The Riverboat Mystery

by Faith Martin

  She gave his hand a squeeze.

  David nodded at once, sympathetic and anxious to please, and gave her a quick peck on the forehead. He turned, still obviously rather reluctant to leave her, but after a moment’s hesitation walked on into their room.

  Jasmine, afraid of being spotted, quickly pulled the door shut. She heard the bathroom door open and close, and breathed easier. It wouldn’t do for the sickeningly cooing couple to notice when the engineer came to her bedroom door!

  Downstairs, Gabriel wandered out onto the starboard deck. It was the first time he’d been on that side of the boat for quite some time. He stood watching the view of the deserted riverbank with a pleased smile on his face.

  All was peaceful and quiet on the Stillwater Swan.

  *

  Jenny looked somewhat guiltily at her watch, and knew she must have held the boat up a little. It was nearly three o’clock. She stepped on board, made her way to the bridge, told the somewhat disgruntled Tobias Lester that she was back, and made for her galley.

  There she found the parrot raiding her bag of raisins. She eyed the bird, which had been caught red-handed. Or rather, red-clawed, with one bit of fruit already in his beak, and the split bag open on the worktop.

  Jenny walked forward, left the spilled raisins on the side — after all, she could hardly use those now — and folded the bag back into some semblance of order.

  The parrot watched her, head cocked to one side. ‘’Ere, what’s your game then?’ he demanded, in Lucas’s wide, cockney drawl.

  Jenny paused, looked at the bird, and fed it another raisin. Really, it was extraordinarily uncanny the way the bird could come out with apt phrases at just the right time. You could almost be fooled into thinking you could hold a normal conversation with it.

  She removed the various meats from the fridge and set them, in various sauces, to cook in the oven. She took a veritable mountain of vegetables from the tiny cold cupboard next to the fridge and set about chopping, peeling, dicing, mincing and shelling. It was a task that would have daunted many a lesser person but only served to fill the cook with a sense of peace.

  *

  Upstairs, Jasmine Olney still waited in vain for Brian O’Keefe. She was beginning to get right royally angry. When she heard the engines turn over, and she knew it would be impossible for him to leave the engine room now, she left her post by the door, yanked the handle open, and marched out onto the landing. Although she could hardly go straight to the engine room and tell the oaf off, she would certainly think of a way to make her displeasure felt.

  When she thought of him, sniggering away in his cubbyhole, imagining her waiting for him up here, all hot and bothered, she felt like she could literally kill him.

  She was just in the mood for it.

  As she passed the bathroom, the door opened and Dorothy Leigh emerged. She looked, even to Jasmine’s unsympathetic eye, a little pale and tremulous. It must be horrible feeling sick all the time, she acknowledged vaguely. It was one of the many reasons why she herself had always refused to have children.

  Hearing the two women exchange greetings, David opened the door to his bedroom, spotted his wife, and stepped out.

  ‘What you need is a nice cup of tea, darling,’ he said soothingly. ‘Let’s find Francis and get you one.’

  Somewhat reluctantly, Jasmine thought, Dorothy allowed herself to be led back downstairs.

  Poor Dotty, she thought, with a savage twist of her lips. No doubt if she started to feel sick again she’d have to make a dive for one of the side decks. Really, men could be such inconsiderate pigs at times. Why couldn’t her husband have just let her go back to their room and lie down, as she so obviously wanted to do?

  Even as her husband led her away, Dorothy cast a forlorn and longing look over her shoulder at the door to their bedroom.

  But Jasmine had no sympathy for women who couldn’t stick up for themselves. And with a shrug, she followed them down the stairs.

  *

  Jenny sluiced some cold water over her face and let her wrists run under the cold tap. It was hellishly hot in her cramped little galley. She glanced at her watch. It was now nearly 4:15. Time for a breath of air in her favourite spot.

  To her surprise, the main salon was empty when she walked through it. In fact the whole boat, she noticed for the first time, seemed to have an almost deserted air.

  It felt like being aboard the Mary Celeste.

  But as she stepped out onto the starboard deck with a sigh of pleasure, she realized just how misleading this feeling was, and she stopped, just a little miffed to find that her ‘territory’ had been invaded.

  David Leigh turned warily as he sensed another presence, but visibly relaxed on seeing who it was. Beside him, sitting in the cook’s favourite deckchair, Dorothy watched the passing scenery with apathetic eyes. She looked rather pale, Jenny thought, and guessed instantly that the curse of the dreaded morning sickness had hit. ‘I think some dry toast and tea might be in order, don’t you?’ she murmured.

  Her husband looked at her gratefully. ‘Just what I thought, but I couldn’t find Francis to ask him.’

  Jenny shrugged, retreated back to her galley, and emerged five minutes later with the unappetizing but tummy-settling food.

  She nodded in satisfaction as Dorothy took a sip of weak, milky tea. She looked really washed out, poor thing, the cook noted with some concern; her hair seemed to have lost some of its lustre, and her cheeks were sallow and her neck was drooping. Even her pretty powder-blue dress looked less like a meadow blue butterfly in colour and more like a limp delphinium. She really shouldn’t wear that dress in a shady place, Jenny thought inconsequentially — it obviously needed the sun to bring out its best. Then Jenny glanced at Dorothy’s miserable face, and realized that being in the sunshine was probably the last thing on her mind.

  Far better to leave her out here, where it was at least cool and a bit of breeze was to be had.

  ‘Well, I’d best get on.’ Jenny backed away, thinking somewhat glumly that it would have to be the port deck or rear deck after all.

  The games room, too, was oddly deserted when she passed through it.

  Out on the port deck, only Lucas Finch stood at the railings, watching the passing riverbanks with a glum air. He looked odd, almost undressed, Jenny thought, and then suddenly understood why. He was without his ubiquitous bird. The perfidious parrot had momentarily deserted him for the lure of raisins.

  Jenny walked slowly away from him, not wishing to interrupt his solitude, but noticing as she did so that the planking, just a few yards from his left foot, was wet.

  Very wet indeed.

  She felt a surge of alarm, and hoped that they weren’t sinking!

  Then common sense quickly took over from a landlubber’s (and non-swimmer’s) natural momentary panic. Of course they weren’t sinking! The boat was as steady as a rock.

  But something had made that big pool of water on the port deck. Perhaps the engineer had had to bring on some water for something or other. Her ignorance of the workings of the boat’s steam mechanism wasn’t something that concerned her.

  She shrugged the thought aside and revelled in the cool river breeze as she took a slow turn on the rear deck. There she watched Brian O’Keefe stow away a rather vicious-looking axe, and then pondered the great paddles as they slowly and hypnotically turned, churning the clear water up into a wide white frothy path in the Swan’s wake.

  Where was everybody?

  Then she remembered her kidneys, which were soaking in red wine. Not her own kidneys, of course — Jenny seldom drank to excess — but the kidneys that were going to go into the little individual steak and kidney puddings which were due to be served as a starter. She rapidly headed back to her galley.

  Too much red wine was bad for kidneys.

  The parrot saw her enter and quickly scoffed the last of the raisins, just in case she felt inclined to pinch one or two for herself. The parrot obviously understood Jenny Starli
ng far better than any of her fellow humans, and proceeded to whistle a fairly passable rendition of the ‘Colonel Bogey March’ as he watched her work.

  She chopped some chives, checked the single cream was still fresh and usable, and then jumped a little as she felt a slight scratch on her shoulder.

  By turning her head just a little to one side, she could see nothing but scarlet and blue.

  She felt rather flattered that the bird, on such short acquaintance, should trust her enough to choose to sit on her shoulder, but she wasn’t any too happy about the possible hygienic repercussions.

  She’d have to shoo him off, she supposed glumly.

  But first she could gather all the jars, tins, cans and glass bottles she might need from the supply cupboard. There was no harm in that, after all, with everything being hermetically sealed.

  So it was that when Jenny opened the door to the supply cupboard, she did so as Long John Silver might have done, with a smile on her face and a parrot on her shoulder.

  She pulled the simple wooden door open, her mind on chutney and pickles. And Gabriel Olney stared back at her, his eyes wide open, his moustache rather droopy. Jenny, stunned to find an interloper amongst her comestibles, had just opened her mouth to ask him what the bloody hell he thought he was doing lurking about in her cupboard, when he began to fall forward.

  More instinctively than anything else, she smartly stepped to one side and out of the way. And Gabriel Olney, with a rather squelchy ‘whoomp,’ fell flat on his face at her feet.

  He was, of course, exceedingly dead. ‘Well, bugger me,’ said the parrot.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  For several seconds Jenny stood rigid in surprise, staring down at the back of Gabriel Olney.

  After a few more seconds, and very, very slowly, her brain began to function again, receiving messages from her eyes that she noted without really realizing that she was doing it.

  Gabriel Olney was wet. His shirt was wrinkled and clinging to his skin, as only wet cotton can. There was no blood. At least, none as far as she could see, and she couldn’t remember seeing any on his chest either, for that scant second that he had been upright in the cupboard, facing her.

  He was missing one elegant boot. Funny, she’d never noticed his boots before. They were just above ankle-height, made with fine black leather, and had rather thick, soft soles. For a moment she was puzzled by those soles, and then realized that they’d probably been made specifically for people who lived or worked on boats. It was typical of Olney’s personality that he had gone the whole hog and bought a complete new wardrobe to go with Stillwater Swan.

  She seemed to stare at his left foot for a long while. It was completely bare. He hadn’t even a sock on.

  His back was not moving. There was no reassuring rise and fall of a man who was breathing. But Jenny already knew that it would be pointless to check to see if he was still alive. In her heart of hearts she knew he was dead and probably had been for — well, who knew how long?

  It was at that point that she herself took a long, deep, shuddering breath, unaware until she did so that she’d been holding it in all this time. She felt a dizzy wave hit her and quickly moved back, so as to avoid touching Gabriel. The parrot on her shoulder lurched a little, unused to her way of moving, and his long scarlet and blue tail flattened against her back for balance.

  Jenny walked the short distance to the galley door, opened it, went through, and then firmly shut it behind her, all still in a state of blissfully numb shock. She couldn’t feel her legs beneath her. She had the distressing sensation of seeing and hearing things as if from a great distance.

  But she couldn’t give in to that sort of thing. Dimly, she began to recall the routine from past, bitter experiences with sudden death.

  No one must be allowed into the room. No one must disturb the body or any possible evidence. She had to call the police.

  It was this last imperative that finally washed away the last vestiges of her numbness, forcing her to think. How could she phone the police? They were on a boat, in the middle of the River Thames, cruising sedately through the deserted Oxfordshire countryside. But surely someone on board had a mobile phone? She’d left hers locked in her van, not wanting to risk losing it on the river. But the others would have one. Or would they? Mobile phones were just the sort of thing you deliberately left behind on a getting-away-from-it-all river cruise.

  ‘I must see the captain,’ she thought, and the sound of her own voice surprised her. Talking to herself out loud simply would not do. She must pull herself together. But Tobias Lester represented, if nothing else, an authority figure, one who had always struck her as level-headed and competent beneath that avuncular exterior. And right now she felt in need of some friendly human company that she could rely on.

  Moreover, he was in charge of the boat, and they’d have to dock somewhere, wouldn’t they? She gave a quick, brisk shake of her head, as if the movement could somehow physically kick-start her sluggish brain into working order again.

  She checked the galley door but quickly discovered that it had no locking system. So she dragged one of the main salon’s ladder-back chairs to stand in front of it. It was hardly ideal. Anybody could remove it and go in whilst she was informing Tobias Lester of their circumstances, of course, but there was nothing else for it.

  Besides, nobody but Francis, perhaps, would have any reason for wanting to go into the galley.

  Except the murderer.

  Jenny shook her head, angry at herself. She really must pull herself together. Why would the murderer want to go back there? He or she was safely away at some other point on the boat by now, and the last thing on their mind would be to come back and incriminate themselves by riffling through the scene of the crime. And that old chestnut about the criminal always returning to the scene of the crime had gone out with the ark!

  Jenny, very well aware that she had spent valuable minutes thinking all this through, and was consequently dithering like somebody’s idea of a dotty maiden aunt, firmly marched out through the games room and onto the port deck, and from there made her way forwards to the bridge. She knocked firmly and opened the door, not waiting for a summons.

  By the wheel, Tobias looked around in surprise. He looked disconcerted at her abrupt entrance, but nothing more than that, as far as Jenny could tell.

  But the murderer must know that it would be the Swan’s cook who discovered the body, and would therefore be prepared, when first spotting her, to act as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

  ‘Cook, I don’t think Lucas would like—’

  ‘You have to dock at once,’ Jenny interrupted rudely. ‘Is there a phone on board?’ Not waiting for an answer, she continued, ‘If not you’ll have to send someone, Brian O’Keefe, I suppose, to the nearest village to telephone for the police.’

  Tobias stared at her as if she’d suddenly acquired several bats in her belfry.

  ‘Dock? Here?’ He glanced automatically towards both banks, his trained eye instinctively looking for the best place to berth, even as he shook his head. ‘There’s no phone on board — Lucas insists on it. And we’re down in the valley here, in a bad reception area. Most mobiles wouldn’t work anyway. But—’

  ‘Gabriel Olney is dead,’ Jenny said shortly, and was very careful to state nothing more than the bare truth. She’d watched a lot of police activity around murder cases in her time, and one thing she’d noted was that they never gave information away. And it was, she had always thought, a very good policy to mimic.

  Tobias’s leonine head abruptly swung her way. His eyes went wide, and he went just a touch pale. ‘Dead?’ he echoed blankly.

  Jenny nodded. ‘We must dock and send for the police. At once.’ She repeated it all patiently, knowing that — if genuine — shock could momentarily befuddle the clearest of minds.

  It had befuddled hers. But never for long.

  Tobias nodded, seeming to grasp the seriousness of the situation at last, and began to
push and twiddle various levers and knobs, slowing the vessel down and heading her towards the right-hand bank. Satisfied that he was doing as he’d been told, Jenny nodded and left, determined to stand guard in front of the galley door.

  Just in case.

  In the main salon, Lucas Finch stepped in from the direction of the rear corridor. ‘Hello, love. The boat’s stopping, did you notice? I wonder what Toby’s up to.’

  The parrot on her shoulder, spotting his master, gave a little wriggle and was quickly airborne, flying back to Lucas. It settled on his shoulder and began, very gently, to gnaw on a claw.

  Jenny walked steadily to the chair in front of her galley and very firmly sat down on it. It would take a better man than Lucas Finch to shift her now.

  ‘I told Captain Lester to dock,’ she admitted coolly. ‘Gabriel Olney is dead. Do you have a map of the immediate area?’

  Lucas stared at her. His face seemed to shut down — only his eyes glittered. And in that moment, Jenny could clearly see the man who profited from war. The man who’d earned himself (by fair means or foul) a considerable fortune. He didn’t say anything for quite some time. When he did, it was to ask a question.

  ‘Why do you want a map?’

  ‘You must send Brian O’Keefe to the nearest village to ring for the police. To do that, we need to know where the nearest telephone is likely to be. I understand mobiles don’t work very well here, and that you don’t allow any on board anyway?’

  Lucas looked at her levelly, perhaps a little surprised by her cool-headed logic, but nodded acquiescently. ‘I have a full-length map of the River Thames in the drawer somewhere.’

  He turned to a large, all-purpose set of drawers set flush to one wall, and riffled through the top one for a map. Once it was found, he carefully unfolded it and spread it out on the dining table. ‘I’ll have to go and get Tobias. He’ll know best what our exact position is.’

  Jenny nodded. By now, the boat was almost at a complete standstill.

  Out on the starboard deck, although they must have noticed that they were docking, David and Dorothy Leigh never came to investigate. Outside, on the rear deck, Jenny heard rapid footsteps and saw the engineer heading quickly towards the bridge. No doubt he too wanted to know the reason behind the unscheduled delay.