The Body on the Lido Deck

by Jane Bennett Munro

  Rob stripped off his gloves. “I’ll go see.”

  “Bring me a big knife from the kitchen!” I called after him.

  “A big knife? How big?”

  “Like a chef’s knife.”

  “You’ve got it.” And he was gone.

  “What now?” Nigel inquired.

  I stripped off my gloves and pushed my chair back so I could stretch out my legs. “Now,” I said, “we wait.”

  “What do you intend to do with a chef’s knife?” Nigel asked. “Fillet the brain?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I intend to do,” I said. “It’ll show the extent of the hemorrhage.”

  “And you’ll take pictures.”

  “Right.”

  “Can you tell,” Nigel inquired, “whether or not she was still alive when she was crushed in the roof?”

  “Either that, or she was strangled beforehand. If she’d been dead, her face wouldn’t have been all swollen up like it was, and the tongue wouldn’t have been all blue and sticking out of her mouth. That wouldn’t happen unless the blood was still circulating.”

  “I guess we’ll never know,” Nigel said. “Any ligature marks would have been obscured when the neck was crushed and the head fell off the body.”

  “I think she was still alive,” I said. “When I saw the head fall into the pool, I got up to look over the edge and blood dripped on my head. If she’d been dead, all the blood would have been clotted.”

  Nigel shuddered. “I sincerely hope she wasn’t conscious.”

  I gestured at the brain, which sat on the drain board next to the sink with the subdural hematoma covering ninety percent of its surface. “I don’t think there was any way she could have been conscious,” I said, “with all that bleeding.”

  “Great Scott,” Nigel said. “That means that someone had to open up the roof, put the body in the opening, and close it again, less than an hour before you saw the head fall. That makes a lot of noise. Wouldn’t you think someone would hear that?”

  “I think I did hear it,” I said. “Something woke me up, and I couldn’t go back to sleep. The roof made the most awful screeching noise when they opened it this morning. If it made that same sound when they closed it on her, no wonder it woke me up. That’s why I was on the Lido deck in the first place, because I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

  “Do you know what time that was?”

  “Not exactly. It was still dark, though. I read until I heard the roof opening at seven o’clock. That’s what attracted my attention, and that’s why I saw the head fall.”

  “Too bad you didn’t look at your watch when you first heard the noise,” Nigel said.

  “I’d’ve had to turn on a light. I didn’t want to wake Hal. I looked at it when I got up there, though, and it was six thirty.”

  I heard a key in the lock, and turned, expecting to see Rob coming down the corridor.

  But it wasn’t Rob. It was the captain. “Where’s Dr. Welch?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “He should be back any minute,” Nigel said.

  Captain Sloane closed the door and leaned on it, folding his arms. “Then I’ll just wait.” Then he saw the brain. “What’s that?”

  “Miss Leonie Montague’s brain,” I said, “showing the massive cerebral hemorrhage that killed her.”

  “Then that other thing must be …”

  “What’s left of her face,” Nigel said.

  That did it. The captain went pale again. Abruptly he turned and opened the door to leave just as Rob came back. “Captain? What can I do for you?”

  “Get out of my way,” Captain Sloane snapped and left abruptly.

  Rob stared after him for a moment, shrugged, and turned back to me, brandishing the chef’s knife. “This do you?”

  “Admirably,” I said. “What about the buckets?”

  “Hang on,” he said. “They’re right out here.” I held the door open while he retrieved an empty laundry detergent bucket and two large glass jars. “How’s this?”

  “Brilliant,” Nigel said. “Just the ticket.”

  “What did the captain want?” Rob asked.

  “No idea,” Nigel said. “He got sick before he had a chance to ask anything.”

  “I didn’t realize that the captain had a key to the infirmary,” I said.

  “The captain,” said Rob, “has a key to everything.”

  “Even cabins?” I asked.

  “Well, he doesn’t actually carry them around with him, but he keeps master keys to every room on the ship on the bridge. In case of emergency, you know. The security officers do too, for the same reason.”

  Far from feeling safer, I found this information alarming. “Does that mean that all the officers have access to every room on the ship?”

  Rob scratched his head. “I never really thought about it, but I suppose they do.”

  I gave myself a mental shake. “Well. Let’s get this done.”

  “Right,” said Rob. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Just arrange these brain slices in a row so I can take pictures of them.”

  I sliced the brain with the chef’s knife, and Rob laid the slices out in a row as I directed. It wasn’t easy. The brain is extremely gelatinous when fresh, and even more fragile when decomposed. That’s why we let brains fix in formalin for two weeks before cutting them. But this wasn’t the usual hospital setting, and we didn’t have any formalin. Nor did we have two weeks.

  The brain slices demonstrated what I already suspected. The subdural hematoma was large enough to have pushed the brainstem down into the foramen magnum, compressing the respiratory center. I deduced from this that she had been dead or close to it when she was crushed, and couldn’t possibly have been conscious, which made me feel better. At least I didn’t have to torture myself by imagining what it had been like to be crushed alive.

  After photographing the brain slices, I put them into one of the mayonnaise jars, with paper towels between them to keep them from sticking to each other. Rob poured rubbing alcohol over them, and I screwed the lid on. We were getting to be quite a team.

  “We’ll just put these in the cooler for safekeeping,” Rob said, and unlocked the heavy steel door. He had to struggle a bit to get it open though. I guessed it hadn’t been used in a while, although one would think someone would lubricate it between cruises. Maybe it didn’t get used enough to merit regular maintenance. Oddly enough, however, the interior of the cooler was spotless. It had obviously been recently cleaned. So recently that I could still smell the disinfectant.

  “Have you had someone in here recently?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

  His voice sounded a little strained. I turned to look at him and saw that his neck muscles were tensed. He didn’t meet my eyes.

  It didn’t take a psychiatrist to know that he was lying. I wondered why. What would be the point? That’s what the cooler was for, after all, to store a body until it could be taken off at the next port.

  Unless, of course, the body had been Leonie’s.

  “Because it’s so clean,” I said.

  “Of course it is,” he returned. “This ship gets cleaned from stem to stern between cruises, and there hasn’t been a body in it on this cruise, like I said.”

  I glanced at Nigel. He shook his head almost imperceptibly, and I took the hint not to pursue it further at that time.

  I put the rest of the head into the bucket. “Have you got more alcohol?”

  Rob looked in one of the lower cabinets and came up with three more bottles. “Sorry, this is all I can spare,” he said. “We can’t get any more until we get to San Juan. I need to keep some on hand in case I actually have to stitch somebody up or sterilize something.”

  “I guess it’ll have to do.”
I uncapped and poured the three bottles into the bucket. It didn’t quite cover the head, so I filled one of the bottles with water and added it to the bucket. It just barely covered the head, and Nigel said, “Is that going to be enough to preserve it, with water in it?”

  “It should be,” I said. “Seventy percent alcohol is strong enough to preserve it without drying it out too much, and this is actually seventy-five percent.”

  “Right-o,” said Rob and picked up the bucket. “I’ll just stow this away, and then we can all get some shut-eye, eh what?”

  That sounded like a lovely idea, since it was now close to midnight.

  Hal was already in bed when I got back to our cabin. I tried to sneak in without waking him, but as luck would have it, I stubbed my toe on the leg of the bed in the dark and lost my balance. I landed on the bed, and Hal woke up.

  “Toni?” He rolled over, turned on the bedside light, and squinted at me. “Why are you wearing scrubs?”

  I told him about the night’s adventures.

  “So where are all the specimens now?” he asked.

  “Rob put them away in the cooler for safekeeping.”

  “Rob?”

  “Rob Welch. The ship’s doctor.”

  “There’s a cooler in the infirmary?”

  “Yes. In case someone dies.”

  “Good. They should be safe there, right?”

  “I hope so,” I said, “providing he’s not involved.”

  “I see you packed your paranoia, sweetie.”

  “You may scoff,” I said, “but at this point the only people I’m absolutely sure aren’t involved are you, me, Mum, and Nigel.”

  “Thank heavens for that.” He moved over and patted the bed next to him. I climbed in, scrubs and all, and he put his arm around me. “So what are you going to do with them?”

  “I don’t know. I took a whole bunch of pictures to document her injuries, so we might not need the actual head and brain. It’s just that I don’t want to lose anything that could be potential evidence. You just never know. If this goes to court and the defense refuses to accept the pictures because they’re digital and can be manipulated, we may need them.”

  “How do you plan to get them to Chief Superintendent Braithwaite?”

  “That’s a fine question. You can’t just slap a label on them and drop them off at the post office in St. Maarten. They’d require special packaging that won’t leak. We might run into local laws that prohibit sending human remains through the mail.”

  “Well, we sure as hell can’t take them home with us,” Hal said practically. “We can’t carry them on the plane.”

  “There’s always the possibility that Chief Superintendent Braithwaite won’t want them,” I said. “Maybe we should send them to the coroner instead.”

  “From what you’ve told me about her, I bet she won’t want them either,” Hal pointed out.

  “Then maybe we should be sending them to Scotland Yard,” I mused.

  “We can ask Nigel about that in the morning.” Hal yawned. “Hell, it already is morning. Let’s get some sleep.”

  I slid out of bed and stood up. “You go ahead. I need to back up these pictures before someone sneaks in here and steals my phone to prevent them from ever seeing the light of day.”

  Hal slid down in the bed and put his arm over his eyes. “Oy vey.”

  “Do you want me to do this someplace else so I won’t keep you awake?”

  Hal shook his head. “No, it’s okay, I can sleep with the light on. Besides you’re safer here than anywhere else on the ship.”

  He had a point. Somebody could sneak up behind me and take me unawares while I was engrossed in computer manipulations in the library or any other public area. Luckily, I could get Wi-Fi in our cabin. Not everybody could, I knew. I’d heard people complaining about it.

  “I’ll just sit over here at the desk and use this light,” I told him.” You can turn that one off.”

  “Okay. Good night, hon.”

  I turned on the desk lamp and pulled out my laptop. For starters, I decided, I’d e-mail them to myself from my phone and forward them to my son-in-law Pete, who was a detective lieutenant with the Twin Falls Police, just in case someone decided to steal my laptop too, and delete my e-mails.

  I wished I’d thought to ask Chief Superintendent Braithwaite for his e-mail address. Perhaps it was on the card he’d given Captain Sloane. I could ask him in the morning, assuming that I saw him in the morning. Of course, it was always possible that if he had it, he might not want to give it to me, which would make me suspicious; but he could simply say he didn’t have it to give, and I’d never know the difference.

  So I Googled the Royal Barbados Police and found their website. Contact us, it said, and gave a phone number and the e-mail address of the public relations officer, Inspector LaShondra Blackwell. I also learned that it was possible to call Barbados from the US by using area code 246, which I might be able to do with my smartphone. I programmed the contact number into it for future use. Then I e-mailed the pictures to Inspector Blackwell, with an explanatory note asking her to forward them to Chief Superintendent Braithwaite. I hoped I wouldn’t get one of those messages that said the e-mail address had failed permanently the next time I checked my e-mails.

  It was nearly two in the morning by the time I’d finished e-mailing those pictures. They had to be sent separately, because e-mail could only handle ten megabytes at a time. But before I could get out of my scrubs and into bed, there was a tap at the door, which woke Hal. “Who the hell could that be at this hour in the morning?” he grumbled, getting out of bed to answer the door.

  First Officer David Lynch stood in the doorway. “I’m so sorry to disturb you, Dr. Shapiro, but the captain just wanted me to check and make sure Dr. Day was all right.”

  “I’m fine, thanks,” I said. “How is he?”

  Lynch looked mildly perplexed. “Fine, as far as I know.” He apparently wasn’t aware that the captain had spent most of the evening running for the nearest loo.

  “Can I ask you something? Is there any other way to open and close the roof except from the bridge?”

  “If there is, I’m not aware of it. Why d’you want to know?”

  “Just curious,” I said innocently.

  “Very well.” He touched his cap. “I’ll bid you good night, then.”

  Hal closed the door behind him. “I don’t think he was expecting us to still be up.”

  “I think you’re right,” I said. “Do you suppose the captain sent him to steal my cell phone?”

  “Hard to say,” Hal said. “Do you suppose he also went across the hall and checked to see if Nigel was all right?”

  “Wouldn’t we have heard him if he had?”

  “I suppose so,” Hal said. “Would he have been able to get into our cabin if I hadn’t answered the door?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “I learned today that the captain has keys to every room on this ship, including cabins.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Hal said. “Then nothing in here is safe, including us.”

  Monday

  PHILIPSBURG, SINT MAARTEN

  7

  Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart;

  ‘Tis woman’s whole existence.

  —Lord Byron, Don Juan

  THAT WASN’T A very comforting thought to go to sleep on, and neither of us slept well, even though I propped the bathroom door open in such a way that anyone entering our cabin would crash right into it. I’d failed to take into account that the motion of the ship in the open sea would cause it to swing back and forth and bang, and I had to get up and secure it. A bungee cord would have come in handy, but who packs bungee cords to go on a cruise? Maybe I could find a hardware store in Philipsburg and get some in the morning, but for now we were at the mercy of anyone with a key.

&
nbsp; Finally I settled for sleeping with my smartphone under my pillow, but by that time it was three thirty in the morning, and I was still too keyed up to sleep. So was Hal, apparently. After several hours of tossing and turning, we gave up and got up much earlier than usual, long before we normally met Mum and Nigel for breakfast in the Lido restaurant.

  Perhaps that was just as well, because it gave us time to scope out the situation on the decks above us.

  To our amazement, the Lido pool area was open and the pool refilled. The roof was closed. We got cups of coffee from the Lido restaurant and went up to the observation deck to look at it from the top, but we saw no evidence of the blood and gore of the previous day. Rather than a miasma of decay, I smelled fresh paint.

  As we stood there watching the sun come up, we heard a noise and turned to see the roof opening slowly and smoothly, with less noise than ever before. Perhaps the cleaning required to remove all traces of Leonie Montague had solved other problems as well.

  “Wow,” I said to Hal, “I never would have expected this to be done so quickly. The maintenance and housekeeping crews must have worked all night.”

  “It’s a minor miracle,” Hal agreed.

  “I’ve been doin’ this for nearly twenty years, but this is the first time I’ve had to deal wi’ human remains,” said someone behind us. We turned to see Chief Engineer Gerard approaching. “I sincerely hope it’s the last.”

  Gerard was a tall, rawboned man with red hair, a red face, startlingly blue eyes, and more than a trace of Scots in his speech. He held a cup of coffee in one hand and a boxlike object in the other. He leaned on the rail next to us.

  “What’s that thing?” I asked him.

  “This? It’s a remote control. It’s what I used just now to open the roof.”

  “Really?” I said, surprised. “I thought that had to be done from the bridge.”

  “It usually is,” he said. “But when repairs have to be made, we have to be able to open and close it while we’re working on it. We can’t be running back and forth to the bridge every five minutes, d’y’see?”