A Death on the Ocean Wave

by Tim Heald

  ‘You remember Muriel,’ said Grim, indicating a small, mousy woman at his side, who smiled and seemed embarrassed.

  ‘Of course,’ lied Tudor. Muriel was infinitely forgettable and looked as if she knew it. Her husband did not exactly cast a long shadow but it was long enough to render Muriel effectively invisible.

  ‘Hope we don’t have a rough crossing,’ said Muriel’s husband. ‘Muriel’s not the world’s greatest sailor, are you, pet?’

  ‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘I’d rather be at home with the cats. But Freddie says you’re only young once and travel broadens the mind.’

  Grim seemed pleased to be credited with such an original thought.

  ‘What do they know of England, I always say,’ he said, unexpectedly, ‘who only England know?’

  Tudor nodded sagely and was rescued by the arrival of Elizabeth Burney who had not changed for dinner and was still showing no sign of feeling the cold. Not even a goose bump.

  ‘Elizabeth is my research assistant,’ he said. ‘She’s doing a criminal studies Ph.D.’

  It was disconcerting to see that the Grims didn’t believe him. Their hand-shaking and smiling were polite but incredulous. Almost immediately Freddie and Muriel moved away on the pretext of more food and drink. Cruising, even aboard as serious a ship as the Duchess, was unhealthily often about more food and drink.

  ‘You want to know who’s top of the bill speakerwise?’ asked Elizabeth, sipping her wine and gazing appreciatively at the rippling, tattooed muscles of burly stevedores doing serious stuff with crates and ropes.

  ‘I thought I was top of the bill speakerwise, as you so charmingly put it,’ said Tudor, smiling at her in protective mode.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid Sir Goronwy Watkyn’s on board.’

  Tudor almost choked on his Cava.

  ‘You’re joking,’ he said, when he’d done some dramatic coughing and throat clearing, ‘Not that fraudulent Welsh goat? And I suppose that means the ghastly Myfanwy’s on board, no doubt with her bloody harp.’

  Actually the ghastly Myfanwy never brought her own harp but commandeered the instrument belonging to the ship’s harpist. This inevitably caused grief and allegations of broken strings. She was a rotten harpist but fancied herself on account, of course, of being Welsh. As for her husband, Tudor loathed him with a passion. He was famous for a series of fantasy-style detective stories set in some Tolkien-like Middle Kingdom full of monsters and wizards and featuring a Grand Bard of the Gorsedd who was the first of the great detectives. In Tudor’s estimation they were utter tosh but they had made Goronwy Watkyn millions of pounds and earned him a knighthood for ‘Services to Literature.’ When he was not writing about his ridiculous bard he wrote a series of gritty contemporary police procedurals set, Tudor thought, in Aberystwyth, or it might have been Bangor. These featured a detective called Dai Jones and were written under the pseudonym J.P.R. Morgan. It was all complete rubbish. Watkyn liked to use his title, habitually wore canary-yellow ankle socks and an overly neat goatee which waggled ridiculously when he talked – which was incessantly.

  ‘You’ve just ruined my trip,’ said Tudor almost meaning it, ‘And who in heaven’s name do you imagine the bloke in the white robe is? The one with the harem in attendance. Surely he shouldn’t be drinking alcohol? Not in that outfit!’

  ‘He’s called Prince Abdullah and beyond that we know practically nothing whatever except that he’s paid in full and the money’s good.’ The speaker was a blue-ish blonde with vivid make-up in a silk kaftan slit oriental style virtually up to the waist. The heels of her shoes were ridiculously high, especially for being on a ship, and she jangled with bangles. Tudor suspected, but didn’t know for sure, that the rocks on her rings were real.

  ‘Mandy!’ he exclaimed, kissing her on both cheeks. ‘Mandy, this is Elizabeth Burney, my star post-graduate pupil at the University of Wessex, who’s come along to help out. Elizabeth this is Mandy Goldslinger, the fabulous Cruise Director of the good ship Duchess.’

  ‘Enchanté,’ said Ms Goldslinger extending a hand with astonishingly long almost witch-like fingernails painted in gilt-flecked purple.

  ‘Hi,’ said Elizabeth.

  Tudor could have been mistaken but the encounter did not somehow suggest love-at-first-sight. Inside his head he heard the all-too-familiar clinking of ice cubes.

  ‘I hope you’ve run the appropriate security checks,’ said Tudor, not joking.

  ‘Oh you crime people!’ said Ms Goldslinger, loudly enough to make some adjoining passengers turn round curiously. ‘That’s exactly what that cutie Goronwy Watkyn said. You’re all the same. Too too paranoid.’

  ‘You can’t be too careful,’ said Tudor. ‘You know how vulnerable cruise ships are to international terrorism. They could be kamikaze- wives. Has anybody looked under their jellabas?’

  ‘Tudor darling,’ said the cruise director, ‘Prince Abdullah is a hundred per cent kosher. I personally have checked with my dear friend Eddie Mortimer who does communications for Kofi Annan at the United Nations and he tells me that the Prince has a great humanitarian record and is a prominent member of the Yemeni royal family.’

  ‘The Yemenis don’t have a royal family,’ said Elizabeth, ‘it’s a Marxist republic.’

  ‘Oh Yemeni shemeni,’ said Mandy. ‘The Prince wouldn’t hurt a fly. Matter of fact hurting even flies is against his religion. He’s a sweetie.’

  ‘You’ll be sorry if they’ve all got bombs in their shoes,’ said Tudor. The ship’s orchestra had not moved on to ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ but were playing ‘Hearts of Oak’. Tudor reckoned they were in for a good half-hour of songs nautical and marine.

  ‘Who are those two sitting on thrones?’ he asked, noticing a man in a safari suit with a much younger blonde wife. They were both smoking and sitting in upholstered chairs. Although not actually behind rope or barbed wire they looked as if they had been cordoned off from the vulgar herd. They had their own table with their own cloth, their own canapes, their own bottle in their own ice bucket. Mandy frowned.

  ‘Those are the Umlauts,’ she said. ‘They think they own the ship. Trouble is they more or less do.’

  ‘Expand,’ said Tudor. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Oh shucks,’ said Mandy unexpectedly. She took a long swig from her glass and wiped her brow. On the shore and the lower decks, dockers and seamen were doing really serious things with ropes, chains and hawsers. They were cutting the remaining umbilical links between the Duchess and Budmouth. Slowly but unmistakably the ship began to move away from the quayside. Her siren sounded. The band was playing ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave.’ Passengers were leaning over the rails and waving at anyone they could see on shore. Some shorebound onlookers waved back. Others maintained an air of stolid indifference. Tudor felt oddly moved. He was pleased that Elizabeth seemed to share his elation to the extent even of waving at a couple of stout workers on the quayside. They waved back cheerily.

  ‘Umlaut takes the Imperial Suite for at least six months of the year. He treats the ship as his office and home. He makes his own rules. He does deals with Zurich and New York and the City and Tokyo and the Middle East.’

  ‘What sort of deals?’ asked Tudor, only half paying attention.

  ‘Money,’ said Mandy. ‘Money, money, money. Mrs Umlaut, Frau Umlaut, is dripping in diamonds, festooned with fur and treats everyone on board as if they were personal staff. Mr Umlaut, Herr Umlaut, Gottfried to his friends — if he had any — is rude beyond belief, tells the captain what to do, makes the rules as he goes along, believes that money can buy anything and anyone.’

  ‘They don’t sound altogether attractive,’ said Tudor.

  Mandy Goldslinger looked thoughtfully across the broadening band of murky water which now separated the vessel from the United Kingdom.

  ‘I could cheerfully murder the Umlauts,’ she said. ‘I really could.’

  Chapter Three

  Entering the ballroom for the welcome party was like
coming on to the set of a modern-dress version of HMS Pinafore. Tudor half expected the ship’s officers lined up in white and blue with gold braid on their wrists and shoulders to launch into a chorus of ‘He’s hardly ever sick at sea/so give three cheers and one cheer more/for the hardy Captain’ and so on. The stagey impression of faux-seamanship took its cue from the Master himself who was, naturally, first in line. Captain Sam, universally known, for obvious reasons, as ‘Kiss me Hardy’ was straight from Central Casting. The skipper had what the Royal Navy refers to as a ‘full set,’ meaning a moustache and beard. These were white in Santa Claus style. Indeed, if one could imagine Father Christmas in the uniform of a Merchant Navy captain you would have a pretty good idea of what Captain Hardy actually looked like for he was a big, pink-faced fellow who shook like jelly when he laughed which was often. He didn’t actually bellow out ‘Ho, ho, ho!’ or even ‘Yo, ho, ho!’ but you would not have put it past him.

  The Master recognized Tudor and greeted him cordially enough though with less joviality than he managed for complete strangers.

  When Tudor introduced Elizabeth Burney, Hardy called her ‘Little Lady’ which was a big mistake. The Master was excellent with women of advanced years and preferably limited intelligence; the younger and brighter they got the less at ease he seemed. Despite the fact that he exuded a sort of mariner’s braggadocio which suggested — was designed to suggest — extreme virility, Tudor had doubts about his true sexuality. Helped out at tea parties, if you asked Tudor. Not that Tudor had the slightest objection to men who helped out at tea parties. Some of his best friends came into just that category. But he was uneasy with pretence, uncomfortable with deceit. After all it was part of his trade and he, as much as the next man, disliked mixing business with pleasure.

  The canapes and Cava had been moved from the lido deck to the ballroom with the Riviera Line’s customary expedition and lack of fuss. The ship’s orchestra had, however, been replaced by a female duet playing ‘Greensleeves’ on classical guitar and cello.

  They looked Baltic: high cheekbones, possibly deceptive innocence, elegant but cheap strapless dresses, probably fresh out of the conservatoire in Riga, Tallin or Vilnius.

  Tudor and Elizabeth negotiated the line of immaculate, beaming, hand-shaking ship’s officers; avoided having their photograph taken, took a gesture of food and drink and headed for a far-off corner of the room from which better to survey the crew and crowd.

  ‘Is it always like this?’ the girl asked, looking around wide-eyed yet not innocent. They were out in the English Channel now and there was a breeze. Force Three perhaps. The curtains of the ballroom, tasselled purple, swayed gently and so did some of the passengers. It would be rougher before they reached New York. It always was and despite the ship’s sophisticated stabilizers it would keep a lot of paying customers in their cabins. It seemed an expensive way of making yourself sick.

  An elderly man in a white tuxedo, a spangled turquoise cummerbund with matching made-up bow tie, and sleek white hair, shimmered over.

  ‘Doctor Cornwall,’ he said proffering a much-ringed hand, ‘Ambrose Perry.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Tudor, medium-term memory working overtime. ‘Ambrose Perry, the gentleman host.’

  ‘That am I,’ said the over-groomed old gent in a curiously archaic and unconvincing turn of phrase which suited his general demeanour and appearance.

  Tudor remembered that Mr Perry had once owned and run a hairdresser’s salon in Bromley called, he thought Daphne’s. He was a brilliant gentleman host: attentive, unthreatening, with a mean fox-trot and a devilish paso doble. In the afternoons – or après-midis as he described them — he called bingo or played bridge. He also picked up gossip like nobody’s business. Gentlemen hosts aboard the Duchess were privy to more secrets than the barmen.

  ‘Prince Abdullah and the Umlauts,’ said the host, ‘that’s a double whammy we’ve never seen before.’

  ‘Is that a problem?’ asked Tudor, all faux-naif.

  ‘Problem?!’ exclaimed Mr Perry, ‘A “many-pipe problem” as your Sherlock Holmes might have said. Herr Umlaut and the Prince are not exactly bosom companions. And the accommodation question is unanswerable.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Elizabeth. She had no idea what he meant.

  ‘I mean,’ said Ambrose, a tad stuffily, ‘that on most of the Duchess voyages either the Herr Doctor or the Prince travel and that invariably they do so without the other. Never the twain shall meet. However, on this occasion they have been, as it were, double-booked. And alas, there is room, accommodationally speaking for but one top banana on board.’

  He spoke a very strange English. Both Tudor and Elizabeth independently supposed that he must originally have come from somewhere else.

  ‘Surely you can have as many top bananas as you like?’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘There is only one Imperial Suite,’ said Ambrose. ‘On voyages when the Prince is on board without the Umlauts he is always given the Imperial. So he is used to it. It confers status. Unassailable status. On those occasions when the Umlauts are on board without the Prince it is they who are installed in the Imperial. They, too, are used to it and they, too, enjoy the status. The Imperial comes complete with a butler whereas the likes of you and I have to make do with bowls of fruit.’

  Tudor suspected that gentlemen hosts probably had to share cabins with each other. In the complex hierarchy of life aboard the Duchess a guest speaker ranked higher than a gentleman host by several degrees. Guest speakers were among the elite of the non-paying passengers though, Tudor conceded, some guest speakers were more equal than others and he had a horrid feeling that, at least in the eyes of the Master and the shipping line, he was out-ranked by Sir Goronwy Watkyn. He was afraid Watkyn would have the better cabin.

  ‘So you’re saying that whoever gets the Imperial Suite is universally acknowledged to be Top Banana.’ Elizabeth was catching on fast, as usual. ‘And on most voyages there is no contest but that on this occasion someone has to decide who gets it and the verdict went to the Umlauts...’ She paused for thought and then said, ‘Who decides? They presumably don’t just flip a coin?’

  ‘It would be the Master’s judgement that decided,’ said Perry. ‘Everything on board ship is down to the Master. He is indeed master of all he surveys.’

  ‘But surely,’ said Tudor, ‘that sort of thing is decided by the company? And it depends on how much money changes hands?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Perry, ‘maybe not. I think the Captain’s word is final. What’s more I’m fairly certain that’s how the Prince and the Umlauts would see it.’ And he shimmered off in the direction of the dance floor whence duty and some very old women were beckoning him to do something appropriate with the last of the remaining light fantastic.

  ‘What an odd bloke!’ said Elizabeth when he was out of earshot – not far, as he was obviously acoustically threatened despite being hearing-aid-enhanced. Deaf as a post notwithstanding the pink plastic stuffed into his right ear.

  A waiter came past with a tray of drinks and Tudor and Elizabeth both exchanged empty glasses for full.

  ‘You do need to pace yourself on board ship,’ said Tudor, in headmasterly mode. ‘Sometimes you feel there’s nothing to do except eat and drink, especially on transatlantic runs.’

  Swilling and browsing seemed pretty pervasive except for the small knot of old people gliding about the dance floor. Cello and classical guitar made an unlikely dance band but some of those on board had the sort of itchy feet which would have bopped to Beethoven or charlestoned to Chopin. These were serious dancers and although in conventional pedestrial mode many of them would have been stiff to the point of virtual paralysis, they seemed when dancing to glide as if on ice. The pair from the University of Wessex watched with admiration and disbelief.

  ‘Och, Dr Cornwall,’ said a broad Scottish voice which was almost as much of a stereotypical Scottish voice as the Captain’s was a bucolic English one. Actually, thought Tudor, Scots, even
caricature ones like this, never quite said ‘Och’ but it was a reasonable Sassenach rendition of the noise a Scot makes at the beginning of his first paragraph.

  ‘Angus Donaldson,’ said the uniformed figure who boasted a ruddy wind-burned face and a set of whiskers almost as full as the Captain’s. His beard and moustache, however, were as black as the Master’s were silver. He looked about twenty years younger. ‘We sailed on the Baroness a few years back. Sardinia and Sicily as I recall. You mounted a spirited defence of Captain Bligh in your talk on the Bounty.’

  ‘He’ll be doing it again,’ said Elizabeth flirtatiously and Tudor introduced her.

  ‘You were Master of the Baroness,’ said Tudor, tentatively.

  ‘Aye,’ said Donaldson. ‘She was a grand wee vessel. I was very happy with her, but, as they say, you have to move on, draw a line under things, so here I am on the flagship of the fleet.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Tudor, squinting at Donaldson’s gold braid stripes, ‘But what’s your title here?’

  ‘You mean, why am I not captaining the ship?’ He laughed, though not sounding wildly amused. Then he lowered his voice. ‘I’ll let you into a secret,’ he said, ‘when it comes to actually sailing the ship, that’s the responsibility of the Staff Captain and the Staff Captain is yours truly. The Staff Captain is by way of what on dry land would be called the Chief Executive or perhaps the Chief Operating Officer. The Master would be the Chairman or the President. He’s the senior officer but he doesn’t actually do a great deal.’

  Tudor wondered why he was telling him this, perilously close as it was to insubordination. He hardly knew the man.

  Staff Captain Donaldson obviously noticed Tudor’s surprise.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, Doctor,’ he said, ‘Sam Hardy’s a fine man and a grand sailor in his day and in his way. I’m not saying his position is purely cosmetic but, well you know how it is. Being the life and soul of the party and a convincing figurehead is a full-time job of its own. It would be asking too much to expect him to steer and navigate as well.’