Second Sitting

by Stella Whitelaw

  ‘You know too much, and if something dicey is going on, then you are in danger. Tell no one anything, talk to no one except me and Richard Norton. You can’t trust a soul. On-board is someone who wouldn’t hesitate to shut you up.’

  I felt a chill despite the heat of the afternoon. He was right. I knew too much. I had made too many enquiries, talked to too many people. And one of those people might think I now knew too much.

  And I was eating at table two tonight, second sitting. Not a good omen. No one had proved it was only men. Suddenly I didn’t feel so hungry.

  Twenty-Three - At Sea

  A new couple from Manchester had moved on to table two, second sitting, having had a disagreement with another couple on their previous table for four, first sitting. They had not heard of the jinx. They soon would. The two sittings rarely mixed.

  So I was not morally obliged to join them this evening to make up numbers. I could go have a midnight sandwich. Susan was indisposed so I was MC for Estelle Grayson’s second show in the Princess Lounge. Remember to dress down. Rule One: do not outshine star.

  I was already heartily sick of everything in my wardrobe. I decided to wear a long saffron chiffon print dress by Anna Sui, which did nothing for me. Muted, washed-out colours, though I did like the curved neckline and little sleeves.

  Estelle Grayson sang like a rich dream, her voice pounding through the old ballads, her hands not straying far from her accompanist’s shoulders. He seemed to be just as besotted, gazing at her with rapt eyes. I’ve nothing against romance third or fourth time around. There’s hope for us all.

  The passengers loved it. They were watching a real live love affair on stage as well as listening to it. Estelle and Joe deserved a bonus. If it lasted. Cruise romances rarely survived on shore. It must be the British weather or the mail system.

  Between shows I went back to my office and started a new document file on my computer. I saved it as Possible Evidence. I began typing, putting down all the information that I had gathered, all my thoughts, my list of possible suspects. The document grew and grew. There was a twisted mass of fact and fiction. It would need an expert to work it out.

  It helped to write it all down. Sorted my head.

  George Foster, art dealer, died aged fifty-nine. Suspects: Joan Foster because she had suspicions that her husband still loved her sister, Helen. Maybe she wanted this mystery painting for herself. All that money. She might think she deserved a big pay-off, a comfortable pension.

  Helen Banesto: revenge for disappointment on being dumped for sister.

  Reg Hawkins, died aged forty-seven: he was being blackmailed by someone. Who?

  Nigel Garten, died aged forty-three: he was competition for valuable painting.

  Amanda Banesto: revenge for mother’s hard life on own. Still grieving for fiancé killed by road rage killer.

  DJ: to find valuable painting, etc.

  AOP: any other person. There were a dozen possibilities. George Foster had lived on the edge of a shady world.

  *

  I nearly missed the end of the second showing, being so engrossed in typing up my thoughts. I remembered to save, then closed down the computer and flew backstage. Fortunately Trevor was not there with his usual caustic comment.

  It was easy to sign Estelle and Joe off to a rapturous wave of applause.

  ‘Well done, well done,’ I said in the wings as they came off and paused for a kiss before sweeping on again for a second round.

  ‘Did I look all right?’ said Estelle. She was swathed in a creation of electric emerald green satin encrusted with sequins and diamante. She looked like a walking Christmas tree. But her face was radiant so I guessed no one looked too closely at the dress. If Boots could bottle the look, they’d make a fortune. Estelle could endorse their next anti-aging product.

  ‘Perfect,’ I said. ‘And you sang like a dream.’

  They swept on again for a third round of applause. But people were beginning to leave. There was a limit to milking. They came off, arms linked around each other, seeking the nearest secluded bar to whisper sweet nothings before Joe resumed an hour or so of playing show tunes at the grand piano in one of the lounges. No doubt Estelle would get an armchair near the front, so she could sing along under her breath.

  I was too tired to go back to my office apart from a swift visit to make sure it was locked. Susan had not appeared all evening, still recovering from her bout of sea sickness.

  All the bars and lounges were busy. The passengers had thoroughly enjoyed Huatulco, whether they had gone on a catamaran trip, bird watching or simply lazed about on the beach. No big churches or monuments to look at, no history to swot up, no guided tours, a day to chill out and relax. Chill out was not exactly the right phrase. It had been a scorcher. I’d seen some red faces and red shoulders coming aboard. Dr Mallory’s evening surgery would be busy.

  Maria de Leger was sitting on her own, scribbling in her notebook, a glass of brandy on the table. She looked up and smiled. I hadn’t spoken to her since Curaçao. It was such a big ship and easy to lose people along all the decks and corridors.

  ‘Hello, Miss Jones. Come and sit down. I’ve done enough writing for the day. My eyes are giving out. They tire so easily.’

  ‘You seem to have covered a lot of ground,’ I said, sitting at her table in the Galaxy Lounge. The notebook was full of writing. She was holding the pages together with an elastic band.

  ‘Well, I’ve lived a very long time. It’s not easy to condense a busy life. But it’s been fun remembering things. The more I write, then the more I seem to remember. Funny how it all comes back to you.’

  ‘What’s the earliest memory you have?’ I asked. This was a fairly safe bet.

  ‘Cherry blossom floating down in the air on a summery breeze. I was leaning out of an upstairs window and watching the drift of petals falling from a tree in the garden. I thought it was snow and told my mother it was snowing but of course it wasn’t. I must have been about two years old.’ She stopped suddenly. ‘Why aren’t you upstairs on the Lido deck for the Carnival party? Dancing under the stars with your latest admirer.’

  ‘I may go along later, in time for the streamer finale. I usually get roped in to take photos of passengers festooned with streamers. One has to be careful as there can be rather a lot of random dunking of crew in the pool.’

  ‘And you don’t want to get that pretty dress dunked in the pool.’

  ‘Somewhat embarrassing.’

  Mrs Leger smiled knowingly. ‘Everyone enjoys the embarrassment of others,’ she said. ‘Wet or dry. I remember once getting very wet indeed, for days on end, in fact. It was in France.’

  ‘Wet for days? How horrid. Where was this? And when?’

  ‘I was hiding in a ditch. It hadn’t stopped raining for days. I was soaked to the skin and cold and dead tired. I only had a hunk of stale baguette and even that was wet. But I ate it because I was hungry.’

  ‘You were in France? Was this during the war?’

  Maria nodded. ‘I never say much about it to anyone because it was all so long ago. People don’t want to listen to war stories any more. And it wasn’t something heroic like piloting Lancaster bombers or flying Spitfires in the Battle of Britain. I was a mere messenger on a bicycle, mainly because I could speak French fluently. My mother was French.’

  ‘So you were working for the French Resistance?’ I had to ask her. All along I had thought there was something special about Maria de Leger. Special and different.

  ‘I was barely seventeen but they needed ordinary people like me. I looked French, I spoke French, could merge into village life. But I had a bike and knew the roads and could get from one town to another fairly quickly.’

  ‘And you survived. Thank goodness for that.’

  ‘Only just,’ she said, her face darkening. ‘I spent four years in a forced labour camp, working morning till night, living on bread and thin soup in an unheated hut with twenty other women. Many of the women died of diseas
e.’

  ‘How awful,’ I murmured inadequately.

  ‘The Germans found me, you see, because some gallant British officer stole my bike. We were both hiding in an empty farmhouse and this soldier was trying to get to Dunkirk, where they’d heard many ships were coming to take them off the beaches. When I was asleep, he made off with my bike. I would have got away otherwise.’

  She started sipping her brandy slowly as if the memories were too painful. ‘I’ve traced him. He’s still alive apparently, in his nineties now, living in England with his son and daughter-in-law. I lost four years of my life. The Germans didn’t put me in a concentration camp because they weren’t able to prove anything and I was French by birth.’ She pulled up her sleeve. ‘Look, here’s my number. It won’t wash off.’

  It was a shock seeing the numbers tattooed on her arm. She always wore long sleeves. The numbers were roughly tattooed but still clear.

  ‘I’m so sorry to hear this,’ I said. The words were inadequate. What else could I say? ‘You were very brave. I can only hope that after the war you were able to live a better life.’

  ‘It wasn’t easy. I had to work very hard. Eventually I went to Paris and became part of the fashion world. For many years, I had my own small fashion house. We made mostly bags, gloves, scarves and belts. I sold it several years ago and came to England. This is one of my scarves.’

  It was the most beautiful gossamer scarf, an iridescent rainbow of blue and silver with shots of coral. The edges were hand-stitched scalloping, a work of art.

  ‘It’s quite heavenly, beautifully made,’ I said. ‘You did well.’

  ‘So did the officer who stole my bike. He survived the war, started an art gallery in Bond Street and became very rich and even titled. No forced labour camp for him or his family.’

  I was getting the awful feeling that I had another name to add to my list in the Possible Evidence file. Hatred stored up for over sixty years. The revenge motive was overwhelmingly strong although how this elderly lady could ever murder anyone was beyond me. But possibly she had been trained when she worked for the underground resistance movement. She said she was only a messenger but that could mean anything in those dangerous days.

  There was a book in the ship’s library written by one of the French underground heroines after the war. I’d read it. It said that all underground workers were given a cyanide suicide pill, to be taken if they were being forced to give away important information to the Germans. If they were being tortured beyond endurance. Maybe Maria had kept her pill all these years.

  But how could she possibly have administered it? She was seated in the same sitting but at a table for six far across the dining room. She could hardly have dropped it into his soup.

  The website on the Internet at Curaçao had given me more than George Foster’s name on the list of directors at the Bond Street gallery. The chairman was Sir Arthur Foster, MC, his father, survivor of the evacuation of Allied troops from the beaches of Dunkirk in June 1940. Was it the same man? Did he ever remember that he had stolen a young girl’s bike so that he could survive?

  ‘You look tired, my dear,’ said Maria, shutting her notebook and putting the cap on her pen. She used a fountain pen, not a biro. ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘No, thank you. I’d better go up to the Lido deck for the streamer finale and take a few extra beach towels in case anyone is being thrown in the pool.’

  ‘Make sure you don’t get thrown in and ruin that pretty dress.’

  ‘They wouldn’t dare.’

  The party was in full swing. Anyone could hear the belting music from a long way off. There was a conga line of dancers twisting round the pool and the outer deck, dancers in sarongs and flip-flops, garlands of paper flowers draped round their necks. Stewardesses were being pulled into the dance line.

  Someone grabbed my waist and before I knew it I was hanging on to someone else, trying to keep up. It wasn’t dancing. It was an untidy, shambling, riotously undisciplined and chaotic parody of a South American dance but everyone was enjoying it.

  There was a shout as hundreds of streamers were hurled into the air from the balconies above and the whole deck area was a mass of coloured paper, fluttering in the wind, swamping the dancers and the band and getting into everywhere. The balconies were festooned with streamers creating a wildly psychedelic canopy above, waving in the coloured lights, changing the ship into a magical fairyland.

  A bundle of long streamers were being wrapped round me and I stood there, laughing. I couldn’t move. I knew who it was. He was wildly dishevelled and very unlike his usual immaculate self, with streamers twisted round his neck and in his hair.

  ‘Aha, me beauty, so I’ve got you in my power at last,’ he said in a pirate Jack Sparrow voice. ‘Don’t you scream now or I’ll make you walk the plank.’

  Samuel had pinned my arms to my sides and was making me dance like a wooden top. The music was so loud, I couldn’t tell what it was. I had only to exert my arms a bit and I could break all the streamers but somehow I didn’t want to. It was easier just to boogie around with Samuel, pretending it was dancing.

  ‘So where have you been all evening?’ he asked loudly. ‘I looked everywhere for you.’

  ‘Liar. You didn’t look at all or you would have seen me talking to Maria de Leger in the Galaxy Lounge. You’ve been up here dancing all evening. That’s why you look such a mess.’

  ‘Dancing is great exercise,’ he said, stripping the streamers off me, picking paper out of my hair. ‘Does you the world of good. Gets the blood pumping.’

  ‘If that’s how you want to keep fit,’ I said. ‘Pumping blood.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I forgot about your foot.’

  ‘It’s not hurting. I wanted to see you anyway.’

  He caught my arm and took me over to his table which was covered in empty bottles and glasses and streamers. He was searching for a clean glass. ‘Now, that’s what I really like to hear. You wanted to see me. Let’s find you a drink.’

  ‘I’ve started a file. I’m putting everything down, recording everything I know for the police. And I’ve found another suspect, someone no one would ever think of. And she has a very strong motive.’

  ‘Good girl, here’s a clean glass. Would you like some of this wine? Might be a bit warm.’ He was testing it.

  ‘Are you listening to me? I said, I’ve started a file called Possible Evidence and found a new suspect.’

  ‘I heard you, Ms Sherlock Holmes, a new suspect. But I don’t want to talk about suspects on a lovely night like this. I’d rather be dancing with you under the stars. Drink up. The night is young. Just you and me and the moonlight.’

  ‘You do talk a lot of rubbish,’ I said. ‘You, me and the moonlight and about three hundred other people.’

  ‘But I only have eyes for you, dear,’ he sang. He was laughing at me again. What could I do about a man who was always laughing at me? Join in perhaps?

  There was a crash of glass as a stewardess stumbled as she was coming towards me and her tray went flying. Glasses flew everywhere. A gasp went up as bare arms and legs were showered with drink. I felt something wet on my face and put my hand up.

  I’d been hit. A glass had hit me.

  ‘Don’t touch it,’ said Samuel, sharply, catching hold of my hand. ‘That’s not wine. It’s blood. Someone threw a glass straight at your face.’

  Twenty-Four - Acapulco

  It was gorgeous. Acapulco is always the high spot of any Caribbean cruise for me. I keep expecting to bump into what’s left of the Rat Pack or Sinatra himself, a jaunty white panama hat shielding his bald spot from the sun.

  But of course only his voice lives on in an echo. And he wouldn’t like Acapulco very much any more. It has changed. It has grown out of recognition yet the setting against the majestic Sierra Madre mountains is still stunning.

  It’s probably the most celebrity studded beach in the world. The rich and the famous flock there to stay in the luxury hotels that st
retch to the eastern end of the bay, tall white skyscrapers in striking modernistic designs. The Mexican fishing village is only a sandy memory though there are still fishing boats drawn up at the end of the beach nearest the old quarter. Some of them have been abandoned for years and their wooden hulls are slowly decaying on the sand.

  I was sporting two interesting butterfly strips on my cheek. Dr Mallory had searched the wound for glass, probing carefully while wearing special magnifying lenses.

  ‘Someone threw that glass at you,’ he said angrily. ‘I saw it happen.’

  ‘No way. It flew off the tray when the stewardess slipped. The deck was very slippery with all the paper streamers and splashes from the pool. It was an accident.’

  ‘Accident, my foot. She dropped the tray, yes, but the glass came straight for you, over her shoulder. Whoever tripped her, was right behind, with a glass aimed straight at you.’

  ‘Did you see them? Who was it?’

  ‘They disappeared into the crowd.’

  I laughed nervously. ‘I don’t believe it. You’re making this up. You’re trying to scare me.’

  He dropped the probe into a tray. ‘No fragments, thank goodness. It’s not deep enough for stitches. But I will put a couple of butterfly strips on it, to hold the edges together. It should heal nicely.’

  I wanted to ask if I would be scarred but knew he’d only give me a sarcastic answer. What did it matter anyway? I could do wonders with make-up.

  ‘I’m coming with you to your cabin,’ he went on. ‘No objections, Casey, please. Purely as a security measure, to make sure no one is lurking in the shower. We don’t want a replay of Psycho. Then I want you to lock your door and not open it to anyone, even if they say they are me or Richard Norton.’

  ‘Now you are being melodramatic,’ I said, wondering if I could stand up. My knees had gone weak and wobbly. ‘Who would possibly say they were you?’

  ‘Someone who wanted to get into your cabin.’

  ‘But I wouldn’t let anyone into my cabin, especially not if they said they were you.’ It was a joke but he was not amused.