A Christmas Cruise Murder

by Dawn Brookes

  “I couldn’t sleep after Waverley left and I had a nagging feeling about the death of this man. I was about to go to bed when I remembered the wallet. As well as a room card, it had this inside.”

  Rachel handed Jason a folded piece of paper and he read the contents grimly, tightening his grip around the note.

  Look here, Sosa,

  It’s time you moved on and stopped being the brute you are.

  Be reasonable and stop contacting my sister and stay away from my nephew.

  I’m warning you for the last time. Leave her alone or you’ll be sorry.

  The letter was unsigned, but it was clear who it was from.

  “This doesn’t prove anything,” Jason said.

  “I agree, on its own it doesn’t, but with the death of the man it was addressed to and in the light of what you’ve just told me, it’s pretty damning evidence.”

  Jason’s head dropped. “I don’t believe it. There has to be some other explanation.”

  “What are we going to do about it?” asked Sarah. “We can’t show it to Waverley and I don’t think the captain should see it, at least not for now.”

  “You’re asking me to withhold evidence. You know I can’t do that.” Jason’s eyes darted from one woman to the other.

  “Not permanently,” said Rachel. “Just until we can find out who killed the man, because I don’t believe for one minute it’s the person who wrote that note. From the sounds of it, he was a nasty piece of work, and he did admit to me that everyone he worked with hated him. I thought nothing of it at the time, but what if someone really did dislike him enough to kill him?”

  “Okay, I’ll hold on for now, but don’t give it to me. I think you should hang on to it for now, and we’ll discuss this again tomorrow.” Jason handed the note back to Rachel, who took it, folded it and returned it to the card holder.

  Jason kissed Sarah on the head. “I need to get back or Ravanos will be wondering where I am, and I want to check the records of anyone who worked with Sosa. I’ll be interviewing the waiters in the morning.”

  “Remember to get some sleep,” Sarah called after him.

  After he had left, Rachel turned to Sarah.

  “I still want to look at the room.”

  “Why didn’t you ask Jason?”

  “I was going to, but to be honest, I think he’s got enough to process, being suddenly left in charge of the investigation. If we find anything else incriminating, we need to tread carefully. I don’t want to compromise Jason’s loyalty or put him in an impossible situation.”

  “Well I’m coming with you.”

  “Before we go, there’s something else.”

  “Oh no, Rachel, no more evidence, please.”

  “No, it’s totally unrelated. After I called you, I noticed there was a message on my stateroom phone. It was Marjorie; she says she has friends on board and thinks they might be in danger.”

  Sarah shook her head. “I don’t believe it! Neither of you can stay out of trouble for one minute, can you? Who are these people?”

  “I don’t know, she didn’t say. She said she’d call again in the morning via the purser’s desk. If Marjorie’s concerned, she must have good reason to be.”

  “But why didn’t she tell you before you left?”

  “That’s the bit I’m not sure about. I spoke to her two days ago to wish her a happy Christmas and to give her my and Carlos’s whereabouts over the next few weeks. She’s been invited to her son’s for Christmas Day, and then she’s going down to Cornwall to see a cousin for a week. There was no mention of her friends being on the same cruise, let alone being in danger.”

  “Perhaps she’s only just found out.”

  “You’re right, that must be it. I remember she told me and Carlos about a month ago that she had recommended him to some friends, but as far as I’m aware, they didn’t contact him. I wonder if it’s related to that.”

  “Trouble just follows you around, doesn’t it?” Sarah laughed.

  Rachel nodded and managed a smile. “I guess it comes with the territory.”

  “It doesn’t mean you have to be involved in every crime committed within a twenty-mile radius, though. Why didn’t you mention it to Jason?”

  “Sarah, you saw the look on his face. He’s gutted about the Waverley thing. I’ll discuss it with one of the security team once I know more in the morning – if there’s anything to discuss, that is. Perhaps it might give Waverley something else to think about.”

  “Anyway, there’s nothing you can do about it for now, so let’s get this room search over with. Tie your hair up and keep your head down. At least the room is on my corridor. I’ll check the coast is clear, then we need to walk quickly and confidently.”

  “Sarah Bradshaw, you’re becoming quite the detective.”

  Sarah giggled. “At least if we’re caught, we’ll only be reported to Jason.”

  Chapter 7

  Rachel followed Sarah along the silent corridor housing officers’ and senior staff’s rooms, trying not to appear conspicuous. Sarah paused, and then stopped outside Sosa’s room where Rachel used the key card she had found in his wallet to open the door. They had opted not to use Sarah’s universal swipe key in case it logged her entry; Rachel was keen not to get her friend in trouble, especially if Captain Jenson was already tetchy about the potential involvement of the CSO’s wife.

  The room was pitch-black before Sarah turned on the lights. Inside, the stateroom was small and airless, cramped all the more by a double bed dominating the space. A small table and two armchairs where Stefan must have eaten his last meal were visible in the corner.

  A desk with two drawers was fixed to the wall opposite the bed and behind the table. One drawer was open, revealing the unused epinephrine injection pens still lying there, and an overturned chair suggested that was where Sosa had met his end.

  “This room’s a trifle claustrophobic,” said Rachel.

  “Not as bad as those below the waterline, though.” Sarah shrugged her shoulders. “At least he had his own shower and toilet; the waiters will be in shared rooms, remember?”

  Rachel did remember having been in one of the crew members’ rooms below the waterline – or below stairs, as she liked to call it – on a previous cruise, and Sarah was absolutely right. That room had been a poky excuse for accommodation with bunk beds and very little furniture, and barely enough room to turn. There, the two occupants shared a shower and toilet with those from the room next door.

  “You’re right, this is luxurious by comparison.” She shuddered at the thought of being in yet another dead crewman’s cabin. At least this one didn’t reek of cigarette smoke; just whisky. “Anyway, let’s get started. You check the bedside table while I look over here.” She walked towards the desk with the opened drawer.

  “Hang on a minute, Detective Prince, you’d better wear these.” Sarah handed her a pair of surgical gloves.

  “Thanks, good thing we have the same size hands. I was going to use a plastic bag, but these are much better. I think I’ve told you before, nurses would make great criminals.”

  Rachel opened the drawer next to the one already open, after checking there was nothing but the epinephrine pens in the first. The next drawer contained a hair dryer, phone charger, some loose change in a neat pile and some blank postcards. She sighed.

  “Nothing here. What about you?”

  “Only this,” Sarah handed her a battered old address book. There were addresses from all over the world, including many from Cuba.

  “Was he Cuban originally? His accent sounded Spanish, so that would fit.”

  “I’m not sure. Definitely South American, so possibly Cuban. I only remember seeing him once; he always insisted on seeing a male nurse when he attended check-ups, so we gave him Bernard. We try to accommodate.” Sarah rolled her eyes.

  “And now we know he was a misogynist wife-beater, that fits his profile,” said Rachel.

  “He must have had dual nationality, tho
ugh, if he lived in England.”

  “I’m sure he did. A lot of these addresses based in Cuba could be family members; they have the same surname, although I’m not sure how common the name Sosa is in Cuba. It could equate to Smith or Jones in the UK, for all I know.”

  She leafed through the book and stopped at a page. “This is the only recent entry I can find. No name, but a London phone number and a mobile number crossed out. I’m betting the number belongs to his ex-wife, Brenda’s sister.”

  Rachel took a photo of the entry with her mobile phone. Walking towards the built-in wardrobe, she announced, “I’ll check his clothes.”

  Sarah yawned loudly and sat on one of the chairs. “You’ll have to be quick. I’m done in and I’ve got to do a surgery in a few hours.”

  Rachel smiled sympathetically at her friend as she opened the wardrobe door. The wardrobe was organised with military precision: jackets, then shirts, then trousers.

  “Well, well, our Mr Sosa was very precise.” She began rifling through Stefan’s pockets. “It always feels wrong, going through a dead person’s things, but I seem to be doing more and more of it nowadays.”

  “Especially when you come on board the Coral,” Sarah teased.

  There was nothing of any significance to be found in any of the clothes Rachel examined, just a few mints and the odd till receipt neatly folded and placed in an upper pocket of a jacket.

  “Nothing. Hang on a minute, what about the safe? Any idea what his date of birth was?”

  “None, and I’m not ringing Jason to find out.”

  “What about reception?”

  “No way.”

  “Come on, Sarah, think!”

  “I could go down to the medical centre and pull up his records. Rachel, can’t this wait until morning? I’m shattered.”

  “Okay, but let me just try something first.” She tapped in the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and smiled gleefully as the safe opened. “Got it.” She pulled out a pile of papers and photos. “I’ll take these back to my room and go through them there so you can get to bed.”

  Sarah smiled gratefully as Rachel walked over to where she was sitting and plonked herself on the other chair, taking in the room in more detail.

  “Have you noticed anything odd?”

  “The only odd thing I’ve noticed is the two of us in a dead man’s room in the middle of the night. Thank goodness it’s not Halloween.”

  Rachel chuckled. “Besides that?”

  “No, I can’t say I have. I take it you’re going to tell me sometime before breakfast?” Sarah yawned again.

  “The room’s immaculately tidy, almost OCD tidy. Even the contents of the drawers are in neat piles – the money, the postcards. The wardrobe is colour coded, everything in order except for one bit.”

  “The epi-pens.” The realisation dawned on Sarah. “They’re not aligned.”

  “You’re right, Watson, which suggests?”

  “That someone else put them there, Sherlock.”

  “Either that or Waverley fiddled with them when he found the body. We’ll have to hold on for the answer to that question.”

  “Sosa could have done it himself trying to grasp one of them. Do you think it was murder, then? I was rather hoping it was a neat little suicide.”

  “I’m not certain, but it’s an odd way to kill oneself, isn’t it? I think a man as regimentally minded as this would have at least moved the pens and stacked them neatly out of reach before doing himself in. Also, why would he call his wife and threaten her if he was planning on suicide?”

  “Assuming that’s what he did.”

  “If I were a gambling woman, I’d bet money on it. No, this wasn’t an accident. It’s certainly a suspicious death.”

  “Which leaves all suspicion pointing to Brenda?”

  “If it was the bread that contained the nuts, she will be the prime suspect. Do you think she’s capable of murder?”

  “I don’t know her well enough to say, but from what I’ve seen of her, she’s outgoing, bubbly and kind – complete opposite to Waverley. I wouldn’t have thought so, but you’re the detective.”

  Ignoring the goading, Rachel continued, “That’s what I thought, so is she just the unwitting scapegoat or is she being framed? Then again, she does have a strong enough motive: that of protecting her sister and nephew from a beast of a man who was probably threatening to do them both harm if his demands weren’t met, whatever they were. People have killed for less reason.”

  “Agreed, but this death would have to have been meticulously pre-planned surely? I could accept Brenda, or anyone, killing in a moment of madness, but not in such a calculated way. Bread is baked fresh each night, so it would have been prepared hours before it went to his room.”

  “Unless nut residue was sprinkled on top once he placed an order.”

  “No, he would have smelled that. Someone with that degree of allergy would see and smell it a mile off, unless it was within the bread itself. Even then, I can’t understand why he didn’t taste it and spit the bread out, but there’s no sign of that. The room seems clean, no vomit.”

  “Thank you for that detail, Nurse Bradshaw. Do we know for sure that Brenda baked the bread?”

  Sarah looked thoughtful. “As far as I’m aware, she prepares or oversees all bread products for those with allergies and sensitivities. The night crew bake the rest.”

  “I thought you said all the bread was baked at night.”

  “I meant most of it. Brenda starts work at 5am – that’s night to me.”

  “Well if it does turn out to be the bread, and that’s the most likely, Jason could be forced to arrest her as all the evidence points to her. But there could still be others in the frame for this if it is murder.”

  “Such as?”

  “Anyone who hated him enough to go to great lengths to remove the epi-pens from his room prior to ensuring he was fed with something that would cause a catastrophic allergic reaction, resulting in an unpleasant death.”

  “A cold-blooded killer, then? I still don’t know how they could have tampered with the bread and known he was going to get it, unless it was someone from the bakery, and that takes us back to poor Brenda. It does make more sense that it was premeditated rather than last-minute if the epi-pens were removed, and that would explain why the drawer was open and Stefan was found on the floor.”

  “I’m afraid it does. If I’m right, and the killer isn’t Brenda, they removed the pens, intercepted the bread and swapped it or somehow tampered with it, and then returned the pens after the deed was done, before the body was found. We need to find out who it was as soon as possible, and before Waverley does something stupid. I can’t see him staying out of the investigation for long.

  “It won’t be easy to find the culprit because your maître d was not well liked, but we need to find out who else had access to the room, and how and at what point the food was tampered with. But for now, Nurse Bradshaw, I think you should get a few hours’ beauty sleep, and I’ll head back to my room to look through these papers from the safe for a couple of hours before breakfasting in the Club Restaurant. Do you think you could ask Jason to meet up with us this afternoon for tea?”

  “Creams?”

  Creams patisserie was their favourite haunt for afternoon meet-ups, and the surcharge meant it was less busy than other public areas on board ship.

  “Sounds ideal. What about your parents?”

  “Mum’s having a massage and Dad’s going to a talk on the Spanish Civil War, so they’ll be out of the way for an hour or so. We’re dining in the officers’ dining room in the evening. I take it you’ll join us?”

  “I will if I can. It depends whether I need to do some more digging in the Club Restaurant, and on what Marjorie has to say in the morning.”

  Sarah raised her eyebrows, but decided not to give Rachel the usual lecture about staying out of trouble, for which Rachel was grateful. They walked back to Sarah’s room and Rachel hugged her friend.

 
“Sleep tight, I’ll see you this afternoon.”

  Sarah yawned again, barely able to keep her eyes open. “See you at three.”

  Rachel marched along the corridor and ran up the stairs to wake herself up before returning to her stateroom. She made herself a black coffee and sat on the bed while she went through some of the neatly piled and organised papers she’d removed from Sosa’s safe. They were mainly letters and documents, along with the photographs. The letters and notes she read made interesting study and added a fresh light to the case.

  “What were you up to, Stefan Sosa?”

  Some of the photos featured an Englishwoman, who Rachel assumed was Christine Jones. These were in a pile joined together by a blue elastic band. There were four other elastic bands of different colours keeping together separate piles of photos, some of which featured a number of other people yet to be identified.

  The images began to blur into one and her eyelids felt heavy. Her tired brain could not take in any further information, so she put the stash of letters and photos in her bedside drawer and mulled over the events of the previous day, her findings in the wallet and the night’s exploration into Stefan Sosa’s room. She tried to relive the conversation she’d had with him on the bus. Something significant filtered through the fog, but then it was lost as she drifted off into a deep sleep.

  Chapter 8

  Rachel awoke with a start at the sound of stateroom attendants clattering trolleys along the corridor outside her room. She looked at her watch: eight-thirty. There was just enough time to shower and change before going for breakfast in the Club Restaurant.

  Rubbing sleep out of her eyes, she examined herself in the bathroom mirror. The dark lines underneath her eyes told her just how much sleep she hadn’t got over the past forty-eight hours.

  “You’re mad, Rachel Prince. Why don’t you just take a holiday like everyone else?” Her reflection didn’t reply and she shook her head before she really did lose the plot.

  Twenty minutes later, she was being shown to a window seat in the busy restaurant by Pash, the waiter she had met the night before who appeared to be assuming the maître d role. She tried to see through the friendly facade, noticing the smile plastered on his face didn’t reach his eyes, which were sharp, almost cold. That was something he and his deceased boss appeared to have in common. She racked her brains, trying to recall what had come to her when she was drifting off to sleep. There had been angry, flashing eyes, but nothing else.