LITMIR.BIZ

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      I went to the starboard door, opened it and looked out. When Smithy had said that the weather wasn’t going to improve, he’d clearly been hedging his bets: conditions were deteriorating and, if I were any judge, deteriorating quite rapidly. The air temperature was now well below freezing and the first thin flakes of snow were driving by overhead, almost parallel to the surface of the sea. The waves were now no longer waves, just moving masses of water, capriciously tending, it seemed, in any and all directions, but in the main still bearing mainly easterly. The Morning Rose was no longer just cork-screwing, she was beginning to stagger, falling into a bridge-high trough with an explosive impact more than vaguely reminiscent of the flat, whip-like crack of a not so distant naval gun, then struggling and straining to right herself only to be struck by a following wall of water that smashed her over on her beam ends again. I leaned farther outwards, looking upwards and was vaguely puzzled by the dimly seen outline of the madly flapping flag on the foremast: puzzled, because it wasn’t streaming out over the starboard side, as it should have been, but towards the starboard quarter. This meant that the wind was moving round to the north-east and what this could portend I could not even guess: I vaguely suspected that it wasn’t anything good. I went inside, yanked the door closed with some effort, made a silent prayer for the infinitely reassuring and competent presence of Smithy on the bridge, made my way to the stewards’ pantry again and helped myself to a bottle of Black Label, Otto having made off with the last of the brandy—the drinkable brandy, that is. I took it across to the captain’s table, sat in the captain’s chair, poured myself a small measure and stuck the bottle in Captain Imrie’s convenient wrought-iron stand.

      I wondered why I hadn’t told Otto the truth. I was a convincing liar, I thought, but not a compulsive one: probably because Otto struck me as being far from a stable character and with several more pegs of brandy inside him, in addition to what he had already consumed, he seemed less than the ideal confidant.

      Antonio hadn’t died because he’d taken or been given strychnine. Of that I was quite certain. I was equally certain that he hadn’t died from clostridium botulinum either. The exotoxin from this particular anaerobe was quite as deadly as I had said but, fortunately, Otto had been unaware that the incubation period was seldom less than four hours and, in extreme cases, had been known to be as long as forty-eight—not that the period of incubation delay made the final results any less fatal. It was faintly possible that Antonio might have scoffed, say, a tin of infected truffles or suchlike from his homeland in the course of the afternoon, but in that case the symptoms would have been showing at the dinner table, and apart from the odd chartreuse hue I’d observed nothing untoward. It had to be some form of systematic poison, but there were so many of them and I was a long way from being an expert on the subject. Nor was there any necessary question of foul play: more people die from accidental poisoning than from the machinations of the ill-disposed.

      The lee door opened and two people came staggering into the room, both young, both bespectacled, both with faces all but obscured by windblown hair. They saw me, hesitated, looked at each other and made to leave, but I waved them in and they came, closing the door behind them. They staggered across to my table, sat down, pushed the hair from their faces and I identified them as Mary Darling, our continuity girl, and Allen—nobody knew whether he had another name or whether that was his first or second one—the clapper/loader. He was a very earnest youth who had recently been asked to leave his university. He was an intelligent lad but easily bored. Intelligent but a bit short on wisdom—he regarded film-making as the most glamorous job on earth.

      ‘Sorry to break in on you like this, Dr Marlowe.’ Allen was very apologetic, very respectful. ‘We had no idea—to tell you the truth we were both looking for a place to sit down.’

      ‘And now you’ve found a place. I’m just leaving. Try some of Mr Gerran’s excellent scotch— you both look as if you could do with a little.’ They did, indeed, look very pale indeed.

      ‘No, thank you, Dr Marlowe. We don’t drink.’ Mary Darling—everyone called her Mary darling— was cast in an even more earnest mould than Allen and had a very prim voice to go with it. She had very long, straight, almost platinum hair that fell any old how down her back and that clearly hadn’t been submitted to the attentions of a hairdresser for years: she must have broken Antonio’s heart. She wore a habitually severe expression, enormous horn-rimmed glasses, no make-up—not even lipstick—and had about her a businesslike, competent, no-nonsense, I can-take-care-of-myself-thank-you attitude that was so transparently false that no one had the heart to call her bluff.

      ‘No room at the inn?’ I asked.

      ‘Well,’ Mary darling said, ‘it’s not very private down in the recreation room, is it? As for those three young—young—’

      ‘The Three Apostles do their best,’ I said mildly. ‘Surely the lounge was empty?’

      ‘It was not.’ Allen tried to look disapproving but I thought his eyes crinkled. ‘There was a man there. In his pyjamas. Mr Gilbert.’

      ‘He had a big bunch of keys in his hands.’ Mary darling paused, pressed her lips together, and went on: ‘He was trying to open the doors where Mr Gerran keeps all his bottles.’

      ‘That sounds like Lonnie,’ I agreed. It was none of my business. If Lonnie found the world so sad and so wanting there was nothing much I or anybody could do about it: I just hoped that Otto didn’t catch him at it. I said to Mary: ‘You could always try your cabin.’

      ‘Oh, no! We couldn’t do that.’

      ‘No, I suppose not.’ I tried to think why not, but I was too old. I took my leave and passed through the stewards’ pantry into the galley. It was small, compact, immaculately clean, a minor culinary symphony in stainless steel and white tile. At this late hour I had expected it to be deserted, but it wasn’t: Haggerty, the chief cook, with his regulation chef’s hat four-square on his greying clipped hair, was bent over some pots on a stove. He turned round, looked at me in mild surprise.

      ‘Evening, Dr Marlowe.’ He smiled. ‘Carrying out a medical inspection of my kitchen?’

      ‘With your permission, yes.’

      He stopped smiling. ‘I’m afraid I do not understand, sir.’ He could be very stiff, could Haggerty, twenty-odd years in the Royal Navy had left their mark.

      ‘I’m sorry. Just a formality. We seem to have a case of food poisoning aboard. I’m just looking around.’

      ‘Food poisoning! Not from this galley, I can assure you. Never had a case in my life.’ Haggerty’s injured professional pride quite overcame any humanitarian concern he might have had about the identity of the victim or how severe his case was. ‘Twenty-seven years as a cook in the Andrew, Dr Marlowe, last six as Chief on a carrier, and if I’m to be told I don’t run a hygienic galley—’

      ‘Nobody’s telling you anything of the sort.’ I used to him the tone he used to me. ‘Anyone can see the place is spotless. If the contamination came from this galley, it won’t be your fault.’

      ‘It didn’t come from this galley.’ Haggerty had a square ruddy face and periwinkle blue eyes: the complexion, suffused with anger, was now two shades deeper and the eyes hostile. ‘Excuse me, I’m busy.’ He turned his back and started rattling his pots about. I do not like people turning their backs on me when I am talking to them and my instinctive reaction was to make him face me again, but I reflected that his pride had been wounded, justifiably so from his point of view, so I contented myself with the use of words.

      ‘Working very late, Mr Haggerty?’

      ‘Dinner for the bridge,’ he said stiffly. ‘Mr Smith and the bo’sun. They change watches at eleven and eat together then.’

      ‘Let’s hope they’re both fit and well by twelve.’

      He turned very slowly. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

      ‘I mean that what’s happened once can happen again. You know you haven’t expressed the slightest interest in the identity of the person

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