Set Sail for Murder

by Carolyn Hart

  Suddenly weary, feeling buffeted by other lives and sensing emotional storms with yet-to-be-calculated damages, I swept the photomontages into a stack, slid them along with Jimmy’s letter and the dossiers into a folder. I looked up at the line that continued to inch across the small screen. The stewards and stewardesses were turning on lights, moving briskly up and down the aisles, bringing coffee and juice and sweet rolls. It wasn’t far now to Heathrow and the true beginning of my journey.

  I snapped shut the folder, but I could not as easily will away the memory of faces. Defensive Alex. Sensitive Kent. Unquenchable Rosie. Beleaguered Val. Affectionate Evelyn.

  Was one of them the face of a murderer-in-waiting?

  3

  After I reached the hotel, I wanted to sleep, but I knew better than to succumb. The only way to overcome jet lag is to fight through the wearying hours following a flight and remain awake until early evening. I decided not to wander about the hotel. The area was too small and the likelihood of encountering Jimmy and the Riordan clan too great.

  Instead, I took the train into London. The day was unusually warm for London in August, the temperature in the nineties. I found a small café near Bond Street and drank several cups of strong tea with a scone and determinedly did not think about the trip ahead. At this nadir of energy, I would regret the burden I had accepted. Instead, I spent a cheerful afternoon in Harrods enjoying shopping for my daughter Emily and her family. When all the gifts had been dispatched, I looked at the time with grainy eyes and walked back to the station. It was an effort to stay awake. Once again I traversed Terminal 4 and was too weary to scan the hotel lobby when I arrived.

  I went straight to my room. I didn’t expect any messages but I checked the telephone on the desk. The message light wasn’t lit, which was all to the good. Unexpected messages rarely bring good news. I yawned, took a step toward the bed, then abruptly turned away. I needed to stay awake a few more hours to adapt to the time change. I’d take a hot shower. As I walked toward the bath, a sharp knock sounded at the door.

  I looked through the aperture. Jimmy, a haggard Jimmy, was lifting his hand to knock again. I’d not seen him in several years. His hair was more white now than blond, but he was still a commanding figure: tall, well built, with an aura of vigor. I opened the door and knew that I still cared for him, that I wanted him to be the Jimmy I remembered, laughing and eager.

  He shot a worried glance up the corridor. When his eyes met mine, I was shocked by the fierceness in his gaze. Fatigue emphasized dark circles beneath his eyes, but fatigue couldn’t account for his somber expression.

  I stepped back, held the door wide. I didn’t try for a greeting. His arrival at my room wasn’t according to his plan.

  He stepped inside, grabbed my hands, squeezed them, held tight, a bridge over time. “I saw you come through the lobby and I had to talk to you. I’ve only got a minute. They’re waiting downstairs. We’re going to have an early dinner.” He loosed his grip.

  I gestured toward the single easy chair near the small desk. The room was small and seemed smaller now, a rather narrow double bed, a luggage rack, a desk, a straight chair, a cushioned chair, dark drapes drawn across the window, all within a dozen feet. Jimmy was tall and rangy. It seemed odd to have him so near and yet now, as the husband of Sophia Montgomery, always out of my reach. There had been a time when a hotel room spelled laughter and love.

  He shook his head, remained standing just inside the door. “I’ll only stay a minute. I want to tell you what happened the night before we left. It may sound crazy, but I think one of them may have tried to poison her.”

  “Poison?” It is an ugly word for an ugly deed.

  His face creased in a worried frown. “Every night Sophia has a glass of cream sherry. I have Scotch and soda. Wednesday, our last night at home, I went down to get the drinks. They are always on a tray on the breakfast bar. Chandelle, our cook, has them ready. I was starting up the stairs and here came Evelyn, hustling down the steps. When she was even with me, she stumbled and knocked the tray loose. Everything spilled. Evelyn was all apologies. She claimed she’d lost her balance.”

  The tension began to seep out of me. Jimmy had lost perspective. A household mishap was hardly the stuff of melodrama.

  He saw my expression. “It sounds innocuous, but if you had seen Evelyn’s face, you might understand. She was white as a ghost. I swear she knocked the tray down deliberately. Either she knew Sophia’s sherry was poisoned or laced with an overdose of barbiturate or she was afraid that was so.”

  I blinked, wished I didn’t feel stupid from lack of sleep. Jimmy believed what he was telling me, once again saw a near escape from death for Sophia. I tried to focus through the numbness of fatigue. “There’s no way death from poison would escape detection. Everyone knows that.”

  “Maybe it was an overdose of sleeping pills. Who could prove that was murder?” He squinted and I wondered if he saw faces in his mind. “Maybe one of them has to have big bucks. Maybe dislike has turned to hatred. Maybe when the boulder missed, one of them decided to be sure. I tried to persuade Sophia to close it all down, announce to everyone that the trusts are going to be dissolved. She won’t listen. Now she’s furious with me.” He blew out an exasperated spurt of air.

  I wasn’t convinced. “Evelyn’s on the heavy side. She could have stumbled.”

  “She looks clumsy, but she’s athletic.” He was emphatic. “She’s a former dancer. Ballet. She still practices. Besides, I followed her downstairs to get a cloth to clean up the mess and fix another drink. I found the sherry bottle in the trash, empty. The night before, it was half full. I picked it up and I’d swear it had been rinsed out. Somebody had emptied the bottle and washed it.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed, struggling to stay awake. “You know what you’re saying, don’t you? If Evelyn knew the sherry was dangerous, either she doctored it or she saw someone put something in it.”

  “I asked her.”

  “What did she say?” I tried to imagine that moment, Jimmy in pajamas, possibly in his blue and white seersucker robe I’d given him one Christmas, standing there accusingly, demanding information from Evelyn. His questions would have been vintage Jimmy: “What was in the sherry? Who put something in it? You? Alex? Kent? Rosie? Val?”

  “She pretended shock and horror at the idea. She insisted the sherry was all right. I told her I knew the bottle had been almost half full. She waved her hand as if brushing away some pestering insect, said I was overwrought.” Jimmy’s gaze was bleak. “I told her, yeah, I was overwrought. I told her murder was a crime. I asked her how was she going to feel if Sophia was killed.” He gave a weary sigh. “Evelyn looked half sick. She shook her head, told me everything would be all right, nothing was going to happen to Sophia. With that, she turned and hurried into the hall. I watched her go up the stairs, graceful as a gazelle.” His words were clipped. “That’s where we are. I’d better get downstairs. Sophia may wonder where I am. But maybe, after we meet on the ship, maybe you can get close to Evelyn. She’ll like you. Everybody does.”

  I would have smiled at that if I hadn’t been so tired. Everybody didn’t. One of the pleasures of age—my age—was doing and saying what I pleased.

  He flung out a beseeching hand. “Evelyn won’t tell you the family secrets, but if you get close to her, maybe you’ll pick up on which one of them she’s worried about. She’s going to avoid me for sure.” He moved toward the door, yanked it open.

  As it closed behind him, I rubbed my tired eyes. A bouncing boulder. Spilled sherry. A loving aunt. Did Evelyn Riordan love one of her nieces or nephews enough to shield a murderer?

  I slipped out of my clothes, tossed them on the luggage rack, pulled on a nightgown, moved like a somnambulist toward the bed. Too tired to shower. Too tired for dinner. As I pulled back the spread and sank into the too-soft mattress, I was shaking my head. Evelyn wasn’t shielding a murderer. Sophia was alive. But Evelyn might be charting an even more perilous co
urse. What if Evelyn spoke to one of them, said, “I saw you”?

  What would happen then?

  The gate area Saturday morning was jammed with cruise passengers. The cruise line provided a charter flight on Qantas Airways to Copenhagen, where we would board the Clio. I sat with my back to the window overlooking the runway. I held a London Times, but it was easy to lower it enough to survey my fellow travelers. Although I didn’t think Sophia Montgomery would recognize me, I was effectively anonymous beneath a floppy-brimmed straw hat with cloth ties. Oversize dark sunglasses and the Times were added protection. I doubted if Jimmy would know me.

  There were about a hundred and fifty travelers waiting to board the plane. It was an attractive crowd, if attractiveness is measured by appearance. This kind of travel doesn’t come cheap, so the clothes were from pricey London boutiques, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Neiman Marcus. There was the added, more subtle distinction of good health and rigid diets and the implicit arrogance of people who don’t have to ask what anything costs.

  I easily picked out couples traveling together, an occasional family group, assorted solo passengers. Sophia Montgomery and her entourage were among the last to arrive. Almost all of the seats in the gate area were taken. That late arrival surprised me. I would expect Sophia to be careless of others’ expectations, but I would also expect her to be in too much of a hurry ever to run late.

  To actually see them after they had filled my mind for so many hours was almost disturbing. If not disturbing, certainly unsettling. Reading their capsule histories, studying their family photos, had been an intellectual exercise. Now they were standing not far from me, near enough for me to see their eyes, read their faces.

  I will confess I looked first at Jimmy. The whiteness of his hair was even more noticeable in the well-lit waiting area. He moved with familiar grace, a tall, lanky man at ease with himself and the world, confident, unpretentious, observant. But, most unlike Jimmy, his face was bunched in a tight frown. He stared out on the tarmac, didn’t look toward his wife. Sophia’s chin jutted and her lips were compressed. It didn’t take a swami to know she was irritated. Her pale blue linen dress was immaculate, her matching sandals the latest style. Diminutive Alex munched on a doughnut and a dribble of sugar dotted his chin. His striped polo was loose and his carpenter pants baggy. He looked even smaller than in his photos since he was flanked by Jimmy and by his six-feet-plus brother Kent. Kent stood a little apart in a navy turtleneck and white jeans and sneakers. He held a paperback and appeared to be reading and oblivious to his surroundings as well as his companions. Alex’s wife darted a little ahead to snag a single open seat. Plopping down, she opened her straw purse, pulled out a Tiffany compact, lifted the lid, and painstakingly freshened her lip gloss, the whole of her attention centered upon her image in the small mirror. Her blond hair was upswept in a French twist and her lilac slack suit crisp and fresh, but her appearance lacked assurance, as if she’d thumbed through an expensive catalog and a pink-tipped finger had chosen this and that and the other with the goal of achieving style. Rosie, whose dress was surely more bizarre, had the swagger of a beautiful woman who wears what she wishes with utter authority. Her peasant blouse drooped seductively. Her gypsy skirt was odd, arresting, and suited her flashing beauty. If she had worn a lace mantilla and pinned a rose to her shoulder, she would have fitted into any Spanish village on a Saturday night. As it was, men turned to look and women watched, and Rosie’s dark red lips curved in an exuberant smile. There was something primal and direct and unstoppable about Rosie Riordan. The contrast with her sister Val was as striking as that between the blazing noon sun and a faint crescent moon. Val wore a black cotton T, black linen slacks, black loafers. No jewelry. No makeup. Her hair, as Titian red as Rosie’s, was drawn into a tight bun. Her eyes were remote behind the horn-rim glasses. She sipped from a Styrofoam cup, her gaze—skeptical, questioning, analytical?—sliding from one to another of her traveling companions.

  I wondered if Val’s judgment agreed with mine. To me they seemed distinct from the other travelers. I saw no eagerness among them, no excitement over exotic ports of call. They all waited, stiff and silent, as if girded for battle. But no, where was Evelyn? It was Evelyn Jimmy hoped I would come to know. Where…

  I found her slumped against a pillar near a rubber tree plant a few feet away from the family. One hand nervously fingered the lacy collar of her blouse. The other was clamped so tightly around the strap of her huge cotton purse—a jolly purse festooned with seashells, the canvas a bright orange, a bag meant for a holiday and happiness—that the fingers blanched.

  Her face looked old and worn. Of course, I didn’t know when the photos I’d studied had been taken, but they could not have been made too many years before, especially the one where she stood by the Christmas tree with Kent. It wasn’t the passage of time that had drawn the color from her cheeks, made the muscles flaccid, turned her blue eyes vacant and staring.

  I had an uneasy feeling that just before I looked at her, she’d been staring at one of them. If only I’d looked at her first. Would I have seen fright-filled eyes focused on a particular person? Was I imagining that she bore a heavy burden?

  Quickly I scanned the group again, looking for a heightened awareness of Evelyn. If one of Frank Riordan’s children had twice tried murder and realized Evelyn knew, surely there would be a crackling awareness of her, a tension that would link them. Alex was squirting antibacterial liquid on likely sticky fingers. Kent turned a page of his paperback. Madge snapped shut her compact, dropped it in her purse, and brushed away a speck of lint from her blouse. Rosie’s lips curved in an inviting smile and a handsome graying man paused in his conversation with his wife to smile in return. Val brushed back a wisp of hair from her face, her features somber. If one of them was attuned to Evelyn, there was no evidence of it.

  Our flight was called. In the swirling movement of boarding passengers, I lost sight of Evelyn’s dumpy figure, but I carried with me an indelible image of her pale, strained face.

  4

  Chartered buses awaited our arrival at the Copenhagen airport. I lagged a half block behind the Riordan party and climbed aboard a different bus. A guide provided capsule descriptions as we drove north through the city to the harbor and Langelinie Pier. Canals were everywhere. Copper spires glistened and gargoyles gazed blindly down from ledges. I have a fondness for gargoyles.

  Neoclassical and rococo buildings were punctuated by an occasional modern structure. Bicycles wove in and out of traffic. I glimpsed the turquoise and gold spire of the Church of Our Savior. We passed Amalienborg Palace, the residence of Queen Margrethe II, and, when we neared the harbor, The Little Mermaid, the graceful statue inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale that speaks always to the young at heart.

  Even though several hundred passengers had arrived at once, the scene on the quay was orderly. The Clio was a lovely ship, her dark blue hull and white upper decks gleaming in the sun. As I recalled the information in my cruise packet, the Clio had been in service for only two years. There were ten decks with an added sundeck forward. In a welcome change from behemoth cruise ships, the Clio carried a maximum of 730 passengers. Now her standard fluttered in the breeze and her smiling crew welcomed travelers.

  The buses waited to discharge passengers until the previous group had embarked. When our turn came, I joined a line of perhaps fifty inching forward up the gangplank to the entryway on Deck 4. Just inside the ship, each traveler paused to have a photograph taken and was then issued an electronic card to be used each time he or she left or reentered the ship. The card also served as an electronic key to their cabin and for use in charging drinks or shopping on board.

  The reception center was on Deck 4, along with the purser’s counter. Amid the cheerful, milling throng, I looked at a color-coded pocket map, conveniently tucked into the blue leather holder for the electronic key, and spotted my cabin, 6012. I climbed blue-carpeted stairs to Deck 6. There was a general air of excitement
and the good humor of a treasure hunt as travelers sought their quarters. Luggage was piled in the hallways, awaiting the arrival of passengers.

  I clicked into my cabin, looked about appreciatively. I hadn’t sailed for a number of years. I had expected a cramped box. Instead the cabin seemed spacious. A compact bath was to my left as I stepped inside, a double closet to the right. I opened the closet, noted the safe, picked up a laminated sheet which contained security information, the number to call in an emergency, medical facilities available, hours of operation for the purser’s office, and an explanation of the electronic keys, with a note that each key left a record when inserted into a cabin lock. I tossed the sheet back onto the safe and closed the closet door.

  Beyond the double bed was a small sofa and coffee table. A desk with a telephone sat opposite the sofa. A sliding glass door opened to a balcony, a picture window to the sea that, with the long mirror on the forward wall, increased the sense of spaciousness. I stepped out on the balcony, admired the two comfortable plastic chairs, and took a deep breath of salt-tanged air. I leaned on the spotless wooden railing and welcomed the soft warmth of the sunshine. Danes too were enjoying the idyllic weather, strolling on the quay, biking, skating. The harbor on a summer Saturday afforded continuing entertainment as the cruise ships arrived and departed.