At the end of dinner Devon Michaelson had decided that it would be a good idea to cement his identity in the eyes of his tablemates, Ted Cavanaugh, the Meehans, and Anna DeMille—namely that he was a widower traveling on the ship with the sole purpose of scattering his late wife’s ashes into the ocean.
“I have decided to drop them from the uppermost deck at eight a.m. tomorrow morning,” he announced. “In thinking about it, I decided I would like to share the ceremony with all of you. Alvirah and Willy, you are celebrating your forty-fifth wedding anniversary. Anna, you are celebrating winning the church raffle. Ted, I don’t know if you are celebrating anything, but you are also welcome to come. In my own way I am celebrating thirty years of happiness with my beloved Monica.”
“Oh, I’ll be there,” Anna DeMille said fervently.
“Of course we’ll be there,” Alvirah said gently.
Devon turned his head as though he were blinking moisture from his eyes. Instead he was taking in the ruby-and-diamond necklace and matching earrings Lady Em had chosen to wear that evening.
Very nice, he thought, very, very expensive, but nothing like the Cleopatra necklace.
He turned his attention back to his own table. In a husky voice, he said, “Thank you. You are all very kind.”
26
Yvonne went straight to their suite as Roger escorted Lady Em to hers. When he entered, Yvonne was in a miserable mood. Dana and Valerie had left with other friends and had not invited her to join them.
She sailed into Roger. “I can’t stand listening to that insufferable old witch for five more minutes. She doesn’t own you. Tell her you work for her Monday through Friday. Period.”
Roger let her finish her tirade and then began shouting back. “You think I like having to kiss that old bag’s feet? I have to inflate every bill to keep you in the lifestyle you’ve managed to become accustomed to. You know that as well as I do.”
Yvonne glared at him. “Will you please keep your voice down. They can hear you on the bridge.”
“And you don’t think they can hear you?” Roger shot back, but he did lower his voice.
“Roger, will you please tell me why you—” Then she noticed that he was sweating profusely and his complexion was a grayish pallor. “You look sick. What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong is that Lady Em wants to see me tomorrow morning alone in her suite.”
“So what?”
“I think she suspects something.”
“Suspects what?”
“That I’ve been cooking her books for years.”
“You what?”
“You heard me.”
Yvonne stared at him. “You’re serious?”
“Oh, I am, my dear, I am.”
“And if she does suspect, what would she do about it?”
“Probably when she gets back to New York, hire another accounting firm to go over them.”
“And what would that mean?”
“Try twenty years in federal prison.”
“You’re serious!”
“Dead serious.”
“Then what are you going to do about it?”
“What are you suggesting, that I throw her overboard?”
“If you don’t, I will.”
They stared at each other, then Roger, his voice shaking, said, “It may come to that.”
27
Alvirah and Willy were passing Roger and Yvonne’s suite and could not help but hear that they were shouting at each other. Alvirah immediately stopped to catch every word. The last words she caught were “federal prison,” before another couple came down the hallway and she was forced to keep moving.
The minute Willy closed the door of their suite she turned to him, “Willy, did you hear all that? They hate that poor old woman.”
“I heard more than that. I think he’s stealing from her. The last words I heard were ‘twenty years in a federal prison.’?”
“Willy, I’m telling you, I think that they’re desperate. And I think that she’s even more desperate than he is. Do you think it is possible that either of them would try to hurt Lady Em?”
28
Professor Henry Longworth felt the tension at Lady Em’s dinner table and excused himself from having an after-dinner cocktail. Instead, he went straight to his suite and made some notes on his computer.
It did not take him long. He wrote about the hostility lurking beneath the surface at the table and the furtive glances at Lady Em’s jewelry by someone at the next table. These facts would serve him well. Very interesting, he thought with a smile.
Then for an hour he watched the news. Finally, before he went to bed, he thought about Celia Kilbride. The telephone call she had received in the cocktail lounge yesterday intrigued him enough to now search the Internet for information about her. What he found was a revelation. The beautiful young gemologist may or may not have been involved in a fraud, he read, although she had not been indicted.
Who would have guessed? he asked himself, somewhat amused. On that thought, he decided to go to bed. For about half an hour he did not sleep. In his mind he was anticipating the Captain’s cocktail party. Would this be the occasion where Lady Em would wear her Cleopatra necklace, her priceless emerald necklace . . . ?
29
Captain Fairfax was in bed in his suite. A creature of habit, he knew that reading for twenty minutes before going to sleep relaxed him. He was moments away from turning off the reading lamp when his phone rang. It was the ship’s chief engineer.
“Captain, we are experiencing some propulsion issues. They are minor and we are conducting tests on each of the engines. We expect to have the issue resolved over the next twenty-four hours.”
“Was it necessary that the ship slow down?”
“Yes, sir. But we can maintain a speed of twenty-five knots.”
Fairfax began doing a calculation in his head. “Very well. Keep me posted,” he said as he hung up the phone.
The Captain thought of the beehive of activity that awaited them at Southampton. A small army of cleaners would be standing ready to thoroughly clean the ship and make ready for the new passengers who would board. New provisions would be brought on and trash would be removed. All this would happen in the brief window between passengers disembarking in the midmorning and new guests coming aboard in the midafternoon. The process functioned like clockwork. But the clock had to start on time, with Queen Charlotte arriving by 6 A.M. in Southampton.
We’ll be okay, he tried to assure himself. We can make up the time we will lose over the next twenty-four hours by going faster after the engine problem is resolved. We’ll be fine, as long as nothing else happens to delay our arrival.
Day Three
30
Celia was surprised when she woke at 7:30 A.M., so early. What did you expect? she asked herself. You were in bed at eight-thirty last night so you’ve had eleven hours’ sleep. She still felt as if the weight of the world were on her shoulders. Oh, come on, she decided, get with it! Take a walk. Clear your brain.