Reaching the passenger deck, Gregor stopped, listened to the murmur coming from behind the door to the mess, and stopped to look around. All day, this long, narrow passageway had been dark. There had never been much sun even at noon, and what light had filtered through had been weak. Then, near dinnertime, some of the candles had been lit, but not many of them. They’d thrown off shadows more than light. They’d made the passageway as spooky as a closet in a haunted house. Now there was a candle in every available holder and they were all lit. The passageway was still spooky, but it was at least spooky and bright.
Gregor walked carefully to the door of the mess and then back toward the stairs that led above and then back again, trying to remember how dark it had been and what Charlie Shay must have seen as he was making his way along here. Then he put his foot on the bottom step and began to push himself upwards even more carefully. He didn’t remember hearing any sound from this passageway after Charlie Shay had had his attack of sickness and headed for the deck above. That didn’t mean there hadn’t been any sound to hear. Gregor tested the step, stepped up, stepped down again and looked around. He thought about the mess, almost barren of decorations, and of the little row of mason jars marked “Pumpkin Rind Marmalade” in a careful Farmington script. He thought about salads and salad dressings and ships in bottles.
“Ipecac,” he said to himself, and thought that that reminded him of Thanksgivings at home. Somebody under the age of eight was always swallowing something they shouldn’t and getting physicked up by the old ladies. He tried the step again. Then he heard a sound from farther down the corridor and turned in its direction. He had asked for everybody to sit together in the mess and wait for him, but he didn’t expect cooperation from Jon or Tony Baird. He wondered which one this was.
As it turned out, it was neither. The figure coming toward him was Bennis Hannaford, and she had emerged from the cabin they were supposed to share. Her black hair was slipping out of its combs and her flannel shirt was unbuttoned over the turtleneck she always wore under it, but other than that she might as well have been on Cavanaugh Street. She cocked her head when she saw him and came as close as she could before she spoke, as if anything they had to say to each other ought to be secret. Gregor could only thank the good God that she didn’t go in for whispers.
“There you are,” she said. “Everybody’s shoved together in that little room talking about you and driving themselves to distraction. Tony knows the details of all your cases and he keeps telling people about them and putting in a lot of blood. I keep telling them there hasn’t really been any blood, the one exception being the one I don’t talk about, of course, but it doesn’t matter because nobody listens to me, anyway. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Tony is in there, too?”
“Everybody is,” Bennis repeated, “except Jon Baird himself, and I didn’t expect that. He doesn’t seem to me to be the kind of man who’s really fond of crowds. Are you going to come in now and tell us what’s going on? We’re all dying to know.”
“What did Tony Baird say about what was going on?”
“He said Charlie Shay had some kind of fit and died of it. What kind of fit that was supposed to be, I don’t know. I’ve seen grand mal epilepsy and the kind of convulsions people have when they’ve been taking speed and downers together, and that was neither of those. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because we all heard the fight you had with Tony and we know you think it was a murder. Strychnine.”
“Strychnine,” Gregor agreed. He looked at the stairs again. A fine mistlike rain was coming down through the hole above his head, making Gregor feel as if his face had been painted with dew. He went a few steps upward and poked his head out into the air. Then he came down again.
“Listen,” he told Bennis, “do me a favor. I’m going to go up on deck. I want you to go back to the mess hall door, make your way along the passage, climb these stairs, and meet me above. You’re used to boats, aren’t you?”
“Fairly used to. It’s like horses, Gregor. It’s one of those things I was brought up to, so I know about it, but I don’t like it much. I like boats a lot better than I like subscription dances, if that’s any help.”
“It’s not whether you like boats or not that I care about. It’s how well you move around on one. I’m always unsteady and I’m always slow. Charlie Shay, I think, was more like you. He was used to it. He could get around without struggling.”