The Riverboat Mystery (Jenny Starling #3)(4)

Lucas, if he’d known her better, would have started grovelling in apology immediately. But since he didn’t, he merely nodded, and carried on blithely. ‘Then there’s that old codger, Gabriel Olney, and his wife, the luscious Jasmine. Now I wouldn’t mind planting her in my garden, I can tell you.’ And he drawled the double entendre with such a childish delight that it was almost impossible for Jenny to take offence. Although a woman’s libber would have jumped right down his throat at such an openly sexist remark, she mused with a wry twitch of her lips. ‘Bugger me if she ain’t a little goer. She’s not so young, actually, but all the better for it, if you know what I mean?’

Jenny, stifling a sigh, began to understand what the hapless cyclist had meant. Politically correct, Lucas Finch most definitely wasn’t. Suddenly, she was not at all surprised that Mr Finch wasn’t ‘all that popular around these parts.’ Even in this day and age, villagers, as she knew only too well, tended to be an insular and conservative lot.

And for different reasons entirely, he was beginning to become very unpopular with his cook as well. Any implied slur on her cooking was guaranteed to get her gander up.

‘So it’s just the four guests?’ she clarified. She’d have to keep Dorothy Leigh’s delicate condition in mind, of course. Plenty of vegetables and rice dishes for her.

‘Right. Oh and myself, and yourself, of course, and Captain Lester and the engineer. Oh, and Francis. My manservant,’ he added. He said the final words very much like a magician might say ‘abracadabra’ before producing a rabbit from a hat.

Jenny found it, much to her chagrin, rather touching. That Lucas Finch must indeed have had a poverty-stricken upbringing, she didn’t doubt. The way he liked to throw his money about when entertaining was a sure sign. And now, the very reverence with which he referred to Francis by the ultra old-fashioned title of manservant made her heart contract in compassion. No doubt to the young Lucas Finch, growing up in London’s grime, the thought of him ever having a servant must have been as fantastic a dream as owning a goldmine.

Of course, what the absent Francis felt about being described as a manservant to Lucas probably didn’t bear thinking about. Jenny shrugged the thought aside. She was allowing her mind to wander off the point.

‘So you have—’ she made a quick mental count ‘—five guests, and . . . er . . . the engineer? And Francis and myself.’

Lucas frowned, looking puzzled.

‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s just the Olneys and the Leighs.’

‘And the captain?’ Jenny prompted. He counted as a guest, surely?

Lucas looked at her as if she was mad. ‘The captain steers the boat, love,’ he explained with a gentle patience that would have been kind, if it hadn’t been so patronizing. ‘He won’t be eating with us, although I suppose you’ll still need to put him aside some food. And the engineer too, I guess.’

Jenny fixed him with an eye that was beadier than the eye the parrot was giving her. ‘Boat?’ she echoed sharply.

‘Course,’ Lucas said, looking surprised now. ‘The Stillwater Swan.’ He said the name as lovingly as Romeo would have addressed Juliet.

‘The Stillwater Swan.’ Jenny repeated his words flatly and felt herself flush. She was beginning to feel as if she and the parrot might have a lot in common after all. ‘I don’t recall the mention of any boat in our correspondence, Mr Finch,’ she said, her voice like steel.

The fact was, Jenny was not so sure that she liked the sound of the word ‘boat.’

Her father, who’d been a top chef in London and then Paris for most of his career, had told her once about working on the Queen Elizabeth II. And all about some of his more harrowing experiences during a typhoon just off Bora Bora. She still, to this day, had nightmares about trying to cook a seven-course dinner in a kitchen that wouldn’t keep still.

Lucas Finch suddenly slapped his forehead in a well-blow-me-down gesture, making the parrot on his shoulder jump nervously.

‘You silly sod,’ the parrot said, quite clearly.

Jenny glanced at the bird in some surprise, then shrugged. No doubt the bird had picked up quite a few less than salubrious phrases from its master over the years. It was just a sheer coincidence that it had chosen to utter the comment at such an appropriate moment.

‘Of course, I didn’t say, did I?’ Lucas grinned at his own neglect. ‘Come on, er . . . Miss . . . er . . .’

‘Starling.’

‘Starling. I’ll show you my pride and joy.’

Jenny wasn’t any too sure that she wanted to be shown Lucas Finch’s pride and joy. Nevertheless, she got rather reluctantly to her feet, and followed his tall, grey-haired figure through the house and out into the vast back garden where, at the bottom, the River Thames meandered by, like some stately relative just calling in for a visit. And there, moored to a large wooden landing, was the most beautiful sight Jenny had ever seen.

The ‘boat’ was a large, flat-bottomed, two-storeyed paddle steamer — obviously purpose-built and to spec, in order to traverse England’s biggest river. Not exactly a Mississippi riverboat special, it was certainly unusual and undeniably elegant. It had class written all over it.

It was also, as its name suggested, painted a bright, almost blinding white, with black and orange trim. As they approached it, the cook noticed how the steam whistle that rose above the structure was carved like the neck and head of a swan, with its orange-painted beak wide open to allow the steam through.