Dying For a Cruise by Joyce Cato Page A

uneasily, Jenny thought. ‘I said as much to Brian when he asked us.’
    ‘When was this?’ she asked automatically, then could have kicked herself for asking. After all, it was none of her business.
    ‘About five.’
    After the scene with Gabriel Olney then, she thought, before she could stop herself.
    She sighed as she watched Francis depart then return with hardly touched soup bowls. She stared at the bowls grimly and handed over stuffed crabs on a bed of rice.
    Even Tobias, usually a hearty eater, couldn’t do the crab she handed him justice. She made up a tray for the engineer, intending to take it to him later. Perhaps he , at least, would appreciate it.
    The cook became grimmer and grimmer as the evening wore on, and the plates kept returning, barely picked at.
    What was wrong with these people? she fumed. She went to all the trouble of creating a multi-course masterpiece of contrasting tastes, textures, sights and smells, all of which were culinary delights, and they didn’t even have the good manners to eat them.
    It was enough to make her spit tin-tacks.
    Well, she’d see they ate the baked Alaska, if she had to ladle it out herself and spoon feed the lot of them!
    So it was that Jenny Starling herself brought in the towering, impressive dessert and put it on the sideboard for Francis to serve.
    Tobias Lester was asked to send for the engineer, and Lucas Finch, looking curiously stiff-faced and unnaturally silent, poured a dozen glasses of champagne. David and Dorothy Leigh accepted their glasses, looking merely bewildered. Jasmine took hers, and peered over the rim of it at the sour-faced Brian O’Keefe, giving him an openly and blatantly smouldering look. Lucas’s hands shook as he held his own glass.
    Only Gabriel Olney looked at ease.
    As well he might.
    ‘I’ve called you all here to join me in a toast to the new master of the Stillwater Swan ,’ he said, dropping the bombshell in a voice so monotone that it was obvious he had been rehearsing the simple stark line for a long time.
    Jasmine Olney gasped audibly.
    Tobias Lester looked as if he’d been poleaxed.
    Brian O’Keefe went as pale as his swarthy colouring would let him – which was surprisingly pale indeed.
    Francis almost dropped his glass. His eyes flew to those of his master.
    Lucas’s left eye twitched as he raised his glass. ‘To Gabby,’ he said, and swigged the finest Grende as if it were cyanide.

SIX
    I T WAS JUST beginning to turn dark – that lovely deepening of lavender into something more nocturnal. A warm breeze played like velvet over the skin, whilst a more than three-quarters moon celebrated by turning from the colour of milk to the more emphatic colour of a mature cheese.
    The last of the aerial patrols of swooping swifts peeled off high overheard, their screeching and screaming calls piercing the night air in a last hurrah. A rarely seen soft-winged, ghostly barn owl set off on his night’s hunting, whilst the sky steadily turned to sapphire and the stars began to twinkle like an accompaniment of diamonds.
    Jenny rested against the deck rails on the port deck, glad that the evening meal was over and the debris from it all cleared away, and she could now mourn it in a dignified silence. Tomorrow, for lunch, she would have to do something clever with all the leftovers. She refused, but simply refused , to let good food go to waste.
    She heard a soft footfall behind her and half turned, seeing the leonine head of Tobias Lester as he crossed the rear decking and pushed open the engine room door. ‘All settled down for the night?’ she heard his voice, dull and flat, echo easily across in the stillness of the night.
    Brian O’Keefe’s reply was a terse affirmative. Both men sounded tense, and little wonder, Jenny mused. And as the captain and the engineer talked together quietly, she strained to catch their words, but couldn’t quite manage it. They sounded friendly enough though, as if adversity had bonded them