by M. M. Kaye
He turned back to her and said: ‘How did you come to find it?’
‘I told you. It was under my pillow. But it hadn’t been there before.’ She told him about that, and why she knew that it had not been there before eight o’clock.
‘You don’t think Mrs Blaine could have put it there while she was talking to you.’ The words were less a query than an assertion.
‘I know she didn’t.’
‘Then what do you think?’
Amanda did not answer him. She stared down instead at the small bottle that he held so carefully with a corner of his handkerchief.
‘Why were you frightened, Amanda?’
Amanda’s eyes lifted slowly to his face. His back was to the light from the passage and his face was in deep shadow, but she could see the gleam of his eyes and the line of his mouth and jaw.
She said: ‘You know, don’t you? That’s why you took the glass.’
‘Ssh! Quietly. Yes I know. You don’t think that she died from a heart attack. Or that she killed herself either. That’s it, isn’t it?’
‘What else can I think?’ said Amanda shivering. ‘If–if it was something in the glass and not the tablets in her hand, then it must have been–have been____’
‘Murder,’ finished Steven Howard softly. ‘Of course. And I think you’re right. Mrs Blaine took two tablets of aspirin. The stuff that killed her was in that glass.’
‘How–how can you know?’ demanded Amanda in a shaking whisper.
‘There are only two sets of finger-prints on the glass, and both of them are quite clear.’
Amanda said: ‘But of course there are only two! Only two people touched it. Myself and Mrs Blaine. Oh, and you.’
Mr Howard shook his head. ‘I lifted it by the rim. Those marks are there too. But what about the person who brought it here in the first place? There should have been at least three sets of prints on it.’
Amanda put her hands to her throat. It seemed oddly constricted. ‘Then she was murdered. No! No, it can’t be true!’
Her voice rose and Steven Howard’s hand was instantly over her mouth. Amanda twisted her head away and said in a shuddering whisper: ‘But–but don’t you see, that would mean that it was someone she knew. Someone I know!—Persis or Toby____No, it can’t be. It couldn’t possibly be!’
‘It must be. Unless____’
He stopped, and Amanda said breathlessly: ‘Unless what?’
Mr Howard did not answer her. His eyes had not moved from her face, but he appeared to be listening intently and his hand closed warningly about her wrist.
There was someone in the passage outside. Amanda did not know how she knew it, or how Steven Howard had known it, for her ear had caught no sound of approaching footsteps. Perhaps someone had brushed against the door in passing, or a shadow had flickered briefly across the white wall of the passage.
Steve Howard sat between her and the door so that she could only see the edge of it. The door did not quite fit and there was a thin sliver of light where age had warped the wood. But even as she looked, the slit of light vanished.
Steve saw her eyes widen, and for a brief moment his fingers tightened on her wrist. He turned his head and drew something out of the pocket of his dressing-gown, moving with infinite caution. Amanda saw the light from the transom glint on the barrel of the gun he held, and thought with a stunned illogicality, ‘He’s left-handed.’
Booted feet clattered noisily down a companion-way at the far end of the passage and instantly the thin sliver of light reappeared at the edge of the door. Whoever had paused outside Amanda’s cabin had gone as silently as they had come.
Someone, a ship’s officer by the sound, passed quickly down the passage, and a distant door banged shut. Mr Howard slid the small gun into his pocket and sighed.
‘I was afraid of that,’ he said softly.
‘Of what?’ breathed Amanda.
Mr Howard turned to look at her. ‘Without wishing to be an alarmist,’ he said, ‘I think you would be advised to walk extremely warily for the next few days. In fact I would suggest that you send yourself an urgent telegram and take the next available plane for England?’
‘Why?’ said Amanda. ‘I don’t understand____’
‘Don’t you? I should have thought it was obvious. It looks as though somebody planned a murder that was to pass as suicide. That someone has either realized already, or will shortly realize, that the thing has blown a fuse, in that you and not Mrs Blaine are occupying Cabin No. 13, and that you will therefore be in a position to know—or at least suspect—that Mrs Blaine was murdered. That being so, whoever planted that bottle may go to considerable lengths to get it back.’
‘Then what are you going to do with it?’ demanded Amanda in a dry whisper.
‘Dispose of it.’
‘But you can’t! The Captain must see it—the police. If you don’t tell them, I shall!’
Mr Howard stood up. ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ he said quietly. ‘Not unless you want to find yourself under arrest.’
Amanda shrank back against the pillow, her breath coming short. ‘What do you mean?’
He stood looking down at her, his hands in his pockets, and after a moment he said softly and very deliberately: ‘You see, there is always the possibility that you might have worked the whole thing yourself.’
There was a long silence in the little cabin. A silence that seemed to stretch out into interminable minutes. Outside that silence the quiet night was once again full of sounds: the rustling wash of water along the sides of the ship, the monotonous throb of the engines and the hundred and one tiny creaks and squeaks and rattles that the shudder of the screw set up in the fabric of the ship.
Amanda spoke at last. ‘You can’t believe that. You can’t!’
‘Perhaps not. But there’ll have to be a post-mortem, and the police may—if this turns out to be a case of murder. You see, they would have only your own word for what happened in this cabin, and of how you came to be in possession of that bottle. If it turns out to contain the same poison that killed Mrs Blaine, they may even think that you invited her in to talk to you. And since her husband presumably inherits anything she had to leave, Major Blaine will now be an exceedingly eligible widower—and you saw quite a lot of him in Fayid, didn’t you?’
Amanda caught her breath in a hard gasp. She said in a furious whisper: ‘Get out! Get out of my cabin before I call someone to put you out!’
‘Don’t be silly, Amanda;’ Steven Howard had not raised his voice, but the words held a cutting edge that was as effective as a slap in the face. ‘You are in no position to behave stupidly. You have no idea at all what it would be like to get yourself involved in a police inquiry out here. It’s no joke anywhere. With this setup it would be hell. If you have any sense in that charming head you will keep your mouth shut about that bottle and the glass and let it be supposed that Mrs Blaine committed suicide. Any other course is likely to prove very sticky for you, if not downright dangerous. And you are in a sticky enough position already, without that.’
Amanda said: ‘Who are you?’
Mr Howard grinned unexpectedly. ‘The name is Howard. Steve to my friends. I paint indifferent pictures and have a passion for meddling in other people’s affairs. Anything else you’d like to know?’
‘Yes,’ said Amanda. ‘Who are you really? Why do you carry a gun? What are you doing in all this? Don’t tell me that you’re just out here to paint pictures, because I don’t believe a word of it!’
Mr Howard laughed. ‘All right. Let’s say that I happen, for reasons of my own, to be interested in one or two people who are on this boat.’
‘Are you in the police?’ demanded Amanda abruptly.
‘No.’
‘Then why are you taking a hand in this?’
Steve Howard grinned. ‘Pure knight-errantry. Or mere meddling—take your choice. And now I think you’d better get some sleep, if you think you can manage it. There’s a bolt on that do
or. I suggest you use it. Goodnight Amarantha.’
The door closed softly behind him.
4
Amanda shot the bolt on the inside of her cabin door with unsteady fingers, and returned to her berth to sit rigidly upright with her arms about her knees, straining to listen and starting at every unidentified sound.
The full import of Steven Howard’s statement that sooner or later someone must inevitably realize that Amanda, as the present occupant of cabin number thirteen, was bound to obtain possession of evidence that pointed to murder, had only just come home to her. It was a singularly unpleasant thought; and even more unpleasant was the sudden realization that but for Julia’s arrival, she would have carried that glass into Julia’s cabin. Her fingerprints would have been found upon it, and there would only have been her own word for why she had handed a glass of poison to Alastair Blaine’s wife.
Alastair’s wife … Was that the key to this cruel murder? Had Alastair____? But no, that was absurd! It could not be Alastair because he at least would know of the exchange of cabins. Who then? Someone who knew Julia well enough to be aware of her lemon-and-water slimming fad, and who had made a note of the number of her cabin but had not realized that she had subsequently moved into Amanda’s. Mrs Norman____? George Norman? Persis? Toby? No, it could not be! There must be some mistake. Julia must either have had a heart attack or committed suicide after all, and there must be some other explanation for that bottle. There must be!
Why, oh why, thought Amanda desperately, had she ever offered to exchange cabins with Julia Blaine? But for that, no one need ever have suspected that there had been a murder. No one would ever have known. Yet because she had made that exchange, she knew—and someone else must suspect that she knew—that Julia’s death was not suicide, but a carefully planned murder.
The sky was paling to the dawn, and the swish of hoses and a thump of holystones betokened the arrival of a new day before Amanda fell at last into an exhausted sleep, from which she was eventually awakened by a loud knocking on her door. Starting up with her heart in her mouth, she found the cabin full of reflected sunlight, and the stewardess demanding entrance with a lukewarm cup of tea.
In the gay morning sunlight Amanda could not remember for a moment why she should have been frightened. Her first impression was that she must have had a particularly vivid and unpleasant dream. But this was quickly dispelled by the stewardess, who on being admitted, announced with relish that the police were already on board and that the captain wished to see Miss Derington in his cabin as soon as possible.
Amanda was suddenly aware that the sea was no longer swishing past the ship and that the engines were silent.
‘Have we arrived?’
‘Half an hour or more ago,’ said the stewardess. ‘We’re at Limassol. I would have woken you before, but the gentleman in number eleven said to let you sleep. Such a nice man! So thoughtful. It’s not many that are these days. Shall I get you some breakfast, dear? You looked a bit peaked—an’ no wonder.’
‘No thank you,’ said Amanda. ‘Just coffee, if you would. What does the captain want to see me about?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know, dear. I expect they just want you to tell the police what happened last night—just as a matter of form as you might say—before they bury the poor lady. Very cut up her husband is. Looks like a ghost he does. As for the little lady in 31, she came over all queer when she heard the news. The dead lady and her husband were going to stay with her. Fancy! Cousins or something. Very delicate she is—Mrs Norman, that is. The sensitive kind I should say. Dreadfully upset she was. “Why, Mrs Norman,” I said____’
A knock on the door mercifully stemmed the flow and Toby Gates’ voice inquired anxiously if Amanda was all right and wasn’t it ghastly?
Amanda replied in the affirmative to both, adding that she would be out in five minutes; and while the stewardess went in search of coffee she dressed hurriedly, plaiting her hair into two thick braids and pinning it swiftly about her head instead of coiling it into the heavy knot at the nape of her neck that took considerably more time and care to achieve.
The yellow cotton frock that she had worn on the previous day seemed too gay a garment in which to attend an inquiry into sudden death (she would not say the word ‘murder’ even to herself), and she rummaged hastily in her suitcase and found a silver-grey poplin with a narrow white belt. Gulping down the coffee that the stewardess had brought, she slipped her feet into white sandals and found Toby Gates waiting for her at the end of the passage.
‘They want to see all of us,’ said Toby, taking her arm and hurrying her up the stairs. ‘Those of us who knew her. She must have had a brain-storm. I always thought she was a spot peculiar. Rotten for Alastair, poor devil; utter hell I should think.’
Amanda said anxiously: ‘What do they want to see us for, Toby?’
‘Oh, just to give them some sort of a picture of the whole thing I suppose. Matter of form an’ all that. They’ve already had poor old Alastair answering questions for the odd half-hour or so. Jolly kick-off to a holiday for all of us, I must say!’
The ship was anchored near a town whose white-walled houses were set among green trees and the silver-grey of olives, against a backdrop of low, barren hills. The sun blazed down from a cloudless sky and glittered on the dancing water, and the blue shallow sea was streaked with bars of vivid emerald, clear cerulean and a soft, milky jade. There was an exhilaration and a sparkle in the air and once again Amanda found that it was impossible to believe that any of the events of the past night had really occurred, or that Julia Blaine was dead.
Toby said: ‘Up this ladder. Left turn. Here we are.’
The captain’s cabin appeared to be filled to overflowing. Besides the captain, the first officer, the doctor, purser and stewardess, there were three unidentified men in uniform, presumably police officers, one of whom, at least, was British. Alastair Blaine, the Normans and Persis Halliday were also present, and Steve Howard was standing at the far side of the room, leaning on the window-sill and looking out across the sunlit deck towards the little town of Limassol. He glanced round as Amanda and Toby Gates entered, but he did not speak and presently returned to his idle contemplation of the view.
Alastair Blaine was looking drawn and grey. He appeared to have aged ten years, and the merciless morning sunlight showed unexpected traces of silver among his thick blond hair.
Persis Halliday, looking, as ever, as if she had that moment been unpacked from an expensive bandbox, was sitting on the arm of a chintz-covered chair swinging one silken foot in a neat alligator shoe and fidgeting with an unlighted cigarette. She looked up as Amanda came in and said: ‘’Lo, honey. This is a pretty set up, I’ll say! Did you sleep at all?’
Claire Norman said: ‘Sleep? I am sure none of us did! How could we? Poor Julia! I shall never forgive myself. Never! Dancing, while she was dying…!’
Her voice was tragic and quivering and she had managed to find among her suitcases a deceptively simple and most becoming frock in black linen that made her appear smaller and whiter and more fragile than ever.
George Norman patted her shoulder with awkward tenderness and Persis, turning to face her, said: ‘So you knew about it last night? Now that’s very interesting. I didn’t get in on it until the stewardess spilt the beans this morning. How did you hear about it?’
For a brief moment two small patches of colour appeared in Claire Norman’s ivory cheeks, and she was all at once very still; her grey eyes no longer limpid with tragedy but curiously alert and guarded. She did not answer Mrs Halliday’s question and it was George Norman who broke the brief silence:
‘We didn’t hear until this morning,’ he said. ‘Claire was only speaking figuratively. She’s a little upset.’
The rigidity went out of Claire Norman’s small body. She did not contradict her husband’s statement, and there was no further chance for conversation, for the captain, clearly impatient to be done with the whole affair, was introduci
ng the police officers and hurrying on with the business in hand. This proved to be merely a repetition of last night’s questions and answers, with the sole difference that four of the late Mrs Blaine’s friends and acquaintances were also present, each of whom gave their individual opinion as to her state of nerves and mind.
Amanda was asked to repeat her story, and did so; making the same reservations that she had made the night before. Mrs Blaine, said Amanda, had been overwrought and hysterical. She felt the heat badly, had complained of the East and Army life in general and had talked of taking her own life. She had been holding some tablets in her hand—no, Amanda could not say how many—and had eventually swallowed them____
Amanda’s voice wavered suddenly, and looking beyond the captain’s shoulder she encountered Steve Howard’s deceptively lazy gaze. He shook his head very slightly. It was only a fractional gesture but in the circumstances plainly readable. Amanda turned her eyes away and looked at the ring of silent faces—the red, impatient face of the captain; the avid gaze of the stewardess; the weary resignation on the face of the ship’s doctor and the alert concentrated gaze of the three police officers—and closed her lips without mentioning the glass in her cabin. She did not look at Steven Howard again but she had the impression that he had relaxed.
The police were courteous and sympathetic and the captain only too eager to wash his hands of the lot of them, and after leaving their names and addresses and completing various other formalities, the passengers were hustled out of the cabin and told that they could now go ashore.
It was perhaps twenty minutes later that they descended the gangway and were rowed away from the ship over water so crystal clear that as they neared the shore every rock and pebble and shell on the sea floor was clearly visible, and they could see the shell markings on the back of a huge turtle that flippered its way lazily through the water beneath them.
There was a man waiting on the water steps by the quay; hatless and presumably British, since he wore a thin, well-cut and very English tweed coat. He was a slim man in the late thirties, of medium height and with a face so deeply tanned by sun and wind as to make his eyes and his crisp, sunbleached and slightly greying hair seem light by contrast. But despite its brownness it gave an impression of being pale under the tan. A paleness that gave a curious greyish tint to the shadows on his face. It was a thin, pleasant face that would have been handsome except that just now it looked desperately tired and was scored with lines of weariness and anxiety.