The Riverboat Mystery (Jenny Starling #3)(35)

By turning her head just a little to one side, she could see nothing but scarlet and blue.

She felt rather flattered that the bird, on such short acquaintance, should trust her enough to choose to sit on her shoulder, but she wasn’t any too happy about the possible hygienic repercussions.

She’d have to shoo him off, she supposed glumly.

But first she could gather all the jars, tins, cans and glass bottles she might need from the supply cupboard. There was no harm in that, after all, with everything being hermetically sealed.

So it was that when Jenny opened the door to the supply cupboard, she did so as Long John Silver might have done, with a smile on her face and a parrot on her shoulder.

She pulled the simple wooden door open, her mind on chutney and pickles. And Gabriel Olney stared back at her, his eyes wide open, his moustache rather droopy. Jenny, stunned to find an interloper amongst her comestibles, had just opened her mouth to ask him what the bloody hell he thought he was doing lurking about in her cupboard, when he began to fall forward.

More instinctively than anything else, she smartly stepped to one side and out of the way. And Gabriel Olney, with a rather squelchy ‘whoomp,’ fell flat on his face at her feet.

He was, of course, exceedingly dead. ‘Well, bugger me,’ said the parrot.





CHAPTER EIGHT

For several seconds Jenny stood rigid in surprise, staring down at the back of Gabriel Olney.

After a few more seconds, and very, very slowly, her brain began to function again, receiving messages from her eyes that she noted without really realizing that she was doing it.

Gabriel Olney was wet. His shirt was wrinkled and clinging to his skin, as only wet cotton can. There was no blood. At least, none as far as she could see, and she couldn’t remember seeing any on his chest either, for that scant second that he had been upright in the cupboard, facing her.

He was missing one elegant boot. Funny, she’d never noticed his boots before. They were just above ankle-height, made with fine black leather, and had rather thick, soft soles. For a moment she was puzzled by those soles, and then realized that they’d probably been made specifically for people who lived or worked on boats. It was typical of Olney’s personality that he had gone the whole hog and bought a complete new wardrobe to go with Stillwater Swan.

She seemed to stare at his left foot for a long while. It was completely bare. He hadn’t even a sock on.

His back was not moving. There was no reassuring rise and fall of a man who was breathing. But Jenny already knew that it would be pointless to check to see if he was still alive. In her heart of hearts she knew he was dead and probably had been for — well, who knew how long?

It was at that point that she herself took a long, deep, shuddering breath, unaware until she did so that she’d been holding it in all this time. She felt a dizzy wave hit her and quickly moved back, so as to avoid touching Gabriel. The parrot on her shoulder lurched a little, unused to her way of moving, and his long scarlet and blue tail flattened against her back for balance.

Jenny walked the short distance to the galley door, opened it, went through, and then firmly shut it behind her, all still in a state of blissfully numb shock. She couldn’t feel her legs beneath her. She had the distressing sensation of seeing and hearing things as if from a great distance.

But she couldn’t give in to that sort of thing. Dimly, she began to recall the routine from past, bitter experiences with sudden death.

No one must be allowed into the room. No one must disturb the body or any possible evidence. She had to call the police.

It was this last imperative that finally washed away the last vestiges of her numbness, forcing her to think. How could she phone the police? They were on a boat, in the middle of the River Thames, cruising sedately through the deserted Oxfordshire countryside. But surely someone on board had a mobile phone? She’d left hers locked in her van, not wanting to risk losing it on the river. But the others would have one. Or would they? Mobile phones were just the sort of thing you deliberately left behind on a getting-away-from-it-all river cruise.

‘I must see the captain,’ she thought, and the sound of her own voice surprised her. Talking to herself out loud simply would not do. She must pull herself together. But Tobias Lester represented, if nothing else, an authority figure, one who had always struck her as level-headed and competent beneath that avuncular exterior. And right now she felt in need of some friendly human company that she could rely on.

Moreover, he was in charge of the boat, and they’d have to dock somewhere, wouldn’t they? She gave a quick, brisk shake of her head, as if the movement could somehow physically kick-start her sluggish brain into working order again.

She checked the galley door but quickly discovered that it had no locking system. So she dragged one of the main salon’s ladder-back chairs to stand in front of it. It was hardly ideal. Anybody could remove it and go in whilst she was informing Tobias Lester of their circumstances, of course, but there was nothing else for it.

Besides, nobody but Francis, perhaps, would have any reason for wanting to go into the galley.

Except the murderer.

Jenny shook her head, angry at herself. She really must pull herself together. Why would the murderer want to go back there? He or she was safely away at some other point on the boat by now, and the last thing on their mind would be to come back and incriminate themselves by riffling through the scene of the crime. And that old chestnut about the criminal always returning to the scene of the crime had gone out with the ark!