Dying For a Cruise (5 page)

‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Miss Starling, but Mr Finch wondered if you would care to prepare this evening’s meal, or would you prefer for Mrs Jessop to do so?’

That this was the famous ‘manservant’ of Lucas Finch, Jenny was in no doubt. He was dressed in a white houseboy’s jacket that reminded the cook of all those films set in India, where the pukka sahib was waited on by expressionless Indians with round, soulful eyes.

But Francis Grey didn’t have round, soulful eyes. He was about fifty, she supposed, slim, and had such an air of being so neat and tidy he hardly looked human. Not a hair was out of place. On this hot July afternoon, not a bead of perspiration dared quiver on his forehead.

‘Oh, I’d be delighted to cook the evening meal,’ Jenny said quickly, and with some considerable relief. She knew that Mrs Jessop could make a decent bed and arrange a mean gladioli floral display, but Jenny believed – quite rightly – that
nobody
could cook like she could cook.

‘How many are going to dine?’

Francis Grey blinked. ‘Just Mr Finch. Mrs Jessop and myself eat in here.’ He indicated the kitchen, at the same time, and in some mysterious way that not even the perspicacious Jenny Starling was quite able to fathom, indicating that she also was to dine in the kitchen. Not that Jenny had ever intended to do anything else. Still it rankled to have a ‘manservant’ make it quite so plain. She inclined her head somewhat stiffly. ‘And the captain and … er … Mr O’Keefe?’

Francis smiled. His face, Jenny noticed in disconcerted surprise, was so bland, so
nondescript
, that even though she was looking right at him, she’d have been hard pressed to actually describe what he looked like.

‘The crew see to their own meals,’ Francis said, somehow relegating the
Stillwater Swan
and her servants to another planet.

Jenny nodded. ‘Very well. What time would Mr Finch like to dine?’ she asked stiffly.

‘Eight-thirty is the usual time,’ Francis allowed. Bowed. And left. Or rather, not so much left as somehow floated away.

Jenny watched him go and then, for some strange reason, shivered. Hard.

J
ENNY AROSE, SOMEWHAT
reluctantly it had to be said, with the dawn chorus. She tiptoed stealthily down to the kitchen, not wishing to disturb either Lucas or Mrs Jessop, and yawningly made herself a cup of tea. This she sipped for a moment before deciding to take it out onto the lawn.

All around her, the cool early-morning air resonated with birdsong. The grass was still moist with dew, and far in the distance she could see a farmer, riding a red piece of farm equipment to the slope of a hill, no doubt in order to turn the hay. She sipped her delicious hot brew and watched the bees disappearing up the fluted bells of the foxglove flowers.

It was going to be another glorious day, as Captain Lester had so ably predicted yesterday. Already the sun was promising to blast its furnace-like heat down on her head as she made her way to her by-now favourite spot under the plum tree. It looked, to her experienced eye, to be an old-fashioned variety Victoria plum, and she wished she could be here in the autumn to sample its fruit. Victorias made perfect plum tarts.

The very rustic-looking wooden bench groaned just slightly in protest as she sat down on it, and a thrush, who was in the process of whacking a snail against a stone, paused to eye her with rather dubious interest. He needn’t have worried – she was not that interested in sharing his breakfast. A nasty French habit, that. Snails. She could cook anything but snails were the exception.

Jenny ignored the bird and continued to sip blissfully away at her tea. It was so nice to be on holiday, after all. She was just down to the final mouthful when she heard a cheerful whistle (of the non-avian kind) coming from the direction of the river. The tune was ‘Messing About On The River’ – a rather apt title under the circumstances, she mused with a smile.

Curious, Jenny strolled to the gate and stood leaning against what had probably once been a chicken hutch, to watch a dark young man step lithely aboard the
Stillwater Swan
. As he did so, he hefted a large bag of coal under one arm as if it was nothing more than a feather pillow. No doubt, the impressed cook surmised, this was Captain Lester’s neighbour and fellow worker, the engineer, Brian O’Keefe.

She wondered idly whether his name could be put down to Irish or Scottish ancestry, but when he disappeared into the
Swan
’s boiler room, she shrugged and glanced at her watch. It was still only a quarter to six. She had plenty of time.

She returned to the kitchen and began the task of moving her precious food packages to the
Swan
. Although from time to time she still caught snatches of ‘Messing About On The River’ issuing from the boiler room, Brian O’Keefe never stuck his head out to ask who was about, although he must have heard her.

Perhaps, she thought rather dourly, he was one of those obstinate individuals who did nothing more than that which was strictly their job, and resented doing even that. She hoped not. She was looking forward to this cruise, and didn’t want anything to spoil the ambience.

By seven, her galley was fully stocked. She’d added plenty of herbs and some more fresh vegetables from the kitchen garden to the final tally, and her last act was to place her knives and assorted instruments reverently into a drawer. She gave the oven another look over, although she’d already tested it thoroughly yesterday afternoon. One of the disadvantages of being a travelling cook was that you were always using ovens that you didn’t know. And, as every cook knew, sometimes to their cost, all ovens had their own idiosyncrasies and funny little ways that could trip you up. Flat soufflés and burnt duck being amongst the worst that could happen. But she was confident that the specimen on the
Swan
didn’t have too many surprises in store for her now.

One of Jenny’s worst nightmares was the thought of an oven giving up the ghost altogether. Although she was perfectly capable of producing a good meal using rings and grill alone, she didn’t much care to have her ingenuity put to the test. (Using microwaves didn’t even cross her mind.) But the gas bottles were full and the cooker was a relatively new and trustworthy brand. She nodded, gave the boiler room a passing look as she left, and returned to the house.

Mrs Jessop looked surprised to see her, and then looked faintly approving as she realized that the cook must have already been hard at work for some time. The younger generation didn’t know they’d been born, Mrs Jessop was wont to say. Not that she’d said it to this Miss Starling. She had infinitely better sense than that!

The two women were cosily drinking tea together when the parrot, in a flurry of scarlet and blue excitement, fluttered by and landed squarely on the teapot lid. Apparently the creature had little feeling in its scaly feet, for instead of squawking and hopping off the hot ceramic rather smartly, it merely turned, cocked its head to one side, and fixed Jenny with a curious, pale eye.

‘Wotcha,’ the parrot said amiably.

Jenny blinked. ‘Good morning,’ she replied.

Lucas Finch came in at that moment, yawning mightily. It was an experience somewhat similar, Jenny mused, to that of peering down the Mersey tunnel on a smoggy day.

‘Mornin’, ladies,’ Lucas said, and scratched himself vigorously under his left armpit before fixing the teapot with an avaricious stare.

Mrs Jessop quickly and competently shooed the bird off, and poured him a cup.

Jenny wondered what the oh-so-correct Francis would make of this cosy little domestic scene. She somehow doubted that he would approve.

Lucas pulled out a chair and sat amicably next to his temporary cook, took a hearty slurp of tea, and then sighed blissfully. ‘The gannets will be arriving in another half an hour or so, love,’ he warned her cheerfully. ‘David and Dot only live down the road aways, and old Gab and Jasmine like to be on time. He’s an ex-soldier, you know,’ he informed her a trifle glumly, then rolled his eyes. There was something about the way he spoke that roused the cook’s instinct for trouble.

Jenny glanced at him curiously. ‘Were you once in the army, Mr Finch?’ She fished for information gently and was somehow not surprised to find that she had hit some kind of nail right on the head.

Lucas jumped as if he’d just been goosed, and Mrs Jessop began to studiously study her teacup. She stared at it so hard that Jenny wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d been attempting to read the tea leaves, which was definitely a fine art in this day of the ubiquitous teabag. So long as there were no tall, dark, handsome strangers lurking about in the bottom of her cup, Jenny wished her luck. Tall, dark, handsome strangers, in her opinion, were far more trouble than they were worth.

‘Yeah, I was in the army a lifetime ago,’ Lucas finally and rather reluctantly admitted. ‘A solider, too. Saw action in the Falklands.’ He sounded definitely defensive about it – a strange reaction for a man most people would automatically call a hero. He slurped another great mouthful of tea. ‘Well, I’d better make sure Brian and Toby are on the ball. Er … you all set then, love?’

Jenny nodded, and promptly outlined the very varied and substantial breakfast menu she had planned. ‘When would you like it served?’ she added, and watched him swallow the last of his tea, before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Far from finding his coarse mannerisms off-putting, they roused in her a sort of amused affection.

‘About nine will do,’ he said, after thinking about it for a moment or so. ‘We don’t want too early a start. We’ll take an hour, have a leisurely breakfast on board, and then set off about ten. I don’t like to eat and cruise at the same time – you miss too much, stuck in the main salon.’

Jenny, who didn’t like anything to compete with her food (including a paddle steamer), smiled happily. ‘I quite agree. That sounds like a very good idea.’

She watched him leave, looking rather better for his morning slurp of tea, and smiled wistfully. For all his uncouth ways, she rather liked Lucas Finch. She would bet a fairly substantial amount of her wages that he was not half as bad as he’d like people to think. Or maybe not, she added mentally, after another moment’s thought.

‘If you don’t mind me giving you a piece of advice,’ Mrs Jessop’s tentative voice broke in, and Jenny quickly turned back to her.

‘I’m always willing to listen to advice,’ she said, quite truthfully. Whether or not she took it was an entirely different matter, of course.

‘I shouldn’t talk about the Falklands war too much in front of Mr Finch, if I were you. He’s apt to be a bit sensitive about it.’

‘Oh?’ she said mildly – and craftily. It had been her experience that the less you seemed to want to gossip, the more gossip came your way.

Mrs Jessop’s genteel face took on a look of mild distress. ‘People can be so … unkind, sometimes,’ she said, her hands fluttering over her cup. ‘There are all sorts of nasty rumours going around that … well, I really don’t know how they start. But in a village … people can be so
spiteful
, can’t they? And I’m sure there’s nothing in it, really. Just because Mr Finch was a Londoner, you see. And, well, sort of very aggressively working class, so to speak.’ She gulped out the last words in a slightly embarrassed rush. ‘And just because he grew up in a neighbourhood with some rather, well, shall we say,
undesirable
men, people will take on so,’ she finished firmly, looking faintly relieved to come to the end of her somewhat rambling sentence.

Jenny had no difficulty in interpreting this rather obtuse explanation. It was quite obvious that people in these parts believed Lucas Finch to have been one of those parasites who had somehow profited from war. The kind of man who’d made a fortune from other people’s misery, in fact.

Jenny sighed. She rather thought – realistically – that the locals probably had it right. Men of Lucas Finch’s ilk could turn a war into a goldmine – and regularly did. So had he been an arms dealer in the not so distant past? Or simply one of those men who could supply whatever was needed, cheaper than anyone else, and thus rake in the readies? It was, she supposed grimly, just as well that she wasn’t a gambler by nature. Lucas Finch probably
was
just as bad – or worse – as he made out. And liking him just showed spectacularly bad judgment on her part!

But she smiled kindly at Mrs Jessop (who obviously needed to consider her employer more in the light of being a rough diamond, rather than an out-and-out crook) and agreed that, yes, people, could indeed be very spiteful when they wanted to be.

At half past eight, a rather impressive-looking Jaguar XJS pulled up on the gravelled entrance at the front of the house with just a little jaunty spurt of gravel. Jenny, who was just walking back to the boat, found herself curious, and paused to watch the couple who emerged.

In spite of the sports car being what she considered to be a young man’s toy, it was a silver-haired man who climbed out from behind the wheel. From the ramrod-straight way in which he marched to the passenger’s side and held open the door, she had no trouble in recognizing an ex-soldier.

This then was Gabriel Olney.

Expecting a similarly silver-haired, genteel officer’s wife to make up a matching set, the cook was faintly surprised by the woman who stepped very elegantly from the car. She was, Jenny saw at once, extremely stylish. Everything about her fairly screamed it. Her hair was dark and shaped into a very chic, short, geometric cut, and when she turned and smiled rather perfunctorily at her husband, Jenny caught a glimpse of liquid chocolate eyes as dark as her hair. But she wasn’t quite as young, perhaps, as she was trying to make out. Jenny put her somewhere in her mid-forties, but her figure was as smart as that of a twenty-year-old and her clothes must have cost the earth. She wondered, without so much as a single pang of envy, how many times Jasmine Olney did her shopping in Paris.

Then the pair passed on into the house, and the curvaceous cook returned to the
Stillwater Swan
to tend to her tomato and herb omelettes and the nicely sizzling bacon.

Ten minutes later, Jenny glanced with satisfaction at the browning sausages and checked her watch. It was nearly nine.

She didn’t like to prompt her employers, but food should be enjoyed when at its premium. She turned down the heat on the stove and, wiping her hands on a pristine clean towel, made her way out to the open decking at the
Swan
’s stern. She could see at once that the planking had been freshly marked for quoits. So Brian O’Keefe
had
been busy after all.

As she moved across to the open landing gate, she saw the engineer himself walk past, a block and tackle draped casually over one shoulder. He paused and gave her a brief but all-encompassing look. It was the kind of look that missed nothing, and left you feeling somehow unnerved – and not in a nicely feminine and appreciative way either.

Brian O’Keefe, Jenny saw at once, was tall, dark and extremely handsome, which was three strikes against him right from the start. He was, she guessed, of Irish ancestry, and had the dark, brooding good looks of that race, and their clear, dark blue eyes. He had the bad manners to look at her as if he found her wanting.

Jenny sniffed. Hard.

Just then, Gabriel and Jasmine Olney appeared at the landing stage, with Lucas Finch and two young people of almost remarkable appearance. Remarkable in that they seemed to go together like two halves of the same coin.

These, Jenny surmised, must be David and Dorothy Leigh.

Dorothy was a small, elfin, fairy figure of a woman, and no sign of her condition yet showed. She tucked a long lock of pale hair so blonde it was almost silver, rather nervously behind her ear, and looked up at her husband. On her face was a look of such adoration that Jenny very nearly winced.

David Leigh was a perfect foil for his wife. He was taller, but not so tall that he made Dorothy look dwarfish. He was lean, but had a look of strength about him that was in perfect contrast to her rather ethereal figure. His hair was a rich shade of brown, very earthy, to offset Dorothy’s own silver hue. What he made of her look of adoration, though, the cook couldn’t tell.