by Mark McCrum
Francis had been planning to talk to Gregoire again. With Carmen. Put him under a bit more pressure. But did he want to do that now? Did he want to be involved any more at all? He really didn’t need to be. Quite apart from anything else, why should he put his own personal safety at risk?
There was a knock at the door.
He got up and went to it, stupidly nervous suddenly. ‘Who is it?’ he called.
‘Hentie.’
‘Thanks, Hentie,’ he said, opening it. ‘Just checking. That was quick.’
‘Ah, they’re mostly all having dinner at the moment, sir. Are you sure you don’t want me to get you a little something to eat?’
‘Maybe in a bit. You can put that down there.’
She bent to lower the tray she was carrying on to the narrow table. She had a nicer figure than he’d thought under that brown uniform.
‘There you go, sir.’
‘You working all night?’ he asked.
‘Just till eleven, sir. Then I get my head down.’
Francis nodded. Get her head down where? he thought mischievously. But could he ask her about Gregoire? Here, now, directly. ‘By the way, are you in a relationship with the hotel director, M. Le Guard?’ No. It wasn’t worth the risk. If she was, she would pass it straight on. Le Guard’s suspicions would be aroused.
Instead he said, ‘I expect you need that. It’s a long day for you.’
‘You get used to it, sir.’
‘Please don’t call me “sir”. Call me Francis.’
She looked embarrassed. ‘As you wish.’
‘You enjoy your work?’ he asked. He felt very stilted, suddenly. Like some old man trying to be chatty, though in fact he was probably no more than fifteen years older than her. If that.
‘After a fashion, yes, s …’ The ‘sir’ faded into a hiss. It was not replaced by a ‘Francis’. ‘The money’s pretty good. For me, from South Africa. The main thing is – it’s easy to save.’
‘I imagine it is.’ He picked up the white china lid of the teapot and gave his tea a stir with the spoon. ‘Got to give it a little whirl around,’ he explained, ‘otherwise it doesn’t taste of anything.’
‘You English with your tea,’ she said with an indulgent smile.
‘So what are you saving for?’ he asked.
Her eyes lit up. ‘I have a couple of dreams.’
‘Such as?’
‘What I would love to do, one day, is have a game farm.’
‘Like a safari place?’
‘Ah, yes, safaris would be part of it. If we had enough hectares. Nice, high-end accommodation. Luxury tents maybe too, for our more adventurous visitors.’
‘In South Africa?’
She shook her head. ‘Namibia. For me, there is more space. Less people. Less trouble.’
‘The crime rate in South Africa isn’t good, is it?’
‘Very bad just now. Actually I had an aunt who was killed on her farm last year by thieves who turned up one afternoon in a bakkie.’ From his time in Swaziland Francis knew what a bakkie was: a little van with an open back. ‘They took one old-fashioned TV,’ Hentie continued, ‘and a laptop. For that they tied her up and shot her in the head. That’s how bad it is now.’
‘Your people are Afrikaans?’
‘We are, sir.’
‘So it’s your country too.’
‘Yes, sir. It is.’ It ees.
‘Nowhere else to go?’
She smiled at that. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s a shame. I’m not saying apartheid was right, it wasn’t. When I was a teenager I used to argue with my dad about that. It was right to free Mandela, to give the blacks their share of power. But the politicians mishandled the transition. Gave people guns who should never have had guns. “Kits constables”, they called them. Boys from the townships who were trained up to be police in eight weeks. Eight weeks! And then given a flippin’ AK47! And now they wonder why we have the worst crime rate in the world.’
‘So you have another reason to want to get away. To the safety of the ship.’ Francis smiled. ‘Or maybe not. Given the things that have happened in the last couple of days …’
‘Yes, sir.’ Hentie’s eyes flicked hurriedly away from his. ‘I’d better be getting back,’ she said.
‘Really? I was enjoying our chat.’
‘I can’t neglect my other guests, sir.’
‘I was interested in your take on it all.’
‘Thank you, sir. I’m glad to help. If you need anything else from the menu, please call the restaurant.’
Just like that, she was gone. If Francis had hoped for a discussion about the MOB, or even their joint witness of the sad demise of Eve, he hadn’t got one. What else did Hentie know? Everything, presumably. Everyone below deck surely knew about George Bernard Dimagiba. So what had he glimpsed there in her eyes in that moment before she’d run away? More than just knowledge. Fear. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to talk about all this with a passenger. She was genuinely scared. Of what her boyfriend might do to her if she told? Of what he might want her to do next?
Francis leant forward and poured himself a cup of tea. He had told Hentie he didn’t want biscuits, but there was another little plate next to the pot with a selection of four or five. He picked up a sugar-dusted shortbread and chewed it anxiously.
Was Hentie really Gregoire’s girlfriend? Or was that just another tall story for the dimwit amateur detective that the senior crew had decided to have fun with?
He urgently needed to clarify his thoughts. He got up and went over to the narrow desk by the mirror. He picked up a pen and one of the pieces of printed writing paper that sat in a pile there, headed GOLDEN ADVENTURER. And below that: From the suite of Mr Francis Meadowes in an elaborate curling font.
On one side he wrote: Victims.
Eve – octogenarian widow. Obviously wealthy, in that she spoke about going on several cruises a year. But not otherwise at all ostentatious about her money. Manner of death not clear. Surely those dodgy prawns wouldn’t have killed her? But Dr Lagip suspicious. Although about what wasn’t entirely clear. Suffocation? Poisoning? Has she heard back from the Takoradi lab yet? If she has, she’s not shared it with me. Eve was also in the Antarctic last Christmas with several others on this cruise. Henry and Daphne, Sebastian and Kurt, Don and Lauren, Col Joe. Suspicious? Or just one of those real-life coincidences?
Lauren – glam (forty-something?) partner of apparently broke Don. Fell overboard after drinking too much. Or was pushed? By Don? Or someone else? After discovering something she shouldn’t? Maybe about Eve’s death. Or because she had been involved in a career-threatening fling with Gregoire? Don certainly thought she had been – just his paranoia? Or was it suicide? Don didn’t think that possible. They were also both in the Antarctic on the Christmas cruise.
George Bernard Dimagiba – forty-something crew member. Victim of snakebite, doctor thinks. Surely she’s right about that? The evidence is horribly clear. Herpetologist Leo backs her up. But how did the snake get on the ship? And when? Did whoever brought it on intend to use it? On George? Or perhaps one of the earlier victims? And where is this reptile now? In the sea? Or hidden in someone’s cabin, waiting for a reprise? As for George, he witnessed Lauren’s fall. But what – or rather who else – did he see that night?
On a second piece of paper Francis wrote: Suspects.
Gregoire – was friendly with Eve, would have had access to her cabin. Was also close to Lauren. How close? Is it possible that he was murdering passengers after getting them to change their will? Too far-fetched, as Carmen thinks? Or could it be that that’s what Lauren found out? Was he grooming her as his next victim? Did she really snog him? If so, did Hentie know? Is Hentie really his girlfriend? Or did the Carmen/Viktor/Captain team just make that up, another piece of misinformation for their joke detective? Whatever: the captain was surprisingly supportive of him.
Don – driven to the edge by his beloved partner’s infidelities? Or just fed up with h
er and wanted money all for himself? Or both? Might he have brought her on the cruise specifically to bump her off, having found out about this extraordinary loophole in international law on a previous cruise? But how would he have got access to the lower deck to kill GBD? And where and how would he have got hold of the snake (unless that was Plan B for Lauren)? In any case he’s been sedated in his cabin since Lauren’s death. Hasn’t he? Final point: if he is a suspect for Lauren, that assumes that Eve died a natural death. Doesn’t it?
Who else? If Hentie really is an item with Gregoire, is it possible they’re working together? Would that explain that sudden flash of fear in her eyes and rapid exit just now? She has a financial motive, in wanting the game farm. But would she have idly disclosed that ambition to me if she and G really were murdering passengers and stealing their money? On the other hand – the butler did it!
He jotted down other possibilities:
Klaus? Something distinctly creepy about him and he always knows too much. Certainly about Africa – so would know all about snakes. That bulky excursion bag of his is certainly big enough to hide one. Could he have popped one in while we were out in Togo? But really a murderer? Why?
And: he was not on the Christmas Antarctic cruise.
Shirley? A terminally ill woman might not care about what she does, if she had a cast-iron motive to kill. But what on earth would be her motive for these two very different women? One of whom is from a different continent to her. Also this is her first cruise ever.
Brad and Damian? Happy with each other, well-off, soon to be married, zero motive. However: a bit odd that they claimed they slept through MOB drama. Believable? Also: how/why did Damian know about Gregoire’s ‘house mouse’ below decks?
Sebastian and Kurt? Ditto re. MOB. Kurt a bit spooky.
Sadie? Confused perhaps, dangerously horny, but surely no killer. First-time cruiser.
Colonel Joe?
The captain and/or his sidekick, po-faced Alexei?
Henry and Daphne?
This last scrawled question brought a laugh. The Alzheimer’s Murderer? Francis could see it now, in the Mail Online. ‘Concealed beneath a brilliantly maintained act of pretending not to know who anyone was, Henry Forbes-Harley not only knew exactly who they were, but he was actively killing them off …’
Absurd. In any case, all these passengers had far too much money to have any need of murdering anyone for money. If Daphne and Henry were anything, they were Gregoire or whoever’s next victims.
As he scrawled the words More than one murderer? there was another knock at the door. Francis hurriedly turned over his piece of paper and walked nervously up the little corridor. Had Hentie rushed off to tell Gregoire? Could this be him now? With a poisonous reptile clutched in his fists?
‘Who is it?’ he called.
‘Carmen.’
He opened the door. She was standing in the corridor, in her blue party dress and high heels. Her grin was infectious.
‘Aren’t you coming up for dinner?’
‘I didn’t think I’d bother. Might have something from room service tonight. Stuff to think about …’
‘Oh, come on, mate. You can’t hide yourself away in here.’ Her eyes danced with amusement. ‘Are you cross with me, is that it?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Seriously, Carmen, I thought we were working together. I didn’t realize that you were concealing things from me.’
She pushed past him into the cabin, filling his nostrils with the waft of some musky, almost sickly scent.
‘You mean,’ her voice dropped to a whisper, ‘Gregoire and Hentie?’
He nodded.
‘Hand on heart, I didn’t know about that. Until we went up to the office. The captain told me. Viktor knew, but I didn’t.’
Did he believe this?
‘You also told the captain what Sadie told me about Gregoire and Lauren.’
‘Was I supposed not to? We’re all working on this together, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, but I thought we’d agreed we didn’t want Gregoire to be suspicious. The captain seems very supportive of him. Who’s to say he hasn’t already repeated this back to him?’
‘Sooner or later he’s going to know. Anyway, it looks like Sadie might have made it all up.’
‘I’m not sure about that. Why would she?’
‘Come on, mate, don’t stay in here sulking. Come up and have some food. We can sit together and do some hard thinking. Thrash this all out.’
‘It somehow doesn’t feel right. To eat an elaborate dinner with all these dead bodies on the ship.’
‘And what’s more right about hiding away in your cabin? You need to be in the dining room. Getting a sense of what people are feeling. Saying.’
‘Have they all forgotten poor Lauren already?’ Francis said. ‘Dressed up in their finery and moved on.’
‘Not at all. “Poor Lauren” is very much the main topic of conversation on this ship. But you need to hear it.’
‘Do I?’
‘Come on, you saddo,’ she replied. ‘Chuck on a jacket and let’s go upstairs.’
Was it only last night, he thought, as he followed her out of the door and along the narrow, claustrophobic corridor, that it had been he who was persuading Sadie to go and join the diners?
FIFTEEN
In the Panorama Lounge after dinner Alfredo the pianist sat behind his instrument, his head tilting back and forth in time to the music, his fingers dancing expertly up and down the keyboard, extracting the maximum feeling from every note he played. ‘Love Story’, ‘Lady in Red’, ‘The Way You Look Tonight’, ‘What a Wonderful World’ – the tunes were as predictable as they were schmaltzy. Every now and then a passenger would get to his or her feet, dodder over the blue carpet and lean down towards the Filipino’s ear with a suggestion for a tune, then drop a bank note into the outsized brandy glass that sat on the gleaming ebony lid of his Bechstein.
The bar was more crowded than Francis had yet seen it. Rather than be got down by the shocking events of last night, the guests seemed to have decided to live it up. Bolstered by five courses, a sorbet and petits fours, the unease that Francis had detected at the Neptune party had been replaced by a much more boisterous mood, one of backslapping and loud laughter.
But he wasn’t paying much attention to this rowdy conviviality, because he had at last got Carmen alone. The ‘hard thinking’ she had promised him had not been possible at the mixed table of eight they had ended up sitting at for dinner. Francis had spent half his meal listening to the life story of a construction magnate from Bolton, UK; the other half in conversation with Martha, a waxy-faced American who had been confined to her cabin for three days with the norovirus. ‘Not that I had it so bad,’ she said, ‘but Sean did. Oh, boy! My travelling companion,’ she added, nodding across the table to a handsome fellow who looked as if he’d been dipped in a vat of teak wood stain. She’d suffered less, she reckoned, because she took probiotics, as well as something called Digest Gold, which was really amazing for upset stomachs – Francis should get some. But the ‘confining thing’ was serious. She and Sean had had this letter from the captain, saying that if they were found outside their cabin – at all, while they were still ill – they would be put off at the next port. ‘It was like, really, heavy, but then’ – Martha cackled with laughter – ‘it had this typo right in the middle which made it ridiculous.’ But it had made them wonder. ‘I mean, how many other passengers are similarly imprisoned?’
‘So,’ Carmen asked him now. ‘Did you pick up anything useful over dinner?’
‘Some remedies for upset stomachs and an insight into the building industry in the north of England, but no, not much more than that.’
She laughed. ‘You’re a patient listener.’
‘So people tell me.’
‘They didn’t talk about the MOB?’ Despite the background din, she mouthed the acronym.
‘The woman on my left did. Ev
entually. But she was convinced Lauren had fallen off.’
‘That’s mostly what they think. An awful tragedy, but no more than that.’
‘The old boy on my right didn’t even mention it.’ Francis gestured round the room. ‘Less than twenty-four hours later, life seems to be carrying on much as normal.’
‘Or else people have just decided to make the most of things.’
There was a pause while they sipped their drinks and looked round at the partying passengers. Then Francis leaned forward. ‘So you really didn’t know about Gregoire and Hentie before that meeting?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Carmen insisted. ‘I’m not holding stuff back from you, mate, if that’s what you’re worrying about.’
‘Or from the captain, as far as I can see.’
‘What are you talking about? Gregoire’s supposed snog with Lauren again.’
‘Call me old fashioned, but if someone tells me something in confidence, I would keep it to myself.’
‘In this situation?’ Carmen cut in. ‘Where we’re trying to find out who killed a man? Possibly even a man and two women. Don’t you trust the captain?’
‘I’m not sure trust comes into it particularly. I don’t think that he’s involved, put it that way.’
‘Involved.’ She laughed. ‘The captain! That’s even crazier than your idea about Gregoire the serial killer.’
‘Is it? So why is he so protective of him then?’
‘Of Gregoire? He’s worked with him for ages, and he rates him. You often find that people in authority can’t countenance the idea of their favoured subordinates doing any wrong at all. Even trivial stuff.’
‘You could be right,’ Francis said. He sat in silence for a bit. ‘I suppose that’s it,’ he concluded.
‘Of course it is. What are you suggesting? That Gregoire and the captain are bumping off the passengers together and sharing the money?’
Francis laughed. ‘Before you came to find me, I was sitting in my cabin with a piece of paper trying to work out how any of these deaths could possibly be related. And I can’t say I was getting anywhere much. The only even half-likely suspects I have are Gregoire and Don. And Don has been in his cabin in a sedated state since Lauren went overboard.’