The Riverboat Mystery (Jenny Starling #3)(68)

Rycroft frowned but said nothing. He was following her thinking, but still for the life of him couldn’t see how the cook had made the jump (and the correct jump, as it turned out) to Dorothy Leigh.

‘So, I put myself in the killer’s shoes,’ Jenny continued. ‘If I took it for granted that the killing wasn’t quite as reckless as it looked, then the killer must have done something to lessen his or her chances of getting caught. So I looked out for anything that would point in that direction. And, of course, there was one obvious, in fact glaring example.’

Rycroft blinked.

‘The note to Jasmine Olney,’ Graves said matter-of-factly.

‘Exactly,’ Jenny said. ‘Somebody had ensured that Jasmine Olney would go to her room and stay there, for some considerable time, because she was expecting Brian O’Keefe to pay her a visit. Now the writer of that note could have been anybody, of course. Everyone had seen how Jasmine ogled the engineer. It could safely be assumed that Jasmine would take the bait. But we knew that O’Keefe didn’t send the note, because he was searching her room at the time and nearly got caught. No, it was a fair bet that it was the killer that sent it.’

‘So you eliminated Jasmine as a suspect?’ Graves chipped in.

Jenny nodded. ‘But there was also one other point about that note that struck me quite forcibly at the time.’

She glanced at Graves, who reluctantly shook his head. ‘The writer was at pains to make sure that Jasmine stayed near the door,’ she emphasized.

‘That’s right,’ Rycroft agreed. ‘In case the husband came up,’ he added, remembering the note in perfect detail.

‘Yes. But why would the killer want Jasmine to stay near the door?’ the cook asked. ‘At the time, I had no idea, but I always kept it in mind.’

‘All right,’ Graves said, his big hands interlocking in his lap as he followed her reasoning through. ‘The killer managed to get Jasmine out of the way. But nobody else, as far as I can see, was lured into any kind of trap.’

Jenny smiled. ‘Except David Leigh,’ she chided mildly. ‘Dorothy urged him to go to his room to work on the will he’d brought with him. As a solicitor’s wife, she knew it would keep him busy for nearly an hour or so. And the last person Dorothy wanted hanging around was her husband. She adored the man. For a start, she wouldn’t want to involve him, and for another thing, she was terrified that if he realized what she’d done, he might be so disgusted with her that he’d leave her.’

‘But the man adores her,’ Rycroft snorted.

‘Yes, but she was willing to take no chance of losing him. That’s the reason she killed in the first place. And in that, I think I was a little at fault there,’ Jenny said, with genuine regret and self-horror. ‘I was the one who pointed out to her that there was more than just an annoying flirtation behind Gabriel’s pursuit of her. I more or less came straight out and said that the man was planning on dragging her name through the divorce courts — or at least, bandying it about in a very public manner.’

Sergeant Graves shook his head. ‘You can’t blame yourself for that, Miss Starling,’ he said. ‘You weren’t to know how unstable she was. Besides, if Olney had gone ahead with his plans — and knowing the kind of man he was, I’m sure that he would have done — she’d soon have realized for herself what was afoot, and killed him anyway. She’d just have done it a little later than she did, that’s all.’

Rycroft shifted impatiently on his seat. ‘All right, so you realized the killer had got Jasmine out of the way. And David Leigh was sent off to his room to work on the will, so that was him out of the way. Did . . .’ Rycroft suddenly sat bolt upright. ‘Wait a minute. Jasmine was in her room from about two fifteen to three ten. The same as David Leigh. But the rope and boot and the wet planking on the port deck weren’t discovered until four fifteen!’ Rycroft was almost incandescent with disbelief. ‘The timing’s all wrong.’

Jenny and Sergeant Graves both smiled at the ugly little man with almost identical patient smiles.

‘But, sir,’ Graves said, not wanting it to be the cook to explain the obvious, ‘if the rope and boot were a decoy, so was the wet deck. Mrs Leigh faked the timing of the murder, just as she faked the method of the murder.’

‘Oh.’ Rycroft leaned back. ‘So when Miss Starling went back to the galley after asking her if she wanted some dry toast and a cup of tea, she slipped away from her husband and set up the rope and boot and wet the planking then?’

Jenny nodded. ‘Yes. Luckily for her, though, Jasmine Olney had chosen that moment to slip upstairs to change. Other than that, it was as simple as ABC. There were plenty of places on board she could have hidden Olney’s boot and a length of rope. No doubt she told her husband she was just going upstairs to get an aspirin, or to nip to the loo or something. It wouldn’t have taken her a minute to set up the rope and boot and lower a bucket down on the rope to slosh water all over the deck.’

‘Or her husband might have known what she was up to,’ Rycroft said darkly, then just as quickly shook his head. ‘No. No, of course he didn’t. She didn’t want him to know, as you said, and he couldn’t have faked his shock on hearing her confession.’

Jenny nodded.

‘You were talking about how the killer lessened the odds on being discovered.’ It was left to Sergeant Graves to get them firmly back on track. ‘You’ve proved she kept Jasmine Olney and her own husband out of the way. But what about the others?’