Dying For a Cruise

by Joyce Cato

  Down in the galley, Jenny heard the bang, but was too busy stuffing tomato cases with chives and cheese to wonder about it.

  Later, of course, she would wonder about that, and so much more. Later, she would minutely ponder on everything, in fact, that anybody on the Stillwater Swan that day did, said or arranged.

  Simply because it was about to become so very, very important.

  FIVE

  JENNY PILED UP a plate of salads and bread and took it to the boiler room. The cruise had not stopped at the village of Kelmscott, as they’d originally planned, since the Stillwater Swan had made such excellent time, but had carried on instead to a lock near Radcot.

  Once safely moored, Brian O’Keefe had turned off the engines, but had not emerged from the boiler room. Jenny, who had a phobia about anybody in her vicinity not being properly fed, had reminded herself of the old adage about Mohammed and the mountain, and promptly made like a waitress.

  With the rest of the guests in the dining room, imbibing chilled white wine as if it was going out of fashion, the cook felt perfectly safe in taking a loaded plate out onto the port deck and down to the boiler-room door. Besides, if any little dining crisis did arise, she had no doubt at all that Lucas Finch’s silent manservant would be more than capable of dealing with it. He was the kind of individual you could imagine dealing with any situation – from a social faux pas to nuclear war.

  Brian O’Keefe answered the smartly rapped knock at once. He glanced once at the cook, then at the plate, and smiled. It was one of those smiles that transformed a face. Instantly the dour, brooding Irishman was gone, and a happy-go-lucky charmer took his place, as if by magic.

  ‘Thanks, missus,’ he said. He took the plate and backed back into the room, like a tortoise retreating into its shell.

  The door closed firmly in her face.

  Jenny looked at the wooden planks, barely an inch from her nose, and slowly raised one eyebrow. Then she shrugged. So long as he cleared his plates, the rest of his manners could go hang, as far as she was concerned. She wandered slowly along the rear decking, glad of the lightly freshening breeze.

  The flight of stairs that led to the upper floor was located on the rear deck, as was the outdoor games area, with a small corridor leading to the starboard deck, and doors off it into the games room and main salon. The port deck that ran the entire length of that side of the boat doubled as a curling deck.

  Jenny wandered over to the railings and looked out across the river, thinking what a very well designed boat the Stillwater Swan truly was. She could quite see why Lucas Finch loved it so.

  Just then her sharp ears heard the faint but unmistakable sound of quacking ducks. She quickly craned her neck and looked both ways, but there were no birds in sight. Being fairly close – well, as the bird flew – to Aylesbury, was it too much to hope that some of those famous white birds had migrated this far?

  The progression of her thoughts was as natural as it was habitual. Roast duck pieces, she mused, with orange sauce (naturally) would make a very good starter. Or, if she was lucky enough to catch two or possibly even three of this year’s prime fledglings, she could even have them for a main course.

  She quickly made her way to the games room, found a cupboard full of fishing equipment, selected a sturdy landing net, and made her way back to the rear deck. Her guests, she knew, would be eating for a good hour, and it had been made clear that serving and overseeing the actual table dining was strictly the province of Francis, whom she had no intention of crossing. And after lunch, Lucas’s itinerary called for another hour’s mooring, to allow anyone who wanted to take a pleasant country stroll to help their lunch go down.

  So she had plenty of time.

  Jenny stepped onto the soft grassy bank and set off determinedly in the direction of the quacking.

  At the table, Lucas Finch tucked happily into a lobster patty and smacked his lips loudly. The parrot on his shoulder eyed a grape from the artfully arranged and appealing centre bowl of fruit with an avaricious gleam to his eye. He too smacked his lips – which was quite a feat, considering that he didn’t have any.

  ‘That lovely Amazon of a woman knows how to cook, you’ve got to give her that,’ Lucas said happily, his cockney twang twanging, and his lips smacking once again as the sauce spurted pleasingly to the back of his throat. He detected prawns and tomatoes and something else particularly delicious but that he couldn’t quite place.

  ‘Hmm, I’ll willingly second that,’ Jasmine Olney said, eyeing her own heaped plate of salad leaves. ‘The dressing on this is just divine.’

  Her husband gave her an arch look. ‘I didn’t know you were up on things heavenly, m’dear.’

  David Leigh shot Gabriel a killing look. Lucas, intercepting it, offered a basket of delicious bread loaves his way. ‘Try some of this, David, my old china. It’ll put lead in your pencil.’

  ‘My old china,’ prompted the parrot, just in case David had failed to get the point.

  David accepted a piece of bread. ‘Dorothy, my lovey?’ Lucas asked.

  Dorothy shook her head. ‘No thanks, Lucas. I want to take a short swim after lunch and don’t want to get too loaded down with heavy food.’

  ‘You shouldn’t do that,’ Lucas said, aghast, ‘it’s dangerous. Or so my old mum used to say,’ he added a shade shamefacedly, feeling just a little chided by the amused look Dorothy gave him.

  ‘That’s why I don’t want a big meal now,’ Dorothy reiterated patiently. Really, there was nothing wrong with Lucas. He was a good sort, more or less. Not at all the big bad black sheep that most people made him out to be. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll wait a good hour before going in the water, I promise.’ She raised her hand in a cheeky boy-scouts pledge. ‘But I simply couldn’t resist bringing my swimming suit. Who knows for how much longer it will fit me?’ she giggled and Lucas almost melted.

  After all, what woman didn’t feel that way when they were going to have a young ’un, he mused fondly.

  ‘And it’s so hot,’ Dorothy added, in the rather odd, tense silence that followed.

  She glanced at her husband, wondering why he was so quiet. She could usually count on David to be both witty and fluent at social gatherings. He was always much more at ease at parties than she was. It was probably due to his job, she supposed. David was always so good with people. She just didn’t have the knack. She never quite knew when someone was teasing her, or making a joke. Sometimes she worried that her husband needed a much more intelligent woman by his side, and she felt a sudden wave of inadequacy sweep over her.

  ‘I’d join you, m’dear,’ Gabriel said, ‘but alas, I didn’t think to bring my swimming trunks. I suppose I could always try it au naturale?’ He smiled and fingered his moustache as Dorothy flushed beetroot.

  Jasmine shot him a half-furious, half-amused look.

  Lucas Finch thought about the skinny and ageing Gabriel Olney in his birthday suit, trying to impress the beauteous Dorothy, and burst out laughing. On his shoulder the parrot promptly did the same. It really was a superb mimic, and it sounded as if Lucas’s laughter was echoing mockingly around the room.

  Gabriel looked first at the bird, then at the man, a darkening flush coming up under his own skin.

  Under the table, David Leigh held his knife so hard it almost snapped.

  Lucas, belatedly aware that, as a host, he really shouldn’t be laughing at a guest, coughed into his napkin. ‘More wine, Gabriel?’ he asked, and poured him another glass. Then he noticed David’s tight, white face, and hastily refilled his glass too.

  On his shoulder, the parrot considered how best to purloin one of the grapes.

  An hour later, Jenny returned to the Stillwater Swan, luckless and duckless.

  She put the landing net away, humming happily as she did so, and noticed in passing that the dining room was now empty. The table had been cleared. No doubt thanks to that paragon, Francis, she mused sourly, and returned to her galley.

  There, the dirty plates a
nd things awaited her. Obviously Francis and duty departed at the galley door. Not that she really minded. Jenny disliked having anyone lurking about in her kitchen anyway – especially after that shocking incident with Professor Mawwinney’s pet rattlesnake. But was it her fault that reptiles liked to seek out warm places? Besides, it hadn’t been her that had loaded the dishwasher that day.

  She quickly washed and wiped, and walked to the full-length food cupboard to inspect the shelves and quickly gather together the ingredients she needed, then began heaping them in related piles onto the table.

  But a quick glance at her watch reassured her that she had hours yet, and so she left the spick-and-span galley and made her way to the starboard deck. Since the port deck was the centre of all the activities, Jenny had come to regard the starboard deck as her own. She took her old deckchair of this morning and put it in her favourite spot, and settled back with a happy sigh.

  As she did so, a fine pair of two-month-old mallards floated past the side, on the lookout for bread scraps. Jenny eyed them with a jaundiced eye, then returned to the galley. She came back with the leftover bread rolls and tossed them over the side.

  The ducks gobbled them up, then promptly showed her their tail feathers.

  Jenny smiled.

  Just then, she saw a human-shaped shadow appear on the deck and looked up automatically. Above her were the bedroom balconies, and on the one nearest the prow of the ship, she saw a pair of milky-white arms appear, and then some wisps of silver-gold hair.

  Dorothy Leigh looked out over the side, cautiously and sensibly eyeing the river to check on the density of the weeds. Seeing that the river was clearest on the right-hand side of the boat, she grabbed a towel and skipped lightly down the stairs. She was glad of a few moments to herself. Between them – but for vastly different reasons – her husband and Gabriel Olney were beginning to make her feel acutely miserable.

  She walked to the rear deck and opened the boarding gate, which now opened out into the middle of the river, and with a slight gasp – for no matter how hot the summers were, the rivers in England always felt icy – she slipped lithely into the clear water. It wouldn’t have done to do so when the majestic paddles were turning, obviously, but with the boat stationary she felt perfectly safe.

  Jenny heard a slow steady splash, and opened one eye. If those ducks had returned for more bread, she’d … She opened the other eye as the silver head of Dorothy Leigh came into sight. She began to open her mouth to call out that it was dangerous to swim after a big meal, and then shut it again.

  After all, it was none of her business.

  Besides, the cook had to acknowledge to herself a few minutes later, Dorothy Leigh was obviously not about to get into difficulties. She swam several hundred yards in an excellent overarm crawl, then swam back in a more leisurely but strong breaststroke.

  She was obviously a very fit young woman. It was a good sign, Jenny thought with satisfaction, for both the baby’s sake and the mother’s. The general medical view nowadays had it that cosseting pregnant women, as a rule, did them far more harm than good. Or so she’d read. She herself had no immediate plans on motherhood, no matter how much her divorced parents might collectively wheedle and moan about the lack of grandchildren to spoil.

  Jenny closed her eyes again, but contrary to appearances she didn’t doze. Jenny Starling never dozed on the job. She thought instead of the evening meal that she was going to prepare, and was happily imagining the looks of stunned and happy amazement on the faces of the guests as they took their first mouthful.

  It was a very pleasant daydream with which to pass the afternoon away.

  A pity, really, that it was the last moment of real contentment that Jenny Starling was going to enjoy on that particular trip.

  The cook was just going down the corridor that ran between the walls of the salon and the engine room, when she saw Jasmine Olney cross the open space at the far end.

  Jenny had been heading for the games room. She’d noticed that it also doubled as a library, and had shelves of books of the thriller, murder mystery and more salubrious kind. And she was rather partial to the classic whodunnit era of British literature. Seeing Jasmine, though, she hesitated.

  She didn’t like being too conspicuous to the guests, but on a ship of this size (not to mention being of a rather noticeable size herself) it wasn’t always possible to be invisible.

  The boat was once more under way, heading for its overnight stop near the quaintly named village of Chimney. The three o’clock sun was at its highest, and Jenny was seeking a cooler spot where she could read for an hour or two in peace before the controlled panic that always precluded a big, complicated dinner.

  When she stepped out onto the rear deck, however, it was deserted. Which was decidedly odd, since the only way to get off the rear deck was to go along the port deck, or enter the salon or games room, both of which led off in the opposite direction from that which she’d seen Jasmine go.

  Then she heard a throaty feminine laugh, more like a purr than any sound a human being might make, and it was definitely coming from the engine room. Jenny very quickly walked into the games room and selected a book. She most definitely did not want to know what Jasmine Olney found to laugh about with Brian O’Keefe in the privacy of the boiler room.

  No siree. In Jenny’s vast experience, it didn’t pay to mind anybody’s business but your own. And if only more people observed that rule, she thought grimly as she selected a Patricia Wentworth novel, then she might not have been called upon to help ‘solve’ such a depressingly large number of murders.

  She took the novel and headed very firmly away from the engine room to her own galley, where it was safe.

  Gabriel watched Lucas saunter to the railings on the port deck and glanced around. Dorothy and David were busily engaged in a game of draughts, his wife had had the good sense to make herself scarce, and now was the perfect time to have it out with Lucas.

  Gabriel was still smarting over the way Lucas had laughed at him at lunch. Well, he thought, stepping out onto the deck and carefully shutting the sliding glass doors behind him, now it was his turn to have a really good laugh. Being as he was the one who was going to laugh last, as it were.

  It all started off reasonably enough.

  ‘Lucas,’ Gabriel said, nodding amicably.

  On the rail, the parrot scratched himself vigorously behind one ear. A small scarlet feather disengaged itself and floated on the breeze to settle on the water. No doubt it would puzzle quite a few anglers before the day was out.

  Lucas turned, his smile widening innocently. ‘Gab,’ he said, and nodded back.

  Gabriel leaned his back against the sturdy white-painted wooden rails, which came up almost to the lowest point of his shoulder blades. ‘Great trip,’ he said, feeling his way into it. He’d waited so long for this moment that he wanted to savour it. Besides, he never had been the kind of man to rush into things.

  Lucas just caught something in his tone of voice, though, and his smile began to falter. He looked at his guest with a slightly quizzical air. ‘It always is,’ Lucas boasted. And it was no idle boast, either. Gabriel had taken four trips on the Stillwater Swan, and all four had been magnificent.

  ‘I was wondering if you ever took her to London?’ Gabriel said, studying his fingernails. But his eyes glittered with glee. ‘I think I will, you know. Perhaps this autumn.’

  Lucas felt himself stiffening. ‘Not still singing that same old song, are yer, me old china?’ he said, and turned to face sideways. There was something about the way old Gabby was smiling that Lucas didn’t much like. ‘I’m getting a bit tired of telling you the Swan ain’t for sale. I’m thinking of getting some cards made up, saying just that, so that I can just hand one out whenever you bang on about it. Save my breath, like.’

  Lucas had invited the Olneys on so many trips just because, like most people, he appreciated having his possessions coveted. And old Gabby had wanted the Swan from the moment he�
�d clapped eyes on her. All very gratifying, of course, but now the old sod was beginning to get on his nerves a bit with this bee he had in his bonnet.

  Lucas made up his mind then and there that this was the last time he’d invite him on board.

  ‘Hmm.’ Gabriel continued to study his fingernails with exaggerated care. ‘I bought a cheque to exchange for this magnificent lady along with me, but the wife found it, you know, and tore it up. Jasmine doesn’t appreciate quality like I do. Can’t expect it of her, I suppose,’ he sighed. ‘She’s so typically middle class. It takes the upper classes, or, oddly enough, the lower classes—’ And he paused here to give Lucas a telling look ‘—to really appreciate quality.’

  Lucas was too thick-skinned to be insulted. Instead of blowing up, as Gabriel had half expected, Lucas merely laughed.

  ‘Poor old Jasmine,’ he said, not altogether insincerely. Who could envy anyone married to a boring lech like Gabriel? ‘Still, it was just as well that she did tear the cheque up, you know. As I told you last time, and the time before that, the Swan isn’t for sale.’ Aand Lucas gave the wide, white rail-top an affectionate pat.

  ‘Ahh, but that was before,’ Gabriel said, and reached into his top, voluminous pocket to withdraw a rather chunky set of papers.

  ‘Before what?’ Lucas asked cautiously, his cockney twang becoming more pronounced as he began to feel decidedly uneasy.

  ‘Before I got a friend of mine from the MOD to copy me these,’ Gabriel said, and handed them over.

  In the games room, Dorothy jumped the last of her husband’s pieces. ‘There. I knew you weren’t paying attention,’ she teased. ‘You can usually beat me hands down.’

  She’d showered and washed her hair after her swim, and now her long locks fell around her shoulders like a gossamer cloud. She was wearing a periwinkle blue summer frock and David, for a moment pushing his troubles to one side, looked at her with appreciative eyes.