by L. C. Tyler
‘Except,’ I said, ‘that that isn’t really how serial killers work. Serial killers kill basically because that’s what they enjoy doing. Think of it as a vocation – a bit like writing but more respectable. They rarely need to do it because their subsequent victims know too much. Most subsequent victims know too little – that’s how they become subsequent victims.’
‘The terrorists who took Ethelred were convinced that they had fellow travellers on board the Khedive.’
‘They were not entirely truthful with Ethelred on some other matters. That could have been a ploy too.’
‘It fits in with what they actually did though, doesn’t it? Why they didn’t blow us up at first, but then changed their minds?’
‘I guess so.’
‘Then we need some means of getting the real killer to give themselves away.’
‘How?’
‘Let’s see what we can do over dinner,’ said Tom. ‘Isn’t that how Agatha Christie would have done it?’
Dinner had been announced in the programme as a fez evening and nobody had thought fit to countermand it. The men had acquired in the market at Kom Ombo, with mixed success at bargaining and a consequent wide range of prices, almost identical fezzes, the single noticeable difference being that some were red with black tassels and some were blue with yellow tassels. They had however been obtainable only in one standard size, which clearly had not fitted all. Proctor’s rested on his ears, while Ethelred’s perched on top of his head at one of the most rakish angles I have seen. Ethelred, I noticed, seemed to have trimmed the hair in his ears, for no apparent reason. Annabelle had purchased a jellabiya somewhere. Its general shape was authentic enough, but the plunging neckline indicated that it had not been made for the local market. It was all strangely frivolous attire for a boat that had so recently been touched by death – and indeed for the evening that Tom had planned.
We were midway through the meal when Tom tapped his wine glass and made an announcement.
‘I think we should drink a toast,’ he said, ‘to our departed fellow passenger, George Purbright.’
‘Is that the right way to remember him?’ asked Proctor. ‘Shouldn’t we have a minute’s silence or something?’
‘Oh yes, I think an alcoholic tribute would be entirely fitting,’ said Miss Watson.
There was a general murmur that might have passed equally for approval or disapproval and most of us drank.
‘Perhaps we should also drink to the British and Egyptian security services,’ said Campion, ‘for having tracked down his killers.’
‘Except they haven’t,’ said Tom.
‘But Ethelred said—’ began Campion.
‘Masterman believes that Mahmoud or Majid fired the gun,’ said Tom, ‘but I don’t.’
‘I hoped,’ said Campion, ‘that we had finally got away from the ridiculous idea that it was one of us.’
‘It’s not so ridiculous,’ said Tom. ‘Let’s begin with the gun. It was one that was good for target shooting, but not what a terrorist would carry. And you’d have expected a silencer.’
‘Not as accurate with a silencer,’ said Proctor.
‘How accurate did it need to be?’ asked Tom. ‘He must have been shot from a few yards away. Purbright had arranged to meet this person, whoever it was. And in any case, Majid and Mahmoud were on the bridge when the shot was fired.’
‘Masterman says not,’ pointed out Campion.
‘Well, there are people who could have committed the murder, whether the shot was fired when I think it was or a little earlier,’ said Tom. ‘You could, Sky. I still don’t buy this idea that it was a pure coincidence that you showed up on the boat that Raffles had been planning to join.’
‘Of course it was a coincidence,’ said Sky indignantly. ‘Anyway, why should I shoot anyone? Unpaid library fines? And Purbright wasn’t Raffles – I’ve told you before.’
‘We have only your word for it. Perhaps you haven’t been truthful about that – any more than you have about what you do.’
‘She’s a librarian,’ said Campion.
Tom didn’t even bother to look in Campion’s direction. ‘You see, Sky, there are two possibilities,’ he continued. ‘Either by some amazing coincidence Raffles booked the same cruise as his librarian or, for some far less improbable reason, you have pitched up here deliberately on his boat. If you were me, which would you believe?’
‘I met him at the library,’ said Sky, but she didn’t sound that convinced.
‘OK, Sky, what’s the Dewey Decimal code for Social Science?’ asked Tom.
Had I been Sky, I would have just brazened it out and said ‘49’ or whatever the first number was that came into my head, because my guess was that Tom didn’t know either. Sky looked, however, like a cornered rat – a rat that was beginning to feel that it should have read up on the Dewey Decimal Classification system.
‘Right then, let’s get to the bottom of this,’ said Proctor, playing a rather scruffy and flea-ridden terrier up against Sky Benson’s rat. He narrowed his eyes and twitched his nose. ‘Why did you follow my client here? Why did you want to kill him?’
‘Nobody has killed Raffles,’ said Sky.
‘Well, somebody has killed somebody,’ said Tom. ‘Do you want us to turn you over to the police as the most likely suspect or do you want to tell us how you know Raffles? The truth this time.’
‘I bet she’s never met Raffles,’ sneered Proctor. ‘I bet she’s making the whole thing up.’
There is a point at which even the mildest and most tolerant of rats will round on the terrier and bite him on the nose. ‘I was there at the trial, you moron,’ said Sky. ‘I saw that man’s odious face every day for two weeks, spouting one lie after another. I saw how his barrister hoodwinked the jury – or enough of them anyway. If that had been Raffles lying out there on the deck, that would be justice. It’s just a shame that it wasn’t him. And it’s a shame that there are people like you, Mr Proctor, who would actually work for somebody like Raffles and try to protect him.’
Proctor found himself to be a scruffy terrier whose rat had unexpectedly bitten him on the nose. His doggy instinct was still to pick Sky Benson up by the neck and give her a good shake – but more cautiously this time.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Sky to nobody in particular. ‘Of course, I don’t really wish anybody dead . . . even him.’
Campion decided it was time to intervene. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I think that’s conclusive. Sky clearly does know Raffles and we can legitimately accept her identification. Now perhaps we can move on . . .’
‘Not so fast,’ said Proctor, unwilling to be deprived of his rodent. ‘In what capacity were you attending the trial?’
‘Does it really matter?’ asked Campion.
‘Not many people have to sit in on a whole trial. Witnesses don’t. I doubt if you were the judge. So what were you?’
‘I was a member of the jury,’ said Sky. ‘OK? Satisfied now?’
‘And you found him not guilty?’
‘A majority were certain he was guilty, but three had doubts. We couldn’t return a verdict. The CPS decided not to go for a retrial.’
‘Don’t they give you extra time for things like that?’
‘The foreman of the jury screwed up,’ said Sky. ‘Just when it looked as though we might be able to return a majority verdict, the judge called us back into the court again and asked whether we had reached an impasse. The foreman said “yes”. The judge dismissed us. We were all too gobsmacked to say anything there and then. Afterwards we went to the judge’s chambers, but were told it was too late. You can’t un-dismiss a jury. It would have to go to retrial – but it didn’t.’
‘The foreman stitched you all up?’
‘The foreman said afterwards that he didn’t know what an impasse was and didn’t like to admit it in court. From his point of view the right answer was a fifty-fifty guess and he got it wrong.’
‘So, you decided that you would exact justice
of your own, and murder him quietly here on the Nile,’ said Proctor.
‘Of course not,’ said Campion unexpectedly. ‘That wasn’t the plan.’
‘And how do you know?’ asked Tom. ‘Were you on the jury as well?’
‘No,’ said Campion. He exchanged glances with Sky and shrugged. ‘I’m a journalist. I covered the case for my paper.’
So they were in it together, exactly as I remembered predicting from the start. Allowing for Ethelred being right about the policemen, that made it one all.
‘After the trial, we didn’t know how to handle things,’ said Sky. ‘The judge had said there was nothing more he could do. We thought maybe we could talk to a journalist, so we did. But you can’t report on what went on in a jury room. So, between us we came up with a scheme.’
‘Precisely – to murder my client!’ Proctor exclaimed with slightly more drama than was justified at this stage.
‘As I have already explained, that was most certainly not our intention,’ snapped Campion. ‘And if it had been, we certainly would not have chosen somewhere like this. You’d have to be crazy. No, the plan was to get a confession out of him. Raffles is basically a loud-mouthed drunk. We reckoned that sooner or later he’d be confiding to some drinking companion how clever he’d been to get away with it. When he did, we wanted to be there with a concealed microphone. The problem was how to gain his confidence. We were able to find out where he did his drinking, but a casual approach in a pub would have looked too suspicious. On the other hand, you get talking to all sorts of people on holiday. And the bar often stays open late. I have access to various sources of information . . . Eventually, using one of the slightly less ethical ones, we picked up Raffles’ name on a passenger list and were able to do a bit of detective work that led us here. So my editor paid to send two of us, armed with recording devices, on the Khedive. Sky volunteered to come with me, though she has since had some qualms about the whole thing.’
‘I doubt he would have recognized me,’ said Sky. ‘I’ve dyed my hair and without make-up I do look quite different. And he’d obviously never heard me speak . . . It was just the thought of having to talk to him at all that turned my stomach. But we discussed it on the first night on board and I realized I would have to go through with it if he did join the ship at Kom Ombo or Aswan. Otherwise I’d have let the whole group down.’
‘And my editor,’ said Campion, who clearly had a slightly different agenda after all. ‘He wouldn’t have been pleased either.’
‘So you’re not a librarian?’ asked Ethelred, with a tinge of disappointment.
‘No, I’m a pole dancer,’ said Sky.
‘So there you have it,’ said Campion. ‘That was our plan. Blown now, of course – thank you very much, Tom – as I shall have to explain to various people when I get back to England. But that was our plan.’
‘I didn’t think you were a professor of Egyptology,’ said Proctor. ‘You were pretty stupid to think nobody would find you out.’
‘I’m a bit rusty,’ said Campion haughtily, ‘but I do have a degree in the subject. I can at least still read the hieroglyphics.’
‘Yes, I realized that,’ said Proctor. He looked round the group, hoping none of us would remember his sarcastic comments at the temple and that none of us would regard him as a total dickhead in retrospect. I gave him a big smile to show that the thought had never crossed my mind.
‘I have had to rely quite a lot on the guidebook for information about each site though,’ Campion added.
Ethelred flashed me a smile that might have been Ptolemy-Eye-Eye related. Whatever. It still didn’t make it two one.
‘You did well, Professor,’ said John. ‘You certainly had me convinced. Anyway, with two of you to identify him, we can at least be sure now that Raffles and Purbright are different people.’
‘If Purbright was really Raffles,’ said Ethelred, ‘he wouldn’t have had the number to phone the security services. Or, if he did, I can’t see why he would have got me to phone it. To make Purbright Raffles, he’d have had to have a whole back-up team of fake security service people.’
Pretty much our conclusion earlier, though the bit about the phone numbers gave it more weight. That seemed to clinch it for most people anyway.
‘Why did the two of you send threatening letters, then?’ I asked. ‘That was hardly going to make him open up.’
‘We didn’t,’ said Campion, puzzled.
‘I didn’t say the letter was threatening,’ said Proctor. ‘Just that he’d been told to watch out – that somebody was after him. Could one of the other jurors have not liked the plan and felt that they ought to tip him off?’
‘Yes, there were three, as I said . . . And maybe the foreman wasn’t being stupid after all – juries have been nobbled before now. It looks as though we were sabotaged before we even set out,’ said Campion with a sigh. ‘What a waste of time and money.’
‘So where is Raffles now?’ I asked.
‘He must have missed the boat,’ said Proctor. He seemed slightly happier. A missing client could be tracked down and perhaps persuaded to pay a cancellation fee.
‘So Purbright was always Purbright,’ continued Ethelred, ‘but it is true that the terrorists themselves thought that it was somebody else on the boat who was sympathetic to their cause.’
Again all eyes turned to Lizzi Hull. ‘Hold on,’ she said. ‘I’ve already been through this – having some sympathy for the Palestinians is not the same thing as having sympathy for terrorism.’
‘You were talking a lot to Majid and Mahmoud,’ said Tom.
‘To practise my Arabic,’ said Lizzi. ‘And they seemed nice people.’
‘You’re not the lady that the Egyptian security services were looking out for?’ asked Ethelred.
Lizzi looked puzzled. ‘I hope not,’ she said. ‘Look, I travelled out in the same plane as most of the rest of you. I went through the same scanners. You can’t get a pair of nail scissors through airport security these days. If it’s any of us, then it must have been somebody who had a chance to stop off in Cairo or somewhere and acquire a gun.’
‘Which way did you come in?’ I asked Annabelle in an offhand manner.
‘Yes, Elsie, it was via Cairo,’ she said. ‘I changed planes there. I certainly wasn’t travelling direct on the charter flight. But I wouldn’t know where to buy a gun in Cairo, even if I’d had the time. Anyway, why would I want to kill Purbright?’
‘You didn’t. But you might have shot him in mistake for Ethelred. They were both wearing white dinner jackets. It would be an easy enough mistake to make in the dark.’
‘Why should I want to kill Ethelred?’
‘You threatened to kill him – you sent him a text message.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Ethelred told me.’
Annabelle flashed another venomous glance at the crime writer on the other side of the table. ‘Things like that are not to be taken literally,’ she said.
‘But if Ethelred died, you’d get Muntham Court back?’ asked Tom.
I doubt that Ethelred had any real plans to mend bridges with Annabelle, but if he did, then that question sealed it for good. He had revealed one too many family secrets.
‘That is scarcely something that it is appropriate to discuss here.’ She spat her words like machine-gun bullets. I think Ethelred may have actually ducked. ‘In any case – you and John travelled here from Cairo too, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, they did, and so did I,’ said Jane Watson. ‘Where are we supposed to have got a gun from anyway?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Proctor. ‘What were you doing in Cairo anyway, Miss Watson?’
‘As I thought I had already explained, I was visiting an old friend, Colonel Ahmed,’ said Miss Watson. ‘A very respectable gentleman, who would I am sure vouch for my conduct while there.’
‘So,’ said Proctor, turning to John and Tom, ‘what were you both doing in Cairo?’
‘Just the u
sual sights,’ said John. ‘The museums and the rest of it.’
The museums. Where they had met Jane Watson. And Jane Watson’s friend had not been pleased to see them. Did Colonel Ahmed know something about Tom and John? Or had they just interrupted a private conversation?
‘You seem familiar with guns, Tom,’ said Proctor.
‘A bit,’ conceded Tom. ‘I belong to a gun club in New York.’
‘And you were prowling around the boat when the shot was fired.’
‘That’s true,’ said Tom.
‘So you’re as much a suspect as anyone.’
‘That’s true as well.’
‘But I’m not a suspect of any sort,’ said Proctor smugly. ‘I have two witnesses as to where I was when the gun was fired.’
‘I have a theory about that too,’ said Tom. ‘What if a silencer was used for the murder – a silencer that was later thrown overboard? What if we were all mistaken about hearing a gunshot when the engine was about to blow up?’
‘Rubbish,’ said Proctor, reluctant to lose his alibi so soon after recovering his client.
‘It sounds reasonable,’ said Ethelred, thoughtfully.
‘A fat lot you know about guns,’ sneered Proctor. ‘This stuff about a silencer is pure conjecture. And I was with Elsie and Jane when the shot was fired.’
‘I’m not suggesting we’re all equal suspects,’ said Tom. ‘As Mr Proctor so rightly points out, for example, not everyone here knows about or can handle a gun. So I thought we might try a little experiment. I have here in this bag the gun that was used – nobody collected it from the cabin, so I took the liberty of doing so myself. I’ve removed the bullets obviously. What I’d like each of you to do is to take it, aim it at somebody round the table and press the trigger.’
Lizzi Hull shrugged. ‘Sounds interesting. I’m game, if it will actually prove anything.’
Campion looked doubtful. ‘Surely the killer will just deny all knowledge of how to fire a gun? I can’t see the point of this at all.’
‘I agree,’ said Proctor. ‘All the killer has to do is to say they’ve never fired a gun in their life and then pretend they can’t even operate the safety catch. Still, I’m willing to play along if that’s what you wish.’