Chapter 12

The News in Hungarian

“What do you think, m’sieu?” The first officer spoke in a low voice. “It is her maid, of course.”

“Yes. I’d like to go to the infirmary with her and see if she can say anything.”

“But Mademoiselle Moore?”

“There is nothing she can do. And there is plenty of time to tell her. I see no point in disturbing her at the moment.”

“It is true.”

We followed the stretcher-bearers and the doctor to the elevator, but we could not all get in, so the first officer and I walked down to the infirmary. While we did, I thanked my lucky stars that he had accepted me, as he clearly had, in the role of close friend of the family. I was desperately anxious to learn whether Klára would say anything, especially since I was sure the doctor’s terse diagnosis was right. The head wounds I had glimpsed were actually skull depressions, deeply bloodied. They were sickening.

When we pushed into the infirmary’s second room, white, bright, and antiseptic-smelling, she was stretched out on a sort of operating table. She had on a black maid’s dress but the white cap was crimson and mashed into the head wounds. Her eyes were open and unfocused; her lips moved but only throaty, sucking sounds came out.

I asked, “Is there any chance?”

The doctor just looked at me. “The brain damage is massive. It’s a wonder she’s not dead.”

“She cannot live?”

“I can do nothing, m’sieu. I have given her an injection. But I would not even touch that poor head. Adrenalin may keep her alive for fifteen minutes or a few hours.”

“The wounds must be the result of a terrible beating,” I said.

“It is clear she did not fall downstairs, m’sieu.”

“Nor climb into the lifeboat by herself.”

He smiled faintly.

“But can you guess at the nature of the weapon?”

“The weapon, I do not know, but a club of some sort. A heavy metal bar, perhaps. Wielded by quelqu’un sauvage.”

I said, “Klára,” a little loudly. There was no response at all. I bent over her and said it again, more loudly.

The eyes did not flicker. I smelled blood, the sweet, waxy, sickening smell that brought back major auto accidents I’d covered as a kid reporter, and once a horrible triple knifing. “She is beyond hearing, m’sieu.”

“She is beyond everything.”

“Oui.”

“How was she found?”

The first officer answered. “The tarpaulin was not properly fastened by whoever put her in the lifeboat. It began to flap, and the bridge noticed. When a sailor went to fasten it, he saw her.”

There was something suffocating, in spite of the careful air conditioning, about standing late at night in that bright room with all its helpless surgical equipment and useless cabinets of medications, waiting for someone to die.

“Will it matter if I try to talk to her again?”

They exchanged glances. “It will make no difference,” the doctor said. “She is already dead. Except for ceasing to breathe.”

I bent over her again, holding my breath.

“Klára. Klára! KLÁRA!”

Nothing.

“Who did this to you?”

I could hear the ticking of the big cheap watch on her wrist.

“Who did it?”

Then it came, a sudden gush of words, the eyes still open and sightless. But the words were strange syllables only. The high harsh voice was speaking in Hungarian. It repeated a phrase, and I grabbed a pad and pencil from the table and wrote it down phonetically.

“Vezetö meg ölt engem.”

I listened carefully and wrote it down phonetically several times. There were minor variations, or so I thought. The watch ticked on precisely.

I said, “Is there a Hungarian aboard? We need an interpreter—instantly! “

It took them a second to come to life.

“Galli, the assistant pastry chef,” said the doctor. “He knows Hungarian. I treat him for his sprain.”

“Get him at once,” the first officer barked. He was beginning to look drawn.

The doctor went to a wall phone and dialed. Klára’s murmur of Hungarian went on, now a mumble, now shrill singsong.

“Klára, who did this to you?”

I asked it again when she paused for breath. “Speak English.”

The first officer tried it in French. But all we got back was the language we did not understand, with vezetö frequently repeated. Finally she fell silent.

“Where in hell is that pastry chef?”

“He is coming to the phone, m’sieu. He was in his bunk.”

“What will happen next about this?” I asked the first officer.

“There will be an investigation. It is clearly murder. I will so inform the captain.”

I drew on my slender French. “C’est fantastique.”

“Oui. C’est horrible.”

“How long ago was she discovered?”

He looked at his wrist watch. “About thirty minutes.”

I looked at mine. It was five past midnight.

We waited in silence. Klára began mumbling again, but more faintly now. A nurse came in, still buttoning the last button of her uniform, saw what lay on the operating table, blanched, and, at a gesture from the doctor, stood to one side.

The door opened again and a plump, elderly, bald man came in. “You sent for me?”

“She is speaking Hungarian,” the first officer told him. “She is dying. Act quickly. Ask her who attacked her. At once.”

The plump little man looked frightened. “Attacked her?”

“Hurry.”

He turned to her. As he did, the mumble gurgled in her throat and stopped. The doctor moved fast to her.

“C’est fini,” he said somberly. “She is dead.”

Now all I had was what had sounded like vegeta meg ult engine. We all looked at each other and then we looked away. The awareness of death comes strangely. But it always comes, sooner or later.

The nurse brought a white sheet with which to cover her. I plucked the pastry chef’s arm.

“What does this mean?” and I read what had sounded like vegeta meg ult engine as best I could. I repeated several versions, slowly. He looked puzzled.

“I think what you say,” he said at last, “is ‘I was killed by the lord.’ Or ‘the master.’ It is hard to translate vezetö.”

“Or the boss?”

“It could mean something like that, yes. Or ‘He had me killed.’”

* * * *

The first officer hurried out to report to the captain, even as the nurse and the doctor began wheeling Klára’s body out to wherever they store bodies on a ship. I was left alone, except for the pastry chef. He looked at me, shrugged, and went out slowly. Everyone seemed to have something to do.

I had something to do too, and the mere thought of it chilled me.

I went up to the little aft bar, which was virtually empty. I ordered a double cognac and I put it down fast, with malice aforethought. Sometimes malice aforethought makes a good chaser.

I waited for it to hit. And settle. And act. Then I went out on deck.

The last thing in the world I wanted was to be seen fooling around lifeboats, but I went to the one containing Jones’s body. At least my knots, learned years ago as a Boy Scout, had held; the tarpaulin was still intact.

I stood in close to the cabin wall and looked up at the dark bridge. Anyone up there could look down and observe me—could be watching me right now. And I couldn’t see him at all. It was a chance I’d have to take.

But I hesitated nervously for a moment, and looked around, and I saw the sea aft was oddly littered with clots of debris. Then I realized what it was. The kitchen crew was dumping garbage.

Now or never.

I walked to the lifeboat and fumbled the knots loose. Standing on tiptoe I looked into the boat. It was pitch dark.

I lit a match; the wind instantly blew it out. That was bad, for that little gleam could easily have been noticed from the bridge. I put the paper of matches into the boat and under the tarpaulin before lighting the next match. The instant it ignited, I dropped it inside the boat.

The match flared for only a second, but in that time I glimpsed Jones’s face, the lips drawn back from the teeth in an animal snarl. Rigor mortis.

But anyway he was there, and he had not been discovered.

I retied the knots with shaking fingers and retreated into the lee of the cabin wall, hoping fervently I had not been seen. Between this and what the cold, precise Widow’s-Peak Pennypacker could tell about me, I undoubtedly could be sent up for life, plus ten years.

When I returned to the grand salon, I stood at the doorway and saw that another officer had joined our table. Tom was saying something, and they all laughed at it. They were having fun. I looked at the captain’s table. Merrilee was still there, glowing, and every officer’s head was turned toward her.

She was having fun too.

The thing for me to do was get to work, and the work that most needed doing right now was to search her suite. But this was not the night to risk being caught snooping in Merrilee Moore’s suite. So I went back to the table and said, “What’s new?” and sat down.

Twit-Twit put her lips close to my ear. “What did that first officer want?”

“The captain lost his bearings. He wanted me to straighten him out.”

The other officer, eavesdropping, chuckled. Obviously he had not heard the news yet.

But Twit-Twit looked at me, not suspiciously as I would have expected, but with a kind of sympathetic understanding, even though she knew nothing about what was going on.

You’d almost think she was intuitive. Or psychic.