Flemming didn’t miss a beat. He turned and looked out over the Grand Lounge. A few people, no more than a dozen, had stopped in to watch the rehearsal, but none of them seemed to be aware of what was really going on.
“Get him out of sight,” Flemming said. “Quick!”
The actor was dragged into the wings and out of view of anyone except those of us involved with the play.
“Nobody move,” Flemming said. “Just stay put.”
He picked up a phone, dialed a shipboard number, and said to whoever answered, “We have a death in the Grand Lounge. Backstage. Get down here with a body cart and something to cover it with.”
He hung up and said to us, “Please, say nothing to anyone about this until I’ve had a chance to discuss it with the captain and security.”
“Where will you take him?” I asked.
“The morgue.”
“You have a morgue on the QE2?”
“Yes, ma’am. Holds four. I ask all of you again, keep this quiet, p-l-e-a-s-e! There’s nothing to be gained by creating a panic with the other passengers.”
“I think he’s right,” I said to the actors and actresses. To him: “But you will get back to us right away.”
“As soon as I can get the appropriate people together. Thanks for your cooperation.”
The dead actor was wheeled away, covered by a sheet that made it look as though it might have been a food cart. We stood together backstage for a few minutes, mostly in silence. Finally, I said, “I think I’ll go to my cabin.”
“Yeah, me, too,” an actor said.
We dispersed, and I headed for my stateroom on the Quarter Deck, one deck below. But as I poised to open my door, I changed my mind and climbed the stairs to the ship’s Sun Deck, the top deck where I’d been wrapped in a blanket earlier that morning and served a delicious cup of bouillon.
The weather was foul. The QE2 was shrouded in fog, and a mist engulfed me. The sea was rough, causing the ship to rise and fall in a steady pattern.
I went to where Frank and I had stood twenty years earlier, wrapped my arms about myself, and felt tears well up.
Was it the death I’d just witnessed that caused me to cry?
Or was it remembering standing here with my beloved husband during our voyage together, one that was as smooth as silk, and certainly hadn’t been marred by a shooting death?
Maybe a little of both, I decided.
I knew one thing: My memories of this transatlantic crossing would be markedly different from the previous one.
08 - The Highland Fling Murders Page 20
