by Tim Heald
She turned mildly pink.
‘It’s one way to get the little man to spill beans,’ she said. ‘Anyway who said Prince Abdullah was a sheikh?’
‘You know what I mean,’ said Tudor. ‘Personally I have a feeling he’s a phoney so it doesn’t much matter whether he’s a fake-sheikh or a fake-prince. It’s the fakery that’s significant, not the title to which he’s pretending.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I don’t know about Middle-Eastern titles but I think the money’s real. He’s loaded. So is Herr Doktor Umlaut.’
‘OK,’ said Tudor, ‘they’re both rich as Croesus and Umlaut’s ancestor made a fortune out of oral contraceptives. What else did he tell you?’
‘Guess,’ she said.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. I’m not in the mood. He’s challenging Prince Abdullah to a duel. Pistols at dawn.’
‘Many a true word,’ she said. ‘It’s not a duel in that sense but it is a kind of mano-a-mano deal. Kids in the playground stuff. Umlaut wants to buy the ship.’
‘And so does the Prince.’
‘Right on,’ she said. ‘They both want it and the board is split. There’s an Umlaut faction and a Prince Abdullah faction. What’s more, the split extends beyond the boardroom. Sam Hardy is the on-board rep of one of the factions and Angus Donaldson of the other. Umlaut is a Donaldson man; the Prince is a Sam supporter. Neither of them will stop at anything.’
‘So.’ Tudor looked at his watch and wondered if they should venture back into what for the moment passed as the outside world and prepare themselves for the next round of gourmandizing. ‘Both these shady plutocrats want to buy the ship. Whichever one succeeds will effectively bar the vanquished one from ever setting foot on board again.’
‘Jawohl as Vultur would say.’
‘And are you telling me that your little Basel billionaire might have bumped off Captain Sam?’
She looked thoughtful. ‘I’m not saying he did,’ she said eventually, ‘and I’m not saying he didn’t. But he had at least half a motive and he’s more than unscrupulous enough. It’s a chance.’
‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘It hadn’t occurred to me that the rivalry was quite so intense.’
‘No,’ she agreed, ‘me neither. Whose side are you on?’
‘We don’t take sides,’ he said. ‘You know that.’
Chapter Nineteen
The bar outside the entrance to the Chatsworth restaurant was called the Mitford, a little act of homage to one of the best known Devonshire Duchesses – Debo, youngest of the famous Mitford sisters. A portrait of her hung in a prominent position alongside photographs of herself and her sisters, including Nancy, the novelist, Diana, the wife of Sir Oswald Moseley, Unity, the friend of the Führer who shot herself in a park in Munich, and the radical Jessica who settled in the United States and wrote a bestseller about American funeral customs.
Riviera Shipping’s design department had done a sparky job on the bar which exuded exactly the sort of brittle period charm Tudor associated with the Mitford girls. It was almost decadent but in a chintzy chocolate box way that saved it from being dangerous. Just right for a cruise liner. No threat.
All tables were taken so Tudor and Elizabeth sat on bar stools and picked abstractedly at olives, Twiglets and tiny cheese biscuits presented in small silvery bowls of the sort you might expect a Mitford girl to encounter in a Grand Hotel. Sitting on bar stools made one susceptible to interruption and so it proved. The interloper, in a white tuxedo of the sort one would expect to see at a sub-standard award ceremony involving C-list celebrities, was Ambrose Perry, gentleman host. He was, briefly, unattached.
‘Formidable tango,’ he said, easing himself on to the stool next to Elizabeth, ‘Where did you learn?’
‘Tasmania,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I did a dance minor at uni. We had an exiled Chilean poet who’d been a senior diplomat under Allende. Should have seen his fandango. Cool.’
‘I thought you were remarkable. I myself have earned a modest crust from ballroom exertions of one sort or another and I know enough to recognize quality. Accept, please, my felicitations.’
‘Will you have a drink?’ asked Tudor, who had already ordered a couple of Harvey Wallbangers in acknowledgement of their earlier conversation. Perry said he wouldn’t mind if he did and his was a white wine spritzer.
‘Enjoying your cruise?’ he asked conversationally and, apparently, innocently.
‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth. ‘She’s a great ship. Food and drink’s excellent. Company ditto. What more could a girl want?’
‘You should have seen the France,’ said Ambrose. ‘She was the ultimate. The acme. Never been a ship like her.’
Elizabeth nibbled a pretzel.
‘She must have been amazing,’ she said. ‘But I like the Duchess. She’s cute.’
‘The France was never cute,’ said Perry. He had a face like a lizard. All wrinkle. The eyes were slits and you half-expected a forked tongue to flick out from behind the pursed lips and spear an olive from the silver bowl. Or maybe an errant insect if one should fly within range. He could be any age but even if he wasn’t he seemed ancient. ‘I’m not sure the Duchess is cute either, but the France had a touch of class. More than a touch. She was class through and through.’
He sipped at his spritzer and patted his mouth with a linen napkin immediately afterwards, removing the salty aftermath of a peanut. He was fastidious – fussily so.
‘I’m glad you’re enjoying the trip,’ said Elizabeth, unconvincingly.
‘I didn’t say I was enjoying it,’ said the host. His fastidiousness clearly extended to speech and judgement as well as dress and manners. ‘Gentlemanly hosting is a job. Enjoyment would be an inappropriate response. Satisfaction maybe, but enjoyment, no. It would be like having fun. My job is to enable others to have fun not for me to have fun myself.’
‘Oh,’ said Elizabeth feeling, rightly, that she had been put in her place.
‘And are your old ladies enjoying themselves?’ asked Tudor, sensing that this was the question Ambrose Perry was waiting for.
‘I believe so,’ he said, appearing to think quite hard about what was the correct answer, ‘The ship-board activities are exemplary as they always are. The little girls from Latvia play prettily and, as you know, with brio when it is appropriate. The bingo is well called. The bridge is popular and the pairs well-matched. Few play chess but boards and pieces are there as always and one or two of us if not in quite the Grandmaster class are always ready to oblige. The jigsaws are stimulating. The library well stocked. Fruit machines are not to my taste nor to that of the majority of my ladies. The food and drink throughout are delicious. With all this I find no fault.’
Both Tudor and Elizabeth could sense a big ‘but’ looming.
Elizabeth anticipated it.
‘But,’ she said helpfully.
Ambrose did not look like a man who wanted help. Particularly from a woman. At least not from a young woman. It occurred to both Elizabeth and Tudor that when it came to women Ambrose was like a conservative oenophile. He liked only old vintages. Anything spritzig made him nervous. Beaujolais Nouveau upset him. Younger elements would say that he only liked women when they were past their sell-by date. It was not that he didn’t like women. He would not have been doing the job that he did if he didn’t. But he only really liked old ducks. He was a sexually-inverted snob – unimpressed by nubility.
‘But nothing,’ he said, sipping another sip of spritzer and nibbling a nut. ‘However, there is, how shall I put this? There is a mood.’ He pronounced the word as if it were the noise a cow might make, giving it an extra syllable or two, as if building an extra section into its middle.
‘A mood,’ repeated Tudor. ‘How do you mean, ‘mood’? Bad mood, good mood, foul mood, moody mood.’ Drink and fatigue were making him facetious. Elizabeth dug a pointy toe into his shin.
‘I’m not entirely sure I’d qualify the mood one way or another,’ said Ambrose, ‘but I defini
tely detect one. You could call it an atmosphere if you preferred. It might perhaps be one of anticipation. Or merely heightened awareness. It may, of course, pass. But’ – and he speared an olive and regarded it thoughtfully before popping it between his overly regular dentures – ‘there again, it may not.’
Tudor and Elizabeth were not entirely sure what he was talking about but judged it better not to admit it. Better to say nothing. Thus encouraged he might expand and become more intelligible. They both therefore had another sip and another olive.
Presently, Perry said, ‘Mrs Potts, for example. Olive. With whom I was sharing the floor earlier. She senses a mood too.’
‘Can you be more specific?’ asked Tudor, not sure whether Olive Potts’ analysis of mood or atmosphere was worth knowing. Or that of Ambrose Perry come to that. Still, it was better, surely, to know what people were talking about than to be left stumbling through a fog of ambiguity.
‘This morning’s business,’ said Perry, ‘is a case in point. One minute, confusion, strange voices on the public address system, clear indications of something amiss. Then suddenly and for no apparent reason, all is suddenly well again. The ship continues on its way as if nothing has happened. In Olive Potts’ eyes that creates uncertainty. An unsettled atmosphere. A bad mood.’
‘I thought,’ said Tudor, deliberately disingenuously, ‘that this morning’s stuff was some sort of anti-terrorist exercise. I’m afraid I didn’t take it terribly seriously. I assumed it was a sort of Bush-Blair inspired equivalent of lifeboat drill. If it isn’t Health and Safety Regulations it’s the War on Terror. Even on board ship.’
‘That’s what you were lecturing on, surely,’ said Perry. ‘Captain Bligh and the Bounty was the eighteenth-century equivalent of what we’re experiencing today. Fletcher Christian was the contemporary equivalent of a suicide bomber. Captain Bligh was in charge of Neighbourhood Watch.’
‘I didn’t see you at the talk,’ said Tudor supiciously.
‘No,’ said Perry, ‘I watched you on TV when I was preparing for dinner. Very good if I may say so, but not necessarily conducive to improving the mood. A little like showing the film Titanic as a matinee on board.’
‘Well,’ said Tudor, ‘I wouldn’t go as far as that. You wouldn’t get the Mutiny on the Bounty happening in this day and age. We’ve become far too sophisticated.’
Ambrose Perry rolled a nut round his mouth and seemed on the verge of spitting it out but evidently thought better of it and chewed and swallowed instead.
‘I’m delighted to hear you say so,’ he said. ‘But I have to say that the Master’s laryngitis is disturbing some of my elderly friends. Mrs Dolly Mather-Jenkins from New Jersey for instance. She is of a naturally nervous disposition, but she is concerned at the Master’s silence. Even if he can’t speak one might hope that he would come among us if only to be hail fellow and well met in silence.’
‘I understand he’s not at all well,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Doctor says he must get some rest.’
Tudor glanced at her and wondered if he should kick her shins too. Why were they both telling porkies?
‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ said Ambrose. ‘I’ve always had a softish spot for Master Sam whereas there is something not entirely to my taste when it comes to the Scottish Staff Captain. My ladies, I have to report, are of a similar mind.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ said Tudor. ‘But I hope you’ll allay their fears. I’m sure you will. I can’t think of more capable hands for them to be in.’
He drained his glass and smiled at Elizabeth.
‘I think it’s time we went in, don’t you?’
‘I’m really not terribly hungry,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll just stick to a couple of ounces of Beluga and a lightly seared filet. Or maybe a tuna steak.’
Tudor got off his stool and stood aside.
‘À bientôt,’ he said pleasantly to the gentleman host who smiled not altogether agreeably and raised his glass at their retreating forms.
‘Rum cove,’ said Tudor, as they paused to wash their hands in the new regulation sani-fluid at the door of the Chatsworth restaurant.
‘Rum’s the word,’ said Elizabeth, raising her eyebrows.
It was too. There was rum everywhere. Or a mixture of rum and brandy and Grand Marnier depending on whether one was having babas or crêpes Suzettes or steak Dianes or dinde Duchesse or choufleur Chatsworth or moules Mitfords. Rum or not, strong spirits were everywhere leaping towards the low ceiling as men in striped trousers and jet black jackets set fire to food of every description after smothering it in alcohol. The room was like a veritable Hell’s Kitchen – Hieronymus Bosch meets the Sunday Times Colour Supplement: Delia with Danger.
The two of them threaded their way gingerly past the various table-side conflagrations nodding in a correctly friendly way to the Umlauts, Prince Abdullah and wives, the Grims, the Goronwy Watkyns and various other old or new acquaintances.
Their stewardess, Helga, brought iced water and menus to their now familiar table.
‘Neither of us is terribly hungry, I’m afraid,’ said Tudor. They both smiled ingratiatingly.
‘How about a little Beluga, followed by a rare steak with spinach?’ asked Helga in flawless English. She had been here before. ‘And shall I send Igor?’
Igor was the sommelier with a superior jacket and a tastevin suspended from his neck. He’d know that because Tudor was paying for the wine he would have a cheap bottle. That meant he would not rate special glasses, or indeed, much in the way of special attention either.
Tudor gazed around the Chatsworth and smiled.
‘You wouldn’t get away with this on dry land,’ he said. ‘In fact I’m quite surprised they get away with it in mid-Atlantic. There must be international safety regulations which tell you how high flames are allowed to go in the dining-room. I’m surprised they’re allowed flames at all. Read, mark etcetera etcetera for you will not see the like again. At least not anywhere with an ounce of political correctness.’
The two of them gazed around this anachronistic temple of 1950s cooking at the table.
‘Restaurants were like this once,’ said Tudor, ‘before you were born. In the days when Sir Bernard and Lady Docker were the stuff of the William Hickey column in the Daily Express and all was right with the world. That was before huge salaries for footballers and commodity brokers, when the workers wore clogs and the Trades Unions –’
He didn’t finish the sentence for a few tables away there was an uncontrolled explosion, a whoosh of flame greater even than that which was usual for the Chatsworth room and a plume of smoke which suggested that one of the penguin-outfitted maitre d’s had made a dreadful mistake.
‘Bomb,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Bombe Surprise!’
Chapter Twenty
She was right. It was a big bang.
Tudor swore.
‘That wasn’t a gastro-explosion,’ he said, ‘that was the real thing. An Ambrose Perry. His old ladies are going to be in a serious mood now.’
The way in which the Chatsworth staff transformed themselves from food and drink flunkeys to para-medics was impressive. Tudor was reminded of military bandsmen who, in time of war, doubled up as stretcher-bearers.
In fact stretchers were called to the table in a far corner of the room though from what Tudor and Elizabeth could see there was no great need for them. The people who were being stretchered off were walking wounded. They must have been shocked and they would surely have suffered a degree of burning, but they were not dead and they did not appear to have been seriously injured. It looked from a distance as if there were two guests on the casualty list and perhaps a couple of members of staff. The silence which had descended upon the room lifted as abruptly as it had fallen. It was replaced by a buzz of conversation several decibels higher than the muted level of what had gone before.
Suddenly waiters emerged through the swing doors to the galley carrying trays on which there were enough filled brandy balloons to provide e
ach diner with a glass. Classic treatment for shock. Nothing was said. It was all done crisply, efficiently and with a uniformly stiff upper lip.
‘Well,’ said Elizabeth, accepting the proffered medicine, ‘quite a day. And I thought cruising was an escape and a relaxation. Silly me!’
‘Oh, I think appearances are deceptive,’ said Tudor. ‘It’s like effortless superiority. The more effortless it appears the more effort has actually gone into it. Same on board ship. The smoother and more relaxed everything seems to be the more blood, sweat and tears it has actually cost.’
‘You reckon?’
‘I reckon,’ he said. ‘I also have a sense that whatever it was may have been aimed at your new friends Herr Doctor and Frau Umlaut. Weren’t they sitting over there?’
They both peered in the direction of the pall of smoke which hung blue and acrid over what little remained of the dining table in the far corner. Someone had moved swiftly with a fire extinguisher so there was a lot of foam about. Also charred table and cloth. Essentially, however, it seemed that damage was minimal. The shock was considerable; the explosion spectacular; the consequences depressing but the short-term effects nothing much.
And so to caviar and steak and a Chilean Merlot. The sang-froid was so thick you could have cut it with a standard-issue butter knife let alone one of the sabre-toothed specialist jobs which came with the filet. But this was a British ship and although her Britishness had been diluted her esprit was undimmed. Rule Britannia and all that. Britons never ever would be slaves. And all that as well.
‘A murder attempt that failed?’ asked Tudor, ‘Or a signally successful warning? It’s one or the other.’