Dangerous Sea (12 page)

She put a finger against his lips. ‘Hush now. We’ve only known each other a few hours. Much too soon to be using big little words like love.’

‘Only a few hours but I feel as if I have known you all my life. Please, Philly, don’t –’

He was interrupted by Perry who dragged up a chair and sat down, demanding a drink.

‘You’re bottled already,’ Philly told him.

‘No I’m not.’ His elbow slipped off the edge of the table and his head jerked.

‘Where’s your girl, anyway?’ she said crossly.

‘I ditched her. She bored me. Waiter! Whiskey sour! I can’t drink this muck. It gives me a headache.’

‘Perry!’ Frank said in exasperation. ‘Can’t you see, you’re butting in. We don’t want you.’

‘Well, you’ve got me, so there. I think you’re being beastly, both of you. I told you, Philly. I found him first. You always take my things. It’s not fair.’

‘Oh, do stop bleating, Perry. Be a dear and go and find Mother.’

‘She’s lying down with one of her “heads”, so there. I can’t go back to the cabin.’

‘I’m not a “thing”, anyway,’ said Frank, annoyed and by now a little drunk himself.

‘What are you then? A person? You can’t be a real person. You haven’t even got a name. What
do
you call yourself? You’re a lord, I know that. But are you Duke something? Or maybe a dukelet – a duke in training.’

‘Call me what you like,’ Frank said crossly, taking Philly’s hand. ‘Dance?’

‘Not yet, Frank, I’m pooped out. Perry, don’t be a bore. What have you done with that girl of yours?’

‘I told you. She bored me. Everything bores me except you and Frank . . . No, I’m serious, Frank. What’s your name? It’s ridiculous not knowing what to call you.’

Frank sighed. ‘I’m called Lord Corinth, if you must know, until my father dies and then I become the Duke of Mersham. But I don’t want to be a duke. I’m going to give it up – renounce it – if they’ll let me. I’m a Communist and we don’t believe in having an aristocracy.’

‘Oh, that’s bullshit, Frank. You love being an aristocrat just like I love being a Roosevelt – even if it’s only a minor one.’ Perry prodded him with the spite of the envious drunk.

Frank might have had some difficulty replying politely but at this moment the Purser appeared and asked him to go to Lord Benyon’s cabin where he was needed. Guiltily, he sprang to his feet, knocking over his champagne glass, said a perfunctory ‘goodbye’ to the twins and hurried back to his employer. Philly, rather put out at his abrupt departure – she wasn’t used to men leaving her on the dance floor – shrugged and said, ‘I guess, Perry my sweet, if you’re not too drunk to dance, I’ll have to make do with you after all.’

Appropriately, the band struck up ‘Dancing with Tears in my Eyes’ and, by the time they reached ‘Stormy Weather’, Perry and Philly were entwined like lovers, consoling each other for life’s disappointments as they had done ever since childhood.

When he was told how Tom Barrett’s corpse had been found hanging from a hook in the cold room, Frank blanched.

‘That’s horrible . . . disgusting. These people . . . will they stop at nothing?’ He shuddered. ‘First, they shoot at us – hoping the car will smash and kill us all – and now they kill poor Barrett. But I don’t understand. Why was he naked and why didn’t they just toss his body overboard?’

‘To answer your second question first,’ Edward said, returning to the cabin after making his report to London, ‘pushing a body overboard is not so easy. A lifeless body is very heavy to manoeuvre and the
Queen Mary
isn’t some little tramp steamer. There’s always someone about on deck and the guard-rails are mostly very high. You might be able to jump overboard without anyone noticing, if you were determined to commit suicide, but to throw someone over, dead or alive, would be almost impossible without being seen.’

‘But why was he killed?’ Frank persisted. ‘Why not kill Lord Benyon? I’m sorry, sir, but you know what I mean. You were alone in here working and there for the taking.’

‘Thank you very much,’ Benyon said with a grimace. ‘That makes me feel very relaxed.’

‘But Frank’s right,’ Verity chimed in. ‘Why kill Barrett and put us all on our guard?’

‘Well, I can think of three reasons,’ Edward said. ‘First, he was the strong man in our party, trained to deal with trouble and armed, so to have him out of the way must make the murderer feel much safer. Second, as I say, Barrett was armed. His clothes, his wallet, are missing and so is his gun. I’ve searched the cabin – no sign of it.’

‘That was so horrible – that he should be naked,’ Verity said. ‘Why did they do that to him? To humiliate him? It is too awful.’

‘I don’t know why they did that,’ Edward said sombrely. ‘I’ve been trying to work out what he was wearing. I think he was wearing that blue jacket and blue linen trousers.’

‘Yes, and those yachting shoes he liked. Said they gave him grip,’ Forrest added.

‘And don’t forget the tie. Was it regimental?’ Verity added.

‘No, not regimental. It was bright pink . . . I know, it was a Leander tie! I’m sure, now I think of it, he said he rowed. Well,’ he continued grimly, ‘if we see any of those clothes on somebody, there’s our murderer but I don’t suppose that’s likely. I expect they were thrown over the side.’

‘Except the gun,’ Benyon suggested. ‘I can see why the murderer or murderers – there may be more than one – took the gun but why the clothes?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps there was something on them – blood possibly – which the murderer didn’t want us to see.’

‘You said there was a third reason, Uncle, why Barrett was killed.’

‘He might have recognized his murderer.’

‘You mean among the passengers?’ Verity asked.

‘Or crew, I suppose.’

They looked at each other uncomfortably. At last Sam Forrest said, ‘I guess we’ll have to keep a twenty-four-hour watch.’

Edward looked at him gratefully. ‘Is that an offer to be one of the watchers?’

‘Sure is. I guess my President don’t want his guests picked off by some Nazi. There’s five of us –’

‘Six,’ Verity insisted, ‘or else I can’t count. Mr Fern, Edward, Fenton, Frank, Sam and me. Do we have a gun among us?’

They all looked at Verity and then at Edward. ‘If Verity says she’s going to do something, she does it,’ he said.

She looked at him and smiled. She couldn’t help thinking that this was a very different man from the one she had met two years before who regarded all women as delicate objects to be kept on a pedestal and worshipped but never allowed to
do
anything.

‘That’s settled then. But no gun?’ she said.

‘I’m afraid not,’ Edward said.

‘I’ve got this little piece,’ Forrest drawled, sliding a revolver out of his pocket. ‘Never without it. Mine’s a rough world and so I carry this.’

They all looked at him in amazement and, in Verity’s case, awe.

‘Well, that’s comforting,’ Marcus Fern said, ‘though I don’t suppose we can draw a gun on the
Queen Mary
. Could we ask the Captain to lend us one of the crew to add to our forces?’

‘In an emergency,’ Edward said, ‘but I think there’s enough of us. There are only three more days, after all . . .’

But, early the next morning, the wind began to blow.

At eight thirty, when Edward and Frank went down to the dining-room for breakfast, they found they were almost alone. It was Sunday so perhaps it was not surprising but, as the movement of the ship grew increasingly unsettling, the late risers became ‘missing, believed seasick’. Uncle and nephew were both good sailors but the roll of the ship was very much greater than they had anticipated. It wasn’t just a normal roll but an alarming, corkscrew motion which made it very difficult to walk.

The waiter, mopping up the spilled coffee – it was almost impossible to drink from a cup without it spilling – informed them that they had met a fifty-five mile an hour gale and that the next twelve hours were going to be very unpleasant. ‘They’ve reduced speed to fifteen knots,’ he told them, with grim satisfaction. ‘It’s the first real storm the
Queen
’s had to weather.’

‘I thought they’d designed this ship to be the most stable of any great liner. It certainly doesn’t feel like it,’ Frank said fretfully.

They soon gave up their meal and went on deck but found the absence of hand-rails in the corridors – which were much wider than those in most liners – made even walking dangerous. In the lounge, the unanchored furniture was sliding across the floor and stewards were having to corral armchairs, like heifers, inside rope barriers.

When they at last got on deck the wind and rain took their breath away. The seas were mountainous and the great ship seemed to slide down the side of one wave with no thought of ever rising up the slope of the next. Edward asked a passing crew member if the storm was worse than expected but he pretended not to hear.

The altar had not been set up in the lounge so there was no chance of praying for calm. The Sunday service, the Purser informed them, had been postponed so they staggered back to Benyon’s suite to find him lying in his berth feeling very unwell. Fenton, who seemed unaffected by the motion of the ship, said, ‘I called the doctor and he’s promised to be here in the next hour but apparently there are some seriously ill passengers. There have been several accidents and he said someone’s broken their leg falling downstairs.’

Verity was sitting on the bed wiping Benyon’s forehead with a cold flannel but she was looking rather green and her skin was clammy.

‘You’d better go and lie down,’ Edward told her.

‘Oh, don’t fuss. I’m all right.’ No sooner had she uttered the words than a particularly fearsome wallow made her go a deeper shade of green and she only just made the lavatory in time. Edward wanted to help but she waved him away. ‘It’s nothing,’ she gasped. ‘Go and see Mr Fern. He’s suffering too.’

Fern was in bed looking pale and wan. He said he had been trying to read but had given it up. ‘All I can do now is just pray for it to stop. Do you think it will
ever
stop?’ he inquired mournfully.

Frank wandered off to see if he could find the twins. They weren’t in any of the public rooms, as far as he could see, and a steward directed him to their cabin on A Deck.

He knocked and there was a muffled ‘Come in.’

‘Oh, it’s you,’ Philly said faintly. She was wearing a silk dressing-gown and her hair was mussed and uncombed. Her white, almost transparent, skin looked even more like tightly drawn muslin than usual. ‘It’s Mother. She’s not good at sea and she only came on the
Queen Mary
because they told her it wouldn’t roll – but it’s worse than the
Normandie
.’

‘Can I do anything?’

‘Come and see her. I’ve told her all about you. Maybe you can distract her.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

Mrs Roosevelt was indeed in a bad way. She had vomited up everything she could and was now retching in that painful way which is more like hiccups than anything else.

‘How are you, Mrs Roosevelt?’ Frank said, with some embarrassment. As a first encounter, this was probably not the best time for small talk and he wondered if the poor woman would really want him to see her prostrated.

‘Ma, this is Lord Corinth – Frank – who we were telling you about.’

‘Lord Corinth, I’m so pleased to . . .’ She made an attempt to raise her head from the pillow but fell back.

‘Please don’t move, Mrs Roosevelt. Is there anything I can get to make you more comfortable?’

‘No . . . no, thank you. Forgive me . . . could you get my eau de Cologne from the shelf over the basin in the bathroom?’

Frank went in to the bathroom to find that all the little bottles which had been on the shelf were rolling about on the floor. He got down on his knees, gathered as many as he could see and put them in the wash basin which was the only available place where they would not roll straight back on to the floor. There seemed to be an armamentarium of drugs. He picked up one bottle but it was not the eau de Cologne. When he finally identified it, he gathered it up with another bottle and, without thinking, read the label: ‘Arsenic trioxide. Danger – take as directed.’

He wondered why she should be taking arsenic but, at that moment, Philly appeared in the bathroom and Frank passed the scent bottle to her.

‘I think I’d better go,’ he whispered. ‘If you feel up to it, come up on deck later. The storm is something you should . . . you know, witness . . . to tell your grandchildren.’

She looked at him as though he were mad and then said in a low voice, ‘I’ll try. Go now. Thank you for coming.’

On the way back to his own cabin, he met Bernard Hunt, who seemed quite untroubled by the ship’s motion. He grasped Frank by the arm and pulled him into the cocktail lounge. ‘Have a drink, my boy. It will steady you.’

‘I don’t think I could but you go ahead.’

‘Well, I will then. I know it’s only ten o’clock but a small brandy, Roger, please.’

He took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth before remembering his manners. ‘You don’t smoke, do you? Disgusting habit – always meant to give it up.’

Frank looked at the man curiously. He was almost sure he was drunk but he wasn’t quite experienced enough to be certain. Hunt put a hand on his knee. It was casual enough but Frank had no wish to be mauled by those yellow fingers with their bitten nails. He slid down on a sofa but Hunt pursued him. A particularly violent plunge, which seemed to set the
Queen Mary
on her side, gave Frank an excuse to struggle to his feet.

‘I don’t like this at all,’ he said, not certain whether he referred to Hunt’s groping or the ship’s motion. ‘Did it do this on the maiden voyage?’

‘Did
she
do this, you mean. Ships are feminine. No, but it amuses me, this bucking and twisting. She’s showing her feminine side. Know what I mean?’

He smiled, showing yellow, equine teeth. ‘But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.’ Frank was now sure the man was drunk – at ten o’clock in the morning – and he tried to be amused but was inwardly rather revolted. ‘I hear you were in Spain. Good show and all that. Meet a man there called Griffiths-Jones? A Party worker – one of the best.’