The Woman in Cabin 10(49)

“I know. What were you doing down in the spa?”

“Didn’t you just hear me? Looking for you.”

I stared at him, at his face, the picture of innocence, his eyes above his dark beard round and full of urgency. Could I trust him? I had absolutely no idea. A few years ago I would have said I knew Ben inside out—right up until the moment he walked out. Now I had learned that I couldn’t even totally trust myself, let alone another person.

“Did you come into my treatment room?” I asked abruptly.

“What?” He looked momentarily confused. “No, of course not. They said you were getting a mud wrap. I didn’t think you’d want me barging in. I was told to look for some girl called Ulla, but she wasn’t there, so I pushed a note under your door and came back up.”

“I didn’t see any note.”

“Well, I left one. What’s this about?”

Something in my chest felt like bursting—a mixture of fear and frustration. How could I possibly know if Ben were telling the truth? The note would be a stupid thing to lie about anyway—even if he’d written the message in the steam, why fib about leaving me a note? Perhaps it had been there, and I’d just overlooked it in my panic.

“Someone else left me a message,” I said at last. “Written in steam on the mirror of the shower next door while I was having the treatment. It said Stop digging.”

“What?” His pink face went slack with shock, his mouth hanging open. If he was acting, it was the best performance I’d ever seen him give. “Are you serious?”

“One hundred percent.”

“But—but didn’t you see them go in? Is there another entrance to the bathroom?”

“No. They must have come through the room. I . . .” I felt oddly ashamed saying it, but I put my chin up, refusing to be apologetic. “I fell asleep. There’s only one entrance to the spa, and Eva says no one went down except for Tina and Chloe . . . and you.”

“And the spa staff,” Ben reminded me. “Plus, surely there must be a fire exit down there?”

“There’s an exit, but it’s one-way. It leads into the staff quarters, but you can’t open it from the other side. I asked.”

Ben looked unconvinced.

“Not that hard for someone to wedge it open, though, right?”

“No, but it’s alarmed. There would have been sirens going off all over the place.”

“Well, I guess it’s possible if you knew enough about the system you could fiddle with the alarm settings. But Eva wasn’t there the whole time, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“She wasn’t there when I came back up. Anne Bullmer was—she was waiting for her nail varnish to dry. But Eva was gone. So if she says she was there for the whole time, she’s not telling the truth.”

Oh God. I thought about myself, lying there, half-naked beneath the thin film wraps and towels, and how someone—anyone—could have come in and placed a hand over my mouth, wound a sheet of plastic around my head . . .

“So what did you want to see me about?” I said, trying to sound normal. Ben looked uneasy.

“Oh . . . that. Well, you know we were on a tour of the bridge and so on?”

I nodded.

“Archer was trying to text someone, I think, and he dropped his phone. I picked it up, and it was open on the contacts page.”

“And?”

“The name just said Jess, but the preview picture was a girl, a lot like the one you described. Late twenties, long dark hair, dark eyes . . . and this is the thing—she was wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt.”

Something cold trickled down my spine. I remembered Archer last night, his laughing face as he twisted my arm up behind my back, Chloe’s disapproving maybe the rumors about his first wife are true. . . .

“Was she the person he was trying to text?” I asked. Ben shook his head.

“I don’t know. He might have pressed a few buttons when he fumbled the phone.”

Automatically, I pulled out my own phone, ready to google “Jess Fenlan”—but the search bar whirred fruitlessly. The Internet was still down, and my e-mails were still not loading.

“Is your Internet working?” I asked Ben. He shook his head.

“No, there’s some issue with the router, apparently. I suppose teething problems are par for the course with maiden voyages, but it’s a right pain. Archer was sounding off about it over lunch; he kicked up quite a stink to poor Hanni. I thought she was about to burst into tears at one point. Anyway, she went and spoke to Camilla Wotserface, and it’ll be fixed shortly, apparently. At least, I bloody hope it will be, I’ve got a piece to file.”

I frowned as I pushed the phone back in my pocket.

Could Archer have been the person who wrote the message in the steam? I thought of his strength, the hint of cruelty in his smile last night, and I felt sick at the idea of him tiptoeing past me while I slept.

“We went down to the engine room,” Ben said, almost as if reading my thoughts. “It’s three decks down, we probably passed fairly close to that exit from the spa you were talking about.”

“Would you have noticed if someone had peeled off from the group?” I asked. Ben shook his head.

“I doubt it. The engine deck was very cramped, we were all kind of strung out, slotting in and out of small spaces, the group only got back together when we got upstairs.”