The Widow's Cruise

by Nicholas Blake

  “Five minutes? An hour?”

  “Perhaps half an hour. Not, I think, less. It was when Primrose returned that I got the impression of the feeling-tone I mentioned.”

  “What gave it to you?”

  “Primrose seemed distrait, absorbed in some—how shall I describe it?—some problem or speculation of her own. She sat down apart from me, which was of course symptomatic.”

  “Just sat and thought?”

  “She took out her notebook and began to write. But her pen had run dry, so she borrowed a pencil from me.”

  Nigel held his breath for a few seconds, then asked,

  “An indelible pencil?”

  “No, an ordinary one.” A barely perceptible wrinkling of Mr Chalmers’s huge brow was the only indication that he had felt anything odd in Nigel’s last question.

  “You did not, then or later, ask your daughter what was on her mind?”

  “Certainly not.” Mr Chalmers’s tone was mildly repressive. “The privacy of the child must always be respected.”

  “She was under analysis herself, she told me.”

  “Yes. With a colleague of mine.”

  The ship’s telegraph clanged. Nigel passed his cigarette packet to Mr Chalmers and lit up.

  “You are being most helpful. Will you carry on from there?”

  “About half an hour later, we started back towards the harbour. We had a few words with Mrs Blaydon. She told us she’d bathed after all.”

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “On the far side of the cove—the eastern side: she’d moved over, I suppose, to keep in the sun. Her bathing-things and dress were spread out to dry on the rocks. She had on a bath-robe.”

  “In the sun?”

  “Yes. On the western side there’s a sharp drop from the track to the rocks, with a shoulder of hill rising just above the track. All that side was in shadow.”

  “And her sister?—had she bathed?”

  “I couldn’t say. Mrs Blaydon told us that Miss Ambrose had gone on ahead; she said we might catch up with her.”

  “Did you?”

  “No. She must have gone out to the ship before we reached the quay.”

  “Mrs Blaydon gave no reason why her sister had gone on ahead?”

  “No. I remember thinking it was almost the first time I’d noticed them apart. Miss Ambrose was something of an emotional vampire, I should say.”

  “Can you give a rough timing for this?”

  “No. Wait a minute. Yes, I can. I looked at my watch and told Mrs Blaydon the Menelaos would be leaving in three-quarters of an hour’s time. So it must have been 5.15.”

  Nigel leant back in his chair. His questions had been following the only line that seemed open to him: but, although it had disclosed one or two curious facts, and one really promising detail, Nigel did not see how this line could lead him towards the murderer.

  “During the afternoon, did you see any other passengers, apart from Mrs Blaydon and Miss Ambrose?”

  “Not after we walked out of the town. I’d noticed Mr Street and that Bentinck-Jones fellow on the quayside then.”

  “Nothing at all that struck you as peculiar?”

  “Well, I did notice, when we got back to the quay, that young Trubody seemed in a bad way.”

  “What? Ill, you mean?”

  “I judged he had had a severe shock, or was in some acute emotional crisis. He rejected my overtures, very abruptly. Wasn’t talking to anyone. He didn’t come out on the caïque with us—caught a later one, I presume.”

  “Yes,” said Nigel, “he only just made it. He and Mrs Blaydon.”

  VII

  Mr Chalmers had only just left the cabin when there was a knock on the door, and Faith Trubody came in, followed by Jeremy Street. Nigel got the impression that the lecturer had been towed in, rather against his better judgment: at any rate, he stood negligently aside, as if dissociating himself from the proceedings, looking around at the appointments of the First Officer’s cabin. His lined, handsome face seemed more of a façade than ever—a façade which might at any moment crumble—revealing what? the real man? or emptiness?

  “Jeremy’s being blackmailed,” the girl breathlessly exclaimed. “I told him he must tell you about it. Of course, it may not have anything to do with the murder, but a man who could do that could——”

  “Just a minute,” Nigel put in. “Could you start at the beginning. And do sit down, won’t you, Miss Trubody.”

  Faith plumped herself down on the First Officer’s bed. “It’s that horrible little man, Bentinck-Jones. He was spying on us on the hillside. Jeremy saw something flashing and then——”

  “My dear girl,” protested Jeremy, a cold irritation in his voice, “if we must wash dirty linen in public——”

  “Dirty linen!” A slightly malicious look appeared on the girl’s face. “When you asked me to marry you!”

  Jeremy Street gave her a furiously angry glance; then, controlling himself, speaking in a clipped voice, told the story. When he had finished, Nigel said,

  “But I don’t understand what’s worrying you. You say that Bentinck-Jones saw you and Miss Trubody in what he interpreted as a compromising situation. He followed you down to the quayside, after you had left her, and threatened to tell her father what he had seen. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “But what proof could he have, to convince Mr Trubody?—it’d be your word, and Faith’s, against his, wouldn’t it?”

  Jeremy Street’s head, with its bleached golden hair, shyed away like a horse’s. “He had a camera, with a telephoto lens,” he said, his lips barely moving.

  “I see. Has he shown you a print?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I don’t know why you didn’t bash up his camera, or throw it into the sea,” cried Faith.

  “Oh, really! This isn’t an American movie.”

  “You see, Jeremy is trying to interest Daddy in some project; and if——”

  “For God’s sake, keep out of this, Faith!” Jeremy turned to Nigel. “What we—I—wondered was if you couldn’t put pressure on Bentinck-Jones and get the film out of his hands.”

  “Pressure? What pressure?” said Nigel unsympathetically. “I’m supposed to be conducting a murder investigation.”

  “That’s the whole point,” said Faith, her green eyes gazing full at Nigel. “You see, last night—just before 9.15 it was—I saw this foul little Bentinck-Jones come up the staircase from where Miss Ambrose’s cabin is, and go out on the deck towards the swimming-pool.”

  “You’re accusing him of the murder?”

  “Well, it’s jolly suspicious, isn’t it?”

  “And the idea is that I should use this information to get back the film from him? Did anyone else see him go out towards the fo’c’s’le then?”

  “I haven’t a clue. I was alone.”

  “But why don’t you do it yourself? If it’s a question of blackmailing the blackmailer——”

  “This is getting us nowhere,” interrupted Jeremy, with a supercilious air. “I should have thought that, as you are in charge of the investigation, you could have the fellow’s cabin searched.”

  “It was searched last night,” said Nigel.

  “Indeed? Then——”

  “But not for camera film.”

  “Well then,” said the girl, “search it again.”

  Jeremy threw up his hands in a theatrical gesture of despair.

  “While we’re about it,” Nigel said, “have you two written out your movements last night?”

  Jeremy Street took a sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to Nigel, who glanced at it.

  9-9.30 lecturing on boat-deck.

  9.30-9.35 (approx.) talked with a few members of audience.

  9.35 went to own cabin.

  9.40 went to bar on after-deck.

  10.0 showed up at dance.

  “Have you corroboration of all this?” Nigel asked.

  “I was in full view o
f about fifty people while I lectured. I don’t know the names of the people I talked to after it, though I could pick them out if you held an identification parade. I’ve no idea if anyone saw me go to my cabin—the man who shares it with me was not there. The bar-tender may or may not remember my drinking from 9.40 to 10.: there was a crowd of Frogs at the bar. Faith will confirm that I turned up at the dance about ten, and stayed there.”

  Ignoring the man’s deliberately riling tone, Nigel turned to Faith.

  “Do you confirm it?”

  “Oh, I expect so. I wasn’t watching the clock, though.”

  “And what about your movements?”

  “I was in the saloon, waiting for the dance to begin, from about nine o’clock. Peter and my father were with me.”

  “Did you leave the saloon at any time between 9 and 10?”

  “Oh no.”

  “Then how did you see Mr Bentinck-Jones creeping out on deck to murder Primrose?”

  Faith bit her thin lower lip, flushing. “I suppose you think that’s very clever. I happened to be standing by the glass door into the saloon. That’s how I saw him come up the stairs. He went out on deck, and turned right, towards the bows of the ship.”

  “Right,” said Nigel briskly, “thank you. I shall not need you any more, Miss Trubody.”

  The girl hesitated, gave Jeremy a dipping, sliding look, then made her exit.

  “Faith seems to be a congenital liar,” Jeremy offered. “Like most women.”

  Nigel made no direct comment on this. “Going back to yesterday afternoon,” he said, “did you in fact ask her to marry you, or is that another of her fictions?”

  “I did. She refused.”

  “How very odd.”

  A ghost of a smile on Jeremy’s face revealed that he took Nigel’s remark as a compliment to his eligibility. “She’s a bit of a delinquent, if you ask me—told me she wanted sexual experience, not marriage.”

  This unusual, if unlikeable, forthcomingness suggested to Nigel that the man was feeling relief because they had moved away from dangerous ground, or was babbling to divert the talk from it. He cast about with random questions, on this side and that, waiting for the signs—an involuntary gesture, a too guarded look, or a feel of greater tension in the air—which told his instinct, trained by much questioning of suspects, that the probe was nearing a sensitive spot.

  “Bentinck-Jones wanted money, I take it?”

  “Presumably. His approach was exceedingly devious, though.”

  “Did you promise him any?”

  “Gracious, no. I stalled.”

  “Where did this happen?”

  “On the quay. I shook him off presently, and took a boat back to the ship. I wanted to get—to think things out.”

  The Asdic in Nigel’s mind faintly pinged. Jeremy Street had altered the course of his last sentence: what had he ‘wanted to get’?

  “But you came ashore again. You returned later in the same caïque as Miss Massinger and myself.”

  “That is so.”

  “Where did you go, the second time?”

  “A little way out of the port. Westwards. I found a bit of shade and read a book.”

  The Asdic had gone silent again.

  “What book?” asked Nigel, quite at a loss for his next move. The effect of this imbecile question was, however, astonishing. Jeremy Street’s handsome head tossed up: he smoothed the hair at the back of it with trembling fingers: his finely-chiselled mouth looked suddenly botched. “What a damned, silly, impertinent question!” he exclaimed.

  “Silly, I expect. But why impertinent?”

  “I use the word in the sense of not pertinent, irrelevant.”

  “You don’t remember the name of the book?”

  “Now look here! I—” Jeremy visibly took a grip on himself. With an ingratiating smile, he went on, “No, actually I don’t. It was some thriller I took out of the ship’s library. Fact is, I didn’t read much—couldn’t get that swine Bentinck-Jones off my mind.”

  After a slight pause, Nigel asked, “From where you were sitting, could you see that track which leads westward out of the town?”

  “Yes. I was above it, on the hillside.”

  “See anyone you knew passing along?”

  “I saw Primrose Chalmers and her parents, walking back towards the town.”

  “Any idea of the time?”

  “Yes. I looked at my watch to see if it was time for me to start back. It was between 5.20 and 5.25.”

  “Miss Ambrose must have walked along the track before then. You didn’t notice her.”

  “No.”

  Nigel seemed to sense a return of the tension, which had eased after they left the subject of Street’s reading-matter.

  “Nothing else you saw, or heard?”

  “I don’t think so. Oh, there was someone—but it could have been a goat—scrambling about on the hillside above me. Earlier. Perhaps an hour before the Chalmerses passed by.”

  A goat, perhaps, thought Nigel: or perhaps a human goat—one that knew the island well.

  VIII

  Nigel felt he could get little further till he had interviewed Melissa Blaydon. A sea-breeze blew in at the cabin window, fluttering its curtain and tempering the heat of the day. Looking out, he saw sea and sky, and an island hazily remote.

  He sat down again, and began to write on a sheet of foolscap paper. It was his custom, in the lull of an investigation, to compile an anthology of oddities—scraps of information, dialogue, query, observation, which had struck him as anomalous and therefore challenging, set down haphazard as they came to mind. Three more cigarette stubs were piled in the ash-tray before he had finished.

  1. Ianthe. Sunstroke, but returned ship alone.

  2. “Bathing-things and dress spread out to dry on the rocks.” Slip of tongue? Freudian? If not, why?

  3. A lot of wetness about—Nikki’s evidence.

  4. What was Jeremy reading? Pornography?—not just after episode with Faith. What would he be humiliated by being known to have read? Or did he return ship to get, not a book, but???

  5. Faith needs her bottom spanked. Would take Ianthe’s word against hers over trouble at school?

  6. What did Peter see on Kalymnos? “I didn’t know then that she’d got sunstroke.” See (1.) Sunstroke explained some peculiar action of Melissa’s—something that gave P. “severe shock”, acute emotional crisis.??? Well, go and ask him, you silly coot.

  7. Pencil, not fountain-pen. First importance—follow up. Pressure. Film.

  8. Primrose’s “secret”, her “plan”—to do with Ianthe? Surely. Why do you push someone into swimming-pool? Clare hit jackpot??

  9. Nikki said C. and I mistaken about seeing him walk away from harbour. A lie. Yet he came clean about episode in Melissa’s cabin. Highly significant?

  10. Why did M. struggle in silence? Why struggle at all?—she’d made assignation with Nikki. No, we’ve only his word for this. Ask her.

  11. No bathing-cap in shower? Looks bad. See (3).

  12. Can Bentinck-Jones’s movements be checked? Under what circumstances could the victim, not the blackmailer, be murdered?

  Nigel brooded over this odd assortment, pushing the pieces about, trying to fit them into one another. Several of them he fairly soon discarded, as if, coming from some different puzzle, they had got into the wrong box. But the remainder—it was astonishing, the way they built up into a section of a picture, of a fantastic picture which, Nigel now realised, he had already, without knowing it, half glimpsed from time to time.

  He added two more entries on the foolscap sheet:—

  13. Landing-tickets. Awkward, but could be fiddled: especially by Nikki.

  14. Clare: the Bishop: Melissa at Delos. Swans.

  As Nigel folded the sheet and pocketed it, the cruise-manager entered with a sheaf of papers.

  “They are nearly complete. I’ve put them in alphabetical order.”

  “Very kind. Did anyone refuse to give us
a statement?”

  “No sir. I didn’t trouble Mrs Blaydon or the Chalmerses, of course. And Miss Trubody told me she gave you the data orally.”

  “You’ve included an account of your own movements last night?”

  Nikki looked wounded. “Sure, sure. Why wouldn’t I? Oh, and there’s a radio message from Scotland Yard just come in.”

  Nigel read it. Ivor Bentinck-Jones was known to Records as a confidence-trickster. Did a stretch in 1947. No conviction since.

  “Changed his profession,” remarked Nigel. “What were you doing on Kalymnos, my friend?”

  Nikki’s lustrous eyes filmed over. “Say, what’s biting you, Mr Strangeways?”

  “Well, the Athenian police can find out—and I don’t suppose their methods are as polite as mine.”

  “Kalymnos, as your great dramatist Gilbert Sullivan wrote, is nothing to do with the case.”

  “Then why bother to lie about your movements there?”

  “Sir! You insult me!” Nikki quivered to the eye-lashes with outrage. “We Greeks are a proud people——”

  “Are you, personally, too proud to burgle Mr Bentinck-Jones’s cabin?”

  “That rat!” The mercurial Nikki beamed. “I will beat him up for you. Anything.”

  “After I’ve had a word with Mrs Blaydon, ask Bentinck-Jones to come along here. Then you can search his cabin. You’re looking for camera-film this time. I doubt if we have authority for this, but it can’t be helped. Don’t go breaking things open, though, or you may get into trouble. Just collect any film or photographs you find lying about. Oh, and one thing more—” Nigel gave Nikki a steady look— “is it possible to get in touch with Kalymnos by radio-telephone?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then will you ask the Captain to do so. I want the authorities on Kalymnos to search around that bathing-place you recommended to Mrs Blaydon.”

  “Search the—? But, Mr Strangeways, whatever for?” The look of bewilderment, or consternation, on the cruise-manager’s face was almost comical.

  “They should search the little bay, and the land between it and the harbour, on either side of the track. They will be looking for clues, Nikki, clues—something a murderer left behind him,” said Nigel with urgency, his eyes fixed on the other man, who was staring at him as if Nigel had diabolical powers. “Will you first go and find the Bishop of Solway. Ask him if he will step up here, please.”