“I've seen them,” Daisy agreed. “Apparently, Pertwee found Mr. Riddman's wallet on the quay and returned it intact, a convincing display of his honesty.”
Timmins nodded knowingly. “He'll have a confederate who's a âfile,' an expert pickpocket. They have any number of tricks. One fellow I know of dresses as a clergyman and makes friends with children. Often they let the mark win until they go ashore, then fleece him in one final game.”
“I gather Riddman lost and kept playing in hopes of his luck changing. Pertwee promised not to cash any of his cheques before New York.”
“And hasn't done so. They'd have let Riddman win in the end, so he had no cause for complaint, then pretended to tear up the cheques. A good file would have no trouble substituting worthless paper before his eyes. Then they'd rush to a bank as soon as they landed and cash them before he got a chance to put on a stop order.”
Daisy didn't have a current account. She had heard of stopping payment on a cheque, but it had not crossed her mind in relation to Riddman. No doubt Alec, the son of a bank manager, had worked it out long since.
“Since Pertwee is dead,” she said slowly, “Riddman has all the time in the world to stop payment before his heirs try to cash them.”
The Purser met her eyes and winced. “I'm afraid so,” he agreed.
“Thank you, Mr. Timmins. You'll keep this to yourself, won't you? I'll be sure to put a bit in my article warning of the dangers of gambling with strangers.”
“You do that, Mrs. Fletcher.” With a shrug he added sadly, “But they all think they're too clever to be caught.”
And the same applied to murderers.
Daisy returned to the library, hoping that Alec would be waiting there for her. He wasn't.
He'd be furious if she went to check that Riddman hadn't done him in and stuffed his body out through the porthole. She decided to go and see Wanda. Perhaps Miss Oliphant had succeeded in persuading the blooming bride to give her medicines a try.
Baines opened the door. With a nervous glance towards the bedroom, she whispered, “I'm sorry, madam, but madam already has a visitor.”
“I'll wait.” Daisy stepped in.
The bedroom door was shut. Daisy heard raised voices
and recognized them, though she could not make out the words. Wanda and Miss Oliphant were at it hammer and tongs.
“Oh dear, perhaps I shan't wait!”
“Might be best not, madam. It takes madam awhile to settle down after she's got herself excited.” The maid flinched as Wanda's voice rose in a screech.
Â
What on earth could the mild Miss Oliphant have said to rouse such fury? Curiosity, Daisy's besetting sin, warred with discretion. She was dithering when the bedroom door flung open and the witch stalked out.
Miss Oliphant's round, normally placid face was bright red, her mouth set in an inflexible line. She closed the door behind her with a deliberate restraint as expressive as a violent slam.
Seeing Daisy, she let her rigid shoulders relax a bit. “Mrs. Fletcher,” she said, “I fear Mrs. Gotobed and I have had a severe disagreement. Perhaps you can convince her that my mind is not to be changed by shouting, even if it were not a matter of principle. I am sorry,” she added, turning to Baines, “to have put your mistress out of temper.”
“If it wasn't you, madam, it'd be something else.” The maid shrugged. “What can't be cured must be endured.”
“A very sound sentiment,” Miss Oliphant said warmly, and with a slight bow to Daisy she left.
Daisy lapsed into vulgarity: “Whew! If that was a disagreement, I wouldn't want to hear them quarrel.”
Baines gave her a perfunctory smile and started towards the bedroom. “I'd better see if madam wants anything.”
“Don't go and put your head into the lion's mouth. I expect I can calm her down a bit.”
Wanda was in bed, sitting bolt upright and glaring at herself in a gold-backed hand-mirror. She glanced up as Daisy entered. In the bright daylight pouring through the porthole,
her face was blotched, her eyes small and hard within circles of puffy flesh.
“Oh, it's you,” she said flatly. “That bloody woman's made me look a perfect fright. What a bitch! And I was going to let Dickie come in today.”
“You must be feeling better then. I'm so glad. I expect you can repair the damage.”
“S'pose so.” Wanda threw back the bed-clothes and slipped her feet into high-heeled, pink mules adorned with fluffy marabou feathers dyed to match. The quilted silk bed-jacket she wore over her pink satin nightdress was similarly trimmed. She threw it off and wrapped herself in an embroidered kimono before sitting down on the stool at the dressing-table. “I was only sick first thing in the morning yesterday,” she said, with a sly glance at Daisy, who, since she had not been thrown out, had found herself a seat.
“First thing?” Daisy absorbed the information, watching Wanda open bottles and jars and start dabbing creams and lotions on her face. “And today?” she asked cautiously.
“Today, too. It wore off an hour ago. You know what that means, don't you?”
“Y-yes.” Daisy was rather surprised that morning sickness would develop so soon. Wanda had only been married for a week or so. However, she was no expert, though she hoped to learn by personal experience one of these days.
Then she recalled that Arbuckle had assumed Wanda to be Gotobed's mistress before they married, so time was irrelevant. Or was Gotobed not the father? Had Curtis Pertwee been Wanda's lover, as Daisy had surmised?
She had been silent long enough to be noticeable.
“Cripes, you are the innocent, aren't you?” Wanda sneered, watching Daisy in the looking-glass while continuing to mess about with her cosmetics. “Do you know where babies come from? Well, I've got a bun in the oven, if you'll excuse
the expression. And that old bitch, that witch, won't help me get rid of it!” she added, with sudden venom.
“Miss Oliphant?” Startled, shocked in spite of her past residence in Bohemian Chelsea, Daisy understood the herbalist's outrage. “No, I'm sure she wouldn't.”
“Bloody self-righteous old bag. Never had a man of her own. What does she know about it?”
“I expect Mr. Gotobed will be delighted,” Daisy ventured.
“Don't tell him! Gawd, Daisy, swear you won't tell him. I'm not going through with this, starting having kids at my age!”
“I won't tell him,” Daisy promised reluctantly. “But there's no need to have more than this one, you know. When you get back to England, go to Marie Stopes's clinic in Holloway, and they'll explain how to avoid conceiving scientifically, not in the old hit-or-miss ways.”
Before Daisy's wedding, Lucy had insisted on her going to the clinic started by Marie StopesâMrs. Roe as she was since her second marriage. “You don't want to get preggy right away,” she had argued. “Get settled first, get things sorted out with Mrs. Fletcher. You
are
going to ask me to be godmother to your first, aren't you, darling?”
Daisy was glad she had complied. She wouldn't have wanted to be traipsing around America suffering from morning sickness. Thus far, she sympathized with Wanda. And she could comprehend not wanting to start a family at her age. Wanda had looked nearer forty than thirty when Daisy came in a few minutes earlier.
By now, her face in the mirror had taken on its accustomed painted pulchritude. She did not answer Daisy because she was tilting her head back to put some drops in her eyes, a delicate task requiring concentration. When she turned, her eyes were once more large, dark, and lustrous.
“I'm not going to argue about it,” she said. “Send Baines
in to do my hair, will you? And if you see Dickie about, say I'm dying to see him.”
Whatever her social inadequacies, Wanda had perfected the art of the indirect dismissal. Daisy departed.
She wondered briefly whether Wanda had succeeded in extracting a promise from Miss Oliphant not to tell Gotobed about her condition or her request. But a spinster of that vintage was probably virtually incapable of broaching such a subject with a man, and Wanda was canny enough to know it.
On her way back to the library, Daisy saw neither Gotobed nor Miss Oliphant. In the sporadic sunshine, the deck-chairs on the port side of the promenade deck were in demand, in spite of the icy draught every time some hardy soul opened a door to go out to the open deck or came in, wind-blown and red-nosed. Among the latter were Brenda, Gloria, and PhillipâDaisy had just reached the library when she saw them enter together by the far door. She was going to wave to draw their attention when Mr. Harvey followed Phillip.
She ducked into the library. With the second officer present, she couldn't very well draw Brenda aside and attempt to prepare her for the shock in case Alec arrested her fiance.
“M
y dear ⦠chap”âAlec had nearly said “boy,” but decided it would not be well receivedâ“you're by no means the first young man, and you won't be the last, to go off on his travels and end up in trouble. I doubt that the Prodigal Son was the first! They had the right idea in the eighteenth century. Any English gentleman sending his son on the Grand Tour of Europe provided a bear-leader to keep him on the straight and narrow.”
“A bear-leader?” Riddman was momentarily distracted from his woes.
“To lick a rough cub into shape. Usually a clergyman; military men too often led their charges into bad company.”
“Jeez, you're not like any American cop I ever tangled with! But it's all very well talking. My grandfather won't care a damn that some sap-head boob raised merry hell two hundred years ago. Stand by to watch the fur fly when little Chester gets home!” Riddman shivered, reached for the cigarette case lying beside his wallet, and waved it at Alec.
“No, thanks.” Alec considered lighting his pipe. This looked like being a long interview, though for a moment he had thought he had a confession. However, he doubted his
stomach was yet fit to cope with smoking, and a pipe implied a degree of relaxation which he was not ready to concede.
The confession had turned out to be no more than a lament for money lost and retribution expected, but that did not necessarily mean Chester Riddman had not shot Pertwee. Time to stop playing the Dutch uncle and get down to brass tacks.
“Do you own any fire-arms, Mr. Riddman?”
“I have hunting guns and a couple of pistols back home. I heard about your Limey gun laws, though, so I didn't bring any.” He drew on his cigarette with quick, nervous puffs. “Anyway, I'm not in such a funk I'm gonna shoot myself.”
“I'm less concerned with your shooting yourself than with whether you shot Pertwee.”
Riddman gaped, aghast. “Shot him? Why would I do such a fool thing? I didn't know he wasn't on the level till you told me just now. Croaking him'd just've wrecked my chances of winning back what I lost.”
“I hope I've convinced you that's a mug's game, even if you're playing with honest men.” Finding himself sidetracked yet again, Alec returned to the main point with a blunt question. “You were seen on deck shortly after he fell overboard. Where were you before that?”
“After lunch? I was in the Smoking Room. I had a shot of rye and smoked a cigar. I was chewing the rag with some guys about the mileage auction pool. They'll remember me,” Riddman said eagerly. “Someone came in and said a boat had been lowered to fish out another man overboard, and we all went out on deck together. I can give you their names.”
With a deep internal sigh, Alec wrote down the names. If he'd just asked that one question right at the beginning, he'd have averted half an hour of alternating between father confessor and nanny. Still, he might have done the boy some good.
“If these gentlemen confirm your story,” he said, “well and good. If not, I'll be back with more questions.”
“Yes, sir. I'm gonna stick close as a burr to Birdie now. She's my only hope of bringing my grandfather around.”
Alec was far from certain that Daisy would approve of a rapprochement between Riddman and Lady Brenda. She favoured Harvey. Still, it was up to the girl to choose between them. Dismissing the matter from his mind, Alec went in search of the two gentlemen named by Riddman.
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“So Riddman's out of it,” Alec told Daisy, neatly catching her fountain-pen as it rolled off the desk.
“Bother.” She wrinkled her nose. “I rather fancied him as the villain. That leaves Welford.”
“And Gotobed. Or someone not yet in the picture,” he added hastily as she frowned at him. “Welford isn't in his cabin. The chap watching didn't have instructions to stop him leaving, as I was then thinking in terms of protecting him. I set a couple of stewards who know him to hunt for him, but they haven't spotted him.”
“He can't go far, after all. And assuming he killed Pertwee because they quarrelled, he has no reason to attack anyone else.”
“No, but I want to talk to him before I have to tackle Gotobed about his wife's connection with Pertwee. I'd hate to upset him if there's nothing in it.”
“Gosh, yes. Or supposing there is something in it, if he doesn't know, which I'm sure he doesn't.” Daisy debated internally whether to tell Alec about Wanda's pregnancy and decided it was irrelevant. Wanda would never have informed her husband, and Miss Oliphant would probably rather die than mention it. “Ah, elevenses, spiffing!”
A deck steward entered the library carrying a tray. The
bouillon sloshed about in the half-filled mugs, and the biscuits were served in a bowl, as they might have slid off a plate. The
Talavera
was dancing a jig across the waves, constant, restless, unpredictable motion with an occasional wild hop, skip, and jump.
Daisy was pleased to see Alec helping himself to a handful of digestive biscuits. He even held out his mug for more bouillon when the steward returned with a fresh, hot jugful. Admittedly his mind was not on the food, but that he was concentrating on murder rather than his stomach wasâin its wayâa great improvement.
At length Daisy interrupted his meditations. “Darling, I went to enquire after Denton earlier. Dr. Amboyne says he's improving, though he can't talk yet.”
“Great Scott, I'd forgotten him, I'm afraid. I still can't for the life of me see where he fits into the puzzle.” Alec sank into his musings again.
Having no useful suggestions to offer, Daisy returned to her writing. The article was beginning to shape nicely, but her thoughts tended to wander, from Gotobedâsurely not a murderer!âand his obnoxious wife to the unhappy triangle of Riddman, Brenda, and Harvey.
Alec took out his notebook and started to make lists. Daisy guessed he missed being able to discuss the case with Tom Tring. She wished she could supply his lack, but she knew her partisanship limited her usefulness to him. When she liked someone, as she liked Gotobed, she tended to see the arguments in his favour and to disregard any evidence against him.
“I'm not getting anywhere,” Alec said in disgust. “I think I'll leave it for the moment and come back to it fresh after lunch. I'm going to go up and take a look at hiding places for sharpshooters up on the boat-deck. Coming?”
“No, I think not, darling. I
must
get on with this.”
Alec was not gone for very long. “Phew, it's cold out, in spite of the sun.”
“What did you find?”
“There are at least half a dozen places up there a man could have lurked unseen with a good view of the place where Pertwee and Gotobed were standing,” he told her gloomily. “All scoured clean by wind and rain. No proof of Gotobed's story, and no disproof either.”
On his way back, he had fetched the stack of information he had to master for his job in Washington. Side by side, they worked steadily until lunchtime.
Arbuckle turned up at lunch, cautious about what he ate, but cheerful. Gotobed reported happily that he had seen Wanda and she was much better, though not yet ready to reappear in public. Miss Oliphant did not join in the general, if not quite sincere, wishes for her rapid recovery.
The wishes for Denton's recovery were entirely sincere when Dr. Amboyne took his place at the head of the table and announced that his patient was at last out of danger.
Glancing at the second officer's table, Daisy saw Brenda laughing at something Riddman had said to her. They were seated at the far end of the table from Harvey. The officer was being polite to the ladies next to him, his monkey-face showing nothing of his feelings about the situation.
Again the meal was interrupted by the arrival of a wireless message for Alec, this time delivered by a ship's boy. Apologising, Alec read it, then passed it to Daisy. It was from the Wellington Line: They had gone through their records and found that Pertwee and Welford had booked together just three days before the
Talavera
sailed.
“It would have been helpful earlier,” Daisy whispered, “before we worked out that they must have been confederates.”
Sighing, Alec nodded. “I wonder if Tom's coming up with anything useful.”
After lunch, he took Amboyne aside. Daisy, waiting, saw the doctor shake his head. When Alec rejoined her with a long face, she said, “No luck, darling? Let's go for a brisk walk out on deck to blow the cobwebs away.”
“Good idea.”
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A number of passengers were strolling around the promenade, walking off their lunch. Most of the deck-chairs on the sunny side were filled now. Arbuckle's reserved seats were occupied by himself and Miss Oliphant, and Phillip, Gloria, Riddman, and Brenda. Riddman started to rise as Alec and Daisy approached.
“These here are your chairs, aren't they?”
“That's all right,” Daisy assured him. “You and Birdie stay. We're going out.”
Arbuckle chuckled. “Hang on to her, Fletcher.”
“Phillip and I went out,” said Gloria, “and came back pretty quick. It's dead calm one minute and a howling gale the next, and mighty cold, too, in spite of the sun.”
“You'll blow away, old bean,” Phillip confirmed. “Better stay in.”
Being told what to do by Phillip was enough to make Daisy determined on the opposite. “We'll need our coats, darling,” she said to Alec.
His grin was understanding and sympathetic, but he said, “I'm not sure I'm ready for this. No one else is out there. Hold on a minute, love, while I stick my nose out.”
He opened the nearest door, took several steps outside, and stopped, apparently admiring the sparkling waves and racing clouds. Then suddenly he staggered backwards as if he had been struck on the chest. His trouser legs flapped wildly. He managed to stop and turn, and practically ran back to
shelter with the wind gust behind him. When he opened the door, a gale entered with him.
“Whew! We'll promenade inside, Daisy!”
“Yes, that was enough fresh air for me. I suppose I'd better send a message to the wireless man to say I don't think I'll get up there this afternoon.”
They walked aft. As they approached the after door, Gotobed came up the companion-way from below. He was obviously intending to go out, bundled up in his ulster, a grey-and-white muffler dangling round his neck, and his fore-and-aft cap in his hand.
“You'd better tie your hat on tight,” Daisy advised, “and your scarf. There are gale-force gusts blowing.”
“It comes up suddenly,” Alec said. “Don't let down your guard.”
“I'll take care.” Gotobed wound the scarf around and knotted it, then put the cap on his head, let down the ear-flaps, and tied the string beneath his chin. “Ready for owt, I am!” Out he went.
Though he was in the lee of the enclosed deck, the cape of his topcoat billowed like a parachute as cross-currents caught it. Expecting the wind, he was braced for it and battled his wayâuphill as the ship rolledâtowards the companionway to the boat-deck. Daisy and Alec stopped to watch, as did several other indoor walkers.
The wind died as suddenly as it had arisen. Gotobed took a side-step, momentarily compensating for a force no longer there. Grinning, he turned and waved to them. He grabbed the handrail and started up the steps.
Daisy and Alec were turning away to continue their walk when another man, his face hidden by a woollen balaclava, crossed the deck outside. Again everyone paused to watch the brave soul who ventured where they dared not. For the moment
unhampered by wind, he scurried to the companionway and began the climb. They saw his legs through the gaps between the steps.
“I hope someone warned him about the gusts,” Daisy said, as they set off again. “He looked less hefty than Gotobed.”
She had scarcely spoken when a figure tumbled backwards down the steps and landed on the deck with an ominous thud, audible through the windows.
“Stay there!” Alec was already in motion. He dashed to the nearest door. Wind blasted in as he wrenched it open.
The ship rolled to starboard. The limp body began to slide. Alec ran towards it, but as the tilt steepened, the
Talavera
did a skip and a hop, throwing him off balance. In a horribly boneless way, the man in the balaclava slithered inexorably down the slope, under the rail, and into the frothing waves.
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Captain Dane sat with his head in his hands. His tiny sitting room was crowded, with Alec and Gotobed seated, the second mate and an able seaman standing.
Harvey held what looked like a rounders bat or a policeman's truncheon. “A.B. Foster here found it in the scuppers, sir, on the promenade deck.”
Alec reached for it. No hope of dabs after the sailor and the officer had handled it, even if he had had a fingerprint kit with him. It was much heavier than it looked, weighted towards the thicker end.