Murder on the Orient (SS): The Agatha Christie Book Club 2

by C. A. Larmer

  “But… but why?” Alicia didn’t like being played, and she liked her sister pointing it out even less. What she had liked was Anita’s forthrightness. She felt she could trust Corrie’s best buddy. They had a genuine connection.

  “I don’t know. I’m not saying she’s necessarily guilty of anything. Maybe she’s a narcissist and wants to put herself at the centre of it all, or maybe she’s just an attention junkie and that’s why she hung out with Corrie for so long, to bask in her friend’s shadow. I mean, what kind of person comes on board to provide a love nest for someone else, especially if she is such a fan of that someone else’s husband? Who does that? I reckon there’s something seriously strange about that woman. I mean, look at her over there.”

  She nodded her head towards the captain’s table, which was half-empty tonight, just a few glum-looking passengers nursing the last of their coffee and wine. The Captain was not present, but Anita was, dressed in a long, pale-blue dress tonight, and she didn’t look glum so much as pitiful, hunched over her glass.

  “Look how pathetic she looks,” said Lynette, “like she has the world on her shoulders. Yet she didn’t even like Corrie Van Tussi, so what’s she got to mope about? It’s an act, I’m telling you. She’s a fraud!”

  Several of them were nodding agreement, but Alicia’s jaw was dropping. There was something about the way Anita was sitting, it reminded her of a comment Anders had made earlier. She sat back with a start.

  Lynette said, “Are you okay?”

  Alicia swept her eyes from Anita back to her sister. “Tell me, Lynny, that galley tour you did on our first full day on board. Who was on it?”

  “What?”

  “Just tell me! Who was on the tour when you inspected the kitchen?”

  “Um, I can’t remember. It feels like weeks ago now.”

  “Think!”

  “Okay, take a chill pill. Um, there were about twenty-five of us, I guess. I didn’t know most of them. Why?”

  “Was Cheyne on the tour? Or his wife? What about Anita, was she there?”

  She thought about it and held her hands up, flustered. “No, I didn’t see Anita or the Dinnegans. The Groots were there, one of the Solarnos I think. Oh and the trainer guy.”

  “The trainer guy?”

  “Yeah, Steve someone or other. Apparently this was his first cruise, and he wanted to check it out. They’re pretty relaxed with the staff, aren’t they? Letting them dance in the main bar, letting them come along on—”

  “Never mind!” Alicia interrupted her. “Just do me a favour. After dinner can you try and get back in and see the chef?”

  “I can try. Nice bloke. He was quite interested in the fact that I was also a chef so—”

  “Ask him who else had access to the kitchen, which passengers? Did he run another galley tour before we got on board, or were there any private tours? We need to get a list of who had access to a knife.” She stood up. “I’ve got to run.”

  “Hang on! What are you going to do?”

  “It’s not what I’m going to do, it’s what Jackson has to do.”

  They were all staring at her now, their faces bursting with curiosity, so she said, “We’ve all been fooled, big time. Anita’s not the fraud, and neither is Corrie. It wasn’t Corrie who was stealing jewels.”

  “Who then?” hissed Perry, excitedly.

  She went to say something when she noticed Dermott bearing down upon them, a waltz in his step. He was no doubt eager to entice them all back onto the dance floor, so she leaned in and quickly whispered, “I’ll explain it all later, I promise. Suffice it to say, we’ve been looking at it from completely the wrong angle!”

  Jackson was just taking a bite of an enormous club sandwich when Alicia swept back into the library, and he looked pleased to see her again, his eyes sparking up.

  “You want?” he mumbled, his mouth full as he indicated a bowl of fries.

  She shook her head, looking around.

  “Where did Anders go?”

  “Back to the medical centre, more forms or something. Welcome to my world.” He brushed crumbs from his mouth with the back of his hand. “So, you’ve finally come up with a third point to prove your mad-arse theory about Corrie?”

  She beamed. “Yes I have, and you’re about to help me prove it.”

  “And how am I going to do that, Ms Finlay?”

  “By making a deal with Cheyne Smith.”

  “Sorry?”

  She sat down next to him and plucked a chip from the plate. “With the right incentive I think you can get him to admit what he’s probably itching to tell you but knows will only incriminate him further.”

  She chomped off the top of the chip, her eyes squinting mischievously.

  “Okaaaay, Alicia, now you’re just sounding confused.”

  She finished the chip and sat back, barely able to contain the smile on her face.

  He smiled too, her excitement infectious and said, “Come on then, out with it!”

  “I think I know the identity of our mysterious woman in green.”

  His smile deflated. “Are we seriously still banging on about that?”

  She nodded. “Wanna hear who I think it was?”

  He rolled his eyes playfully and said, “Go on then, get it off your chest.”

  She snatched another chip and was just about to take a bite when she decided to put him out of his misery and said, “It wasn’t Corrie Van Tussi at all. It was her nemesis!”

  “Her nemesis?”

  “Dame Dinnegan, of course!”

  Chapter 10

  It was now 11:35 p.m. on the final night of the cruise, and the Grand Salon was full to bursting. The scheduled Captain’s Formal Farewell Dinner Dance had been cancelled for obvious reasons, but that didn’t stop the crowds from gathering again, toasting the end of their mammoth fifty-day journey and, for those in the know, congratulating themselves on another near miss.

  They would sleep more easily in their beds tonight, although, if truth be told, very few of them had lost sleep over the recent events. The captain had seen to that, aided and abetted by his devoted team, including both Anders and Jackson. They had carefully screened how much real information filtered out, and so while colourful rumours had swept the decks and fuelled the conversation in the bars and dining room, unless you knew the players directly, there were not a lot of specifics to keep it burning.

  And so most of the passengers never felt genuinely threatened.

  They knew the captain’s wife had fallen overboard, but they had begun to suspect it was all just a terrible, terrible tragedy. These things happened, didn’t they, even on the best of ships?

  As for the missing jewels they’d heard about? Well, their bling was still safe in their cabins, so it was nothing to get in a lather about.

  And Dame Dinnegan’s death? Somewhere between her vicious knifing in the gym and post-dinner drinks in the music bar, the story had morphed from murder to a terrible case of domestic violence.

  That’ll teach the silly old goat for marrying a man half her age! And an artist to boot. What did she expect?

  Alicia knew from conversations with Jackson that Cheyne would be quietly whisked off in Auckland, and while his subsequent court case would ruffle a few feathers, most of this international crowd would have moved on by then and onto their next holiday.

  It was a win-win for everybody, Alicia thought as she accepted the champagne glass that was now being foisted upon her. Except perhaps for Corrie. She was guilty of a very foolish, childish affair, but that was about the extent of it.

  “To Alicia!” someone said, and she swept her attention back to the crowd that had gathered around the velvet booth where she had now taken centre stage.

  The book club was all there, as were Anita, Dermott and one of the Solarno sisters. Billie, she decided. The Groots were seated close by listening in as was the American man in green from earlier that day.

  “How on earth did you figure out that Dame Dinnegan was th
e one running around stealing jewels with Cheyne?” asked Perry after everyone had sipped. “I would never have guessed that woman was not disabled. Not in a million years.”

  “Yes, she had us all fooled, even most remarkably, you guys.” Alicia slid her gaze across the veteran cruisers.

  “And don’t I feel like a fool for it!” Dermott replied. “She waltzed with me on a cruise just two years ago.” He waved a hand at Billie. “She almost smashed you at shuffleboard, remember? I can’t believe we didn’t notice.”

  “We just assumed she had cancer or something,” said Billie. “Us oldies do tend to age quickly once we get past seventy-five. And she really did look frail.”

  Alicia nodded. “She was clever all right. Hiding her strong limbs under flowing chiffon and pretending to be scatty, her makeup badly applied, all the things that indicate someone is not quite with it. At Dame Dinnegan’s age, looking ‘your age’ is perfectly normal. It’s also a great disguise. No one suspects the batty old dear in the wheelchair.”

  “Except she wasn’t so batty,” said Claire, and Alicia nodded.

  “You noticed that, Claire, when you spoke to her, but you kind of dismissed it as everyone did. It was only when I saw Anita sitting down at dinner that it dawned on me: most of us look a lot smaller when we’re seated, especially if we hunch over. Then I remembered what you said, Anders, about how much bigger the Dame was once you saw her fully laid out on the slab. Not nearly as frail and diminutive as we’d been led to believe. But of course proving it now that she’s dead… well, that’s the hard part.”

  She glanced at Jackson who was just pulling up a seat at the edge of the table, a frosty glass of beer in his hand. Now everyone was staring at him, and he laughed.

  “My chance to be all show-offy is it?” He smiled playfully at Alicia. “Alicia’s right of course. Dame Dinnegan had no need for a wheelchair; it was all a charade. Cheyne’s just admitted it. He’s cut a deal with his lawyer. You know, he’s bloody lucky to have that woman on board.”

  “So how did it work?” asked Lynette.

  He took a refreshing gulp of his beer, then cleared his throat. “Well we only got the basics tonight, will hopefully fill in the fine print later, but it sounded like a pretty tight operation to me. The Dinnegans ran a few different lines, which is why it was so hard to pin it on them. Sometimes Cheyne would pretend to tuck his wife into bed early, then return to the bar where he’d chat up a rich widow, find out her room number, then slip a roofie into her cocktail. Then he’d depart, all alone, making sure there were plenty of ogling ladies to witness it. Dame Dinnegan would then take it from there, either by slipping into the bar in disguise and guiding the poor victim out and back to her room, or she’d wait for her in the passageway and walk her back from there.”

  “You have to remember,” said Anders, “Rohypnol works fairly quickly. So once the women were drugged, it wouldn’t take long for them to start feeling woozy and want to hit the sack.”

  “That’s right,” said Jackson. “But they’d just look very drunk, so it’d be easy for Dame Dinnegan to look like she was helping them to bed. Once she had them in their room, she’d put them into bed and steal what she could find. Cheyne tells me that sometimes they did it in reverse—the Dame would drug the victim’s drink in the bar, and he would take over once the victim got back to her cabin. That way the person who last had a drink with the victim was never the last person to be seen with them. The perfect alibi.”

  “I don’t understand this!” said Eva Groot now, calling out from her table. “How did no one recognise the Dame walking around? Even out of her wheelchair, she would look the same, yes?”

  “Not if she made her face up differently and put on a wig.”

  “Or a green kaftan and a captain’s hat,” added Alicia, and Jackson nodded.

  “The creepiest part is, Cheyne reckons the ‘Corrie’ disguise only started soon after his affair began, which was the second week of the voyage. Before that her usual disguise was a boring brown wig and a long black dress. He preferred that look, said it made her blend in better.”

  Claire and Alicia swapped a small satisfied smile.

  “So the silly old cow was deliberately trying to pin it on my Coz?” said Anita.

  “Looks like it,” Jackson replied. “She obviously uncovered the affair and sought revenge. We suspect the Dame pinched Corrie’s kaftans herself on one of several occasions she’d been invited into her cabin for drinks with the captain. They were old mates. She obviously did it to throw suspicion at the woman who was stealing her partner in crime. After Mrs Jollson’s death, we suspect the Dame returned them to Corrie’s cabin and hid them behind her bed.” He caught Alicia’s eye. “As for the enigmatic green kaftan? That probably went overboard with Corrie the night she vanished.”

  “Just hang on a minute,” said Gunter now. “Before we move on to that, can you explain to me why this lady, this rich Dame Dinnegan, would need to steal other people’s jewellery?” He glanced at his wife. “We thought she was very rich.”

  “Apparently not rich enough,” said Jackson. “Several husbands had seen to that. According to Cheyne, she was close to foreclosure on her beloved estate in Oxfordshire. It’s been in the family for something like 135 years. She was damned if she was going to lose it in her lifetime.”

  “Enter Cheyne Smith,” said Alicia, and he nodded.

  “They met about eighteen months ago at a mutual friend’s party in some London mansion apparently. He made a clumsy attempt to pinch her ruby broach, I think he said, and the Dame caught him in the act. But instead of handing him over to the police, she realised it could be the answer to all her prayers. She convinced him to steal for her in exchange for pulling strings and establishing his art career, which at that time was going nowhere fast.”

  “And with good reason,” said Lynette, her legs curled up beneath her as she listened.

  “I suspect this wasn’t their first job,” Jackson continued. “We haven’t had a chance to go into the details, but I’m sure if we approach the authorities in the UK and elsewhere, we’ll find there were several fancy parties they both attended where mysterious thefts occurred. Maybe another cruise or two. What we do know is they worked as a team, stealing the odd gem to keep her creditors at bay just long enough for her to live out her final days in her beloved mansion. Then when she was gone—which had to be soon, he thought—she would leave him everything, and he would be an established artist. Win-win.”

  “It’s like Billie said,” Alicia added as Billie glanced across at her, looking bewildered. “You said Cheyne was like the thriving strangler vine, clinging onto the crumbling castle, sucking it dry. It wasn’t just him getting all the benefit. Dame Dinnegan couldn’t have survived without the ripe green vine. It kept her castle intact, didn’t it?”

  “Ah but she didn’t anticipate another thief coming along and luring the vine away,” said Perry.

  Jackson said, “According to Cheyne, it was love at first sight for him and Corrie. I’m not sure that lowlife has any idea what love even is, but that’s what he says, and that’s why he wanted out. Sadly for everyone Dame Dinnegan wasn’t having it. She insisted he finish this one last job—Mrs Jollson—and then said she’d cut him free. And so he did.”

  “But they went too far with the drugs this time,” said Anders, all eyes now sweeping across to him. “Or at least Dame Dinnegan did.”

  A shiver ran through Alicia then, and she wondered silently whether the overdose was actually intentional. Perhaps Dame Dinnegan had done it to blackmail her own husband, to bond him to her for life? Stealing jewels is one thing, manslaughter quite another. Perhaps she was going to hold that over him to keep him with her until her final days?

  As if reading her mind, Jackson said, “We suspect it wasn’t an accidental drugging. This last operation went against their usual modus operandi. Cheyne was supposed to drug Mrs Jollson’s drink that night, that was the plan. But he says, at the last minute, his wife insisted o
n doing both—drugging the drink and taking the victim back to her cabin to steal her jewellery. And she wouldn’t be dissuaded. He thought she was letting him off the hook. He now believes she was setting him up, and I’m inclined to believe him. I think Dame Dinnegan deliberately overdosed Cecilia Jollson. She wanted to put the fear of God in her husband.”

  Just then a round of applause caught their attention, and they all looked around with a start, realising that it must now be midnight. The band was departing, and a DJ was just starting up. The Groots made a quick exit, and Billie, too, groaned and gave her apologies.

  “That’s me done. I can’t stand that racket, so I’ll take my leave but well done everyone.” She swept her eyes from Alicia to Jackson. “You did a very impressive job. The captain will be eternally grateful!” She placed a hand at her heart. “I am eternally grateful.” She bowed her head and shuffled away.

  Dermott, too, was looking weary despite having the night off his dance duties. “I think I’ll turn in as well, folks. But Billie’s right, commendable work. Oh and sweet dreams. I think we all deserve it!”

  That just left the book club and Jackson. Alicia wasn’t sure where Anita had got to, but at some stage of the conversation, she had snuck off. Probably looking for the captain, she decided.

  “Shall we get another round?” said Perry, waving a waiter over, and they all nodded eagerly. They weren’t ready to retire just yet.

  As soon as the fresh drinks arrived, Claire began to wonder about a few loose ends.

  “Okay, so now we know who the elusive woman in green was. It was the Dame—and quite frankly I’d rather not call her that, as far as I’m concerned she’s lost the privilege. But what I want to know is, who killed Corrie? Surely that can’t have been Dorothy? She might have been mobile, but I doubt she could have overpowered a woman half her age, one with footballer’s shoulders no less.”