Death by Water (28 page)

—Beverley or Cholmondeley. The fact that he still visited his aged mother every Sunday and brought her his children to spoil with homemade scones and blackberry tart was an indication of his compassionate and forgiving nature. His sons, however, were very firmly called James and Michael, and his daughters were Jane and Mary.

But this was going to be a headache, he could tell. First it seemed an ordinary accident. Drunken cruise passenger does header off lido deck while dancing. A not uncommon circumstance. Then several people, including the navigation officer of the ship, had told him that the drowned man had been pushed—with, of all things, a boathook. It would help if they could find the body but the deceased had evidently gone down like a stone. All that enthusiastic dredging had found so far was a black garment and a dissolving papier-mâché skull mask.

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No, it wasn’t going to be funny at all. In person, the Detective Inspector was a well dressed forty year old with a deceptively diffident manner, brown eyes and fading chestnut hair, which was retreating backwards over his scalp. Years of training by his daughters had made him familiar with the female psyche, though not less puzzled by it. Five o’clock in the morning and a faint presage of dawn found him, his assistant Detective Sergeant Donald Peace, Navigation Officer Green, the purser and the doctor, in the Grand Salon, drinking tea or coffee, according to taste, and worrying.

‘What was the deceased’s name again?’ asked Peace, taking out his very own fountain pen and opening his notebook. ‘I’d better make it all official.’

‘Go to it, if it gives you any pleasure,’ said his boss gloomily.

The newly promoted Peace’s youthful enthusiasm occasionally filled him with a sense of how old and cynical he had become.

Without noticing. One day he just woke up and there he was, old and cynical and getting short of hair.

‘Jack Mason,’ said Green. ‘His father is a judge in Melbourne.’

‘Date of birth?’ asked Peace, imperturbably.

‘Here’s his passenger card,’ said the purser. ‘You can copy it. Nice enough young bloke,’ he added.

‘So he was,’ agreed Mr Green. ‘But wild.’

Detective Inspector Evelyn Minton pricked up his ears.

‘What sort of wild?’ he asked. This was a world he knew very well. ‘Other men’s wives wild?’

‘Well, he did seem to have a sort of infatuation with Mrs West,’ admitted Theodore Green. ‘But what I meant was he was restless. He tried to climb one of the fells at Milford Sound, for instance. Got quite a long way before he had to come back.’

The navigation officer was feeling unreal. At the same time he was horrified that something like a murder could have
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happened on his own ship and at the climax of a very good party. Captain Bishop had told him to talk to the police, stay with them, and give them anything they wanted. But he would not allow them to wake his first class passengers in the middle of the night. Tomorrow would do—they weren’t going anywhere.
Hinemoa
had moved out from her mooring so that the sea-bed could be searched for the body. There was no way off the ship except the route Jack Mason had taken.

‘So he was restless. What was he doing on a cruise? These things are mainly for the rich and old, aren’t they?’ asked Minton, taking a deep swig of tea.

‘Not at all,’ the navigation officer bristled. ‘We have quite a number of young people aboard. Now, let me tell you all I know about Jack Mason and why he was here.’

He did so. Peace took notes. Roberts the steward supplied more tea. Roberts had met policemen in his time, and knew that all police forces were fuelled and lubricated by tea. Minton rumpled his hair and then stopped in case any more of it fell out.

‘All right, I’ve got a good picture of what the lad was like,’

he admitted. Theodore Green had not omitted one fact and had indulged in a reasonable number of hypotheses, much against his usual practice. ‘Basically a good boy, at a loose end, quarrelling with his father. Best bet is probably this Mr West.

If he’s as jealous as you say, then he might well have decided that Mason wasn’t wanted on the voyage. We’ll talk to him after breakfast. And all the others. Oh Lord,’ he said, reading the passenger list. Then he leaned over and grabbed Green by the forearm.

‘This Miss Fisher—she isn’t a fashionable little woman with Dutch-doll hair and green eyes? Comes from St Kilda?’

‘That’s her,’ said Green, considerably astonished, trying to get his arm back.

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‘She’s some sort of nob?’

‘She’s an Hon,’ said Mr Green, a little proudly.

Evelyn Minton passed a hand over his eyes, incidentally releasing the navigation officer’s arm. He was rather pleased to get it back in one piece.

‘Oh, jeez,’ he said.

‘What’s the matter, Boss?’ asked Donald Peace, capping his fountain pen. ‘Headache?’

‘Biggest one of all,’ said Minton. ‘My wife’s cousin is married to an officer in Melbourne. Nice bloke. Works for Homicide. He came over to stay in the bach for a bit of fishing a few months ago, and he told me all about this Miss Fisher.

His boss, Jack Robinson, says she’s given him a whole forest of white hair. She’s a private investigator,’ he said, and Doctor Shilletoe dropped his cup.

It rolled and spilled. The men at the table watched it. No one said anything. Then the doctor got up, scraping his chair clumsily, and almost ran from the room.

‘Your doctor always this jumpy?’ asked Minton.

‘No,’ said Theodore Green. ‘I don’t know what’s come over him lately.’ Mr Green was wondering if he ought to tell these policemen that Miss Fisher was indeed on the ship in her professional capacity. He decided that he would subject the idea to a rigorous analysis when he had time, and then decide.

‘How did he get on with Jack Mason?’

‘Very well. Spent a lot of time attending to him when he came back all stung and bruised. They got on fine.’

Nothing is more depressing than the room in which a very good party has ended in disarray. Streamers hung forlornly from the decorations. The floor had been swabbed and the crockery and glasses cleared away.

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Minton was adding pipe smoke to the already close atmos-phere of the Grand Salon. Peace did not smoke and Green did not commonly smoke in uniform. But it looked like being a very unusual night. He found his packet of Gauloise. Navigation Officer Green’s view was that if you were going to endanger your health and cut your wind smoking, the cigarette ought to have punch. He drew the line, however, at Navy Capstan, reputed to be composed of old rope.

He dragged his wandering mind back to the business at hand. He and the purser, from their several viewpoints, knew a lot about the passengers, and in an hour Donald Peace had a neatly written summary of the major players which he could readily transfer to a typewriter when he got ashore, if he ever did.

Periodically the draggers would come back with news of no progress whatsoever. ‘He must have gone down like a stone, Boss,’ said one. ‘No splashing and bubbling, just straight down.’

‘That’s strange,’ Theodore Green observed. ‘He could swim like a fish.’

‘The boathook might have hit him in the spine and broken his back,’ said Minton. ‘Paralysed him instantly.’

They all thought of how it must feel, being unable to move, sinking rapidly in black water. Choking. Smothering. The knife-like pain as the lungs give up and breathe water. Donald Peace, who had almost drowned in a surprise encounter with a vicious undertow, remembered struggling in utter despair towards the surface, impossibly out of reach, and shivered.

‘Or he might have been real drunk,’ said Minton. ‘Drunks make a hole in the water like that. Just straight down and nothing until the body washes up a week later. Well, nothing to do until we can talk to the passengers, and we already know a lot about them, thanks to Mr Green. Let’s see if P&O can rustle up some breakfast for us, eh, before all the rich people wake up.’

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Roberts was already giving orders to the first class kitchen.

He also knew that policemen ran on fried bacon, fried bread, fried eggs, fried mushrooms, fried tomatoes and anything else which could be conveniently cooked in fat. The night chef was a Kiwi. He’d know how to make Fried Cuisine.

Wednesday

Phryne Fisher was woken with her usual coffee, and far too much information for a woman whose last drink before sleeping had been Petit Duc cognac. She retreated into the bathroom, bathed and brushed her teeth, while Caroline was telling Dot all about it. Actually, she didn’t have a headache. Her calves were sore from a lot of dancing in slippers, but above the neck she was in tiptop form. This was an asset, because from the sound of the news Caroline was even now imparting, it was going to be a trying day.

Bathed and brushed, Phryne sat down to her coffee and attended to Dot’s narrative.

‘You know that Mr Mason was wearing Death’s costume last night, well, he went over the side,’ said Dot. ‘And Caroline was saying that he was pushed!’

‘I know,’ said Phryne. ‘I saw him go.’

‘Oh, Miss,’ wailed Dot. ‘Can’t we go anywhere without a murder?’

‘It does seem unfair, Dot. This, however, was no doing of mine. I did not expect it either. Who is investigating it?’

‘A nice policeman from Dunedin, Miss. Called Minton.

His second in command is a Maori called Peace. Caroline’s brother is married to his second cousin.’

‘Then we will talk to him in time,’ said Phryne. ‘How was your party?’

‘Oh, it was lovely. I had such a nice time. Everyone liked
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my costume. Nice things to eat and that Mr Forrester did an Ancient Greek dance with his dryads and naiads.’

‘I bet he did,’ said Phryne, and grinned.

‘No, it was all quite proper, they had body stockings on.

Caroline’s girls danced again. We had lobster. I had a very good time. And now this has to happen.’

‘Not your concern, Dot dear. The only people near enough were the first class passengers. It was during the last dance, and most of our friends had gone to bed. Ask Caroline for my usual breakfast, will you, and I will dress. By the way, what happened to our feline companion?’

Dot found underwear for Phryne and then stood, staring into the wardrobe. What did one wear to be interviewed by the police? She decided on a respectable dark green suit and a dark ivory blouse.

‘Scragger?’ she asked absently. ‘Was he in here? I did wonder why there was a napkin on the floor. He must have got out when I came in. I was late, Miss. After two. I’ve never been up that late before. I mean, for a party. Sat up all night at plenty of sickbeds and so on but I never stayed at a party so long.’

‘Then you must have been enjoying it, Dot. A good sign.

You will be frivolous yet. Just not very frivolous,’ concluded Phryne.

Frowning—she didn’t think that frivolous was at all respectable—Dot ordered Phryne’s breakfast and went to her own.

Phryne had just eaten the last crumb of croissant and drained the last drop from the coffee pot when a knock announced Theodore Green and two policemen. Phryne admitted them. They stood, uneasy in this bower of luxury, until she ushered them onto the private balcony and sat down on a steamer chair herself.

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The one with the notebook was clearly Mr Peace, Caroline’s relative. He was slim and tall, with light milk coffee coloured skin, and the aristocratic face she had come to associate with the princely class of Maori; high nosed, high cheekboned, almost Ancient Egyptian. A prince of the captivity, thought Phryne.

The other was older, balding, and anxious. He shook her hand and introduced himself.

‘Well, Detective Inspector, I have drawn up an account of exactly what I saw last night. Here it is,’ she said, and handed over three closely written sheets. Minton scanned it.

‘I have to tell you, Miss Fisher, I have heard a lot about you,’ he said, eyes widening as he read. ‘This is very good,’ he added. ‘You’d swear to all of this?’

‘Yes,’ said Phryne. ‘From whom?’

‘Oh, a bloke who works with Jack Robinson.’

‘And you are about to tell me not to interfere,’ prompted Phryne.

‘Yes,’ said Minton, looking into her eyes.

‘I have no intention of interfering,’ she said. ‘I’m on holiday. I have affairs of my own to pursue.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘What did you think of Jack Mason?’

‘A nice boy with not enough to do,’ she said. ‘If I might make a suggestion, you should talk to Mavis and the Melody Makers. They were in the middle of the dance. They might have seen something. Or heard something.’

‘They’re on our list,’ he told her.

‘Take beer,’ said Phryne, ‘if you want them to loosen up.’

‘What a suggestion,’ said Mr Minton. ‘They’ll cooperate because it is every citizen’s duty to cooperate with the police.’

Phryne was about to reply when she caught a gleam of mischief in the policeman’s deep brown eyes.

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‘Of course,’ she said demurely, folding her hands in her lap in the manner made popular by Her First Sermon.

‘We can take these?’ Donald Peace asked, indicating Phryne’s notes. Phryne nodded. They took the notes, and their leave, and Phryne decided to stay put for the moment. She tried Chaucer and found that she could not concentrate, so she picked up one of Dot’s detective stories and was soon deep in
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
.

Detective Inspector Minton read the summary about Professor Applegate before he knocked on her door. ‘Tough eminent old lady not to be trifled with’ it said, and when she opened the door and met his eyes with her own calm, wise ones, he saw what the navigation officer had meant. The professor was wearing a severe grey serge coat and skirt. The only mark of distinction which separated her from any other old lady of independent means and strong character was a greenstone orna-ment which made his partner step back a pace.