The borrowing days, p.8
The Borrowing Days, page 8
“And you heard them quarrelling too?”
“Just as I was coming on watch. The old man was bellowing. I couldn’t make out much of what he was saying because the others were shouting back and trying to top him but he sounded extremely angry. So did they. I could hear the racket but not what they were quarrelling about.”
“They didn’t tell you what it was about?”
“I haven’t asked them yet. That comes next.”
“What else?”
“Two things, first, Mr. and Mrs. Yelland....”
“The card-sharps?”
“Yes. They were playing piquet in their cabin around half past twelve when they heard a row going on in the cabin next door which happens to be Paul Penman’s. The son.”
“Was it with the old man?”
“They couldn’t say. They heard Paul Penman coming back about a quarter past midnight....”
“How did they know it was the son? Were they peeping?”
“I asked that and they said that he whistles a lot, very quietly but very well and he was whistling Zerlina’s aria from Don Giovanni...”
“They said as soon as he got back to the cabin someone knocked on his door and was made the reverse of welcome. In fact there seems to have been a noisy row and the visitor seems to have been thrown out. Literally.”
“Was it with Penman?”
“I asked that and they said the old man would not be that easy to throw out. And I think they are probably right. The son’s as tall as his father but much more lightly built. The Yellands said it sounded as if the visitor had been kicked out...literally.”
“No, he couldn’t have done that to the old bastard. Yes, he will have to explain that. What’s the second thing?”
“You remember the two old girls who share a cabin on Deck 5, starboard side? Miss Poole and Miss Moddicott?”
“I do. The long and the short of it.”
“They remind me of some comics my mother used to get for me from Scotland. There were two Roman characters in them called Nero and Zero, just like those two. Anyway, the long thin one...”
“Nero?” suggested the Captain with a grin.
“I expect so. She said that she had heard a shuffling sound on the deck just outside the cabin window. As if someone was dragging a very heavy mattress, she said.”
“Of course they’d be dragging mattresses around at midnight.”
“I expect she was half-asleep. But that that would tie in very well with the blow on the head. If he was unconsconscious or semi-conscious he couldn’t walk and he was too heavy for anyone to carry unless he was an Olympic weight lifter. Nero said she had been lying awake and when it had gone past she looked at the read-out under the TV and it said 01:05. Her friend....”
“Zero?”
“Of course. Anyhow, she pooh-poohed this tale, said if there’d been anything to hear she would have woken, she was a light sleeper, all that sort of guff...”
“Sort of what?”
“Sorry, sir, nonsense, I suppose. She didn’t want to be dragged into anything ‘unsavoury’ I think she said, but Nero stuck to her guns and said it was so and I’m inclined to believe her.”
“Now, that’s really interesting.”
“It might indicate when he went over to within about five minutes or so, I think. A blow to the head, probably with his own stick, drag him to the gate and over he goes. But would a passenger know where to find the key or even that it was a key if they did find it?”
“There was a crowd on the deck watching the inflatable lowered to take off the Russians yesterday afternoon. Someone could have seen then,” said Svensson.
“True. If they were on deck. And now,” Per said, “I must have a talk with the family.”
“They will be feeling fairly uncomfortable, I should imagine. After all, while anyone might have done it, only they would wish to do it. They must realize this.”
“True,” Per agreed.
“The daughter, she’s tall? Reddish hair in a great thick braid? Good-looking?” Myking asked and Per nodded. “I think it must have been her I saw about a quarter to one.”
Per stiffened.
“Where?”
“I’d phoned Didda and had some coffee in the snack bar and was coming back up to my cabin. She was standing beside the starboard door to the deck on 5, obviously waiting for someone. Her arms were folded and she looked, I dunno, worked up about something. I don’t think she even saw me.”
“Thanks,” said Per. “Are you sure of the time?”
“When I got back to my cabin I saw the time under the set and it was between a quarter and ten to one. I remember because I thought I must have been nearly twenty minutes talking to Didda.”
The Edvard Grieg was clouted by a gust of wind, which laid her over nearly ten degrees. A breaker washed down the port side, swamping the promenade deck.
“Picking up,” commented the Captain. “The sooner we get to Gamvik the better.”
Down in the library Paul and Harriet were trying to read. They were conscious of the steward sitting just outside the door, ostensibly to keep people away but probably, they guessed, to keep an eye on them.
“Though where we could go in the middle of the Arctic Ocean,” said Paul, “and in a storm, beats me.”
“Perhaps it’s more what we would do than where we’d go?” Harriet suggested.
“What could we do?” Paul asked.
“Destroy evidence?”
“What evidence? We don’t even know for certain whether he’s dead.”
“Much as I hope he may be,” Harriet muttered and then looked contrite. “Sorry Paul. I tend to forget he’s your father. You’re not alike, in any way.”
“You’re not alone in that,” Paul said. “Very often he forgot he was my father. And when he did remember he let it be known he would have preferred a different kind of son.”
He smiled a little wryly and picked another book from the shelf beside him. Harriet said nothing but staggered from chair to chair towards the windows.
“The storm seems to be a lulu,” she remarked, “the sky’s absolutely black and the sea’s boiling like a pot and they’ve put on all the lights everywhere,”
“Lars said it promised to be a snorter,” Paul observed. “He told me no one’s allowed on deck. Too dangerous. All the doors to the outside are barred and locked in case some fresh air fiend ignores the warning. He said anyone out there when a wave hits could be swept off the ship like a piece of paper.”
“Yesterday Per told me that the sunshine and blue skies meant Farewell Summer and they often got a day like that before the first storm of the winter.”
“Did he? I expect he had been watching the Met. Reports. And when did we get on to first-name terms with the third officer?”
“When we met on deck last night. He was off-duty. We were watching the sunset and talking and had a drink afterwards in Theo’s bar. He told me about the ship going to South America for our winter. He told me he hadn’t had a winter for three years. Just spring and summer. I said I envied him and he said he missed winter. Imagine! Then Henry intervened and was filthily rude, as usual. Per’s OK, I think. And very bright or I miss my guess. Why did you call the baby Joshua?”
“It was her father’s name and we both liked it. You know Per Berg was a policeman once. Lars told me. Did he tell you?”
“No. He just said he had started going to sea later than most people. He didn’t say why. Is that why he’s been put in charge?”
“Yes. I suppose so. He’d know how to set about things.”
There was a long silence. Harriet was looking out of the windows at the angry sea and the black sky and Paul turned over the pages of a book. Suddenly he dropped the book on to his lap and asked her,
“Had you really got the drop on father, Harry?”
“Up to a point. He’d been insider trading,” Harriet said.
“Why does that not surprise me?” asked Paul with a wry grimace.
“I think Farman got him the information and he acted on it. Father, my father, asked me to snoop, told me where and what to look for and I found it. Whether we could make it stick in a court of law, I don’t know. More a sort of weapon in an argument.”
Harriet fidgeted around for a minute or two and then asked,
“Are you and Gerda going to get married?”
“Yes. As soon as we get back.”
“You didn’t tell the old man.”
“No. Why ask for a bawling out? I’d had enough of those. Anyway, whatever he said wouldn’t have made any difference.”
“Not if he cut off supplies?”
Paul looked up and smiled before he pulled an envelop out of his shirt pocket,
“Read that.”
‘That’ was a cable. It read:
LANDON CONFIRMS POST STOP JOIN HIM PARIS NOVEMBER 15 STOP MANY CONGRATULATIONS DARLING STOP JOSH AND I MISS YOU STOP LOVE GERDA
“Is that Morrison Landon, the baritone?”
“It is. His usual accompanist has been diagnosed with MS, poor sod, and I auditioned to replace him. I was waiting for news when the old man swept us all off on this bloody trip.”
“So, now you are independent.”
“I am. Landon pays very well. He doesn’t like to share. He likes his accompanist on tap. Also he records a lot and I will get accompanist’s fees and royalties. Not only that but he’s known to be choosy about accompanists. He’s got about another five years before he retires and if we get along for that time I expect I should be able to beat off soloists with a club afterwards. I don’t need father’s miserable salary any longer or his even more miserable job.”
“Did you know this, last night?”
He gave her a look compounded of exasperation and cynicism.
“Do you suppose I’d have shouted back if I hadn’t?”
“I must say it was a surprise. Why didn’t you tell him?”
“Because we still had eight days on this bloody boat and I didn’t want every meal made hideous by his giving us and everyone else within earshot his low opinion of music and musicians at the top of his voice.”
Harriet laughed.
“Fair comment. Mama and I were pretty startled when you shouted back, even.”
“Well, Josh is only two months old and Gerda’s not earning a great deal yet. Until I was sure of the job I couldn’t afford to shout. I know you despise me for jumping when he said jump all the time but I needed the cash.”
They fell silent for a little
“How on earth did you get your music training?” asked Harriet who had been thinking about the cable. “I mean, I know you’re good, but even natural talent needs honing a bit.”
Paul chuckled.
“You know he sent me to the Harvard Business School?”
“Well, yes,” Harriet said doubtfully. “They don’t seem to have taught you very much, if I may say so.”
“Say away. They didn’t teach me anything at all. My dear father didn’t know I’d spent my time and his money on a course at the Berklee School of Music and not at the Harvard Business School as he had arranged. I got a friend in the Business School to forge the reports. He pinched the forms and I made up the rude comments and he copied the signatures from his own report. Which is one reason, if not the most important, why I am such a lousy businessman. I also had my diploma forged but he never asked to see it.”
“You devil!” exclaimed Harriet admiringly and Paul shrugged.
“He wouldn’t hear of my doing music...”
“I can just about hear him not hearing of it.”
“But he was in London, not Boston and not interested enough to check up. I took a chance. And it came off. I’ve been eking out the salary with accompanying jobs for a few years now. Most concerts are at night. And for rehearsals....”
He shrugged.
“I could usually think up something, a customer to be interviewed, an advertising man...you know the form. Anyway, no one trusted me with anything important, you know that.”
“I know that.”
She grinned at him delightedly.
“Weren’t you a mite short of relatives for funerals?”
“How often does anyone check up? That’s how I met Gerda. She needed an accompanist for a concert and someone gave her my name.”
Harriet laughed delightedly and thumped the arm of her chair.
“Oh, well done! I do like to hear how someone’s really done down that bloody old man! Especially you, Paul.”
The ship heaved as she was hit by a really fierce gust and books came flying out of the cupboard the door of which Paul had left swinging. While they were both picking them up and reshelving them the glass door whooshed open. Per Berg came in and started to fix a notice to the outside of the glass. They straightened, their hands full of books.
“I don’t know whether Lars told you,” he said, rather indistinctly, gnawing the sellotape, “but I’ve been put in charge pro tem.”
“Yes,” Harriet said. “We heard, and we heard why. But we are both still wondering, in charge of what?”
Per closed the door and turned to face them.
“It looks fairly certain that your father was murdered, Mr. Penman. The Rescue people told us he had a heavy clout on the side of the head before he went overboard. I am in charge of trying to find out who clouted him.”
The two stared at him in dismay and Harriet slammed her fist on to the arm of her chair and got to her feet.
“Oh damn the man!” she said between her teeth. “He can’t even die without causing unpleasantness. I’ll tell you something for nothing; I’ve been wishing him dead for months. I kept wishing I was a witch so that I could cast a spell or something so that he’d walk under a bus.”
There was a short silence and then Paul laughed.
“That’s opening the proceedings with a bang!”
“I’m hoping you’ll be able to answer a few questions for me,” Per began.
“And we’re hoping you’ll answer a few for us. I take it,” said Paul, “that the body on the shore was my father’s”
He hastily closed and latched the door of the book cupboard as the ship began to heel again.
“I think it must be,” Per said. “He is the right age and height, he has the right clothes and the right scars. Also, he had a wallet in his breast pocket with his name on half a dozen credit cards. Someone will have to identify him formally when the ship reaches harbour but there is no real doubt in the matter. Shall we sit down?”
Harriet sat down beside Paul on a sofa. Per took one of the armchairs.
“They told us also that Mr. Penman was hit on the head when he was alive, before he went into the sea. The blow was not enough to kill him; it may not even have been enough to make him wholly unconscious. But it was enough to make him an easy victim. This confirms what I was beginning to think after the stick was found. This is no accident. We have a case of murder.”
The other two looked at each other and said nothing.
“Do I understand that you may have been thinking the same thing?”
Harriet nodded.
“It wouldn’t have been like him to have had an accident. He was so very careful of himself. He never risked catching a cold or a chill, never ate anything which could upset him.”
“And he would no more climb on the rail than fly,” Paul added. “And if it wasn’t an accident...it had to be the other thing.”
“Suicide?” Per suggested.
“He’d never consider suicide, never,” Paul said.
“Actually, I think he might, but only if he was about to be made to look foolish or criminal. He would, I think, rather die than be humiliated.”
The other two looked at Harriet with interest and Paul nodded in agreement.
“You could be right,” he agreed.
“Our difficulty is,” Per went on, “if he was murdered, someone murdered him. Now, as you probably know, the police method of looking at a murder is to ask, first, how and when it was done, which is why you have all that business of the doctor’s having to guess the time of death. Then they consider who had the opportunity to do it and only then who might have a motive for doing it. Well, now we know how it was done and roughly when, we are looking for those who had the opportunity.”
Paul looked across at Harriet.
“I suppose I did. As I gather you have been told, I had a visitor after I got back to my cabin. He was both unexpected and unwelcome. He didn’t stay long. About ten minutes, I suppose. He left before twenty to one.”
“The visitor was not your father?”
“No. It was a man called Martin Farman. He is.... was... my father’s solicitor.”
“Farman....”
Per looked down a list and circled the name with a pencil
“Did you know he was aboard?”
“No. He came as a very nasty surprise.”
“And to me,” Harriet said. “I had organized the whole trip, bought the tickets, arranged the flights, paid for everything. He never said a word to me about taking Farman along.”
“Have you any idea why your father might have arranged to bring him, Mr. Penman?”
“Oh, yes. Last night he was threatening to cut us all out of his Will,” Paul said. “I can only suppose that Farman was there to draw up a new one if it became necessary. Perhaps he already had.”
“Why did you have an argument with this Mr. Farman? I understand from your neighbours that it became quite heated.”
“The sneaking bastard was trying to blackmail me. You see, I have a fiancée and we have a young son and are planning to be married and my father wanted me to marry Harriet.”
“He wanted what?” Per demanded.
“He wanted me to marry Harriet. It’s perfectly true.”
He went on,
“You see, that way the controlling block of shares she holds in ComUnity would come into the family, she (I quote) would put some backbone and some common sense into me and he could leave me, us I suppose, to deal with ComUnity which was his latest victim and find another likely venture.”
“Victim?”
“My father used to pick on a smallish or medium-sized company which was vulnerable for some reason, get it into financial trouble, buy up shares when they were down and then take it over, strip the assets and depart.”
