Innocent Murderer by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

hesitating I swung my body through the hatch and crouched just below the opening as their footsteps came close and stopped. They had reached the lifeboat and I heard one of them lean up against it.
    â€œI know that.” The man.
    â€œAre you getting cold feet?”
    There was no answer, just silence. I tried to peek out one of the portholes to see if one of them was nodding or shaking their head, but all I saw were shoulders and then the man’s voice, “Who left the hatch open?”
    There was a scuffling and a couple of grunts and then the hatch came down. I moved to the porthole and peered out. I could just make them out. The woman was facing me. Elizabeth. Suddenly the other one turned and I saw the bushy black beard: Peter. I heard their footsteps move away and I was left alone in the cold metal hull of that lifeboat with the hatch battened down.
    Think like a mariner, I told myself, as I began to feel a tad uneasy. Lifeboats are for saving lives not locking people inside. Just because this hatch was locked down didn’t mean they all were. Right? And there were more. I’d seen them sprouting their little levers like dozens of curling rocks. The portholes threw a gloomy light over everything so that I could just make out how awful it would be to have to be in one of these things for real.
    The seats were solid metal benches with room for maybe seventy people. Being stuck in one would mean bounc – ing around inside an unforgiving metal hull the shape of a walnut with people in various stages of seasickness.
    I was already feeling claustrophobic and I’d only been inside for five minutes.
    It was cold. The metal of the boat was taking up the cold of the air like a sponge takes up water. I felt my way around until my hands found the outline of a hatch. I pushed, but nothing happened. In the twilight I could see eight levers, two on each side of the hatch, and I began turning them. When I tried to push up again and nothing happened I felt a little twinge of fear. What if I couldn’t get out? What if they never found me? How often did they do lifeboat drills? I tried again and felt it budge. After several more attempts the hatch flew open and I was free to wonder about the conversation I had just overheard.
    I went back to my berth and flopped down on the bed.
    Next thing I knew my stomach was in my mouth and my semi-circulars had lassoed my entire body, making me reel with nausea. I got up on my knees and opened the porthole. The sun was sinking toward the horizon that it would barely get to touch before being shot back up into the sky. The sea was roiling around in swells and the ship was doing a pretty good job of not roiling with them — something to do with stabilizers, we’d been told by the orientation crew. The PA system on the boat crackled to life and the captain’s voice filled my little room. We were into some rough waters for a few hours before we could sneak around a headland and into calmer seas.
    I spent those hours with my eyes glued to the barren mainland mountains. It helped keep the nausea at bay, but it was pretty tiring so at about 11:00 p.m. I got up and went to sit in the outer room, only once daring to take my eyes off the horizon to look at the time. Eventu – ally we did hit calm water and I went back to bed and fell into a blanket-churning sleep. But before long I was awakened by a light tapping on my door and my name being whispered. I thought it was LuEllen, back for a repeat, but being mercifully quieter this time. I started to get up when the door opened — there were no locks on any of the berths on the ship — and in walked Martha, dressed in a floor-length, lime green velvet dressing gown and wearing enormous fuzzy Guinness slippers.
    â€œYou awake?” she whispered.
    â€œI am now.”
    The room was lit by the stream of light coming through the open door and I felt no need to turn on the lamp.
    â€œCordi — you’ve