LITMIR.BIZ

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owe you our thanks, Dr Marlowe. That was well done, an excellent face-saving proposal.’ He smiled. ‘I am not accustomed to suffering interruption lightly but in this case it was justified.’

      ‘If I hadn’t interrupted we’d all be on our way to Hammerfest now. You were about to remind him of that part of your contract with him which states that he will obey all your orders other than those that actually endanger the vessel. You were about to point out that, as no such physical danger exists, he was technically in breach of contract and so would be legally liable to the forfeiture of the entire contract fee, which would certainly have ruined him. But for a man like that money ranks a long, long way behind pride and Captain Imrie is a very proud man. He’d have told you to go to hell and turned his ship for Hammerfest.’

      ‘I’d say that our worthy physician’s assessment is a hundred per cent accurate.’ The Count had found some brandy and now helped himself freely. ‘You came close there, Otto, my boy.’

      If the company chairman felt annoyance at being thus familiarly addressed by his cameraman, he showed no evidence of it. He said: ‘I agree. We are in your debt, Dr Marlowe.’

      ‘A free seat at the première,’ I said, ‘and all debts discharged.’ I left the board to its deliberations and weaved my unsteady way down to the passenger accommodation. Allen and Mary darling were still in the same place in the lounge, only now she had her head on his shoulder and seemed to be asleep. I gave him a casually acknowledging wave of my hand and he answered in kind: he seemed to be becoming accustomed to my peripatetic presence.

      I entered the Duke’s cabin without knocking, lest there was someone there asleep. There was. Eddie, the electrician, was very sound indeed and snoring heavily, the sight of his cabin mate’s close brush with the reaper hadn’t unnerved him any that I could see. Cecil Golightly was awake and looking understandably very pale and drawn but not noticeably suffering, largely, it seemed very likely, because Mary Stuart, who was just as pale as he was, was sitting by his bedside and holding his far from reluctant hand. I was beginning to think that perhaps she had more friends than either she or I thought she had.

      ‘Good lord!’ I said. ‘You still here?’

      ‘Didn’t you expect me to be? You asked me to stay and keep an eye on him. Or had you forgotten?’

      ‘Certainly not,’ I lied. ‘Didn’t expect you to remain so long, that’s all. You’ve been very kind.’ I looked down upon the recumbent Duke. ‘Feeling a bit better?’

      ‘Lots, Doctor. Lots better.’ With his voice not much more than a strained whisper he didn’t sound it, but then, after what he’d been through in the past hour I didn’t expect him to.

      ‘I’d like to have a little talk with you,’ I said. ‘Just a couple of minutes. Feel up to it?’

      He nodded. Mary dear said: ‘I’ll leave you then,’ and made to rise but I put a restraining hand on her shoulder.

      ‘No need. The Duke and I share no secrets.’ I gave him what I hoped would be translated as a thoughtful look. ‘It’s just possible, though, that the Duke might be concealing a secret from me.’

      ‘Me? A—a secret?’ Cecil was genuinely puzzled.

      ‘Tell me. When did the pains start?’

      ‘The pains? Half-past nine. Ten. Something like that, I can’t be sure.’ Temporarily bereft of his quick wit and chirpy humour, the Duke was a very woebegone Cockney sparrow indeed. ‘When this thing hit me I wasn’t feeling much like looking at watches.’

      ‘I’m sure you weren’t,’ I said sympathetically. ‘And dinner was the last bite you had tonight?’

      ‘The last bite.’ His voice even sounded firm.

      ‘Not even another teeny-weeny snack? You see, Cecil, I’m puzzled. Miss Stuart has told you that others have been ill, too?’ He nodded. ‘Well, the odd thing is that the others began to be ill almost at once after eating. But it took well over an hour in your case. I find it very strange. You’re absolutely sure? You’d nothing?’

      ‘Doctor!’ He wheezed a bit. ‘You know me.’

      ‘Yes. That’s why I’m asking.’ Mary dear was looking at me with coolly appraising and rather reproachful brown eyes, any moment now she was going to say didn’t I know Cecil was a sick man. ‘You see, I know that the others who were sick were suffering from some kind of food poisoning that they picked up at dinner and I know how to treat them. But your illness must have had another cause. I’ve no idea what it was or how to treat it and until I can make some sort of diagnosis I can’t afford to take chances. You’re going to be very hungry tomorrow morning and for some time after that but I have to give your system time to settle down: I don’t want you to eat anything that might provoke a reaction so violent that I mightn’t be able to cope with it this time. Time will give the all clear.’

      ‘I don’t understand, Doctor.’

      ‘Tea and toast for the next three days.’

      The Duke didn’t turn any paler than he was because that was impossible: he just looked stricken.

      ‘Tea and toast?’ His voice was a weak croak. ‘For three days!’

      ‘For your own good, Cecil.’ I patted him sympathetically on the shoulder and straightened, preparing to leave. ‘We just want to see you on your feet again.’

      ‘I was feeling peckish, like,’ the Duke explained with some pathos.

      ‘When?’

      ‘Just before nine.’

      ‘Just before—half an hour after dinner?’

      ‘That’s when I feel the most peckish. I nipped up into the galley, see, and there was this casserole on a hot plate but I’d only time for one spoonful when I heard two people coming so I jumped into the cool room.’

      ‘And waited?’

      ‘I had to wait.’ The Duke sounded almost virtuous. ‘If I’d opened the door even a crack they’d have seen me.’

      ‘So they didn’t see you. Which means they left. Then?’

      ‘They’d scoffed the bleedin’ lot,’ the Duke said bitterly.

      ‘Lucky you.’

      ‘Lucky?’

      ‘Moxen and Scott, wasn’t it? The stewards?’

      ‘How—how did you know?’

      ‘They saved your life, Duke.’

      ‘They what?’

      ‘They ate what you were going to eat So you’re alive. They’re both dead.’

      Allen and Mary darling had obviously given up their midnight vigil for the lounge was deserted. I’d five minutes before I met Haggerty in the galley, five minutes in which to collect my thoughts: the trouble was that I had to find them first before I could collect them. And then I realized I was not even going to have the time to find them for there were footsteps on the companionway. Trying with very little success to cope with the wild staggering of the Morning Rose, Mary Stuart made her unsteady way towards an armchair opposite me and collapsed into rather than sat in it. Insofar as it was possible for such an extraordinarily good-looking young woman to look haggard, then she looked haggard: her face was grey. I should have felt annoyed with her for interrupting my train of thought, assuming, that was, that I ever managed to get the train under way, but I could feel no such emotion: I was beginning to realize, though only vaguely, that I was incapable of entertaining towards this Latvian girl any feeling that remotely bordered on the hostile. Besides, she had clearly come to talk to me, and if she did she wanted some help, or reassuring or understanding and it would come very hardly indeed for so proud, so remote, so aloof a girl to ask for any of those. In all conscience, I couldn’t make things difficult for her.

      Конец

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