I leaned against the railing on the promenade deck. Preparations were under way for the Clio to sail. The pilot’s boat rode nearby. Seagulls scolded. The dark blue water looked placid. The last excursion group had returned almost an hour ago. Soon the hawsers would be loosed and the Clio would sail southwestward from Stockholm to anchor off the old naval village of Karlskrona tomorrow afternoon.
“Hi, Mrs. Collins.” Rosie Riordan wore sunglasses. Her red hair was tousled and her cheeks pink from sun. “Did you go on an excursion?”
I gestured toward the city, time-stained copper domes glittering in the late afternoon sun, graceful church spires punctuating the soft blue sky. “This morning. I stayed aboard this afternoon.”
Rosie placed her elbows on the railing, looked out at the deep blue water. “It didn’t feel right to go. But it doesn’t do any good to stay. We did the city tour this morning and Drottningholm Palace this afternoon.” She turned toward me, the light reflecting from the dark lens of her sunglasses masking her eyes. Her face looked drawn and tired. “Everything seems unreal. This was Sophia’s trip. It’s crazy that she’s gone. I can’t believe it even though I know it’s true.”
“I understand.” Sophia had been gloriously alive, overwhelmingly dominant. Now she didn’t exist.
“If only—but there’s no point in thinking how it could have been different.” Rosie sounded sad. “Anyway, you were nice to speak up and tell the captain that Val was with you in the bar.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I’m always pleased to be considered nice, but I was simply reporting a fact.”
Rosie shook her head. “You knew she didn’t remember. To have everyone realize that would have been devastating for her. She’s scared enough as is. She’s—well, she’s promised to go into treatment when we get home. This is the first time she’s had blackouts. Now she knows she was with you from about a quarter to eleven to eleven-thirty.” She sounded relieved.
I wished I could see Rosie’s eyes, know whether she was anxiously watching me. I stared at the dark lens, my gaze steady. “I can’t say exactly when Val got to the bar, but it was after eleven, possibly as much as ten minutes after the hour.”
“Oh, it was sooner than that.” Rosie was insistent. “I rang up her cabin about a quarter to eleven. I was up in the top deck bar and I thought she might want to come up and join me. There wasn’t any answer so she was already on her way down to Diogenes. She’s pretty fuzzy on everything that happened Friday night, but she thinks she went straight from her cabin to the bar. She wanted another drink and her bottle was empty. So if Val asks you, tell her she was with you from ten forty-five on.” She took a deep breath. “You saw her. She was too drunk to—” She didn’t have to complete the sentence: —push Sophia overboard. “Anyway, please, if she asks you, tell her everything’s fine, that she was with you. She’s scared because she doesn’t remember what happened and it freaked her out when they said somebody used Jimmy’s key to open Sophia’s door right after eleven. It’s better if she thinks she was with you.”
Rosie turned away, walking swiftly, head down, shoulders hunched.
I stared after her. Rosie was afraid. Desperately afraid. I would have gone after her, demanded to know what she feared, but she’d never tell me.
The message light flickered on my telephone. I sat at the desk, picked up the receiver, punched 7 for the message.
Jimmy sounded irritated. “Ingrid’s either stringing me along or too dense to understand what I’m asking her. I told her that it was important to find out who entered Sophia’s cabin right after eleven, and if she could be of any help, I’d be glad to pay her a reward. I offered her a thousand dollars. That got her attention. She said she couldn’t help me, then asked if it was worth a lot of money to know who was in the hall then. I told her if she knew anything she had to tell me. I guess I got too excited. I promised I’d try to keep her out of it when I talked to Glenn. That’s when she started backpedaling, protesting that she didn’t mean she knew anything, that she was nowhere near the cabin at eleven and she had to get back to work, and she turned and pushed the cart down the hall so fast she almost crashed into an old lady coming out of her cabin a few doors down, one of those dowdy but regal English passengers. She looked at me like I was a serial rapist, then sailed by with her eyes flashing and her mouth pursed. I feel like I struck out all the way around.” A pause. “I’m running out of ideas. Look, you always help me think. Let’s have dinner in the main dining room at seven.”
Waiters in white jackets and shirts and black trousers moved deftly among the white-clothed tables. The Clio was under way, cruising through the dramatic Swedish archipelago, the shadowed portions of the fir-crowned islands so darkly green they appeared black. The archipelago is made up of twenty-six thousand islands, many uninhabited. Occasionally we passed a small island with a weathered dock and a single rustic wooden house on a bluff with smoke curling from the chimney. I wondered at the owners. Was the house a vacation retreat? Did anyone live year-round in such a remote place?
The dining room was almost full. I looked from table to table, women in cocktail dresses, men in suits or tuxedos. Most faces were smiling. The buzz of conversation was a melding of deep voices with the higher tones of women. The mood seemed lighthearted, as befitted the elegant surroundings.
Jimmy dashed salt into his soup. “Why don’t you talk to Ingrid again, see if you can get her to open up.”
I forked a piece of watercress. “I don’t believe Ingrid could have seen anything useful. I checked out the passageway by Sophia’s cabin this afternoon. I thought Ingrid might have been in a storage room after her duty hours, opened the door, and seen someone at Sophia’s door. That won’t work. There are no storage rooms in the cross corridor. There are two interior cabins opposite 6088.” I was getting all too familiar with that portion of the ship and easily recalled the numbers. “Cabins 6090 and 6093. Of course,” I added perfunctorily, “Sophia’s door is also visible from Evelyn’s cabin and from the cabin opposite Evelyn’s on the starboard side. Will you ask Glenn again just to be certain that he checked with the occupants of all the nearby cabins?”
“He said he did. He’s thorough. If he’d come up with anything, I think we’d know.” Jimmy’s expression was puzzled. “I’d swear there’s something there with Ingrid, but I don’t know what it could be.”
The waiter cleared away the first course.
I took a sip of wine. “I wonder if Glenn’s checked to see what time keys were inserted into the doors of the Riordan cabins Friday night. Your key opened Sophia’s door at eleven-oh-three. I called Sophia at eleven thirty-nine. If a Riordan cabin was entered after eleven-oh-three, that might be a link. I left Sophia at ten-fifteen. She called you at ten-eighteen. That’s the last indication that she was alive. I wish I knew what time Val came down to the bar. If Sophia answered her door, let Val inside, there may have been time for her to have killed Sophia and come upstairs, pretending she’d had too much to drink. It may have been five or ten after eleven when she got to the bar.” It was possible that Val’s interlude with me had been calculated, her apparent lack of memory pretense. Was Rosie worried about what Val might remember? Or terrified about what Val might have done? “All the Riordans were vague about when they turned in.”
Our entrées arrived, lamb chops for me, veal for Jimmy. When the waiter was out of earshot, I looked soberly at Jimmy. “The murderer’s sitting pretty. Glenn may have suspicions, but there isn’t enough proof to tie anyone to Sophia’s disappearance, much less prove she was murdered. Besides, he seems to be inclined toward suicide. If we can’t come up with something specific, her death will be passed off as suicide or an accident.”
“Everything is nebulous.” Jimmy sounded discouraged. “None of the Riordans can prove where they were after ten-eighteen. That’s the critical period: ten-eighteen, when Sophia called me, to eleven thirty-nine, when you called her.”
I looked at Jimmy with a deep sadness. He was convinced that one of the Riordans had committed murder and desperate to see justice done. But there was the heartbreaking possibility that Sophia might have grabbed up the key from the bowl, gone to hunt Jimmy, and used it to reenter the cabin at 11:03. If she were despondent at not finding Jimmy and assumed his lack of response meant he was unwilling to forgive her, she could have gone out on her balcony, key in her hand, clutching the envelope with his letter and the dossiers, and jumped to her death. I did not speak of this to Jimmy. He would never believe Sophia committed suicide.
I know better than ever to say never.
“I don’t know what else to do.” Jimmy’s face creased in misery. “I have to admit Glenn’s done everything he can. He told me he talked to every passenger within twenty cabins either way of Sophia. The only fact he’s certain of is that my key opened her door right after eleven. Everything else is what we’ve told him or the Riordans have told him. It all comes out to nothing.” He looked at me with despair in his eyes. “I’ll never forgive myself if Sophia’s death isn’t avenged.” Then he added, so softly I scarcely heard, “Sophia will never forgive me.”
I reached across the table, caught his hand, wished I could help him bear his weariness and despair. “Sophia would never blame you.”
It was almost as though Sophia were there with us, blue eyes glinting with intelligence, vibrant face inquisitive, golden curls tight against her head. I remembered her that last evening and knew I had to tell Jimmy what she’d said. I hoped it would be of comfort.
“Sophia told me she’d been a fool, that you were kind and caring and generous. She loved you very much, Jimmy.” Then and now I’d not been certain whether Sophia truly loved or desperately sought love.
“I wasn’t there when she needed me.” His eyes were haunted.
I stood on my balcony, gripped the railing. Far below, the white froth of waves glistened in the moonlight. Stars blazed with a magnificence not seen on land except atop remote mountains or in secluded valleys, far from the brightness of cities. The Clio plowed steadily southwestward through the velvety August night.
I felt quite alone, though an occasional splash of light through a balcony door illumined several adjoining balconies. The balconies, of course, were connected, running the length of the ship, each balcony separated from its neighbor by a chest-high railing. Had the traveler next door chosen to enjoy a nightcap on the balcony, we could have exchanged greetings, shaken hands. I smelled the distinctive, to me unpleasant, odor of a cigar. Someone was on a nearby balcony.
I spent almost an hour on the balcony, looking out into the night, thinking and figuring and planning. I didn’t have much hope, but I’d learned as a very young reporter that if you want to know, you have to ask.