The Riverboat Mystery (Jenny Starling #3)(57)

Rycroft nodded. ‘Can you explain it to us, please, Mrs Olney?’

Jasmine elegantly shrugged one white shoulder and raised a hand to fiddle with the single row of pearls at her neck.

Jenny noticed at once that they were real. Then she wondered exactly how much money Gabriel Olney had left, and whether he’d left it all to his wife. Or had David Leigh, in the last week or so perhaps, made up a new will and testament for Gabriel that had left his money entirely elsewhere?

‘What is there to explain?’ Jasmine shrugged. ‘I found the note in my magazine this afternoon, during the darts match. It seems like years ago now, not merely a matter of hours. Anyway, I went upstairs. He never came. And that’s the whole story,’ she added mockingly.

Her voice, although kept deliberately flat, had an undertone of real anger to it. Jenny, for one, had no trouble in detecting it at once. Nor did it surprise her. Jasmine Olney was clearly not the type of woman who would appreciate being stood up. Her ego was too fragile for such an insult to go unnoticed.

‘Why didn’t you tell your husband about it, Mrs Olney?’ Rycroft asked. ‘Or did you?’ he added sharply.

The cook saw at once where Rycroft was leading, of course. If Gabriel Olney knew about the supposed assignation, might he have tackled O’Keefe and been killed for his pains?

But Jasmine laughed openly at the question. ‘Tell Gabby? Why on earth would I do that?’ She sounded both genuinely puzzled and wary at the same time, like a mouse spying a twitching whisker at the mousehole.

Both men looked distinctly disapproving. ‘I see,’ Rycroft finally grated through severely clenched teeth. ‘So you went upstairs to meet a lover?’

But again Jasmine laughed, relaxing now that she understood the policeman’s interest, and apparently not one whit put out by the inspector’s obvious disapproval. ‘Hardly that, Inspector,’ she drawled. ‘I’d only set eyes on Brian O’Keefe yesterday. No, I never intended to let him . . . do . . . anything. I was merely curious, that’s all.’

Rycroft looked a little mollified at this. ‘I see. And you say Mr O’Keefe never showed up?’

‘No, he didn’t,’ Jasmine said shortly.

‘Did you hear anything whilst you were in your room, Mrs Olney?’ Jenny put in, making Rycroft fume silently at her cheek.

Jasmine glanced at her, surprised by the cook’s presence, but she answered her question readily enough. ‘No. At least, not when I was in my room. But now that you mention it . . . just before I got to the door I thought I heard something inside. But . . .’ She shrugged. ‘There was nobody there.’

Jenny nodded. Brian O’Keefe had good hearing. Or a guilty man’s super-sensitivity to sound. In any event, he’d managed to get out before being caught in the act of searching the room.

‘Was the window shut or open when you went in?’ she asked, earning herself yet another wrathful look from the inspector. This she met with such calmness that it only infuriated the tiny policeman all the more.

Jasmine frowned. ‘Well . . . now that I think about it, the window was closed. But it had been open previously. Gabriel always liked to sleep with the windows open. He was a soldier, you know,’ she added, as if this explained any and all of her husband’s idiosyncrasies. ‘And the day was so hot, I’m sure he wouldn’t have closed them for any reason when we got up. Why would he?’

She looked sharply at the two policemen, then at the cook. ‘Why do you ask?’

But at this point, Rycroft hastily dismissed her. She went, casting suspicious, thoughtful looks over her shoulder as she did so. ‘O’Keefe shut the window behind him, of course,’ Rycroft said, when the widow was safely out of earshot. ‘He must have heard her coming and bolted for it.’

‘Hmm,’ the cook made a soft sound of agreement. ‘He probably shut the window to help mask the sounds of his climbing down to the lower deck.’

That would have been the starboard deck, she suddenly realized. If she’d followed her usual habit of sitting out on the starboard deck after lunch, instead of going for a walk, she’d have been treated to a very interesting spectacle indeed. Instead, she’d been a good mile away at the time.

Such was the luck of travelling cooks.

Graves nodded. ‘So O’Keefe can think quickly on his feet.’

Jenny sighed wearily. There were far too many clever people on board this boat for her liking.

‘I’m going to bed,’ she said shortly. ‘My head’s spinning.’

*

The next morning Lucas suggested a walking party to the village of Carswell Marsh, to buy papers, to phone relatives and explain what had happened and, in David Leigh’s case, to phone his employers to make general arrangements for a short leave of absence.

Besides, Lucas wanted to buy some crackers for his parrot. Rycroft had no objection to this, and at ten o’clock Lucas, Jasmine, the Leighs, O’Keefe and the captain set off on their cross-country walk. No doubt they were all relieved to get away from the boat for a while, not to mention get out of sight of the policemen and all their questioning. Besides, it was a perfect day for such a tramp across the meadows.

Jenny, who was sitting out on the starboard deck watching a pair of moorhens and their chicks swimming in and out of the river reeds, had declined the offer. She had no one to telephone, and besides, she had some thinking to do.