A Death on the Ocean Wave Page 7

  ‘There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark... the male and the female,’ intoned Tudor wearily. ‘That’s a bit corny.’

  ‘Attaboy,’ said Elizabeth clapping her hands together. ‘No permanent ill-effects from nerve gas. Just like Shiver-my-Timbers said.’

  ‘Shiver-my?’ repeated Tudor.

  ‘Someone called Major Timbers simply has to have a nickname,’ she said. ‘And I don’t, under the circumstances, see how it could conceivably be anything else.’

  ‘And I suppose the second lesson is Matthew, Chapter Twenty-four, verse Thirty-eight.

  ‘“For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away.”’

  ‘How did you know that?’ asked the girl, impressed.

  ‘They always do a double-Noah on the first Sunday after embarcation,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit obvious, but passengers seem to like it. The idea of being descended in some curious way from Mr and Mrs Noah rather appeals to them though I don’t think the ark would have satisfied modern safety regs and I don’t suppose the catering would have been any great shakes.’

  ‘No rum punch in the captain’s bar,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I always imagine the ark must have been incredibly smelly.’

  ‘Probably,’ said Tudor. He was beginning to feel a lot better. Heroic even. He stood up and went into the bathroom where he splashed his face liberally with cold water.

  ‘Five minutes before kick off,’ she said, chirpily, opening the cabin door and hustling him outside.

  They walked briskly and in silence along the corridors and up to the doors of the cinema which doubled up, on these occa-sions, as morning chapel, ecumenical. It was slightly unconvincing, tasteless even, but not as unconvincing or even, in a manner of speaking, tasteless as the figure standing at the entrance clutching a Bible and prayer book and wearing a cassock and a sanctimonious expression.

  It was Freddie Grim, but to Tudor’s amazement, no longer retired Detective Chief Inspector Grim, but the Reverend Grim. Policeman Fred appeared to have taken to Holy Orders.

  Chapter Ten

  Grim’s was a bizarre sermon. ‘“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink”,’ he began, in a nasal sing-song voice which reminded Tudor of Jonathan Miller’s vicar in Beyond the Fringe.

  ‘“My brother Esau is an hairy man, but I am a smooth man.”’ Grim’s words made about as much sense. His theme was H20 but he was drowned by it, engulfed. No ark for Grim.

  In a perverse way Tudor quite enjoyed trying to work out what exactly it was that the newly ordained preacher was trying to say. He was certainly moving in a mysterious way but it was difficult if not impossible to work out what lay behind the mystery and if there was any method at all in the apparent madness. Tudor wouldn’t have given him a licence.

  Meanwhile the Duchess was heading into a storm. The curtain behind the makeshift altar was waving mesmerizingly and metronomically at the beginning of the service but by the time they reached the second hymn it had moved from the gentle sleepy seduction of Force Five to the dangerous billowing of Eight or Nine. Preacher Grim had to brace his sea legs and hold fast to the lectern. One or two of the congregation wove an uneasy path out of the cinema.

  ‘The animals went in two by two,’ said Reverend Grim. ‘Two by two. Not individually one by one; not even in threesomes where one of them would have been what later generations call a gooseberry; not in a herd, nor a flock, nor a crowd, nor a group, nor a team, but two by two.’

  Here he paused and glared round the auditorium as the curtain flapped behind him and the floor rose and fell.

  ‘Two by two,’ he repeated, ‘two by two.’

  ‘The animals are going out two by two,’ whispered Elizabeth behind her hand as another queasy couple made for the exit.

  Grim now seemed lost for words, his attention distracted by the gathering storm and the diminishing congregation. Then, with an obvious effort, he pulled himself together and relaunched himself. ‘When,’ he said, ‘in a previous life I was often confronted by sin and its wages I found myself deliberating on the subject long and hard. Long and hard.’ And here, he stared around the cinema with the demonic gaze of an Old Testament prophet or a Methodist preacher in the Wesleyan tradition.

  ‘Why’s he repeating everything?’ asked Elizabeth in another whisper.

  ‘Because he can’t think what to say next,’ said Tudor unkindly. ‘Or,’ he added even less kindly, ‘because it’s something they taught him in preaching college. Trick of the trade.’

  ‘What I learned in a life surrounded by criminals and immersed in crime was that actually the most serious crime of all, that of murder, the taking of human life, which is not only a crime against humanity but a sin against God, murder is very rarely a criminal crime. That is to say that in my experience – in my very varied and lengthy experience – I very rarely came across criminals who killed.

  ‘Murder was much more frequently... very much more frequently... committed by those who, like the animals who went into the ark, lived their lives two by two. For as the wife said of her husband, or it could just as well have been the husband saying of the wife, when asked, if during their long marriage, he, or she, had ever considered divorce, replied, ‘Divorce never, murder frequently.’ He stared at the now thin congregation, eyes revolving unnervingly and was rewarded with a mild titter.

  ‘Lady Longford,’ said Tudor under his breath, ‘speaking of the noble Earl.’

  ‘It’s a very old joke,’ whispered Elizabeth, ‘and almost certainly apocryphal.’

  God alone knew where Freddie Grim went from here. He seemed to be talking about the perils yet sanctity of marriage and to be pegging his remarks to the notion that many of those cruising aboard the Good Ship Duchess were celebrating significant wedding anniversaries. For couples such as this read animals two by two; for the Duchess read the ark; and presumably for Noah read the Master of the Duchess, Sam Hardy.

  It was odd, thought Tudor, that the Master was not present. Perhaps, aware of the impending storm, he had decided that his place was on the bridge. Yet that seemed unlikely for Sam Hardy only ever thought of the bridge as the place to be when he was showing passengers around it. He would normally be here with a big black prayer book leading matins the way ship captains were popularly supposed to.

  ‘So you see,’ said the preacher, ‘nothing could seem cosier or more companionable, or safer than a voyage at sea in the company of one’s beloved partner. The ark represented sanctuary and safety. She was a refuge from a naughty world. Indeed in that particularly disastrous moment in the world’s history she represented the only place in which one could live. Everybody else perished.

  ‘And yet’ – and here he wagged a finger at his now seriously depleted audience – ‘and yet, the safety of the closed room which is another way of looking at a modern cruise liner or an ancient ark is a deception and a delusion. There is no safety at sea, no safety in an enclosed space but, above all, my brothers and sisters there is no safety with those you consider your nearest and dearest. It was Jean Paul Sartre, no Christian he, who told us that hell is other people. Huis Clos.’

  He paused and gazed round again. Tudor had a distinct impression that either he or the preacher were going mad. ‘It was all right for Noah,’ said Grim. ‘Noah was six hundred years old when he built the Ark and when he disembarked he lived on for another three hundred and fifty. And it was all right for those who sailed with him. But it wasn’t all right for those that were left behind. Remember what happened? “Every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven, and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.”’

  ‘What’s he trying to say?’ muttered Elizabeth.

  ‘I think he’s telling us that he knows hi
s Bible inside out,’ said Tudor, ‘otherwise I just don’t get it.’

  ‘So what, in the end, did God mean by this?’ asked Grim. ‘What is the underlying message in the story of Noah and the ark and the animals that went in two by two and all those creeping things and the clean and the unclean? What possible relevance can it have for the rest of us?’

  And now he looked around with a baleful air of triumph as if he had come to the end of a difficult task but had prevailed in the end.

  ‘Our Master on board this ship will not live to be nine hundred and fifty years old as Noah did,’ he said. ‘But at the same time we would do well to ponder the words with which our Lord ended the dreadful story of the flooding of the earth and the saving of the human race on board ship. He said, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.”’

  And here the retired policeman smiled a huge grin of baleful self-satisfaction, crossed himself and said, ‘And so in the name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, Amen.’ After which in a voice subtly changed from that of inspirational preacher to official factotum, he announced that the final hymn was to be ‘Eternal Father strong to save whose hand hath bound the restless wave’ and during it a collection would be taken in aid of the Royal National Lifeboat Association.

  Tudor sang lustily and gave generously; Elizabeth remained stumm and gave nothing. At the end of the hymn they all bowed their heads while Grim pronounced a blessing and told them to go in peace. This they duly did.

  ‘Fascinating sermon,’ said Tudor, outside in the lobby. ‘Fascinating’ was one of the most useful words in his semantic armoury, suggesting huge enthusiasm while actually doing no such thing. He suspected, from Grim’s sickly grin of acknowledgement that the policeman/priest recognized the device for what it was.

  ‘I’m glad you enjoyed it,’ she said.

  It was on the tip of Tudor’s tongue to point out that he hadn’t broached the matter of enjoyment, but instead he said, guardedly, ‘Plenty of food for thought.’

  ‘Drink for thought,’ said Elizabeth accurately but unhelpfully. ‘One of the most liquid addresses I’ve ever heard.’

  Grim turned his rheumy eyes on her as if noticing her for the first time.

  ‘Thank you my dear,’ he said, clearly not meaning it.

  He then reverted to Tudor and said, ‘Certain amount of excitement this morning, I understand.’

  It was a question masquerading as a statement.

  ‘“Exciting” is a bit strong,’ said Tudor wearily and warily. ‘All in a day’s work for people such as you and I. There was an incident of sorts but it was all easily resolved. No harm done. A handful of silly people handcuffed together in the brig but nothing that couldn’t be resolved by a mixture of intellectual rigour and a straight bat.’

  ‘How very British,’ said Grim. ‘I look forward to hearing more in due course.’

  Saying which he turned to other members of the congregation who were still filtering out into the Sunday morning.

  ‘I fancy a walk round the deck,’ he said to Elizabeth Burney. ‘Coming?’

  She said she thought that sounded like a half-decent idea and would probably do him good so they went up a flight of stairs to the promenade deck, shoved open one of the heavy doors and were beaten back by the wind which was rising in strength.

  ‘OK?’ asked Tudor.

  ‘Yup,’ she said, looking frail and vulnerable but no longer fooling her mentor.

  They leaned into the wind and walked.

  Seconds later they bumped into Mandy Goldslinger. She was wearing a designer track-suit and walking in the wrong direction.

  ‘Dottore!’ she screeched above the gathering storm. ‘You’re dead. It’s official. How’s it feel?’

  She was clutching a piece of paper. It turned out to be the hard copy of an e-mail from the obituaries department of the Daily Telegraph in London. The author was David Twiston-Davies, the paper’s chief obituarist and he was researching a eulogy of the distinguished Criminal Student Dr Tudor Cornwall who, he was reliably informed, had just perished at sea under distressing and violent circumstances.

  ‘Good, eh?’ cackled La Goldslinger mirthlessly. ‘Never believe anything you read in the newspapers. Had you on the right ship though. Or off it, eh!’ and she shoved him in the shoulder almost knocking him over.

  ‘Ah,’ said Tudor, making the obvious connection with the sinister amateurs with whom he had been grappling earlier in the day. ‘Not Tipperary?’

  ‘I thought that might interest you,’ she said. ‘You might want to run it past the prisoners in the bilges. But that’s not all.’

  A larger than usual wave rocked the boat causing all three to stagger and clutch on to the nearest railings. The next revelation from Mandy Goldslinger also made Tudor and Elizabeth stagger though not as literally as the wave.

  ‘I called Twiston-Davies,’ she said, ‘to tell him that you were still very much alive. He sounded halfway between relieved and irritated. Said he’d put a lot of work in on the piece and was I quite sure as they were rather hoping to make you their lead – it being a slow death day. He also said his informant was absolutely adamant about your having passed away. He was an old friend of yours as well, apparently. The Visiting Professor at the IISWP.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Tudor, ‘I think I can guess.’

  But Elizabeth Burney did the guesswork for him.

  ‘Ashley Carpenter,’ she said. ‘It has to be Ashley.’

  Ms Goldslinger arched immaculately painted eyebrows and glanced from one to the other.

  ‘How did you know?’ she asked.

  Tudor and Elizabeth glanced at each other and shrugged.

  ‘He had to crop up sooner or later,’ said Tudor.

  Elizabeth simply frowned.

  ‘Greatly exaggerated,’ he said, ‘rumours of my death.’

  ‘’Course you’re not dead, darling,’ said the cruise director. ‘I know a stiff when I see one. Had enough in my day. Hardly a cruise goes by when a gentleman host or his client doesn’t topple off the perch and end up in the refrigerator between the lobster and the Aberdeen Angus rib-eye.’

  Elizabeth Burney looked incredulous and seemed on the verge of speech but Tudor quelled her with a vividly alive-looking glare.

  ‘So the Twister thinks I’m dead,’ he said. ‘How so? Who’s his source?’

  ‘Well,’ said Mandy with a lascivious leer, ‘the story seems to have come out of the International Institute for the Study of World Republicanism.’

  ‘Which must be somewhere in North Carolina,’ said Tudor.

  ‘Or Bulgaria,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Close but no cigar,’ said Mandy. ‘You’re on track. It’s not really international, it doesn’t really study anything, it... oh well, shit, it’s a Mickey Mouse sort of a place but they seem to have stacks of money and nothing much to do but make trouble and stuff.’

  The stormy winds did blow and the trio braced their legs as the Arabian wives marched past in close formation and billowing burnooses, eyes firmly straight ahead and undeviating.

  ‘So the International Institute for the Study of World Republicanism told the Daily Telegraph I was dead. Where are they when they are at home if not Bulgaria or North Carolina? Don’t tell me. Bolivia. They’re big in La Paz.’

  ‘’Fraid not,’ said the cruise director. ‘Irish outfit. The postal address is Limerick.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Ashley Carpenter was Moriarty to Tudor’s Sherlock Holmes.

  It wasn’t as simple as that. How could it be? Fact was, in his experience, always more complicated and far-fetched than fiction. He and Carpenter had an edgy, complex reality that the melodramatic Victorian cut-outs of Holmes and Moriarty necessarily lacked.

  Carpenter had been satisfactorily absent from Tudor’s life for a while now, to such an extent that Tud
or almost believed he had vanished for good, perished in some unobserved disaster at his own Reichenbach Falls perhaps, or vanished into Mexican gunsmoke like Ambrose Bierce. Yet so far, Ashley had never quite gone away, and he always cropped up unexpectedly just when Tudor had almost forgotten him.

  Not that he could ever entirely forget, not as long as the precocious Elizabeth Burney remained under his wing. Elizabeth was Carpenter’s legacy, a farewell gift after that Visiting-Fellowship which made Tudor wince whenever he thought of it.

  The two of them had been best of friends at university – or so Tudor believed. Only years later when Ashley invited his former fellow-student to spend a semester in his hometown ‘uni’ did Tudor come to believe otherwise. Ashley had asked him down under and then done a bunk and set Tudor up on a murder rap. It sort of hadn’t worked out and in some curious and still unexplained act of final revenge Carpenter had bequeathed him Elizabeth, his own former mistress. Or so Tudor believed. It was not something he and Elizabeth ever discussed. Indeed until now the words Ashley Carpenter had scarcely passed their lips. Theirs was an unusual relationship, founded largely on evasion and unspoken words.

  They had in the phrase of the day, ‘moved on.’ In another piece of bromide vernacular they had drawn a line under what had gone before. And yet as they both knew neither option was really available. Life and lives were not like that. They were all of a piece. You could not simply create a new identity for yourself and repudiate all that had gone before. Your past was part of your present and would inevitably inform your future. And Ashley Carpenter was part of Tudor’s past and Elizabeth’s as well. Try as they might they could not eradicate him and pretend he had never been. Now here he was, back with a vengeance.

  ‘So,’ said Tudor, as the ship tossed and they turned back down the starboard promenade deck, buffeted by the galeforce wind, ‘did you know anything about this?’

  ‘Of course not.’ The girl looked put out. ‘Ashley’s history,’ she said. ‘You know that.’