The Riverboat Mystery (Jenny Starling #3)(39)

First of all, she’d almost said ‘the murdered man’ when, in reality, she really had no reason to believe it was murder. Apart from the fact that he’d fallen out of the kitchen cupboard, of course. She’d have bet her last penny that the inspector hadn’t missed the tell-tale slip. And secondly — much worse — she’d boldly stated the fact that it was Gabriel Olney who was dead when his widow, who was standing not more than ten yards away, had not been given a shred of warning.

It just went to show, Jenny thought sourly, that practice hardly made perfect.

Jasmine abruptly sat down, and blinked.

At this point, Rycroft and Sergeant Graves glanced at her curiously. Rycroft said, reasonably softly, ‘Mrs Olney? You had no idea of your husband’s death?’

Jasmine shook her head. Then she blinked again. She seemed to be unable to find a thing to say. Eventually she licked her dry lips and said, somewhat unsteadily, ‘No one told me.’

‘We thought it best not to,’ Jenny said quickly, but inside she could have kicked herself for her thoughtlessness.

But then again, said a suspicious little voice that would insist on piping up in the back of her mind, Jasmine might have known all along about her husband — if she was the one who’d put him in her cupboard in the first place.

Rycroft glanced back to the cook, obviously puzzled. He thought that either the cook was the most cold-hearted woman he’d ever met, or the shrewdest.

He would soon learn which.

‘Carry on, please,’ he said, his disconcertingly high-pitched voice once again as bland as milk.

‘There’s Dorothy and David Leigh.’ She nodded to the young couple, who were still standing transfixed in the doorway to the starboard deck. ‘They live in the village of Buscot, the same as Mr Lucas Finch, the owner of the boat.’ She hesitated over the word ‘owner,’ not sure of her ground. Had Gabriel Olney already legally bought the Stillwater Swan?

If he noticed her sudden stumble, Rycroft didn’t mention it. ‘Go on.’

‘There’s the engineer . . .’

‘We know all about Mr O’Keefe, madam,’ the sergeant said helpfully, and Jenny nodded. Of course, they’d have questioned him thoroughly on the way here.

Again Rycroft wondered at the statuesque cook’s apparent understanding of the way the police mind worked. He began to feel distinctly uneasy. There was something about her that looked familiar, now that he thought about it. Not that he’d ever met her before — Rycroft had an excellent memory, and someone as noticeable as the cook would have stuck in his mind like a rose thorn.

Nevertheless . . .

‘Who else is on board?’ he prompted crisply.

‘Captain Tobias Lester.’ She nodded at the captain. ‘He lives in a cottage on Mr Finch’s estate at Buscot. And then there’s Francis . . . er Grey,’ she said, for the briefest of moments having forgotten his surname. It was not, perhaps, surprising. Francis had a way of making himself seem almost non-existent.

Which reminded her. Just where was Francis?

‘Mr Grey is Mr Finch’s manservant. The Leighs and Olneys are Mr Finch’s guests. I was hired to cook for the weekend. We set off from Buscot yesterday morning about . . . ten o’clock?’ She glanced questioningly at the captain, who nodded.

At that point Tobias took over, very competently giving the police the Stillwater Swan’s timetable and docking points over the past two days. When he’d finished, Rycroft nodded, turned back to the cook and said smoothly, ‘You’ve left yourself out, madam.’

Jenny sighed. ‘My name,’ she said heavily, ‘is Miss Jenny Starling.’

And waited for it.

She didn’t have to wait long.

Opposite her, Sergeant Graves started to write it down, and mumbled automatically, ‘Do you have any other given names, please,’ before his head shot up comically. ‘Did you say Starling?’

Jenny, who considered her parents to have gone rather mad in the first-names department, saddling her with two other totally unusable ones, was glad not to have to say what the rest of them were in front of witnesses.

‘Yes. Starling,’ she repeated heavily.

Rycroft was staring at her, his face falling into a look of utter dismay. It was most unfortunate. Folds of skin suddenly seemed to mould themselves into the semblance of a chow, and a rather sick-looking chow at that.

‘Sir, we’ve finished.’ The two forensic experts chose that moment to emerge from the galley. Rycroft glanced at them, eyebrows raised. They shook their heads. ‘Plenty of fingerprints — probably all legitimate. We’ll have to take samples from everyone present. Nothing much else — or rather, too much of everything else to be of use, I’m afraid. It’s a storage cupboard after all. It’ll take days to identify and sort out all the trace elements in there. But we’ve all the photographs we need.’

Which meant, Jenny thought, no obvious murder weapon, no traces yet or fibres. Someone, she thought grimly, had been very clever. Very clever indeed.

And that someone was on this boat now.

Rycroft sighed. ‘Take a thorough look over the rest of the boat, will you?’ he said curtly, and resumed his scowling contemplation of the cook.

Tobias and Lucas cast first the policemen, then the cook, curious looks. ‘Is something wrong?’ Lucas asked, rather absurdly given the circumstances.