by steve higgs
Eventually, I spotted it, but as I snagged it from the deck and hurried on, I could tell the item in my hand was paper not plastic. Looking down, I saw that I had picked up someone’s business card. I slipped it into my pocket rather than drop it again. I was almost at Flint Magnum’s table, so did I plonk myself down in the seat opposite him and straight out ask him why he killed Jack? Or should I play it more subtly and let him know that I knew what he did even though I had no idea what anyone had done in the hope that he would panic and give himself away.
I didn’t get to say anything though. I had been staring with such focus at my target that I hadn’t looked at the white uniform crossing the room to my right. It was on a converging path, emerging from between two tables just a pace ahead of me. The man in the white uniform pulled out the chair I was heading for and sat.
My heart literally stopped as he turned around and I watched in abject horror as Mr Schooner placed his hat on the table and shook hands with Flint Magnum. He was looking at the man opposite him and ignoring me, the chef’s uniform doing as intended and making me invisible. All he needed to do was look up and he would have me though and I could feel myself about to sneeze. Rather than break my stride and draw attention to myself, I continued onward to pass the table.
As I did so, I could feel the sneeze building, but trying to suppress it, I could hear their conversation. ‘What will you do now that Mr Langley is dead?’ asked Mr Schooner of my mystery man.
I couldn’t see his face, it was already behind me, but it was Flint Magnum’s voice that replied, ‘It is still missing, so my task hasn’t changed.’
‘Aachooo!’ I sneezed.
Mr Schooner turned his head just as I drew level with him. ‘Gesundheit.’ I didn’t stop moving or speak for fear he might recognise my voice, but he whipped out a meaty hand to grab my arm. I froze in horror. ‘Send a waiter over with a gin and tonic. There’s a good girl,’ he instructed. I had been holding my breath so long now I could hear my pulse thumping in my ears, but he let my hand go and smacked me on the rump for good measure and laughed a dirty laugh as I hurried away having never once taken the time to look at me.
What had I just heard? The man that was holding me captive and accusing me of murder was somehow linked to the man I thought might be the murderer. And that man was looking for something.
Outside, in the quiet air drifting in off the ocean, I all but collapsed. My poor heart! I had thought I was busted, and in the split second between Mr Schooner grabbing my arm and asking for the drink, I had played out a dozen scenarios that had me mopping decks in the bowels of the boat with a chain between my ankles to them constructing an actual jail cell for me to be held captive in. I sucked in gasps of air as I pulled off my hat and put my head between my knees. My goodness, that had been scary. Thankfully, it was a short hop back to my suite and the effort and terror had been worth it as I now had the name of the mystery man.
Flint Magnum.
It was an odd name though. It sounded more like a dodgy film star name from the seventies like Rip Torn or Slim Pickens. I was still thinking about the name when I walked up to the security guard outside my suite door.
Oh, my God! I had been thinking about the mystery man and forgotten that I couldn’t just let myself in!
‘Can I help you?’ the man asked.
I flapped my mouth twice but no words came out.
‘Are you here to take Mrs Fisher’s food order?’ He didn’t recognise me, but then I didn’t recognise him and didn’t think he had been one of the ones that was searching my suite earlier.
‘Ack!’ I squeaked, then swallowed and tried again. ‘No, sorry, wrong suite.’ I turned and hurried away. He had been about to let me in but then might have noticed when the chef failed to ever come back out. To protect my ability to venture out again, I needed to maintain the belief that I was trapped inside.
I kept going in the direction I had been heading, leaving the security guard behind me but Jermaine’s door wasn’t all that much further down the passage. Would the guard be watching me and wonder where the door I went in through went?
Perhaps it would be better to keep going, find somewhere to lay low and come back later when he was distracted or had changed over for someone else. Deciding it was a good idea, I soon changed my mind three paces after passing his door when I saw the captain coming towards me. He was escorting a nice-looking couple and gesticulating in the same manner he had with me on our way to my suite just a day ago.
I was trapped again. I couldn’t see how he could possibly not recognise me if I walked right up to him in this tight passage. I was in the uniform of a member of his staff. Would he talk to me? Probably.
Panicked, I turned around yet again and went back to Jermaine’s door. I grabbed the handle and turned it, desperate to get in before the guard looked my way.
It was locked!
Oh, my friggin God!
I wrapped my knuckles on the door as quietly and insistently as I could. The guard was chatting with a pretty brunette lady but he was going to look soon and the captain was less than twenty feet away.
‘Who is it?’ came a voice from the other side. It was muffled but it sounded like Jermaine.
‘Let me in,’ I insisted.
A pause on the other side, ‘Who is it, please?’
Sweat now running from my brow from my stomach clenching fear, I squeaked, ‘It’s Patricia,’ as quietly as I could.
‘Patricia?’
‘Mrs Fisher. The resident of the suite. Open the door.’
The door finally opened just before the captain got to me. My weight was against it so I tumbled inside, bowling over Jermaine as I went head over heels to land on the floor in a heap.
From my inverted position I looked up to discover that it was not, in fact Jermaine, but an altogether different person I was looking at. Confused, I looked around as I tried to right myself. This wasn’t even Jermaine’s room.
I had just busted my way into the wrong butler’s cabin!
Evening
Having apologised and excused myself, I left the poor man alone again and found myself back in the sunlit passage once more. Somehow, in finding myself trapped between the captain and the security guard, I had missed that there was a second door next to Jermaine’s. The suite next to mine must be a reverse image which would put the butler’s accommodation right on the other side of a wall from Jermaine’s.
This time, when I knocked on the right door, it was Jermaine’s face that I saw when it opened. Filled with relief, I gave him a hug once the door closed behind me. Sensing his discomfort, I pushed away again.
‘Sorry. That was more… adventurous than I expected. I ran into Mr Schooner, but he didn’t recognise me.’
Jermaine blew out his breath in horror. ‘What happened?’
‘I’ll tell you about in a minute. I need to get out of this outfit.’ The chef clothes had done the trick, but they didn’t really fit me. The waist band was cutting my belly in two which was mostly about the size of my belly rather than the waist of the trouser, which reminded me that I was supposed to be getting more exercise with Barbie. Maybe she had forgotten I thought hopefully.
‘Hi, Patty,’ she called out brightly as she came through Jermaine’s door.
Nuts.
‘Are you ready for your next session?’ she asked. ‘We need to get this one in now so that we have enough time to rest and recover before bed.’ I wanted to ask if she was joking but I already knew that she wasn’t. ‘You’ll get sore if we don’t keep the muscles supple though, so we need to start with a massage.’ That sounded more like it. ‘I can do that here or at the gym, whichever you prefer.’
‘I’ll get changed then.’ I made it through Jermaine’s small cabin and into my kitchen but they both followed me.
‘Did you find the mystery man?’ Jermaine asked. Somehow, I had forgotten to mention the biggest news of the evening.
I had been undoing my chef’s tunic but stopped and turned back
to face my two… mentally I stopped to consider how it was that I framed my relationship with Jermaine and Barbie. They weren’t exactly friends, not yet anyway since I had only met them yesterday, but I couldn’t think of them as staff either. Accomplices made it sound like I was guilty of something, which I wasn’t so I labelled them as team mates; they were on Team Patricia.
Anyway, the question warranted an answer, so I told them about finding myself making sushi and how he had suddenly been in front of me.
‘Flint Magnum,’ Jermaine repeated the name, wrinkling his nose as if a bad smell had reached it. ‘That doesn’t sound real.’
‘I know, right? He sounds like he should work in the adult film industry or something.’
‘So, what now?’ asked Barbie.
‘You mentioned a central registry of all passengers earlier. Can you find his name on that and find out what room he is in? Then maybe we can follow him and see what he is up to.’ I wanted to add that I needed to break into his room and search it for clues, but I was certain that would not be well received and would absolutely change them from team mates into accomplices.
Jermaine nodded and got to his feet. ‘I can do that,’ he said as he indicated back toward the door into his place. ‘I’ll go now, shall I? If you two are off to the gym?’
‘We are,’ said Barbie, jumping to her feet. Seeing me not moving, she asked, ‘We are, aren’t we?’ I didn’t really want to but the only place I was allowed to visit was the gym so even though I had been out for the last hour, I felt that I should take the chance I was given and suffer through another round of sweaty, breathless exercise with the blonde goddess now waiting for my answer. She did say she was going to give me a massage. Reluctantly I nodded my head.
‘Yay,’ she said for the umpteenth time as she clapped her hands in excitement.
‘I’ll get changed then. Oh, hold on,’ I said as a ray of hope shone on me. ‘I’m not sure I have any clean gym clothes to wear.’
‘I laundered and pressed your clothes from earlier already,’ said Jermaine super helpfully.
I muttered under my breath and went to find my clean gym clothes. ‘I’ll need to buy some new ones anyway. Is there a shop here I can get some in?’ I called back from the bedroom.
Barbie’s voice came back, ‘Sure.’
‘Can you see if the security guy will let us go there and whether he is the one escorting me to the gym or if he needs to call for someone else, please?’
Barbie called through again on her way to the door. I heard a brief exchange, the tinkling sound of her laugh as the security guy was no doubt trying to entertain his way into her knickers and the sound of the door closing again.
With my baggy, shapeless shorts and t-shirt on over a big pair of knickers and a sports bra, I stared at the mirror. Next to Barbie I looked ridiculous. To be fair, so did more than ninety-nine percent of women on the planet but they didn’t have to stand next to her. I could see the roll of belly fat sitting on the top of my shorts through my t-shirt. I added another sweatshirt to cover it up. It wasn’t much better, but it helped, even if it did mean I would sweat like a pig.
I stepped out of my bedroom to find the security guy in my living room. ‘Aren’t you supposed to wait outside?’ I asked.
He was six feet and couple of inches of ramrod straight military-looking rigidness. His hair was cut short to the back and sides and set neatly on top with a side parting. He wore his uniform as if he were about to go on parade and beneath it his muscular frame was quite obvious.
He held up a hand which I believed was meant to instruct me to stop moving. It didn’t work. ‘Madam, if you plan to leave the suite, I am under instruction to search you for weapons.’
I gawped at him. ‘You have got to be kidding.’ He didn’t bother to reply. ‘I’m a fifty-two-year-old, overweight woman from the leafy suburbs of rural England. Just what is it you think I might have stashed in my knickers? A Kalashnikov? A few grenades?’ I was staring at him to see if his impassive face had any other expressions in its repertoire. Not so far. ‘I could tell you that I didn’t kill Mr Langley but since no one seems to want to believe that one, please search away.’ He didn’t move though, perhaps unsure what he was supposed to do. ‘Tell me. Will you be looking in my body cavities as well?’
That made his featureless face twitch. Involuntarily, he had grimaced slightly. Teasing hadn’t been as much fun as I thought though. Bored, I lifted my sweatshirt to show the thin t-shirt beneath it and turned about. ‘See? No guns, knives or nunchakus.’
All I got was a nod. We were ready to go. Then he put his hand to his ear where a small curly wire ran to an earpiece. He nodded to an unseen person only he could hear and spoke into the cuff of his uniform. Then he looked at me. ‘Mr Schooner is on his way, madam. Please wait here.’
I flapped my arms in frustration. I didn’t exactly want to go to the gym, but I certainly didn’t want to be told I couldn’t go. As my frustration rose, dragging my anger with it, I forced myself to calm. Two slow breaths later, I reversed into a chaise-lounge and offered the guard a smile. Moments later he turned and opened the door to allow an angry looking Mr Schooner in.
He wasted no time on pleasantries and got straight on with being himself. ‘How did you do it?’
I opened my mouth in reaction but closed it again without answering his question. I had no way of answering it anyway which I was certain he knew. How had I done what?
‘Hmmm?’ he tried again, trying to get me to say something.
It was Barbie that broke the stand-off. ‘What has happened, Mr Schooner?’
Mr Schooner, who had been squinting at me, cast his gaze at Barbie for a second before bringing it back to me again. ‘Someone mutilated Jack Langley’s body. One of Mrs Fisher’s accomplices, no doubt.’
‘Ewwww,’ said Barbie while pulling a convincingly disgusted face.
I gave him a bored look. ‘Why would I want to do anything to Mr Langley’s body?’
His upper lip twitched in annoyance. ‘I intend to find out.’ Then he spun on his heel and left again, leaving me with a fresh mystery to ponder. Someone had cut open Jack Langley’s dead body. What on earth would they have done that for? I thought about it for a moment, but no plausible reason presented itself.
‘Shall we go?’ asked Barbie, looking like she had already forgotten the body mutilation.
Almost two hours later, I stumbled back through the door and fell onto the couch. Okay, the two hours had started with a twenty-minute massage and ended with a twenty-minute warm down, but I was still dying.
‘Everything alright?’ asked Jermaine, appearing from the kitchen. He was still dressed in his immaculate butler outfit.
‘Don’t you ever take that off?’ I asked from my prone position.
‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘At bedtime.’
‘Did you find Flint Magnum?’
Jermaine crossed the room to stand near the high-backed chairs opposite the couch. ‘No record of him, I’m afraid. He gave you a made-up name.’
The sneaky little toad.
So, what now, Patricia? my brain asked me. I didn’t have an answer though. I was getting tired. The hangover from last night was long forgotten, any ill effects well out of my system but the fatigue caused by a poor night’s sleep was catching up with me. Undoubtedly it was exacerbated by the additional exercise and the workout my adrenal system had received today combined with consuming a fraction of the calories I would usually eat. If I closed my eyes right now, I would be asleep in seconds, but I was also hungry, and Barbie was bringing me dinner. She had promised to select me something that would tantalise my taste buds and satisfy my cravings as well as fill me up and replenish my energy reserves. I really hoped what she had in mind was a steak and three gin and tonics, but I expected to be disappointed.
In the end, it was morning when I found out what she had for me because despite my intentions, I fell asleep on the wide, soft couch and woke up several hours later with a blanket
over me and a note from Jermaine requesting that I call him upon waking so he could settle me correctly. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I had been putting myself to bed for more than forty years and could manage it one more time at least.
Madeira
The ship had docked in Madeira at some point in the night so that when I woke it took me a while to work out that the difference I could perceive was the missing distant hum that I associated with the ship churning through the water.
From my private balcony, the view was green hills rising into the distance from the wide sandy beaches I could see to my left and right beyond the port we had harboured in. Of course, with a ship this size, the ports it went to had to be substantial and this one lay at the foot of a city, its buildings stretching inland and away into the hills.
‘What city is that?’ I asked Jermaine as he deftly poured coffee from a silver coffee pot into my delicate porcelain cup.
‘Funchal, madam.’ I squinted at him a little. He was back to addressing me like I was royalty and it still felt weird to me. He saw my look and said, ‘Madam, if it pleases you, I had to work very hard to attain this position. My duties as butler to the Royal Suite come with a certain amount of ceremony and as such, I feel uncomfortable addressing you informally. I feel it… undermines the role.’ He had delivered what I had to assume was a long-thought out message without the slightest gesticulation.
‘Okay, Jermaine.’ I couldn’t present an argument, so I was back to being madam whenever he spoke to me. It wasn’t something I hated, it just didn’t seem to fit.
‘Is there a pair of binoculars in the room?’ I asked. ‘Since I am not permitted to go ashore, I would like to look a little closer than I can with just my eyes.’
‘Very good, madam.’ Jermaine butlered away to return just a few moments later with a large case the rough shape of a pair of binoculars.
