The Riverboat Mystery

by Faith Martin

  Rycroft opened his mouth and then abruptly closed it again. He stared at the note in his hand, his face openly aggrieved.

  ‘Perhaps they’re in it together?’ he said tentatively, then instantly corrected himself. ‘No, if that were so, there’d be no need for them to pass cute little notes to each other.’

  ‘Then who did write it?’ Graves finally asked.

  Jenny shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  But she was sure that she should know. All the clues, she was convinced, were right there in front of her. She just wasn’t seeing them clearly. She needed to rearrange them. She needed to sift through the camouflage. She needed to sleep.

  ‘I think we should all turn in,’ she said wearily. ‘I’m almost asleep on my feet now.’

  But Rycroft, terrier-like, had the rat between his teeth once again, and had no intention of giving up shaking it about just yet. ‘Well, I for one want a word with Mrs Olney. Graves,’ he snapped.

  The sergeant dutifully went into the games room and extracted the widow. As soon as she saw the magazine and note in the inspector’s hand, she stiffened, then seemed to wilt.

  Her smile was somewhat ironic. ‘I see you’ve found the mysterious note, Inspector,’ she murmured. But she seemed more amused than afraid. She was wearing a low-cut black evening dress, and her eyes were heavily accentuated with mascara — despite her grief, Jasmine Olney hadn’t neglected to dress for dinner. She looked both attractive and dangerous. Both men felt themselves put on their mettle.

  Rycroft nodded. ‘Can you explain it to us, please, Mrs Olney?’

  Jasmine elegantly shrugged one white shoulder and raised a hand to fiddle with the single row of pearls at her neck.

  Jenny noticed at once that they were real. Then she wondered exactly how much money Gabriel Olney had left, and whether he’d left it all to his wife. Or had David Leigh, in the last week or so perhaps, made up a new will and testament for Gabriel that had left his money entirely elsewhere?

  ‘What is there to explain?’ Jasmine shrugged. ‘I found the note in my magazine this afternoon, during the darts match. It seems like years ago now, not merely a matter of hours. Anyway, I went upstairs. He never came. And that’s the whole story,’ she added mockingly.

  Her voice, although kept deliberately flat, had an undertone of real anger to it. Jenny, for one, had no trouble in detecting it at once. Nor did it surprise her. Jasmine Olney was clearly not the type of woman who would appreciate being stood up. Her ego was too fragile for such an insult to go unnoticed.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell your husband about it, Mrs Olney?’ Rycroft asked. ‘Or did you?’ he added sharply.

  The cook saw at once where Rycroft was leading, of course. If Gabriel Olney knew about the supposed assignation, might he have tackled O’Keefe and been killed for his pains?

  But Jasmine laughed openly at the question. ‘Tell Gabby? Why on earth would I do that?’ She sounded both genuinely puzzled and wary at the same time, like a mouse spying a twitching whisker at the mousehole.

  Both men looked distinctly disapproving. ‘I see,’ Rycroft finally grated through severely clenched teeth. ‘So you went upstairs to meet a lover?’

  But again Jasmine laughed, relaxing now that she understood the policeman’s interest, and apparently not one whit put out by the inspector’s obvious disapproval. ‘Hardly that, Inspector,’ she drawled. ‘I’d only set eyes on Brian O’Keefe yesterday. No, I never intended to let him . . . do . . . anything. I was merely curious, that’s all.’

  Rycroft looked a little mollified at this. ‘I see. And you say Mr O’Keefe never showed up?’

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ Jasmine said shortly.

  ‘Did you hear anything whilst you were in your room, Mrs Olney?’ Jenny put in, making Rycroft fume silently at her cheek.

  Jasmine glanced at her, surprised by the cook’s presence, but she answered her question readily enough. ‘No. At least, not when I was in my room. But now that you mention it . . . just before I got to the door I thought I heard something inside. But . . .’ She shrugged. ‘There was nobody there.’

  Jenny nodded. Brian O’Keefe had good hearing. Or a guilty man’s super-sensitivity to sound. In any event, he’d managed to get out before being caught in the act of searching the room.

  ‘Was the window shut or open when you went in?’ she asked, earning herself yet another wrathful look from the inspector. This she met with such calmness that it only infuriated the tiny policeman all the more.

  Jasmine frowned. ‘Well . . . now that I think about it, the window was closed. But it had been open previously. Gabriel always liked to sleep with the windows open. He was a soldier, you know,’ she added, as if this explained any and all of her husband’s idiosyncrasies. ‘And the day was so hot, I’m sure he wouldn’t have closed them for any reason when we got up. Why would he?’

  She looked sharply at the two policemen, then at the cook. ‘Why do you ask?’

  But at this point, Rycroft hastily dismissed her. She went, casting suspicious, thoughtful looks over her shoulder as she did so. ‘O’Keefe shut the window behind him, of course,’ Rycroft said, when the widow was safely out of earshot. ‘He must have heard her coming and bolted for it.’

  ‘Hmm,’ the cook made a soft sound of agreement. ‘He probably shut the window to help mask the sounds of his climbing down to the lower deck.’

  That would have been the starboard deck, she suddenly realized. If she’d followed her usual habit of sitting out on the starboard deck after lunch, instead of going for a walk, she’d have been treated to a very interesting spectacle indeed. Instead, she’d been a good mile away at the time.

  Such was the luck of travelling cooks.

  Graves nodded. ‘So O’Keefe can think quickly on his feet.’

  Jenny sighed wearily. There were far too many clever people on board this boat for her liking.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said shortly. ‘My head’s spinning.’

  *

  The next morning Lucas suggested a walking party to the village of Carswell Marsh, to buy papers, to phone relatives and explain what had happened and, in David Leigh’s case, to phone his employers to make general arrangements for a short leave of absence.

  Besides, Lucas wanted to buy some crackers for his parrot. Rycroft had no objection to this, and at ten o’clock Lucas, Jasmine, the Leighs, O’Keefe and the captain set off on their cross-country walk. No doubt they were all relieved to get away from the boat for a while, not to mention get out of sight of the policemen and all their questioning. Besides, it was a perfect day for such a tramp across the meadows.

  Jenny, who was sitting out on the starboard deck watching a pair of moorhens and their chicks swimming in and out of the river reeds, had declined the offer. She had no one to telephone, and besides, she had some thinking to do.

  It didn’t take the policemen long to find her. Graves pulled up a similarly hefty chair to the one the cook had requisitioned, whilst Rycroft perched with perfect ease on a flimsy wooden and canvas folding deckchair.

  ‘Well, Miss Starling,’ Rycroft said. ‘You’re the expert,’ he added sarcastically. ‘What are your thoughts so far?’

  Jenny dragged her eyes from the moorhens and looked at him. She sighed unhappily.

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that someone has either been very clever, or very lucky, or both. Unless . . .’ But the thought that suddenly popped into her head was a little too far-fetched to voice without first thinking it over.

  And thinking it over very carefully, at that.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard from the medical examiner yet?’ she asked curiously.

  Rycroft shook his head and explained about the railway disaster that had slowed things up.

  Jenny sighed. ‘A pity. I would have liked to know if Mr Olney had been drugged. I don’t believe he was, of course, but . . . it’s nice to be sure of these things, isn’t it?’

  Rycroft blinked. ‘Drugged? What made you ever imagin
e that he’d been drugged? The medico was sure that he drowned.’

  Jenny nodded. ‘Oh yes, I’m sure that he did too.’

  Rycroft slowly leaned back in his chair and took several deep breaths. He hated questioning women. They were so damned . . . illogical.

  ‘If there were drugs involved, then it was premeditated.’ He tried a different tack, and the cook willingly went with him.

  ‘If Gabriel was drugged, yes. But I don’t think he was. And I don’t think, somehow, that this was pre-planned. It smacks too much of desperation for that.’

  Rycroft glanced at Graves to see if he was faring any better. Apparently he was, for he said slowly, thoughtfully, ‘You have some kind of problem with the method of killing, Miss Starling?’

  Jenny started. There was no other word for it. She opened her eyes very widely and said, with total sincerity, ‘But of course I have. Don’t you?’

  Rycroft clutched the side of the chair until his knuckles turned white.

  Jenny stared at them, bewildered. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But I thought . . . I mean, it’s so obvious that I was sure that you must have . . .’

  Aware that she was not exactly earning herself any brownie points, she took a deep breath and started at the beginning.

  ‘On the face of it,’ she explained, ‘the rope and boot on the port side of the deck suggests that Mr Olney was overpowered, that the killer tied the rope to his foot, hauled him over the side, let him drown, pulled him back and put him in the cupboard. Yes?’

  Rycroft let go of the chair, and nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘But that’s so patently absurd as to be laughable,’ she said, her voice rising an octave into a near-squeak of incredulity. ‘To begin with, how did the killer overpower Mr Olney? He was fit enough, and an old soldier to boot.’

  Rycroft was beginning to feel uncomfortable. It occurred to him that whilst he had spent his time investigating, Jenny Starling had spent her time thinking. And he was beginning to appreciate just how exasperated his colleagues must have felt on their previous murder investigations where she had also been involved.

  Now, he shrugged and tried to keep up with her. ‘Well, we assumed the killer gave Olney a crack on the head before trussing him up,’ he said, somewhat defensively, and looked at Graves, who nodded his agreement.

  ‘But didn’t the medical man say he could find no obvious cuts, bruises or outward marks of violence on the body?’ she reminded him. ‘At least, when I looked at Mr Olney with you, Inspector, I couldn’t see anything. Only his fingernails looked a bit broken, and his knuckles looked slightly discoloured. I don’t know enough about pathology, of course, to know if bruises can develop after death or not. But apart from that, there seemed to be nothing wrong with Mr Olney at all. Or am I wrong?’

  Rycroft ran a finger around his collar. ‘No, you’re not wrong,’ he admitted uneasily. He too had noticed no obvious wounds on the body. And any medico examining a body — even giving it a very quick and preliminary look-over at the scene — would have noted any bashes on the head.

  ‘And surely one of the very first things a doctor checks is a body’s head?’ Jenny said, eerily echoing his own thoughts.

  Rycroft reluctantly admitted that it was so. Looking back, he could see in his mind’s eye the police surgeon running his hands carefully over Gabriel Olney’s head.

  ‘And he didn’t report to you later on any bumps or bangs on Mr Olney’s head?’ she pressed.

  Rycroft frowned, not liking the feeling he was getting that he was being backed into a corner. ‘No. He didn’t,’ he confirmed shortly.

  ‘So I repeat,’ the plump cook said, ‘how did the killer overpower Mr Olney?’

  ‘He couldn’t have. Unless he was drugged,’ Sergeant Graves said. ‘But you said you didn’t believe he was drugged.’

  Jenny sighed. ‘No. I don’t think so, but I don’t know so. Not for sure. That’s why I wanted to know if you’d got the post-mortem report.’

  Rycroft grunted. ‘Well, say for the moment the killer did dope Mr Olney somehow. He tied him up, chucked him over the side, and drowned him.’

  But Jenny was already shaking her head. ‘Inspector, does that sound reasonable to you?’ she asked, and Rycroft was back once more to clutching the side of his chair.

  ‘Consider the difficulties,’ she urged, for all the world like a teacher instructing a classroom. ‘The killer would have to have doped Mr Olney sometime in the afternoon. Without being seen. He — or she — would then have had to either hide the unconscious man, or go through the rigmarole with the rope and drowning that you’ve just described, again without being seen. Then the killer would have to hide the body in my cupboard — still without being seen. How? How could all this be done?’

  Rycroft swallowed hard. ‘We know that at four o’clock the deck was dry,’ he began. ‘The killer could reasonably guess that the captain would be on the bridge, and O’Keefe in the engine room.’

  ‘Providing it was neither of them that did it,’ she put in.

  ‘Right,’ Rycroft conceded.

  ‘And he knew that Jasmine would be in her room,’ Graves put in brightly.

  ‘Right. The note was a decoy,’ Rycroft agreed.

  ‘But by four o’clock Jasmine had been out of her room for a good forty-five minutes,’ she pointed out, hating to rain on their parade. But facts were facts.

  Rycroft groaned. ‘But she went back up to her room for a quarter of an hour,’ he suddenly remembered. ‘To change, or whatever. And at just about four o’clock too.’ He was reluctant to let a good theory go to waste, just because the facts didn’t fit.

  ‘The Leighs were on the opposite side of the boat,’ Graves added, getting carried away with the theorizing now, ‘and you were in the galley.’

  ‘So how did the killer get the body into my cupboard?’ she asked bluntly.

  ‘When you were taking Dorothy Leigh her tea and toast,’ Rycroft said quickly.

  Jenny looked from one policeman to another. ‘But don’t you see how risky this all is?’ she asked, exasperated. ‘What’s to stop me from going back to the galley straight after taking Dorothy her toast? The killer couldn’t know that I would take a stroll around the boat. And besides all that, Lucas Finch was wandering around all afternoon. He could have bumped into the killer at any point in these proceedings.’

  ‘If it isn’t Finch we’re after.’ This time it was Rycroft’s turn to put in the little dig.

  Jenny ignored this childishness and kept doggedly to the point. ‘What’s to have stopped the Leighs from leaving the starboard deck? How could the killer know how long Jasmine would be gone? She might only have nipped up to the loo. She could have been gone only a minute or so. But in that time the killer dragged Olney’s body to the side, drowned him and carted him back to my cupboard? I don’t think so.’

  Graves scratched his chin. ‘If he or she did, it sounds . . .’ He looked lost for words.

  ‘Desperate?’ Jenny supplied one for him helpfully. ‘Suicidal? Risky?’

  ‘And yet, it worked,’ Rycroft pointed out.

  ‘But did it?’ she asked sceptically. ‘If so, how come the deck was wet, but not the route the killer must have taken to my galley? Why wasn’t the galley floor wet? It wasn’t, you know. Only the cupboard floor was wet.’

  ‘I know that,’ Rycroft snapped, although in fact that detail had totally escaped him. ‘The killer must have covered him in something dry.’

  ‘The plastic sheet,’ Graves suddenly whooped, remembering the cook’s fascination with the engineer’s woodpile and its covering and now understanding it. ‘It was bound to dry out quickly in the boiler room, and putting it in the engine room meant that it was also out of sight.’

  ‘So the killer must have waited until Brian O’Keefe had stepped out of the engine room,’ she said. ‘He has to every now and then, of course,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘I’ve seen him. He checks in with the captain every so often for a start. Then he checks the paddles a
t the back. Oils things. But it all takes time. How did the killer know that O’Keefe was going to conveniently leave the engine room and allow him or her time to put the wet plastic over the wood to dry out?’

  ‘But O’Keefe did leave the engine room,’ Graves pointed out. ‘He was going to ask the captain where they were. But then recognized the straight stretch of river, or so he said. So he was out of the engine room for a few moments at least.’ Then he frowned. ‘Of course, the killer would still have to have been nippy. Very nippy now that I think about it.’

  ‘Incidentally,’ Jenny put in, ‘I hope you realize the significance of that straight stretch of river.’

  Rycroft glanced at her. He didn’t look pleased. ‘Significance?’

  The cook sighed. Did she have to point out even the obvious?

  ‘The Swan travels at about four miles per hour. On a straight stretch of river, such as the one we travelled down yesterday afternoon, the captain could have tied off the wheel, murdered Olney, and gone back, without anyone knowing. With the boat travelling slowly, the straight stretch could be made to last for at least half an hour, and the boat would be perfectly safe without anyone steering her. Other boats would be sure to see her coming a long way off and steer to either side of her, so there’d be no question of a collision to give the game away. The captain could have left the wheelhouse any time during that period. It’s a wonderful sort of alibi to have. Everyone thinks the captain must be steering the boat. But that’s not necessarily so.’

  Rycroft sighed, fighting back the urge to scream. Loudly. ‘We’ve already established that nobody had an alibi for every moment of that afternoon, Miss Starling. I think we can agree that anyone could have done it.’

  Sergeant Graves shifted uneasily in his chair. ‘What exactly are you getting at, Miss Starling? Are you saying that Mr Olney wasn’t drowned on the port deck?’

  Jenny shook her head, more in sorrow than in denial. ‘I’m just pointing out how impossibly risky the whole thing must have been, if the evidence is to be believed,’ she explained patiently. ‘And haven’t you asked yourself why Gabriel Olney was put in my cupboard? If the killer did heave him over the side, tied by one foot to a rope to ensure that he drowned, why didn’t the killer then simply undo the rope and let Gabriel’s corpse float down the river? In due course, he’d be noted as missing, we’d quickly set up a hue and cry, and his body would be found somewhere on the Thames. The police would conclude, with no bumps or signs of violence on the body, that he’d simply fallen overboard and drowned. Even if you did suspect foul play,’ she cut in quickly, as Rycroft opened his mouth to hotly deny that they’d come to such a conclusion so quickly, ‘what proof would you have? You might suspect that there was something rotten going on, but you’d be more likely to drop it and label it an accident after a diligent investigation, if Olney had been found floating face down by some innocent bystander walking their dog. But by putting the corpse in my cupboard, it was like advertising the fact that it was murder. Why?’