A Death on The Ocean Wave E-Book

Tim Heald

• Herausgeber: Dean Street Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

In his third adventure, Doctor Tudor Cornwall, head of criminal affairs at the University of Wessex, finds himself literally all at sea. Accompanied by his precocious star pupil, Elizabeth Burney, Tudor boards the good ship Duchess as a guest speaker on a transatlantic crossing which goes spectacularly wrong. Are the Irish journalists actually terrorists in thin disguise? Does the captain really have laryngitis? How come Freddie Grim formerly of Scotland Yard is preaching at matins? Was the flambé at Doctor and Frau Umlaut's table meant to be quite so explosive? Is Prince Abdullah a real Royal?And, most importantly of all, can Tudor solve these and other mysteries before the ship docks?

Leseprobe

Tim HealdA Death on The Ocean WaveA TUDOR CORNWALL MYSTERY

In his third adventure, Doctor Tudor Cornwall, head of criminal affairs at the University of Wessex, finds himself literally all at sea. Accompanied by his precocious star pupil, Elizabeth Burney, Tudor boards the good ship Duchess as a guest speaker on a transatlantic crossing which goes spectacularly wrong.

Are the Irish journalists actually terrorists in thin disguise? Does the captain really have laryngitis – or has he been done away with? How come Freddie Grim formerly of Scotland Yard is preaching at matins? Was the flambé at Doctor and Frau Umlaut’s table meant to be quite so explosive? Is Prince Abdullah a real Royal?

And, most importantly of all, can Tudor solve these and other mysteries before the ship docks?

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

About The Author

Also by Tim Heald

Death and The Visiting Fellow - title page

Death and The Visiting Fellow - chapter one

Copyright

Chapter One

The Duchess didn’t look like a cruise ship. She had two funnels, round port holes, scrubbed wooden decks and a jaunty air of sea-worthiness which suggested a bygone era in which passengers travelled by sea because that was the best and possibly the only way of getting from A to B. The Duchess was all brass, teak and jolly Jack tar. She was the pride and joy of Riviera Shipping, the smartest, most eclectic and most expensive shipping line of the twenty-first century. No bingo and balcony, no chrome and casino: this was P.O.S.H.

Doctor Tudor Cornwall stood on the Budmouth Quayside and sighed. Middle age was making him conservative and old-fashioned. He who had once been an awkward, progressive maverick, castigated by his opponents as a dangerous leftie, was now reduced to celebrating the traditional lines of a ship that looked like a ship.

‘Nice, eh?’ he said to the gamine figure at his side.

Elizabeth Burney smiled. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Sort of thing I used to have in my bath when I was a kid.’

They could have been father and daughter. He, grizzled, tweedy, beetle-browed, overcoated, feeling the cold of a bright, sharp October morning; she, booted, be-jeaned, cotton-shirted, cashmere-sweatered, unbothered by the chill; he, fifty-something; she, twenty-something. But not father, not daughter – guest lecturer; research assistant.

He was looking forward to the assignment. Some people didn’t enjoy transatlantics. They were bored by day after day of featureless ocean. The rise and fall of the dangerous deep made them sick and alarmed; consequently they couldn’t eat; conversely they drank too much. Tudor, on the other hand, relished the unaccustomed isolation; he liked getting no signal on his mobile; he enjoyed caviar and cold, dry chateau-bottled Muscadet. Applause was gratifying as well. Likewise recognition. As Reader in Criminal Studies at the University of Wessex, head of an increasingly well-regarded department, author, expert, broadcaster, aspiring television personality, Dr Tudor Cornwall was on the verge of celebrity. Actually, in his own worlds of Wessex and criminal studies he was a celebrity, albeit a minor one. ‘Minor’ celebrity, he reflected, was a bit like ‘minor’ poet or ‘minor’ public school. It was almost a pejorative. Never mind, on the good ship Duchess he was a guest lecturer and therefore ipso facto a celebrity grade one, alpha male. He was not a vain man but the notion gave a keen edge to his anticipation.

The girl, on the other hand, was just beginning. She was a blank page, the beginning of a book, could go anywhere, could become anything. Not that she was unformed. Far from it. She was a precociously developed personality, smart and streetwise way beyond her years. Tasmanian by birth and upbringing she was as far from home as it was possible to be. An uprooted orphan, she never spoke of family or friends down under. It was as if she had drawn a line under her past, wiped the slate clean, moved on. She herself would never have used such clichés for she was naturally original and inventive. But she seemed to have no past. It was as if she had been beamed in from outer space – which, in a sense, she had.

They had met when Tudor was on a Visiting Fellowship in that far-off land. Even then she had an ambiguous, shady reputation. She was the protégé of Tudor’s oldest but false friend, Ashley Carpenter. Probably his mistress, though that was too old-fashioned a word to describe their relationship. She was also alleged to be the college thief, though this, too, was an assumption without serious substance. She had been foisted on Tudor in what, at the time, had seemed like a final act of revenge by Carpenter. Subsequent events had cast doubts on this. Tudor still thought of her as some sort of Trojan horse, but he no longer regarded her as hostile. She seemed well disposed, affectionate even, and she was awfully bright. Although he couldn’t admit it, even to himself, he was more than a little in love with her. She, on the other hand, didn’t appear to be in love with anyone. She never mentioned Ashley Carpenter.

‘Well, star pupil,’ said the Reader in Criminal Studies, grasping the handle of his battered leather suitcase, ‘shall we go on board?’

She smiled up at him.

‘Why not?’ she said. ‘She’s home for a week.’

‘Not quite a week,’ he said. ‘We dock in New York in six days’ time.’

She hefted her rucksack on to her shoulders.

‘That’s hair splitting,’ she said. ‘I think of it as a week. Call it a nautical week. Like a knot. Chronological equivalent of a sea-mile.’

Her teacher sucked his teeth. ‘A week is a week. Six days is six days. You can’t have it both ways.’

‘I like having it both ways,’ she said. ‘Suits my temperament. If I say six days is a week then a week is six days. That’s the meaning of meaning.’

‘Oh shut up,’ he said. ‘Stop being tiresome and precocious.’

There were procedures to be gone through. There were, reflected both Tudor and Elizabeth, always procedures to be gone through. This was what so much of life had become: a procedure to be gone through. Tudor’s professional life should have been divided into teaching and researching and writing. Instead it was dominated by form-filling and pen-pushing and answering to a faceless, humourless, gormless bureaucracy. Elizabeth’s particular bugbear were the immigration authorities who seemed to have an antipathy to Australians in general and her in particular. These were particular procedural problems, but both of them were confronted with the increasing regimentation and regulation of modern life. For free spirits such as them the experience was hobbling. For professional crime-studiers who believed that everything they did should be individual, intuitive, quirky and idiosyncratic the constant drive to make them conform to a grim post-Stalinist pattern of behaviour was a constant reproach. Crime didn’t stick to rules. That was the whole point.

The pre-boarding procedures took place in a large corrugated-iron shed cursorily tricked out with tired bunting and frayed red carpet. As formalities went these were agreeably perfunctory. Luggage went through an X-ray screening machine and was then whisked off to their cabins. It was a listless examination as was the body search, performed by bored men and women out-sourced from some private agency and abetted by hand-held metal detectors. Tudor and the girl knew that it was all a charade, a sop to the terror instilled in so many westerners by the destruction of the World Trade Centre. It meant nothing but it made people feel good, or at any rate less bad. It created the illusion that the President of the United States was doing something. Likewise the British Prime Minister. Tudor knew perfectly well, and his talks with his friends and contacts in the Intelligence Services confirmed, that if any terrorist organization worth its salt wanted to do something horrible to a cruise liner it was a doddle.

Nevertheless the two of them submitted to the more or less pointless formalities with a good grace before striding purposefully up the gangplank and submitting their shiny new ID cards to the beaming Filipino purserette at the vessel’s entrance.

‘Welcome aboard,’ she said. The badge attached to her crisp, starched white shirt, said ‘Cherry.’

Tudor and Elizabeth smiled back.

Cherry consulted a chart on the baize-covered table in front of her, then turned to a gallery of hooks behind her and picked off two old-fashioned keys with heavy wooden tags.

‘Two floors up,’ she said. ‘Boat deck, aft. Adjacent cabins.’

She smiled with what might have been innuendo but might just have been friendliness.

Tudor and Elizabeth smiled back in a blank semi-expressionless way that ignored any suggestion of suggestiveness, accepted their keys and moved off in the direction of the stairways which were carpeted in blue and lined with photographs and portraits of assorted aristocrats and royals from Britain and beyond. Two decks up they turned left along the Duchess’s starboard corridor until at the very end they found their cabins.

‘I’d like to be on deck when we sail out,’ said Tudor. ‘Why don’t I see you by the Lido Bar in half an hours’ time?’

‘Where’s the Lido Bar?’ she asked, wide-eyed, innocent.

‘You’ll find it,’ said Tudor. ‘She’s a small ship. If in doubt ask a uniform.’ Tudor had guest-lectured on the Duchess before. He knew his way around. So, metaphorically at least, did Elizabeth even though this was her first time on board.

The cabin, like the ship, was old-fashioned. After all, the Duchess had been built in Gdansk some twenty years earlier when Lech Walesa was strutting his stuff. Poles were fine ship-builders but, like the Pope and Walesa, they were essentially traditionalist. Thus Tudor’s cabin had sturdy mahogany furnishings and a serviceable en-suite bathroom but no gold taps and no balcony. Indeed it didn’t even have a window but a couple of large, brass-surrounded port holes. Port holes on a modern cruise-ship. Good selling point, he reckoned.

His cases would come in good time and be stored in the walk-in fitted cupboard. He eyed the half-bottle of champagne on the coffee table and decided to broach it later, then picked up the heavy manila envelope with ‘Doctor Tudor Cornwall, Guest Lecturer, Cabin BD77’ written in inky loops on the outside, and opened it with his fingers, thinking, slightly pompously, that a line of Riviera’s pretensions really ought to provide paper-knives in its boat-deck cabins.

There was a stiffy inside bidding him to a Captain’s Cocktail Party in the ballroom that evening after they had set sail. He noticed that the Captain – though 'Master’ was the preferred moniker – was still Sam Hardy. He had sailed with Sam before. Several times. He must be getting on for retirement age. Not that Sam had much to do with sailing the ship. He was a Captain Birdseye sort of captain, all jovial bonhomie and silver whiskers, more at home waltzing round the dance floor with elderly widows or telling noon-time jokes over the Tannoy from the bridge. The actual work was done by his officers. Well, that was unfair, conceded Tudor. Being mine host and master of ceremonies on a ship like the Duchess was a twenty-four hour permanent smile, constant charm, never-a-cross-word sort of job, and in a way far harder work than actually making sure the old ship got safely from one side of the Atlantic to the other. Tudor wouldn’t have liked being master of the Duchess but it suited old Sam Hardy. The ladies liked him and that was all that mattered.

There was another envelope, similarly addressed though this time in typewriting.

Tudor smiled. He knew what this was and he smiled as he read it.

‘Hi Tudor!’ it ran. ‘Good to have you aboard again. I really look forward to more of your criminal experiences and I know the lucky passengers are in for a real treat as usual. We’ll be having a short briefing in the cinema at 9.00 p.m. this evening for guest lecturers, gentlemen hosts and other entertainers. And I’d be delighted if you and your companion could join me and the rest of the team for dinner in the Chatsworth Room at 7.30 for 8.00. Look forward to catching up. Best, Mandy xx.’

‘Mandy’ and the kisses were handwritten and underneath were the words ‘Mandy Goldslinger. Cruise director.’ He liked Mandy. They, too, had worked together in the past. She was of a certain age and uncertain antecedents: Coral Gables by way of Budapest. She could, up to a point, have been one of the Gabor sisters if life had panned out differently. Her virtues of brash street-wise American pzazz perfectly complimented the stolid all-British joviality of Skipper Sam.

Tudor put the two missives back on the table and contemplated the bowl of fruit: apple, banana, two kiwi fruit, red and white grapes. Standard issue for Guest Lecturer Grade One. He wondered who his colleagues would be, what the passengers would be like. The lumpen passenger list was always pretty much the same. Likewise the lecturers. But voyages such as this invariably threw up the odd surprise. He was sure this would be no exception. Thinking which, he picked up his key and set off in the direction of the Lido Bar, whistling a happy tune.

Chapter Two

Tudor was not a sailor in the practical sense of knowing a quarter deck from a poop or being able to tie a sheepshank or a bowline but he took a real pleasure in things nautical. It was a vicarious spectator’s pleasure but none the less genuine for that. Watching the Duchess cast off her chains before being tug-nudged gently out to sea was always mesmerizing. He had little real understanding of what was happening, but he derived an expert’s enjoyment from watching other experts at work. You didn’t have to be C.S. Forester or Patrick O’Brien to do that.

The ship’s orchestra, all seven of them, were playing ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ from a balcony on the deck above and white-clothed trestle-tables were laid out with canapes and bottles of sparkling white Spanish wine.

Tudor took a glass of Cava and a miniature chipolata on a toothpick, walked to the rail and contemplated.

The members of the band seemed even older than the passengers. They had a slightly louche, left-over air that Tudor associated with a certain sort of seaside resort or spa. People who he’d assumed were long dead turned up in resorts such as Budmouth, or ships such as the Duchess, all wrinkles and hip-replacements. Many of them were orphaned so that one was likely to encounter Gerry without the Pacemakers (now there was a sick geriatric joke), Wayne Fontana without the Mindbenders or Brian Poole without the Tremeloes. Ancient hasbeens strutting their last at the end of the pier. At least the Duchess’s orchestra had each other, wearied by age though not yet quite condemned. They played the ‘Saints’ with a lugubrious panache, their moustaches improbably dyed, their paunches straining against the buttons of striped pseudo-Edwardian waistcoats, wispy hair lapping discoloured collars. They might, reflected Tudor, have known better days, they might have been drowning but they were still playing on. Dying but not dead, bloodied but unbowed. In a moment they’d do ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. At least the ship’s orchestra was maintaining a pretence and doing so with conviction.

This was not always the case with the passengers who in some cases closely resembled what Tudor imagined were the walking dead. Watching from the rail, drink and sausage in hand, he had a sense that he was the only man alive. This was unfair. He knew it as soon as he thought it. There were some sprightly nonagenarians tripping the light prosaic before his eyes on the lido deck. Men and women were mocking age and infirmity, shaking their zimmers at the Grim Reaper and embarking with stoicism and gritted teeth on what for some was almost certainly the Last Great Cruise.

One or two had already changed for dinner: men in white tuxedos with brightly coloured waistcoats and cummerbunds, buckled shoes, sleek silver hair and gold fillings; women in long ball gown concoctions that would not have shamed Barbara Cartland and beehive hair-do’s that suggested a golf-club dinner-dance in Surrey circa Coronation Year. Tudor told himself to stop being ageist and snobby. He himself wasn’t that smart nor that young any more. Those still in day clothes had an air of Carry on Cruising: male tattoos of a bruiser, sergeant’s mess quality Hawaiian shirts, golf shoes; sandals with knee-length socks, pearls, cardigans. Everything said money and middle Britain; Thatcherland; suburban and provincial. ‘Shut up,’ Tudor said to himself. ‘This is your audience. If you want to be a celebrity you’ve got to make people like this like you.’ Even as he said it, half of him at least thought the game not worth the candle.

‘Doctor Cornwall,’ said a smoky estuarine voice at his elbow, ‘nice to see you again. Muriel and I wondered whether you might be on board.’ When Tudor too obviously didn’t recognize him, he said, ‘St Petersburg the year before last. Freddie Grim, ex-Flying Squad. Used to work with Slipper of the Yard.’

‘Of course,’ said Cornwall, suddenly remembering all too well. Slipper was the man who had developed an obsession with the Great Train Robber, Ronnie Biggs. Freddie Grim had been close to him. If Cornwall’s memory was not playing tricks Freddie Grim had accompanied Slipper on the notoriously unsuccessful trip to Brazil where they had so ignominiously failed to secure the robber’s extradition.

‘Great Train Robbery,’ he said hopefully and was relieved when Grim’s mouth cracked in a satisfied grin, revealing a set of unnaturally even teeth and letting out a halitosis breeze of stale tobacco and lunch-time beer. He was wearing a blazer with the badge which appeared to be that of the Metropolitan Police Bowls Club and a matching cravat.

‘Spot on,’ said the former policeman. ‘See our Ron’s trying to get let out on compassionate.’

Biggs was in Belmarsh prison where he was supposed to have suffered a couple of strokes. His solicitor was having no luck at all in presenting his client as more sinned against than sinning.

‘Giving us the Bounty again?’

Tudor nearly always did his ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ talk on board ship. In it he proved beyond reasonable doubt that Captain Bligh was strict but fair and that his survival in a small open boat was due to consummate seamanship. It seemed an appropriate subject for a cruise and invariably proved popular. His audiences tended to sympathize even if they felt Bligh’s rules were strictly administered. In fact, particularly if strictly administered. Most of them were almost certainly floggers if not hangers. Probably both.

‘You remember Muriel,’ said Grim, indicating a small, mousy woman at his side, who smiled and seemed embarrassed.

‘Of course,’ lied Tudor. Muriel was infinitely forgettable and looked as if she knew it. Her husband did not exactly cast a long shadow but it was long enough to render Muriel effectively invisible.

‘Hope we don’t have a rough crossing,’ said Muriel’s husband. ‘Muriel’s not the world’s greatest sailor, are you, pet?’

‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘I’d rather be at home with the cats. But Freddie says you’re only young once and travel broadens the mind.’

Grim seemed pleased to be credited with such an original thought.

‘What do they know of England, I always say,’ he said, unexpectedly, ‘who only England know?’

Tudor nodded sagely and was rescued by the arrival of Elizabeth Burney who had not changed for dinner and was still showing no sign of feeling the cold. Not even a goose bump.

‘Elizabeth is my research assistant,’ he said. ‘She’s doing a criminal studies Ph.D.’

It was disconcerting to see that the Grims didn’t believe him. Their hand-shaking and smiling were polite but incredulous. Almost immediately Freddie and Muriel moved away on the pretext of more food and drink. Cruising, even aboard as serious a ship as the Duchess, was unhealthily often about more food and drink.

‘You want to know who’s top of the bill speakerwise?’ asked Elizabeth, sipping her wine and gazing appreciatively at the rippling, tattooed muscles of burly stevedores doing serious stuff with crates and ropes.

‘I thought I was top of the bill speakerwise, as you so charmingly put it,’ said Tudor, smiling at her in protective mode.

‘Well, I’m afraid Sir Goronwy Watkyn’s on board.’

Tudor almost choked on his Cava.

‘You’re joking,’ he said, when he’d done some dramatic coughing and throat clearing, ‘Not that fraudulent Welsh goat? And I suppose that means the ghastly Myfanwy’s on board, no doubt with her bloody harp.’

Actually the ghastly Myfanwy never brought her own harp but commandeered the instrument belonging to the ship’s harpist. This inevitably caused grief and allegations of broken strings. She was a rotten harpist but fancied herself on account, of course, of being Welsh. As for her husband, Tudor loathed him with a passion. He was famous for a series of fantasy-style detective stories set in some Tolkien-like Middle Kingdom full of monsters and wizards and featuring a Grand Bard of the Gorsedd who was the first of the great detectives. In Tudor’s estimation they were utter tosh but they had made Goronwy Watkyn millions of pounds and earned him a knighthood for ‘Services to Literature.’ When he was not writing about his ridiculous bard he wrote a series of gritty contemporary police procedurals set, Tudor thought, in Aberystwyth, or it might have been Bangor. These featured a detective called Dai Jones and were written under the pseudonym J.P.R. Morgan. It was all complete rubbish. Watkyn liked to use his title, habitually wore canary-yellow ankle socks and an overly neat goatee which waggled ridiculously when he talked – which was incessantly.

‘You’ve just ruined my trip,’ said Tudor almost meaning it, ‘And who in heaven’s name do you imagine the bloke in the white robe is? The one with the harem in attendance. Surely he shouldn’t be drinking alcohol? Not in that outfit!’

‘He’s called Prince Abdullah and beyond that we know practically nothing whatever except that he’s paid in full and the money’s good.’ The speaker was a blue-ish blonde with vivid make-up in a silk kaftan slit oriental style virtually up to the waist. The heels of her shoes were ridiculously high, especially for being on a ship, and she jangled with bangles. Tudor suspected, but didn’t know for sure, that the rocks on her rings were real.

‘Mandy!’ he exclaimed, kissing her on both cheeks. ‘Mandy, this is Elizabeth Burney, my star post-graduate pupil at the University of Wessex, who’s come along to help out. Elizabeth this is Mandy Goldslinger, the fabulous Cruise Director of the good ship Duchess.’

‘Enchanté,’ said Ms Goldslinger extending a hand with astonishingly long almost witch-like fingernails painted in gilt-flecked purple.

‘Hi,’ said Elizabeth.

Tudor could have been mistaken but the encounter did not somehow suggest love-at-first-sight. Inside his head he heard the all-too-familiar clinking of ice cubes.

‘I hope you’ve run the appropriate security checks,’ said Tudor, not joking.

‘Oh you crime people!’ said Ms Goldslinger, loudly enough to make some adjoining passengers turn round curiously. ‘That’s exactly what that cutie Goronwy Watkyn said. You’re all the same. Too too paranoid.’

‘You can’t be too careful,’ said Tudor. ‘You know how vulnerable cruise ships are to international terrorism. They could be kamikaze- wives. Has anybody looked under their jellabas?’

‘Tudor darling,’ said the cruise director, ‘Prince Abdullah is a hundred per cent kosher. I personally have checked with my dear friend Eddie Mortimer who does communications for Kofi Annan at the United Nations and he tells me that the Prince has a great humanitarian record and is a prominent member of the Yemeni royal family.’

‘The Yemenis don’t have a royal family,’ said Elizabeth, ‘it’s a Marxist republic.’

‘Oh Yemeni shemeni,’ said Mandy. ‘The Prince wouldn’t hurt a fly. Matter of fact hurting even flies is against his religion. He’s a sweetie.’

‘You’ll be sorry if they’ve all got bombs in their shoes,’ said Tudor. The ship’s orchestra had not moved on to ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ but were playing ‘Hearts of Oak’. Tudor reckoned they were in for a good half-hour of songs nautical and marine.

‘Who are those two sitting on thrones?’ he asked, noticing a man in a safari suit with a much younger blonde wife. They were both smoking and sitting in upholstered chairs. Although not actually behind rope or barbed wire they looked as if they had been cordoned off from the vulgar herd. They had their own table with their own cloth, their own canapes, their own bottle in their own ice bucket. Mandy frowned.

‘Those are the Umlauts,’ she said. ‘They think they own the ship. Trouble is they more or less do.’

‘Expand,’ said Tudor. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Oh shucks,’ said Mandy unexpectedly. She took a long swig from her glass and wiped her brow. On the shore and the lower decks, dockers and seamen were doing really serious things with ropes, chains and hawsers. They were cutting the remaining umbilical links between the Duchess and Budmouth. Slowly but unmistakably the ship began to move away from the quayside. Her siren sounded. The band was playing ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave.’ Passengers were leaning over the rails and waving at anyone they could see on shore. Some shorebound onlookers waved back. Others maintained an air of stolid indifference. Tudor felt oddly moved. He was pleased that Elizabeth seemed to share his elation to the extent even of waving at a couple of stout workers on the quayside. They waved back cheerily.

‘Umlaut takes the Imperial Suite for at least six months of the year. He treats the ship as his office and home. He makes his own rules. He does deals with Zurich and New York and the City and Tokyo and the Middle East.’

‘What sort of deals?’ asked Tudor, only half paying attention.

‘Money,’ said Mandy. ‘Money, money, money. Mrs Umlaut, Frau Umlaut, is dripping in diamonds, festooned with fur and treats everyone on board as if they were personal staff. Mr Umlaut, Herr Umlaut, Gottfried to his friends — if he had any — is rude beyond belief, tells the captain what to do, makes the rules as he goes along, believes that money can buy anything and anyone.’

‘They don’t sound altogether attractive,’ said Tudor.

Mandy Goldslinger looked thoughtfully across the broadening band of murky water which now separated the vessel from the United Kingdom.

‘I could cheerfully murder the Umlauts,’ she said. ‘I really could.’

Chapter Three

Entering the ballroom for the welcome party was like coming on to the set of a modern-dress version of HMS Pinafore. Tudor half expected the ship’s officers lined up in white and blue with gold braid on their wrists and shoulders to launch into a chorus of ‘He’s hardly ever sick at sea/so give three cheers and one cheer more/for the hardy Captain’ and so on. The stagey impression of faux-seamanship took its cue from the Master himself who was, naturally, first in line. Captain Sam, universally known, for obvious reasons, as ‘Kiss me Hardy’ was straight from Central Casting. The skipper had what the Royal Navy refers to as a ‘full set,’ meaning a moustache and beard. These were white in Santa Claus style. Indeed, if one could imagine Father Christmas in the uniform of a Merchant Navy captain you would have a pretty good idea of what Captain Hardy actually looked like for he was a big, pink-faced fellow who shook like jelly when he laughed which was often. He didn’t actually bellow out ‘Ho, ho, ho!’ or even ‘Yo, ho, ho!’ but you would not have put it past him.

The Master recognized Tudor and greeted him cordially enough though with less joviality than he managed for complete strangers.

When Tudor introduced Elizabeth Burney, Hardy called her ‘Little Lady’ which was a big mistake. The Master was excellent with women of advanced years and preferably limited intelligence; the younger and brighter they got the less at ease he seemed. Despite the fact that he exuded a sort of mariner’s braggadocio which suggested — was designed to suggest — extreme virility, Tudor had doubts about his true sexuality. Helped out at tea parties, if you asked Tudor. Not that Tudor had the slightest objection to men who helped out at tea parties. Some of his best friends came into just that category. But he was uneasy with pretence, uncomfortable with deceit. After all it was part of his trade and he, as much as the next man, disliked mixing business with pleasure.

The canapes and Cava had been moved from the lido deck to the ballroom with the Riviera Line’s customary expedition and lack of fuss. The ship’s orchestra had, however, been replaced by a female duet playing ‘Greensleeves’ on classical guitar and cello.

They looked Baltic: high cheekbones, possibly deceptive innocence, elegant but cheap strapless dresses, probably fresh out of the conservatoire in Riga, Tallin or Vilnius.

Tudor and Elizabeth negotiated the line of immaculate, beaming, hand-shaking ship’s officers; avoided having their photograph taken, took a gesture of food and drink and headed for a far-off corner of the room from which better to survey the crew and crowd.

‘Is it always like this?’ the girl asked, looking around wide-eyed yet not innocent. They were out in the English Channel now and there was a breeze. Force Three perhaps. The curtains of the ballroom, tasselled purple, swayed gently and so did some of the passengers. It would be rougher before they reached New York. It always was and despite the ship’s sophisticated stabilizers it would keep a lot of paying customers in their cabins. It seemed an expensive way of making yourself sick.

An elderly man in a white tuxedo, a spangled turquoise cummerbund with matching made-up bow tie, and sleek white hair, shimmered over.

‘Doctor Cornwall,’ he said proffering a much-ringed hand, ‘Ambrose Perry.’

‘Ah,’ said Tudor, medium-term memory working overtime. ‘Ambrose Perry, the gentleman host.’

‘That am I,’ said the over-groomed old gent in a curiously archaic and unconvincing turn of phrase which suited his general demeanour and appearance.

Tudor remembered that Mr Perry had once owned and run a hairdresser’s salon in Bromley called, he thought Daphne’s. He was a brilliant gentleman host: attentive, unthreatening, with a mean fox-trot and a devilish paso doble. In the afternoons – or après-midis as he described them — he called bingo or played bridge. He also picked up gossip like nobody’s business. Gentlemen hosts aboard the Duchess were privy to more secrets than the barmen.

‘Prince Abdullah and the Umlauts,’ said the host, ‘that’s a double whammy we’ve never seen before.’

‘Is that a problem?’ asked Tudor, all faux-naif.