Murder Ahoy!

by Fiona Leitch

  Will stood up. “Come on,” he said, tugging me to my feet.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, reluctant to leave our quiet little spot.

  “To do some detective work. We need to find this Rob, if we can, and we need to work out who he was going to meet.”

  “And how do we do that?”

  “By talking to all the females on the ship, mysterious or otherwise…”

  If Lauren Donaldson was surprised to see us knocking on her cabin door, she didn’t show it.

  “Oh, hi!” she said pleasantly. She’d changed into tennis gear and was holding a racket. “I was just about to go out.”

  “Swimming?” I said. She looked puzzled for a moment, then laughed.

  “Ha ha ha, good one.” She picked up her key card. “Do you mind if we walk and talk? I’m meant to be meeting a friend for a game.”

  We wandered along the corridor towards the fitness zone.

  “I didn’t even know they had a tennis court on here,” said Will conversationally. Lauren nodded.

  “Yes, there’s tennis, badminton and squash,” she said. “I always make sure I bring my tennis gear with me, otherwise I go a bit stir crazy.”

  “So you’re a regular on this cruise, then?” I said, and she smiled.

  “Busted! Yes. I’m not a passenger, as such.”

  Will did a mini fist pump. “I knew it! You’re one of the actors, aren’t you?”

  She nodded. “I normally perform in the theatre shows - I’m a singer, really. But when they mentioned the murder mystery I jumped at the chance. Of course, now it’s been called off I’m at a loose end, so I’m having a holiday at the cruise line’s expense.” She laughed again, a warm, hearty chuckle that reminded me a bit of the Captain’s. “They’ve forgotten all about us in the chaos, and I’m not going to be the one who reminds them…”

  “I don’t blame you,” said Will. “We won’t tell either.” He waited for a passing guest to get out of earshot, then stopped. Lauren stopped too.

  “Look, you heard all that this morning,” he began. She nodded.

  “Yes, I did. And I know what you’re going to ask - do I know Rob and who he was meeting?” She smiled at me, a look of regret on her face. “I’m sorry but I don’t. The entertainment staff don’t really work with the stewards, so it takes a while for us to get to know them all. Karl did say he was new and he’d only done a couple of cruises.”

  “Okay.” I thought for a moment. Just because she was an actor employed by the cruise line, it didn’t get her off the hook; she could still just as easily be the mysterious female we were looking for. “Tell me, you were on Louise’s team, weren’t you? Did you talk to her much? Did you tell her who you really were?”

  She looked around, suddenly wary, then spoke in a lowered voice. “Between you and me - yes, I did tell her I was one of the actors. I told her who the murderer was so her team would win.”

  “Why?” I didn’t know why but hearing that pissed me off. It was cheating. Never mind that the whole thing had been called off and it hardly mattered now.

  “I know I shouldn’t have done, but…” She looked around again. “My partner, Pete - they took him on for the murder mystery, but he’s actually a filmmaker. He wanted to shoot one of Louise’s books - The Cuckoo and the Blackbird, you know that one?”

  “Bloody hell, why?” I couldn’t stop myself from saying it. That had been Louise’s debut novel, and a proper hot mess it had been too. Lauren laughed.

  “I know… But the underlying story itself is actually really good, or Pete reckons it could be, anyway. Pete and his producer spoke to her agent, but she was asking a ridiculous sum of money for the movie rights, I mean, it needs to be completely re-written to make sense but she wasn’t having it. So…”

  “So the two of you accepted this gig in order to get close enough to badger her into giving you the rights,” said Will. Lauren looked defensive.

  “I think badgering is a bit strong,” she protested. “I was making nice to her, getting her to like us…”

  “Was it working?” I asked. She laughed.

  “Nope. My charm offensive had failed to get anywhere, right up to the point where - ” She stopped abruptly, looking at me.

  “Right up to the point where I bumped her off, gotcha.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by that…” She sighed. “If only the murderer could have held off for a bit longer, I might have made more head way.”

  “I can see how Louise’s death would have been terribly inconvenient,” I said, with thinly veiled sarcasm. Lauren looked at me.

  “You’re the one who hated her,” she snapped, and turned and left.

  We tracked down the Bauers in the hot tub. They were sharing a cocktail, Mrs Bauer sucking seductively on her straw as Mr Bauer ogled her breasts, or at least the spot in the frothing bubbles where they must’ve been. We stood and watched them for a moment, amazed.

  “What’s with them?” I asked Will. Every other time we’d seen them, relations had clearly been quite strained; he’d been attentive, uncomfortably so, like he was on his best behaviour, while she had treated him to icy stares or just plain ignored him.

  Mr Bauer looked up and saw us. He gave us a broad smile and waved cheerfully.

  “Hello!” he called. “Are you coming in?”

  “We don’t have our swimming togs,” I said, and he laughed.

  “Nor do we,” he said, winking at me. Will stuttered something and Mrs Bauer laughed.

  “Oh Schnucki!” cried Mrs Bauer, flapping her hands playfully at him. “Don’t tease them.” She shifted in the water so we could see the top of her swimsuit. I shrugged and slipped off my shoes, then sat on the edge so I could dip my toes in.

  “Ooh that’s nice…” I sighed, enjoying the feel of the water jets on the soles of my feet. Will tugged up the legs of his trousers and joined me.

  “We have not really spoken properly since that first night, have we?” said Mr Bauer. “I am Klaus, and this is Birgit.” He reached up and shook both our hands, which seemed absurdly formal for someone who was almost naked in a hot tub.

  “Will and Bella,” said Will. They nodded.

  We sat in comfortable, companionable silence for a while, then Birgit nudged her husband. He nodded.

  “Yes, Schatzi, I have been trying to find the words…” We looked at him in surprise, but he just smiled at us, thoughtfully. Finally, he spoke.

  “My wife and I came on this cruise with the worst of intentions,” he said. I looked at Birgit, and she nodded but didn’t speak.

  “I have not been a good husband,” he began, but Will put his hand out to stop him.

  “You don’t have to tell us this,” he said, and I almost laughed; his upbringing had been terribly middle class and buttoned up, and although he could now open up to me, he still didn’t really go for big displays of emotion from others. Whereas I, as a writer, love a bit of gossip and over-sharing; where else am I going to get my characters from?

  Luckily for me, Klaus wasn’t to be entirely deterred.

  “I will not go into details as I do not wish to embarrass my wife,” he said. Dammit, go into detalls! “But neither of us intended to be married at the end of this cruise.”

  I looked at Will. We’d joked about them plotting to kill each other as part of the murder mystery game, when all the time they had been planning something much sadder; a real life divorce. I opened my mouth to speak, but I wasn’t entirely sure what to say.

  Birgit smiled and put her hand on Klaus’s arm, gazing at him adoringly. “I was going to stab him and throw him overboard for cheating on me.”

  Will and I made choking noises as we tried to hide our surprise. They both laughed; they were winding us up.

  “And they say Germans don’t have a sense of humour,” I said ruefully, and they laughed again.

  “No,” said Klaus, shaking his head. “My wife wasn’t going to murder me. This cr
uise was a last, probably pointless attempt to save our marriage. We have had some tragedy in our life - the loss of a child - ” Will and I both gulped again - “and we had stopped communicating with each other. We had become strangers.”

  “Oh - oh, I’m so sorry…” I stuttered, completely thrown. And now I kind of wished they weren’t telling us this, because anything tragic to do with children and I am in absolute bits. I had always thought that when I met the right man I would have kids of my own, but then I met Joel and… I’ll spare you the details - maybe another time - but the thought of actually managing to have a child and then losing them… It would surely be too much to bear.

  “What changed?” asked Will. The Bauers smiled at each other, then at us.

  “You two,” said Klaus. “After poor Ms Meyers’s murder, watching the way you worked together. The way you never doubted your wife, and the way you relied on him, it reminded us of how we used to be. We used to be a team, like you.”

  “We sat down and talked,” said Birgit. “For the first time in months, we actually sat down and talked about our feelings. About our son, and each other.”

  I could feel tears welling in my eyes, and when I looked over at Will he was blinking furiously. He’s just as big a softy as I am. I cleared my throat noisily and looked at the two smiling Germans.

  “So thank you,” said Birgit, and on impulse I got into the water and gave them both a big hug. There were a few tears - mostly but not only on mine and Birgit’s part - and then I climbed out and Will led me soggily back to the cabin.

  Chapter 20

  “Well that was interesting,” I said, as I peeled my wet clothes off. I had almost welcomed the puzzled stares that had accompanied our walk back to the cabin; it made a change from accusatory ones.

  Will handed me my dressing gown and I slipped it on.

  “But what have we learnt?” I asked him, fumbling for the tie-belt.

  “That Germans are a bit weird but basically really nice?” he said. “And that actors are almost as self-obsessed as writers?”

  I slapped him, then reached behind me again for my belt.

  “No, we learnt bugger all,” I said, still fumbling. “We’re no closer to finding out who this mysterious woman is.”

  “Do you need a hand?” asked Will.

  “I can’t find my belt…” Will spun me round to reach for it.

  “It’s not there,” he said. “It must’ve come off.”

  I pulled the robe around me and searched the area round the bed. “At least we can cross the Bauers off the list of suspects. I think they were probably too wrapped up in their own problems to worry about killing Louise. Where the bloody hell is my belt?”

  I flopped onto the bed, annoyed. Will had bought me that dressing gown for our first Christmas together. It was a silky Japanese kimono, a beautiful bright turquoise robe patterned with peacocks and colourful birds, with tiny butterflies embroidered on it in gold thread. I always felt slightly decadent and Barbara Cartland-esque in it, like I should be reclining on a chaise reciting my latest novel to a mousey-haired, bespectacled lackey at a typewriter, whilst smoking a cigarette (in a long holder, naturally) and stroking a small dog, possibly with a laudanum habit (me, not the dog).

  “I can’t believe Lauren gave the game away and told Louise who the murderer was,” said Will. “That’s just not cricket.”

  “Well I can’t believe Peter wanted to film Louise’s crappy book,” I said. “But it kind of rules Lauren out of the mystery female stakes, doesn’t it? She needed Louise alive, at least until she’d sold the movie rights. The rights to all her stuff will go to her estate, whoever inherits that, and there’ll be chaos over them. And they’ll all become bloody bestsellers now…”

  Will sat down on the bed next to me.

  “What the Bauers said - about their child…” He spoke cautiously. “I know that sort of thing upsets you. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not really.”

  He let out a deep breath and relaxed. “Oh thank God.”

  I reached out and took his hand, and we sat there for a moment in silence. But then he spoke again.

  “Obviously we’re a bit too old now anyway, but I always just assumed you didn’t want children,” he said, with a questioning note in his voice.

  “I can’t have them,” I said. “It’s fine, I found out a long time ago and I’m used to it now.”

  “You found out when you were with Joel?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No wonder you hated Louise, after what she said at Harrogate…”

  “Yeah.” I remembered her comment, in front of everyone. In your day women were expected to just stay at home and look after the children. If you could keep hold of your man long enough to have them, of course. “She didn’t know,” I said. “She can’t have done. She was just being nasty about my age and about Joel. But when she said it - in that moment, I really could have killed her.”

  “Maybe it was another nasty comment that got her murdered,” said Will. I shook my head.

  “No. I thought that as well at first. But this business with the steward, and her probably being drugged - it was planned, wasn’t it? It wasn’t someone just hitting out at her because she’d upset or angered them.”

  I lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling as I thought out loud.

  “So we’ve basically discounted Lauren, Birgit Bauer, the Chief Purser - it can’t have been her, she could have just ordered the steward to cover the bar at the Pearl without being all cloak and dagger about it - Heather, because she was off banging Karl at the time, and unless she’s a master of cunning and deceit and her accusations earlier were all a big show, Sylvia as well. Who does that leave?”

  Will lay down next to me. “Doris.”

  “Yeah, doubt it.”

  “No, these old biddies can be quite evil and Machiavellian! She could be a criminal mastermind, running a powerful underground organisation that Louise and her family were once part of and are now threatening to destroy by exposing them…”

  I looked at him. He was clearly enjoying himself immensely. “Hang on, let me write this down. I may have to use it in my next book.”

  He laughed. “You’re beginning to rub off on me.”

  I leant forward, my kimono falling open. “Ooh, I hope so…”

  So after we finished, um, rubbing off on each other, I put on dry clothes and we went out for lunch. Seriously, this entire cruise had turned into a never-ending buffet of amazing food and sex. The perfect holiday in fact, if I hadn’t come across a dying woman…

  To be fair, I hadn’t actually eaten any of my breakfast - Sylvia had put paid to that - so my stomach rumbled loudly when we entered the Red Lion pub. Yes, they had a ‘real’ English pub onboard, complete with a mahogany bar, a shiny display of optics behind the counter with every spirit you could think of (plus a few more you couldn’t), and a dartboard. I made a mental note to leave immediately if my accuser turned up again while we were eating, as I thought the likelihood of one of us - probably me - being carried off with a dart shoved somewhere painful was quite high.

  The waiter placed two plates of crusty bread, cheese, ham and pickles in front of us and my stomach rumbled again. I spread some butter on a hunk of bread and tucked in.

  “You can’t beat a Ploughman’s Lunch,” I said, and Will nodded, his cheek bulging with a pickled onion. “There’s this proper old country pub I used to go to, near Dorking - it’s probably been done up now and turned into a gastropub - but it used to have loads of old ploughs and scythes and stuff like that all over the walls, it was the perfect setting for a rural horror film.” I put on a deep, gravelly ‘movie trailer’ voice. “The Ploughman is back, and he wants his lunch…”

  Will laughed. “Well he can’t have it. Do you want your pickled onion?”

  I’ve never liked pickled onions. They look too much like eyeballs to me. The fish and chip shop near my dad’s flat, where
he used to take me and my sister when it was his weekend to have us, had one of those massive jars full of pickled onions on the counter. It used to give me nightmares, every time we had cod and chips.

  “Knock yourself out. But you’ll have to give your teeth a good clean if you want a repeat of this morning…”

  Will grinned, leaned across the table and speared my pickled eyeball with his fork. I shuddered and looked away, in time to see Heather entering the bar.

  “Oh bloody hell,” I muttered. Will looked over and saw her.

  “It’s alright, she’s on her own,” he said.

  Heather looked around, then smiled as she spotted us and made her way over. She stood slightly awkwardly in front of us.

  “I’m glad I found you,” she said. “I just wanted to apologise for Sylvia this morning.”

  Will and I both made dismissive noises: no need for that, not your fault… But Heather shook her head.

  “No, I think it is my fault,” she said. “I think Sylvia’s feeling a bit left out, because…” She hesitated.

  “Because you’ve made a new friend?” I suggested carefully. She smiled.

  “Is it that obvious?” she said.

  “Well, you have stopped talking about murdering your ex-husband,” said Will. She laughed and pulled up a chair, slipping into it.

  “You know about me and…?”

  “You and Karl,” I said. “Yes. That’s how come the two of you arrived on the scene together so quickly, isn’t it? You were next door to Louise’s cabin.” I smiled. “Kudos, by the way. He’s a young stud.”

  She giggled. It was nice to hear; the Heather who’d begun the cruise had not seemed like a giggler. “I know! He’s the same age as my eldest. Who’d be horrified.”

  “They don’t have to know, do they?” I said. “Not if it’s just a holiday fling…”

  She looked at me frankly. “Of course it’s just a fling. I’m not an idiot, I know it’s not a relationship. I knew he was using me for money, even before his confession this morning, but then I’m using him for sex so it seems fair.”