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By the time she had got over that and finished her unpacking she was suddenly quite desperately tired and went to bed.
Brigid lay in her bed and listened to the sounds of the ship and the port. Gradually the cabin acquired an air of being her own and somewhere at the back of all the wretchedness there stirred a very slight feeling of anticipation. She heard a pleasant voice saying again, “You don’t sound as excited as I would have expected,” and then she was so sound asleep that she didn’t hear the ship sail and was only very vaguely conscious of the fog signal, booming at two-minute intervals all night.
By half-past twelve all the passengers were in bed, even Mrs. Dillington-Blick, who had given her face a terrific workout with a new and complicated beauty treatment.
The officers of the watch went about their appointed ways and the Cape Farewell, sailing dead slow, moved out of the Thames estuary with a murderer on board.
Captain Jasper Ba
The voices of invisible shipping, hollow and desolate, sounded at uneven distances. Time passed very slowly.
At two-thirty the wireless officer came to the bridge with two messages.
“I thought I’d bring these up myself, sir,” he said, referring obliquely to his cadet. “They’re in code. Urgent.”
Captain Ka
The wireless officer tucked his cap under his arm, entered the captain’s cabin and shut the door.
“This is a damned perishing bloody turn-up,” Captain Ba
VERY SECRET STOP DIRECTORS COMPLIMENTS STOP CONFIDENT YOU WILL SHOW EVERY COURTESY TO SUPERINTENDENT ALLEYN BOARDING YOU OFF PORTSMOUTH BY PILOT CUTTER STOP WILL TRAVEL AS PASSENGER STOP SUGGEST USES PILOTS ROOM STOP PLEASE KEEP ME PERSONALLY ADVISED ALL DEVELOPMENTS STOP YOUR COMPANY RELIES ON YOUR DISCRETION AND JUDGMENT STOP CAMERON STOP MESSAGE ENDS.
Captain Ba
URGENT IMMEDIATE AND CONFIDENTIAL STOP SUPERINTENDENT R ALLEYN WILL BOARD YOU OFF PORTSMOUTH BY PILOT CUTTER STOP HE WILL EXPLAIN NATURE OF PROBLEM STOP THIS DEPARTMENT IS IN COMMUNICATION WITH YOUR COMPANY STOP C A MAJORIE-BANKS ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DEPARTMENT SCOTLAND YARD MESSAGE ENDS
“I’ll give you the replies,” Captain Ba
“Certainly, sir.”
“Dead under.”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Very well.”
“Thank you, sir.”
When the wireless officer had gone Captain Ba
Throughout the rest of the night he gave the matter in hand, which was the pilotage of his ship through the worst fog for ten years, his sharpest attention. At the same time and on a different level, he speculated about his passengers. He had caught glimpses of them from the bridge. Like every man who so much as glanced at her, he had received a very positive impression of Mrs. Dillington-Blick. A fine woman. He had also noticed Brigid Carmichael, who came under the general heading of Sweet Young Girl and who would, as they approached the tropics, probably cause a ferment among his officers. At another level he was aware of, and disturbed by, the two radiograms. Why the suffering cats, he angrily wondered, should he have to take in at the last second a plain-clothes detective? His mind ranged through an assortment of possible reasons. Stowaway? Escaping criminal? Wanted man in the crew? Perhaps merely a last-minute assignment at Las Palmas, but if so, why didn’t the fellow fly? It would be an infernal bore to have to put him up; in the pilot’s room of all places, where one would be perpetually aware of his presence. At four o’clock, the time of low vitality, Captain Ba
All the next morning the fog still hung over the English Cha
Mr. McAngus, too, remained but a short time on deck and soon retired to the passengers’ drawing-room, where, after peering doubtfully at the bookcases, he sat in a corner and fell asleep. Mrs. Cuddy was also there and also asleep. She had decided in the teeth of the weather forecast that it was going to be rough and had taken a pill. Miss Abbott was tramping up and down the narrow lower deck, having, perhaps instinctively, hit upon that part of the ship which after the first few hours is deserted by almost everyone. In the plan shown to passengers it was called the promenade deck.
It was Brigid who first noticed the break in the weather. A kind of thin warmth fell across the page of her book; she looked up and saw that the curtain of fog had grown threadbare and that sunlight had weakly filtered through. At the same moment the Farewell gave her noonday hoot and then Brigid heard the sound of an engine. She went over to the port side and there, quite close, was the pilot cutter. She watched it come alongside the rope ladder. A tall man stood amidships, looking up at the Farewell. Brigid was extremely critical of men’s clothes and she noticed his with absent-minded approval. A sailor at the head of the ladder dropped a line to the cutter and hauled up two cases. The pilot went off and the tall man climbed the ladder very handily and was met by the cadet on duty, who took him up to the bridge.
On his way he passed Mr. Merryman and Mr. Cuddy, who looked up from their crime novels and were struck by the same vague notion, immediately dismissed, that they had seen the new arrival before. In this they were not altogether mistaken; on the previous evening they had both looked at his heavily distorted photograph in the Evening Herald. He was Superintendent R. Alleyn.