The Riverboat Mystery (Jenny Starling #3)(22)

There, the dirty plates and things awaited her. Obviously Francis and duty departed at the galley door. Not that she really minded. Jenny disliked having anyone lurking about in her kitchen anyway — especially after that shocking incident with Professor Mawwhinney’s pet rattlesnake. But was it her fault that reptiles liked to seek out warm places? Besides, it hadn’t been her that had loaded the dishwasher that day.

She quickly washed and wiped, and walked to the full-length food cupboard to inspect the shelves and quickly gather together the ingredients she needed, then began heaping them in related piles onto the table.

A quick glance at her watch reassured her that she had hours yet, and so she left the spick-and-span galley and made her way to the starboard deck. Since the port deck was the centre of all the activities, Jenny had come to regard the starboard deck as her own. She took her old deckchair of this morning and put it in her favourite spot, and settled back with a happy sigh.

As she did so, a fine pair of two-month-old mallards floated past the side, on the lookout for bread scraps. Jenny eyed them with a jaundiced eye, then returned to the galley. She came back with the leftover bread rolls and tossed them over the side.

The ducks gobbled them up, then promptly showed her their tail feathers.

Jenny smiled.

Just then, she saw a human-shaped shadow appear on the deck and looked up automatically. Above her were the bedroom balconies, and on the one nearest the prow of the boat, she saw a pair of milky-white arms appear, and then some wisps of silver-gold hair.

Dorothy Leigh looked out over the side, cautiously and sensibly eyeing the river to check on the density of the weeds. Seeing that the river was clearest on the right-hand side of the boat, she grabbed a towel and skipped lightly down the stairs. She was glad of a few moments to herself. Between them — but for vastly different reasons — her husband and Gabriel Olney were beginning to make her feel acutely miserable.

She walked to the rear deck and opened the boarding gate, which now opened out into the middle of the river, and with a slight gasp — for no matter how hot the summers were, the rivers in England always felt icy — she slipped lithely into the clear water. It wouldn’t have done to do so when the majestic paddles were turning, obviously, but with the boat stationary she felt perfectly safe.

Jenny heard a slow steady splash, and opened one eye. If those ducks had returned for more bread, she’d . . . She opened the other eye as the silver head of Dorothy Leigh came into sight. She began to open her mouth to call out that it was dangerous to swim after a big meal, and then shut it again.

After all, it was none of her business.

Besides, the cook conceded a few minutes later, Dorothy Leigh was obviously not about to get into difficulties. She swam several hundred yards in an excellent overarm crawl, then swam back in a more leisurely but strong breaststroke.

She was obviously a very fit young woman. It was a good sign, Jenny thought with satisfaction, for both the baby’s sake and the mother’s. The general medical view nowadays was that cosseting pregnant women, as a rule, did them far more harm than good. Or so she’d read. She herself had no immediate plans on motherhood, no matter how much her divorced parents might collectively wheedle and moan about the lack of grandchildren to spoil.

Jenny closed her eyes again, but contrary to appearances she didn’t doze. Jenny Starling never dozed on the job. She thought instead of the evening meal that she was going to prepare, and was happily imagining the looks of stunned and happy amazement on the faces of the guests as they took their first mouthful.

It was a very pleasant daydream with which to pass the afternoon away.

A pity, really, that it was the last moment of real contentment that Jenny Starling was going to enjoy on that particular trip.

*

The cook was just going down the corridor that ran between the walls of the salon and the engine room when she saw Jasmine Olney cross the open space at the far end.

Jenny had been heading for the games room. She’d noticed that it also doubled as a library, and had shelves of books of the thriller, murder mystery and more salubrious kind. And she was rather partial to the classic whodunnit era of British literature. Seeing Jasmine, though, she hesitated.

She didn’t like being too conspicuous to the guests, but on a boat of this size (not to mention being of a rather noticeable size herself) it wasn’t always possible to be invisible.

The boat was once more under way, heading for its overnight stop near the quaintly named village of Chimney. The three o’clock sun was at its highest point, and Jenny was seeking a cooler spot where she could read for an hour or two in peace before the controlled panic that always preceded a big, complicated dinner.

When she stepped out onto the rear deck, however, it was deserted. Which was decidedly odd, since the only way to get off the rear deck was to go along the port deck, or enter the salon or games room, both of which led off in the opposite direction from that which she’d seen Jasmine go.

Then she heard a throaty feminine laugh, more like a purr than any sound a human being might make, and it was definitely coming from the engine room. Jenny very quickly walked into the games room and selected a book. She most definitely did not want to know what Jasmine Olney found to laugh about with Brian O’Keefe in the privacy of the boiler room.

No siree. In Jenny’s vast experience, it didn’t pay to mind anybody’s business but your own. And if only more people observed that rule, she thought grimly as she selected a Patricia Wentworth novel, then she might not have been called upon to help solve such a depressingly large number of murders.