The Wheel of Darkness Read online

  “I see.” Mayles took a sip of the Vernaccia to cover up his surprise and quickly turned the conversation away. “Are you a linguist?”

  A certain amusement seemed to lurk in the man’s gray eyes. “Not at all. I investigate things.”

  Mayles had his second surprise of the dinner. “How interesting. You mean, like Sherlock Holmes?”

  “Something like that.”

  A rather unpleasant thought ran through Mayles’s head. “And are you . . . investigating now?”

  “Bravo, Mr. Mayles.”

  Some of the others were now listening, and Mayles didn’t quite know what to say. He felt a twinge of nerves. “Well,” he went on with a light laugh, “I know who did it: Mr. Mustard in the pantry. With the candlestick.”

  As the others laughed politely, he again turned the conversation away from this potentially difficult line. “Miss Greene, have you ever seen the painting Proserpine, by Rossetti?”

  The woman turned her eyes on him, and he felt a shiver of disquiet. There was something distinctly strange in those eyes. “I have.”

  “I do believe you resemble the woman in the painting.”

  She continued to look at him. “Should I be flattered to be compared to the mistress of the lord of the underworld?”

  This bizarre answer, its intensity—and her resonant, old-fashioned voice—put Mayles out. But he was an expert at riding any vagary of conversation, and he had a ready reply. “Pluto fell in love with her because she was so beautiful, so vital—as you are.”

  “And as a result Pluto kidnapped her and dragged her into hell to be his mistress.”

  “Ah well, some people have all the luck!” Mayles glanced around and received an appreciative laugh for his little bon mot—even Miss Greene smiled, he was relieved to notice.

  The dealer, Lionel Brock, spoke: “Yes, yes, I know the painting well. It’s in the Tate, I believe.”

  Mayles turned a grateful face toward Brock. “Yes.”

  “A rather vulgar work, like all the Pre-Raphaelites. The model was Jane Morris, the wife of Rossetti’s best friend. Painting her was a prelude to seducing her.”

  “Seduction,” said Miss Greene. She turned her strange eyes on Mayles. “Have you ever seduced, Mr. Mayles? Being cruise director on a luxury ocean liner must be a marvelous platform from which to do it.”

  “I have my little secrets,” he said, with another light laugh. The question had cut rather closer to the bone than he was accustomed to. He didn’t think he would put Miss Greene at his table again.

  “Afar from mine own self I seem, and wing strange ways in thought, and listen for a sign,” Greene recited.

  This was followed by silence.

  “How lovely,” said the meatpacking heiress, Mrs. Emily Dahlberg, speaking for the first time. She was a strikingly aristocratic woman in a gown, draped in antique jewels, slender and well-kept for her age, and—Mayles thought—she looked and spoke exactly like the Baroness von Schräder in The Sound of Music. “Who wrote that, my dear?”

  “Rossetti,” said Greene. “The poem he wrote about Proserpine.”

  Brock turned his gray eyes on Constance. “Are you an art historian?”

  “No,” she replied. “I’m a pedant and an obscurantist.”

  Brock laughed. “I find pedants and obscurantists charming,” he said with a smile, leaning toward her.

  “Are you a pedant as well, Dr. Brock?”

  “Well, I . . .” He laughed off the question. “I suppose some might call me that. I’ve brought along some copies of my latest monograph, on Caravaggio. I’ll send a copy over to your stateroom—you can decide for yourself.”

  A hush fell over the table as a distinguished man with silver hair, in uniform, came up to the table. He was slender and fit, and his blue eyes sparkled under his cap. “Welcome,” he said.

  Everyone greeted him.

  “How is everything going, Roger?”

  “Just shipshape, Gordon. So to speak.”

  “Allow me to introduce myself,” the new arrival said to the table, gracing them with a charming smile. “My name is Gordon LeSeur and I’m the first officer of the Britannia.” He had a charming Liverpudlian accent.

  A murmuring of introductions went all around.

  “If you have any questions about the ship, I’m your man.” He smiled again. “How’s dinner?”

  Everyone assured him it was excellent.

  “Fine! We’re going to take good care of you, I promise.”

  “I’ve been wondering,” asked Mrs. Dahlberg. “They say the Britannia is the largest cruise ship in the world. How much bigger is it than the Queen Mary 2?”

  “We’re fifteen thousand tons heavier, thirty feet longer, ten percent faster, and twice as pretty. But Mrs. Dahlberg, I have to correct one thing you said: we’re not a cruise ship. We’re an ocean liner.”

  “I didn’t know there was a difference.”

  “A world of difference! The point of a cruise ship is the cruise itself. But an ocean liner’s job is to transport people on a schedule. The ‘ B’ has a much deeper draft and a more pointed hull form than a cruise ship, and it is capable of serious speed: over thirty knots, which is more than thirty-five miles an hour. The hull has to be a lot stronger than a cruise ship and good at seakeeping, able to cross the open ocean in all weathers. You see, a cruise ship will run away from a storm. We don’t divert—we just plough right through.”

  “Really?” asked Mrs. Dahlberg. “We might encounter a storm?”

  “If the weather reports are correct, we will encounter a storm—somewhere off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.” He smiled reassuringly. “Nothing to worry about. It’ll be great fun.”

  The first officer said his good-byes to the table and moved to another nearby, one populated with loud dot-com billionaires. Mayles was grateful for the momentary silence from those braying asses while the first officer repeated his spiel.

  “Finest first officer in the fleet,” Mayles said. “We’re lucky to have him.” It was his standard line; and, in fact, LeSeur was a decent fellow. Not your typical first officer, who were usually arrogant, conceited, with a chip on their shoulders because they weren’t captain.

  “He looks rather like a graying Paul McCartney,” said Lionel Brock. “No relation, is there?”

  “It’s the accent,” said Mayles, “and you’re not the first to make that observation.” He winked. “Don’t let him hear you say that; our first officer, I’m sorry to say, is not a Beatles fan.”

  The main course had arrived along with another wine, and the volume of simultaneous talk at the table intensified. Mayles had his radar out. Even as he himself spoke, he could listen to several other conversations simultaneously. It was a useful skill.

  Mrs. Dahlberg had turned to Pendergast. “Your ward is a remarkable young woman.”

  “Indeed.”

  “What is her background?”

  “She is self-educated.”

  A loud guffaw of laughter from the next table caught Mayles’s ear. It was Scott Blackburn, the dot-com wunderkind, with his two sycophantic buddies and their hangers-on, all in Hawaiian shirts, slacks, and sandals, in utter disregard of the ship rules and the sartorial traditions of First Night. Mayles shuddered. On every crossing there seemed to be at least one group of rich, loud businessmen. Very high- maintenance. According to their files, Blackburn and his group had been on a wine tour of the Bordeaux country, where they had spent millions of dollars creating instant wine cellars. And, as billionaires frequently were, they were demanding and eccentric: Blackburn had insisted on redecorating his extensive suite with his own art, antiques, and furniture for the seven-day crossing.

  Mrs. Dahlberg was still talking to Pendergast. “And how did she happen to end up as your ward?”

  Miss Greene interrupted. “My first guardian, Dr. Leng, found me abandoned and wandering the streets of New York City, an orphan.”

  “Heavens, I didn’t know such things happened in modern times.
”

  “When Dr. Leng was murdered, Aloysius, his relative, took me in.”

  The word murdered hung heavily in the air for a moment.

  “How tragic,” said Mayles. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yes, it’s a tragic story—isn’t it, Aloysius?”

  Mayles detected an edge in her voice. There was something going on there. People were like icebergs—most of what really went on, especially the ugliness, was submerged.

  Mrs. Dahlberg smiled warmly at Pendergast. “Did I hear earlier that you’re a private investigator?”

  Oh no, thought Mayles. Not that again.

  “At the present moment, yes.”

  “What was it you said you were investigating?”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t say.”

  “Investigating?” Brock, the dealer, said with an alarmed look. He apparently had missed the earlier conversation.

  “How deliciously mysterious.” Dahlberg smiled and laid a hand on Pendergast’s. “I love a good mystery. Do you read murder mysteries, Mr. Pendergast?”

  “I never read novels. I find them ridiculous.”

  Dahlberg laughed. “I adore them. And it strikes me, Mr. Pendergast, that the Britannia would make a splendid setting for a murder.” She turned to Mayles. “What do you think, Mr. Mayles?”

  “A murder would be splendid, as long as nobody got hurt.” This witticism elicited a round of laughter, and Mayles once again prided himself on his ability to keep a conversation at a charming, superficial level, where social etiquette demanded it remain.

  Pendergast leaned forward. “I can’t promise a murder on the voyage,” he said, his voice like honey, “but I can tell you this: there is a murderer on board.”

  11

  PENDERGAST RELAXED IN THE SALON OF THEIR SUITE, LEAFING THROUGH the Britannia’s oversize wine list. Nearby, a flat-screen television was tuned to the ship’s information channel and a muted voice was extolling the virtues of the ocean liner to a succession of images.

  “The Britannia is a grand vessel in the old tradition,” the cultured British voice intoned. “With sweeping staircases, vast public areas, two ballrooms, eight restaurants, three casinos, and five swimming pools. She has a passenger manifest of 2,700, a crew of 1,600, and a gross tonnage of 165,000. In terms of accommodations she is the roomiest vessel on the high seas, and the crew-to-passenger ratio is unmatched by any other luxury ship. Several features are unique to the Britannia, such as the eight-story Grand Atrium, the ‘Sedona SunSpa®,’ the upscale shopping arcades of Regent Street and St. James’s, the thousand-seat Belgravia Theatre, and the heated pool modeled after a Roman bath excavated at Pompeii. It boasts the crystal and gilt King George II ballroom, the largest ballroom afloat. The ship is longer than the Empire State Building is tall, and its whistle is audible for fifteen miles. In the tradition of the Titanic and the great ships of the past, the Britannia is distinguished by the extraordinary amount of ‘brightwork’ used in its trimming, inside and out, involving more than a million board-feet of teak, mahogany, Port Orford cedar, gum, iroko, and Queen Island beech . . .”

  On the second floor of the suite, a door opened. Constance emerged from her room and came down the stairs.

  Pendergast shut off the television and put the wine list aside. “I had no idea the ship’s wine cellar was so extensive,” he said. “One hundred and fifty thousand bottles laid down. Their selection of pre-1960 Pauillacs is particularly impressive.”

  He glanced up as she came over. She had changed out of her formal dinner clothes and into a pale yellow dress. “Your new wardrobe suits you, Constance,” he said.

  “You helped pick it out,” she replied, settling into a chair opposite him.

  “You were rather sharp this evening,” he said.

  “So were you.”

  “I’m trying to smoke out a killer. What were you doing?”

  Constance sighed. “I’m sorry if I was difficult. After the monastery, I find all this opulence—dispiriting.”

  “Be in the world but not of it.” Pendergast quoted the ancient Buddhism maxim.

  “I’d rather be in my home, reading a book by the fire. This”—she gestured around— “is grotesque.”

  “Keep in mind we’re working.”

  She shifted restlessly in her chair and gave no reply.

  Privately, Pendergast noted that a change had come over his ward in the past few weeks. Her time in the monastery had worked wonders on her. He was glad to see she had continued her Chongg Ran discipline in her stateroom, rising at four every morning and meditating for an hour, meditating in the afternoon, and not overindulging in food and drink. Most importantly, she was no longer listless, drifting. She was more purposeful, relaxed, more interested in the world around her than she had been since the death of his brother. This little mission of theirs, this unsolved mystery, had given her a new sense of direction. Pendergast had high hopes she was well on the way to recovery from the terrible events of March and the procedure at the Feversham Clinic. She was no longer in need of protection from others. Indeed, after her sharp display at dinner, he wondered if it wasn’t now the other way around.

  “What did you think of our dinner companions?” he asked.

  “Very little, alas. Except for Mrs. Dahlberg—there’s something attractively genuine about her. She seems interested in you.”

  Pendergast inclined his head. “I’m not the only one who made an impression.” He nodded at a slim manuscript that lay on a side table, entitled Caravaggio: The Riddle of Chiaroscuro. “I see that Dr. Brock wasted no time sending his monograph over to you.”

  Constance glanced at the manuscript, frowned.

  “Despite their shortcomings, I suspect a few of our dinner guests may prove useful,” he went on. “Mr. Mayles, for instance. Now there is a man who notices everything.”

  Constance nodded and they fell into silence.

  “So,” she finally said, changing the subject, “the thief and murderer killed Jordan Ambrose with a small-caliber pistol. Then committed gratuitous violence to the body.”

  “Yes.”

  “But the rest of the modus operandi you described—the careful checking of the pockets, the meticulous wiping and cleaning of all surfaces—doesn’t fit.”

  “Precisely.”

  “I’m not aware of any precedent in any of the casebooks I’ve read.”

  “Nor am I. Except, perhaps, for a singular case I handled in Kansas not so long ago.”

  There was a knock on the door and Pendergast went to answer it. Their cabin stewardess stood in the hall outside.

  “Come in,” Pendergast said, waving his hand.

  The woman made a small curtsey and stepped inside. She was thin and middle-aged, with black hair and deep-set black eyes. “Pardon me, sir,” she said in an Eastern European accent. “I was wondering if I could be of assistance in any way at present?”

  “Thank you, no. We are fine for the time being.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll be back to turn down the beds.” And with another small curtsey, she ducked out of the room.

  Pendergast closed the door and returned to the sofa.

  “So how are we going to spend the evening?” Constance asked.

  “There are any number of postprandial entertainments available. Are you in the mood for anything in particular?”

  “I thought perhaps the muster drill.”

  “How droll. Actually, before we do anything, there’s one chore to complete.” Pendergast gestured toward a large computer printout that lay beside the wine list. “There are twenty-seven hundred passengers on board this ship and only seven days in which to find the murderer and retrieve the Agozyen.”

  “Is that the passenger list?”

  Pendergast nodded. “Direct from the ship’s database. Including occupation, age, sex, and time of boarding. As I told you earlier, I’ve already ruled out members of the crew.”

  “How did you obtain that?”

  “With great ease. I locat
ed a low-level computer maintenance tech and told him I was a North Star auditor, evaluating crew performance. He couldn’t furnish the list quickly enough. I’ve already made considerable progress thinning the pool of suspects.” And he pulled a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket.

  “Go on.”

  A long white finger touched the paper. “The murder was committed at ten, the cab arrived at the dock at half past midnight, and so the killer must have boarded after that point. That alone removes one thousand four hundred seventy-six names.”

  The finger touched the paper again. “The murderer is a man.”

  “How in the world do you know that?” asked Constance, as if the assumption were an offense to womanhood.

  “The bottle of scotch. A man like Ambrose would hardly have chosen that if his visitor were a woman. And then there is the knife that was driven clean through the body, through half an inch of carpet, and almost an inch into plywood flooring. That must have taken great strength. Finally, Ambrose himself was a mountain climber in superb physical condition, not an easy man to kill. It implies our killer is strong, fit, and fast—and male.”

  “I’ll concede the point.”

  The finger moved down the sheet. “For these same reasons, we can bracket the age: over twenty, under sixty-five. On a ship like this, that latter fact is most useful. In addition, he’s not traveling with a wife: the messy murder, cab ride, disguise, boarding ship with the Agozyen—all these are the actions of a man unencumbered by a wife. The psychopathology of the murder, the keen pleasure taken in the violence, also points strongly toward a single man. A single male, of a certain age: one thousand and twelve more names removed. Which gives us two hundred and twelve left.”

  The finger moved again. “All the evidence shows that Ambrose contacted a known collector, perhaps not of Asian antiquities per se, but a collector nonetheless. And a man whose face might be recognizable to members of the general public. Which leaves us with twenty-six.”

  He glanced up at Constance. “The murderer is clever. Put yourself in his shoes. He has to get this awkward box on board ship without being conspicuous. He would not have boarded immediately, carrying the box—that would be remembered. And besides, he was covered with blood from the murder; he’d have to change his clothes and wash up in a secure place. So what would he do?”