The False Inspector Dew

Alma smiled. 'I said I was going to Paris to learn to paint. She thought it was very rash of me. So did the people who rented the house. They won't be a bit surprised when I don't come back. The bank manager even warned me about white slavers.'

'How did he become an expert?' said Walter with a smile. 'You must have convinced them, Alma.'

Before she could respond, the cabin vibrated to a deafening boom that must have tested every rivet in the ship.

'Ship's whistle,' said Walter. 'Isn't it a marvellous sound to hear?'

'Are we moving?'

'We're about to.'

She got up and put out her arms to him. He held her closely. 'Don't go yet,' she murmured.

'It's all right,'he said, i can wait for a while yet. I intend to go to her while everyone else is at lunch. She thought she might be prone to seasickness, so I advised her to do without lunch.'

7

It was the duty of the second officer to man the last gangway. The visitors had gone ashore and stood waiting in hundreds along the quay, shouting and waving to the passengers massed at the rails on every deck. The last few shore staff left the ship. The bugle was sounded and the watchkeeping and navigating officers went to their stations. The commander came on to the bridge.

Captain Arthur H. Rostron was a slightly built, clean-shaven man with silver hair. He could have passed as a shopkeeper except that his years at sea had toughened his skin and given his eyes the screwed-up look that comes from years of staring ahead into every kind of weather the elements inflict. He had taken command of the Mauretania in 1915. By then his name was a legend in the Cunard Company. One bitterly cold night in 1912, when he was in command of the Carpathia, Captain Rostron had received a wireless message from a vessel in distress. Other ships were closer. Arthur Rostron changed course and raced the Carpathia for sixty miles to the scene. He coaxed speeds from her that no-one believed possible in those waters perilous with icebergs. He rescued seven hundred survivors from the Titanic.

The captain looked down to where the second officer stood at the head of the gangway, craning to catch the signal from the bridge. He raised his hand and lowered it. The time was exactly mid-day. The last gangway was landed. The mooring ropes were slackened fore and aft. The stern tugs stretched the hawsers to their limit and began to tow the Mauretania away from the quay. The marine superintendent in his bowler hat supervised the shore gang. They followed the great ship along the quay until the last bow rope was released.

Steadily the tugs hauled the ship out of the Ocean Dock into her swinging ground in the fairway. On the bridge the outward pilot had taken the wheel. The tugs started to swing her. In less than five minutes she was pointing seawards. The tugs cast off.

'Sound the bugle,' ordered Captain Rostron.

The Mauretania was under way, first to Cherbourg to pick up more passengers, and then New York.

Under the direction of the master-at-arms, an immediate search was made for stowaways. The searchers looked in the traditional places, the lifeboats, storage chambers, engine rooms, laundry and kitchens. It was a token search to satisfy company regulations. As everyone acknowledged, any stowaway with a modicum of sense would mingle with the passengers at this stage. So Alma, trying to be calm in Walter's stateroom, and Poppy, in the arms of Paul, stayed undetected.

8

Lydia was still unpacking when she felt the movement of the ship. She went to the porthole. She could no longer see the crane on the quay. She could see white gulls against the blue sky. They were beating their wings in flight, yet they seemed to make no progress until one soared upwards as if it had snapped an invisible thread. It screamed its triumph over the others. Lydia gave a shiver of excitement.

She turned back to the task of emptying her cabin trunk. Some of the dresses would need pressing. She would have to see the steward later. For the present she was content to spend an hour or two in the quiet of her stateroom. She had no reason to stand out on deck watching England slip out of sight. England had not appreciated her. But in five days she intended to be at the rail with the others waiting for the first glimpse of America.

The ship seemed to have stopped for a minute. Now there was another shattering burst of sound from the ship's siren or whatever it was called. The vibration of the engines returned in force. Lydia felt it through her shoes. She was not upset by it, but she decided to sit on the bed while her body got accustomed to the novelty. She disliked the thought of being seasick. Walter had been right. It was a sensible precaution to go without lunch. Poor Walter, so thoughtful, so unadventurous. She reached for the paper and shut him out of her mind.

She need not have worried about the risk of being seasick. She was not seasick. It takes at least an hour before the pitch and roll of a great ship disturbs the equilibrium of the inner ear to that extent.

Lydia had less time than that.

9

The cold facts may have suggested that Poppy wanted to make a monkey out of Paul Westerfield, but that was not so. She had a job to do, and she did it in the best way she could. She had not been paid to give him sexual favours. She was prepared to allow enough familiarity to smooth the way for the job, and that was all. So when he had taken her back to Chicksand Street in the taxi the previous night, she had presented him with a cup of tea and a kiss on the horsehair settee in the parlour. She had spent what remained of the night upstairs with her sister Rose. At six in the morning when Rose had gone down as usual to look at the milkmen bringing out their horses she had found a strange man asleep in the parlour. She had reported it to Poppy, who had truthfully said that the man was a millionaire who was sleeping in the parlour instead of the Savoy. Poppy had gone back to sleep for an hour. Soon after seven she had put on her crepe de chine dress, tied an apron round her waist and cooked sausages and bacon for two. By eight they had arrived at the Savoy to collect Paul's luggage and by nine they had found themselves seats on the boat train.

If Paul had entertained ideas of seamier scenes in his stateroom, he was denied them. Poppy proposed to remove one thing: the wallet from Paul's blazer pocket. She was under instructions to take it and pass it to Jack. One chance had gone. She could not miss another.

She allowed him enough kisses and embraces to allay suspicion. He was no Casanova, but it was not unendurable. Perhaps twenty minutes had passed when his hand disconnected the first hook and eye at the back of her dress.

She said in a tortured voice, 'Oh my God, I think it's moving.'

'What?' His hand jerked away from the dress.

'The blooming ship — I can feel it. Oh, no, I'm trapped. I never really meant to stow away.'

'Don't worry.'

She sat up on the bed. 'Don't worry, he says!'

'What I mean is that I can pay.'

'Pay what?' demanded Poppy, i don't want to go to America. You live there. I don't.'

'You can get off at Cherbourg. We stop there to pick up more passengers.'

'Cherbourg? Where's that, for God's sake?' Jack had told her, of course, in case of emergency, but she was