cabin. It was like Nancy Drew with sex added.
Then she heard the noise behind her, just outside the bathroom, and realized that someone was in the closet next to the bed.
This time she did scream.
This time she did start to feel faint.
She had just reached the cabin door and the corridor when she heard the closet open. Curiosity forced her to turn around for at least a glimpse of the person emerging from behind the racks of Cindy's clothes.
Cindy gasped.
You couldn't tell if it was a man or woman. A black snap-brim fedora and heavy black topcoat with a collar that touched the edge of the hat rushed from the closet into the moonlight and then pushed past Cindy.
'You killed him!' Cindy shrieked. 'You killed him!'
But the figure kept moving, not running exactly, just moving steadily away from the closet and out of the cabin.
Cindy knew better than to grab for the person. She did not want to end up the way Ken 'High Rise' Norris had. For one thing, she'd be dead. For another, she wouldn't be able to write Aberdeen a letter about any of this.
4
A spring in his step, a tune vaguely inspired by 'Rhapsody in Blue' on his lips, Tobin strolled a deserted section of deck thinking of a Dennis O'Keefe movie he'd seen sometime in the early fifties. What made the picture memorable was the starlet in it-so beautiful in memory he dreamed of her still, just as he had when he was seven or eight. She seemed all things impossibly female, and occasionally-as now-he felt real loss thinking of her. What had brought her back was that the picture was set in the South Seas-or at least as much like the South Seas as the Republic Studios back lot could resemble. And being on the cruise (and being potzed) had brought back the O'Keefe picture. Maybe he'd meet somebody like the starlet aboard this ship…
The caw of ocean birds; the scent of saltwater; and the wan moon on the wan wash of sea against the rolling boat-how he loved the water and all its myths.
He wanted to call his children and tell them that he was idiotically happy because he was-yes, abruptly and unbelievably, he was indeed happy. The ocean was great therapy for him as it had been for no less than Eugene O'Neill and Stephen Crane and Jack London and Hart Crane-well, check Hart, the man having pitched himself miserably overboard at the end. Wonderful therapy. He wondered how much a ship-to-shore call would be, and what time it was in Boston and Los Angeles, respectively.
And it was exactly then that he ran into somebody who was backing out of a cabin.
He assumed she was going for little more than a brief stroll because she wore only a white terry-cloth robe and a towel wrapped around her head.
Beneath the line of her robe he could see that she had sensational legs and as she turned he saw that she had a face to match.
Encouraged by her mere presence-and the elegantly wrought lines of her legs-he started to introduce himself but then he saw that the woman held her hands away from her body, as if they did not belong to her. Or as if she did not want them.
Then he realized that there was a very good reason for this. Her hands and forearms were covered in what appeared to be blood.
'My Lord,' he said.
'He's dead. I didn't kill him. Do you think they'll believe me?'
He was so intrigued with her face-very, very nice; an erotic naivete; or would it be a naive eroticism-that he said, 'Of course they will.'
'I don't even own a knife like that.'
'Of course you don't.'
'And I had no reason in the world to kill him.'
'Of course you didn't.'
'I just wanted to take a little shower so that our time together would be-well, perfect-and then I came out and found him there. Does that sound believable?'
He was doing his best to peer down the slight opening in her terry-cloth gown, wondrously wound up and ashamed of himself at the same time.
While he was looking at her, she was looking at him and then she said, 'You're Tobin, the critic! You're one of them!'
'One of them?'
'One of the panel. 'Celebrity Circle.' '
'Ah. Yes.'
'So's he. So was he, I mean.'
Then, lust and alcohol receding, Tobin began to have some sense of what was going on here. 'In your cabin,' he said.
'Yes.'
'There's a dead man.'
'Yes.'
'Stabbed, I believe you said. Or implied.'
'Yes.'
'And he's-or was, as you said-on the panel.'
'Yes.'
'My God.'
'Exactly,' she said, holding her bloody hands out to him as if she wanted him to take them. 'And it's not as if he's just another passenger. He's a celebrity. Or was.'
The way she said 'celebrity'-so dreamily-told him far more than he should have known about her. This glimpse into her both excited and depressed him.
Then, inevitably, he asked, 'Who is he?'
'I didn't tell you?'
'No.'
'Ken.'
'Ken Norris?'
'Yes. 'High Rise.''
Terrible show, thought Tobin, realizing the curse of being a critic. The poor bastard had just been stabbed and here Tobin was reviewing his show.
'Do you think they'll believe me?' she said again.
'I think so.'
'You sounded so much surer before.'
'Why don't we go have a look and then I'll call for the captain?'
'God,' she said, 'Aberdeen will never believe this.' He decided, for the moment, not to ask who Aberdeen might be.
5
