The Woman in Cabin 10(63)

I let out a sigh and picked up my abandoned evening bag to check the time on my phone and set the alarm for tomorrow. I wasn’t waiting for a call from Karla—I wanted to be up and off the boat as soon as possible.

But my phone wasn’t inside.

I turned the bag upside down, shaking it out but knowing it was fruitless—the bag was small and light, and there was no way anything heavier than a postcard could have been concealed inside. It wasn’t on the bed. Could it have slipped onto the floor?

I tried to think clearly.

I could have left it at the dinner table—but I hadn’t taken it out of my bag, and in any case, I had a clear memory of feeling it inside my evening bag during the argument with Ben. And I would have noticed its weight missing when I threw the bag on the bed.

I checked the bathroom in case I’d taken it in there on autopilot, but it wasn’t there, either.

I began to search harder, throwing the duvet onto the floor, pushing the bed to one side—and that’s when I saw it.

There was a footprint, a wet footprint, on the white carpet, very close to the veranda door.

I froze.

Could it have been me? Getting out of the bath?

But I knew that was impossible. I’d dried my feet in the bathroom, and I hadn’t walked anywhere near that window. I moved closer, touching the cold, damp shape with my fingertips, and I realized this was the print of a shoe. You could see the shape of the heel.

There was only one possibility.

I stood up, slid back the veranda door, and went out onto the balcony. There, I hung out over the rail, looking across to the empty veranda on the left of mine. The white glass privacy screen to either side was very high, and very sheer, but if you were daring and had a head for heights, and didn’t mind the possibility of slipping to a watery grave, you could just get over it.

I was shivering convulsively, my thin dressing gown no protection from the cold North Sea wind, but there was one more thing I had to try, though I was going to be very sorry and feel very stupid if it turned out I was wrong.

Carefully, I dragged the sliding glass door closed and let it click into position.

Then I tried to pull it back.

It worked—smooth as silk.

I went inside and did the same thing, and then checked the lock. As I had thought, there was no way of securing the veranda door to prevent someone entering from the outside. It was logical, really, now that I thought about it. The only person who should be on the veranda was an occupant of the room. You couldn’t risk someone accidentally locking themselves out there in bad weather, unable to get back inside and raise the alarm, or a child shutting a parent out there in a moment of rebellion, and then being unable to work the lock.

And really—what was there to fear? The veranda faced the sea—there was no possibility of someone accessing it from the outside.

Except there was. If you were very bold, and very stupid.

Now I understood. All the locks and bolts and DO NOT DISTURB signs in the world wouldn’t do any good on my cabin door, not when the balcony offered a clear route to anyone with access to the empty room, and enough upper-body strength to pull themselves over.

My room was not safe, and never had been.


Back inside the suite, I got into my jeans and boots, and my favorite hoodie. Then I checked the lock on the cabin door and huddled on the sofa with a cushion hugged to my chest.

There was no possibility of sleep now.

Anyone could have access to the empty suite. And from there, it was just a short climb across the glass divider into mine. The truth was, I could draw the bolt across my cabin door as much as I liked, but any member of the staff could open the empty cabin with their passkey. As for the guests . . .

I thought again of the layout of the cabins. To the right of mine was Archer’s, ex-marine, with an upper-body strength that made me wince when I remembered it. And to the left . . . to the left was the empty cabin, and beyond that, curving round the ship to the other side of the corridor, was Ben Howard’s.

Ben. Who had deliberately cast doubt on my story with Nilsson.

Ben, who had lied about his alibi.

And he had known about the photos on Cole’s camera before I did. His words came back to me as if in a dream: He was showing them to us over lunch. He had some great pics . . .

Ben Howard. The one person on board I had thought I could trust.

But I pushed that thought away—focusing on the phone, and the stupidity and daring of coming in to steal it while I was in the bath. He had risked a lot to take it, and the question was why. Why now? But I thought I knew.

The answer was Trondheim. As long as the boat’s Internet was down, the perpetrator had nothing to worry about. I couldn’t make a call to land without going through Camilla Lidman. But once we started to draw closer to land . . .

I hugged the cushion harder to my chest, and I thought of Trondheim, and Judah, and the police.

All I had to do was make it until dawn.





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Monday 28 September

iamsherlocked: Hey guys, anyone else been following this Lorna Blacklock case? Looks like theyve found a body.

TheNamesMarpleJaneMarple: I think you’ll find it’s Laura Blacklock actually. Yes, I’ve been following it. Really tragic and sadly not that unusual. I read somewhere that more than 160 people have gone missing off cruise ships in the past few years, and almost none of those have been solved.