by C. A. Larmer
Ah, thought Alicia, it was starting to make more sense. “She was using your room to meet up with Cheyne.” It was said as a statement, but she was rewarded with a nod. “That’s why she wanted you to come aboard. They couldn’t use their own cabins, their spouses might catch them, so they needed another cabin. To conduct their affair.”
Anita chuckled. It was a hollow sound. “Well, they weren’t playing Scrabble in there that’s for sure.”
“Okay, so why is Dame Dinnegan’s death all your fault, exactly?” This bit she was still not following.
Now she got the “duh!” scowl. “Because if I had said something about Cheyne and Corrie sooner, Dame Dinnegan might still be alive. Don’t you see? He obviously killed Corrie and he obviously killed his wife. The guy’s a psychopath!”
Alicia took a deep breath. “You’re going to have to walk me through it, Anita. I’m still not following. I mean, why do you think Cheyne killed Corrie? If they were lovers, why would he do that?”
“That’s the thing! Corrie obviously broke up with him, and he couldn’t handle it.” She sighed impatiently as though talking to a toddler. “The night that Corrie fell overboard, right?” Alicia nodded. “He couldn’t find her. She was obviously snubbing him. The deal was, Coz got the room key from me after dinner when Tonio was due back on the bridge. She would disappear with sleazebag for an hour or so, then sneak back to her own cabin before hubby was any the wiser. But she never asked me for my room key that night, right? So I thought, good, maybe Tonio’s words at dinner had got through to her. Finally! I just loathe the way she treats that man. Such disrespect, she so didn’t deserve him.”
“So maybe they used a different cabin, hers or his perhaps?”
Again the knee shook, along with the head this time. “No, they never used their own cabins. They were really discreet, desperate not to be caught. I’m not sure who they were more scared of, Tonio or the Dame. Anyway, here’s the thing, he came to me that night—”
“Who? Cheyne?”
“Yah! I’m in the main bar, right, minding my own beeswax, and he says, ‘Where is she?’ like I have any idea. Says he tried her cabin and she wasn’t there and where the bloody hell is she. I said, give her a minute. She’s gotta be somewhere, try again in half an hour. I mean, hello? What am I? Her keeper? So he comes back half an hour later and says, nope, she’s not answering her door. I said, ‘Maybe she’s had enough, Cheyne, maybe she’s seen the light and it’s over.’ Well I wish I hadn’t said that! He was spewing. He’s all, ‘No, no! We’re in loooove, we’re running away together when the cruise is over, she promised me, blah, blah, blah.’ He wasn’t a happy man.”
“What time was all this?”
“I dunno, after dinner some time.”
“Can you be more precise?”
She dragged on her cigarette and gave it some thought. “I guess the first time we spoke was about 10:30-ish, thereabouts. The next time was closer to midnight I’d say. The dancing had started, I know that. Your friend will know, the party boy.”
“Perry?”
“Yeah, he was hanging with those fat sisters, the Sausage sisters or whatever they’re called.”
“The Salami Sisters.”
“That’s right, short, fat and ugly like salami.” She snorted. “If your mate doesn’t remember Cheyne coming in, they will. Those women don’t miss a beat.”
“And Cheyne never caught up with Corrie that night?”
“You’re not real quick are you?” She sighed. “Coz was obviously avoiding Cheyne. As I say, maybe she’d grown a conscience after what Tonio said at dinner. It was kind of embarrassing. Or maybe Dame Dinnegan said something to her. I mean, Coz was clearly terrified the woman would find out, and maybe she did! In any case, whatever her reasons, Coz was staying well clear of Cheyne the night she died, and I don’t think he liked it one little bit.”
“So what are you saying? He tracked her down and forced his way into her cabin at 2:00 a.m. and they had a fight? Then what, he threw her overboard?”
She nodded, her eyes as wide as saucers.
“And what about his wife? Why would be kill Dame Dinnegan?”
“What am I? Sherlock Holmes? She must have found out, maybe she was threatening to tell Tonio. I reckon Cheyne topped her too. Don’t you see, if I had just said something none of this would have happened? If for once in my freakin’ life I had stood up to Coz and refused her something, she might still be alive. She wouldn’t have been able to have her fling with Cheyne, the whole thing would not have happened.”
Alicia took a long sip of her drink. “This might not be the Love Boat, Anita, but there’s plenty of places for a determined couple to meet up, and they’d been managing well enough before you got on board. Even if you had said no and stayed home in Sydney, where there’s a will, there’s a way.” She looked at her over the rim of her glass. “So why don’t you say something now? Tell all of this to the captain or the detective in charge.”
Anita shook her head firmly. “What and break Tonio’s heart? No thank you! He doesn’t need to know his wife was an ungrateful slut; at this stage it would just be cruel. Coz is gone, the old lady’s dead, and they’ve got that sleazebag locked up. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over, so why kick the hornet’s nest?”
“Because it might be important,” said Alicia. “Because the detective in charge needs to know all this.”
She shook her head again, this time more wearily. “Tonio loved Coz. I… I just can’t do it to him. I just can’t.”
Maybe not, thought Alicia, but I can.
Chapter 5
Back in the interview room, Detective Liam Jackson was beaming. And not just because of the cigarettes. He gave Packer a nod as he took his seat and then pressed the record button again.
“Interview is recommenced at 12.36 p.m. Tell me please, Mr Smith, how long have you been sleeping with the captain’s wife?”
The change of direction caught everyone off guard, including Brenda, who didn’t get a chance to tell Cheyne to shut his trap before he wailed, “What’s that got to do with anything?”
Jackson smiled. Now they were getting somewhere.
While he had been out in the passageway inspecting the evidence, Anders had reappeared with news from Alicia’s little chat with Anita, and it had confirmed what he already suspected.
“Turns out Corrie and Cheyne were having an affair,” Anders told Jackson. “Anita says it started long before she got on board and is the reason why Corrie begged her to join them in Sydney so they could have easy access to a cabin. They’ve obviously been sneaking around the ship for weeks.”
Jackson would have been disgusted if he wasn’t already a jaded cop. Still, it helped explain the Italian cigarettes Packer’s men had also found amongst Cheyne’s belongings. It was the same brand Packer had photographed in Corrie’s cabin.
“I’m sorry, Detective Jackson, but I’m a bit confused,” said Brenda. “I thought Mr Smith was here to answer questions in relation to the death of his wife, not the disappearance of Mrs Van Tussi.”
Jackson gave her a patient smile. “I’m getting to that, I can assure you, Ms Williams.”
Cheyne had already come to his own conclusion. “I’m telling you, that’s why the captain did it! He’s angry with me, right? He’s lashing out!”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Mr Smith,” said Packer now. “If Captain Van Tussi was so angry, why not kill you? Why kill your innocent wife?”
That left him speechless, and he chewed his lips again, trying to get his head around an answer. Eventually he said, “It’s too weird, man, I don’t know why.”
“How long were you having an affair?” Jackson persisted.
“You do not—” began Brenda, but Cheyne was hissing now.
“It was not an affair! We loved each other; we were going to get married.”
“Pity you were both already married,” said Packer.
“Yeah, but Corrie was leaving that stuffy bastard,” h
e spat back. “We were jumping ship in Auckland.”
“That’s very interesting,” said Jackson. “So how did Mrs Van Tussi end up in the water just south of Lord Howe Island?”
Cheyne’s eyes welled up; he dropped his head into his arms and buried it there.
“Maybe it was just a fling for her?” Jackson said. “Maybe she wanted out?”
He looked up. “What? No!”
“Maybe Mrs Van Tussi told you to back off and you couldn’t handle it, Cheyne. You’re not used to being rejected, are you, a pretty boy like you? Maybe you had a fight, maybe things got nasty, you didn’t mean to throw her over.”
“No!”
“Maybe your wife suspected what had happened. So you had to kill her too?”
“No! No! No!”
Brenda gave Jackson a pointed look, and he smiled. “I’ve got another theory if you’d like to hear it. It’s a beauty.”
She smiled coyly. “Your theories are certainly running thick and fast this afternoon, Detective Jackson. Go on then, let’s have it.”
All eyes were upon him as he dropped another plastic evidence bag onto the table. This one was a lot brighter than the previous one, and a lot more incriminating.
The sparkling diamond necklace was the first thing to grab Cheyne’s attention, followed by a set of pearl earrings and an enormous gold broach, and he stared at them, aghast, then up at the detective who couldn’t help himself. He was beaming from ear to ear.
“These items look familiar to you do they, Mr Smith?”
“What… Where…?” he began as Brenda placed another warning hand on his forearm.
Jackson leaned towards the tape recorder and said, “Let the record show I have just shown Mr Smith an evidence bag containing several items we believe to be stolen property that was located in his cabin not less than an hour ago. I repeat, Mr Smith, any idea how these stolen items got in your possession?”
“You do not have to answer that,” squeaked Brenda, but he ignored her now.
“I’m being set up!” he wailed, his eyes darting between Jackson and Packer. “Can’t you see, it’s a stitch up!”
“So you never did steal these items then?”
He scowled at the evidence bag as though he were looking at a nest of Tiger snakes.
“Again,” said Brenda, “you do not need to answer that.”
“Then let me rephrase. Do you have any idea how this jewellery got into your cabin?”
“Once again,” said Brenda, this time to Jackson, “please explain what any of this has got to do with the death of Dame Dinnegan?”
Jackson pushed the bag of jewels towards Cheyne, who recoiled as if the jewellery was about to sit up and bite. “I’ve been investigating a series of jewellery thefts aboard this ship for several weeks now, Ms Williams. We believe the victims were drugged, probably with something like Rohypnol before their property was stolen. We also believe Cecilia Jollson was drugged and robbed and that an autopsy will show that it’s Rohypnol that triggered her heart attack and subsequent death.”
Brenda sat back with a thud, her mind racing. She had heard something about another woman dying in her sleep a few nights ago but had no idea it was related to this.
Her eyes lit up. This was getting more interesting by the minute. Perhaps the cruise wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
Jackson continued, “We suspect Mr Smith and Mrs Van Tussi had a bit of a racket going on, befriending and then drugging rich passengers and stealing their jewels. Of course you went too far with poor Mrs Jollson, didn’t you? That must have been a bit of a shock.”
Cheyne began torturing his lip again, his eyes darting around the room, but he remained silent, so Jackson continued.
“I suspect Mrs Van Tussi couldn’t live with the guilt of what she’d done—”
“She wouldn’t kill herself,” he said almost snidely. “She loved me. She wouldn’t leave me like that.”
“Ah yes, but perhaps she didn’t kill herself, Mr Smith. Perhaps she told you enough was enough, she wanted out. It had all gone too far for her, hadn’t it? I mean, it must have been a bit of a laugh at first, sleeping around, pinching a few jewels.”
“She had nothing to do with that!”
Brenda placed a warning hand on Cheyne’s arm again, but the detective was not done.
“So she told you she wanted out. Maybe she wanted to confess everything to the captain, or maybe she just wanted to break it off with you. Either way, it spelled trouble for you. You wouldn’t let her, would you, Mr Smith? You had a fight, you threw her overboard, it’s as simple as that.”
“No, no, no, no…” He was moaning now, tears streaming down his cheeks.
Brenda sighed loudly. She had gathered her wits again and was giving the policeman an admonishing look. “Detective Jackson, my client has been more than cooperative, but you have now overstepped. We only agreed to questioning in relation to the death of Dame Dorothy Dinnegan. He is not here to answer questions regarding the disappearance of Corrie Van Tussi or any stolen property for that matter.”
Jackson held a hand up. “I believe it’s all linked, Ms Williams. Please just hear me out.” He turned his eyes upon Cheyne. “I suspect your wife discovered some or all of this, am I right? Perhaps she confronted you. Or perhaps it was even worse than that. Perhaps she never even knew what you had been up to. I mean, the poor woman was bombed out of her brain half the time wasn’t she?”
Now a tiny smile broke out on Cheyne’s lips, and he shook his head. “You have no idea.”
“So when you decided you no longer needed her,” Jackson continued, unabated, “you no longer needed her wheelchair to hide behind—because as you say, you were jumping ship in New Zealand—she suddenly became dispensable. So you got rid of her.”
“No!” he yelled now. “It wasn’t like that. You’ve got it all wrong!”
“Which bit, exactly? Dame Dinnegan? Mrs Van Tussi? The thefts? Help me out here, Cheyne.”
“God, it just doesn’t make any sense,” Cheyne muttered.
Then he dropped his head into his arms again and began sobbing like a child.
Chapter 6
“It all makes perfect sense to me,” said Anders, relaying the information to the group on the main deck. “Corrie and Cheyne obviously had a thing going, but then Corrie wanted out. The affair and the thefts, it was all supposed to be fun, but when they accidentally killed Mrs Jollson, well, she must have come to her senses.”
“And Cheyne didn’t like it one little bit?” Perry said, and they all sat silently for a few moments thinking about what that had meant for poor Corrie.
They were seated around a small wicker table by the ship’s pool now, nursing strawberry smoothies and cups of Twinings tea. While the original SS Orient did not actually have a swimming pool, this one was designed to mirror those from other early cruise ships and looked just like an oversized ice box with metal bars around the side and a shiny metal ladder for entry. Several women were paddling about while a portly man appeared to have fallen asleep wedged tight inside a blow-up ring.
Anders watched the bathers for a few moments then said, “What Anita told you, Alicia, seems to add fuel to that. It was clear Corrie was avoiding her lover the night she died. By the time he caught up with her around 2:00 a.m., he must have been fuming. Jackson thinks a struggle ensued, Corrie was killed, maybe accidentally, Cheyne’s not saying, but it’s clear at some stage the poor woman was thrown overboard.”
“Yes, except she screamed out, remember?” said Alicia, and he dismissed this with a downturn of his lips.
“Okay, so she wasn’t killed before she went over, but he obviously did it. He had the jewels, he had the motive.”
“And Dame Dinnegan?”
“He suspects Dame Dinnegan discovered some or all of this and had to die. Apparently the jewels weren’t too hard to find in their room. Maybe the Dame stumbled upon them, asked him about them, and she had to be silenced. Or maybe he had just had enough of her, wh
o knows? In any case the guy is in the ship’s slammer, and we should all toast our resident cop for solving the whole thing.”
He held his cup aloft, and they all cheered the absent detective. Alicia tried to echo their cheers, but there was something niggling at the back of her mind, something she couldn’t quite get her head around.
“Okay, spit it out,” said Lynette. “What’s on your mind?”
“I don’t know, it just doesn’t quite add up to me.”
“Oh no, here we go.”
“No, seriously, I’m still confused about a few things.” She glanced at Anders. “Like, the four missing hours.”
He frowned, so she quickly said, “Where was Corrie between 9:45 p.m.—when the cabin steward turned down her bed—and 2:00 a.m. when Cheyne supposedly caught up with her and chucked her over?”
“She could have met up with Cheyne earlier,” said Lynette, but Perry was shaking his head.
“Not between dinner and midnight she didn’t. Alicia’s right. Cheyne was in the Grand Salon for most of that. I saw him myself.”
“Maybe she was with Anita.”
“Nope. Anita was here too. On and off, but never with Corrie.”
“What does it even matter where Corrie was then?” asked Anders. “Those hours are not important. She wasn’t pushed overboard until after two. Maybe she was hanging with some other friend she’d made, wandering the decks wrestling with her conscience. Who knows? Sorry, I just don’t think it’s relevant.”
“Okay, that makes sense, kind of,” Alicia had to concede. “What doesn’t make sense, not one bit of sense, is how Cheyne killed his wife.” Now they were all frowning at her, so she asked, “Why would Cheyne kill his wife so brutally in such a public space? Even if she did confront him with what he’d done, why not give her an overdose of roofies like he supposedly did with Mrs Jollson? Or better yet, just throw her overboard? Make it look like suicide. He must have known he would be the number one suspect in his wife’s murder. There’s no better suspect than the unfaithful husband—everyone knows that. Yet he didn’t even bother to hide the stolen goods. They were there in plain sight in his cabin! I mean, even Dumb and Dumber would know that his room would be searched.”