Officer Grant met us outside of the dining room. “I’m to escort you,” he said with a faint smile, “even though I’m sure you know how to get there on your own.”
The officer who opened the double doors at the fore end of the Nav deck wasn’t familiar to me, but his name was. “Third Officer John Alexander,” he said in answer to my inquiry.
I wasted no time. “Are you related to Captain Keith Alexander?”
“He was my grandfather. Why do you ask?”
“Because our captain named his son after him. He must have been quite a guy.”
Alexander smiled. “Oh, he was. It was mutual, by the way. Grandad was really impressed with Captain Sloane. Couldn’t say enough good things about him. He was really excited when I got this assignment right out of maritime college.”
“Is he still living?”
Alexander shook his head. “No, sorry to say. He passed away a few months ago. Lung cancer.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said.
“Thank you.” He tapped at the captain’s door. The captain opened it and invited us in. He was still in his uniform, and Sarah was fully dressed also in a tropical print dress and sandals. A light cardigan was draped casually over her shoulders. How did she do that? Whenever I tried to toss a sweater casually over my shoulders it was always crooked and kept falling off.
Alexander excused himself and returned to the bridge.
The genteel cocktail party atmosphere that had been present at our last visit was gone. This was more like a business meeting in a lawyer’s office. We sat around the conference table in the captain’s office. Instead of the port wine and tiny glasses, a bottle of single malt Scotch sat on the table in front of the captain. I peered at the label. Laphroaig. I’d heard of it but never tasted it.
An elderly Indonesian, undoubtedly the captain’s room steward, busied himself filling whisky glasses with ice and passing them around. At a gesture from the captain, he picked up the Laphroaig and began filling the glasses with two fingers’ worth. I tasted it and made a face. I like Scotch, but this was way smokier than anything I’d ever tasted.
Sarah noticed. “Don’t you like it, Toni?”
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’ll just take some getting used to.”
Mum put a hand over her glass when the steward reached for it. “I’m sorry, I don’t care for Laphroaig. Might I have white wine instead?”
“Certainly,” said Sarah. “Bong, some chardonnay for Mrs. Gray, please. There’s a bottle in the refrigerator.”
The steward complied, his face inscrutable.
Captain Sloane raised his glass. “A toast,” he declaimed. “To truth!”
Dutifully, we all raised our glasses too and repeated, “To truth!”
Mum said, “In vino veritas.”
We all drank. The Laphroaig went down a little more easily the second time.
Captain Sloane put his glass down with a bang and cleared his throat. “This cruise is almost over. We’ve only one more day. These murders must be solved by then. Sarah and I decided that we must do everything we can to facilitate that, and to that end, we’ve decided to reveal the truth about everything as we know it.”
Everything? Really? I was skeptical, but that’s just my nature.
“I’ll start,” Captain Sloane continued. “When I had just graduated from maritime college, I was assigned as third officer to a ship of the line, the Seven Sisters. That was in 1983. I had an affair with one of the entertainers. I was not married at the time. I hadn’t even met Sarah yet.”
“Evie Hodges,” I said.
“Quite. Five years later, I was assigned as first officer to another ship of the line, the Southern Cross. By that time I’d met Sarah, and we were engaged to be married. To my surprise, the cruise director on that ship was none other than Miss Hodges. She took me aside one day and informed me that we had a daughter, Maggie. I offered her monetary support, which she refused. She told me that her parents were taking care of the child and that I needn’t worry; she had not told—and would not tell—anyone the identity of the father.”
“Jessica told me she never did,” I put in.
“I would have expected no less. Tragically, however, Miss Hodges was found dead the day we were to arrive at Southampton. Scotland Yard was called in. Nigel? Can you take it from here?”
“Everyone here knows what I’m about to say,” Nigel said, “but I suppose it won’t hurt to repeat it. Miss Hodges was found to have been murdered. She’d been strangled and beaten to simulate a fall down the stairs. Of course, since the ship had already sailed, it wasn’t possible to investigate the murder because the evidence was gone.”
“All these years, I never told Sarah about Miss Hodges,” Captain Sloane said, “or Maggie. Today I told her.”
Sarah put her hand over his. “He did,” she confirmed, and her eyes filled with tears. “I know just how hard that was, because I had something to tell him as well.” Her voice broke. “I had to tell him that our son, Keith, isn’t his biological son.”
“It’s all right, Sarah,” the captain said. “We’ve both shed enough tears today to float this vessel. I’m sure we’ll shed more before this affair is resolved.”
“I’m so ashamed,” she said, sniffing. I handed her a Kleenex. “Thank you. I was already engaged to be married, and I should never have allowed myself to get into such a situation.”
I opened my mouth to ask what situation, but a look from Hal stopped me.
Sarah went on. “Colin was away on a cruise ship, and some of my girlfriends wanted to go to a party.” She wiped her eyes. “Nearly everyone there worked for the Constellation cruise line. My family owns it, you know. There was dancing and lots of drinking. I had too much to drink and passed out. When I woke up, I found myself in bed with Joseph Gerard.”
“Oh my God,” I blurted, ignoring Hal. “What did you do?”
Sarah blew her nose. “Well, first I threw up. Then I got dressed and went home. Two weeks later, I found out I was pregnant.”
“Did you tell him?” my mother asked.
“I was so mortified, I didn’t tell anybody. I was to be married in a month’s time, and I thought I could just pretend it was Colin’s.” She gave a self-conscious little giggle. “It wasn’t easy. Luckily Keith inherited my looks and not Joe’s. I would have been hard-pressed to explain a redheaded baby.”
That sounded familiar. I remembered my best friend, Jodi, telling me about something similar that had happened to her.
“Keith works in maintenance,” Nigel said. “Does Gerard know he’s Keith’s father?”
Sarah shook her head. “Nobody outside this room knows.”
“More to the point,” I said, “did Keith know he had a sister?”
Captain Sloane poured more Laphroaig into his glass. He held the bottle aloft and waved it around. “Anybody need a refill?”
Nobody did. As a subject-changer, it failed miserably. Nobody was fooled.
He sighed. “He does now, more’s the pity. It was a mistake to tell him. She might still be alive if I hadn’t.”
Both Officer Grant and Nigel snapped to attention. Officer Grant spoke first. “Captain, are you telling us that your son killed your daughter?”
“No, not intentionally,” the captain said. “It was an accident, just as Dr. Day said. Miss Montague had told me several cruises ago that she was searching for her father, and we had talked about it on several occasions, but it wasn’t until she told me that her real name was Maggie Hodges that I knew for sure that she was my daughter.”
“Maggie Hodges isn’t such an unusual name,” Mum said. “Surely she told you more than that.”
“Certainly. She told me that her mother had been an entertainer on one of the other ships of the line and had had an affair with an officer, and that when she, Maggie, was four years old, h
er mother had gone back to work as cruise director and was murdered. With that background, she had to be my daughter.”
“So you told her then,” Nigel said.
“No, not right away. I had to think about the ramifications, you know—like what it would do to Sarah if she knew, to say nothing of Keith.”
“So when did you tell her?” I asked. “No, wait, let me guess. The night before we got to Barbados.”
“Correct. Sarah was due to come aboard in Bridgetown the next day, and I envisioned some kind of happy family scenario with all four of us getting to know one another. I should have known better.”
“Why?” asked Officer Grant.
“You know my son, Officer Grant. Apparently he inherited Gerard’s temper. Keith always managed to spoil any family get-together he was ever involved in. I was hoping he’d get past that when he went to maritime college, but he’s flunked out of six of the fifteen maritime colleges in the UK, which is why he’s had to work his way up from the bottom. Now it’s even worse, because he feels entitled and lets everyone he works with know it. I should have known that this would be no exception.”
“So what happened?” I asked impatiently.
Hal gave me that look again. “Toni. Let the man talk.”
Colin Sloane waved a hand tiredly. “It’s all right, Dr. Shapiro. Leonie—Maggie—was here in my cabin after the show. I told her that she was my daughter. We hugged, she cried, I had Bong bring some champagne, and I called Gerard and had him send Keith up here. When he got here, I introduced him to his sister.”
“How’d he take the news?” Grant asked.
“Not very well,” the captain said. “He called her a gold digger and a slut. She slapped his face. He slapped hers, and the fight was on. She scratched his cheek and drew blood. He knocked her down and she hit her head on the coffee table and cut it open and knocked herself out.”
“Oh dear,” Mum murmured inadequately.
“You may well say so. Pandemonium ensued. Keith panicked, and I told him to get back to his quarters posthaste and try not to let anyone see him. I called First Officer Lynch and the doctor, who took her to the infirmary, and then Bong tried to clean the blood out of the carpet and off the coffee table. You know the rest.”
“So nobody knows Keith was here except us,” I said.
“Correct.”
“When did the doctor call you to say that she had died?”
Captain Sloane looked perplexed. “He didn’t.”
“You mean you didn’t know she was dead until her body was found the next morning?”
“No, actually I didn’t know it was her until you and the Chief Superintendent told me the next evening.”
“Really?” my mother asked. “You didn’t recognize the dress she was wearing?”
“Uh, Mum? There really wasn’t much left of it, and it was soaked with blood and embedded into her flesh.”
Mum blanched. “Really, kitten. Was that strictly necessary?”
The captain gave a thin smile. “Sarah will tell you about my very limited fashion sense.”
“It’s only to be expected from someone who’s worn uniforms all his life,” Sarah agreed.
“So where do we go from here?” asked Officer Grant.
“To the infirmary,” I said.
“Whatever for?”
“Because Rob told me that he did call the captain to tell him Leonie died,” I said. “The captain says he didn’t.”
“Looks like our medical officer still has some explaining to do,” Hal said. “Does anyone else here have a feeling of déjà vu?”
20
You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you,
but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute.
You are avenged 1440 times a day.
—Ambrose Bierce
“THAT WOULD EXPLAIN your reaction when we told you who she was,” Nigel said to Captain Sloane. “The last time you saw her alive, she was unconscious on your cabin floor and essentially uncrushed.”
“That means we only have the doctor’s word for it that she died when she did,” I said.
“His and the first officer’s,” the captain said. “I called Officer Lynch right after I called the doctor. They both took her to the infirmary.”
“That’s not much better,” I remarked. “Officer Lynch isn’t medical. If Rob told him she was dead, he’d believe it even if she wasn’t. If Rob asked him to help put her in the cooler, he’d do it without a second thought.”
“Unless she started to regain consciousness,” Hal said. “Then they wouldn’t have put her in the cooler at all. They would have tried to medevac her to the mainland.”
“Not the mainland,” Captain Sloane said. “It’s too far. Barbados is the easternmost island in the Caribbean. The eastern shore of Barbados is the Atlantic. But Bridgetown has a hospital. We could have medevaced her there.”
“Like Joe Gerard,” I said. “He didn’t make it, and judging from the extent of Leonie’s brain injury, she wouldn’t have either. In fact, I can’t believe she’d have regained consciousness in the first place.”
“Don’t people with severe brain injuries sometimes regain consciousness?” Hal asked. “I mean, you hear about a body being found in a different place from where they were attacked because they woke up and walked around? Didn’t you tell me about somebody who did that in your emergency room back when you were an intern?”
“Oh God, yes,” I exclaimed. “He got up off the gurney when we were all out of the room, and we looked all over and finally found his dead body in the stairwell.”
“Now that’s creepy,” Grant declared. “Are you suggesting that they put her into the cooler while she was still alive?”
“Maybe they did,” I mused. “I mean, maybe Rob thought she was dead, only she wasn’t, and regained consciousness in the cooler.”
My mother gasped and put her fingers to her lips. “What an absolutely horrible thought! Kitten, you can’t be serious.”
“As a heart attack,” I said. “Imagine it. You’re inside some small dark cold metal space with a locked door. What would you do?”
“Panic, of course,” Hal said. “Try to get out. Bang on the door. Call for help.”
“Dear God in heaven,” Mum said. “I’m surely going to have nightmares tonight.”
“Would that make enough noise that someone outside the infirmary would hear it?” Grant asked. “Because didn’t the doctor tell us that he and Lynch put the body in the cooler and left?”
“I think one would have to be inside the infirmary to hear anybody banging around in the cooler,” I said. “It’s way down at the end of a long hallway behind a closed door.”
“So if she regained consciousness before they had a chance to get out of the infirmary, they probably would have heard her?” Grant asked.
“It’s possible.”
“If they had, wouldn’t they have gone to the rescue?”
“Depends,” I said. “They would if they were innocent of any part of this mess. But we don’t know that, do we?”
Captain Sloane picked up his glass, now empty, got up and went over to the bar. He put more ice in his glass, came back and filled it up with Laphroaig. At this rate, he was going to finish the bottle all by himself. “Dr. Day, are you trying to confuse us all? Isn’t there anyone you don’t suspect?”
“She suspects everybody,” Hal said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she suspects all of us.” His smile at me took the sting out of the words.
I smiled back. “I said it before, and I’ll say it again. The only people I know are innocent are you, me, Mum and Nigel.”
“You did say that,” he acknowledged. “And we really don’t know any more than we did then.”
“On the contrary,” Nigel said. “Now we have more suspec
ts than we did then.”
“So it’s worse, not better,” the captain said. “We actually know less.”
Sarah yawned. “Excuse me.”
Captain Sloane was instantly solicitous. “My dear, you’re tired. Perhaps you should turn in.”
“Maybe I should,” Sarah said. “You should too, Colin. You should definitely not finish that drink.”
The captain looked at her, and I could just hear what he was thinking. Woman, don’t tell me what to do; I’m the captain here, not you. But before he could say a word, Nigel stood up. “We should all call it a night. We can resume this discussion tomorrow if we know anything more. Thank you for your hospitality, Captain, Sarah.”
“You’re quite welcome,” Sarah said. “Fiona, will you breakfast with me tomorrow? It’s our last chance.”
“I’d be delighted,” Mum said graciously. “But perhaps we should just have one Irish coffee this time.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Sarah said. “I’ve really been quite groggy all day, but the caffeine just wouldn’t let me sleep.”
I knew just how she felt.
Something was niggling at me, something to do with the cooler, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe future discussions would refresh my memory. The problem was that we didn’t have much future left.
“I don’t know about you,” Nigel said when we reached our cabins, “but I’m wide awake, and Grant is right about our running out of time, and there’s a lot we need to discuss, now that we’re not with the captain and Sarah.”
“Okay by me,” I said. “Hal?”
“Sure.”
“Not me,” said my mother with a yawn. “I’m going to turn in. Goodnight, loveys.” She unlocked her cabin door and disappeared. I envied her. Why hadn’t the caffeine affected her like it had Sarah and me? She’d actually been able to nap this afternoon and was still able to sleep now, where the rest of us who hadn’t had naps were still wide awake.
“So do you want to discuss it here or go back down to the Ocean Lounge?” Hal asked.
“Let’s go down,” I said. “If I stay up here, I need to be sitting down or I’ll get seasick.”
The Body on the Lido Deck Page 22