Ransom at Sea Read online

  “You go in first,” Emily said to Lynn with a smile, “that way I won’t have so far to slide.”

  Lynn complied, shifting herself over to the window somewhat gracelessly, then Emily sat beside her. Ransom took his place across from them.

  A rail-thin, pockmarked waitress in a pink uniform with a blue apron approached the booth with the tip of her pencil already poised on her small green pad.

  “This all one check?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Ransom. He ordered eggs and bacon, and Emily ordered a club sandwich. Lynn declined any food at first, until Emily insisted that she eat in order to keep up her strength. Lynn consented to have the same as Emily, and the waitress slumped away.

  “So,” said Ransom, folding his hands on the table, “why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me what happened?”

  Emily started to say something but Lynn cut in. “First of all, Rebecca didn’t do it!”

  Her two companions looked at her.

  “That’s what I’m here to look into,” said Ransom.

  “It’s no good unless you have it right from the beginning,” said Lynn, surprised at her own intensity. “You have to start out knowing that Rebecca didn’t do it!”

  “You seem awfully sure of that.”

  “I am sure! She couldn’t kill anyone, let alone her aunt.”

  “You’re fond of her?”

  Lynn’s cheeks turned red. “I like her.”

  “I see.”

  Her eyes flashed. “No, you don’t see! I don’t know her well, but I do know that she adored her aunt. She wouldn’t have killed her.” She glanced at Emily and her redness deepened when she saw something close to pity in those aged eyes.

  “So, Emily,” said Ransom, “all you told me on the phone was that this woman had been murdered, and you thought the police were interested in the wrong person. Possibly. Do you have a—” His eyes shifted for a split second in Lynn’s direction. She was looking down at the table. “—particular reason for thinking that?”

  Emily adjusted herself in her seat. “I suppose I do, but nothing that you would call conclusive. I imagine it’s possible that Miss Bremmer killed her aunt—” Lynn raised her eyes and started to say something, but Emily headed her off. “I know, my dear, it would be a terribly hard thing to accept, but I’m talking in terms of conjecture.” She turned back to Ransom. “As I said, I suppose it’s possible. Marcella Hemsley had become—through no fault of her own—a difficult and rather disagreeable woman, and Miss Bremmer was facing the prospect of putting her in a nursing home, a thing she was loath to do. I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility for someone in that position to…” She allowed her voice to trail off, finishing with a suggestive shrug.

  “You mean mercy killing,” said Ransom.

  “But she loved her aunt!” Lynn objected.

  “Exactly. She loved her very much. We all witnessed how patiently and devotedly she cared for her aunt.”

  After a beat, Lynn looked away from her, and Emily turned back to Ransom.

  “You see, a few things have happened in the two days we’ve been gone that, in lieu of any sort of explanation, look a bit odd. Now, if Rebecca did indeed kill her aunt, then I suppose none of these things really matter. But if she didn’t kill her, then there are things that need to be looked into. And you see, Jeremy, Sheriff Barnes didn’t quite see the importance.”

  “And what are these little things you’re talking about?” Ransom asked.

  She shook her head slowly and gave him a self-deprecating smile. “I’m afraid you’re going to think I’m very foolish.…”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Well—”

  They were interrupted by the arrival of the food. The waitress held a plate in each hand and had the third precariously balanced on her left forearm.

  “I remember you’re the odd man out,” she said as she placed the dish full of eggs and bacon in front of Ransom. She then put the other two plates in front of the women.

  “I’ll be back with coffee,” the waitress said over her shoulder as she walked away.

  “This looks very nice,” said Emily, eyeing the three-decked concoction that had been cut into triangles, each of which was speared with a toothpick topped with crinkles of colored cellophane.

  “You were saying?” Ransom prompted.

  “Oh, yes. The first thing might’ve been a dream—at least in part, because I’m almost sure I was at least partially awake.” She related what she remembered of the anxious conversation on the white deck, then told him of the meeting she’d witnessed between Stuart Holmes and the stranger, and the stranger’s reappearance that night on the dock.

  Ransom had been listening to her thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t think it was that unusual to run into someone you know in Sangamore. And, having done that, would it be so odd for his friend to visit him later on the boat?”

  “But the way that guy acted at the dock,” Lynn cut in. “He turned his face away when he passed under the light. Emily called it furtive, and that’s certainly the way it looked to me—like he was afraid of being recognized.”

  A new thought occurred to Emily. “Recognized … or described. He did look familiar to me, somehow.…” She lost herself in thought for a moment, then shook her head. “But Jeremy, that in itself wouldn’t seem strange except for one other thing: the stranger showed up here just as we all set off on our hikes. And he went into the general store where Stuart Holmes was waiting.”

  “Hmm,” he said, raising his right eyebrow a fraction of an inch. “Is there more?”

  “Well, of course, the big event—other than the murder—is that the night before last, our first night out, Marcella woke everyone on the boat screaming that someone had been in her room.”

  “You don’t think she was a reliable witness.”

  Emily shook her head. “Wholly unreliable, I should think. But I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility that there really was someone in her room—even though it may just have been one of the stewards looking in to check on her.”

  “She accused David Douglas,” Lynn said, her brittle tone surprising the detective.

  “Did she?”

  Lynn smiled for the first time since the murder had occurred. “I wish you’d stop doing that.”

  “What?” he asked innocently.

  “Responding to me as if I’m the world’s most questionable witness.”

  “I’ll be glad to oblige … if you’ll tell me what you have against David Douglas.”

  The smile disappeared and her jaw hardened. “Nothing. He’s just a pest.”

  “How so?”

  “He … just is. He’s one of those overly friendly people who don’t have a sincere bone in their bodies.”

  He turned to their elderly companion. “Emily?”

  “He’s quite an ingratiating young man,” she said with a hint of a twinkle in her eye.

  “You are perhaps the only woman I know who could make that sound damning.”

  Lynn said, “But Becky’s aunt did say it was David she saw.” She paused, then added grudgingly, “But it couldn’t have been him. The captain himself—and yes, before you ask, he is a reliable witness—said that David followed him and his wife into the corridor where the passenger cabins are.”

  “Yes, he did say that,” said Emily, “and I’m sure the captain was being completely honest. But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t David Douglas who was in Marcella’s room.”

  “If someone was,” said Ransom.

  Emily nodded. “Granted.”

  “How is that possible?” Lynn asked.

  “Well, we were all woken from a sound sleep. It took us all a bit of time to respond to Marcella’s cries, and I’d image even longer for the captain, whose cabin is at the other end of the boat. The boat isn’t all that long—surely if it was David that Marcella saw, the moment she woke and started screaming he would’ve taken off for his own cabin.”

  “How long are we talking ab
out here?” Ransom asked.

  Emily offered a genteel shrug. “Before anyone got to the corridor? I don’t know … thirty seconds? Sixty seconds? Maybe longer. It wouldn’t take nearly that long for someone like David to have run to the back of the boat.”

  “Wouldn’t he have been heard running?” Lynn asked.

  Emily shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not in the confusion.”

  “All right,” said Ransom, “so we have the incident in the night, the stranger visiting Stuart Holmes, and the conversation you think you overheard but might have dreamed. Is there anything else?”

  Emily raised her head and looked off in the distance as if something were niggling at the back of her mind. “There was one other odd thing … if I could remember what—” Her face suddenly brightened and she looked Ransom in the eye. “Oh, yes. It seems very unimportant—and it probably is—but it struck me as peculiar at the time. When we were in Sangamore, Lynn and I met Marcella and Rebecca for dinner at a pub.”

  “A pub?” Ransom echoed with a grin.

  “Yes. It was very crowded, and far in the back of the room there was Claudia Trenton, who has made a point of keeping herself aloof from her fellow travelers—which in itself does make me wonder why she would choose to come on a trip like this, since a certain degree of camaraderie is to be expected.…”

  “Emily…”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Claudia was having dinner with Bertram Driscoll.” Having imparted this bit of information, Emily took a bite of her sandwich.

  “Is that significant?”

  She finished chewing and swallowed. “That’s just the thing. I don’t know if it is or isn’t. Miss Trenton and Mr. Driscoll are polar opposites, and the last people one would expect to see dining together under any circumstances. It was just another thing that struck me as not quite right.”

  “But he explained that,” said Lynn, who had been eying Emily curiously as she’d related this.

  “Yes, he made a point of explaining it, when it wasn’t really necessary.” Emily’s brow knit slightly. “I would’ve thought Claudia would’ve been the one who would want to explain.…” Her face cleared. “But, no matter. The other thing is, Mr. Driscoll was the one who woke me up when I was overhearing the conversation on the deck.” She paused and looked at Ransom significantly.

  “I see,” he said, nodding. “So since Claudia was the only one on deck, it’s reasonable to suppose she was the female voice you heard, and Driscoll was the one she was talking to.”

  “It’s possible. It would be unlike him to be so quiet, but it would make another instance of the two of them together, in a situation that could be thought questionable.”

  Ransom was looking down at his half-finished eggs and slowly drumming his fingers on the pink tabletop. “And you told all this to Sheriff Barnes?”

  “Yes, and he didn’t think anything of it!” Lynn snapped.

  “Well, in all honesty, Lynn, if I didn’t know Emily, I don’t think I’d make much of it, either.”

  Emily sighed. “I’m afraid it does all seem rather inconsequential. And as I said, if Rebecca is guilty, it all amounts to nothing. It may do that either way. But if she’s innocent, then these things bear looking into, don’t you think?”

  5

  Ransom wasn’t at all sure that it did warrant looking into. Emily was usually unfailing in her ability to sense when something wasn’t quite right, but she herself readily admitted that on this occasion her observations seemed trivial. Ransom could sympathize with Sheriff Barnes … and yet, even the sheriff had sensed that something was wrong with the setup.

  A half-overheard conversation, an encounter with a stranger, the wrong people dining together: things that might have the ominous quality of the beginnings of a nightmare where minor occurrences are infused with an inexplicable foreboding before something terrible happens.

  But that was exactly what happened, wasn’t it? Ransom thought. Minor forebodings, and now a woman is dead. With an inward sigh he admitted to himself that Emily was most likely right.

  They dropped Lynn off at the sheriff’s station, then headed south for the dock which was a little over a mile away.

  “This isn’t exactly going to be an easy task, is it?” Emily observed.

  “Well,” Ransom replied, “I can question Holmes about his friend, of course. As for the rest of it, I don’t know what point there would be in asking Trenton and Driscoll about their dinner, since they’d just give me the same explanation he gave you. And if there was something fishy about it, asking them would put them on their guard. Are you sure it was Claudia Trenton you heard on the deck?”

  “Not for a moment,” Emily admitted candidly. “I do wish I could be more definite. Claudia was the only one there when I drifted off, and she was still there when I woke. The conversation was stopped by the sound of approaching footsteps coming up the steps … the starboard stairs, I believe. The next thing I knew, Bertram Driscoll was standing over me, waking me up. When I turned around to see who had been talking, Claudia was in her deck chair, presumably asleep. Mr. Driscoll said he hadn’t seen anybody else. It could very well be that Claudia was talking to someone else, and Mr. Driscoll came up the stairs and the other person fled down the port stairs, not wanting to be seen with her. When the footsteps sounded, the woman said ‘wait,’ and there was nothing more after that.”

  “Hmm. Has it occurred to you that perhaps Driscoll was the one she’d been talking to, and he came over to make sure you were asleep?”

  “Yes, it has. But if it’s true, that would mean Bertram Driscoll is very clever.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She smiled. “Because he told me that was what he was doing.”

  When they reached Friendly’s, Ransom turned right into the parking lot and came to a stop at the ridge of trees that bordered the lake. He switched off the engine and sighed deeply. “Emily, I’m really sorry this had to happen on your vacation.”

  “I shouldn’t be,” she replied with Victorian spirit. “It’s been a very interesting trip so far.”

  He laughed. “I suppose if no one had been murdered, you’d feel slighted.”

  She made a gently deprecating noise. “What do you propose to do first?”

  “I don’t suppose I could convince you to leave the boat and stay at the motel.”

  She shook her head. “I couldn’t leave Lynn alone on the boat.”

  “I meant both of you.”

  “I can assure you Lynn will not leave the boat,” Emily said solemnly. “She is determined to clear Rebecca.”

  Ransom turned to face her with one brow upraised. “What’s going on there? Did Lynn know Rebecca before now?”

  “No, I’m sure she didn’t.”

  “Then how on earth did they form this bond so quickly? It’s only been a couple of days.”

  Emily smiled at him with grandmotherly affection. “Have you ever heard of a shipboard romance?”

  “Has it gone that far?”

  “I suppose right now you would call it a strong affinity. But think of Lynn’s character. Rebecca is someone who needs support—she was caring for a difficult relation, and under a great amount of strain. Lynn likes to help people who are in need. That’s simply her nature. Remember, when her lover, Maggie, was terminally ill, Lynn quit her job and went to work as a very efficient cleaning woman so that she could command her own time.” Emily paused and her eyes wandered out through the windshield. “I suppose it’s my good fortune that she decided not to go back to the corporate world once Maggie was gone.”

  “So you think the relationship between them is nothing more than Lynn wanting to help someone in need.”

  Emily quickly came back to the present and looked at him pointedly. “No, I think that may have been the basis of it. But for Lynn it goes deeper than that.”

  Ransom ran a hand over his close-cropped blond hair, then rested his arm on the back of the seat. “Emily, have you been playing matchmaker?”

&nb
sp; She looked mildly affronted at the suggestion, though her smile belied the offense. “Certainly not! Of course, I’ve been gracious about having Marcella and Rebecca accompany us.…”

  Ransom laughed. “Oh, I’ll bet you have! Now, to get down to the matter at hand, you can give me the lay of the land.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “We know that Marcella was killed sometime after you all started on your outing. Can you tell me where everyone was?”

  Emily sighed with frustration, folded her hands again, and rested them in her lap. “That’s just the problem, and I’m afraid it’s not going to make your task any easier.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Virtually everyone was on their own just before we discovered the body. Lily DuPree had decided to stay onboard rather than hike—which is not at all surprising because she’s rather frail and I don’t think she would’ve been able to manage the trails very well.”

  “She stayed on the boat?” Ransom said with interest.

  “Yes, but from what I understand she claims to have fallen asleep and didn’t hear or see a thing—which is also not surprising. The boat is small enough that you do feel the motion of the water. It’s an amazingly effective soporific. Add to that the fact that our sleep was interrupted the night before, and there you are.”

  “I see. Go on.”

  Emily raised her chin and took a deep breath. “The Millers were the first to leave the group.…” She went through the roster of passengers, relating when each of them had split off from the main group. “The only other people we saw at all was the stranger that drove up in the green car, and a pair of hikers looking in those shops over there.”

  “Hikers?”

  “Yes. Apparently that’s what they were. They were there when we first came along, and gone when we came out of the visitor’s center.”

  “Hmm. So the Millers were off on their own,” Ransom said, ticking them off one by one, “Claudia Trenton, Lily DuPree, and Stuart Holmes were each on their own. Muriel Langstrom, Jackson Brock, and Bertram Driscoll were together for a while but separated. Were the last three alone long enough to go back to the boat and kill Marcella?”