mr. carter?”
“Any time,” I said courteously. “But not here….” my voice
trailed away. I was changing my mind even as I spoke.
“You see, you’re the only person I can talk to,” she said. “Yes.”
a beautiful girl alone in my cabin and plainly anxious to speak to me
and I wasn’t even listening to her. I was figuring out something; it
did involve susan beresford but only incidentally.
“Oh, do pay attention,” she said angrily. “All right,” I said
resignedly. “I’m paying.”
“You’re paying what?” she demanded. “Attention.” I reached for
my whisky glass. “Cheers!”
“I thought you were forbidden alcohol on duty?”
“I am. What do you want?”
“I want to know why no one will talk to me.” she lifted
a hand as I made to speak. “Please don’t be facetious. I’m
worried. Something’s terribly wrong, isn’t there? you know I always
talk more to the officers than any of the other passengers”-i passed up
the pleasure of loosing off a couple of telling shafts-“and now nobody
will talk to me. Daddy says i’m imagining it. I’m not. I know i’m
not. They won’t talk. And not because of me. I know. They’re all
dead scared about something, going about with tight faces and not
looking at anyone but looking at them all the time. Something is wrong,
isn’t there? terribly, terribly wrong. And fourth officer dexter he’s
missing, isn’t he?”
“What would be wrong, miss beresford?”
“Please.” this was something for the books, susan beresford
pleading with me. She walked across the cabin-with the size of the
accommodation old dexter saw fit to provide for his chief officers that
didn’t require more than a couple of steps-and stood in front of me.
“Tell me the truth. Three men missing in twenty-four hours-don’t tell
me that’s coincidence. And all the officers looking as if they’re going
to be shot at dawn.”
“Don’t you think it strange you’re the only person who seems to
have noticed anything unusual? how about all the other passengers?”
“The other passengers!” the tone of her voice didn’t say
a great deal for the other passengers. “How can they notice
anything with all the women either in bed for their afternoon sleep or
at the hairdresser’s or in the massage room and all the men sitting
around in the telegraph lounge like mourners at a funeral just because
the stock exchange machines have broken down? and that’s another thing.
Why have those machines broken down? and why is the radio office
closed? and why is the campari going so fast? I went right aft just
now to listen to the engines and I know we’ve never gone so fast
before.”
she didn’t miss much and that was a fact. I said, “why come to
me?”
“Daddy suggested it.” she hesitated, then half smiled. “He said I
was imagining things and that for a person suffering from delusions and
a hyperactive imagination he could recommend nothing better than a visit
to chief officer carter, who doesn’t know the meaning of either.”
“Your father is wrong.”
“Wrong? you da ah-suffer from delusions?”
“About your imagining things. You aren’t.” I finished my whisky
and got to my feet. “Something is wrong, far wrong, miss beresford.”
she looked me steadily in the eyes, then said quietly, “will you
tell me what it is? please?” the cool amusement was now completely
absent from both face and voice: a completely different susan beresford
from the one i’d known, and one I liked very much better than the old
one. For the first time, and very late in the day, the thought occurred
to me that this might be the real susan beresford: when you wear a price
ticket marked umpteen million dollars and are travelling in a forest
alive with wolves looking for gold and a free meal ticket for life, some
sort of shield, some kind of protective device against the wolves, is
liable to be very handy indeed, and I had to admit that the air of half
mocking amusement which seldom left her was a most effective deterrent.
“Will you tell me, please?” she repeated. She’d come close
to me now; the green eyes had started to melt in that weird way
they had, and my breathing was all mixed up again. “I think you could
trust me, mr. carter.”
“Yes.” I looked away it took the last of my will power, but I
looked away and managed to get my breathing working again, in-out,
in-out; it wasn’t too difficult when you got the hang of it. “I think I
could trust you, miss beresford. I will tell you. But not right away.
If you knew why I say that you wouldn’t press me to tell you. Any of
the passengers out taking the air or sunbathing?”
“What?” the sudden switch made her blink, but she recovered
quickly and gestured to the window. “In this?”
I saw what she meant. The sun had gone, completely, and heavy dark
cumulus clouds coming up from the southeast had all but obscured the
sky. The sea looked rougher than it had been, but I had the feeling
that the temperature would have fallen away. I didn’t like the look of
the weather. And I could quite understand why none of the passengers
would be on deck. That made things awkward. But there was another way.
“I see what you mean. I promise you i’ll tell you all you want to
know this evening”-that was a pretty elastic time limit-“if you in turn
promise you won’t tell anyone i’ve admitted anything is wrong-and if you
will do something for me.
“What do you want me to do?”
“This. You know your father is holding some sort of cocktail party
for your mother in the drawing room tonight. It’s timed for seven
forty-five. Get him to advance it to seven thirty. I want more time
before dinner never mind why now. Use any reason you like, but don’t
bring me into it. And ask your father to invite old mr. cerdan to the
party also. Doesn’t matter if he has to take his wheel chair and the
two nurses along with him. Get him to the party. Your father’s a man
of very considerable powers of persuasion-and I imagine you could
persuade your father to do anything. Tell him you feel sorry for the
old man, always being left out of things. Tell him anything, only get
old man cerdan to the cocktail party. I can’t tell you how vital that
is.”
she looked at me in slow speculation. She really had the most
extraordinary eyes; three weeks she’d been with us and i’d never really
noticed them before, eyes of that deep yet translucent green of sea
water over sand in the windward isles, eyes that melted and shimmered in
the same way as when a cat’s-paw of wind riffled the surface of the
water, eyes that i dragged my own eyes away. See carter, old beresford
had said. There’s the man for you. No imaginative fancies about him.
That’s what he thought. I became aware that she was saying quietly,
“i’ll do it. I promise. I don’t know what track you’re on, but I know
it’s the right track.”
“What do you mean?” I said slowly.
“That nurse of mr. cerdan’s. The tall one with the knitting. She
can no more knit than fly over the moon. She just sits there, clicking
needles, botching every other stitch and getting practically nowhere. I
know. Being a millionaire’s daughter doesn’t mean that you can’t be as
slick with a pair of knitting needles as the next girl.”
“What!” I caught her by the shoulders and stared down
at her. “You saw this? you’re sure of it?”
“Sure i’m sure.”
“Well, now.” I was still looking at her, but this time I wasn’t
seeing the eyes; I was seeing a great number of other things and I
didn’t like any of them. I said, “this is very interesting. I’ll see
you later. Be a good girl and get that fixed with your father, will
you?” I gave her shoulder an absentminded pat, turned away, and stared
out of the window.
after a few seconds I became aware that she hadn’t yet gone. She’d
the door opened, one hand on the handle, and was looking at me with a
peculiar expression on her face.
“You wouldn’t like to give me a toffee apple to suck?”
if you can imagine a voice both sweet and bitter at the same
moment, then that is how hers was. “Or a ribbon for my pigtails?” with
that she banged the door and was gone. The door didn’t splinter in any
way, but that was only because it was made of steel.
I gazed at the closed door for a moment, then gave up. Any other
time I might have devoted some minutes to figuring out the weird and
wonderful working of the female brain. But this wasn’t just any other