Death Sets Sail

by Robin Stevens

  ‘I don’t remember anything properly! I never do when I sleepwalk! I was having such a terrible dream, though, and when I woke up this morning – oh, poor Mother!’

  ‘Have you always sleepwalked?’ asked Amina.

  ‘Since I was little,’ said Heppy, nodding. ‘Only it’s got worse the last few years. I do all the wrong things, and I try to fix them, but it only makes it worse.’

  ‘But,’ I started, ‘are you sure you’re doing things wrong? Only – I mean, the others aren’t very nice to you.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m always wrong,’ said Heppy. ‘That’s what Mother said, and she’s always right. Mother told me I had to stop sleepwalking, that it was bothering everyone in the society and it was bad of me, but everything we tried made me sleepwalk more. I had Miss Doggett tie me to the bed, only I untied the knots myself and I woke up in the garden. Then I took Moth— Theodora’s tonic, but it only made me more jumpy. I even slept … without clothes on in case it made me too ashamed to go anywhere, but it didn’t. It was terribly embarrassing and Theodora had to punish me after that. I thought that perhaps, in another country, the fresh air would help me sleep, but it didn’t. I sleepwalked the night before last, right into Mother’s room, and moved things about. And then last night – I must have picked up the knife in my sleep and killed her!’

  ‘How do you know you sleepwalked the night before last?’ asked Daisy sharply.

  ‘I put a piece of thread across the door. It was broken in the morning, so I knew I must have got out during the night. So last night I asked Miss Bartleby to lock me in. But she must have forgotten.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She came into my cabin last night, after we’d put Mother to bed. She said goodnight to me, and I gave her the key to my cabin door and asked her to lock it behind her. She took it, and I thought I heard it turn in the lock – but I must have been wrong!’

  ‘Are you saying you were locked in last night?’ Daisy whispered the words. She seized my hand and squeezed it so tight in her excitement that I almost yelped.

  ‘I thought so,’ said Heppy mournfully. ‘But I can’t have been, can I? This morning, when I woke up, the door was open!’

  10

  ‘But – but—’ Daisy was stammering with amazement.

  I felt my breathing quicken. Was this the final proof that Heppy was not responsible? But Miss Bartleby was forgetful – we knew that. She might really have forgotten. This could be another false hope. And of course, I realized with a sinking heart, Heppy’s door must have been unlocked, at least for part of the night. We knew from the evidence that she had sleepwalked into her mother’s room, and the bloody sheet, at some point after the crime. So how could we prove that Heppy could not have committed the murder itself?

  ‘Tell us everything you remember about last night,’ I said with an effort. ‘Please.’

  ‘Why does it matter?’

  ‘We want to understand!’ said Amina.

  ‘There are things about how Theodora’s cabin looked this morning that seem – odd,’ I said. ‘We’re trying to make everything fit. Please, won’t you tell us?’

  Heppy blinked at us. ‘You are strange!’ she said. ‘When I’ve told you and told you what really happened. Oh, all right, if you want. Yesterday evening, there was Mother’s ritual. I – failed again. I must try to be better, I must!’

  ‘But there’s nothing wrong with you!’ I cried, frustrated. ‘The things you think are so bad – they’re all perfectly ordinary. You mustn’t listen to the Breath of Life!’

  Heppy’s face crumpled, just for a second. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘No one can. The whole Breath of Life are my family, not just Daniel and M— Theodora. That’s something that Theodora explained to us all. I have to listen to them. And I will be better, I must be! If I could stop sleepwalking … but anyway Mother held the ritual. It was almost done when Daniel came in to stop it.’

  Her face had turned red with anger. ‘He doesn’t understand!’ she said. ‘He won’t work on himself. His soul will be weighed, and found wanting. He’ll never learn his reincarnation.’

  This was interesting. Heppy would not get cross about Theodora, and her punishments – when really she had every reason to be. No wonder she sleepwalked, I thought. But all of her anger seemed to be directed at her brother, not her mother.

  ‘What happened next?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, I went back to my cabin to calm myself,’ said Heppy. ‘And then – then I went to help Miss Bartleby get Theodora ready for bed. Miss Bartleby – well – hasn’t quite been herself lately. She gets so tired, and sometimes she misplaces things. She doesn’t mean it, but it makes Theodora … talk sharply to her. She only needs prompting – the way I do – but, all the same, sometimes she responds poorly to it. She hasn’t learned yet. So I help. Miss Bartleby tucked her in tightly, and I read to her – some passages from the Book of Life; it always soothes her. Once she was asleep, Miss Bartleby and I left. I asked her to come back to my cabin and make certain it was locked. She agreed – I remember giving her the key, and hearing the click of the lock outside as she turned it. Then she said goodnight, and went away, and I got into bed and fell asleep. And when I woke up the door was open, and I was covered in blood and – oh, MOTHER!’

  Her voice rose in a wail.

  ‘But I don’t understand!’ said Amina. ‘You were locked in when you went to sleep, but you weren’t when you woke up. That means somebody else must have unlocked your door. What if – what if that person is framing you?’

  But Heppy was shaking her head.

  ‘No, you don’t understand,’ she said. ‘It was magic – don’t you see?’

  The three of us exchanged mystified glances. ‘I don’t think we do see,’ I said carefully.

  ‘Dark magic,’ said Heppy, almost with satisfaction. ‘Miss Doggett was telling me about it. I must have cast one of the spells she was talking about in my sleep to unlock the door from the inside. Then I walked to Theodora’s room and killed her. I did it, and now I deserve to be punished!’

  ‘But – but – magic isn’t real!’ I said.

  Heppy looked at me pityingly. ‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘No one else was responsible. They couldn’t be.’

  And then the door to her cabin opened and Mr Mansour barked, ‘Young ladies! OUT!’

  11

  Mr Mansour was furious.

  ‘You cannot be in there!’ he told us, flapping his hands to shoo us down the hallway. Ahmed was standing, glowering at us, his shoulders as wide as possible to show that he had not really been afraid. ‘All of this running around, disrupting the other passengers – that is not how to behave! You girls are trouble. You are not – what’s the word – ladylike. The pranks, the fights – on my way down here, I walked through some strange string contraption that rang a bell, which I assume was your doing.’

  Daisy nudged me, and I elbowed her back. There was another part of the mystery closed. The boys’ reconstruction had been completed successfully. Mr Mansour had not noticed the string and bell until he had set it off. May had been right – we could trust her story. Our suspects really were limited to the five members of the Breath of Life.

  ‘And now I find you in with the prisoner!’

  ‘But, Mr Mansour!’ I said. ‘Heppy just told us – she said that Miss Bartleby locked her in her cabin last night. If she did, the crime is impossible – she couldn’t have got out on her own. That means someone else must have unlocked her door – someone framed her for this crime! Everyone in the Breath of Life knows she sleepwalks. You’ve got it all wrong!’

  ‘It’s true!’ said Amina. ‘It is, I heard her!’

  I expected him to ignore us. Daisy and I are used to grown-ups sniffing at us, thinking that we are only babies or foolish little girls. But Mr Mansour stopped in his rush and turned on us.

  ‘Miss El Maghrabi, Miss Wells, Miss Wong,’ he hissed, so close I could smell the oil he put on his moustache and see the fine little threa
ds of blood that ran through the whites of his eyes. ‘I am doing my best. I have never – I have never had a journey like this. I have a murder on my hands. I must keep the rest of my passengers safe, and that means asking you not to behave like you believe yourselves to be female Sherlock Holmeses. Since you will not stay in your cabin, I have decided to gather everyone together on the top deck. Please come up as soon as possible. If we all remain calm and stay together, this experience will be over quickly and quietly.’

  ‘All right!’ said Daisy cheerfully, pushing in front of me as I gaped at him. ‘We’re terribly sorry, Mr Mansour. We didn’t mean to upset you. We’ll go and get our things, and be up on the top deck in five minutes. Come along, Hazel, Amina. Let’s go.’

  Mr Mansour eyed her suspiciously.

  ‘We really don’t want to upset you, Mr Mansour,’ Daisy carried on. ‘We have something important to tell you, but it can wait until we’re up with the others. We’re sorry to have worried you.’

  ‘Er – thank you, Miss Wells,’ said Mr Mansour.

  ‘Daisy!’ I hissed. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Don’t speak, Hazel,’ said Daisy, and when she turned to me I could see that, oddly, she was beaming. ‘Oh, come along, we have to get to our cabin as soon as possible! We have to collect some things – your father doesn’t have our passports, does he?’

  ‘Our passports?’ I asked, bewildered. ‘They’re in my case. But why do we need those?’

  ‘Proof,’ said Daisy confusingly. ‘Like in Murder on the Orient Express. You’ll see.’

  ‘See what?’ asked Amina. ‘Daisy, what are you going to do?’

  ‘Really!’ I said. ‘You can’t just keep things from me any more.’

  ‘I’m not!’ said Daisy. ‘But there’s no time, Hazel. I’m thinking too fast to talk about it yet. I’ll show you when we’re in our cabin. Come on! It’s the only thing left that might work – really the only possible plan. And it’s an excellent one. Come on, come on, you’ll see!’

  For what felt like the hundredth time in our strange detective careers, I let her drag me forward by the wrist. I could not think what she was planning. From the look on her face, I could tell it was quite audacious – but, all the same, I never guessed exactly how audacious it would be.

  1

  What Daisy had to do in our cabin was quick, and we got up onto the upper deck, among delicate potted ferns and dainty white chairs, only a minute late. Far-off calls to prayer were floating across the wide bright water to us, and I could see the spire of a minaret through the palm trees.

  Most of the Hatshepsut’s passengers were already there, waiting, though I could not see Miss Beauvais or Pik An. Mr Mansour gave us a very angry glance and moved away to the front of the deck. I looked at Daisy, and she nodded at me fiercely. I knew what we had to do – I was holding part of the plan squeezed tightly in my fist – and it made me feel dizzy with nerves. Could we pull it off? Surely not! But if anyone can, it’s us, I told myself. We’re the Detective Society and, no matter how difficult things seem, we never lose. That thought was like a hand on my shoulder, a warmth on my back. I smiled at Daisy, and we moved forward together, Amina just behind us.

  Miss Doggett was standing, stork-like, beside the railings, now wrapped in a patterned shawl, a look of furious concentration on her face. Opposite her, his hair shining brassily in the sun, was Mr DeWitt, leaning on his cane and glaring at Miss Doggett. Miss Bartleby was huddled in one of the cane chairs, squeezing her hands together in her lap and whispering something to herself that was not loud enough to be heard by anyone else. Daniel was just behind her, pacing anxiously, his fists clenched.

  My father looked over at us, and when he saw us he gave a sharp nod of his head. There was no doubt about his meaning – I led Daisy and Amina across the top deck to sit next to him, May and Rose.

  ‘Remember, Hazel!’ Daisy whispered to me. ‘It’s imperative that you wait until—’

  ‘QUIET,’ said my father, and I took Daisy’s hand and squeezed it. Mr Mansour stepped forward to speak.

  ‘Good morning, honoured guests. Once again, I apologize for this inconvenience. I had hoped that keeping the suspect safe in a cabin on the lower deck would be enough to restore calm, but I see that this is not the case. Therefore I have called this meeting to allay suspicions one more time. It seems clear what happened, after all. Mr Miller, you are her brother?’

  ‘Yes!’ said Daniel crossly. ‘That is, not by birth. Theodora adopted us all when we were very young. But the three of us grew up together—’

  ‘Three?’ asked Mr Mansour, puzzled.

  ‘Our brother Gabriel died at Passchendaele.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Mr Mansour. ‘My brother died at Rafa.’

  ‘He was Mother’s favourite,’ said Daniel with a shrug. ‘And as our father had already been lost at sea, Theodora was left with only Heppy and me, and we weren’t much consolation, I think. She was – angry that we were the ones she’d been left with. She said more than once after they died that she wished we had gone, not them. That’s when she began to tell us to stop calling her Mother, and when this idiotic society of hers began.’

  ‘It is not idiotic!’ snapped Miss Doggett. ‘Earthly bodies may fade, but spirits live on. Theodora knew perfectly well that Gabriel and Alfred’s souls may have flown out of their bodies, but they will return. No one is truly lost, and we are all part of the great wheel of existence. Even Joshua—’

  ‘Nonsense!’ shouted Daniel. ‘It’s all utter nonsense, and I’m ashamed that I ever listened to it – and brought poor Josh into it. If I hadn’t, he’d still be alive.’

  ‘JOSHUA BROKE THE FAITH!’ cried Miss Doggett. ‘He deserved everything he got!’

  The two of them glared at each other, panting.

  Mr Mansour jumped in. ‘Please, please – I understand tempers are high. I am attempting to calm them by laying out the truth as clearly as possible. I was simply going to ask Mr Miller if he knew whether Miss Miller walked in her sleep often.’

  ‘We all know about that, poor child,’ said Mr DeWitt, nodding.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Miss Bartleby. ‘Poor Heppy, she is plagued with it.’

  ‘We – we even saw her do it, the night before last,’ said Amina. The rest of us all stared at her, and I saw her realize that she had admitted to being out of bed in the middle of the night. ‘From the cabin, I mean,’ she added, rather weakly.

  ‘Hephzibah sleepwalked because her ba – her soul, in your parlance – was troubled,’ Miss Doggett put in. ‘She was a very damaged, unquiet girl, and she has caused the society much heartbreak over the years. It had become so bad that we – Theodora and I – were concerned that, if she did not work hard, her soul might be too heavy in the weighing to merit reincarnation at all. That is what happens to the very worst people, you know. The universe has a way of purging its dross.’

  ‘So you – were not surprised at what happened?’ asked Mr Mansour, rather nervously. ‘Is Miss Miller really so bad? She seems quite – ordinary to me.’

  ‘That is simply because you do not know her well enough. She’s a real troublemaker. And yes, I was not surprised that she attacked Theodora.’ Her lip curled here. ‘Again, I say that the universe has a way of purging itself of its dross.’

  ‘Do not speak of Theodora like that!’ cried Mr DeWitt. ‘Poor lady, she was the best of us!’

  ‘Her ba was unworthy, if anyone’s was!’ snapped Miss Doggett. ‘She was no more the reincarnation of Hatshepsut than – than that little child is!’

  She pointed a shaking finger at May, who glowered at her.

  ‘I’m not Hatshepsut – I’m Ching Shih the pirate queen!’ she said.

  ‘MAY WONG,’ said my father threateningly. ‘QUIET.’

  ‘I – well – now, onto the matter of the knife,’ said Mr Mansour, floundering rather. ‘It was taken from our dining room last night. Did any of you see it?’

  ‘Goodness, never!’ said Miss Bartleby, sh
aking her head definitively.

  ‘What are you talking about, Rhiannon?’ said Miss Doggett. ‘We used it in our ritual in the saloon. You brought it! But I don’t know how it ended up in Theodora’s room – Heppy must have taken it. Yet another example of her degenerate character.’

  Miss Bartleby’s face went very still, for just a sliver of a second. Then she said easily, ‘Why of course we did. What was I thinking? I simply – didn’t assume it important.’

  I squeezed Daisy’s hand. ‘L-Y-I-N-G?’ I tapped out in Morse code on her palm, and Daisy wrote back with a simple ‘Y-E-S’.

  ‘So – so who was with Theodora after this ritual? Who saw her last?’

  ‘Heppy helps her prepare for bed,’ said Miss Bartleby. ‘I do too. I took Theodora to her room, and then – and then Heppy came in, and read to her. I left her cabin just before midnight, and she seemed quite well, then.’

  And again I saw an expression on her face that told me there was something about this story that was causing her worry.

  ‘Everyone went to bed as normal?’ Mr Mansour asked.

  ‘Yes, absolutely,’ said Mr DeWitt.

  ‘I was asleep all last night,’ said Daniel.

  ‘And I was meditating in my cabin,’ said Miss Doggett, po-faced.

  ‘L-Y-I-N-G,’ Daisy and I both tapped out on each other’s hands at the same time, our fingers getting tangled up in our haste. I slid my eyes sideways at her and saw that she was smiling at me. It was almost time for our announcement. I felt prickly with nerves, but also strangely calm and floating. It was no good trying to stop it now. It would happen.

  ‘Well, all right – I think that is clear enough. And you were all woken by Miss Miller’s screaming this morning. Now—’

  And that was when Daisy got to her feet. ‘Excuse me,’ she said.

  ‘Miss Wells, please don’t complicate things,’ said Mr Mansour. ‘Unless you have something to say that has a bearing on the investigation?’