by Fiona Leitch
He looked at me for a moment, then gave a small laugh. “Yeah, that sounds bad doesn’t it? I didn’t even really know her that well. But she was alright, you know?”
“I’ll take your word for that.” I picked up my knife and fork and looked at him. “Are we done?”
He sighed. “You still hate me, then?”
“Why on earth would I hate you?” I said, and for a moment I thought he was actually going to answer that. But he obviously thought better of it.
“Fair enough. Look, I just wanted to come and make sure you were okay - ” he eyed my massive plate of food - “I can see you are. I wanted to say, I know you didn’t kill her.” I was surprised to hear a slight hoarseness in his voice, like he was suppressing some emotion. I looked at him and was even more surprised to see a look of genuine worry on his face. “I want you to know, I’m on your side. I know you, Bell. You’re not a killer.”
I felt tears pricking my eyes again. Damn you, Quigley! I swallowed hard, trying not to show that I was actually quite touched by his concern.
“I don’t suppose you know why your girlfriend invited me to her cabin just as she was about to get done in, do you?” I asked. He shook his head.
“I don’t know. Like I said before, maybe she was going to call a truce. She didn’t tell me she was going to talk to you, but then we weren’t joined at the hip.” He looked embarrassed - another first. “I mean, we were joined at the hip in that we, you know, physically - ”
“Yeah, yeah, believe it or not I had guessed you were doing the horizontal macarena,” I said, rolling my eyes. He snorted.
“Horizontal macarena… You always did have a way with words.”
“Maybe I should think about becoming a writer, what do you reckon?”
“Nah, you’re not that good,” he said, grinning. I flapped a hand at him.
“If you’re not going to help me, bugger off so I can eat my breakfast,” I said. He stood up as I pointedly picked up my knife and fork.
“You do realise she was mad jealous of you, don’t you?” he said, and my hand stopped halfway to my mouth with a forkful of poached egg on it.
“She was jealous of me?” I was astounded.
“Why is that such a surprise?” Joel seemed equally astounded that I was astounded. “I mean, look at you…”
Exactly, I thought, though I wasn’t about to say it out loud. Overweight and approaching 50.
Joel though, the bastard, seemed to know what I was thinking. “Look at your career,” he said, clarifying it. “You’re an amazing writer, you’ve had bestsellers all over the place. Louise liked to say her background and her lack of education had held her back, but she knew it was just an excuse. You had the same kind of childhood and it didn’t stop you. She was in awe of you.”
“In awe of me?” I still didn’t quite believe it.
“And then, of course…” Joel’s voice trailed away as he stared at me.
“What?” I said, but his gaze was starting to make me feel hot.
“She knew that I still - you know what I’m trying to say, don’t make me say it.” I just stared at him, thinking, you have got to be feckin’ kidding me. “She knew I regretted what happened - that I still had feelings - ”
The egg on my fork slipped off and smooshed into a puddle of hollandaise with a loud and farty-sounding splat. Joel stopped and looked at it, then at me, sitting there with my mouth open. I hastily shut it.
“Your bacon’s getting cold,” he said, and turned and left.
My bacon was getting cold. I ate it thoughtfully. There was a lot to unpack from that conversation. Joel still - I swerved around that thought. Louise had been jealous of me? It seemed unlikely. But then, I did have a string of bestsellers and awards and lots of readers, and what did she have over me? Her relative youth, and lots of media attention, which she had always courted. She had written a wildly successful memoir, which had sold loads but had also caused a fair bit of controversy, as there were whispers that maybe not all of it was strictly true. I’d thought that was a very diplomatic way of putting it, because I’d read it and the whole thing sounded like bollocks to me. But who knew? There were certain things in my own childhood (and more recent past) that I’d kept to myself, and if I suddenly came out with them now doubtless not everyone would believe me. And it hardly mattered now anyway, because she was dead.
Maybe one of the figures from her murky past was on this ship, and had seized the opportunity to wreak revenge upon her for outing them in her book? But that seemed unlikely; they were low level criminals on the streets of Manchester, and if anything the notoriety that had accompanied Louise’s book had probably given them huge props amongst their fellow felons. No, whoever had killed Louise had had a grudge against her now, not from her past.
Listen to me! Hercule Poirot without the moustache. Although as a woman of a certain age I did have a small one that kept appearing (along with a few random hairs on my chinny chin chin), and the ‘little grey cells’ were becoming outnumbered by long grey hairs, but you know what I mean. I shook my head and mopped up runny egg yolk and hollandaise sauce with a hunk of toasted English muffin.
The thought of hunks and English muffins immediately led me back to Joel. He still - there was no avoiding it forever - he still had feelings for me! I had some choice feelings for him, too, but I assumed his were of the more romantic persuasion, rather than the sort that led to you Googling ‘how to make a voodoo doll’ and ordering pins.
When I had met Joel at the Smoking Gun awards, many years ago now, he’d been the new enfant terrible of British crime writing while I was, I suppose, part of the establishment. Why he’d fancied me in the first place I could never quite work out, but he had. He’d celebrated his win over me in the Best Crime Novel award by plying me with drinks and badgering me for a bunk up. I’m not a complete pushover but it’s safe to say I wasn’t much of a challenge after the second bottle. It had however grown into something much more than that, and by the time the awards came around again we were married. We laughed, we talked about books and movies, we had fun. But it wasn’t enough for him - no, I reminded myself sharply, I wasn’t enough for him - and he’d cheated on me with a string of casual lovers, most of them one or two night stands, ‘nothing serious’, as he’d put it. It might not have been serious to him, but it was to me. I’ve never exactly been a nun (what can I say? I’m a part time hedonist. I love pleasures of all kinds, including but not limited to sex) but I have always been a monogamist, a one-man (at a time) woman. Well, there was that once in South America, when I was travelling - but it was all consensual and I never did it again, forget I even mentioned it.
Anyway… I finished eating and sat back in my chair, stuffed full of food and wild thoughts.
Will returned soon after that, bearing a passenger list and a map of the ship. The Chief Purser, it seemed, was convinced of neither my guilt or my innocence, she just wanted the murder solved as quickly and quietly as possible, with the minimum of fuss or publicity. If that meant helping Will in his unofficial investigation, so be it. The Captain too was happy for - or maybe resigned to - Will poking around, as long as he did it discreetly. How Harry, the head of security, felt about it we knew only too well, but it looked like there was nothing he could do about it.
Will kissed me and smiled when he saw that I’d eaten.
“You’re feeling better, then,” he said. I nodded. I decided not to mention Joel’s visit until I’d had time to process it.
“What have you got there?” I asked, as he spread out the map, trying not to get hollandaise sauce on it.
“It’s a floor plan of Louise’s deck,” he said. “We can mark out who was where when she died.”
There was a polite knock on the door and I groaned.
“Who is that now?” I said. “This bloody cabin has been like Clapham Junction this morning.” Will raised an eye brow; as far as he was aware Zoé had been my only visitor. Dammit. “Joel popped
by,” I said lightly, and his other eye brow joined the first.
“What did he want?” he asked, but there was another knock before I could reply.
“Housekeeping!” came the muffled voice from behind the door. I opened it as Will gathered the map and passenger list up again.
“I’m terribly sorry,” I said, trying to sound lighthearted, “but I can’t leave.”
“I know, madam,” said the room cleaner, a young Asian woman. “I can work around you.”
Will opened the glass doors onto the balcony and gestured me outside. I smiled at the cleaner and followed him, shutting the door behind me.
We sat on the sun loungers and watched the seagulls swooping low over the waves. Will cleared his throat and spoke without looking at me.
“So, what did Joel want?”
To declare his undiminished, undying love for me, I thought. Not helping, Bella…
“He wanted to see if I was okay,” I said.
“Hmm.”
I turned to him, reaching out a hand to grab his. “Don’t ‘hmm’ like that!” I said, earnestly. “Honestly, you don’t need to worry about Joel. He just wanted to let me know he doesn’t think I’m guilty, and after seeing that bloody picture on Twitter I need to hear that from as many people as possible.”
Will smiled at me. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m being an idiot.”
“Yes you are. But you’re my idiot…”
He laughed and kissed my hand, and we stayed like that until the cleaner knocked on the window to signal that she was done.
Chapter 13
Will spread out the map again on the now-empty table, and laid a note pad next to it. The cabins were clearly marked out, either side of the wide corridor, with the Pearl and its kitchens at one end of the ship, and a bar and viewing lounge at the other.
“There are so many cabins!” I cried in dismay. I knew the corridor was long, but there were far more than I’d realised. Will nodded.
“There are 110 cabins on that deck,” he said. “But just here - ” he tapped the middle of the map - “there’s a wall of lifts and a staircase down to the Excelsior’s lower level, on the deck below. The only way of accessing the other end of the corridor is to go down those stairs and up the other side, so I think we can discount all the cabins beyond that point - I don’t think the murderer would want to risk being seen by anyone in the Excelsior, as they wouldn’t have had time to clean themselves up before leaving the murder scene. Louise rang the pursers’ desk at 9:33 exactly - I checked, they have a daily log where they enter all phone calls and so on. The duty purser came straight up to the Pearl, which I reckon would take four, maybe five minutes, so say 9:37, 9:38. You moaned a bit - don’t look like that, you did - but you’d still left the Pearl by 9:40. It can’t have taken you long to reach the cabin?”
“Only about two minutes,” I said. I traced my route on the map. “I came out of the Pearl and walked through the Excelsior upstairs bar, then out past the kitchen, to her cabin there…”
“So at the very most, the murderer had ten minutes between her calling the pursers’ desk and you arriving at the cabin, to get into her room, attack her and leave without being seen.”
“Hmm…” Something was bothering me, niggling at my brain, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Will looked at me.
“What is it?”
“Why was the murderer in such a hurry? I mean, I know you wouldn’t want to hang around after you’d just topped someone, but they literally got in - she let them in or they broke in, we don’t know, but the lock wasn’t broken - they got in, stabby stabby - ” I absentmindedly mimed a Norman Bates-style stabbing - “…then straight back out again.”
“Why were they in such a hurry, unless they knew you were coming?”
“Exactly.” I shut my eyes, saw Louise bleeding out in front of me, and opened them again quickly. “How long does it take for someone to bleed to death?” I asked. Will looked thoughtful.
“Depends on the wound,” he said. “If her throat had been slit all the way across - ” he swallowed hard, and I knew he was remembering a crime scene in Venice - “it would have been quick. She’d have been unconscious in 60 seconds, maybe less, and dead pretty soon after. But it was a small puncture wound, and with the corkscrew left in and her holding her neck trying to stop the bleeding - and then you, trying to stem it with your scarf - who knows? It could have taken a lot longer. You could never have saved her, even if the blood only looked like a trickle. Even in a hospital it would have been touch and go. They’d have to take the corkscrew out at some point, and then she would have been gushing.” I grimaced and he stopped abruptly. “Sorry. Not a nice thought.”
“So who had the cabins nearby?” I asked. Will took up a pen and consulted his list, adding names to the cabins as he spoke.
“Well, out of the people who we know had contact with Louise - basically the other murder mystery players - the Bauers were opposite - ”
“Who?” I didn’t recognise the name.
“Mr and Mrs Too Innocent. It looks like they’re genuine holidaymakers and not actors after all,” said Will. I laughed.
“Well, we’re both rubbish detectives, then,” I said. But then something occurred to me. “Unless…”
“Unless what?”
‘Bauer, Meyers - they’re both German surnames. We know that Louise was full of Scheiße when it came to her childhood, so could there be some kind of Teutonic connection there?” It seemed unlikely, but stranger things happen at sea.
Will shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t think so. That’s pretty tenuous, even for a mystery writer…” He dodged the slap I aimed at him.
“I’m just spitballing here,” I said, thinking aloud. “Maybe there’s some kind of family connection from the past, and they were here to confront her or bump her off. That would account for their suspicious actions…”
Will laughed. “What suspicious actions? I think we were looking a bit too hard for dodgy characters.”
“Yeah…” I said, slightly reluctantly. “I guess they probably are completely legit, even if he should be locked up for wearing those lederhosen. Okay, who else have we got?”
“Next to the Bauers are Lauren Donaldson and Peter Maguire.”
“The gorgeous Jamaican Marilyn Monroe and the skinny bloke who’s so white he’s almost reflective?”
Will laughed. “Yes, that’s them. He is terribly white, isn’t he? Nice couple though.”
“What have we got on them?”
“Absolutely bugger all at the moment, I need to do some digging. They were on Louise’s team, though.”
“Okay. What about the cabin next to Louise? There were definitely people in there,” I said, remembering the moans and groans I’d heard as I knocked on the cabin door.
Will looked at his list. “That’s Sylvia and Heather.”
I was surprised. “Sylvia and Heather? But I heard…” It suddenly clicked, how Heather and Karl had both turned up so quickly, and at the same time. “Karl, the randy little - I bet he’s got a woman in every port.” Will looked at me, puzzled. “Karl and Heather were the first people to get to me.” Will still looked puzzled. “Together. Looking red in the face and slightly dishevelled.”
Understanding dawned. “Ahhh…” Will laughed, amazed. “Karl and Heather? She’s old enough to be his mother.”
“And rich enough for it not to matter,” I said. “She told me her ex owned and ran one of the biggest manufacturing companies in the UK and I get the impression she’s done rather well out of the divorce settlement. I might be cynical, but I hope she just sees it as a bit of holiday fun. Something to get back at her ex-husband.”
“The one who’s sleeping with his secretary. Who looks like Louise…” Will looked at me meaningfully.
“I know,” I said. “And I know she disliked Louise because of that. But it’s hardly a strong enough motive for murder, is it? And I’m certain she was with Karl. She
was definitely in her cabin with someone, anyway. It sounded like they were very busy, and were on the verge of finishing being busy at any minute, if you know what I mean.”
We both sat for a moment, involuntarily imagining Heather and Karl getting jiggy with it. I shuddered and turned back to the map.
“So this room here - ” I tapped the blueprint. “This is the Pearl, yeah? Who’s in the cabin between that and Louise?”
Will consulted his list again. “Ah yes. They used to let that out with Louise’s cabin as a connecting room, usually for passengers with children. But the Chief Purser said they used to get complaints about the noise so they stopped renting it out - it’s right next to the Pearl’s kitchen. The chef uses it as a store room.”
“So could the murderer have holed up in there and got clean?” I wondered. Will looked thoughtful.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I think the connecting door is blocked up, or locked at the very least, so they couldn’t have used that. There is a door out into the corridor… I think that’s normally locked too, but the chef might leave it open during service in case they need anything.” He made a note on his writing pad. “I need to go and do some digging.”
I sighed. “I just wish I could come with you.” I looked around the cabin. As prisons went it was pretty plush, and most jails don’t come with room service, but even so I was already starting to go stir crazy.
“I’m going to have a word with the Captain,” said Will. “This is not on, confining you to your cabin! They’re treating you as if you’re guilty with absolutely no proof of anything.”
There was a knock on the door. I rolled my eyes.
“I might be stuck in here but it feels like the whole bloody world wants to visit,” I said. Will opened the door, and I knew from the set of his shoulders that he wasn’t pleased to see whoever was on our doorstep.
“Oh,” he said, then turned to me. “It’s the judge, jury and executioner.”
Behind him, Harry sighed heavily. “There’s no need for that, Mr Carmichael,” he said. Will opened his mouth to say something but I stopped him.