The Pleasure Cruise Mystery by Robin Forsythe Page B

your chief? I thought it was the steward. I see he has left my tea. I didn’t hear him come in.”
    â€œDrink a cup and pull yourself together, Ricky. I want to ask you a few questions.”
    â€œA police interrogatory at this unearthly hour! Algernon, you’re an outrage. I was dreaming I was a pirate and was boarding
    â€˜A stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus
    Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores
    With a cargo of diamonds
    Emeralds and amethysts
    Topazes and cinnamon and gold moidores!’
    and you shatter the dream by saying you want to ask me a few questions. You’ve robbed me of an adventure of the soul. I was about to savour the delight of cutting throats, of rapine...”
    â€œShut up, Ricky, and listen to me.”
    â€œPerhaps you’re a fair substitute for sudden death. I’m listening. Anything serious happened?”
    â€œYes. In the first place, do you remember on which side of her head Mrs. Mesado parted her hair?”
    â€œThis is momentous, Algernon; I’m glad you’re not being frivolous before breakfast. A woman’s hair is a subject to which I’ve always given considerable thought. I used to think a woman parted her hair on the side she thought most becoming to her face. This is, of course, an error into which a fashionable hairdresser might fall. If she’s right-handed she always parts it on the right side; if she’s left-handed, on the left. The ambidexterous, and most women are more or less so, part it on either side. The final test, however, is on which side does her hair part in a dead straight line?”
    â€œDid Mrs. Mesado part her hair on the left of right side?” asked Vereker with a shade of curtness. He was in no mood for Ricardo’s airy trifling.
    â€œOn the left side. Next question, please.”
    â€œYou’re certain?”
    â€œI took particular notice. You remember her perm wave, don’t you? It fell in shining breakers over her right ear.”
    â€œI do. Your answer’s a confirmation.”
    â€œThey’re usually an education, but proceed.”
    â€œWhen you were pacing round the deck this morning, Ricky, did you notice how many cabin windows were alight on the starboard side?”
    â€œYours was the only one on the whole deck—a lone star in a world of Cimmerian gloom!”
    â€œYou’re sure that Mrs. Mesado’s cabin was in darkness all the time?”
    â€œPositive. A lighted window has an overwhelming attraction for a vulgarly inquisitive man like me. I’d have remembered.”
    â€œDo you know what your statement implies, Ricky?”
    â€œIt implies that the story of Lady Godiva will always appeal to human beings, and that deaf, natural Peeping Tom will be held up for ever as a nasty example by nastier people.”
    â€œI’m not referring to your peculiar type of curiosity, Ricky. You remember my mentioning that I heard Colvin and Mrs. Mesado talking in her cabin between 1.30 and 1.45 this morning?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWell, doesn’t it strike you that they were talking in the dark? Why had they put out the light?”
    â€œAn intriguing question, Algernon,” replied Ricardo, smiling. “It reminds me inconsequently of where was Moses when the light went out? To be blunt, they were doing something in that cabin which they were anxious to hide from the outer world. I was the only outer world at the time you mention.”
    â€œExactly, and I’ve a shrewd idea of the nefarious game they were up to.”
    â€œYou’re not letting your erotic imagination run riot, Algernon?”
    â€œEven my imaginative efforts are rather practical, Ricky, and I’m beginning to think I’ve made an amazing discovery.”
    â€œLet’s have the story; I’m all agog.”
    â€œNot yet. When I’m certain of my facts I’ll tell you more. In the meantime you’ve got to give me a