Gregory Morrison watched as Captain Fairfax and his chief security officer entered his room. He looked at them and past them. “Where’s Inspector Clouseau from Interpol?” he demanded. “I said I wanted him here as well.”
“I asked Mr. Michaelson to join us,” Captain Fairfax said nervously. “But he told me he had absolutely no intention of coming here to be humiliated by you.”
“You weren’t supposed to ask him to come. I told you to tell him to come.” Morrison sighed. “Forget it, he’s useless anyhow.”
Morrison paced around his suite as he spoke. “That cow Brenda Martin is running all over the dining room showing her swollen neck to anyone who will give her the time of day. Don’t you people realize that all the passengers will be afraid of being in their rooms alone?”
He looked John Saunders squarely in the eye. “Can you give me any good reason why I should keep paying you? After a passenger is murdered and her jewelry stolen, why didn’t it occur to you to have someone in the hallway to stand guard?”
Saunders had taught himself to overlook Morrison’s constant jibes. “May I remind you, Mr. Morrison, we agreed to try to keep things on board as normal as possible. Armed guards in the hallways outside the passengers’ suites is not normal. I specifically recall your saying that we are not running a prison.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Morrison said grudgingly.
Captain Fairfax took over. “Frankly, Mr. Morrison,” he said firmly, “we should be focusing on how we are going to respond to this latest,” he paused, “incident. It had not been picked up by the news sites before I came up here, but—”
Morrison rummaged in his pocket and found his phone. He tapped in the name of the ship. “Just what I was afraid of,” he snarled. “The first headline is ‘Another Passenger Attacked on Queen Charlotte?’ ”
Morrison continued to read. “Can you believe this? They’re already referring to the ship as the twenty-first-century Titanic.”
No one spoke.
“My ship,” Morrison added, his voice breaking. “Now, you two get out of here and make sure nothing else happens before we reach port.”
Captain Fairfax and John Saunders nodded and left the room. Morrison settled down into a comfortable chair, tapped his phone and looked at the emails from his office. There was one from his chief financial officer ten minutes earlier saying that thirty passengers who were scheduled to board the ship in Southampton had canceled their reservations.
He got up immediately and went to the bar. This time he chose Johnny Walker Blue and filled his glass. As he sipped, his thought was, That was before what happened to Brenda Martin. I wonder how much I will have to pay for her sore throat.