Dreaming Spies (10 page)

As the days went by, Holmes had contrived an excuse to visit the ship’s safe, even succeeding in a quick survey of the purser’s list of its contents, and he was forced to acknowledge that nothing of Darley’s appeared to be therein. Not that a clever (or at any rate, experienced) blackmailer didn’t have a dozen ways to summon a needed item of extortion, from onboard confederates to a friend back home willing to drop an envelope into the Royal Post.

Short of physical evidence, we needed to watch for slips of behaviour. Thus, although I did not actively pursue testimony against Darley—or indeed, for him—neither did I avoid the man’s presence as studiously as I might have under other circumstances.

However, despite the enforced intimacy of shipboard life, it proved surprisingly difficult to engage the man in casual conversation. For one thing, despite his apparently robust physique, he seemed often unwell, keeping to his cabin and missing several of the port stops (although his wife and son took advantage of the touristic opportunities—separately, of course). And when he did participate in communal events, he was often surrounded by his fellows—an entirely masculine community—and wrapped up in the minutiae of shared enthusiasms: hunting, horses, and guns chiefly among them. Holmes might get away with lingering on the edge of those conversations, but not I.

The first time he appeared at Miss Sato’s afternoon salon was when the posted topic was “sports.” Naturally, her talk focussed largely on sports exclusive to Japan—sumo wrestling, archery, falconry, and the martial arts—but the discussion that followed was wide-ranging, and took us into baseball, cricket, motorcar racing, and beyond. Then Lord Darley spoke up.

“What about horses? You do have them, don’t you?”

“Yes, we have horses in Japan. Not, I think, as many as you have in England, because we have little free land, but we do have them.”

“What about a hunt?”

Miss Sato exchanged glances with the Japanese man seated nearby. He stood and faced the room. “Certainly we hunt. If you are interested in a day out, I have a friend near Tokyo who hunts. What kind of falcon do you have, sir?”

Confusion reigned for a time, until the difference between hunting-with-Salcons and hunting-on-horseback was straightened out. Lord Darley, it seemed, was an enthusiastic huntsman, and wished to arrange for some horseback riding once dry land was achieved. His monologue concerning the difference between his home mounts and those of the Colonies—Kenya and India, for the most part—would have gone on for some time, had not the purser gently moved to rescue Miss Sato, suggesting that she might continue this conversation elsewhere while the room was cleared for tea.

It turned out that Miss Sato was to some degree familiar with both
horses and riding equipment, and amiably set about describing the differences between the traditional Japanese saddle and those of the English and Western schools. However, when it came to details of the horses themselves, she regretfully shook her head and admitted that she knew nothing about the angle of pasterns. The earl was taken aback at this woeful ignorance, but his reproach was soothed when she offered to locate a stable near Tokyo for his entertainment.

He reluctantly let her be pulled away by a couple of adolescent boys who were interested in jujitsu, a martial art about which she protested that she knew little, but I slipped in beside the earl.

“I’d be very interested to know of a good public stable near Tokyo, if you hear of one,” I said earnestly.

He looked at me in surprise, running an eye down my length as if judging the angle of my pasterns. I did not, it would seem, have the appearance of a great lover of horses. Still, he replied with no apparent disbelief. “Oh, you don’t want public stables, Mrs Russell. Not unless they’re a whole lot better than those you find in other countries. Ill-tempered nags with no wind, for the most part. See if the gel there can find some people with their own place.”

Before one of the others could interrupt, I asked him what he thought about the saddles that Miss Sato had described, then agreed with his opinion that they sounded more like the saddles in museums than those he used.

“I suppose that makes sense,” I said thoughtfully. “The Samurai were fighters, they’d need something secure to brace against as they were aiming their bows or swinging a weapon.”

A second, more appraising glance, this time at my unexpected sensibility. We were soon launched into a rather more technical discussion than I was qualified for, but in those situations, I generally fall back on an open declaration of ignorance followed by a series of admiring questions. Most men read this as self-deprecating expertise, although there is always the danger that the man will be astute enough to see past the performance and suspect coquetry.

Lord Darley did not appear astute. Amiable, yes. August and self-absorbed
and well pleased with his own appeal, yes—but not astute. He was the sort of aristocrat in whom generations of in-breeding and privilege led to a belief that his ermine robes were not only deserved, but proof of the rightness of the universe.

I left his presence feeling the need of a good cold, invigorating bath, to clear away the honeyed assumptions of wealth. Later, I informed Holmes that as far as I was concerned, if Darley had provided Society secrets to a blackmailer, he probably hadn’t realised it—and if he had, nothing would convince the man he was wrong to use whatever resources he had to produce whatever money he needed.

In any event, I wished nothing more to do with the man on this voyage, and was happy to leave the investigation entirely in Holmes’ hands.

The ship drove east: across the Bay of Bengal, beneath the end of the Andaman chain, down the Straits of Malacca. Since the combination of motion and enclosure was anathema to my well-being, I spent much of the time on one deck or another, either in my native First Class or with the Americans in Third. Not only were the two sets of lessons demanding—locking both Japanese grammar and Buddhist prayers onto our tongues, fitting Japanese customs and Buddhist attitudes into our minds—but we were forced to negotiate all these lessons amidst a constant stream of interruptions, from children, the other passengers, and the world past the railings.

Too, my nocturnal disturbances continued, with recurring variations on the dream of flying objects and a new and more ominous image of an anonymous haunting figure. Disturbing dreams had not been a problem for many years, and I was not at all pleased with this new development.

Afterwards I wondered if, but for these distractions, I might have caught word of the ship’s poltergeist earlier. Instead, it required a trio of overheard conversations.

Boys will play rude games
.

Ship’s light sparkles on the waves
.

Life goes on unseen
.

Shipboard travel is always a compromise, even for those fortunate souls immune to gastric distress. Deck cabins have a window, permitting fresh air and a minimum of smells from the engine and kitchen, and even in rough weather the window can be left open (unlike the poor benighted souls below, whose portholes must be screwed shut when the seas rise). On the other hand, having the promenade deck just outside one’s room inflicts the constant noises of travellers at play: strolling, playing quoits or cards, scolding children or—worst by far—carrying on shipboard flirtations. I have, at times, fallen back on the suites designed for the very rich, but the nerve-grating habits of the neighbours tend to drive me back down to the realms of the lower classes. In any event, our neighbours this time would have been the Darleys, who in such close quarters could not have failed to notice Holmes’ glowers.

The solution is bribery. Lavish applications of cash can shift one’s quarters to the cooler side, arrange for table-mates who are interesting (or, lacking that, taciturn), and even lead to the rearrangement of the deck’s fixtures to create an obstacle outside of one’s windows. Once or
twice I’ve managed to shut the deck outside my rooms entirely, ensuring a degree of peace while forcing promenaders to bounce back and forth and back again, frustrated from completion of their endless circuits.

We didn’t manage that this time, although we did (thanks to a combination of cold cash and a fulsome letter from A High-Ranking Indian Authority) ruthlessly supplant a previous reservation and take over a large, airy, relatively quiet promenade-deck suite, with a more or less functional electrical fan, located precisely halfway along the ship’s length to assure optimal steadiness.

Although I still spent most daylight hours out of doors, the seas were generally calm enough that most nights, I could retreat to my bunk for a few hours. This was the case as we worked our way down the Malacca Straits. I brushed my teeth, made sure the window was as wide open as it got, directed the fan, and stripped the bedclothes down to a single sheet. Having checked that my thermos jug had been filled with ice water, and that my clock, torch, water glass, and throwing knife were on the little table, I climbed into bed. After a few pages, I switched out the light.

It was one of the blessed nights when I succeeded in convincing my central organs that the gentle motion all around was a soothing thing, maternal as a grandmother’s arms. I relaxed. I felt fine. I slipped down, softly, to sleep …

“Did you ask the Chips?” blared an English voice inches from my ear.

Answered by a drawl. “He said he was busy with some dashed job for the Captain and couldn’t help us.”

“What about Sparks?”

“Seemed to think it might be too dangerous. What about you? Did you talk to the chappie in the smoking room?”
Chips
was the ship’s carpenter;
Sparks
, the radio man; and my ears instantly identified the drawler: Thomas Darley. Which made the co-respondent Monty Pike-Elton.

“I rather got the impression that several others got there before us,” Pike-Elton bleated.

“There’s the bath steward—nobody’d expect us to hide it in the baths.”

“Yes, but we wanted to open the hunt to girls as well, and they’d complain
we weren’t playing cricket. They can’t very well go poking around the men’s baths.”

“Some of them would,” said Darley.

“And how! Did you see what the Wilson girl was wearing? Don’t know that you’d need to get
her
into a game of strip poker!”

“How about the engineer?”

Were it not for the vague puzzle of what “it” might be, I’d have long since emptied my iced water out the porthole onto the pair of them. Holmes’ change of breathing told me that he was listening, too.

They dismissed the Chief Engineer as being the standard humourless Scot, the Chief Steward as being unbribable, and the boots steward as being the opposite—all too willing to sell information to anyone. Neither, I noted, brought up the library steward. Possibly unaware that such a person existed.

“So we’re back to the purser,” Pike-Elton said.

“He’s such an obvious choice.”

“Precisely! Nobody would expect the two of us to go for the obvious.”

Somehow, I doubted that.

A low voice came from the other bunk. “Russell, would you object to a spot of target practise from my Webley?”

“Have you any idea what they’re talking about?”

“The tone of their remarks indicates some sporting entertainment.”

It was true: had they been planning a bomb or a burglary, even these two might have tried to keep their voices down a touch.

“The purser’s office isn’t very large,” Darley complained.

“Big enough to hide a lady’s hat.”

Ah.

“Not with that ruddy great feather on it.”

“Cut the feather off.” There was a pause as they considered the denuded headgear, then burst into ill-stifled guffaws. “Still,” Pike-Elton continued, “we’ll have to convince the fellow that we’re not his belowdecks ghost.”

“Yes, what d’you suppose he meant by that? You suppose the Americans are up to something?”

“Getting the drop on us? I don’t know, those places the purser was asking about don’t sound like their style. I can see the Americans poking around the bridge, but way down in the bilges? Never.” It was clear that Montgomerie Pike-Elton would never be caught dead that far belowdecks.

“That New Yorker’s white suit would never be the same, true. Well, ships have ghosts, and any rumours of odd noises in the night will just make it all the harder for people to sort out the clues. We can see the purser tomorrow, ask if he’s got a drawer we could stash the hat in.”

“Got a smoke? I gave that girl my last one.”

“The ugly one? Why’d you do that?”

“She asked me.”

“Ooh, ever the gentleman! Lord, Tommy, she reminds me of my mother’s favourite hunter.”

“She does rather whinny, doesn’t she? But in the dark, I’d—”

I hadn’t heard Holmes swing out of bed, but his voice now snarled out from the window. “If you two are not gone in ten seconds, you will be feeding the sharks!”

Silence, followed by the sound of retreating heels.

That night’s dream was a variation on the earthquake-and-
Alice
cards: a sinuous black cat crept along the back of some shelves, its progress marked by a steady rain of fallen knick-knacks.