The Riverboat Mystery (Jenny Starling #3)(37)

Jenny shook her head, telling herself it was useless to speculate. Besides, the police would be here soon. It would be up to them to find out who’d killed the ex-soldier.

Jasmine, perhaps sensing that now was not the time to pick a fight with the engineer, subsided reluctantly back onto her deckchair. Lucas paused, looked at her, seemed about to say something, then shook his head.

Lucas joined Jenny and the captain, Tobias Lester efficiently checking the map. He glanced at his watch, did his mental arithmetic, and put his finger firmly on one point.

‘I’d say we are here, give or take half a mile or so. That makes the nearest village Carswell Marsh, which is about three miles south of here. It’s all across fields so Brian should make good time.’

‘Good time for what?’ Brian asked, catching the last sentence as he came in. He nodded at Tobias. ‘I’ve got her well secured. What’s going on?’

‘Gabriel Olney’s dead. You have to go and get the rozzers.’ It was Lucas who answered, but Brian O’Keefe stared at Tobias Lester for a long, hard time. Then he finally nodded. ‘Right,’ he agreed curtly.

Jenny had the strong feeling that, whatever his immediate thoughts, Brian O’Keefe would never utter them now.

‘Once you’ve phoned them,’ Jenny spoke up, her voice quite steady and firm now, ‘you’ll have to wait for them and then lead them back here to the boat. Especially if there’s no road for them to follow.’

Brian glanced at her, saw her strange seating arrangement for the first time, and cast a curious look at the closed galley door. Then he checked the map for himself, saw where he had to go, and shook his head. ‘There are no roads near here indicated on the map.’

‘Right, then you’d best set off fairish, like,’ Lucas said, and rubbed his nose. ‘Think you can find the village all right?’

Brian O’Keefe smiled wryly. ‘I can smell a pub from five miles away. I’ll find the nearest one to me, no trouble.’

The three of them watched him go in silence. He was young and fit, and set off across the fields like a hare.

Lucas slowly swivelled his eyes through the open door of the games room and out towards the port deck. His eyes moved quickly away again from the beautiful dark-haired woman sat sunning herself, and moved apprehensively to those of his captain.

‘Someone should tell Jasmine,’ he said heavily.

Tobias looked appalled. ‘Not me.’

As one, both men turned towards Jenny. Jenny said, very firmly, ‘I’m not leaving this room.’

Lucas opened his mouth to say something, then glanced at the door behind her. As if sensing the tension in the air, the parrot on his shoulder bobbed his head up and down uneasily.

‘He’s in there then, is he?’ Lucas finally asked. Rather pointlessly, she thought. Jenny nodded. ‘And you don’t want anyone going in there?’ Lucas carried on the theme, his suspicious, thoughtful tone of voice making Tobias suddenly jerk his head towards the cook, a questioning look on his face.

‘You said he was dead,’ Tobias said, almost accusingly. ‘You didn’t say how.’ He chose his words with an odd kind of care, almost as if he was afraid of the answer.

‘I’m not sure how he died,’ Jenny said, quite truthfully. ‘And it’s useless to speculate. We’ll just have to sit quietly until the police come. And I think it will be a good idea to tell Mrs Olney nothing, for the moment. Unless she asks, of course.’

Naturally, both men agreed, and sincerely hoped that she wouldn’t.

*

The police arrived in a surprisingly short time. Brian must have run all the way to the village, and the nearest police station must have been close by, for barely an hour had passed when O’Keefe returned to the Stillwater Swan with what looked like a herd of constables and plainclothes detectives.

Jasmine, who’d never left her seat in the sun, looked up with every apparent evidence of bewilderment as strange men began to file into the main salon, and she took off her sunglasses to follow their progress inside with her eyes.

Jenny slowly rose from her chair, trying to sort the men out. The tall, stoop-shouldered man with glasses and carrying a black bag was the easiest man to allot, since this had to be the police medical examiner. Two other, rather cherubic-faced men carried what looked like briefcases. From past experience, she knew that these had to be the forensics experts. But they were both looking at the oddest little man Jenny Starling had ever seen. (And in her time, she’d seen some very odd-looking men indeed.)

He couldn’t have been more than five feet in height, for a start, which made her wonder how many powerful people he must have known in the police department to allow him to get around the minimum height restriction rules. Or did they even still exist?

But it was not just his height (or rather lack thereof) that made her goggle at him. He was, without doubt, quite simply the most ugly individual Jenny had ever seen. His eyes were tiny, button black and set deep in his face. His chin was non-existent, his mouth a rather lipless gash. But it was the turned-up nature of his nose, which the cook suddenly saw as he turned and looked directly at her, that made him look most like a human variety of a pug dog. It was so squashed up it looked almost comical. And the nostrils . . . yes, they were almost pointing upwards.

If he ever got caught out in the rain he’d surely drown, Jenny thought inconsequentially, and suddenly became aware of the hysteria behind that thought. Not to mention the unintentional unkindness. She mentally apologized, stepped to one side, and pointed into the galley. ‘He’s in there,’ she said quietly, and the small man gave her a single, sharp glance, nodded and led the way briskly inside.