Feast of Murder(94)

Bennis came up behind him and whispered in his ear, “I was just thinking of something. The Murder on the Orient Express.”

“What about it?”

“Well, I just hope this isn’t like that. I mean, that’s the one where everybody did it, do you remember? Except they were on a train, not a boat. Well, if I’d been those people and I were on a boat and not a train, what I’d do is take Hercule Poirot and just throw him overboard.”

“What would you do with Hercule Poirot’s favorite sidekick?”

“Throw me over, too, I guess,” Bennis said.

Gregor sighed. “Then you’d have three deaths to account for instead of one, and with the confusion about jurisdiction you’d have at least three separate law enforcement agencies looking into it, and then one of your coconspirators would break down under questioning—”

“All right,” Bennis said peevishly. “For God’s sake, Gregor, it was only a suggestion.”

“Limit your suggestions to new magic powers for unicorns. And while you’re not suggesting things, do me a favor. Block this passage.”

“Why?”

“So that nobody can get out, why do you think?”

“Gregor—”

Gregor sighed again. “I am going to go in there,” he said, “and behave just like your Hercule Poirot. I am going to give a presentation, and I am going to name a murderer—and I daresay the name won’t come as a surprise to at least half the assembled company. Doing that sort of thing in real life has a few unfortunate side effects, one of which is that key parts of your audience have a tendency to bolt. I want you to block this little passage up so that that’s nearly impossible, or at least a lot of work. Can you do that?”

“If you give me time. Do you really think Jon Baird is going to try to run off somewhere? Where would he run?”

“It’s not Jon Baird who’s going to try to run off somewhere,” Gregor said, and then, because he really didn’t have any more time, he turned away from her astonishment. If Bennis wasn’t so damn convinced that she would make a wonderful amateur detective, right along the lines of one of those new hard-boiled female private eyes, she wouldn’t spend so much of her time astonished.

Gregor left her standing where she was, gaping after him and not moving at all, never mind with the speed he wanted of her, and headed into the bow with a determined step. The boat was tiny. He didn’t have far to go. It was just that with the way things were situated on the deck, it was hard to see into the bow until you were practically there. It might have been easier to see on the port side, but nobody ever went that way. Maybe that was why it had been blocked up. Gregor made himself go a little faster. There was no urgency at the moment, but he was ready to be finished with all of this.

He got through the passage just as Bennis got into gear, running toward the stern in search of God only knew what. Gregor trusted her. Bennis would come up with something. Gregor came up behind Julie Anderwahl, tapped her politely on the shoulder, and nodded to ask her permission to pass. She said “Oh!” and got out of his way.

Julie Anderwahl’s “Oh!” attracted attention. The rest of them were strung out across the bow in a rough semicircle, facing away from him. Only Tony Baird was facing in Gregor’s direction, and he wasn’t looking at Gregor. He was looking at his father, a smug, self-satisfied smirk spread across his face that made Gregor feel faintly nauseated. Jon Baird was smirking back, leaning against an empty spool with his arms crossed in front of his chest. The rest of them seemed paralyzed. Even Fritzie Baird didn’t look as distracted as she usually did. She was staring from her former husband to her son and back again, appalled.

It was Sheila Baird who decided to recognize Gregor’s presence for real, instead of just spying on him out of the corner of her eye. She was standing very close to Tony Baird. She spun around on her heel and marched up to Gregor in a huff, not so much as glancing at her husband on the way.

“He put him up to it,” Sheila said spitefully. “Don’t you dare believe anything else. He put him up to it.”

“He didn’t put me up to anything,” Tony Baird said.

Sheila ignored him. “He would never have killed Charlie otherwise. I know. I know them both. He would never—”

“But Tony didn’t kill Charlie,” Fritzie said, confused. “He couldn’t have. He was—”

“He was sitting much too far away at dinner and you had his attention most of the time before Charlie got ill anyway,” Gregor said pleasantly. “That’s right, Mrs. Baird. It was Jon Baird who killed Charlie Shay. Jon Baird was the only person who could have killed Charlie Shay. Julie Anderwahl was much too sick to put both strychnine and ipecac into Charlie’s salad without being noticed. That took skill. And I’d have had no reason to.”