The Riverboat Mystery (Jenny Starling #3)(25)

Dorothy noticed it especially.

She’d remarked to her husband on their earlier trip on the Stillwater Swan that Francis and Lucas made a very odd pair. Lucas was just so cockney, and Francis was so proper. They should have been oil and water, but weren’t. They seemed to conspire against the world in some odd sort of way. It was almost spooky.

Now she took another sip of soup, and tried again to break the deadlock.

‘I must say, I really do like this,’ she offered stiltedly. ‘You wouldn’t have thought our cook would have had such a subtle hand, would you? Not to look at her, I mean,’ she laughed. ‘When I went for my swim this afternoon I saw her sitting out on the deck, and I could have sworn she was asleep.’

‘Probably stuffed herself on all the leftovers from lunch,’ Jasmine said cattily, and totally inaccurately.

Jenny always prepared a plate of food for herself at the same time as she prepared the plates for the guests.

Jenny was no mug.

In the galley, Francis returned, his face thoughtful.

Something was up, that was for sure. He’d never seen Lucas look so upset and uneasy before.

Just then, Captain Lester came through from the bridge. The Swan was moored not a mile from Chimney, and he accepted the plate of soup the cook gave him with a somewhat distracted air. He looked at Francis.

‘Any idea why Lucas wants me and Brian to join them—’ he nodded in the salon’s direction ‘—after dinner, for drinks?’

Francis frowned. First of all, he had no idea what Lucas intended, which normally was totally unheard of. Lucas always told him everything. Everything. And secondly, Lucas never asked the captain or O’Keefe to mingle with the guests at dinner time. During the day, yes. But never during the more formal evening meal. It broke the atmosphere of elegance and olde-worlde dining that Lucas strove to create, and which he himself enjoyed so much.

‘It must be something unusual,’ Tobias Lester added — a shade uneasily, Jenny thought. ‘I said as much to Brian when he asked us.’

‘When was this?’ she asked automatically, then could have kicked herself for asking. After all, it was none of her business.

‘About five.’

After the scene with Gabriel Olney then, she thought, before she could stop herself.

She sighed as she watched Francis depart then return with hardly touched soup bowls. She stared at the bowls grimly and handed over stuffed crabs on a bed of rice.

Even Tobias, usually a hearty eater, couldn’t do the crab she handed him justice. She made up a tray for the engineer, intending to take it to him later. Perhaps he, at least, would appreciate it.

The cook became grimmer and grimmer as the evening wore on, and the plates kept returning, barely picked at.

What was wrong with these people? she fumed. She went to all the trouble of creating a multi-course masterpiece of contrasting tastes, textures, sights and smells, all of which were culinary delights, and they didn’t even have the good manners to eat them.

It was enough to make her spit tacks.

Well, she’d see they ate the baked Alaska, if she had to ladle it out herself and spoon feed the lot of them!

So it was that Jenny Starling herself brought in the towering, impressive dessert and put it on the sideboard for Francis to serve.

Tobias Lester was asked to send for the engineer, and Lucas Finch, looking curiously stiff-faced and unnaturally silent, poured a dozen glasses of champagne. David Leigh accepted his glass, looking merely bewildered. Dorothy politely refused, on account of her condition. Jasmine took hers, and peered over the rim of it at the sour-faced Brian O’Keefe, giving him an openly and blatantly smouldering look. Lucas’s hands shook as he held his own glass.

Only Gabriel Olney looked at ease. As well he might.

‘I’ve called you all here to join me in a toast to the new master of the Stillwater Swan,’ he said, dropping the bombshell in a voice so monotone that it was obvious he had been rehearsing the simple stark line for a long time.

Jasmine Olney gasped audibly.

Tobias Lester looked as if he’d been poleaxed.

Brian O’Keefe went as pale as his swarthy colouring would let him, which was surprisingly pale indeed.

Francis almost dropped his glass. His eyes flew to those of his master.

Lucas’s left eye twitched as he raised his glass. ‘To Gabby,’ he said, and swigged the finest Krug as if it were cyanide.





CHAPTER SIX

It was just beginning to turn dark, that lovely deepening of lavender into something more nocturnal. A warm breeze played like velvet over the skin, whilst a gibbous moon celebrated by turning from the colour of milk to the more emphatic colour of a mature cheese.

The last of the aerial patrols of swooping swifts peeled off high overhead, their screeching and screaming calls piercing the night air in a last hurrah. A rarely seen, soft-winged barn owl set off on his night’s hunting, whilst the sky steadily turned to sapphire and the stars began to twinkle like an accompaniment of diamonds.

Jenny rested against the deck rails on the port deck, glad that the evening meal was over and the debris from it all cleared away, and she could now mourn it in a dignified silence. Tomorrow, for lunch, she would have to do something clever with all the leftovers. She refused, but simply refused, to let good food go to waste.

She heard a soft footfall behind her and half turned, seeing the leonine head of Tobias Lester as he crossed the rear decking and pushed open the engine room door. ‘All settled down for the night?’ She heard his voice, dull and flat, echo easily across the stillness of the night.