Death Sets Sail

by Robin Stevens

  I rather thought that she was jealous. I felt quite impressed by Mr Mansour. I could see how shaken he was – after all, unlike us he was not used to dealing with dead bodies – but he was not giving in to it. He turned to us and Miss Doggett.

  ‘Ladies,’ he said. ‘I apologize unreservedly for this. Once I have conveyed Miss Miller to her temporary quarters, I will be on the upper deck, should any of our honoured guests wish to express their displeasure and ask questions. But I would advise that everyone return to their cabins immediately. I will arrange service of breakfast to your rooms, so you will not need to venture out. Again, I do apologize unreservedly on behalf of the owners of the Hatshepsut for this terrible event. A death of this nature has not happened in the twenty years I have been working on this ship.’

  And we all stood watching as he led Heppy downstairs.

  11

  ‘Psst!’ said a voice.

  We turned and saw that George, Amina and Alexander were gesturing to us from the port side of the ship.

  ‘Come on!’ mouthed George. ‘Come here!’

  We scurried round the side of the ship, out of Miss Doggett’s view.

  ‘Thanks for helping us earlier,’ George said, as soon as we were standing with them, squinting in the sun. ‘She nearly saw us! Did you manage to get into Theodora’s cabin?’

  ‘Obviously,’ said Daisy. ‘And we found some brilliant things.’

  ‘So did we,’ said George, shrugging.

  ‘I bet it won’t be as good as what Hazel and I found, though.’

  ‘Bet you it will.’ They glared at each other, chins high.

  ‘Have you been in all of the cabins yet?’ I asked. ‘Mr Mansour’s going to start going round and getting everyone back into their cabins as soon as he’s put away Heppy – so shall we finish up investigating rooms, or would you prefer to keep staring at each other?’

  ‘Hazel Wong!’ said George, laughing and turning away from Daisy. ‘All right, you win. We’ve been in Heppy’s, and Daniel’s, but not Miss Doggett’s.’

  Daisy raised an eyebrow.

  ‘We couldn’t!’ said Alexander. ‘You saw – she nearly caught us.’

  ‘Good grief,’ said Daisy, squinting at him like a cross cat. ‘Well. We had better go and look at it, then.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re upset!’ I whispered to her as we padded across the warming boards of the deck towards Miss Doggett’s cabin. ‘She’s an excellent suspect! Aren’t you pleased that we get to search her cabin?’

  ‘Of course,’ Daisy whispered back. ‘It’s the principle of the thing, Hazel. It doesn’t do to be too excited.’

  We were all rather shocked to realize, when we pulled open Miss Doggett’s cabin door, that Miss Beauvais was still in it, lying propped up wanly on the scarf-draped bed. She was the sort of person you forget about – and obviously no one had remembered she was there.

  She struggled up onto her elbows, a look of alarm crossing her face. ‘Amina, what are you doing here?’ she gasped. ‘I’m quite comfortable here, really. I shall go back to my cabin in a bit.’

  I wondered then whether Miss Beauvais had been rather enjoying being forgotten about.

  ‘I’ve come to look after you, of course,’ said Amina cheerfully. From Miss Beauvais’ face, I could tell she thought that idea was nightmarish.

  ‘Really, no, that won’t be necessary,’ she said in French. ‘I’m feeling much better. I only wanted to rest here a little while.’

  ‘I’ll take you back to your cabin,’ said Amina. ‘Come on. Really, I promise I don’t have any mice in my pocket this time—’

  ‘Amina!’ I said, and Amina looked guiltily pleased with herself.

  ‘Hey, I can take you, Miss,’ said Alexander, catching my eye. Miss Beauvais sagged with relief.

  ‘Oh yes, an excellent idea!’ she cried, and leaned on Alexander as she stumbled out of the cabin.

  The sound of their voices receded, and the four of us looked at each other.

  ‘If Miss Doggett comes in,’ said George in a low voice, ‘we’ll just say we came in here to get Miss Beauvais and now we’re tidying up after her. All right? Now this is a Pinkerton investigation, so we’ll take the room as Alex and I would usually. Hazel, you look under the bed and on the floor; Amina, look at the bed and wardrobe itself; I’ll search on the desk; and, Daisy, you investigate the top of the wardrobe. All right?’

  I looked at Daisy warningly, and she gritted out, ‘All right!’

  As the search began, I got down on my hands and knees and shone my torch about under the bed to see what I could find. It was chaos – sandy shoes, loose earrings, bits of bunched-up waste paper and a black case that I pulled open to find full of heavy dark books. They smelled of dust and crumbling pages. I sneezed.

  ‘More books?’ asked George from above me. I backed out from under the bed to find him staring down at me, a fat, leather-bound book in his hand. ‘The desk’s full of them. They’re – well, a lot of them are hieroglyphic, I think, but there’s Greek too, and Latin—’

  ‘Here, let me see that!’ said Amina. She bent her head to the book in George’s hand, pushing back her long hair, and then she looked up again in indignation.

  ‘I know what this is!’ she said. ‘It’s – it’s the – well, I didn’t understand what they were saying about that Book of Life thing before, but now I see it. They’ve made a horrible mistranslation of the Book of Going Forth by Day.’

  My skin tingled. ‘Oh!’ said George. ‘Right!’

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s – well, it’s lots of spells to help ancient Egyptians avoid the gods and demons that they thought were waiting for them in the afterlife. It’s nothing to do with recording silly little things you’ve done wrong in your life at all, but of course they don’t understand that! That’s what all of these books are.’

  ‘Yes, but why has she got so many copies, then?’ asked George. ‘And look – she’s written notes all over this one.’

  Amina took the book from him and began to look through it, and her face scrunched up in disgust. ‘Different copies have different spells,’ she said. ‘All right, all these notes are about shabtis. They’re – ancient Egyptian servant-people, little figures that are buried in tombs to do the work of one particular dead person in the afterlife. They have a spell on them to make them do everything their master needs, and that’s the one she’s looking at. Miss Doggett’s translation’s bad, but this is definitely the shabti spell, written out over and over again. And she’s put in – hah, she’s put in her own name as the master. Really! She’s got the whole thing absolutely mixed up. This is – nonsense, not ancient Egyptian at all. It’s more like voodoo from a story. And those hieroglyphs are all wrong too. They say Edo Hoggett, not Ida Doggett!’

  ‘The Shabti Figure replieth: I will do it, verily I am here when thou callest,’ said George, reading over her shoulder. ‘What a silly translation!’

  ‘Ugh!’ I said. ‘But what does it all mean? Daisy, come down from the wardrobe and look at this!’

  ‘HAH!’ said Daisy suddenly. She had been balancing on Miss Doggett’s chair, reaching up high for something at the very back of the wardrobe. Now she spun round and jumped off the chair with a thump, holding whatever it was aloft. ‘Look at this! It seems she was practising her spells on the members of the Breath of Life!’

  I got up and looked – and gasped. Daisy was holding yet another scarf that had been wrapped round a set of little dolls, each covered with embroidery. I thought they were only toys at first, until I saw that there was a little fat one with white hair, a tall gawky one with curly hair, a wrinkly one with flaxen hair and a cane … and a doll with an impressive bosom and a furious expression on its face – and three pins stuck into its soft doll throat and heart.

  12

  ‘They’re embroidered with the hieroglyphs from the books!’ whispered Amina. ‘They – she’s using them as her nonsense shabtis! Oh!’

  As we al
l stood, gasping from Daisy’s discovery, we heard a querulous voice from out on deck. ‘Boys!’ Mr Young was crying from somewhere nearby. ‘Boys! Where are you? Boys!’

  ‘I thought he was in his room! Whose idea was it to bring him?’ asked Daisy crossly.

  ‘He was supposed to be!’ said George. ‘I thought he’d be there for hours. Here – you hide, and I’ll go out and head him off.’

  ‘All right,’ said Daisy, nodding. ‘Meet back in our cabin as soon as you can get away. We need to have a detective meeting while the facts are still fresh in our minds! And you still haven’t told us what you found out about the body. That’s crucial!’

  ‘Back as soon as I can,’ said George briefly. ‘He shouldn’t be too difficult to subdue – but hide until you hear us go. If he sees you in here, he’ll kick up a stink.’

  He ducked out of Miss Doggett’s cabin door, and Daisy, Amina and I all bundled into her little wardrobe. Inside it was stuffy and close, almost suffocating, not helped by the fact that Daisy had her hand across my mouth. I breathed through my nose and tried not to cough or think about the time that Daisy and I had been stuck inside a Hong Kong wardrobe, peering out at an even more awful scene.

  Amina giggled, and Daisy said, ‘Hush, Amina! Don’t pinch me!’

  Then I felt even more awkward. We had come a long way since Deepdean airing cupboards, I thought.

  The voices outside tailed off, and Daisy said, ‘Come on! To our cabin!’

  Amina took her hand laughingly and towed Daisy out into the cabin. As she followed, Daisy looked back at me, blushing, and I shrugged at her. I did not want to be Daisyish about this. I liked Amina. But all the same – it was an odd new feeling, seeing my best friend bowled over by someone who was not me. I did not entirely enjoy it. Martita had been quite different. There had been no chance of her ever noticing Daisy, not like that. But Amina … thinking about it gave me an uncomfortable headache. It all seemed impossibly grown-up.

  Daisy would hate me to write that – she would hate me to say any of this – but Daisy is not here to lean over my page and correct my writing as I go. I am still struggling with that. I keep imagining her behind me, but when I turn round there is no one there at all. The room feels very empty, and that is still strange. I never really thought that she might not be with me one day. Daisy always seemed as permanent as myself.

  Of course, I have been reminded now that everything changes, and there is really no such thing as solid ground.

  But in the cabin that day I did not understand that yet. All I was worried about was the case. I could feel the engine beneath me, and the ship’s paddles turning as we set off after the night’s pause. We were on our way to Aswan. Time to prove Heppy’s innocence was slipping away from us.

  1

  When we got back to our cabin, Daisy was jumpy and unlike herself. She kept looking at Amina and twitching away again, catlike.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her what on earth was wrong with her, but that was simply too cruel. After all, I knew exactly what it was. We all three stood in rather awkward silence – until the boys came bursting in.

  ‘Ah, there you are!’ said George artificially. ‘Mr Young! We’ve found them!’

  ‘In our own cabin,’ said Daisy, raising an eyebrow. ‘How surprising.’

  Mr Young stuck his silly, perspiring head round the door. ‘Girls!’ he cried. ‘You’re safe! Thank goodness.’

  ‘Are you our tutor now?’ asked Daisy rudely.

  ‘Miss Wong’s father has asked me to help in this time of need,’ said Mr Young – which I knew perfectly well was a lie. My father couldn’t stand Mr Young any more than we could. ‘Now, girls, can I trust you to stay here for a while? Mr Mansour is bringing breakfast round to everyone’s cabins, and I suggested to him that you could all take it in here. The boys will look after you.’

  ‘Aren’t they brave!’ said Daisy, still sharp. I elbowed her. ‘But what about you?’

  ‘I will – er – go back to my own cabin,’ said Mr Young. ‘It’s not safe to be out. Please lock your door once I’m gone, and stay alert. Is that understood?’

  ‘Perfectly, Mr Young,’ said George. ‘We’ll look after the girls. You ought to look in on Miss Beauvais too – Alex escorted her back to her cabin just now, and she’s still a bit weak.’

  ‘Good, good, of course,’ said Mr Young and, with a haunted glance around him, he withdrew and we heard his feet pattering away.

  We waited, and then—

  ‘Hah!’ said Daisy. ‘I should say you did too good a job of finding yourselves a fool tutor!’

  ‘I know,’ said Alexander gloomily. ‘At least he didn’t lock us in!’

  ‘He’s too afraid,’ said George with a snort. ‘He still half believes that Heppy will get out of the cabin she’s being held in and kill him for knowing too much about ancient Egypt. He only came out of his room because Mr Mansour unlocked it and tried to give him breakfast. He asked where we were, and Mr Young had to pretend to be taking care of us and go and look.’

  I realized then that I was starving hungry – we had woken just after six, and it was past eight now. I imagined crisp pastries, sweet fruits, halwa and honey and dates. I swallowed.

  ‘We can’t stop for food!’ snapped Daisy – but, when Mr Mansour knocked a moment later and ushered in white-clad servers carrying sweet-smelling trays, piled high, none of the rest of us complained. Even Daisy knows perfectly well that we need bunbreak to help us solve our cases, so she sighed and gestured at our little table. Soon we were munching away.

  ‘What next?’ asked Amina, wiping her mouth delicately.

  ‘Detective meeting, of course. Hazel, get out your casebook again. We have plenty to add to it since we spoke last. Body first, if you please. What did the three of you find out?’

  ‘Well, we got into the cold room where it’s being kept. And Alexander nearly fainted,’ said Amina with a twinkle.

  ‘I don’t know why you guys didn’t!’ said Alexander. ‘You’re monsters. Go on, George, I can’t.’

  ‘Two deep stab wounds around her heart, and one up near her neck, which accounts for most of the blood,’ said George. ‘She would have died very quickly. We knew she was stabbed already, but where she was stabbed is interesting. It’s hard to stab someone’s heart, you know – all those ribs. Hazel, you’re right that it points to a murderer who cared about getting her in the heart, someone from the Breath of Life. And I don’t think they could have been so precise in their sleep, either. Another point to back up our theory.

  ‘Apart from those three wounds, there aren’t any others. No cuts on her hands or arms. But there was something that we almost missed at first.’

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Bruising,’ said George. Alexander made a face. ‘On her shoulders and arms, as though someone had leaned against her. And – tell them, Alex.’

  ‘We think they held a pillow over her face,’ said Alexander.

  ‘Why do you think that?’ asked Daisy, rather scornfully.

  ‘We found a feather on her eyelash,’ said Alexander. ‘A tiny one, but we think it came from a pillow.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Daisy.

  ‘It seems most likely, under the circumstances,’ said George, smirking at Daisy. ‘Don’t you think? There was blood on the pillow in her room, wasn’t there? Perhaps that was the one used. Anyway, none of that evidence – that someone covered her mouth with a pillow to keep her quiet, and leaned on her to keep her still – fits with a sleepwalking murder. Go on, Alex, say what you said to me.’

  ‘You know when you’re dreaming, and you think you’re running, or yelling – and then you wake up and all you did was kick off your sheets and mumble a bit?’ asked Alexander, waving his hands expressively.

  ‘Mumble!’ said George. ‘You’ve never mumbled in your sleep. You do laugh, though.’

  ‘I have funny dreams! All right, George, you’re the one who mumbles. I was trying to be nice to you. All I’m saying is, ima
gine leaning on someone’s chest while you hold a pillow over their face with one hand and stab them with the other in your sleep. There’s no way!’

  ‘We don’t know if it’s impossible until we try it,’ said Daisy. ‘Which reminds me, we need to do a reconstruction after this. But – well, good work, I suppose. Though I ought to have been there.’

  She glared at George unlovingly.

  ‘Well, you weren’t,’ said George. ‘And you wouldn’t have seen any more! The body helps rule out Heppy, and we’ll say it to anyone who asks. Add that to what we saw at the crime scene—’

  ‘It doesn’t make any sense!’ said Alexander firmly. ‘I mean, maybe you could argue that Heppy was trying to clean up, not very well – that she automatically wiped off the knife – but—’

  ‘— but it’s not very likely,’ said George. ‘It makes far more sense to assume that the person who wiped the knife was very much awake, and very much not Heppy.’

  My breath caught in my throat. Suddenly I wondered whether Mr Young’s fear was quite sensible, after all. ‘And there’s something else,’ I said. I told them about what Daisy and I had found at the crime scene. ‘We know Heppy didn’t wash her hands, because they’re still bloody. So we have to assume that the murderer was the one who washed up in the sink after they’d hung up the sheet – silly of them, as it makes Heppy’s framing less perfect. But, if they did that, they couldn’t have gone through the doorway while the sheet was hanging up, otherwise they’d get bloody all over again. So what if the murderer waited there for her? What if – they did all the things you said, and then stayed there to wait until they’d seen Heppy sleepwalk into Mrs Miller’s room and out again?’

  I had a terrible, looming image in my head – of a dark figure, standing in silence and watching Heppy push aside the bloody sheet, in her dream imagining it as nothing more than the curtains of the cabin.

  Alexander looked sickened.