The Secret Woman (23 page)

I said I would and we slipped out onto the deck.

“I've been wanting to talk to you,” he said. “There's something I wanted to say, but I hardly know how to.”

“You're not usually at a loss for words.”

“That's true. But this is…delicate.”

“Now you are making me very curious.”

“You'll probably hate me.”

“I can't imagine myself doing that in any circumstances.”

“What a comforting person you are. I'm not surprised the Captain's son adores you.”

“I think that's an exaggeration. He has a mild respect for me. It doesn't go beyond that. But tell me what it is you want to say.”

“You promise to forgive me before I begin.”

“Oh dear, you're making me feel it's something terrifying.”

“I don't think it is…yet. Well, here goes. It's about the Captain.”

“Oh.”

“I have offended you.”

“How could you when I don't know what you are going to say?”

“Can you guess?”

I could but I said: “No.”

“You see, I've sailed with him, often. You know the saying about sailors having wives in every port. Sometimes it's true.”

“Are you accusing the Captain of bigamy?”

“I believe he has only gone through the ceremony once.”

“Then…what?”

“Anna—may I call you Anna? We know each other well enough, don't we?”

I inclined my head.

“Then, Anna, he has a reputation of being something of a philanderer. On every voyage he selects a passenger to whom he pays special attention. On this voyage he has selected you.”

“I had met him before, you know. We were not entirely strangers.”

“I'm sorry if I've offended you. It's only out of my concern.”

“I'm not very young. I can take care of myself.”

He seemed relieved. “I should have known you recognized him for what he is.”

“What…is he?”

“A man of casual affairs.”

“Really?”

“He never thought he would get caught as he did. But they were too much even for him—the girl's mother and her old nurse. She was going to have a child and they called forth all their black magic. They'd put a curse on him and every ship he commanded unless he married her.”

“Are you telling me that he would marry for such a reason?”

“He had to. Sailors are the most superstitious men on earth. None of them would have sailed with a master who had been cursed. They would have known it, too. He had no alternative. So he married the girl.”

“It seems a little far-fetched.”

“Life often is not as simple as it seems.”

“But to marry because of a curse!”

“He owed her marriage in any case.”

“Perhaps that was the reason he married her.”

Dick laughed. “But you see, don't you, why I am concerned for you?”

“You have been jumping to conclusions. Perhaps they have been suggested by Miss Rundle?”

“That old gossip. I wouldn't accept anything she told me. But this is different. This concerns you, and anything that concerns you is of great importance to me.”

I was startled, but my thoughts were too occupied with Redvers for me to give much attention to Dick Callum's hints.

“You are kind,” I said, “to concern yourself over me.”

“It's not a matter of kindness but of inability to do otherwise.”

“Thank you. But do please stop worrying about me. I can't really see why you should be anxious because now and then I have had a word with the Captain.”

“As long as you understand… I fear, I'm making a mess of this. If you ever needed my help would you let me give it?”

“You talk as though I should be doing you a favor by letting you, when it is I who should thank you. I'd willingly accept your help if I needed it.”

He put his hand over mine and squeezed it.

“Thank you,” he said. “It's a promise. I'll keep you to it.” I thought he was about to say more, so I said quickly: “Shall we go and dance?”

We were dancing when we heard the shrieks from the lower deck. The piano stopped abruptly. It was a child's voice. I immediately thought of Edward and then I knew at once that it was not Edward but Johnny Malloy.

We ran down to the lower deck. Others had already arrived before us. Johnny was shouting at the top of his voice: “It was the Gulli-Gulli man. I saw him. I saw him.”

My first thought was: The child has had a nightmare. But then I saw something else. Lying on the deck, fast asleep, was Edward.

Ivor Gregory had come out and picked up Edward. Johnny went on shouting: “I saw him I tell you. He was carrying Edward. And I followed him and I shouted, ‘Gulli-Gulli, wait for me.' And Gulli-Gulli put Edward down and ran away.”

It sounded crazy. I went to the doctor who looked at me steadily and said: “I'll get him back to his cabin.”

I nodded and went with him. I saw Mrs. Malloy running to Johnny demanding to know what he was doing out there and what all the fuss was about.

Dr. Gregory laid Edward gently on his bed and bent over him; he lifted his eyelids and looked at his eyes.

I said: “He's not ill, is he?”

The doctor shook his head and looked puzzled.

“What on earth could have happened?” I demanded.

He didn't answer. He said: “I think I'll take the child along to the sick bay. I'll keep him there for a bit.”

“Then he
is
ill?”

“No…no. But I'll take him.”

“I don't understand what could possibly have happened.”

He had thrown off his burnoose when he laid down the child; when he went out I noticed it lying on the floor.

I picked it up. There was a faint odor of musk about it, the perfume several people had bought in the bazaar. It was so strong and pungent that it seemed to cling to anything that came near it.

I dropped the thing and went out on deck. Johnny had been taken to his cabin by his mother and Mrs. Blakey. Everyone was talking about the incident. What on earth had happened? How had the sleeping child got out there? And what was this wild story about a Gulli-Gulli man carrying him along the deck and putting him down when Johnny called?

“It's some prank,” said Chantel. “We were having fun, so they thought they would, too.”

“But how did the child get out?” asked Rex, who was standing close to Chantel.

“He came out and feigned sleep. That's easily explained.”

“The doctor didn't seem to think he was awake,” I put in.

“That's nonsense,” said Chantel. “He wouldn't have walked out in his sleep would he? But perhaps he did. I've had patients who did the oddest things when asleep.”

Miss Rundle was well to the fore. “All this talk about the Gulli-Gulli man. Pure fabrication! They should be whipped both of them.”

Claire Glenning said softly: “I imagine it was just a bit of fun. We don't want to make too much of it.”

“Still, it gave some of us a fright,” put in Chantel. “I suppose that's what they wanted to do.”

“A storm in a teacup,” said Gareth Glenning.

“All the same,” Miss Rundle announced, “children have to be taught discipline.”

“What do you want to do?” asked Rex. “Clap them into irons?”

Rex had set the tone as he so often did. Quiet as he was, no one ever forgot that he was that Rex Crediton, industrialist, financier, millionaire—or he would be on the death of his mother. His gravity, dignity and almost self-effacing manner implied that he did not have to call attention to his personality. It was enough that he was Rex, if not yet ruler he would be in due course—of the great Crediton kingdom.

“On with the dance!” he said, and he was looking at Chantel.

So we went back to the lounge and we danced, but it was impossible to forget that strange scene on the lower deck and though we did not continue to talk of it, I was sure it was still in our minds.

I left early; and when I reached my cabin it was to find a note from Dr. Gregory on my dressing table. He was keeping the child in the sick bay for the night.

***

Early the next morning one of the stewards came to tell me that the doctor would like to see me.

I went along to his quarters in some alarm.

“Where's Edward?” I asked.

“He's in bed still. He's been a little sick…nothing to worry about. He'll be perfectly well by midday.”

“You're keeping him here?”

“Only until he gets up. He's all right…now.”

“But what happened?”

“Miss Brett, this is rather grave. The child was drugged last night.”

“Drugged!”

The doctor nodded. “That story Johnny told…he wasn't imagining it. Someone must have gone to the cabin and carried the child out.”

“But whatever for?”

“I don't understand it. I've questioned Johnny. He said that he couldn't go to sleep because he was thinking about all the dancing and the costumes. He had drawn a picture of his mother and he wanted to show it to Edward, so he put on his dressing gown and slippers and came out to look for him. He lost his way and was trying to find his bearings when he saw what he calls the Gulli-Gulli man hurrying along, carrying Edward.”

“The Gulli-Gulli man. But he came on at Port Said and left.”

“He means he saw someone in a burnoose.”

“Who?”

“Almost every man on board was wearing one last night, Miss Brett.”

“But who could have been carrying Edward?”

“That's what I should like to know. And who drugged the child beforehand?”

I had turned pale. The doctor's eyes were on my face as though he thought that I was responsible.

“I can't believe it,” I said.

“It seems incredible.”

“How could he have been drugged?”

“Easily. Sleeping tablets dissolve in water…milk…”

“Milk!” I echoed.

“Two ordinary sleeping tablets would have sent a child into deep unconsciousness. Did you have any sleeping pills, Miss Brett?”

“No. I daresay his mother has. But she would not…”

“It would be the easiest thing in the world for anyone who wanted to get hold of sleeping tablets to do so. The mystery is…with what object?”

“To drug the child so that he did not give the alarm when he was picked up, to carry him out to the deck. For what purpose? To throw him overboard?”

“Miss Brett!”

“But what else?” I asked.

“Such an idea seems quite preposterous,” he said.

We were silent for a while. And I thought: Yes, of course it is preposterous. Am I suggesting that someone was trying to murder Edward?

I heard myself say in a voice that was high pitched and unnatural: “What are you going to do?”

“I think the less this is talked of the better. It will be exaggerated. Heaven knows what will be said. At the moment most of them believe that it was a game the boys were playing.”

“But Johnny will insist he saw someone whom he called the Gulli-Gulli man.”

“They will believe he imagined it.”

“But they know that Edward was unconscious.”

“They'll think he was pretending.”

I shook my head. “It's horrible,” I said.

He agreed with me. Then he started to ask me questions. I remembered how the milk had come up, how he had not wanted it, how I had gone out to Chantel's cabin, and how she had come back with me, and had even tasted the milk when she had cajoled him to drink it.

“I'll ask her if she tasted anything odd.”

“She would have said if she had.”

“You can't throw any light on this mysterious matter?”

I said I couldn't.

I went back to my cabin feeling very uneasy.

***

I wanted to talk to Redvers. I knew that Dr. Gregory would report to him, and I wondered what his reaction would be when he knew that someone had tried to murder his son. Murder was a strong word. But for what other purpose could the child have been drugged?

The doctor did not want anyone to know of it. Perhaps he would keep it secret from most of the ship's passengers, but I as his governess must know, and Redvers as his father must; besides as Captain of the ship he must know everything that happened on board.

I would go up to his cabin now and talk to him. I must.

There was a knock on my door and Chantel's voice said: “May I come in?”

“How's our nocturnal adventurer this morning?” she asked.

“He's in the sick bay.”

“Good heavens!”

“He's all right. Chantel, the doctor doesn't want this to get about but he was drugged last night.”

“Drugged! How?”

“
Why
is perhaps more important. Oh, Chantel, I'm afraid.”

“Surely no one meant the boy any harm?”

“But why drug him and carry him out? If it hadn't been for Johnny what do you think might have happened?”

“What?” she asked breathlessly.

“I think someone was trying to kill Edward. He could have been thrown overboard. No one would have heard anything. The child was unconscious. Perhaps a slipper left by the rail. It would have been presumed he had wandered out and fallen overboard. Don't you
see
?”

“Now that you put it like that, yes. The easiest place to commit a murder must be at sea. But whatever for? What possible motive?”

“I can't think of one.”

“This will get Miss Rundle working overtime.”

“Dr. Gregory thinks it should be kept quiet. It would upset Edward terribly if he thought he was in danger. He knows nothing about it. He must not know.”

“And Johnny?”

“We'll find some way of dealing with him. After all he had no right to be wandering about at night so he's in disgrace for that. Thank God he did.”