Murder on the QE2 (6 page)

“I ... hadn’t noticed,” I said.

“I might be wrong,” she said. “Good night.”

I slept soundly, the huge ocean liner’s gentle motion plowing the waters of the Atlantic providing a slow, pleasant rocking sensation in which to wrap myself. Of course, the seas at that stage of the trip were relatively calm. Walter, my steward, had told me the captain expected a smooth crossing. But there are never any weather guarantees on the North Atlantic.

I awoke refreshed and ready for my first full day at sea. My initial lecture was scheduled for that afternoon, immediately following the performance of Act One of my play. I’d prepared notes to help me with my speech before leaving Cabot Cove, and had gone over them many times. I was confident it would go well. I don’t believe in writing out a speech, and then reading it, or trying to commit it to memory. I prefer—and most professional speakers agree—to use my notes only as memory joggers. If you know what it is you’re speaking about, that’s generally all that’s necessary.

I considered going to the Queens Grill for breakfast, but decided I was more in the mood for room service. After calling to order a continental breakfast, I wrapped myself in my robe and read the ship’s daily schedule of events that had been slipped beneath my door, a slick publication produced by the QE2’s social staff. This morning’s issue featured a photograph on the first page of our captain, Captain Sir Archibald Marwick, a handsome gentlemen with beard and mustache, right out of central casting. He would be interviewed in front of an audience in early afternoon by the ship’s social directress. There was also a mention on page one of my play.

I turned to the second page and was faced with—me! A large photo dominated the page, along with the notice of my lecture. Other pages in the program heralded talks and demonstrations by Judge Dan Solon, chef Carlo Di Giovanni, and plant expert Elaine Ananthous.

Remarkable, I thought, how busy one could be during the five-day crossing. There were first-run movies, dance lessons, a daily tea dance at four featuring the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra under the direction of Buddy Morrow (my kind of music), aerobics classes, computer lessons, shuffleboard, table game tournaments, classical concerts, gambling lessons in the casino, skeet shooting and a golf driving range, and dozens of other things to do. Of course, one was free to simply find a secluded corner and read a fat book on the way across the Atlantic. Aside from my official responsibilities, that was what I intended to do.

Walter delivered my breakfast with what I would come to learn was a perpetually sunny disposition. On the tray was a note addressed to me, which I opened and read:

 

 

How wonderful, I thought. I’d heard the
QE2’s
bridge was a marvel of technology and navigational gadgetry.

Energized even more by the invitation, I showered in the luxurious bathroom. It was while I was in the shower that I realized the ship’s movements had become more pronounced; I had to hold on to the handrails to keep from being pitched out of the tub.

I left the shower and peered through the porthole. Everything was gray, a cocoon of fog and mist. Walter’s sunny forecast was fast proving inaccurate.

I applied my makeup and did my hair, chose a blue-and-green pleated plaid skirt, white blouse, tan cardigan sweater, and sneakers, made sure my point-and-shoot camera was loaded and in my bag, and set out for a morning walk. I remembered from having been on the
QE2
twenty years ago that if you took five turns around the Boat Deck, it equaled one mile. That sounded appealing despite the weather. As I climbed the wide, center staircase, I found myself timing the ship’s up-and-down motion, allowing its upward motion to help me ascend, and pausing during the downward dips.

I stepped through a doorway to the Boat Deck. A stiff wind caused me to squint and to raise my hand to my face. The sky was obscured by heavy fog. The wind whipped up the sea and sent salty spray into my eyes. The word “invigorating” came to mind. I debated for a moment canceling my planned walk and retreating to the warmth and dryness inside. But then I spotted Mary Ward, my eighty-year-old new friend and sailing companion.

“Good morning, Mrs. Fletcher,” she. said brightly. She was dressed in a teal sweatsuit, white wind-breaker, and white high-top sneakers.

“Good morning, Mary. I didn’t expect to see you out here in this weather.”

“Bracing, isn’t it?” she said, moving her arms as though warming up to run in a marathon.

“To say the least.”

As we started walking together, I realized she was steadier on her feet than I was. I chalked it up to her being shorter, closer to the moving deck. I’ve always been good at rationalizing things like that.

By the time we’d made one full turn of the Boat Deck, the weather had turned even more foul, the mist threatening to become rain.

“Maybe we’d better go inside,” I suggested.

“Oh, one more time around,” she said.

I had to laugh as I set off with her again. As we walked, we talked a little about our individual lives. She was a widow; her deceased husband, an internist, was named Frank, as mine had been. She’d taught high school English, had four grown children, and loved reading murder mysteries and doing crossword puzzles, the harder the better. I really liked this woman. She reminded me of some of Cabot Cove’s older citizens, their ages not getting in the way of their busy lives.

Having someone with whom to share the second lap made it go faster, and I found us beginning our third turn around the Boat Deck. A few other hearty passengers had joined us by now, including Marla Tralaine’s young manager, Peter Kunz, wearing a shiny yellow jogging suit. Despite the cool, wet weather, he appeared to be perspiring, as though he’d already run a number of laps.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Morning,” he replied.

“Will Ms. Tralaine be joining you?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Not her thing. She’s ... she’s a late sleeper. Lucky to see her by noon.”

I wasn’t surprised at the answer.

“Care to walk with us?” I asked.

“No. I think I’ll go in the other direction.” His laugh seemed forced to me. “I’m left-handed,” he said. “I just naturally move left to right.” He walked away.

Mary and I continued on our third lap, at a faster pace this time. The weather had created what movie directors spend thousands of dollars to achieve, an eerie, ethereal atmosphere in which people and inanimate objects on the deck came and went in wisps of fog—there one moment, distorted and vague, then gone the next, only to reappear.

The outer perimeter of the Boat Deck—of most decks on the
QE2
—is lined with massive white lifeboats covered with orange tarps to keep them from filling with sea- and rainwater. There were twenty of them, I was told, with a capacity of more than two thousand persons. They’re lowered by winches in the event the ship has to be evacuated.

We stopped in front of the last one on the starboard side of the ship—the nautical dictionary Cunard had sent me held me in good stead—and caught our breath.

“You know, Mary,” I said, “this is bracing.”

She’d moved from my side and didn’t answer.

I looked at her. She’d gotten closer to the lifeboat and leaned forward, as though to better see something.

“What is it?” I asked, joining her.

I didn’t need an answer because I saw what she had seen—a woman’s bare foot poking up through a small gap in the orange tarp. As shocking as it was, my focus for the first few seconds was on the perfectly applied nail polish on her toes—so incongruous, five small spots of vivid crimson in the monochromatic gray gauze world of the QE2’s Boat Deck.

Mary Ward looked at me.

I looked down the length of the deck, but saw no one.

The ship suddenly lurched as it slid down into a deep trough and rode up again on the other side of the aquatic depression, causing us to fall against the lifeboat.

“We’d better inform someone,” Mary Ward said in a voice so calm she might have been suggesting we get a cup of coffee.

“Yes,” I said. “We had better do that.”

We went through a doorway and to a phone on an unmanned desk. I picked up the receiver and said to the woman who came on the line, “This is Jessica Fletcher. I’m a lecturer on this cruise ... crossing. I need to speak to ... Priscilla Warren.”

“Priscilla Warren?”

“Yes. She’s my ... I suppose you can call her my guide.”

“Please hold on.”

When she came back, she said, “I’ll page Ms. Warren.”

It seemed an eternity before Priscilla said, “Hello?”

“Priscilla. It’s Jessica Fletcher.”

“Yes, Mrs. Fletcher? Is something wrong?”

“I’m afraid there is.”

I explained the reason for my call.

“You stay right at the phone, Mrs. Fletcher,” she said. “I need to contact some other people. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”.

Mary Ward and I waited impatiently. It seemed an eternity before Priscilla arrived, accompanied by the QE2’s security officer, a pink-faced, round gentleman wearing a uniform, who was introduced as Wally Prall. With him was the ship’s chief medical officer, Dr. Russell Walker, wearing the obligatory white lab coat, a stethoscope about his neck.

“Where is this body?” Prall asked.

“We’ll show you,” I said, leading them out onto the Boat Deck and down the starboard side until reaching the lifeboat. I pointed to the foot.

Security Chief Prall stepped up onto a metal box secured to the deck and stretched to enable him to loosen some of the fasteners holding the tarp over the lifeboat. He stripped it back, peered over the gunwale, looked down at Dr. Walker, and said, “Deceased female.” His words were carried out to sea by the ever-increasing wind.

They stepped down. Prall asked me, “Have you told anyone about this?”

“No,” I replied. “I called Ms. Warren the minute we discovered the body.”

“Good,” he said. “Follow me.”

The minute we were inside, Prall picked up the same phone I’d used and issued orders: “I want the starboard side of the Boat Deck closed off. Get a maintenance crew up here. Make it look like something’s being fixed.”

Dr. Walker made a call: “We have a deceased passenger on the Boat Deck. Starboard side. Send up a stretcher and two techs. Keep it low-key and quiet.”

When Walker hung up, Officer Prall said to him, “Back doors all the way. No passenger contact.” He said to me and to Mary, “Please come with me.”

“Mr. Prall,” I said, “I don’t mind coming with you. But perhaps Mrs. Ward would prefer to go to her cabin.”

“Oh, no,” she quickly said. “I’m happy to come with you, sir.”

What she hadn’t said was,
I wouldn’t miss this for the world.

We followed the doctor and security chief down the interior port hallway until reaching the G Stairway, one of many stairs linking the thirteen decks. We eventually reached the Two Deck, four decks down from the Boat Deck. Dr. Walker led us into his private consulting room and closed the door. Security Chief Prall excused himself, saying he wanted to get back to coordinate the removal of the body.

“Please have a seat,” Dr. Walker said, indicating two chairs.

Once we were seated, he leaned back in his swivel chair, formed a bridge with his fingers, and rested his chin on it. His expression as he scrutinized us was that of someone trying to decided whether we could be trusted. I knew that the death of this woman, whoever she was, posed a problem for not only the doctor, but for everyone else charged with the well-being of eighteen hundred passengers sailing to England on what was, let’s face it, an expensive holiday. Death on board is hardly destined to buoy spirits.

“Mrs. Fletcher,” the doctor said, coming forward in his chair and smiling, “I am truly sorry that you and your friend here had the unfortunate experience of discovering the body of a fellow passenger. It must have been traumatic for you.”

“We managed,” Mary Ward said, returning his smile. This was a formidable southern lady.

“I’m sure you understand our need to keep this under wraps,” Dr. Walker said.

“Yes, I can understand that,” I said. “But can you? Keep it ‘under wraps,’ as you put it.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Because we tend to have an older passenger population—not exclusively, but generally tending to be older and more affluent—having someone die during a crossing is not without precedent.”

I glanced at Mary Ward before saying, “That doesn’t surprise me, Dr. Walker. But this obviously wasn’t a ... how shall I say it? ... this wasn’t a routine death of an older person. That foot does not belong to a senior citizen. Besides, unless there was an older passenger who had the foresight to climb into a lifeboat in anticipation of dying, we have—you have a murder on your hands.”

“I wouldn’t jump to conclusions,” he said in a tone I found patronizing. “We’ve had passengers exhibit some rather bizarre behavior in the past.”

“Like climbing into a lifeboat with a member of the opposite sex?” Mary Ward asked.

Dr. Walker’s eyes opened wide. “You’ve heard?” he asked.

“I read a great deal,” she said, demurely lowering her eyes.

He cleared his throat and said, “The point is that we musn’t rush to judgment as to the cause of this passenger’s death. That will be determined by an autopsy.”

“Performed here on the ship?” I asked.

“No, of course not. We have a morgue on board. We don’t advertise that. But we’ll be able to hold the body until we reach Southampton. The family will be notified, and they’ll make arrangements for an autopsy and eventual disposition of the body.”