Innocent Murderer

by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

  Who the hell was “me”? I thought.

  “Martha!” yelled the big lump inside the blanket.

  Shit. Hastily I got up and pulled the blanket off Martha, who looked as though she had just been bagged by a hunter, which she sort of had.

  “Lord love a duck, Cordi. What are you doing?”

  “Trying to defend myself. Why didn’t you knock?”

  “I did.”

  “You didn’t.”

  Martha groaned and rolled onto all fours and pushed herself up with some difficulty.

  She brushed her staticky hair off her face. “Who did you think I was for god’s sake? Don’t tell me you’re still thinking there’s some mad person on board out to get you? First the frayed ropes and then the mystery person and the hawsehole. I thought you’d got over that.”

  “I have.” I lied.

  Martha gave a sign of relief. “That’s good.”

  “But I do think we now have a possible murderer on board.”

  Martha pinioned me with her astonished stare. “Listen to yourself, Cordi. You’re going off half-cocked. Who ever wanted you dead anyway? As for Terry and Sally … accidental deaths — that’s what they’ll say. I know it’s early yet, but so far there’s nothing to say otherwise.”

  “Yes there is,” I said.

  Martha cocked her head at me. I waited, relishing the silence leading up to my revelation.

  “Terry was wearing a necklace,” I said triumphantly.

  “So?”

  I stared at her. This was not the reaction I’d had in mind. “Remember what happened in the sauna?” I asked.

  And suddenly Martha’s light bulb went on. “She chewed Sally out for being so stupid as to wear a neck–lace,” she said slowly.

  “Right. So what was she doing in that pool while wearing a necklace?”

  Martha screwed up her face in thought. “She decided to take a late night dip.”

  “Without a sauna? That water is barely above freez–ing. No one in their right mind would do that.’

  “Okay. She came out to see the midnight sun before turning in. Lost her balance and fell in. That’s when Sally saved her.”

  “Stark naked?” I was going through the scene again in my mind’s eye. The single towel over the railing.

  She looked at me then and I saw the beginnings of a convert. “So how did she get into the pool?”

  Just then the PA system crackled to life. “Would Cordi O’Callaghan and Martha Bathgate please report to the bridge at your earliest convenience?”

  Martha and I exchanged glances. I started searching around for my clothes while she went into the head to calm down her electrified hair.

  When we came up on deck the sun was washing the distant hills of Devon Island with golden tones. The pack ice prowled off the port side, making it impossible for us to go into Pond Inlet. People were very disappointed about that, but the ice was acting strangely this summer and the ship’s crew couldn’t do anything about it. No one wanted to be stranded in the pack ice.

  Martha and I marched up to the bridge. Jason was talking to a few passengers and there were at least six other people lined up along the fore windows, binocu–lars glued to their eyes. I looked out the window and saw an iceberg the size of a three-storey apartment building slowly coming toward us, as graceful as a dancer. But that’s not what everyone was looking at. We walked over to see what all the fuss was and saw two wrinkly walrus trying to sun themselves on the smallest little ice floe. Their massive bodies undulated with myriad folds of blubber and overlapped into the sea so that it looked as though they were sunbathing on water. Every time they moved their little ice floe bobbed them precariously up and down. All around them were dozens of much bigger ice floes, but for some reason they had chosen this tiny little one. I wondered which of the two would be left lying on the iceberg when it got too small for both of them. Of course, I knew, even though it made no sense in terms of the iceberg. The bigger one would win out. He was a monster, probably fourteen hundred kilograms.

  By the time Jason noticed us standing by the helm, Martha was deep in conversation with some man who was telling her all about the life habits of walrus. I was glad I wasn’t drawn into a conversation that would lead Martha to disclose that I was a zoology professor; although most of the ship probably already knew that.

  Jason caught my eye and pointed back behind the bridge. I commandeered Martha and followed him into the privacy of the radio room, a room just behind the bridge with no windows. Seated at one of the radio consoles was Duncan, who was talking on the phone to someone who was having trouble hearing him. We were treated to his loud voice for several minutes.

  “No, I am not the captain. He just passed the phone over to me. I am a pathologist. The captain asked me to … Yes that’s right. We have two bodies on board.

  Preliminary exam points to accidental drowning of both. No, there were no obvious marks on the bodies, but that will have to wait for the autopsies. Yes, that’s right. We have them on ice. What’s that? Oh, right. Two females.” He looked over at Jason. “But the captain says you have all that information. Yes. Alright. I’m los–ing you. Yes. Okay. Goodbye.” I raised my eyebrows at Duncan, wondering where the ship’s doctor was. He read my mind.

  “Ship’s doctor slipped and knocked herself out as we were getting the bodies to the cooler. She has quite a nice little concussion and Jason here has asked me to take over as best I can until she is able to resume her duties.”

  As if on cue we all looked at Jason.

  “So, what happened?” he asked looking first at me and then at Martha.

  Since our stories were almost identical it didn’t take long to fill him in. He was about to get up to go back out onto the bridge when I hesitated. Martha started having facial fits trying to signal to me to think before I spoke.

  But I figured what the hell, if they thought I was crazy they’d ignore me, but if they thought what I said had some merit then it would be worth it.

  “I don’t think Terry died accidentally.”

  Jason looked up quickly with a “go on” expression on his face.

  “I think someone murdered her, probably in the pool since Duncan says there were no marks on her,”

  “And how in the name of god did you come up with that scenario?” asked Jason.

  I told him about the necklace and Terry’s derision of Sally, but he seemed completely unimpressed. Duncan, on the other hand, was having conniptions, shaking his head and chopping the air with his hand.

  We all waited for Jason to respond.

  “I don’t know what to say, Cordi. You’re a respected zoologist and you come to me with this weird story about the dog and the hawsehole and now this. Although the cook did admit to his assistant throwing leftovers on the ice, and the ramp was down to check on the hull. But the hawsehole? I hope you haven’t blabbed this murder the–ory around ship and caused a panic that there’s a mur–derer on board.”

  I sensed that maybe this was the time to say nothing and shake my head, so I said nothing. He fiddled with the hem of his sleeve.

  “There was no murder. We have found a suicide note in Sally’s room. Terry must have tried to rescue her and died in the attempt.”

  Did I feel dumb.

  “What did the note say?” asked Martha.

  Jason shook his head, rummaged around in his breast pocket, and pulled out a scrap of paper. When he saw the shocked expressions on our faces he said, “This isn’t the real note. I just copied it down to look at it later.”

  We waited. He took his time. Then he began to read what Sally had written:

  How hollow is time … Aching seconds I cannot stand. The oozing emptiness that is my mind. Sticky blackness. Nothing there. I have to die. My friends, goodbye.

  Haunting, melodramatic, and very, very sad.

  Nobody said anything and through the door I could hear the second mate explaining to a passenger that port means left and starboard means right. I wondered if they had hear
d what we were saying.

  Jason broke the silence. “So you see, it’s not mur–der, but a good Samaritan dying in an attempt to save a suicide.”

  “But then why,” I asked, “was she wearing noth …”

  Duncan suddenly went into a paroxysm of coughing that bounced off all the walls and practically deafened us.

  He stood up and pointed to the door, and Martha and I went to help him. We got him out on the bridge and near the door where he gulped in fresh air.

  Jason looked alarmed. “Is he all right?”

  “He’ll be okay,” Martha said. “He’s just allergic to plastics.”

  I looked at Martha in disbelief, but she refused to look at me. We took our leave of Jason, both of us sup–porting Duncan until we were well away from the bridge when Duncan shook us off and turned to me. “Cordi, are you nuts?”

  I was getting used to that.

  “You can’t go blathering murder when there’s no evi–dence. I have an idea what you were about to say back there, but it would not have been good.”

  We were standing on the port side of the ship near the Zodiacs. The view from the stern was spectacular: rolling, barren hills with glaciers creeping down them to the sea, leaving a splattered mass of ice. I reminded Dun–can about the necklace and that Terry had been naked.

  He peered at me the way doctors sometimes do when they’re trying to make a diagnosis. “That’s hardly evidence of murder.”

  “There’s no evidence that it isn’t, and there’s no way Terry would have taken the time to strip naked to save someone in distress.”

  “She was coming from the sauna.”

  “Which brings us back to the necklace.”

  “She left the necklace on by mistake. All the evidence so far points to accidental drowning.”

  I wasn’t about to give up. I had the bit in my teeth. “And I say there are way more scenarios than purely acci–dental or suicide.”

  Martha and Duncan looked at me expectantly.

  “Terry murders Sally by drowning her and then acci–dentally drowns.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure. Or, Sally murders Terry and then drowns herself, or drowns accidentally.”

  “Why?”

  “Do I hear an echo in here? Okay, maybe you like this better: Sally dies trying to rescue Terry, who is acci–dentally drowning, or vice versa. Nice and clean. No murder. No suicide.”

  “Enough already. We have a suicide note,” Duncan said.

  “Which can be faked.”

  “Cordi, you’ve made your point. There are lots of possibilities, including murder, but we’ll just have to wait for the authorities to find out which scenario is the right one.”

  “There’s another scenario.”

  “Why do I not want to hear this?”

  “It was a suicide pact. They both committed suicide together.”

  Duncan looked slightly mollified by my retreat from murder, but Martha wasn’t buying it at all. “Since when would Terry make a pact with Sally?” She had a point.

  They had not exactly been bosom buddies.

  “Look on the bright side. If it’s suicide we won’t have to testify in court.”

  I wandered back up to the bridge to see what was happen–ing and looked out the windows. That’s when I noticed her. She was standing at the very bow of the ship, leaning into the railing as still as a figurehead. Sandy. I took the side stairs down from the bridge onto the deck. It was a beautiful day so there were lots of people around. I approached the bow slowly. She had her eyes closed and the wind was blowing her hair off her face. She looked peaceful and I felt like an intruder. I started to back away.

  Suddenly she opened her eyes and started. Clearly, she’d thought she was alone.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m hogging the bow.” That was not what I had expected her to say considering her per–sonal space had been invaded. She pulled herself upright so that we were now facing each other and I could see she had been crying.

  “I’m sorry about Sally. You seemed like good friends.”

  “We were,” she said. “More than you can know.” She moved over to the railing and leaned against it. I followed suit.

  “She was pretty upset about Arthur.”

  Sandy turned and looked at me, her face a mass of confusion, but I must have been mistaken because it sud–denly turned to anger. “A lot of people used Sally. I had thought Arthur was different.”

  “There were others?”

  She eyed me thoughtfully. “There are other ways to use people besides love affairs,” she said, reading my mind.

  “What do you think happened?”

  “You want my version or the ship’s version?”

  “What’s the ship’s version?”

  “They say she committed suicide, that there was a suicide note, and that Terry tried to save her and failed.”

  “And you don’t think that’s what happened?”

  She rapped her fist against the railing and fixed her eye on the horizon. “No, I don’t.”

  “But she was depressed and upset about Arthur.”

  “Was she? I mean was she upset enough to kill her–self? No, she wasn’t.” She said it with such conviction that I wondered why she could be so sure. All I could see were images of a very miserable Sally in the sauna.

  “What happened then?”

  “I think she tried to save Terry and they both drowned. She wasn’t a very good swimmer.” Her voice caught on the last word and she turned to look at me. “Sally was not suicidal.”

  The words hung in the air like a dare and she stared at me, her eyes pleading for something I couldn’t quite fathom. Finally she turned away and looked out across Lancaster Sound.

  I left her standing by the rail and was headed back across the bow when I saw Peter and Elizabeth heading my way. I plastered a suitably sad look on my face and strode up to meet them.

  “Terrible news about Sally and Terry,” I said as we all came to a halt beside the hawsehole. I looked down it and shivered, but they didn’t appear to notice.

  Elizabeth looked awful, her face long and haggard, and so very pale, as if the lifeblood had been removed from it. You couldn’t really tell what Peter looked like but he seemed slightly frantic, his eyes flitting about and alighting on nothing.

  “It’s so tragic,” said Elizabeth, the words barely squeezing out of her mouth.

  “It should never have happened,” said Peter. I was surprised at his anger.

  “But you hardly knew them,” I said. “You aren’t part of the writing group are you?” I remembered him com–ing late to that first lecture, but I hadn’t seen him since.

  He stared at me. Elizabeth jumped in. “He knew them through me.”

  Peter looked at Elizabeth and then slowly nodded.

  Elizabeth was fidgeting with one of her mitts. “Sally was a good woman,” she said. “She’s going to be missed.”

  The omission of Terry’s name was glaring.

  Peter took Elizabeth by the arm, signalling the end of the conversation, and I headed back to the haven of my berth.

  It was midnight, one full day after Martha and I had found the bodies, and there we were again, on the prowl. I’d managed to convince her to come with me to check things out by telling her I was just trying to prove that Sally had not committed suicide. If I had mentioned mur–der again she might have given me that sideways look that meant she didn’t quite believe me.

  We were tiptoeing down my hallway, one behind the other, towards Sally’s room. I could hear someone snoring as we passed one of the berths — whoever it was had left their door open. Sally’s room had white masking tape criss–crossing it in a big X. I guess the captain didn’t have any of the yellow stuff, which made it look sort of amateurish.

  “We can’t get through that without breaking it,” said Martha. She was standing right by the door and I reached past her with my gloved hand, opened it, and turned on the light switch. I let it swing gently and the
two of us stood and stared inside. Sally’s room was just a two-bunk berth with a sink, a dresser, and a desk and chair. She probably shared facilities with LuEllen. I made a note of that. The bed sheets were all messed up as if she had been having a fitful sleep and her briefcase was open, some handwritten papers were scattered about.

  I couldn’t see clearly enough and leaned in over the tape, trying to get a better view. Martha tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Allow me.” She nudged me aside, whipped out a pair of binoculars and began eyeballing the room. It was all I could do to keep from asking for the binocs, she was taking so long. I kept looking anxiously up and down the hall. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore and grabbed Martha by the shoulder. She turned round and gave me the binoculars.

  “All the papers are handwritten and the suicide note is just to the left of the sink.”

  I scanned the sink and zoomed in on the note. It was handwritten on a ripped sheet of paper with scalloped edges, which seemed somehow pathetic for a last com–munication. I scanned the other sheets, just a handful that could have been blown about by the porthole being open. There was a biography of Audrey Hepburn and Terry’s book, which looked old and tattered. There were some clothes draped over a chair and a little teddy bear propped up on the desk.

  Suddenly Martha hauled down on my coat hissing, “Someone’s coming.”

  I could hear footsteps coming up the stairs to the outer door at the end of the hallway. I quickly reached in to close the door and found that my arm wasn’t long enough. I looked at the binocs in my hand and against all odds lassoed the handle with the strap and pulled it closed just as the door at the end of the hall opened.

  Martha and I had started walking down toward the door when Elizabeth appeared, still looking hag–gard and demolished. I could see the surprise in her eyes when she saw us but she covered it well, saying in a monotone, “Good evening ladies. What are you doing up so late?”

  There was a moment’s silence and then Martha replied, “Just bird watching.”

  She kicked me in the foot. It took me a second to fig–ure out what she meant by that and I quickly raised the binoculars in a salute.

  Elizabeth didn’t give any indication that this might be a bit unusual at 12:30 a.m. We’d have looked like fools had we not been in the land of the midnight sun. She didn’t even look at the binocs. Instead she said, “I wish you luck,” and we flattened up against the wall so that she could get by.