by Joyce Cato
David shook his head firmly. ‘No.’
‘Hmm. Nobody seems to have seen Mr Olney at all after the darts match, until his body was discovered. That’s nearly two hours or so. Unless you saw him, Mrs Leigh?’
Dorothy tucked her cold hands under her armpits in a touching, vulnerable gesture, and shook her head. Her pale hair shimmered in the sunlight.
‘No. After David and I left the darts match, I stayed in the bathroom for what seemed like ages. Well … I was a bit afraid to leave, actually. I do so hate to make a fuss, and it was all rather embarrassing. After I went downstairs with David to the deck, we just stayed there all afternoon. The cook brought me some tea and toast, and I ate it, and felt a bit better. And now all this! I’m sorry, but I really do think I should go back upstairs. I’m feeling a bit queasy again.’
She did, in fact, look very ill, and she had begun shivering. How much of it could be put down to shock, her timid nature or to her condition, it was hard to say. Jenny, who knew little about pregnancy, watched her with some concern.
Inspector Rycroft hastily assured her that this would be all right, and the Leighs once more departed, David’s arms firmly around his wife’s shoulders. But, presumably, Dorothy Leigh once again wanted no witnesses to her illness, for he came back down again after just a few minutes, looking restless and unhappy and muttering about sending for a doctor if she didn’t look better soon.
‘Now, Mr O’Keefe.’ Rycroft turned to look at the engineer. ‘Can we have your movements, please?’
The engineer smiled grimly. ‘I was where I always am – in the engine room.’
‘You must have left it from time to time, though, sir,’ Sergeant Graves said mildly.
The engineer shrugged. ‘Not so’s you’d notice. And no, I never saw Olney.’
It wasn’t much of a statement, and Jenny knew that neither of the policemen would let it stand at that, but for now Rycroft seemed disinclined to pursue it.
Instead, he got together with Sergeant Graves and painstakingly wrote out a timetable.
Glad that Leigh had returned, for he wanted everyone to hear what he had to say, he coughed as impressively as his high-pitched voice would let him, and was satisfied to see all heads once more turn in his direction.
‘Right then. According to your statements, I’ve compiled the following list of events and times. The times, of course, are approximate only, and we can allow five to ten minutes either side of them to take into account any inaccuracies.’
Jenny, although finding him somewhat pedantic, was also glad to find him very competent. It made life so much easier when you had a policeman in charge who actually knew what he was doing.
‘Right then.
‘1.00 p.m. to 1.50 p.m. Lunch. All present expect for cook, Francis Grey, Captain Lester and Brian O’Keefe, who ate in separate parts of the boat.
‘2.00 p.m., Mrs Leigh proposes darts match. At the same time, or thereabouts, Miss Starling leaves the boat for her stroll.
‘2.10 p.m., Mrs Olney goes up to her room.
‘2.30 p.m., Mr and Mrs Leigh leave the games room. One goes to the bathroom, the other to their bedroom.
‘2.35 p.m., the captain goes to the bridge.
‘2.35 p.m., Mr Olney goes to starboard deck, presumably alone. At the same time, Mr Finch “wanders about the boat.”’.
‘3.00 p.m., Miss Starling returns to the boat, and the Swan sets sail. Miss Starling goes to the galley.
‘3.10 p.m., Mrs Olney and the Leighs come back downstairs. The Leighs go to the starboard deck (Mr Olney not present at that time) and Mrs Olney goes onto the port deck to sunbathe.
‘4.15 p.m., Miss Starling notices the Leighs on the starboard deck and returns to galley.
‘4.20 p.m., Miss Starling takes Mrs Leigh some tea and toast and takes a walk around the boat. She notices the port deck is wet. Mr Finch is on the deck, and notices it too.
‘4.30 p.m., Miss Starling discovers the corpse in her cupboard.
‘4.40 p.m., Mr O’Keefe sets off to report the matter.
‘Now, does everyone agree with that timetable?’
There were a few glances cast around between members of the group, but nobody spoke up against it.
‘Right. Can anybody add anything to that timetable?’
Brian O’Keefe, somewhat surprisingly, spoke up immediately. ‘Yes. I can.’
All eyes swivelled in his direction.
‘Yes, Mr O’Keefe?’ Rycroft asked archly.
‘The port deck wasn’t wet at four o’clock. I know, because I was going to go to the bridge to ask the captain how we were doing for time. I needed to know if we would need any more wood cutting. Starting out later than planned had put our original time schedule out.’
‘I see,’ Rycroft said thoughtfully. Then, ‘You didn’t mention this, Captain Lester,’ he added abruptly.
Tobias gave Brian a furious and – to Jenny’s mind, at least – slightly surprised look, and opened his mouth to reply, but was forestalled.
‘Captain Lester didn’t forget,’ Brian cut in quickly. ‘It just so happened that I never got as far as the bridge. I could see for myself where we were, because that part of the river was particularly memorable. We were on a very straight stretch of the Thames – it goes on for very nearly a mile or so, so I knew exactly where we were and knew for myself that we were all right for fuel. I didn’t notice Mrs Olney sunbathing, though, but I did notice, now that I think back, that the deck was perfectly dry. If it hadn’t been, I’d have checked it out immediately. I knew that I hadn’t taken any river water on board, and it would be my job to investigate any water spillage at once. On a boat you have to be careful,’ he added firmly. ‘At four o’clock that deck was dry – that I’ll swear to on a stack of Bibles.’
Rycroft looked at him thoughtfully for a long time, but when he did speak, it was to Jasmine Olney.
‘Mrs Olney. You said you were on the port deck all afternoon after leaving your room? How is it that Mr O’Keefe never saw you sunbathing there?’
Jasmine blinked. ‘Oh but I don’t … oh yes, yes, I remember now. I went upstairs to my room, briefly, to fetch my magazine. Oh, yes, and of course I changed too. Put on a little make-up in preparation for dinner. I was only gone about ten minutes – less probably. It just slipped my mind. It must have been then that Mr O’Keefe looked out.’
Rycroft nodded. An interesting omission, but perhaps perfectly innocent. It was the sort of uninteresting detail that might slip your mind – especially after receiving a shock. And becoming a widow must be something of a shock, even for someone as self-possessed as the lovely Jasmine Olney.
‘I see. So. The big question is where was Mr Gabriel Olney all this time?’
But to that, nobody had any kind of an answer.
Rycroft sighed. ‘Come now, ladies and gentlemen. You must realize that this death is, to say the least, suspicious. It looks, on the evidence so far, that somebody tied the rope to Mr Olney’s foot, tossed him overboard, and drowned him at some time between 4 and 4.15. Then, probably whilst Miss Starling was taking Mrs Leigh her tea and toast and circumnavigating the boat, that same somebody then stashed his body in her galley cupboard. You, Mr Leigh, were on the starboard deck, yet you say you heard nothing?’
David Leigh’s lips firmed. ‘I’m not saying that I heard nothing, Inspector. I’m stating it as a fact.’
‘You, Mrs Olney? You never noticed anything unusual when you returned to your deckchair?’
Jasmine bit her lip. ‘I noticed the deck was wet, of course. And I think I saw Lucas just disappearing into the games room. But I didn’t see Gabby.’
The inspector glanced at Brian, who merely shook his head.
It was a most unsatisfactory state of affairs.
‘Well, someone must have killed him,’ Rycroft growled.
Sergeant Graves’ eyes swivelled everywhere, seemingly at once, but nobody gave so much as a guilty start.
‘Couldn’t somebody have swum acr
oss from the riverbank and done it?’ Lucas asked, somewhat diffidently.
Rycroft snorted. ‘It’s possible, Mr Finch, but hardly likely, is it? You yourself were stood at that deck not a minute before it must have happened. Did you see anybody swimming back to shore?’
Lucas flushed. ‘No, I didn’t,’ he muttered angrily. ‘And it was just a thought.’
The parrot very neatly relieved himself on Lucas’s shoulder. The millionaire, though, merely brushed it off without any obvious signs of distaste, as if he was used to it – as he probably was.
‘So I repeat,’ Rycroft said, turning away from the boat owner and his disgusting parrot with a look of chagrin on his face and a rather supercilious sneer on his ugly mouth, ‘who murdered him?’ He thumped a small fist onto the tabletop as he did so and made everyone jump most theatrically.
It was at this dramatic moment that one of the forensics boys stepped into the electric silence and said loudly and excitedly, ‘Sir, I think you’d better come upstairs. We’ve found a suicide note!’
TEN
FOR A MOMENT nobody moved. It was so unexpected, so … impossible, that nobody seemed able to take it in.
It was at that moment that Jenny looked across at David Leigh, and felt her whole body stiffen with shock. For David Leigh looked appalled. Stricken. Disbelieving. He looked, in fact, the very opposite of what Jenny had imagined he should.
That he hated Gabriel Olney was obvious. The looks he had given the man when he’d been alive had hardly been meant to hide the fact. And now he was dead, and if there was a possibility, no matter how fantastic, that it was not murder after all, then surely the solicitor should be relieved? Or, at the very least, fascinated.
Instead he looked sick at heart. It was very odd indeed. Unless of course … Jenny’s eyes became thoughtful, and then just slightly puzzled.
Inspector Rycroft came out of shock first and uttered a soft but very colourful exclamation, and tossed his ugly head at the forensics man. ‘It’s in his bedroom?’ he barked sharply.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Right. Lead the way.’
Once again, everybody went after him, like a flock of curious sheep. Once again, the policeman, rather surprisingly, made no move to stop them. Then again, the cook thought, as she took up the rear and climbed the stairs, perhaps it was not so surprising after all. She’d noticed that both Graves and Rycroft had very sharp ears. And very quick eyes. Between them, in a matter of seconds, they could look at every face and, no doubt, fairly shrewdly gauge every mood. And as this particular case seemed determined to take on so many twists and turns, faces could reveal an awful lot about how people reacted to them. Hadn’t she just seen an example with David Leigh?
No, Rycroft might be a shade unorthodox in his ways, but there was method in his madness. And she couldn’t help but wonder what the policeman made of this latest twist in the case. He must surely have come across any number of suicides during his career so far. Weren’t most of them supposed to leave notes? And although she was no expert, she could well imagine that different personalities would choose various different ways in which to end their lives. Women, she’d read somewhere, were supposed to choose things that didn’t mar their looks – taking pills being a leading choice, as well as that old standby, putting your head in a gas oven. Men, she rather thought, didn’t mind so much using a gun for a quick but messier way out, if they had access to one.
But she was willing to bet that as a method of suicide, drowning yourself in such a spectacular manner must put Gabriel Olney in a league of his own.
Much as she might applaud the investigating officer’s reliance on his observance of the witnesses to help his case along, she guessed that both Rycroft and Graves had been momentarily too stunned themselves to notice the young solicitor’s reaction.
Now, Jenny began to wonder about this so-called suicide note.
In fact, she wondered about it a great deal.
The Olneys’ bedroom offered a mute testimony to the personalities of the two people involved. On Gabriel’s side, the room was immaculately neat. His clothes were hung circumspectly in the wardrobe and all his drawers were tidily shut. His shoes were carefully aligned on the shoe tree provided, and his side of the dressing table held toiletry things in rows of pristine precision.
Jasmine’s half of the room, in contrast, was in utter chaos. A scarlet silk shift lay half on, half off her side of the bed. A pair of silk stockings, looking shockingly intimate under the macabre circumstances, lay trailed across the carpeted floor. Her side of the dressing table was a riot of mess, with jars of cream with their tops removed and lipstick tubes undone, leaving greasy pink, red and purple lines on top of the wooden surface. A make-up bag was tossed haphazardly onto the bedside chair.
The forensics man led them to the top drawer of the dresser – obviously nabbed by Gabriel for it contained socks, ties, a spare shirt and a solid gold pair of cufflinks.
It also produced a single piece of folded paper.
Rycroft raised an eyebrow at the forensics man, who interpreted it easily. ‘It’s been dusted for prints, sir. There’s only one set – belonging to the deceased.’
Rycroft grunted.
Jenny nodded. Yes. That made sense, if what she suspected had happened had happened. It would have been a bit touch and go as to whether only Olney’s prints were on the paper, but if Jasmine’s were on it too, well, it would hardly be a surprise, would it? It would all depend on the circumstances. Her thoughts were abruptly cut off as the senior investigating officer moved forward.
Rycroft very carefully unfolded the paper and read the lines aloud with quick, bland precision.
Dear All,
Sorry to do this to you. Be a bit of a shock, I suppose, but there are reasons. Aren’t there always? Bury me next to the parents at Gatesham, will you? Oh, and keep the flowers down to a sensible level, Jasmine. No need to go overboard.
Gabriel.
Into the profound silence that followed, there came a half laugh, half sob, shocking in its abruptness and lack of self-control.
Jasmine Olney quickly put a hand to her mouth as everyone turned to look at her, Rycroft, at least, looking a shade guilty at his lack of tact. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Olney. That was stupid of me,’ he apologized at once.
But Jasmine shook her head. ‘It’s not that,’ she found her voice at last. ‘It was just that … well, it sounded so like him. It had his … flavour. I could almost imagine him saying it out loud. It, well, it just took me by surprise a little, that’s all.’
Rycroft nodded, but quickly sorted through all the flotsam to find the real nugget. ‘In your opinion then, you think your husband probably wrote this?’
Jasmine nodded, then asked tentatively, ‘May I see it? I know his writing well.’
Rycroft hesitated for a scant second, then slipped it into a clear plastic evidence ‘envelope’ and handed it over.
Jasmine read it, her face perfectly still. ‘It looks like his writing to me,’ she said at last.
‘Do you have a sample of his writing with you?’ Rycroft asked, but Jasmine quickly shook her head. ‘Never mind. We’ll send a constable over to your house to pick up a sample, and then send that, together with this note, to our experts at the Yard. We’ll soon know whether this document is a forgery or the genuine article.’
Jenny hid a smile. So the policeman doubted the veracity of it. It was hardly surprising, in the circumstances. She herself had no doubts at all that it was a forgery. Nor did she have any real doubts as to who had written it. Of them all – a ship’s captain, an engineer, a cockney business man, a housewife, a faithless spouse, and a solicitor – it was obvious to her, at least, that only one of them had the professional know-how to create a reasonable forgery.
She wondered, idly, how many clients David Leigh had defended on such charges.
Rycroft handed the note to his sergeant, who quickly left to hotfoot it back to the village with the note. No doubt at Carswell Marsh th
ey already had a small contingent of police, awaiting more orders.
‘Right, carry on.’ He nodded to the forensics expert. ‘I want a list of all the equipment on board ship, and I want anything in any way out of the usual reported to me immediately.’
‘Jenkins is already doing the inventory, sir,’ the man replied smartly, and began promptly taking samples out of every toiletry item on the table. Not that they seriously suspected poison, the cook knew, but still, it paid to be thorough. And there was always the possibility, of course, that Olney had been drugged first. A woozy or unconscious man was more easily disposed of, after all. Still, a Mickey Finn applied through his aftershave lotion was just too James Bond for her to take seriously.
Rycroft turned and raised his eyebrow at the crowd, who had no trouble interpreting this silent but graphic gesture, and Tobias Lester led the exodus back out of the bedroom and downstairs to the salon.
There everyone hung about looking a trifle lost.
Jenny glanced at her watch and frowned. She approached Rycroft tentatively.
Rycroft looked up at her.
Jenny looked down at him.
‘Well,’ Rycroft barked, ‘are you now going to tell me whodunnit, where, why and how?’
Jenny blinked. ‘Actually, I was going to ask you if you still wanted me to cook dinner. I assume the sergeant will be returning, and that you will be staying the night on board, and I thought you might be hungry. And the others, of course….’ She glanced across at them. ‘Although they’re in shock now but when it wears off, as a man of your experience probably knows, it can often leave people feeling ravenous.’
Rycroft wilted. ‘Oh. Right. Er … the body’s still in the galley. I’ll just go and take a look before the sergeant gets back with the others. They’ll have made arrangements for the removal of the corpse by now and be waiting for permission to remove it. If everything’s been seen to, I can’t see any reason why you can’t resume your duties.’
Jenny nodded and followed him to the galley. Rycroft looked displeased, but again made no move to shoo her back. Which was probably just as well, really. When he moved through the opened door, the cook made sure to shut it firmly behind her. She didn’t want any of the others – especially Jasmine – to catch a glimpse of where her husband’s corpse had been found.
