Set Sail for Murder

by Carolyn Hart

  I stopped in front of her. “Monika, what hours do you work?”

  I suppose it was part of her training to reply politely no matter how odd the question. She replied quickly in slightly accented English. “I am on duty from ten to fourteen hundred and from sixteen to twenty-two hundred, Mrs. Collins. If you need me at any other time, I will be available.”

  “Thank you.” I smiled and walked on. My smile slipped away. Stewardesses went off duty at 10 P.M., too early to be of help. Still, it never hurt to ask. I kept on toward the stern. I spotted a service cart in the hallway near the Riordan cabins.

  As I recalled, Evelyn was in the cabin next to Sophia and Jimmy. I came around the cart. I was at the conjunction of the long hallway from the bow to the stern and the short hallway from starboard to port. I could see the door to Sophia’s cabin as well as the row of cabins belonging to the Riordans.

  I waited until the stewardess stepped out into the corridor. She was humming a cheerful tune. She stopped when she saw me. “Ma’am, may I help you?” Her nameplate read INGRID. She was younger than my stewardess, Monika, likely not much over twenty. Her round face was framed by thick blond hair. Her complexion was rosy and flawless, her features attractive. She was a pretty girl with a full figure. Likely she’d tend toward plumpness when she was older.

  I wasn’t especially hopeful. Staff Captain Glenn was smart and capable. I was confident he would be careful, thorough, and persistent in making inquiries, but it wouldn’t do any harm to try.

  “Ingrid”—I gestured toward Cabin 6088—“I’m sure you know that Mrs. Lennox disappeared Friday night. I’m a friend of hers, and I’m hoping you can help me.”

  “Oh, ma’am, I’m sorry.” Her eyes, a clear bright blue, clouded in sympathy. “What can I do?”

  “Staff Captain Glenn asked you if you saw her that evening.” I made it a statement, not a question.

  “Yes, ma’am. I turned down the covers at twenty-one hundred. I didn’t see her again. I go off duty at twenty-two hundred.”

  That should have been that, but her response was so glib, so quick, that I looked at her intently. There was the tiniest flare of wariness in her eyes. Her expression was open, frank, and honest. Too honest. There was something she didn’t want to reveal.

  “What did you do when you got off work?”

  The question caught her by surprise. She hesitated a fraction too long. “I went to the second showing of the movie.”

  “I’ll bet that was fun. Did you go with a friend?” She was a very pretty girl. I didn’t doubt that some young man aboard ship had noticed.

  She looked uncomfortable. “Oh no, ma’am. I went by myself.”

  Did she resent being asked a personal question? Or was she unable to claim a companion at the movie because she hadn’t been in the lounge? “I was hoping you might have seen the person who entered Mrs. Lennox’s cabin a few minutes after eleven.”

  “Entered it? But—” She broke off, looking puzzled, then shook her head. “I wouldn’t know. I go off duty at twenty-two hundred.” Her expression was bland.

  “Perhaps you forgot something, came back to this area.”

  “No, ma’am.” Her gaze didn’t falter. “I went to the movie.”

  Jimmy took a sip of Scotch. His face was pale and drawn, but his blue eyes were no longer glazed with fatigue. We sat at a secluded table in the topside bar. The wide windows were dark and the Clio churned steadily southwestward en route to Stockholm. A trio played Caribbean music, the notes of the marimba soft and evocative.

  He listened intently as I described my inconclusive interview with Ingrid. “…and I don’t believe for a minute she went to a movie. She looked at me with wide-open eyes and an angel’s face and lied.” I paused. “She’s a pretty girl.”

  “Yeah. She is.” Jimmy picked up the tall slender dish in the center of the table, rattled peanuts into his hand. “That’s probably the answer right there. She’s probably having an affair with some guy and she doesn’t want anybody snooping into where she was after she got off work.”

  I didn’t know much about the inner workings of a cruise ship, but I doubted staff had the free time and, much more important, the privacy to pursue too many amorous delights while at sea. I suspected private quarters were only for high-ranking officers. A dormitory arrangement was probably the rule for service personnel.

  I felt dissatisfied. “Do you think it would do any good for me to talk to Glenn, ask him to see her again?”

  Jimmy looked thoughtful. “If she’s lied to him once, she’ll cling to that story no matter what.” He popped peanuts in his mouth, said indistinctly, “Don’t rile up Glenn. I’ll give it a try, see if I can get anywhere with her. If I offer her a reward, maybe she’ll cooperate. If she actually knows anything. But”—he sounded discouraged—“I can’t see any reason why she’d be near her duty station an hour after she got off work. Probably the lie had to do with going to the movie. She was up to something that she wants to keep hidden.”

  “I suppose so.” I was oddly reluctant to give up on Ingrid. I was sure that she was hiding something, but Jimmy was probably right. Her secret likely had nothing to do with Sophia, and if she had indeed lied to Glenn, she could not afford to change her story.

  “The hell of it is”—Jimmy looked grim—“I don’t see what more Glenn can do. He’s interviewed the passengers in nearby cabins and the service staff. Nobody saw Sophia Friday night or anyone in the corridor. He thinks Evelyn may be right and Sophia herself used that key.”

  “Then where is the key? And where are the papers I gave her?” That was the sticking point to me.

  Jimmy’s hand tightened around his glass. His voice was strained. “Glenn thinks she was so upset when she got back she went out on the balcony and jumped. If that’s true, she must have had the key and papers with her.” He looked at me with tortured eyes. “I know that’s not true, but he won’t listen. He thinks I don’t want to believe it because I blame myself. I can’t get him to understand that it doesn’t matter how distraught Sophia was, she would never have killed herself. That leaves it up to me to figure out what happened.” His voice was low and hard. “Evelyn wants to believe it was an accident. I let her think I agreed. I have to be able to talk to the Riordans. I’d agree to anything.”

  I’d correctly read Jimmy’s suddenly bland expression yesterday.

  Jimmy rubbed his face. “Evelyn’s crazy about those kids. In her heart she must know one of them did it. She has to know. Or maybe she wants to believe in them so bad she’s convinced herself that Sophia jumped. But I know one of them killed Sophia. I’m going to keep after them. I’ll find out the truth. Somehow. Some way. I owe Sophia.”

  I woke early and watched the sun rise. After breakfast, I sat on my balcony as the Clio glided to her berth in Stockholm. At the last minute, I decided to go on the excursion into the city, hoping to divert my thoughts from their endless, fruitless effort to figure out who took the key from the ceramic bowl.

  In the sumptuous Golden Hall of Stockholm’s city hall, a trim, energetic guide described the grandeur of the annual Nobel Prize banquet: the elegant dress, magnificent music, the congregation of the world’s greatest minds. Names drifted through my mind of past winners in literature, Octavio Paz, John Steinbeck, Albert Camus, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis. I tried to envision them as living writers. Did they feel overwhelmed by the opulence of this huge gleaming gold room? I wondered if Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite and left a fortune to fund awards to those deemed to have most benefited mankind in the previous year, would have been pleased by the kingly presentation of the prizes in his name.

  I enjoyed seeing the Golden Hall and the wooden sculpture St. George and the Dragon in Storkyrkan Cathedral, and all the while I worried at the questions I couldn’t answer. Who took the key? What happened to the papers? What could Ingrid have seen?

  I skipped the afternoon excursion to Drottningholm Palace, knowing I would once again be among the few passengers remain
ing aboard. This time the service cart wasn’t on the port side. I expected Ingrid was even now working her way forward, servicing the starboard cabins. I had no wish to encounter her. Not at this moment.

  Once again, I stood at the conjunction of the passageways, the door to Evelyn’s cabin to my right, Sophia’s door in the cross passage about ten feet to my left. Clearly, Evelyn could see Sophia’s door every time she stepped out of her cabin. But—I backed up a few feet—when the other Riordans came into the hallway their view was obscured. The center portion of the Clio was devoted to storage and service areas.

  I walked aft into the cross hallway. The two great suites occupied the space at the stern. Opposite them, at the end of the central service block, there were two cabin doors, 6090 and 6093. These were small interior cabins with no outlook to the sea. Less desirable, they would be considerably less expensive. However, anyone opening one of these doors had an unobstructed view of Sophia’s door.

  And so? I shook my head in discouragement. Glenn told Jimmy he’d checked with all nearby passengers. He certainly wouldn’t have missed these cabins. Yet it was clear that Ingrid could only have glimpsed Sophia’s door by looking out of one of four cabins: Evelyn’s, the matching cabin on the starboard side, or the two interior ones opposite the suites. There were no storage doors with the necessary vantage point. Even if Ingrid had been in the area long past her duty hours, she could not have opened a service door and seen anyone at Sophia’s door.

  Disappointed, I turned and walked slowly forward. Sophia was gone and there didn’t seem to be any link to her murderer. The days of our cruise were growing ever shorter. Today was Monday. We would leave Stockholm shortly before dinner, sail through the night, and anchor tomorrow afternoon off the Swedish coast for excursions by tender to Karlskrona. Wednesday the Clio reached the German harbor of Travemünde at noon for afternoon excursions to Lübeck. Wednesday evening the Clio began her final leg of this cruise, leaving Travemünde to be at sea for two and a half days before arriving in London at noon on Saturday, where we would disembark.

  Would a murderer walk free?

  22

  I leaned against the railing on the promenade deck. Preparations were under way for the Clio to sail. The pilot’s boat rode nearby. Seagulls scolded. The dark blue water looked placid. The last excursion group had returned almost an hour ago. Soon the hawsers would be loosed and the Clio would sail southwestward from Stockholm to anchor off the old naval village of Karlskrona tomorrow afternoon.

  “Hi, Mrs. Collins.” Rosie Riordan wore sunglasses. Her red hair was tousled and her cheeks pink from sun. “Did you go on an excursion?”

  I gestured toward the city, time-stained copper domes glittering in the late afternoon sun, graceful church spires punctuating the soft blue sky. “This morning. I stayed aboard this afternoon.”

  Rosie placed her elbows on the railing, looked out at the deep blue water. “It didn’t feel right to go. But it doesn’t do any good to stay. We did the city tour this morning and Drottningholm Palace this afternoon.” She turned toward me, the light reflecting from the dark lens of her sunglasses masking her eyes. Her face looked drawn and tired. “Everything seems unreal. This was Sophia’s trip. It’s crazy that she’s gone. I can’t believe it even though I know it’s true.”

  “I understand.” Sophia had been gloriously alive, overwhelmingly dominant. Now she didn’t exist.

  “If only—but there’s no point in thinking how it could have been different.” Rosie sounded sad. “Anyway, you were nice to speak up and tell the captain that Val was with you in the bar.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I’m always pleased to be considered nice, but I was simply reporting a fact.”

  Rosie shook her head. “You knew she didn’t remember. To have everyone realize that would have been devastating for her. She’s scared enough as is. She’s—well, she’s promised to go into treatment when we get home. This is the first time she’s had blackouts. Now she knows she was with you from about a quarter to eleven to eleven-thirty.” She sounded relieved.

  I wished I could see Rosie’s eyes, know whether she was anxiously watching me. I stared at the dark lens, my gaze steady. “I can’t say exactly when Val got to the bar, but it was after eleven, possibly as much as ten minutes after the hour.”

  “Oh, it was sooner than that.” Rosie was insistent. “I rang up her cabin about a quarter to eleven. I was up in the top deck bar and I thought she might want to come up and join me. There wasn’t any answer so she was already on her way down to Diogenes. She’s pretty fuzzy on everything that happened Friday night, but she thinks she went straight from her cabin to the bar. She wanted another drink and her bottle was empty. So if Val asks you, tell her she was with you from ten forty-five on.” She took a deep breath. “You saw her. She was too drunk to—” She didn’t have to complete the sentence: —push Sophia overboard. “Anyway, please, if she asks you, tell her everything’s fine, that she was with you. She’s scared because she doesn’t remember what happened and it freaked her out when they said somebody used Jimmy’s key to open Sophia’s door right after eleven. It’s better if she thinks she was with you.”

  Rosie turned away, walking swiftly, head down, shoulders hunched.

  I stared after her. Rosie was afraid. Desperately afraid. I would have gone after her, demanded to know what she feared, but she’d never tell me.

  The message light flickered on my telephone. I sat at the desk, picked up the receiver, punched 7 for the message.

  Jimmy sounded irritated. “Ingrid’s either stringing me along or too dense to understand what I’m asking her. I told her that it was important to find out who entered Sophia’s cabin right after eleven, and if she could be of any help, I’d be glad to pay her a reward. I offered her a thousand dollars. That got her attention. She said she couldn’t help me, then asked if it was worth a lot of money to know who was in the hall then. I told her if she knew anything she had to tell me. I guess I got too excited. I promised I’d try to keep her out of it when I talked to Glenn. That’s when she started backpedaling, protesting that she didn’t mean she knew anything, that she was nowhere near the cabin at eleven and she had to get back to work, and she turned and pushed the cart down the hall so fast she almost crashed into an old lady coming out of her cabin a few doors down, one of those dowdy but regal English passengers. She looked at me like I was a serial rapist, then sailed by with her eyes flashing and her mouth pursed. I feel like I struck out all the way around.” A pause. “I’m running out of ideas. Look, you always help me think. Let’s have dinner in the main dining room at seven.”

  Waiters in white jackets and shirts and black trousers moved deftly among the white-clothed tables. The Clio was under way, cruising through the dramatic Swedish archipelago, the shadowed portions of the fir-crowned islands so darkly green they appeared black. The archipelago is made up of twenty-six thousand islands, many uninhabited. Occasionally we passed a small island with a weathered dock and a single rustic wooden house on a bluff with smoke curling from the chimney. I wondered at the owners. Was the house a vacation retreat? Did anyone live year-round in such a remote place?

  The dining room was almost full. I looked from table to table, women in cocktail dresses, men in suits or tuxedos. Most faces were smiling. The buzz of conversation was a melding of deep voices with the higher tones of women. The mood seemed lighthearted, as befitted the elegant surroundings.

  Jimmy dashed salt into his soup. “Why don’t you talk to Ingrid again, see if you can get her to open up.”

  I forked a piece of watercress. “I don’t believe Ingrid could have seen anything useful. I checked out the passageway by Sophia’s cabin this afternoon. I thought Ingrid might have been in a storage room after her duty hours, opened the door, and seen someone at Sophia’s door. That won’t work. There are no storage rooms in the cross corridor. There are two interior cabins opposite 6088.” I was getting all too familiar with that portion of the ship and easily recalled the numb
ers. “Cabins 6090 and 6093. Of course,” I added perfunctorily, “Sophia’s door is also visible from Evelyn’s cabin and from the cabin opposite Evelyn’s on the starboard side. Will you ask Glenn again just to be certain that he checked with the occupants of all the nearby cabins?”

  “He said he did. He’s thorough. If he’d come up with anything, I think we’d know.” Jimmy’s expression was puzzled. “I’d swear there’s something there with Ingrid, but I don’t know what it could be.”

  The waiter cleared away the first course.

  I took a sip of wine. “I wonder if Glenn’s checked to see what time keys were inserted into the doors of the Riordan cabins Friday night. Your key opened Sophia’s door at eleven-oh-three. I called Sophia at eleven thirty-nine. If a Riordan cabin was entered after eleven-oh-three, that might be a link. I left Sophia at ten-fifteen. She called you at ten-eighteen. That’s the last indication that she was alive. I wish I knew what time Val came down to the bar. If Sophia answered her door, let Val inside, there may have been time for her to have killed Sophia and come upstairs, pretending she’d had too much to drink. It may have been five or ten after eleven when she got to the bar.” It was possible that Val’s interlude with me had been calculated, her apparent lack of memory pretense. Was Rosie worried about what Val might remember? Or terrified about what Val might have done? “All the Riordans were vague about when they turned in.”

  Our entrées arrived, lamb chops for me, veal for Jimmy. When the waiter was out of earshot, I looked soberly at Jimmy. “The murderer’s sitting pretty. Glenn may have suspicions, but there isn’t enough proof to tie anyone to Sophia’s disappearance, much less prove she was murdered. Besides, he seems to be inclined toward suicide. If we can’t come up with something specific, her death will be passed off as suicide or an accident.”