Dying For a Cruise (16 page)

‘Well, it might be nothing,’ Dorothy said, a touch nervously, ‘but I suppose I really
should
mention it….’

‘Anything can be important, Mrs Leigh,’ Rycroft agreed firmly.

Dorothy nodded. ‘Well … it has to do with Mrs Olney.’

R
YCROFT’S EYES BRIEFLY
flickered at the name of the grieving widow, but other than that he merely raised his expressive eyebrows. This silent demand, designed no doubt to intimidate more information from its recipient, wasn’t really necessary on this particular witness, Jenny thought, but supposed it had become something of a habit of his, and one that must have served him well in the past.

As it was, Dorothy quickly wrung her hands together and glanced yet again towards the games room, as if fearing that the woman in question had super-sensitive hearing and could somehow listen in on her near-whispered words.

‘It was during the darts match,’ Dorothy began reluctantly, her pretty blue eyes creasing into a frown. ‘I don’t know
what
it was, exactly,’ she admitted, confusingly, ‘but I’m sure it was the real reason why she suddenly left the room.’

Rycroft smiled politely. ‘Yes, Mrs Leigh. Now, could you tell me exactly what it is that you’re talking about?’

Dorothy flushed. ‘Oh. Sorry, aren’t I making any sense? I happened to look across at Jasmine to ask her if she wanted a drink, when I saw her turn a page of her magazine.’

‘Magazine,’ Rycroft repeated blandly. He glanced at Graves, who merely gave an infinitesimal shrug of his mammoth shoulders.

‘Yes. Her magazine,’ Dorothy continued, apparently unaware that the two men were beginning to regard her as something of a featherbrain. ‘And in between the pages of the magazine, I saw a white piece of paper.’

‘Oh?’ At this, Rycroft perked up considerably. Jenny, who was watching the both of them carefully, was struck once more at the pug-like looks and tendencies of Inspector Neil Rycroft. All he needed was a larger pair of floppier ears, she thought, utterly fascinated, and he could have perked them up at just the right instant to look for all the world like a dog about to be thrown a bone.

Dorothy nodded. ‘At that moment, of course, Mrs Olney glanced up, but I’d already begun to look away.’ She said this with some evident relief, and Jenny could understand why. A woman like Dorothy Leigh would have been raised to try and avoid embarrassing little moments as if they were the plague.

The information was definitely interesting and Jenny nodded to herself as she quickly took in its full import, but neither of the policemen seemed to notice. She doubted that they’d picked up on Dorothy Leigh’s obvious piece of very clever feminine deduction, either. Namely, that it could only have been from a man. It took another beautiful woman to second-guess someone like Jasmine Olney.

So. There was more to Dorothy Leigh than one might think, the cook mused. But then, wasn’t there always more to any woman than a mere man might think?

‘Anyway,’ Dorothy said, beginning to look a little shamefaced. ‘I waited a moment or two and then looked back. I was … well, curious, I suppose. And I saw at once that Jasmine was reading it. The piece of paper, I mean, not the magazine,’ Dorothy added hastily.

Rycroft nodded, apparently insensible to the fact that he’d just had his intelligence rather cleverly insulted.

Graves’ lips, however, did their usual twitch. So, there was a lot more to the burly sergeant as well, Jenny mused fairly, than was obvious at first glance. Jenny had never been able to understand why the public in general always thought that a big, hefty man had to have a small brain.

She began to wonder whether it might be Graves, and not Rycroft after all, who provided the intelligence for their successful partnership.

‘After she’d read it, she sort of turned a few more pages, yawned, and said she was going up for a nap,’ Dorothy concluded. ‘Naturally, I wondered who the note was from.’

Again the cook nodded to herself. It all sounded very much like Jasmine-Olney-type behaviour to her. She didn’t doubt that Dorothy Leigh was telling the truth.

Rycroft pursed his lips. ‘Could you see what was written on this note?’

But Dorothy quickly shook her head. ‘Oh no, I was sitting several seats away. I can only tell you that it wasn’t a very long note.’

Jenny gave a very slight cough. ‘Did you notice which magazine it was in?’

Dorothy smiled. ‘It was one of those fancy French fashion things. I remember particularly because I’ve always admired the actress who was on the cover.’

Jenny’s eye quickly scanned the room and alighted on the coffee table, on which resided two magazines. Rycroft, catching on, all but sprinted for the table, moving off the spot like an athlete hearing the starting gun.

Jenny, of course, who’d had no intention of making such an undignified dash for the evidence, felt her own lips begin to twitch. Ruthlessly, she firmed them into a hard straight line. Sergeant Graves’ example of hidden mirth could be most habit forming.

The junior officer was a handsome man, too, Jenny noted absently and then frowned ferociously. If mixing business and pleasure was a no-no, then how much more of a no-no was mixing murder enquiries with pleasure? She quickly turned away from the sergeant and turned her mind strictly to Rycroft, who was returning to their position clustered around the door and riffling the pages of the magazine as he did so.

Then he gave a soft exclamation and withdrew a single piece of paper. ‘I’d have thought she’d have got rid of this by now,’ he said, avidly scanning the few lines.

As he read the ‘B.O’K’ signed at the bottom of the note, he drew his breath in sharply.

‘O’Keefe again,’ he said, then suddenly remembered that Dorothy Leigh was still present. He quickly curled the note into his fist. ‘Oh, er, thank you, Mrs Leigh, for bringing this to our attention.’

Jenny very helpfully poured Dorothy’s milky drink for her and urged her to get to bed.

She was not quite as pale as she had been earlier on, and, indeed, dressed in a long-sleeved mint-green dress, she now looked very fetching. But her eyes showed signs of strain, and the cook didn’t urge her to bed merely to help out Rycroft, who obviously wanted her gone.

As she watched Dorothy move across the main salon, her husband quickly joined her from the games room. Obviously, he’d been watching out for her, too. Together the young couple left the room. As a show of simple togetherness it was touching in a way you seldom felt about couples nowadays, Jenny mused with just a little sigh.

Obviously the sergeant thought so too.

‘Attractive,’ Graves said succinctly, but Rycroft was once again scanning the note. He handed it to Graves who then, after a moment’s thought, handed it to the cook.

Jenny read the note thoughtfully. It purported to be from Brian O’Keefe, and it urged Jasmine to go to her room and wait for him. It asked her to keep a lookout at the door in case her husband should show up.

It was a very clever note, Jenny thought judiciously.

Very clever indeed.

‘Right then,’ Rycroft said. ‘Let’s get O’Keefe in here. I want another word with him,’ he added ominously.

But as Graves started off, Jenny halted him in mid-stride with just one quiet, very well-placed word. The word was, ‘Why?’

Rycroft and Graves both stared at her. ‘Why?’ Rycroft squeaked. ‘Because I want an explanation for this damned thing.’ He rattled the note. ‘That’s why.’

‘But O’Keefe didn’t write it,’ Jenny said patiently.

Graves returned to the doorway. He looked interested more than upset. Rycroft, on the other hand, was beginning to feel decidedly frayed at the edges.

‘Oh? You’re a handwriting expert, are you?’ he snapped.

Jenny sighed crossly. ‘No, I make no such claim. But why, if he was all set to search Gabriel Olney’s room, would Brian invite Jasmine Olney to meet him there? He chose lunchtime to do the search precisely because he thought there would be nobody about to disturb him. So he’d hardly invite Jasmine to come and do just that, would he?’

Rycroft opened his mouth and then abruptly closed it again. He stared at the note in his hand, his face openly aggrieved.

‘Perhaps they’re in it together?’ he said tentatively, then instantly corrected himself. ‘No, if that were so, there’d be no need for them to pass cute little notes to each other.’

‘Then who did write it?’ Graves finally asked.

Jenny shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

But she was sure that she
should
know. All the clues, she was convinced, were right there in front of her. She just wasn’t seeing them clearly. She needed to rearrange them. She needed to sift through the camouflage. She needed to sleep.

‘I think we should all turn in,’ she said wearily. ‘I’m almost asleep on my feet now.’

But Rycroft, terrier-like, had the rat between his teeth once again, and had no intention of giving up shaking it about just yet. ‘Well, I for one want a word with Mrs Olney. Graves,’ he snapped.

The sergeant dutifully went into the games room and extracted the widow. As soon as she saw the magazine and note in the inspector’s hand, she stiffened, then seemed to wilt.

Her smile was somewhat ironic. ‘I see you’ve found the mysterious note, Inspector,’ she murmured. But she seemed more amused than afraid. She was wearing a low-cut black evening dress, and her eyes were heavily lined with mascara. She looked both attractive and dangerous. Both men felt themselves put on their mettle.

Rycroft nodded. ‘Can you explain it to us, please, Mrs Olney?’

Jasmine elegantly shrugged one white shoulder and raised a hand to fiddle with the single row of pearls at her neck.

Jenny noticed at once that they were real. Then she wondered exactly how much money Gabriel Olney had left, and whether he’d left it all to his wife. Or had David Leigh, in the last week or so perhaps, made up a new will and testament for Gabriel that had left his money entirely elsewhere?

‘What is there to explain?’ Jasmine shrugged. ‘I found the note in my magazine this afternoon, during the darts match. It seems like years ago now, not merely a matter of hours. Anyway, I went upstairs. He never came. And that’s the whole story,’ she added mockingly.

Her voice, although kept deliberately flat, had an undertone of real anger to it. Jenny, for one, had no trouble in detecting it at once. Nor did it surprise her. Jasmine Olney was clearly not the type of woman who would appreciate being stood up. Her ego was too fragile for such an insult to go unnoticed.

‘Why didn’t you tell your husband about it, Mrs Olney?’ Rycroft asked. ‘Or did you?’ he added sharply.

The cook saw at once where Rycroft was leading, of course. If Gabriel Olney knew about the supposed assignation, might he have tackled O’Keefe and been killed for his pains?

But Jasmine laughed openly at the question. ‘Tell Gabby? Why on earth would I do that?’ She sounded both genuinely puzzled and wary at the same time, like a mouse spying a twitching whisker at the mousehole.

Both men looked distinctly disapproving. ‘I see,’ Rycroft finally grated through severely clenched teeth. ‘So you went upstairs to meet a lover?’

But again Jasmine laughed, relaxing now that she understood the policeman’s interest, and apparently not one whit put out by the Inspector’s obvious disapproval. ‘Hardly that, Inspector,’ she drawled. ‘I’d only set eyes on Brian O’Keefe yesterday. No, I never intended to let him … do … anything. I was merely curious, that’s all.’

Rycroft looked a little mollified at this. ‘I see. And you say Mr O’Keefe never showed up?’

‘No, he didn’t,’ Jasmine said shortly.

‘Did you hear anything whilst you were in your room, Mrs Olney?’ Jenny put in, making Rycroft fume silently at her cheek.

Jasmine glanced at her, surprised by the cook’s presence, but she answered her question readily enough. ‘No. At least, not when I was
in
my room. But now that you mention it … Just before I got to the door I thought I heard something inside. But …’ She shrugged. ‘There was nobody there.’

Jenny nodded. Brian O’Keefe had good hearing. Or a guilty man’s super-sensitivity to sound. In any event, he’d managed to get out before being caught in the act of searching the room.

‘Was the window shut or open when you went in?’ she asked, earning herself yet another wrathful look from the inspector. This she met with such calmness that it only infuriated the tiny inspector all the more.

Jasmine frowned. ‘Well … now that I think about it, the window was closed. But it had been open previously. Gabriel always liked to sleep with the windows open. He was a solider, you know,’ she added, as if this explained any and all of her husband’s idiosyncrasies. ‘And the day was so hot, I’m sure he wouldn’t have closed them for any reason when we got up. Why would he?’

She looked sharply at the two policemen, then at the cook. ‘Why do you ask?’

But at this point, Rycroft hastily dismissed her. She went, casting suspicious, thoughtful looks over her shoulder as she did so. And Jenny couldn’t help but think that any woman who didn’t care what men thought of her was a woman to look out for.

‘O’Keefe shut the window behind him, of course,’ Rycroft said, when the widow was safely out of earshot. ‘He must have heard her coming and bolted for it.’

‘Hmm,’ the cook made a soft sound of agreement. ‘He probably shut the window to help mask the sounds of his climbing down to the lower deck.’

That would have been the starboard deck, she suddenly realized. If she’d followed her usual habit of sitting out on the starboard deck after lunch, instead of going for a walk, she’d have been treated to a very interesting spectacle indeed. Instead, she’d been a good mile away at the time.

Such was the luck of travelling cooks.

Graves nodded. ‘So O’Keefe can think quickly on his feet.’

Jenny sighed wearily. There were far too many clever people on board this boat for her liking.

‘I’m going to bed,’ she said shortly. ‘My head’s spinning.’

The next morning Lucas suggested a walking party to the village of Carswell Marsh, to buy papers, to phone relatives and explain what had happened and, in David Leigh’s case, to phone his employers to make general arrangements for a short leave of absence.

Besides, Lucas wanted to buy some crackers for his parrot.

Rycroft had no objection to this, and at ten o’clock Lucas, Jasmine, the Leighs, O’Keefe and the captain set off on their cross-country walk. No doubt they were all relieved to get away from the boat for a while, not to mention get out of sight of the policemen and all their questioning. Besides, it was a perfect day for such a tramp across the meadows.