by Fiona Leitch
Before Will could consult his list there was a knock at the door. He stood up but I stopped him.
“I’ll get it,” I said. “I’m not hiding.”
It was Joel. I tried to keep my voice normal as I invited him in, and managed to sound almost as though he hadn’t told me he still loved me the last time I saw him. To be fair, he hadn’t actually said it, but the sight of him was still enough to give me palpitations. Or maybe it was indigestion from the lemon drizzle cake earlier.
“I ran into that stroppy middle aged bird - ”
“Heather,” said Will and I simultaneously.
“Yeah, her, she said you were trying to clear your name?”
“That’s right,” said Will stiffly, drawing himself up to his full height which, next to Joel, made him look like an angry hobbit. “My wife’s innocent and I intend to prove it.”
“Good,” said Joel. “I’ll help.”
I looked at him in surprise. “You will?”
“Of course I will,” he said. “I told you, Bell. I know you’re not a killer.” He looked at Will. “Look, mate, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I want to help.”
Will stared at him for a moment, and I thought he was going to tell him to get lost. But then his shoulders sagged and he relaxed.
“Okay,” he said. “You’d better sit down.”
Joel sat down at the table and looked at the timeline.
“This is when the murder took place, yeah?” he said. “And you’re working out who was where at the time.” I nodded. He studied the list of names.
“Doris and Sarah - they were on my team. Doris is a right old character, constantly demanding attention. If I was her daughter I’d be putting arsenic in her cocoa… Lauren and Pete - Louise was pretty chummy with those two, she said they weren’t quite who they seemed…”
Will grinned at me triumphantly. “Told you!” Joel looked at me, puzzled, but I wasn’t going down that rabbit hole.
“Yeah, we need to talk to them… But it would be more useful now if you could help us pin down what happened earlier, when you and Zoé left Louise in her cabin.”
“Well, I didn’t actually see Louise,” he said, “but I did hear her. I stuck my head around the door to check everything was okay and Zoé was just coming out of the bathroom. She said Louise was in there, throwing up. She turned round and told her I was outside and Louise said she’d see me in the morning.”
“Letting you off the hook,” I said. “I bet you were relieved.”
“Just a bit.” Joel grinned.
“So,” I said. “Louise is in the bathroom, suffering from alcohol poisoning - ”
Joel put his hand up. “Woah woah woah! Are you saying Louise was drunk?”
I looked at him in surprise. “I told you she was.”
“No, you said she was ill,” said Joel. “She can’t have been drunk. That woman could drink Oliver Reed under the table.”
“I saw her,” I said. “She was reeling around all over the place. She certainly looked drunk.”
“Doubt it.” Joel shook his head. “The first time I met her, at the - ” He stopped and looked at me, sheepishly. “I met her at the Smoking Gun Awards last year, and we…”
“Skip to the relevant bit,” I said quickly.
“We drank all night, and then we went back to my hotel room.” Joel looked straight into my eyes. That’s not the bloody relevant bit, you twat, I thought. “We went to my hotel room, where I passed out on the bed and she gave up and left.”
There was silence for a second, and then Will burst out laughing. I cringed, waiting for Joel to punch him or at least say something nasty, but instead he laughed as well. I let out my breath slowly.
“Last of the red hot lovers, I know.” Joel smiled ruefully. “That woman had hollow legs. She was a borderline alcoholic. She must’ve had the best part of two bottles of wine and some spirits, and she was fine - better than me, anyway. She hadn’t drunk anywhere near that much the night she was - ” He stopped.
Will stopped laughing. “The night she was murdered.”
We all sat in silence for a moment. Here we were, joking about Louise, and she was lying in a fridge down in the ship’s medical centre.
“She was falling over, though,” I said. “She wasn’t ill, she was - she seemed - completely legless.”
“Well, she wasn’t.” Joel was adamant.
“Maybe she was drugged,” said Will. I looked at him in shock. “Some kind of date rape drug. That could make her appear drunk and render her completely helpless.”
“Drugged? But - when? At dinner? Who would do that?” I tried to imagine one of the murder mystery players slipping something into Louise’s drink, but couldn’t. It meant that her murder had been very much planned, and not the opportunist crime we’d thought.
“We need a toxicology report on her before we know for certain,” said Will, “but I’m not sure the medical facilities on board will be up to it.”
“The steward,” I said. Joel looked at me. “The one who helped Zoé carry Louise back to her cabin. We’d never seen him before, and we already thought that maybe he’d taken her key and let himself back in after he’d seen how drunk she was, but perhaps he made a point of coming to the Pearl specifically to target her. Perhaps he wasn’t even a real crew member - ”
Joel stopped me. “Blonde guy, about 5’8”, tattoo on his forearm - black ink, Celtic design, yeah?”
“Yeah, that’s him. He - ”
“He was behind the bar. That other steward - the one who’s all tan and white teeth - ”
“Karl,” Will and I said together.
‘Yeah, him. He was flirting with that woman - Heather? Heather - they were flirting in the corner of the bar after dinner, before we started that stupid name game, and I overheard your main suspect tell him to go for it, said he’d cover for him.” Joel reached out and tapped the timeline. “He was behind the bar during the murderer’s window of opportunity. I think he was the one who took ages turning the lights back on.”
Bollocks. There went the theory I had started to work on. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I noticed him, because I liked his tattoo and I was thinking about getting one.” Joel stared at me defiantly, probably because he knew I was remembering his incredibly low threshold for pain. He could barely handle stubbing his toe, letting alone having someone working on his skin with a needle, but I let it pass.
“Damn. So he couldn’t have taken the key without Zoé seeing and then let himself back in…” I was disappointed; I’d thought we could be onto something, and now it seemed we were almost back at square one.
Almost. We now knew - or suspected - that Louise had been drugged and deliberately incapacitated.
“Not necessarily,” said Will. “He could still have taken the key, and given it to someone else.”
“Who?”
“No idea.” Will smiled grimly. “I think we need to find this steward…”
Chapter 17
That heavy leaden ball of anxiety had settled deep within my guts again, so I decided that the best way to oust it was with a three course dinner with matching wines and a cheese board to finish. We headed to the Pearl, and found the murder mystery players sitting down to eat. They all - well, most of them - welcomed Will and I warmly, although Sylvia seemed out of sorts and wasn’t really talking to us or Heather.
We made slightly awkward small talk through the first two courses. Michael asked if we’d found out any more about the steward but Zoé, God bless her, must’ve seen my discomfort as she deliberately changed the subject and steered the conversation into uncontroversial waters. I smiled at her in gratitude and she beamed back at me. We finished the main course and then, as had become the custom everyone got up and wandered between the tables, talking to the other diners over dessert. I thought it was nice that everyone was still mingling and chatting, even though the murder mystery (the official one, anyway) had been disb
anded and there was no need to question each other and look for clues. I say everyone was mingling and chatting, but Will and I stayed in our seats; I knew I should get up and put on a brave (and most of all, innocent) face, but I’d spotted too many of the guests at the other tables looking over at me and talking between themselves. Sylvia, in particular, seemed unable to talk to anyone without causing them to peer in my direction in discreet (or not so discreet) scrutiny.
The Chief Purser came over and plonked herself down next to me. She smiled at Harvey as he returned to pick up his glass before wandering off again; but as soon as his back was turned her face dropped. She seemed to have aged over the last couple of days, and let out a heavy sigh before turning to me.
“So how are you holding up?” she asked, in that soft Scottish voice that was so soothing.
“Okay,” I said. “How about you? This is not what you wanted on your first murder mystery, is it? A real live corpse turning up.”
“A real live corpse,” she murmured, amused. “No, we hadn’t planned for that. I think we can safely say this is our first and last murder mystery cruise. And possibly my last cruise, full stop.”
“The Captain can’t hold you responsible!” said Will. “It’s hardly your fault, is it?”
She sighed again, toying with a napkin that had been screwed up and discarded on the table in front of her. “I didn’t kill anyone, no. But someone leaked those photographs to the paper. It’s not a good look, is it? And I knew all about your history with Louise and Joel. When the other writers pulled out and they were the only ones available at short notice to replace them - I should have said something, I should have warned you and made sure you were okay with them - ”
“I was okay with them,” I said, putting my hand on her arm.
“Still,” she said, “it was my idea, and the buck stops with me.”
We sat in silence for a moment, watching the other diners chatting; several of whom were very studiously (and obviously) trying to avoid looking over at us. No, at me. The Purser turned back to me.
“Joel told me you were trying to find the steward who was helping out behind the bar on the night of the murder,” she said. I nodded. “I don’t know who it was off the top of my head - we took on a lot of new crew recently and I don’t know all of them by name. I do know they weren’t supposed to be on duty here, but the crew do sometimes swap shifts with each other, so there’s nothing suspicious about that in itself.”
“Will you be able to find out who it was?” asked Will, and she nodded.
“Yes, leave it with me.” She looked across the room, took a deep breath and got to her feet. “For what it’s worth, Bella, I don’t think you did it. I believe you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” She smiled. “Don’t lose hope.”
Don’t lose hope. I sat in the dining room, knowing that I was innocent yet feeling horribly guilty under the weight of the other diners’ stares. Even the ones who were on my side - they didn’t actually know I was innocent; how long would they continue to believe me, if I couldn’t find any evidence pointing to someone else?The more we investigated, the more confusing it got. First it was an opportunistic murder, then it wasn’t; by another passenger, except how would they have got in - so by a crew member; but what was their motive? What was anyone’s motive? Yes, she was an annoying bint and a terrible writer, but if I went around taking out everyone who was guilty of writing unnatural dialogue, convoluted plots with ridiculous twists at the end and clichéd characters, well then there’d be fewer awful books out there and people would be forced to spend their hard earned money on mine instead. Hmm. Yeah, maybe I wouldn’t get my defence attorney to use that in their closing arguments…
“Penny for your thoughts?” Will looked at me, a gentle but slightly worried smile on his face.
“A penny? Pah! I don’t think for anything less then £2.50.” I’m good at bravado, but Will knows me too well to fall for it, and he didn’t this time either.
“You’re worried.” I bit back a sarcastic no shit, Sherlock.
“Why on earth should I be worried?” I asked.
“Sorry, it was a stupid thing to say,” he said apologetically. “Of course you’re worried. But you didn’t do it - ”
“How do you know that?” I snapped. What the hell was I doing, trying to start a fight with him or something? But he just smiled again.
“Bella, I know you. I’m not saying you’d never kill anyone, because as we both know…” He looked serious for a moment. “As we both know, everyone has the potential to be a killer under the right circumstances. But I know you, and I know what motivates you. You didn’t like Louise, but you don’t like a lot of people - ”
“That’s not fair!” I cried. “I like everyone!” I thought about it. “Okay, I like most people. Some more than others. I mean, I can’t stand some people, but most of the time…”
“Like I said, there are a lot of people you don’t like, but you don’t go around dispatching them. And I have the sneaking suspicion you actually quite enjoyed your feud with Louise.” Will was grinning at me now.
“What? You’re insane.” I dismissed the idea, but there was the distinct possibility that he was right. Some of my finest work had been penned in sarcastic tweets to or about her. I had reached hitherto unknown heights of snark when faced with some of her more outrageous claims on social media, several examples of which had ended up in my books. She annoyed the crap out of me, but she’d also inspired me. I’d been toying with creating a character who was a self obsessed, opportunistic, narcissistic, manic self-publicist writer, who was so far up her own arse she could see her tonsils, but I thought my readers would think her too far-fetched to be real. Someone who was so deluded, arrogant and overly-confident in their own meagre talent that they regularly compared themselves to the great writers who had gone before them, describing themselves as ‘Margaret Atwood’s heir’ or ‘the next Maya Angelou’. All of which Louise had done. She’d once updated her Twitter bio, calling herself ‘the Queen of True Crime’ (seriously, WHO DOES THAT?! You can’t proclaim yourself the Queen of something) and I had responded by changing my own Twitter bio to ‘the 7th Earl of Get the Hell Outta Here With Your Over-Inflated Ego’. Which had gone down well with my fans but not so much with Susie, the ever-diplomatic agent. Funnily enough Louise hadn’t reacted to it at all, probably because she was too busy taking herself far too seriously to notice it or to realise it was aimed at her.
Will was still grinning at me.
“Oh alright, I did enjoy it,” I admitted. “But I don’t think that’s necessarily going to convince a jury, do you? 'I couldn’t possibly have killed her, your Honour, because I enjoyed taking the piss out of her on social media too much.’ As defences go, it’s not very good, is it?”
“Point taken. But it’s convinced me. I will always be on your side.” Will looked around, then bent close to me. “I’d be on your side even if you had topped her.”
“Thank you. I’ll bear that in mind next time I bump someone off.”
“Please do. If you ever need an alibi, I’ll cover for you.”
“Just say we were having sex. That’d ring true for anyone who knows us.”
Will laughed and gave me his version of The Look, which at that moment was a very welcome distraction. It was much less arrogant than Joel’s Look, much softer and more considerate; less the kind of the look that said I want to take you roughly over the kitchen table and more I want to take you roughly (with your consent) on the bed, where it’s more comfortable and there’s much less chance of getting splinters in your crevices, and have wild sex with you whilst making sure you enjoy it as much as I do, possibly more times than I do, and afterwards I’ll even make you a cup of tea. The kind of look that gets you just as hot as the first one, without the vague feeling of self-loathing that often accompanies it. Or is that just me? Anyway…
He gave me His Look, and I gave him one right back - mine just said ooh y
eah go on then - and before I quite knew what was happening we’d blown the joint and were making out in the corridor. We stopped at the sound of footsteps coming towards us, no doubt looking highly suspicious to Sarah, downtrodden daughter cum care assistant to the redoubtable Doris, who had obviously managed to escape from her mother’s demands for a few minutes and was making her way back to the dining room. We smiled and nodded at her, then pulled ourselves together and made our way to our penthouse, giggling; luckily it was just one deck above, almost exactly above the Pearl. Right above Louise’s cabin, I thought, then pushed that away; it wasn’t conducive to sexy time with Will.
We almost fell through the doorway, snogging furiously and ripping at each other’s clothes, rather ineffectually if truth be told; Will was used to whipping my usual t-shirt and jeans off, but this was a fancy cocktail dress, with unaccustomed hooks and buttons. I laughed and pulled away from him, heading further into the room as I struggled to undo myself. But then I stopped, my libido suddenly frozen in its tracks by a metaphorical bucket of cold water.
Someone’s been in here.
“Babe - ” I started, turning round to face him, then stopped short again. He hadn’t hung around; his clothes lay in a heap on the floor. Most of them, anyway.
The sight of Will naked but for a pair of Argyle socks was normally enough to make me all unnecessary, so it was testament to how rattled I was that the only quiver that betrayed me now was one of mild irritation.
“Bloody hell, you move fast,” I said. He stepped forward and took me in his arms, reaching around to fiddle with my buttons again.
“And you’re being too slow,” he murmured, kissing my neck as his fingers got busy in my clothes. “This dress is ridiculous, I may have to rip it…”
I pulled away from him. “Someone’s been in here.”
“What?” He clearly didn’t want to discuss it right now. “Of course they haven’t.”
“They have!” I said, dancing out of his grip. “Look! My handbag’s on the chair.”
