Ship Ahoy! (A Cliffhanger Novel Book 3)

by T. J. Middleton

  ‘I don’t suppose it is.’

  ‘It was a good job she can swim. Otherwise…’ He had this faraway look in his eye. ‘She’s very strong willed. Seven stories of ocean-going liner and the eight-foot swell of the Atlantic wasn’t going to queer her pitch. Oh no. Perhaps they might be related, Hilary and…?’

  ‘Barbara,’ I reminded him. ‘Who knows. She doesn’t talk about her past, that’s the whole point. Very private.’

  ‘Still, it’s an unusual name, one my wife kept from her first marriage.’

  ‘Oh, what happened to hubby number one? Didn’t fall off the boat with her?’

  He smiled again. He had a nice smile, like it released him from all the crap in his life.

  ‘Food poisoning. He went mushroom picking. She cooked them up in an omelette. Another narrow escape.’

  ‘She was lucky then.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  He stood back again, walked from side to side. They do that, people who know about art, first this way and then that.

  ‘Does it have a price?’

  ‘One thousand,’ I said, not batting an eye-lid. It’s important to show no fear. He scratched behind his ear. Didn’t bother him a bit. I should have doubled it.

  ‘It’s forceful, but is it something you would want on your wall?’

  ‘Depends on the wall, squire,’ I said, not giving any ground. ‘I mean take these sharks of mine. They look ready to rip your guts out, but you’d be surprised the number of people stick them in the shower, or shove them underneath the bed in the kiddie’s play room.’

  ‘Your sharks?’

  ‘Yes. I’m a sculptor you know. I do fish in the main, but recently I’ve been thinking of broadening out, moving into pastries.’

  ‘And you are…’ he peered round one, looking for my signature, ‘Al…?’

  ‘Greco.’

  He stuck out his hand.

  ‘Very pleased to meet you Mr Greco. Very pleased indeed. Gerald’s the name. Gerald Palmerstone. I must say it’s quite refreshing to come to a cultural backwater like this and discover such distinctive…’ He fussed with his handkerchief. ‘Well I’m off for a stroll up to the Beacon. The path’s the one at the back of here?’

  ‘The broad chalk one, yes. Straight to the top.’

  ‘And it goes through the long grass?’

  ‘There’s a path round the back that does more of that. Narrower, less man made. You could go up this way, down the other, best of both worlds.’

  ‘I will. Thank you. I’ll be bumping into you later no doubt.’

  ‘That would be nice. I go up there sometimes too you know. A bit of a ramble. Flowers, birds, nature au naturel. You might not know it but there’s a very rare butterfly flapping his wings round these parts, the Blue Bindon. Delicate like a piece of bone china.’ He whirled right round, eyes on me like searchlights.

  ‘You’ve seen it?’

  ‘Not every day, but if you know where to go. You got to watch where you’re putting your feet though, ‘specially if you’re walking off piste as it were. Nothing worse than taking your boots off of a night and finding a couple of the little darlings stuck to the rubber soles.’

  ‘But you know where to look?’

  ‘I know where I have seen them, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘It’s exactly what I mean. I’m a bit of a butterfly fanatic you know.’

  ‘Who’d have guessed it?’

  ‘My net is just propped outside. I go everywhere with my net.’

  ‘Well you would wouldn’t you, if you were a fanatic.’

  ‘Perhaps if you have the time while I’m here, you could show me where they live.’

  ‘I don’t see why not. We could talk about the picture too, come to some arrangement if you’re interested.’

  ‘Possibly. It’s a lot of money, but in my experience, in the right frame of mind, a man will do almost anything. Right, best be off. Toodle pip.’

  He left. I waited a bit, then locked up. What was he? A lawyer? A banker? Time for the wife. Perhaps she’d tell me.

  Mrs Durand-Deacon was sitting in the same chair, like she hadn’t moved. Same seat, same cup and saucer by her side. Only the biscuits were missing.

  ‘You’re late,’ she said.

  ‘I’m here,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘It depends,’ she said. There was a scrap of lettuce squatting in the corner of her mouth, like a frog on the edge of a pond. It was going to sit there our whole meeting. Knowing her she had probably stuck it there deliberate to distract me. I tried not to look at it. She moved the cup and saucer onto her lap, settled it in, like it was a small dog.

  ‘Have you been thinking about my proposition?’ she asked.

  ‘I have.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s not something to enter into lightly Mrs Durand-Deacon. You think…’ I looked round, made sure no one was listening. ‘You think that bumping somebody off is something that comes naturally to me. It doesn’t. It has to mean something, something that affects me, here.’ I banged my heart. ‘I might be no good Mrs Durand-Deacon but only on account of me. Not anyone else. You want someone to get rid of your husband you should get someone who has no second thoughts about it, who does that sort of thing like a window cleaner cleans windows.’

  She took a sip. Tea washed over the frog. It didn’t budge.

  ‘How am I going to find a window cleaner,’ she said. ‘Fate has thrown me you Mr Greenwood, and I’m going to take full advantage of it. Gerald has to go, and you’re the nasty piece of work to do it.’

  Her shoulders gave a little shiver. She was enjoying it, enjoying the thought of it. Christ Gerald, you should never have married her.

  ‘You don’t leave me much choice.’

  ‘None, as far as I can see. So, tell me, what are your plans? No, don’t. It’s best if I know nothing. But you’ll need to work something out soon. He’ll be here soon.’

  ‘He’s not here yet then?’

  ‘He’ll come when it suits him. That’s the sort of man he is. Tomorrow at the latest. Do you think he could he dead the day after, or the day after that? Chasing some stupid butterfly off that Beacon of yours would be appropriate.’

  ‘It’s very crowded up there these days, Mrs Durand-Deacon what with the holiday season nearly upon us. Do you have any other way you’d like him to go, just for interest’s sake.’

  ‘You choose. It’s his funeral. But it would be nice if it wasn’t mine too. I can stomach a memorial service at a suitable interval, after it’s all over, but having an actual corpse to weep over.’ Her nose wrinkled with disgust.

  ‘You mean like lost at sea?’ Her face lit up, like I’d just set off a firework.

  ‘Exactly! Do you know he can’t swim? Just think, if it had been him instead of me being chased by your chainsaw.’

  ‘I can hardly do that a second time Mrs Durand-Deacon, not to two members of the same family. There’s a pattern there and if there’s one thing coppers like above all, it’s a pattern. Makes their job of finding the miscreant so much simpler. Also, a chainsaw is not what we could call an animate being. I can’t train it to do it again. It was, pardon the expression, a lucky accident. But tell me, these complimentary tickets of yours. For two you said.’

  ‘Me and a guest.’

  ‘What about you and him?’

  ‘Gerald?’

  ‘That’s right. Take him with you. This next cruise. I’ll be there. You just leave it all to me.’

  ‘The next? Far too early. My body isn’t ready yet.’

  ‘Come on, Mrs Durand-Deacon, we all know you could do it if you wanted. Once on board, of course, it probably would be best if you stayed in the background, sprained your ankle or got an unfortunate bout of food poisoning, forcing you to stay in your cabin most of the time.’

  ‘Food poisoning?’ She dipped her spoon into her tea. It rattled against the sides. ‘Sure. We get it all the time on the Lady Di. Chicken, pork, sliced bread.
Even mushrooms.’

  The cup bounced on the saucer like a train had just gone over a set of points. That unsettled her.

  ‘Seems a bit of a waste,’ she said, trying to regain the ground, ‘me stuck inside while everyone else is out on deck, enjoying themselves. This is meant to be recompense for the last time, not a repeat performance.’

  ‘You’ve got to think of the bigger picture Mrs Durand-Deacon, the real reason you’re on board. Actually, I was thinking it might be best if you weren’t there at all.’

  ‘Not at all?’

  ‘Keep you out of the frame altogether, just in case anything goes wrong. Have someone else to take your place. That way you couldn’t get mixed up in it.’

  ‘Someone pretending they were me?’

  ‘Why not?’

  She thought for a moment.

  ‘Well, I know Gerald’s not the most observant of men when it comes to his legal spouse, but don’t you think he might notice that the person sitting next to him and answering to the name of Hilary, is not in fact his wife.’

  I hadn’t thought of that.

  ‘Fair point Mrs Durand-Deacon. It’ll need some finessing. Tell me, this hobby of his. Is he some sort of expert?’

  ‘He’s written a whole book on the beastly things. Butterflies of the Brecon Beacons. Three years it took him.’

  ‘He could give lectures then. The Lady Di is always looking for enthusiasts, someone to bore the pants off the punters. A talk on Welsh butterflies might just be the job.’

  ‘So, I wouldn’t have to use my complimentary tickets after all.’

  ‘On the contrary Hilary. May I call you Hilary? I think you might have to kiss them goodbye altogether. I’ll need help one way or another, someone to lure him onto the deck at the opportune moment, a Lady in Red, that sort of thing.’

  ‘As long as it leads to one sort of thing and not the other.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that. The Lady in Red I have in mind would have him over the side and into the briny before he’d even got his hands warm. You don’t have that letter on you, I suppose, the one from the Lady Di, the complimentaries? Only it might be a good idea if I sorted the tickets out right away.’

  ‘Gerald’s bringing it, along with all my other stuff. I was going to treat my sister. We were hoping to decide where we’d go while I was staying here.’

  ‘Very thoughtful of you Mrs Durand-Deacon. Very thoughtful, Sheila being so recently widowed, running this place all hours of the day. The devotion she showed to that poor husband of hers, mopping up after his dribble, taking him for pointless little jaunts, Salisbury, Dorchester, Poole. I drove them around a lot, you know, before my trouble. Always thinking of things for him to do, she was. Why she even stuck him in Weymouth dodgems once. He couldn’t drive to save his life, but it doesn’t matter in dodgems does it. It’s what you’re supposed to do, crash.’

  Actually that was not quite true. If there’s one thing fairground folk hate more than anything, it’s punters knocking seven bells out of their precious cars, though, if you’re in one, why else would you be there? Who wants to drive round and round in the same direction like a motorised hamster? Not me. Blasting that spotty pillock with the glasses broadside, or ramming that bloke with the good looking bird up the arse and giving them both whiplash, that’s what it’s all about, like when you’re on the dance floor of a Saturday night. Donald didn’t half get a pasting that day. Sheila was laughing so much her teeth fell out. Mrs Durand-Deacon was looking puzzled.

  ‘How do you mean, drove them?’

  ‘I was a taxi driver round these parts, didn’t you know? If I wasn’t making a name for myself as an artist now I’d probably go back to it, seeing as there isn’t one left in the village now.’

  ‘You mean people paid you to drive them? You astonish me.’ I rose above it.

  ‘Do you know what time tomorrow your Gerald is due?’ I asked. ‘Only the sooner we get these tickets sorted the better.’

  ‘Lunchtime he says. He has an appointment in town first thing that morning.’

  ‘Perhaps if I came by in the afternoon then. You could send him out to the Beacon after lunch, that is if it isn’t raining. So we could meet up without him disturbing us.’

  ‘Oh rain doesn’t bother him where butterflies are concerned. He’ll be out there with his little net whether I suggest it or not. I still don’t see why I have to give my tickets up.’

  ‘Maybe you won’t. Maybe you and your sister will be able to use them after all. I’m just running through the possibilities Mrs Durand-Deacon, the various pitfalls you might drop into if we don’t watch our step. And even if you do have to give them up, just think what lies ahead. I know it’s a big sacrifice on your part, but you must admit, it would be better to get rid of him on the high seas, well out of it, rather than at the bottom of a two hundred foot chalk cliff with Dorchester’s finest sniffing around.’

  She sniffed herself.

  ‘They can’t be that good. They’re only country police after all.’

  ‘Of the very highest calibre,’ I told her. ‘There’s one chap they got, Adam Rump, the villains break out in hives at just the mention of his name. The Henry Moore of the detecting business, that’s him. You commit a crime, he’ll punch holes in it. We wouldn’t want to get the wrong side of a man like Rump.’

  Mrs Durand-Deacon brushed her skirt, got to her feet.

  ‘Very well. Wednesday afternoon. I’ll give you the papers then. After that, it’s probably best if we don’t meet in public.’

  ‘This isn’t public, Mrs Durand-Deacon. This is your sister’s hotel. Hardly anyone comes here now, not if they can help it.’

  She waved me away, started to climb the stairs. She had surprisingly slim ankles for a woman of her build. The inner door to the porch banged open.

  ‘There you are!’

  I looked round. Mrs Durand-Deacon too. Adam Rump was standing in the doorway in full ceremonial police gear. He had a statue in his hand, not a statue exactly, a sculpture. Silver it looked like. Of a fish.

  SEVEN

  ‘Adam! Didn’t expect to see you so soon.’

  I span to face him, my left hand flapping up and down behind my back, hoping Mrs Durand-Deacon would get the message and get the hell out of it. I grabbed Rump’s right arm and marched him to the window. It was a strange feeling, moving a policeman along. His body was all bunched up, like he’d been wound up too tight.

  ‘Mrs Blackstock told me she saw you driving down here,’ he said. ‘I was going to try the beach, but then I saw your car. Who was that you were talking to?’

  ‘Her? Another sculptress, Barbara Hepworth. Down here to look at my sharks, get a few tips. Now, what’s this all about? Don’t tell me you’ve found Audrey.’

  ‘Audrey? No, I haven’t come about her.’ He looked down at his feet, then back up at me. ‘The truth is Al, I was very taken with that woman I met in your bungalow yesterday, the one standing in the corner without any clothes on? Mrs Durand-Deacon was her name. Very taken.’

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘Yes. As a matter of fact I haven’t been able to think about anything else, since I saw her. You might find it hard to credit, but this morning, I was so busy summoning up courage to come and see her, that I forgot to feed Mother Teresa her special feed. I was half way across to Dorchester Assizes for a vital appearance regarding a particularly unpleasant case of robbery with violence, when I remembered and was forced to drive back. What else could I do?’

  ‘Well, it’s an inseparable bond, a man and his koi.’ His head went up and down, like on a spring.

  ‘I knew you’d understand. The truth is…’ he gulped. ‘I am in love. I know, it sounds foolish, a man like me, putting his life and his fish into the hands of a mere woman the second time around, but there it is. Love isn’t rational is it? It’s foolish, instantaneous, reckless. That’s what I feel, you know, reckless, ready to break the boundaries of decency, that is if she’ll let me. Why, it may sound almost
sacrilegious but I’d even be prepared to break the law, if it meant capturing Mrs Durand-Deacon’s heart.’

  ‘This is dangerous talk Adam. If your superiors should hear of it…’

  ‘I don’t care. I want to smash free of life’s handcuffs, abandon myself to the woman of my dreams. Durand-Deacon is such an distinguished sounding name. I could call her Dee Dee for short. Dee Dee do this. Dee-Dee do that. It has quite a ring to it, don’t you think?’

  ‘You don’t think you’re rushing into this a little fast? I mean, she hardly spoke to you.’

  ‘I know! Wasn’t it marvellous, the way she communicated without saying a word! And keeping still all that time! You could make a cup of tea or read the paper and she’d still be there, whenever you wanted to take a peek. And then there was the devotion she showed to your fish, how she yearned for her body to be near your pond. Well, forgive me pointing it out to you, but my pond is much bigger than yours. Cleaner too. She could lie on her back in it and let Mother Teresa nibble her feet. She’s very partial to dead skin, Mother Teresa and I couldn’t help noticing quite a lot on Mrs Durand-Deacon’s left heel. Do you know her Christian name by any chance?’

  ‘Hilary I believe. Ugly name isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s the most beautiful name in the world and I’ll thank you to remember it. And that’s the other thing.’

  ‘What other thing.’

  ‘I didn’t like the way you ogled her when she had nothing on. It’s not right. Now that she’s my fiancée…’ he held up his hand… ‘yes, that’s what I said. It’s just a matter of time, Al, I can feel it in my bones. The point is, as my fiancée, or if you prefer, my fiancée-to-be, the only person to be ogling her should be me. It is quite inappropriate that she should be showing you her all and sundry whenever the fancy takes you. In fact from now on I forbid it. Get someone else in if you must. That old trout I saw going up the stairs just now. What did you say her name was?’

  ‘Hepworth.’

  ‘Well ogle her instead then, and leave my Hilary out of it. That’s all I’ve got to say on the matter. Now where is she?’

  ‘How do you mean?’