by P. C. James
“I’m sure the child knew the risks and the consequences of stealing,” Pauline said. Outside, she saw the man had let go of the child and she was backing away, calling him names as she went.
“That policeman should have arrested that brute,” the woman said, slightly calmer now the incident was over and no longer inflaming her anger.
“Then what?” Pauline said. “He’d also arrest the girl for theft. She’d likely be put in a juvenile facility and lost to her family, as such children are in our own world. How is that better?”
The woman turned away in disgust, an angry retort clearly being held back.
“But Pauline it was horrible,” Freda said. “Our parents didn’t treat us that way. Even if we’d stolen something, they wouldn’t have hit us like that.”
“I’m not saying what we saw was nice,” Pauline said, “only that it’s clearly the way things are done here. After all, no one watching was objecting. Outsiders should be wary of interfering.”
“That these people think it’s okay doesn’t make it right,” the woman across the aisle cried, jumping into the conversation.
“The law or the native custom has to be followed. ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’ is good advice,” Pauline said.
“Just because something is the law, doesn’t make it right either,” the woman said.
“Bad laws must be changed by society, not ignored by people who just don’t like them,” Pauline said. “That way lies chaos and eventually, violence.”
The woman harrumphed and looked away again.
Freda said, “Thankfully, we’re moving again.”
She was right. Slowly the traffic was edging its way forward, carrying the bus with it. It was going to be a long trip down the highway to the cruise ship.
It was indeed a long journey and Pauline was not feeling any more charitable toward her fellow passengers, the Ecuadorean officials, the tour company’s guide, or the world in general by the time they arrived. The drive down to Guayaquil from the airport hotel at Quito had been torturous. The road was rough and the coach’s suspension hard. The traffic had made it uncomfortably long and also hot, for the coach’s air-conditioning hadn’t functioned well, if it had been working at all. She observed her fellow passengers without any of that goodwill vacations were supposed to engender, as they too waited in line to join the ship at Guayaquil’s hastily erected, and clearly newly named, Cruise Ship Dock. Her fellow passengers, she observed, were the usual crowd of elderly couples, retired single men with large camera equipment packs, and women with overstuffed hand luggage, and a very small number of families. One man standing nearby with two plastic bags that clinked as he shuffled forward with the line looked as if he’d started partying the night before. She hoped her face didn’t betray her silent prayer that he not be anywhere near her cabin.
“Polly, wake up!” Freda said, nudging her as she stepped forward. Pauline realized her focus on the passengers had caused her to miss the line moving again. She picked up her carry-on bag and walked two steps forward and put her bag down again. Like the coach, the line was not moving well.
Pauline returned to watching the passengers. One couple, who looked very young, belied their age by wearing sober, old-fashioned clothing and looking strangely traditional for such a youthful pair. The woman wore a headscarf as Mennonite and Amish folk do. Perhaps that’s what they are, she thought, and moved on to survey the rest of the people in line. They weren’t exactly the kind of people she’d seen on the previous cruises she’d been on. In the Caribbean, where her previous cruising had mainly been, people were flamboyantly dressed and bejeweled. This cruise group were a more outdoorsy set, with lots of khaki clothing and bush hats. Sensible enough for hiking across the bare terrain of the Galapagos Islands and yet strangely out of place in her experience of cruise ships. She hoped they weren’t all naturalists who would only discuss iguanas and finches at every mealtime.
Like all waiting lines – fortunately this was a small ship because the Ecuadorian government was reducing the numbers who could be on the islands at any one time – this one eventually came to an end, and Pauline and Freda were sipping their welcome-aboard mimosas by late afternoon. Thirty minutes later, they were in their cabins next door to each other on Deck 3. The crossing from the mainland to the islands was to take a day and a half, and the voyage was organized for the guests to have dinner, socialize, and then miss most of the crossing time while sleeping.
Their bags arrived. They unpacked and freshened themselves before Pauline and Freda met outside their doors to begin exploring the ship. The moment they stepped outside their cabins, their cabin stewardess greeted them with a broad smile.
“Good afternoon, Señora Holman and Señorita Riddell. My name is Maria. I will be looking after your rooms during the voyage.”
Maria was a petite woman, slim and hardly more than five feet tall, with black hair and dark eyes. “If you should need anything, just call me. My number is beside the phone in your cabin.”
“Thank you, Maria,” Freda said, peering at Maria’s name badge. “You’re from Peru, I see.”
“Yes, madam, but I am very fortunate not to live there anymore.” Maria’s smile grew broader.
“From what I hear and read, you are indeed fortunate,” Pauline said. “Where do you live now?”
“In Quito, Ecuador,” Maria replied, “where I am among good people.”
“Quito seemed a wonderful city,” Pauline said. She saw Maria was already looking to move and introduce herself to a couple entering their room farther down the corridor. “I see others arriving,” Pauline added. “You must go. We shall certainly call if we need something.”
Maria hurried away to greet the couple before they disappeared into their cabin while the two sisters headed for the elevators. They’d agreed to watch the sail out before dining. Pauline had done three cruises, but for Freda this was the first time. As Pauline assured her, the sail out warranted standing outside in the fresh late afternoon breeze blowing in from the sea.
4
First Evening. At Sea
At dinner, they were seated at a table with a collection of ill-assorted people: a morose, overweight single man named Arvin Weiss, who was the person responsible for holding them up that morning; the Mennonite couple Pauline had seen earlier, who were Ruth and Isaac Brandt; a young man from Toronto, Jason Somerville, who announced he was a police detective; and an oddly mismatched American couple, Rod and Betty Chalmers.
The mismatched couple were a revelation. Pauline had read of such pairings, especially in murder mysteries where contested wills were featured, but she had never met one in real life. Rod was in his thirties, but only just, Pauline guessed. Betty was in her seventies, maybe even older. She was a wealthy widow and he had been her exercise instructor, until a week ago. Now they were on their honeymoon, having the trip of a lifetime. She was loud and gay, the excited bride of fevered imagination; he was silent and only spoke in sarcastic rejoinders to anything, indeed everything, anyone said. Pauline hoped they’d find a different table for the rest of the cruise.
Arvin was an equally unsatisfactory dinner companion. As with many overweight people, his clothes didn’t fit, particularly around the middle, giving a general air of being down on his luck. His brown hair was thinning, combed over and straggling in so many opposite directions it looked as if he’d cut it himself. His sour expression took a turn for the worse when the Toronto detective said, “Your forgotten passport did us no favors, Arvin.” The stress on ‘forgotten’ was warranted for Mr. Weiss had it in his pocket the whole time, as it turned out.
“I missed it, okay? So, what! The driver didn’t need to make such a big deal out of it but I knew he would the moment I saw him. He’s an Arab and hated me because he could see I was Jewish.”
“Arvin,” the whole table seemed to call out in unison, before the detective said, “The coach driver’s name was Ernesto Lopez, it was on his badge and on the certificate above the windshield. He w
as Mexican and he was angry because you were fifteen minutes late to the coach and then you went back for the passport you thought you’d left in the hotel.”
“What’s it to him if he’s late. I’m the paying passenger, he’s the driver.” Arvin’s face grew quite pink in his agitation.
“The delay meant we’d missed the opportunity to avoid the rush hour traffic, which put the driver in considerable difficulty trying to catch up time on a busy road,” Rod Chalmers growled.
Pauline thought he seemed equally as angry as the driver had been. Arvin, however, would have none of it and the squabble continued to burst out during the meal. Pauline sincerely hoped Arvin would find a different table for the rest of the voyage or even fall overboard on the first night. She hadn’t enjoyed the coach trip either and for that too she blamed Arvin.
The detective, Jason, was eager and opinionated on every topic that was discussed, not at all what people expected of Canadians. His fingers constantly thrummed the table in his apparent inability to be still. He spoke in the same way, bursting into conversations with blunt statements that brooked no opposition or discussion.
When Freda was unwise enough to tell the other guests she was from England, and Pauline now lived in Toronto, Somerville practically pounced.
“Where in Toronto,” he demanded, in a voice Pauline was sure didn’t bring out the best in anyone he was interrogating.
“High Park,” Pauline said, “and you?”
“Oh, nowhere so grand,” he replied. “Leaside. I grew up there. Do you know it?”
“I’m afraid I don’t, Mr. Somerville,” Pauline said. “I go out so little. The Eaton Centre, Yorkville and Hazelton Lanes are the limit of my exploring.”
“Yorkville’s great, isn’t it?” Somerville said.
“You’re a young man,” Pauline said, “and would naturally enjoy it. I enjoy the liveliness but find the clothes don’t suit me so much.” She smiled to show she wasn’t being too serious.
Realizing they were beginning to silence everyone else in this exchange, Pauline said, “I think you must be from Ontario as well, Mr. and Mrs. Brandt?”
The conversation moved on in desultory fashion and Pauline was very conscious of the young detective’s regular speculative glances in her direction, as though trying to remember her. She was pleased when, after the dessert, he leapt out of his seat, declined the coffee and declared it time for a night cap, an oddly old-fashioned phrase for one so young. He headed straight for the bar at the end of the lounge where he joined a group of men loudly discussing football.
The Mennonite couple stayed on after the others had left and it gave Pauline an opportunity to learn more about this Christian sect of which she knew so little. Few outside their communities in Canada and the USA did know much about them though there was plenty of speculation. Their formal manners and language pleased Pauline who’d found the world since the beginning of the Sixties a disappointing and disturbing place.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Pauline said, “how do two Mennonite folks come to be outside their own world and aboard a ship of such unserious people?”
Isaac replied, “We’re part of a reformed group who don’t abjure all modern inventions or customs.”
“You’ll see plenty of new customs on the ship over the next ten days,” Pauline said wryly. “I know I was shocked the first time I went on a cruise.”
Ruth smiled. “Our mutual faith and support will help us survive the modern Western World,” she said.
While Ruth was speaking, there was a definite smile in Isaac’s eyes, though his expression remained neutral, and Pauline guessed they were gently teasing her, which in itself made them the best of their dinner companions of the evening.
After dinner, Freda and Pauline wrapped up warmly and walked the deck under the stars. It was surprising how cold the night air was at sea on the Equator. MS Orillia was an old ship of the sort Pauline had seen many times in harbors up and down England’s east coast. The brochure said it had been built for the Far Eastern trade at the end of the Second World War but, when that trade never recovered, it had been converted to a cruise ship and sailed the Mediterranean until this last year when it had been refurbished to sail this remote part of the world. It almost smelled new, Pauline thought, or maybe that was the scent of the tropical sea that lay all around. Despite the Orillia’s age, here under the Milky Way glowing in a great arc across the sky, and the almost full moon that cast a silver lane from horizon to ship, the ship looked ethereally beautiful in her newly painted white livery.
When she was sure nobody was about, Freda said quietly, “I do hope we get a different table for dinner tomorrow night.”
Pauline laughed. “You too?” she said. “Really, I could murder that silly man Arvin.”
“The other one, Rod, wasn’t much better,” Freda said. “He snapped at everything anyone said with such cutting, unpleasant comments.”
“I wonder why Arvin even came?” Pauline said. “He says he can’t stand the heat, felt too unwell to eat anything at dinner and wasn’t sure he would ever be able to eat anything because it wasn’t kosher. He had no discernible interest in evolution, Darwin, Ecuador or the islands. A strange way to spend the small fortune this cruise costs, I should think.”
“I wish he hadn’t come, or the other two,” Freda said bluntly.
“And our Canadian detective?”
“I think he was just nervous. Did you see his fingers? They never stopped drumming on the table. I think he may have a had a drink or two before dinner,” Freda said.
“It was probably the trip down here that upset them all,” Pauline said. “I know I felt like death when we arrived. Maybe they’ll perk up after a good night’s sleep.”
“They were setting out to fortify themselves with even more alcohol when we left so I expect they will sleep well,” Freda replied. “I think I’m going to have a nap myself before we listen to the naturalist’s talk. It has been a long day.”
When they reached the exterior door that was nearest their cabins, Freda pulled it open and stepped inside. Pauline, however, stopped. Farther down the deck, in a place shadowed by lifeboats and the ship’s superstructure, she saw a dark bundle that looked vaguely human-shaped.
“Pauline,” Freda said, “are you coming?” She strained to hold open the heavy door.
“In a moment, Freddie,” Pauline said. “There’s something strange on the deck. I’ll just go and investigate.”
“What is it?” Freda asked, peering around the door and following Pauline’s gaze.
“Probably one of the maintenance crew’s bag or jacket but it may be a passenger who has fainted – or worse.”
Pauline strode down the deck until she stood beside the man. She crouched and shook his shoulder. He didn’t move so she took his wrist in her fingers. As she’d already suspected, though hoped she was wrong, he was dead. Not dead long for he was still ‘alive’ warm. She looked up. The decks above were lit but no one was in sight.
“What is it?” Freda called, repeating her question.
“It’s a man. He’s dead. Go and phone reception. Tell them there’s been an accident on the starboard side, deck three, at the lifeboat station. I’ll stay with the body until someone in authority comes.”
Pauline saw the door close and hoped Freda would be quick. Why the man was dead, she couldn’t yet say, but she knew not to touch the body until the police arrived. But there were no police, she thought, shaking her head. She checked his pulse again, this time at his neck, and felt the sickening looseness there. There was no question; it was broken. She rather hoped Freda would get back before the ‘person in authority’ because Freda was a principal nursing officer – what used to be called a matron before they’d foolishly allowed men into the profession. However, she was confident her own knowledge from the bodies she’d witnessed down the years of detecting, and her fingertips, were not deceiving her. He was dead. Then she saw blood on her fingers and peered carefully at his throa
t. His beard hid the wound but somewhere under his chin looked to be the reason for his death.
A light back along the deck told her Freda or crew members were arriving. She wished she’d had her camera with her. Pictures were useful things to have as memory aids later. She stood and surveyed the scene, hoping to fix it in her mind.
“They say someone will be here soon,” Freda said, as she arrived at her sister’s side. “I thought I should come and join you, in case…”
“In case it’s murder and the murderer is still about,” Pauline finished the sentence for her. “I think it is murder and I’d like your professional opinion before anyone gets here.”
Freda crouched down and felt for a pulse. Not finding one, she felt the skin temperature.
“Look under his chin,” Pauline said.
Freda tipped the head back and gingerly touched the bloodied hair of his beard. She knelt and looked more closely.
“He’s been stabbed,” she said.
“Yes. Then thrown, or maybe just fell, over one of the railings up there.”
“He has a name tag,” Freda said. “He’s not one of the servers,” she added.
Pauline nodded. “Jose, Peru,” she said. As she spoke, a door opened and two men stepped out to greet them. One wore an officer’s uniform, the other had a medicine bag. Pauline was unimpressed. He was the kind of doctor that failed to present himself as an example to the public. There had been some in her time, but they generally didn’t stay long at any one place. She now knew where they went.
“Is he dead?” the officer asked Freda.
“Oh, yes. Quite dead,” Freda replied.
“As the ship’s doctor,” the man with the bag said, “I’ll be the one to confirm death.”
Pauline couldn’t decide if he was being ironic or was genuinely put out by Freda’s assertion.
“You’re certainly the one who must sign the certificate, Doctor,” she said.