Gasps rippled around the room.
“What in the holy mother’s name do you mean?” asked Gustave, levitating above his chair. His face was hardly impassive now. Little flecks of spittle flew from his lips onto Dolores, who gently wiped them away with her handkerchief.
Neville entered at that moment, struggling under the weight of a box. He looked satisfied, but grim. Ruby nodded at him and smiled. He stood at the table outside the semicircle as if he were awaiting orders.
“Yes. The murderer wasn’t there.” Again, another murmur of voices around the room. Fina saw Ruby warming to her role. The dramatic reveal was still to come.
“You see,” said Ruby. “We know Balraj died from a blow to the back of his head.”
“And from our calculations, it had to be someone quite tall, or someone in heels,” interjected Ian. Fina smiled to herself.
“Yes, and by what we found in the room, someone had not only moved the body, but had cleaned up after themselves. They would have needed to find cleaning supplies and dispose of them afterwards – all in twenty minutes,” said Ruby.
“Well, then it had to be Miss Dominguez!” said Sadie. “She would be tall enough in heels, and she was the only one besides Violet who had the opportunity.”
“It would seem that way, Lady Winchcombe-Twisleton, but we still encounter the old problem of this being an impossible murder in terms of timing.”
“Is this drama necessary? Please get on with it, Ruby,” said Emeline in a harsh voice. Ian flashed Emeline a warning look. She ignored him.
“It’s Miss Dove to me, Miss Caulk. In any case,” she said, returning to her previous subject, “it is quite necessary and you’ll see why when we come to a conclusion.”
She continued. “Let’s leave the problem of the seeming impossibility of Mr Chadha’s murder to the side for a moment. Consider the case of Patricia Burbage’s murder.”
Emeline blew her nose loudly in her handkerchief.
Ruby glanced at Ian. He nodded. “We know that Mrs Burbage was killed by cyanide in her glass of port.”
“Good God man, stop stating the obvious,” yelled Phillip. Fina had never seen the man so agitated before. He was normally such a good-natured, rather bland character. Now he was all fire and brimstone. What had changed?
Ian ignored the outburst. “While we know the cyanide was in the glass – and that any one of us could have put it there given the distraction of the cat in the kitchen – we didn’t know if it had originally been poured into the bottle. We did find out afterwards that it was in the bottle and Mrs Burbage’s glass, but not Ruby’s.”
Ian’s voice rose. “At first, I thought the target was Miss Dove. But after our analysis, with the help of Mrs Gibbs,” he said, nodding gratefully in Violet’s direction, “we discovered that the target was indeed Mrs Burbage. Miss Dove might have been a secondary target: although there wasn’t poison in her glass, there was cyanide in the port bottle.”
“And Mrs Burbage had told us earlier that she thought someone wanted to harm her,” added Fina.
“Exactly,” said Ian. “Add to that the scorpion incident – which initially seemed either an accident or a warning to Miss Caulk – and we have a relatively clear picture of a build up toward Patricia’s murder.”
“What about Miss Gidge?” asked Dolores. “Poor woman. I’m quite glad she is on the mend.”
Obligatory nods of agreement came from everyone in the room.
“Miss Gidge knew too much,” said Ruby. “It took her a while, but she had access to clues that no one else had. She tried to get in contact with Fina and me before she was attacked. She was hesitant to express her suspicions, but I believe the second murder made her feel that she had to come forward.”
“Unfortunately, the murderer found her before we could,” said Fina.
Agnes wobbled into the dining room on a makeshift cane.
Victor and Gilbert trailed behind her. Sarah looked to Ruby who nodded in reply. Sarah rose and the pair trundled after her like little ducklings out of the room. Fina had seen Ruby and Sarah discussing their plan of action earlier. Ruby said she wanted Agnes’ entrance to be a surprise.
Fina saw looks of pity on her fellow passengers’ faces as Agnes lowered herself in a chair just outside the circle. Neville rushed over to put a pillow behind her back.
Agnes surveyed the crowd, her hand resting on top of her cane, looking like an ancient soothsayer.
“Thank you for joining us, Miss Gidge. I know that we are all relieved, with the exception of one of us, that you are on the mend,” said Ruby. “Now,” she said, gesturing to the crowd, “I hope that Miss Gidge will share what she knows about these two murders – and her own attempted murder.”
“Shall I begin with Mr Chadha, miss?” asked Agnes, wincing from pain, though also clearly enjoying her moment in the limelight, thought Fina.
“Yes, please do.”
“Right, miss.” She took a long sip of water from the glass Neville had brought to her. “As you all know by now, I brought trays to Mrs Gibbs, Miss Dominguez and Mr Chadha that first night. The main thing is that I brought Mr Chadha’s tray at 6:45, knocked and knocked but there wasn’t no answer. So I left the tray thinking he’d fallen asleep. Course, when I picked it up the next morning, he hadn’t eaten it, had he? That’s when I knew something wasn’t right.”
“And that’s when we discovered he was murdered,” said Ruby.
“Right you are, miss. Awful it was, though there weren’t much blood. I didn’t think about it at the time because I never seen a murder before.”
“What happened then, Miss Gidge?” asked Fina.
“Well, I went about my business, as usual. Though the whole thing made me nervy. Always looking over my shoulder, I was,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “But after the second murder, some ideas in my head began to bother me more. It was like there was a bee buzzing in the back of my head. It wouldn’t leave me alone, but I couldn’t quite figure out where or what it was.”
“And that was the key to the whole mystery,” Ruby put in. “The clue that escaped us all, but which, if I’d only realised it, one of the ship’s crew had known about all along.”
She exchanged glances with Agnes, who nodded at her.
“The bed-clothing.”