The Body on the Lido Deck

by Jane Bennett Munro

  From the ship we’d be heading straight for the airport to fly back to Twin Falls, which required three flights—from Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta, Atlanta to Salt Lake City, and Salt Lake City to Twin Falls—and would take all day even if we managed to make all our connections. In January, the biggest obstacle was weather. Planes can take off and fly in rain or snow, but if they can’t see the ground, they can’t land. Both Salt Lake City and Twin Falls were prone to dense fog at this time of year.

  To our surprise, when Mum joined us after breakfast, Sarah came with her. As Nigel and Hal pulled out chairs for them, both women were giggling as if they shared some joke they didn’t want us to know about.

  “What’s so funny?” Hal asked.

  They looked at each other and burst out laughing. “We’re a trifle tiddly,” Sarah explained.

  “Mimosas,” Mum added. “You know, orange juice and champagne.”

  “Then you should switch to coffee,” Nigel said sternly, signaling to a waiter. “Not Irish, mind.”

  “So what did you three great detectives come up with last night while I was sleeping?” Mum asked.

  Hal and Nigel took turns filling them in. “Toni’s decided that the doctor did it,” Hal said, “but my money’s on Joseph Gerard.”

  “Keep your voice down!” I hissed, taking a quick look around. Fortunately, nearly everyone had left, and none of the stragglers were sitting anywhere near us.

  “We didn’t even talk about Gerard last night,” Nigel reminded him. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Young Dr. Welch?” Sarah inquired in surprise. “But he’s a sweetie. A right darling. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “Gerard, on the other hand,” said Hal, “threatened my wife.”

  “That awful man,” Mum said angrily. “Nothing he did would surprise me.”

  “He’s angry at me because I wanted to look at videotapes, and as a result his son was killed.”

  “Oh dear,” Sarah said. “I heard about that. Colin was quite upset, and apparently Joseph didn’t take the news well.”

  Joseph? Then I remembered that Sarah knew Gerard—in the biblical sense at least. “That’s what Officer Grant said,” I agreed.

  “I’m afraid Joseph has always had a foul temper,” Sarah said, “even as a young man. Colin has known him for decades, of course, ever since his first assignment on the Seven Sisters. They’ve always been at odds, because the young entertainer Evie Hodges was dating both Joseph and Colin. She preferred Colin, of course, and Joseph didn’t like it.”

  “The captain told you that?” I asked. “I’m surprised he mentioned her, seeing as he kept their daughter a secret from you.”

  “Obviously, he didn’t tell me everything,” Sarah said, “but he did tell me about Joseph. Then when they were together on the Southern Cross, Joseph found out somehow that Evie had a daughter by Colin, and that really set him off. I believe he and Colin actually came to blows over it.”

  “Dear me,” said Mum.

  “Colin told me last night that Joseph threatened to tell me about Maggie, and Colin said he’d make sure Joseph would never work a cruise ship of the line ever again if he did that.”

  “Blimey,” Nigel commented. “I’d say ‘being at odds’ is a bit of an understatement.”

  “Oh, they hate each other,” Sarah said cheerfully. “It doesn’t help that they now hold equivalent ranks.”

  I nudged Hal. “See?”

  “Hmph,” he replied.

  “Colin says that it’s very difficult to run a ship when one’s worst enemy holds equivalent rank and can sabotage everything one does,” Sarah continued. “Joseph probably thinks that Colin assigned Keith to maintenance just to get back at him.”

  “Damn,” I remarked, “that sounds like Meacham.”

  “Bert Meacham?” Sarah inquired. “The ‘gruesome twosome.’ Just Colin’s luck to get his two worst enemies together on the same cruise. One can only hope that it won’t happen again.”

  “I thought Bert Meacham always showed up on every ship he captained,” I said.

  “That’s pretty much true,” Sarah said. “Meacham is the lesser of the two evils, I’d say.”

  “Have you told him yet that he’s Keith’s father?” I asked. “Gerard, I mean.”

  Sarah didn’t answer right away, so I pressed on, disregarding the repressive looks coming my way from both Mum and Hal. “Or have you told Keith?”

  “No to both,” Sarah said. “I try to stay away from Joseph, and I’m afraid of Keith’s reaction, so no.”

  “I was under the impression that Keith hates his father,” I said. “Maybe if he knew, he’d be happier.”

  Sarah frowned. “Wherever did you get that idea?”

  “When I saw him down in the food disposal, trying to get Leonie’s skull cap out of the food grinder.”

  Mum made a face. “Antoinette, really.”

  I ignored her. “The way Keith looked at his father. Pure hatred.”

  “Keith is conflicted,” Sarah explained. “All the psychiatrists I took him to agreed on that. You see, Keith craves his father’s attention, but he didn’t get it as a child because Colin was always off on a cruise ship. I’m afraid I spoiled him somewhat, trying to make up for it. He was given everything he ever wanted, sent to the best schools, given every possible privilege. But none of it made up for his father’s love. He flunked out of countless schools. It’s a wonder he ever made it to maritime college, and he flunked out of six of those. Colin finally put his foot down. No more partying, drinking, gambling, and drugs. He was put to work in the bowels of the ship in the maintenance department, and he hates that too. All the trouble he caused was the result of acting out, trying to get his father’s attention. And he’s still at it.”

  “I see,” I said. “Then he finds out he has a sister, whom he thinks has taken away his father’s affection, and he acts out by attacking her.”

  “Yes,” Sarah said sadly, “and this is the end of the line, I’m afraid. Keith committed assault and battery on his sister, and she died as a result. It’ll be manslaughter at the very least, and Colin put him in the brig that very night, pending trial when we get back to England.”

  “So there is a brig,” Hal said.

  “Of course there’s a brig,” Sarah said. “All ships have a brig. It’s maritime law.”

  “So Keith couldn’t have killed Joe Gerard or Mrs. Levine,” I mused. “Speaking of Mrs. Levine, whatever happened to her body?”

  “Colin arranged for her sister to take her ashore in San Juan,” Sarah said. “They were going to fly her home to Miami to be buried there.”

  “I suppose there wasn’t an autopsy,” I commented, earning another glare from my mother.

  “No,” Sarah said. “Colin didn’t mention one. Why? Should there have been one?”

  “She was strangled,” I said. “I found petechiae in her conjunctivae and a ligature mark around her neck.”

  “Colin must not have known,” Sarah said. “Didn’t you tell him?”

  “She did,” Hal said. “He was there when she found it. She showed him. She took pictures with her cell phone.”

  “Which was then stolen,” I said. “It still hasn’t turned up. Neither has my laptop.”

  “Dear me,” said Sarah, sounding exactly like Mum. “Might I change the subject? Chief Superintendent …”

  “Nigel, please.”

  “Nigel, you said that you still suspect Colin in this dreadful affair. Might I ask why? Naturally I think you’re dead wrong.”

  “Nothing would make me happier,” Nigel said, “and I must say that the evidence implicates Keith much more than it does the captain. However, there are no witnesses other than your husband and your son. We have only their word to depend upon.”

  “Bong was there,” Sarah said. “He saw the whole thing. He
told me so.”

  “Bong is obviously a very loyal employee,” Nigel murmured.

  “Yes. He’s been with Colin for twenty-five years, ever since the Southern Cross.”

  “You’ll forgive me,” Nigel said gently, “if I point out that Bong’s testimony is somewhat suspect, rather like a wife testifying for her husband.”

  Sarah was unperturbed. “Yes, yes, I quite see that, but all the same …”

  “None of us really believe your husband is a viable suspect,” Nigel assured her, “but there it is, don’t you know.”

  We broke up shortly after that, with the excuse that we needed to return to our respective cabins and start packing and getting everything ready for disembarking. As Hal and I bounced between the walls and the bed with the pitching of the ship, laying out suitcases on the bed, emptying drawers, and retrieving toiletry articles from the bathroom, we continued to discuss the case.

  “We’re almost out of time,” Hal said, “and there’s not enough evidence to prove who did what to whom. So I guess somebody’s gonna get away with murder.”

  “Murders,” I corrected him, “and you may be right. But now that Scotland Yard is involved, surely they’ll continue to investigate.”

  “There probably isn’t anything we can do about it now anyway,” Hal went on.

  “Maybe there is,” I said.

  Hal stopped folding shirts and gave me that look he always gives me when he thinks I’m about to get myself into a dangerous situation. “Toni. I don’t like the sound of that.”

  I ignored him. “We could set a trap. Force his hand. Or hands.”

  “No.”

  “Why not? It worked with Tyler Cabot.”

  “We’re not dealing with Tyler Cabot. We’re not in Twin Falls. We’re dealing with maybe three murderers on board a cruise ship in the middle of the Caribbean in a storm.”

  “I bet I could get Nigel to agree.”

  “Not if your mother has anything to say about it.”

  22

  The play’s the thing

  Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.

  —Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 2, scene 2

  “IT COULD WORK,” Nigel conceded.

  Mum was not so agreeable. “Antoinette, I simply won’t have it,” she declared, hands on hips. “It’s far too dangerous.”

  “Not if we get the captain and Officer Grant to help.”

  “In my humble opinion, which nobody ever listens to,” Hal said with a withering glance at me, “if we don’t have support from the crew, it will never work. Besides, who would you set a trap for? We’ve got, what, six suspects?”

  “The captain, Keith, Rob, Gerard, Lynch, and Meacham,” I recited, counting on my fingers. “We’ve all but eliminated the captain, and Keith has been in the brig since Bridgetown, so we’ve narrowed it down to four suspects.”

  “Oh, well, when you put it that way,” Hal said, sarcasm fairly dripping from his lips, “it’s as easy as pie. A child could do it.”

  “He’s got a point, old girl,” Nigel said. “It’s one thing to try to catch one suspect, but four? How do you propose to accomplish that?”

  “I think Hal’s right,” I said. “We do need to involve Officer Grant, and he can involve the captain, but I think if we have a lot of security guards around, it should be fairly safe.”

  “Fairly safe,” my mother snarled. She slammed the lid of her suitcase shut. “Fairly safe? Have you all gone bonkers?”

  “For this to work,” Nigel said, “all the suspects have to think that each of us knows something incriminating about them but still hasn’t told anybody. That way the guilty party will want to eliminate one of us to prevent our telling anybody.”

  Mum sat down on the bed and folded her arms across her ample bosom. “Oh, right. That sounds really safe,” she said with a sniff. “Are you proposing to dangle yourself or Antoinette out there as bait? I’m telling you right now, if anything happens to either of you I’ll never forgive you.”

  “Fiona, calm yourself,” Nigel said. “The fact is that there are four suspects and four of us. Each of us will have a mission—even you. It’s got to look completely innocent.”

  “Bollocks,” said Mum. “Completely innocent, my arse.”

  My mother almost never swore. This was an opportunity too good to miss. “Mum, really,” I said to her. “Your language!”

  Nigel and Hal both burst out laughing, and even Mum produced a smile, although she strove mightily to conceal it. The tension was broken.

  Officer Grant was more than happy to help us carry out our scheme. He assured us that members of his security staff could be concealed in whatever area of the ship we needed them. “But what do you each propose to do?” he asked.

  “We’re each going to confront one of our four suspects with the evidence we have that implicates that person, ask them to account for their whereabouts for each of the incidents, and see what happens,” Nigel explained.

  “Well, that’s going to be a bit difficult with regard to Meacham,” Grant objected. “We still haven’t found him.”

  “Do you suppose he got off in San Juan?” I asked.

  “Don’t you think we would check something so obvious?” Grant responded. “He would have had to swipe his crew ID. There’d be a record.”

  “What if he didn’t swipe his ID?” I persisted. “Could he sneak off without anybody seeing him?”

  “I don’t see how. There are always two people on duty at the gangway.” Grant appeared to have had just about enough of this subject. “Can we please get on with something useful?”

  His casual dismissal of what I thought was a perfectly legitimate question rankled, but I decided not to press it. I shrugged. “Carry on.”

  “We still have Gerard, Welch, and Lynch,” Nigel said.

  “I’ll take Rob,” I volunteered.

  “I’ll take Lynch,” Nigel said. “Hal, do you think you can handle Gerard?”

  “I think I can take him two falls out of three,” Hal said. “It’s that third fall that bothers me.”

  “Well, by that time,” Grant said, “my men should come to your rescue.”

  “So where will we find them?” I asked. “I mean, we aren’t allowed in crew quarters or anywhere below decks without a crew member.”

  “You can find Dr. Welch in the infirmary,” Grant said. “That’s not off limits.”

  Duh. I knew that. Grant didn’t have to tell me that. But again I decided not to make an issue of it. “Oh, I know that,” I said. “But what about the others?”

  Grant thought a moment. “I can arrange to have all of them at the captain’s table for dinner. It’s probably best to wait until after dinner anyway, as they’ll all be off duty by then. Dr. Welch will be done with evening office hours. You’ll have the infirmary to yourselves after that.”

  “Except for the security guards that you’ll conceal about the place,” I reminded him.

  We went our separate ways after that. Hal and Nigel went back to their respective cabins to finish packing, as the evening looked fairly busy. I went to the library and logged on to a computer to use my remaining Internet minutes. There was one more person I wanted to Google.

  Everyone had finished packing by the time I got back to our cabin. Nigel proposed a visit to the Ocean Lounge, so he and Mum and Hal departed, leaving me free rein in our cabin to pack without anyone getting in my way. I asked him to let me have a look at the three ships’ crew manifests, so he left them with me.

  Since it was nearly five o’clock, I popped another seasick pill, as the pitching of the ship had not diminished. This must be a huge storm for us to still be in the middle of it after forty-eight hours. I finished packing, leaving out an outfit to travel in the next day. After I got the suitcases off the bed and out into the corridor, I changed into my black pants and a bla
ck sequined tunic with which I wore silver earrings and a wide silver choker. Then I curled up on the bed to peruse the crew manifests one last time.

  The name I was looking for appeared on all three. How’d we miss that? Maybe we just hadn’t had a reason to be looking for it—until now.

  I stuffed the papers into my boat bag and went down to the Ocean Lounge.

  After Boozey had taken my order, I hauled out the crew manifests and showed Nigel what I’d found.

  “What are you trying to tell us?” he inquired.

  “It’s the same thing I’ve been telling you all along. The only people I don’t suspect are the four of us.”

  “Did you Google him too?”

  “Of course I did. I didn’t find anything.”

  “Well, there you are.”

  “What’s this all about, kitten?” my mother asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” I told her. “I just found somebody else that was on all three ships.”

  “What does it mean?” she persisted.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Kitten, I don’t like it when you keep things from me.”

  “I don’t like it either,” Hal said.

  Nigel intervened. “What Toni is trying to convey in her usual convoluted way is that we shouldn’t trust anyone but ourselves, no matter how helpful they’ve been.”

  The captain’s table was full.

  Officer Grant had succeeded in his mission. Besides Captain Sloane and his wife, I recognized First Officer Lynch, Third Officer Alexander, Chief Engineer Gerard, Officer Grant himself, Rob, and a slightly built man with thinning blond hair who was unfamiliar to me.

  Mum nudged me. “Kitten, who’s that man sitting next to the doctor?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never seen him before.”

  “That’s Second Officer Bellingham,” said the man across the table, “the navigation officer. He’s the one who’s been making all those announcements about the storm.”