Lament for Leto (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “He’s gone down to the dining saloon to see about a table. He wants to make sure that the chief steward puts all of our party together, I expect. We’re bound to get two others with us, though, to fill in. I took a look, and most of the tables seem to be for fours or eights, and there are only six of us.”

  “Is he an enterprising man?”

  “Not very. How do you mean?”

  “I seem to remember, from my study of a plan of the ship, that there are a number of tables for two.”

  “Oh, golly! I don’t want to be stuck with only him at every meal!”

  “No, of course not,” said Dame Beatrice, who had not been thinking of this particular partnership. “Do help yourself to more sandwiches. They look extremely good.”

  Shortly after this they were joined by Julian.

  “I’ve fixed up a table for us. Quite good, but we shall have two others with us, I’m afraid,” he said. “We sit where we please at breakfast, and tea is always served up here or on deck, but for lunch and dinner it’s table thirty-six, the first sitting, if that’s all right, Dame Beatrice.”

  “It is kind of you to have made the arrangements, Mr. Suffolk. Well, I think, while you are taking tea, I will go and see whether my luggage is in my cabin.”

  Her cabin—the party had made their bookings separately—was a stateroom on A deck and had its own bathroom. The reservations had been made so late that nothing but the dearest and the very cheapest of the one-class accommodation had been left, and, even at that, there had been very little choice. She had no idea where the rest of the party were to sleep, but supposed that she would hear in due course. Meanwhile, she was well-satisfied with her own quarters, found that there was ample space for herself and her possessions, unpacked, and then was about to take a stroll on deck when there was a tap on the door. A messenger from the shore had brought her a magnificent bouquet of dark red carnations. A card was attached. It was dated for some days previously and bore the signature of Ronald Dick. He had placed the order for the flowers just before his aeroplane left for Athens, with instructions for the date of their delivery. Dame Beatrice thought it very handsome of him.

  The messenger had been followed by her cabin steward, a grey-haired, gravely solicitous man, who brought with him her stewardess, a round-faced, capable-looking woman of about thirty-five. Dame Beatrice gave instructions about early tea, and, in turn, had her attention drawn to the whereabouts of her life-jacket and the necessity for parading on deck in this uncouth adjunct and proceeding to her appointed boat-station whenever she was called upon to do so.

  “Travelling alone, madam?” (The stateroom was intended for two persons.)

  “So far as this cabin is concerned, yes, I am travelling alone, but I have several friends on board.”

  “I hope you will be very comfortable, madam. If you press the bell once for the stewardess, twice for me, we will be with you in no time at all. Any hour of the day or night, madam, we shall be on call.”

  “That is very reassuring,” said Dame Beatrice. She dispensed reimbursement for the reassurance and, her myrmidons departing, she finished tidying up and then put on her coat, tied a scarf over her hair, and went out on to the deck. The ship was not yet under way. On one side were the wharves and customs sheds of Southampton Docks. On the other side there was a wide stretch of calm and oily water with a prospect beyond it of a low, green, uninteresting-looking shore.

  She descended to the deck below. The open-air pool had no water in it. Further exploration revealed deck tennis courts without their nets, white-painted lines marking out other deck sports, a small, well-equipped gymnasium, a children’s playroom, smaller lounges including a writing-room and the ship’s library, two bars (both closed), an adjoining smoking-room, the ship’s shop and hairdressing saloons, a drying-room, the ship’s hospital, a covered swimming pool of Pompeian luxuriousness, various companionways, and what appeared to be miles of corridors partitioned off at intervals by fireproof doors which were open to allow the free passage of stewards and passengers.

  She located the dining-saloon and went to inspect table thirty-six. On her way back to her stateroom she met Chloe and Mary. They greeted her rather perfunctorily and asked whether she had had tea. She reassured them and was informed that Chloe did not propose to do more than drink a half-bottle of a good dry champagne and then would remain in her cabin until the morning with Mary to attend on her in case she felt any malaise.

  Before Dame Beatrice had completed her tour of the ship, the cruise had begun. She went on deck to see the vague green landscape slipping away to starboard and, on the opposite shore, the dwindling figures of people on the dockside waving farewell to their friends. Of Hero so far there had been no sign. However, she turned up for dinner and announced that Chloe and Mary were taking theirs in their cabin.

  “A little soup and a morsel of fish,” she said, imitating Chloe’s rich voice. “That poor Mary! Sometimes I think I am unkind to despise her. What are we going to drink?”

  The ship was bound for Israel, and there were several parties of Jewish passengers on board. Some of these, especially the younger ones, were lively, and, on the whole, they all appeared to do well at the various innocuous gambling games which formed part of the entertainment, so much so that Roger won various sums of money at the ship’s dog-racing deck-game simply by noting which of the wooden animals was most favoured by the Jews and putting his stake on it. A couple of magnificent swimmers were apt to monopolise the outdoor pool at certain times of the day, and there were several very accomplished dancers. Apart from this, Dame Beatrice made a new acquaintance. This was a small fat Jewess who was travelling with her daughter, a quiet, dark-eyed, beautiful girl in her early twenties.

  The mother, a Mrs. Solomons, finding herself seated on deck next to Dame Beatrice on the third afternoon out, opened the conversation. Dame Beatrice knew her name because people on board had been talking about her fabulous jewellery.

  “Your rings are good,” Mrs. Solomons pronounced. Dame Beatrice stretched out a yellow claw and the emeralds and diamonds on her skinny fingers blazed green fire and rainbow fire in the brilliant afternoon sunshine.

  “Yes, quite good,” she agreed.

  “You lock your stateroom door at night?”

  “No. Do you think I should?”

  “I lock mine. You see my rings and this watch?”

  “Yes, indeed. I also noticed your rubies when you were watching the dancing last night.”

  “My husband would kill himself if my rubies were stolen. He did not want Leah and me to come on this cruise, but, when I was set on it, he begged me not to take my jewels.”

  “He did not think of coming with you to protect them?”

  “He wishes to play golf. I ask you! What is golf?”

  “It has always seemed to me merely a method of taking a little ball for a long walk.”

  “Yes. And then you lose the little ball in the rough, and next day, maybe, you buy it back again from some cheeky boy who has found it. So I tell him I am coming on this ship. I have relatives in Israel. I wish to visit them. Of what use to travel, if I don’t bring my jewels? But, all the time, I am afraid. I am desperately afraid. You see, someone might kill me for my rubies, and then Aaron would kill himself, partly for me and mostly for the rubies.”

  “Why do you not entrust them to the purser? You could still have them back from him to wear in the evenings, and then he would lock them up again.” Dame Beatrice calmly put forward this reasonable suggestion, only to have it violently repudiated.

  “No. I will keep them with me, always with me. I trust nobody. Look at this watch? Have you ever seen one so good? I think not.” She took it off her wrist and handed it over. “Trust even this—many hundred pounds it cost—to the purser? I think not. No, indeed!”

  “I do not think I have ever seen one so valuable,” said Dame Beatrice, handing back the watch, “but I think ‘good’ is a relative term when one applies it to anything mechanical. My own
”—she passed it across—“is probably as good a timekeeper, but I do not think it cost as much as yours.”

  To her surprise and amusement, Mrs. Solomons took a watchmaker’s glass from her capacious handbag and opened and scrutinised the watch before she returned it.

  “A nice watch,” she said approvingly. “Very nice. My husband is in the business, so I know watches, and my brother Laban is in jewels, so I know stones. Do you really think it would be wise to place my rubies with the purser? You don’t think it would be too big a temptation to a young fellow earning a small salary?”

  “I believe the Company’s pursers are chosen for their sea-green incorruptibility,” said Dame Beatrice solemnly.

  “Anyone green is not the person to take charge of valuables.”

  At this moment Leah Solomons, her flawless brown limbs set off by a white bikini, came up beside her mother and said,

  “I’m going to have a swim now, mother. Will you be here until tea?”

  “This lady thinks I should ask the purser to lock up my rubies,” said Mrs. Solomons, ignoring both the statement and the question.

  “This lady is Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, and of course you ought to let the purser take charge of your rubies. That way we might both get some sleep at night. I don’t know what Daddy would say if he knew you’d brought them with you,” said her daughter. She sauntered to the edge of the pool, tensed her body and dived faultlessly in.

  “She is a good girl,” said Mrs. Solomons indulgently, “but she bosses me like I was the child. They have no respect nowadays. So you are Dame Beatrice? I saw your name on the passenger list. How did you get it? Why did they make you D.B.E.?”

  “For services to the Home Office, I think.”

  “You are a high-up policewoman?”

  “No, a consultant psychiatrist.”

  “A number of people on this ship need their heads looked at, I think. That Mrs. Dearwater, for instance.”

  “Really? I met her at tea on the day we embarked. She seemed perfectly normal.”

  “She plays bridge for small threepences. She asked me to make up a four.”

  “She asked me, too, but I do not care for bridge.”

  “I like to play, but not for chicken-feed. At home we have a club. We skin each other clean.” She chuckled richly. “Threepences!” she repeated. “Are you going to shop when we get to Gibraltar?”

  “No. I doubt whether I shall even go ashore.”

  “Perhaps wise. All the trouble to dodge the Customs when one gets back. Hardly worth the bother and anxiety.”

  “One can always look pleasant and declare the goods, of course.”

  “Pay on them? Of what use, then, is the cheap Gibraltar price?”

  Dame Beatrice did not go ashore at Gibraltar. The ship was to stay there for a matter of four hours only, so there was no time to do anything but shop, and there was nothing which she felt inclined to buy. She was by no means the only passenger who remained on board. Those who remained lay about in deck-chairs or retired to their cabins. The outdoor pool was not used while the ship was in port, but, in any case, most of the younger people had gone ashore. She had seen Hero and Julian disembark, but the others in their party had evidently decided to remain aboard. She saw nothing of Chloe Cowie and her niece, but Roger came up to where she was reclining in her deck-chair. He appeared to be at a loose end, so at his request she accompanied him to the ship’s gymnasium, where he bicycled away to the point of giving himself an apoplectic fit and then treated her to a vigorous display of ball-punching.

  “That ought to get my weight back to normal,” he said. “I’m eating far too much on this trip. Did you know it’s to be a gala dinner tomorrow night, with prizes for the best fancy-dress costumes concocted on board? I wish you’d come along to our cabin while Suffolk isn’t there, and help me to get some clothes sorted out. He hates it if I chuck stuff all over the place, so now is my opportunity. What are you going to go as? Have you thought of anything? Perhaps we could go as a double, if you’ve got any good ideas.”

  “I doubt whether it would be to your advantage to take me as your partner, but I will give thought to the matter.”

  They were taking tea on deck when Mrs. Solomons came up to them.

  “I have taken your advice,” she said, “while we are in port. I have left my rubies with the purser. He gives Leah a receipt for them. I take them out again for the dance tomorrow night. I let everybody know where they are, so I get plenty of sleep tonight, not worrying about them. You did better not to go ashore. Everybody is shopping very foolishly, and these shopkeepers, they know we are in a great hurry, so there is no chance of beating them down for prices. Take it or leave it, they say, so there is no fun about it and I come back to the ship for my tea.”

  “Can’t she bear to miss a meal she’s paid for?” asked Roger, gazing after the plump little figure of the Jewess as she padded along to the lounge.

  “Well, we couldn’t bear to miss one, either,” Dame Beatrice pointed out. There was much comparison of purchases and prices when the shoppers returned to the ship, then the evening passed normally, with dancing for those who desired it and a film show for those who did not. On the following day there was an invasion of the ship’s shop, especially for crêpe paper and fancy headgear, and, during the afternoon, a scarcity of people on deck or in the lounges, since preparations for the fancy-dress party involved the time and attention of the majority of the passengers.

  The first sitting for dinner was at half-past six, half an hour earlier than usual, the second sitting was due to end at half-past eight, and the fancy-dress parade which would precede the dance was timed for half-past nine. Gala programmes, containing the dinner menu (which was even more elaborate than usual) and items of information concerning the rest of the ports of call and other matters of interest, were placed on the tables and, in an atmosphere of champagne and general conviviality, were circulated around the dining-tables for signatures.

  By a quarter past seven Dame Beatrice had finished her dinner and had retired to her cabin to put the finishing touches to a costume for Roger. She had declined to partner him, but had concocted, with his advice and assistance, a representation of Neptune which involved his wearing a crown, a red beard, and (at his insistence) frogmen’s flippers and a snorkel tube. Her help had been requested in sewing hundreds of blue and green scales on to a pair of Hero’s tights and a string vest of Roger’s own, and at the moment when the tap came at her stateroom door she was involved in making sure that the prongs of Neptune’s trident stayed upright on their parent handle.

  “Come in,” she said, thinking it was the boy. Her steward entered.

  “Commander’s compliments, madam, and could you make it convenient to spare him a moment in Commander’s dayroom?”

  “Certainly,” said Dame Beatrice, hoping that she was not going to be co-opted on to some committee or other.

  “If you ask me, madam, something’s Up,” said the steward confidentially.

  “It would seem so. Will you direct me? I have no idea where to find the Commander’s dayroom.”

  She was ushered into it to find it occupied by a tearful Mrs. Solomons, her daughter Leah, the chief purser, the second purser, and the Commander himself.

  The last-named was given the courtesy title of Commander and a resplendent uniform to go with it, but his duties were really those of liason-officer and entertainments man. He dealt with passengers’ complaints and acted as chairman of, and general adviser to, the entertainments and sports committees elected from among the passengers themselves, and was ordinarily the most urbane and sociable of men. On this occasion, however, he was looking so grim that there seemed no doubt that something, in the word of the steward, was most certainly Up.

  “Ah, come in, Dame Beatrice,” he said. “We are wondering whether you can help us to avoid a lot of unpleasantness and scandal. Mrs. Solomons’ rubies seem to have been mislaid.”

  “Stolen!” sobbed Mrs. Solomons. “Why
you are messink about usink wronk words, isn’t it?” Her lapse into the accents of her Whitechapel youth, even without the venom in her voice and her sobbing utterance, was indicative of the depths of her feelings.

  “And how can I help you?” Dame Beatrice enquired. The chief purser coughed modestly.

  “I have told the Commander of your phenomenal successes with psychopaths and in solving cases involving crime,” he said. “There seems to be no doubt that, as Mrs. Solomons states, her rubies have been purloined. What is all the more unfortunate for us, they were taken from my own office by someone who presented the receipt for them. She purported to be . . .”

  “Wait a minute, Binns,” put in the Commander. “It’s not really your story. Do sit down, Dame Beatrice, you, too, Mrs. and Miss Solomons.” He swung round on the youthful second purser. “Let Dame Beatrice hear all about it from you. Don’t look so glum, man,” he added, more kindly. “Nobody’s blaming you for what happened. Naturally you honoured the receipt when it was presented. What else could you be expected to do?”

  Thus encouraged, the second purser moistened his lips, waited until the women were seated, and then embarked upon his tale.

  “I’m afraid there isn’t much to tell,” he began.

  “Be bloody, bold, and resolute,” suggested Dame Beatrice, thus adding her own note of encouragement for the benefit of the harassed young officer.

  “Well, I was in charge of the office this evening while Mr. Binns and the third were off duty, when a girl in fancy dress came along. She fished out a receipt for a numbered package, signed the book, took the parcel, and went away. Of course I didn’t dream she had no right . . .”

  “Of course not,” said Dame Beatrice. “At what time was this?”

  “Six o’clock. I checked the time and wrote it down, as the regulations instruct.”

  “Did the girl say who she was?”

  “No. She simply said, ‘Can I have this out, please?’ So I handed the package over.”

  “Would you recognise her again?”

  “I hardly looked at her. In any case, she was pretty well disguised. She had on a black beard and a patch over one eye, and I think she was got up as some sort of a pirate.”