Feast of Murder(88)

“Ready?” he asked her.

“Absolutely,” she said.

“Put something on your head,” he told her. “Your hair’s wet. You’re going to give yourself a sore throat.”

“I never get a sore throat,” Bennis said.

She brushed past him, out into the passage. He came out behind her just as a pair of legs disappeared up the staircase to the deck above. He made a mental note that they looked like Sheila Baird’s legs and then ushered Bennis formally down the passage. It was the sort of thing he had no idea if she liked but that he was too used to doing to give up.

Bennis had her foot on the bottom step of the staircase when the shouting started—and the screaming, too, because after the first startled “Hey! What are you doing!” the next thing they heard was definitely a woman’s shriek. Bennis spun around to him in alarm and grabbed him by the lapels.

“Come on,” she said. “It’s sounds like someone else is getting murdered.”

“They’re not,” Gregor said calmly.

“How can you possibly know? Can’t you hear that screaming? We’ve got to hurry.”

“I’ve been hurrying ever since I got here. I’m through. The screaming is only Fritzie Baird, having hysterics.”

“But Gregor—”

“But Gregor nothing,” Gregor said. Bennis was still blocking his way on the stairs. He lifted her out of the way and started up himself. “Do you know what that is you hear? That’s the—wait. Listen to the splash.”

There was a splash. There was a very loud splash. Somebody above them yelled, “Man overboard!”

“Corpse overboard,” Gregor said wearily. “That’s Charlie Shay, being tossed to the sharks by Jon or Tony Baird, it doesn’t matter which. And don’t tell me I ought to go up there and dive in after it, because I can’t swim very well and Charlie Shay’s pockets are probably stuffed full of rocks. Let’s go upstairs and get hold of our murderer.”

Bennis grabbed his calf, firmly and painfully. “Gregor,” she said, “just last night you went to no end of trouble to make sure that corpse stayed on this boat.”

“I know.”

“Now you’re telling me the corpse is no longer on the boat and you don’t care?”

“I think it’s too bad for Charlie Shay. It doesn’t matter.”

“But Gregor—”

“Besides,” Gregor said, “I’ve been chasing that thing from one end of this ship to the other, and I’m sick of it.”





Part Three

Finis





One


1


CALVIN BAIRD HAD NEVER been under any delusions that he was a respected man. As a child he had been something of a joke—Jon Baird’s not so bright, not so sharp younger brother—and as an adult he had survived mainly through protective coloration. Fortunately, he was equipped with all the necessary accoutrements of camouflage. He could have had a body that matched what he imagined his soul to be. Instead, to people he didn’t know, he appeared positively aristocratic, the epitome of the Eastern seaboard Brahmin, the ultimate representative of WASP superiority. It was an impression he used to good effect when he was among strangers. He could go into a charity ball or a White House task force on the problem of the moment and be reported out as a paragon. It was only among people he did know that he had trouble—and now, of course, he was definitely among people he knew. He couldn’t get away from them. Calvin Baird hated a great many things about boat trips like this one, whether provided with decent plumbing or not, but what he hated most was his forced proximity to all the people who knew him too well. He couldn’t even fall back on his position in the firm. Here, he didn’t have a position in the firm. He was supposed to be family. He had only one thing to be thankful for in this situation. He had just asked his latest wife for a divorce, and because of that he hadn’t had to put up with her presence on this boat. Since the younger of his two stepdaughters was coming out this year at the Grosvenor, which took place on the day after Thanksgiving, he wouldn’t have had to put up with her in any case.

Since what he did have to put up with was intolerable, Calvin had decided, this morning, not to fight with the “shower.” He knew all about that “shower,” and he didn’t think it was worth it. They were supposed to have an “authentic” Thanksgiving when they got to Candle Island, but Calvin knew all about that, too. There was indeed an authentic Puritan cabin there, taken apart stick by stick from its place at the center of a small town in Massachusetts and reassembled where Jon thought it would do the most good. It had roughly planed log walls and a big black stove for heat and an outhouse in the trees out back. Jon always told his guests it was the only building on the island. It wasn’t. On the other side, where the coast was too rocky to allow for any approach by sea, there was another cabin. It was also log, but it had come from Rocky Mountain Log Homes and been assembled by a first-class builder. It had six bathrooms, including one with a Jacuzzi for four. Calvin thought he could wait to get there before he cleaned up, especially since he knew that getting there wouldn’t take them long.