill could not simply have tripped and banged her head. Somebody had done this to her. And if she had been deliberately murdered, then what about Harry? Had Doctor Armstrong got it wrong? Had he been killed too? Please God no, I thought. All those suspicions I had had, in the aftermath of his death, now came flooding back to me.
First things first, I thought, trying to calm myself. Was there anything out of place inside the cabin? It was a fairly ordered space, by the looks of it. A set of garish clothes were hanging on the closet door. A pair of shoes by the bed. A couple of shuffleboard sticks. But nothing obviously amiss that I could see. It was Harry’s stateroom all over again. I focused my attention on Mrs O’Neill. How long had she been lying there? An hour, perhaps? A little less? The blood had congealed somewhat on the carpet. Doctor Armstrong would determine the exact time of death, but it would be some minutes before he arrived.
The maid was caught up in her own distress. ‘I’ve never...I’ve never seen nothing like this before,’ she mumbled, bringing a hand up to her nose and wiping it with the back of her hand. The girl was small and blonde, dressed in a cheap but serviceable yellow dress. ‘Bloody hell. What a horrible thing. Oh! ’Scuse my language, sir.’
‘That’s quite all right.’ I pulled back from the door and took a short, hard look at the girl. Was there anything useful she could tell me?’ ‘You were...sharing a room with her?’ I asked.
Jenny wiped her hand distractedly on the side of her dress. ‘Yes, sir. I had to swap rooms with Miss Wellesley, didn’t I? Her ladyship said...’
I waggled my fingers dismissively. ‘Yes, I know all about that. But what time did you last see Mrs O’Neill? Alive, I mean.’
She frowned, struggling to recall. ‘I dunno, sir. About eight thirty, I think. I went off to breakfast.’
Eight thirty. That sounded a little late for the servants’ sitting. ‘And you’ve only just now come back to the cabin?’
‘Yes, sir.’ She sniffled.
‘And Mrs O’Neill...she was in good health when you left?’
‘Yes, sir. Bright as a button.’
‘Did she go down to breakfast?’
‘I believe so, sir.’ It would have been a different sitting from the maid. ‘The poor bleeder. You think she was dead when she hit the floor?’
‘Dead or unconscious,’ I thought. It would have been quick, even if she had been attacked. Jenny was peering up at me, hoping for confirmation of her own theory. ‘You’re right,’ I agreed. ‘She must have come out of the bathroom and slipped on the mat.’ I did not really believe that, but it seemed the kindest thing to say. I did not want the girl having a fit, out here in the corridor. It would only attract further attention. Besides, it was a plausible enough interpretation of the scene. The bathroom door was open and the mat in front of it did look a little ruffled. If Mrs O’Neill had been struck by someone, she must have hit the washbasin on the way down. My eye slipped sideways and caught abruptly on the dressing table. In pride of place, in front of a large oval mirror, stood a black Olivetti typewriter. I drew in a breath. I couldn’t think how I hadn’t noticed it before.
If I had been thinking clearly, I might have hesitated before stepping into the room. There would be hell to pay if I contaminated what might well prove to be a crime scene; and it was not as if there was any doubt that Mrs O’Neill was dead. But all thoughts of decorum deserted me at the sight of that glistening black machine. I had to get a closer look, while the opportunity was there. Gingerly, I stepped across the stockinged legs of Mrs O’Neill. A sheet of paper was spooled into position on the typewriter and something had been bashed out onto it. I leaned forward and examined the text. It was complete gibberish, a short sequence of repeated letters, all in upper case: “QWEQWEQWEQWEQWE” it said; and the letter “W” in every case was slightly misaligned.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing!’ an angry voice called out to me from behind. I swirled around. Mr Griffith, the security officer, was standing in the frame of the door.
The nearest available muster point was on the opposite side of the foyer, in the spacious confines of the Reynolds Suite. A steward bundled us off into the living room, while a seriously perturbed Mr Griffith remained behind to examine the scene of the crime; if indeed it was the scene of a crime. It was rather bad luck that the junior man had bumped into him first, on his way to find the doctor, but I supposed right now Griffith was the more useful of the two men. Susan O’Neill was far beyond the help of even a highly trained medic.
The Reynolds Suite was deserted as we settled ourselves in the sitting room. There was no sign of Sir Richard or Lady Jocelyn.
‘Bleeding hell,’ Jenny muttered, as we threaded our way around the sofa. ‘I couldn’t half do with a drink. Begging your pardon, sir.’ She had spotted the bottles lined up on the sideboard beneath a rather stern portrait of Admiral Hood.
‘You and me both,’ I agreed. I pulled out my newspaper and threw it down on the coffee table. A stiff drink was definitely in order.
My mind was in something of a whirl. That typewriter. Beyond any doubt, it was the source of all these letters. But did that mean Mrs O’Neill was responsible? I ignored the stern gaze of the painted admiral and reached for one of the crystal decanters. ‘I don’t think, in the circumstances, Sir Richard will object,’ I said, pulling out the stopper. I poured myself a hefty glass of brandy and followed it up with a half measure for the girl.
‘Thank you, sir,’ she said, her eyes flashing with gratitude as she took hold of the crystal tumbler. She knocked it back in one and smiled shakily. ‘Gaw, I needed that.’ She closed her eyes, trying to rid herself of the image of Mrs O’Neill. ‘I ain’t never seen a dead body before.’
‘“I haven’t ever seen”,’ I corrected her absently, taking a sip of my own brandy. The girl’s accent was atrocious; the worst kind of East End gabble. I could see why she irritated Lady Jocelyn so much. But despite that, she did seem to have some wits about her.
‘Her ladyship is always having a go at me for not speaking proper. Properly,’ she corrected herself. ‘Stupid cow.’ She scratched the side of her face with her free hand, and then grimaced, remembering the other room. ‘Gawd. Poor Mrs O’Neill.’
‘It would have happened very quickly,’ I assured her. ‘I doubt she would have felt anything. May I get you another?’
‘Not half!’ She grinned, proffering the glass.
Before I could take hold of the tumbler, the far door opened and Lady Jocelyn swept imperiously into the suite. The woman’s eyes widened in horror at the sight of her maid with a brandy glass in her hand. ‘Jenny, what on earth do you think you’re doing?’ she exclaimed.
I raised a hand to forestall any confusion. ‘Ah. That’s my fault, Lady Jocelyn.’
‘What on earth is going on?’ the grand dame demanded.
‘Jenny has had a bit of a shock. We both have. We...er...we needed to steady our nerves.’
‘A shock?’ A flicker of irritation passed across that aristocratic face. ‘Who are all those people outside Susan’s
room? What is going on?’
‘Ah.’ So she had seen the kerfuffle on the far side of the foyer. Several members of staff were now buzzing about, assisting Mr Griffith. ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news, your ladyship. You might like to sit down.’
Sir Richard Villiers barrelled into the room behind his sister. ‘Devil if I can see what they’re up to,’ he said.
‘Hush, Richard!’ Lady Jocelyn snapped. ‘Bad news, Mr Buxton? What bad news?’
I put down the tumbler on the sideboard. ‘The worst, I’m afraid. It’s Susan. Mrs O’Neill. There’s no easy way to tell you this – your ladyship, Sir Richard – but I’m afraid she’s dead.’
That, for the moment, was enough to silence the pair of them.
‘I’ll need to speak to all of you, in due course,’ a grim-faced Mr Griffith asserted, addressing the small group now gathered in the Reynolds Suite. The Reverend Hamilton-Baynes had returned with his wife to change for lunch and they had been joined by Mr Hopkins and Miss Wellesley, the latter returning from her shopping trip down on D Deck. The mood in the room was one of understandable shock.
‘Dead?’ Miss Wellesley mumbled, swaying momentarily when she heard the news. ‘Oh, my goodness.’ The vicar had to step forward and escort her to the sofa.
Mr Griffith was in no mood to answer any questions. He was a short, stocky fellow with greying hair and a slightly ill-fitting uniform. His manner was grave but cautious, the ruddy complexion and mutton chop sideburns failing to distract from his intelligent blue eyes. He raised his hands to dampen down the speculation. ‘As far as we know, Mrs O’Neill’s death was an unfortunate accident. Doctor Armstrong is examining the body as we speak.’
Miss Wellesley shuddered at the use of the word “body”. Her hands were gripping a glass of brandy somebody had poured for her. Mrs Hamilton-Baynes, who was now sitting by her side, put a comforting hand on the girl’s knee.