by Tim Heald
Which brought him back to his sleep-disturbing unease. Was he a genuine professional? Of course he was. He ran a fine department in an adequate university. It was, in fact, a flag-ship outfit – an alpha institution in an otherwise beta organization. He personally enjoyed international respect among his peers. He had a job and he was good at it. His alumni prospered. Likewise his papers and pamphlets. He teetered on the brink of celebrity, was already world-famous in Wessex. And yet, deep down in his heart of hearts, he feared that men like Trythall and Donaldson were right. He was an amateur and they were professionals; he was a Gentleman and they were Players.
He got up again and went to the porthole. Away in the distance he could make out a huge container ship buffeting through the waves. He was reminded of John Masefield’s catchy little poem ‘Cargoes’ which he had learned by heart as a child. They hadn’t had container ships in Masefield’s day, just chunky little tramp steamers with cargoes of pig-iron. That wasn’t quite right. Pig-lead. He closed his eyes.
Funny, he could have sworn it was ‘pig-iron’ not ‘pig-lead’ and a ‘Tramp steamer’ not a ‘coaster.’ Just showed how fallible memory was and yet memory was a cornerstone of conventional British justice. Evidence in court was memory-based, almost by definition. Yet memory was almost always flawed. Tramp steamers, he thought, squinting at the ugly container vessel on the horizon, had been consigned to history along with bobbies on bicycles. Somehow everything seemed to bring him back to police procedure. He supposed he must have learned the Masefield at about the time that he was first getting to know Sherlock Holmes and Lord Peter Wimsey. Privately he still stuck to the belief that these two were the best detectives ever with Holmes right out in front of Wimsey, and the rest limping along in their wake. As for real-life detectives they were nothing compared to the giants of fiction. Whisper it not to the likes of Donaldson and Trythall but they were mere pygmies in the police pantheon.
Day really was beginning to dawn now. He realized as he watched fingers of pink illuminating the ocean that it had been a while since they had seen the sun or even a hint of blue sky. They had been sailing under and over steel grey. A metaphor for life, he thought gloomily. His existence was seldom punctuated even by shafts of crepuscular pink but was almost uniformly monotone. No, that was an exaggeration. There were a number of highs in his life of lows but in the still small hours it never seemed like that, particularly after a dressing down from a man such as Angus Donaldson. He knew he should rise above such sermons but he was absurdly thin-skinned besides which there was more than a shadow of doubt about the worth of what he was doing. In his heart of hearts he doubted even whether Wessex should have a university of its own and whether, anyway, the University of Wessex was worthy of the name. His department was degree-giving. You could graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Studies or even, God help him, a Ph.D. in Criminal Studies complete with tasselled mortar board and a banana and orange hood to your rook-like black gown. Was it all a farce? The Vice-Chancellor had even tried to foist Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare on him as one of a batch of celebrity honorary ordinands but at least Tudor had been able to resist that one. No honorary degree from Wessex for Jeffrey. Not even over his dead body.
He sat down heavily on the bed. Now there was a success. Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare. He was a real pro. But here Tudor really did tell himself to take a grip. There were crimes to consider, disappearances to be explained and he really could not afford the luxury of contemplating Jeffrey Archer.
He supposed he should do as he was commanded by Donaldson. After all the man was in charge of the ship and had a right to be obeyed without question. That was the way they did things in the Merchant Marine. You did as you were told without demur. If there was to be a debate you had to wait until after the event. Quite unlike civvy street and in particular to a man such as Tudor Cornwall whose natural instinct honed by years of practice was to subject everything to relentless, forensic examination.
Someone knocked on the door and he glanced at his watch. 6.30. Far too early for room service even if he had ordered such a thing. He presumed it was a human knock and not a ship’s rodent scratching. If it were human it could be an enemy, dangerous. Tipperary Tatler perhaps still dangerously at large. Or someone suspicious like Freddie Grim or Prince Abdullah or... well, as he had observed on the dance floor of the Great Hall the previous night, almost everyone was more or less suspicious. He simply couldn’t afford to be paranoid and terrified of every early morning knock on the door. Nevertheless caution was advisable.
‘Who is it?’ he asked in a stage whisper.
‘It’s me,’ said a strong, female Antipodean voice, ‘Elizabeth.’
‘Oh,’ he replied, apprehensive though not for quite the same fearful reasons as a few seconds earlier. ‘What is it?’
‘I wanted to see you. Let me in. The door’s locked.’
He put on a Duchess towelling bath robe with the ship’s logo of anchor and tiara over the breast pocket, unlocked the door and admitted a windblown waif in tight jeans and a turquoise tank top. She was blue lips, tousled hair and damp, salty spray.
‘Brill sunrise,’ she said. ‘I’ve been up on the foredeck or whatever you call it. You know, just under the bridge. I was the only person there. It was just miraculous. One minute it’s so dark you can still see the stars and that container ship away on the left was still lit up –’
‘Port,’ said Tudor pedantically.
‘You what?’
‘Port,’ he said. ‘On board ship left is port and right is starboard.’
‘That’s just affectation,’ she said. ‘Any case you no more know your port from your starboard than your arse from your elbow. You’re even more of a landlubber than I am.’
‘It’s not an affectation actually,’ said Tudor, uncomfortably aware that he was sounding even more pompous. ‘If you say “right” or “left” there’s room for ambiguity. If you’re facing the stern it could be your left or the ship’s left. If it’s port or starboard it’s always the same. See what I mean? Did you say you were watching the sunrise over the bows. You sure you don’t mean the stern?’
‘Unlike you,’ she said, ‘I do know my arse from my elbow, my port from my starboard and, above all and most certainly, my bows from my stern and my front from your back.’
‘And you saw the sun come up while you were standing forrard.’
‘Amazing. First of all you just have a sort of general pink haze and then this amazing sort of red cricket ball emerges and pops up. It’s like a beachball being squeezed out of a swimming pool. You know? Now you see it, now you don’t. Or rather, the other way around. Now you don’t see it, then you do. Exciting. It almost fizzed. First real sun I’ve seen all trip.’
‘You sure you were in the bows?’
‘Don’t be silly. Look on the TV.’
The TV set had no fewer than eighteen channels. Half a dozen were dedicated to movies; three to a loop of in-house lecturing, including Tudor himself – to his chagrin; others were devoted to sales of various Duchess-related products including shore excursions where appropriate. Channel Three was ‘The View from the Bridge’ with classical music. Tudor turned it on and was rewarded by Handel and a magnificent view of the sharp end of the Duchess ploughing towards a gloriously rising sun. ‘Thine be the Glory’. Judas Maccabeus. Epic stuff.
‘See,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Stern indeed. Did we have a bet on it?’
‘Not that I can remember. You can have a second boiled egg for breakfast.’
‘Big bloody deal,’ she grinned. ‘I slept like a log till six. How about you?’
‘’Fraid not,’ he said. ‘Donaldson’s slightly got to me. I have a feeling we should pull back; leave things to sort themselves out; let Donaldson and his security team take care of it all.’
‘Security team!?’ Elizabeth looked sexily angry. ‘Those goons! You must be joking.’
‘To be honest I hadn’t given them much thought. But my strong impression is th
at Donaldson is concerned to try to keep a lid on the situation; prevent things getting out of hand; hand it over to competent authorities as soon as possible.’
‘And you feel like letting him?’
Tudor shrugged. ‘If I’m asked to help – as I was by Mandy Goldslinger – then I’ll do what I can. But if I’m expressly told not to interfere I don’t feel I have much alternative.’
‘That’s a bit weedy.’
‘It’s life,’ he said. ‘When the chips are down I have to admit that I have no authority. Also my skills are essentially theoretical. You could be the regius professor of law at Oxford or whatever but that doesn’t mean that you’d be competent to lead for the prosecution or defence at a big case at the Old Bailey.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Elizabeth, ‘you’d be a damned sight better than most barristers. You always say so and I believe you. I think you’re right. I also think you’d make a better first of conducting a criminal investigation. Probably better than the average senior cop back in the UK and most certainly than some jumped up security guard on board ship.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘we’re all prone to self-doubt. I’m all very well on paper, lecturing, sitting in my ivory tower. But sometimes I feel I should stay there and leave real life to the people who deal with real life. I just do theory and I should stick to it.’
‘Well, maybe,’ she said, ‘but I think you have a duty to be involved. ‘We have every reason to believe that Sam Hardy, the legitimately appointed Master of the Duchess has been removed from his position against his will and possibly even murdered. I think you have a perfect right – duty even – to insist on his being released or produced. And until and unless that’s done you should investigate like fury.’
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘They’ll be serving breakfast in a moment and I’m feeling peckish. I’m going to have a shave and a shower then I’ll see you up there. If you’re there ahead of me I’ll have porridge and a couple of boiled eggs with brown toast and black coffee.’
‘And mine’s mixed berries, low fat yoghurt and camomile tea,’ she said, letting herself out. ‘I guess you could poison us with any of that, though my money’s on the dispenser which “sanitizes” your hands. That’s a murder weapon if ever I saw one. Sir Goronwy Watkyn in the Chatsworth with the hand-sanitizer. Beats Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with the lead piping any day.’ And she laughed.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Breakfast aboard the Duchess was always a muted, even subdued, affair. The morning after the masked ball it was, inevitably, even quieter and more sparsely populated than usual.
The meal was served between 7 and 9.30 but that was ship’s time which by now was in a little warp all of its own. In the middle – or thereabouts – of its voyage to the United States, the Duchess was chronologically behind home but ahead of her destination. She lost an hour a day throughout the voyage, so that by the time she arrived in New York, she was five miles behind her base in the United Kingdom and existing at the same time as the millions of Americans living along the Eastern Seaboard. In mid-Atlantic she was as isolated in time terms as she was geographically. This compounded her sense of loneliness, isolation and vulnerability. In terms of the ideal setting for a closed-room classic Agatha Christie murder she knocked a snow-bound country house into any number of cocked hats.
In a real terrestrial stately home, of course, there would have been a hotplate on a sideboard with silver topped dishes of kidneys and kedgeree from which silent guests would have helped themselves. The Duchess was more grand hotel than grande dame with what the trade called ‘silver service’ from waiters and waitresses with names such as Waclav and Natalia, all immaculate in starched jackets and with manners and skills that their United Kingdom counterparts simply couldn’t have deployed. Tudor found this mildly depressing though not sufficiently to put him off his boiled eggs which came just as he preferred with firm whites, gungy yolks and crisp brown soldiers. Elizabeth dabbed at a light moustache of low-fat yoghurt and eyed him disapprovingly.
The crew to passenger ratio on board the ship was amazingly high. There were almost as many people driving the ship and attending to the clients’ needs as there were paying punters. Given that the passengers were for the most part elderly and infirm and the crew fit and youthful it would have been a doddle for a mutiny to have succeeded. Overpowering resistance, should the masses behind the green baize door have risen up in rebellion, would have been ridiculously easy. Over the years Tudor had witnessed some ugly moments when passengers took against crew or, less obviously, vice versa. But none had ended in tears.
‘That’s a heart attack on a plate,’ said Elizabeth virtuously.
‘Nonsense,’ said Tudor. ‘Two not hard boiled eggs represent a mild palpitation at worst. Fay Weldon as much as said so. “Go to work on an egg”.’
‘That was an advertising campaign on behalf of the Egg Marketing Board if I’m correctly informed,’ she said. ‘But for a man of your age and in your condition they’re a bad idea in anything other than moderation.’
‘I can’t help my age,’ said Tudor, ‘but there is nothing at all wrong with my condition. I’m in perfectly good nick. And certainly in good enough nick not to be damaged by a couple of boiled eggs for breakfast.’
She seemed unimpressed.
‘Boiled eggs are bad for you,’ she said. ‘End of story. But more to the point, “Are you a detective or not?” People like Trythall and Donaldson are right in a way. You’re all fur coat and no knickers. Most of the time, operating in the UK the way you do you’re in the same position as a critic to an author or a concert. Power possibly, but no responsibility. Now here, for once, you’re outside police jurisdiction, away from the rule of law, you have a serious possibility of showing the world that you’re not just a load of hot air but a real power to be reckoned with. This is a serious chance to prove yourself. Take it, run with it, come first past the post and you’re made for life – fail and everyone’s criticism is justified.’
‘That’s pretty harsh.’
‘It’s life,’ she said, smiling.
‘A defining moment?’
‘You could say that.’
‘If I cop out I remain a peripheral figure, properly despised by those at the sharp end like Detective Chief Superintendent Trythall and Captain Donaldson.’
‘You said it.’ She spooned low-fat yoghurt on to her berries, blue, black, straw, rasp. Waclav poured her more camomile tea. Natalia poured him more black coffee.
Away in the distance the Umlauts, still charred, were breakfasting off cured herring, pumpernickel and Darjeeling tea with lemon. They seemed agitated and presently Walter placed his napkin carefully to the left of his place, pushed back his chair and walked slowly to Tudor and Elizabeth’s table where he asked if he might sit. They naturally acquiesced.
‘You understand, naturally,’ he began, ‘that the man Abdullah and I are not the best of friends.’
No one said anything.
‘Enemies, in fact.’
Tudor and Elizabeth both nodded.
‘He is not, of course, a prince.’
There seemed nothing they could say and they didn’t, though Elizabeth smiled encouragingly.
‘And his wives are not wives.’
‘Really!’ said Tudor. ‘I’ve had my suspicions about the so-called wives ever since we set sail.’
Elizabeth shot him a glance which was half amused, half exasperated. It seemed to say ‘Men!’
‘And they have been multiplying,’ said Dr Umlaut. Waclav asked if he’d like something to drink and he said he’d like to continue with Darjeeling and a slice of lemon.
‘Multiplying?’ asked Tudor.
‘There are now more than there were when we embarked,’ he said. ‘I can’t say for certain how many more but there has been a definite increase. You know that Abdullah is attempting to acquire the ship and make it his own. With compulsory smoking everywhere.’
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‘I understood as much,’ said Tudor, ‘but I understand that you too aspire to taking over the ship.’
‘Only in order to prevent this horrible person,’ said the Doctor. ‘My position is entirely, as you would have it, reactive. If this so-called “Prince” were not in the frame I would be more than content to let the status quo maintain itself.’
‘Well that’s by the by,’ said Tudor. ‘The fact is that you and Prince Abdullah, Prince or not, are in the middle of what is, in effect a boardroom war. From a seat in the grandstand it’s quite difficult to call the shots. As an impartial observer I... well let’s just say I find it very difficult to become partial. I’m not sure I should take sides.’
‘But there is good,’ said Umlaut, ‘which is me. And there is bad, which is that man.’
‘With respect,’ said Tudor, meaning as always when those words are uttered, nothing of the sort, ‘we only have your word for that.’
‘My word is my bond,’ said the little man, bristling in a burnt-out way.
‘That too. This wouldn’t stand up in court. You need proof, corroborative evidence.’
‘That’s what we look to you for. You are our resident expert. You run a department of criminal affairs at a university. You are the expert. Much better than police. They have no brain.’
‘It’s very kind of you to say so,’ said Tudor, ‘but I’m afraid I’m off the case. The captain has ordered me to back off.’
‘But we have no captain. The captain is missing. This is the heart of the mystery. This is why you are essential. It is you who must discover the body. Or the living person. We rely on you. The whole ship relies on you.’ He sounded quite distraught.
‘The drill is that the senior officer aboard is the man in charge. The official line is that the Master himself is indisposed due to laryngitis. Because he can’t speak the captaincy automatically devolves on to his number two, Angus Donaldson. That means that Donaldson is in charge. And Donaldson has ordered me off the case. Whatever you or I think about that it really leaves me with no options. Sorry.’