Innocent Murderer

by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

  I stared at him and he stared back.

  “No, Cordi. You can’t be thinking what I think you’re thinking,” he said.

  I looked down at my hands and said, “That some–one was trying to kill me?”

  “Whoa, Cordi. Put your head back on. Why would anybody want to do that? And in such a roundabout way?”

  “I don’t know and I’ve put a lot of thought into it. I admit that planning this whole thing out sounds crazy, but maybe whoever it is just took advantage of a situa–tion. The dog was already on the ice. All whoever it was had to do was lower and then raise the gangway.”

  “Yes, but why?”

  “Maybe I saw something or overheard something. Maybe I have something they want. I don’t know.”

  “Look, Cordi. You’ve been popping Gravol like pea–nuts, you’ve been sick, you’re stressed out. I think you’re imagining demons where there simply aren’t any.” He hesitated, clearly wanting to say something more but deciding against it.

  I looked at him suspiciously and then at Martha, who shrugged and said, “Sleep on it, Cordi. See how you feel tomorrow.”

  I didn’t stay with them, but walked down the beach instead. I was actually feeling kind of, very, unsocial. I wasn’t used to sharing my free time with so many people night after night and I felt irritable and sort of sad. I wondered if I WAS imagining things, but then I looked down at my hand and knew it had been real. Why did I sometimes let people talk me out of my feelings? Why do we all?

  When we got back to the ship I headed out on deck to look for icebergs. It was late afternoon and the fog had rolled in. I prowled around all four sides but I found nothing except for the dampness of the sea, enshrouded by fog. As if on cue the foghorn sounded practically beside me and I jumped. I nosed about the deck where the pool is, poking my head here and there, not know–ing what I was looking for or even if I would recognize it when I saw it. One of the huge orange metal lifeboats loomed out of the fog and I went over to take a look. It seemed to be made of multiple hatches all with numerous tie downs. I tried the handle of one of them and raised it slowly to an upright position. As I did so I heard a man and a woman arguing as they approached.

  “We’re playing with fire,” said the man.

  “It’s worth every risk if it works. She can’t just take my man away from me,” said a woman, her voice rising.

  “She’s going to catch on, I know it.” Their voices were getting closer. “There’s a lot of risk.”

  “No one said it was going to be easy,” the woman said.

  I felt like an eavesdropper, which I guess I was, but I was struck by the intensity of their voices. I frantically looked around for a place to hide. I didn’t want them to think I’d overheard them. Without hesitating I swung my body through the hatch and crouched just below the opening as their footsteps came close and stopped. They had reached the lifeboat and I heard one of them lean up against it.

  “I know that.” The man.

  “Are you getting cold feet?”

  There was no answer, just silence. I tried to peek out one of the portholes to see if one of them was nodding or shaking their head, but all I saw were shoulders and then the man’s voice, “Who left the hatch open?”

  There was a scuffling and a couple of grunts and then the hatch came down. I moved to the porthole and peered out. I could just make them out. The woman was facing me. Elizabeth. Suddenly the other one turned and I saw the bushy black beard: Peter. I heard their footsteps move away and I was left alone in the cold metal hull of that lifeboat with the hatch battened down.

  Think like a mariner, I told myself, as I began to feel a tad uneasy. Lifeboats are for saving lives not locking people inside. Just because this hatch was locked down didn’t mean they all were. Right? And there were more. I’d seen them sprouting their little levers like dozens of curling rocks. The portholes threw a gloomy light over everything so that I could just make out how awful it would be to have to be in one of these things for real.

  The seats were solid metal benches with room for maybe seventy people. Being stuck in one would mean bounc–ing around inside an unforgiving metal hull the shape of a walnut with people in various stages of seasickness.

  I was already feeling claustrophobic and I’d only been inside for five minutes.

  It was cold. The metal of the boat was taking up the cold of the air like a sponge takes up water. I felt my way around until my hands found the outline of a hatch. I pushed, but nothing happened. In the twilight I could see eight levers, two on each side of the hatch, and I began turning them. When I tried to push up again and nothing happened I felt a little twinge of fear. What if I couldn’t get out? What if they never found me? How often did they do lifeboat drills? I tried again and felt it budge. After several more attempts the hatch flew open and I was free to wonder about the conversation I had just overheard.

  I went back to my berth and flopped down on the bed.

  Next thing I knew my stomach was in my mouth and my semi-circulars had lassoed my entire body, making me reel with nausea. I got up on my knees and opened the porthole. The sun was sinking toward the horizon that it would barely get to touch before being shot back up into the sky. The sea was roiling around in swells and the ship was doing a pretty good job of not roiling with them — something to do with stabilizers, we’d been told by the orientation crew. The PA system on the boat crackled to life and the captain’s voice filled my little room. We were into some rough waters for a few hours before we could sneak around a headland and into calmer seas.

  I spent those hours with my eyes glued to the barren mainland mountains. It helped keep the nausea at bay, but it was pretty tiring so at about 11:00 p.m. I got up and went to sit in the outer room, only once daring to take my eyes off the horizon to look at the time. Eventu–ally we did hit calm water and I went back to bed and fell into a blanket-churning sleep. But before long I was awakened by a light tapping on my door and my name being whispered. I thought it was LuEllen, back for a repeat, but being mercifully quieter this time. I started to get up when the door opened — there were no locks on any of the berths on the ship — and in walked Martha, dressed in a floor-length, lime green velvet dressing gown and wearing enormous fuzzy Guinness slippers.

  “You awake?” she whispered.

  “I am now.”

  The room was lit by the stream of light coming through the open door and I felt no need to turn on the lamp.

  “Cordi — you’ve got to see this. Look out your window!”

  Looking out that window was the last thing I wanted to do after spending five hours at it, but I turned and looked. All I saw was a never ending expanse of sea and pack ice, a deep blue sky, and the mainland. I turned back and shrugged at her.

  Martha came closer and looked. “Oh, you’re on the wrong side. Come on!” and she grabbed me by the hand and pulled. I was a dead weight and she let go.

  “Cordi, you’ll regret it if you don’t come and see.”

  “See what?”

  “You’ll see. Now where is your dressing gown?”

  I was feeling groggy from the Gravol. “I don’t have one.”

  “You don’t? Why not?”

  “Because most people don’t travel with dressing gowns.”

  She stood there looking at me for a second and was about to say something when she thought better of it.

  Instead she flung me a pair of sweats, a top, and my run–ners. By the time I put my jacket on I was feeling a little better and thought that maybe Martha was right after all, until I caught sight of the time. It was 3:00 a.m. Was I doomed to always be awake at 3:00 a.m. on this ship?

  As we moved out into the corridor, Martha leading the way, I said, “Martha, what are you doing up at this time of night?”

  She stopped in the corridor and I crashed into her.

  “Some weird noises woke me up and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I looked out the porthole and there it was. I knew you’d want to see it.” Martha continued down t
he hall. She could be so infuriating.

  We walked up a couple of decks and then outside, where we took the starboard stairs up to the observa–tion deck. And there it was. Actually, there they were.

  Two vibrant rainbows, one snuggled inside the other and arching across the deep blue of the sky. The sun was bal–anced on the horizon, a red orange globe.

  I could clearly see each colour of each rainbow — so clear and precise that there was no fading out at the edges or anywhere along the enormous arcs. They were perfect, stretching from Baffin Island across the ship and halfway to Greenland. We were the only ones up there and we stood and watched as the ship knifed its way through Baffin Bay to Lancaster Sound. In this uninhab–ited place of history and intrigue we could have been sent back three thousand years and it would have looked exactly the same.

  I turned and looked toward the stern of the ship and gasped. In the golden light of the sun, which was try–ing — unsuccessfully — to set, lay a monster of an ice–berg, taller than the ship and slowly receding from us. We moved to the far rail as if drawn by a magnet and watched it as it slowly glided away — or that’s what it seemed like as we moved away from it.

  I glanced down over the railing and saw the pool below. There was a white towel hanging over the rail. But that’s not what caught my attention. There was a hunk of some sort of clothing floating near the surface, rising and falling with the movement of the ship. I was trying to make out what it was when my eyes shifted and I found myself looking down into the depths of the pool. At first it looked like some kind of weird white reflection through the wavy water, but then I recoiled when the reflection materialized into the unmistakable body of a naked woman.

  Chapter Eight

  I charged over to the stairs and, grabbing one railing in each hand, swung myself down the stairs, two at a time. I could hear Martha struggling down behind me, cursing her long flowing gown. Even before I got to the ladder I’d whipped off my sweatshirt and kicked off my shoes.

  “Get help!” I yelled at Martha, and in a flash I had my sweats off and jumped into the pool. I felt nothing. No cold. No fear. Just the incredible focus of my goal. I swam down and took hold of the person under the chin, my fin–ger momentarily getting caught on her necklace. I kicked hard and slowly rose to the surface. As I did so I could see the bundle of clothes, her clothes I guessed, floating languidly like a ballet dancer. And that’s when I saw it: a face among the clothes was staring back at me, wide-eyed and lifeless. I nearly choked on a mouthful of water and almost let go of the first body. But I managed to kick up and broke the surface, raking in the air the way a croupier rakes in the chips.

  Martha had disappeared to get help. I was all alone. I tried to hoist the body up the ladder but the superhu–man strength that visits some people in moments like this wasn’t calling on me. I wasn’t sure what to do. I couldn’t save them both, so I closed my eyes and did artificial res–piration, trying not to think about anything at all, espe–cially about who I was trying to save.

  Suddenly an extra pair of hands reached down and grabbed the body under the arms, pulling it out of the pool. I watched as Duncan laid her down on the deck and began to take her pulse. The captain had arrived and went over to help Duncan. I heard him suck in his breath and looked over to see him stooping over the body, one hand holding his head, his expression, what? Dum–founded? Shocked? No, there was more. If I hadn’t been so cold and shaking that I could barely see I would have sworn that Jason was crying. Someone threw a blanket over me as I looked up at Jason and said through chat–tering teeth, “There’s another one.”

  “Save your strength,” said Jason as he glanced back at me. And I realized he hadn’t heard me.

  “There’s another one,” I said loudly.

  “Another what?” asked Jason, his voice strangely hoarse.

  “Another body.”

  I pointed with my finger at the bundle of clothes, but I didn’t take my eyes off the body Duncan was working on. It was Terry. Her face was grey and lifeless, but still as beautiful in death as it had been in life. I felt sick and cold and hopeless. How can life be so tenuous? I turned away, my stomach heaving, and saw the second mate jump in the water to rescue whoever was in the bundle of clothes.

  I think we all knew our actions were in vain. Their bod–ies looked as though they’d been deserted for a long time.

  The doctor had arrived, and she and Jason pulled the sod–den mass out of the water and laid it down beside Duncan, who was resting on his haunches, a look of resignation on his face. He moved over to the body clad in the salt and pepper coat, and pushed the hair from her face.

  Jason gasped and I heard him mutter “Oh, no,” as we gazed down on Sally, who had finally realized her wish to be free of her torment.

  It seemed surreal, standing there wrapped in a blan–ket that wouldn’t keep Scruffy warm, in the land of the midnight sun, with the bodies of two women lying at our feet. I noticed someone had covered Terry. Beautiful, arrogant Terry. Timid, lovelorn Sally.

  What had happened here that took two lives away?

  I shivered. Looking up, I saw a row of people gaping at the bodies, and then felt angry that the end of two lives could become a spectator sport. How had they found out at this crazy hour of the morning?

  Martha tugged me on the arm, pulling me toward the stairs. I hadn’t even known she was there. I stopped and looked toward where the rainbows had been but they had evaporated, just like the souls of those two women had. I started walking down the corridor when Martha grabbed my arm and steered me into the sauna.

  “You get in the sauna. I’ll get you some dry clothes,” she said and was gone.

  Like an automaton I stripped off my wet under–clothes and went into the sauna. It was lonely in there, the chattering voices of moments past assailing my ears as I sought to make sense of what had just happened. Terry must have been taking a late night sauna or it wouldn’t have still been warm in there. Thumbing her nose at the world she jumped, alone and naked, into the pool. I was remembering her the other night. She’d stayed close to the ladder and used the dog-paddle. Perhaps she couldn’t really swim. Perhaps she’d inhaled some water or jumped too far away from the ladder. Sally had happened upon her, roaming the decks in sorrow, or insomnia, or both? She’d jumped in to rescue her and they’d both drowned.

  But other, less charitable, ideas were crowding my mind. Something suddenly flitted through my brain so fast that all I knew for sure was that it was important. I idly wondered how something can be important if you can’t remember it.

  Martha came back and collected me as if I was some fragile vase, shepherding me down the hall to my room. She wouldn’t let me do anything except get into bed and drink the hot chocolate she had somehow made materi–alize. My body glowed with the warmth from the sauna, and the heat of the hot chocolate was delicious.

  I was exhausted, but just as I was snuggling down into my covers, as Martha heaped yet another blanket on top of me, there were three soft raps on my door. I started to get up but Martha held up her hand and went to get the door.

  “How is she?” Even in a whisper Duncan’s voice is loud, deep, and rumbly. “Dear girl. I thought I should make a house call, make sure everything’s okay.”

  Since Duncan’s “house calls” usually involved dead bodies, that wasn’t very reassuring. He came into my room and took up a position leaning against my port–hole, which Martha had shut down tight, so that the air was already getting stale.

  “The ship’s doctor kicked me out. Took umbrage at my being at the scene before she was.”

  “She wouldn’t do that,” said Martha.

  “No, but she did usher me out.”

  “What have they done with the, um, bodies?” I asked as I sat up in bed. I always felt at a disadvantage with Duncan because he’s over six feet tall, but now I was a whole lot shorter and had to tilt my head back farther than usual just to see his face.

  “The authorities have ordered the captain t
o put them on ice until they can be delivered to pathology back in Ottawa.”

  “Any guesses?” I asked innocently.

  “Guesses?”

  “About how they died?”

  “Whoa, whoa, Cordi. Put the reins on your imagina–tion. It looks like a straightforward situation. No guesses needed. No hanky-panky here.” Duncan’s mention of hanky-panky stopped me dead.

  “I didn’t say anything about hanky-panky,” I said slowly. But maybe subconsciously I had. Or maybe I was just too damn tired to know my own mind.

  “I wondered if you had a guess about the sequence of events.”

  “You mean who died first?”

  I nodded.

  “We may never know that, but one thing’s pretty sure — one of them must have tried to save the other and they both died in the attempt. Of course, forensics could turn up something else, but if you’re a betting woman put your money on the former.”

  I wasn’t a betting woman, but I suddenly knew why Duncan’s scenario didn’t wash.

  Chapter Nine

  I lay sleepless in bed until early morning. I was thinking about giving in and getting up when I heard my door qui–etly opening. Who the hell could be visiting at this ungodly hour? I wasn’t about to wait in bed to find out. In a flash I grabbed my blanket and flattened myself against the wall by my inner door. I could hear somebody padding around the outer room and time seemed to stand still, as it is wont to do when someone scares the shit out of you.

  Whoever it was started towards my door. I tensed myself, making sure I timed it just right. As they entered the door I raised the blanket over my head, flinging myself and it over the intruder, and we both crashed to the floor.

  The blanket began flopping around like a giant jump–ing bean. I could hear the muffled cries of protest coming from under the blanket and suddenly realized they were saying something I could understand. “Cordi, you idiot, it’s me!”