Murder on the Leviathan Read Free Page B

which the commissioner had especially high hopes since the invitations bore the instruction: 'Admission on presentation of a gold badge or first-class ticket'. Why on earth would anyone bother to carry around a ticket, when it was so much simpler to pin on your little gold leviathan?
    At the banquet Gauche let his imagination run wild as he mentally frisked everyone present. He was even obliged to stick his nose into some ladies' decolletes to check whether they had anything dangling in there on a gold chain, perhaps a whale, perhaps simply a pendant. He had to check surely?
    Everyone was drinking champagne, nibbling on various savoury delicacies from silver trays and dancing, but Gauche was hard at work, eliminating from his list those who had their badge in place. It was the men who caused him the greatest problems. Many of the swines had attached the whale to their watch chains or even stuck it in their waistcoat pockets, and the commissioner was obliged to inquire after the exact time on eleven occasions.
    Surprise number three: all of the officers had their badges in place, but there were actually four passengers wearing no emblem, including two of the female sex! The blow that had cracked open Lord Littleby's skull like a nutshell was so powerful it could surely only have been struck by a man, and a man of exceptional strength at that. On the other hand, as a highly experienced specialist in criminal matters, the commissioner was well aware that in a fit of passion or hysterical excitement even the weakest of little ladies was capable of performing genuine miracles. He had no need to look far for examples. Why, only last year a milliner from Neuilly, a frail little chit of a thing, had taken her unfaithful lover, a well-nourished rentier twice as fat and half as tall again as herself and thrown him out of a fourth-floor window. So it would not do at all to eliminate women who happened to have no badge from the list of suspects. Although who had ever heard of a woman, especially from good society, mastering the knack of giving injections like that?
    What with one thing and another, the investigation on board the Leviathan threatened to drag on, and so the commissioner had set about dealing with things in his customary thorough fashion. Captain Josiah Cliff was the only officer of the steamship who had been made privy to the secret investigation, and he had instructions from the management of the shipping company to afford the French guardian of the law every possible assistance. Gauche exploited this privilege quite unceremoniously by demanding that all the individuals of interest to him be assigned to the same saloon.
    It should be explained at this point that out of considerations of privacy and comfort (after all, the ship's advertisement had boasted: 'On board you will discover the atmosphere of a fine old English country estate') those individuals travelling first class were not expected to take their meals in the vast dining hall together with the 600 bearers of democratic silver whales, but were assigned to their own comfortable 'saloons', each of which bore its own aristocratic title and in appearance resembled a high-society hotel, with crystal candelabra, fumed oak and mahogany, velvet-upholstered chairs, gleaming table silver, prim waiters and officious stewards. For his own purposes Commissioner Gauche had singled out the Windsor saloon. Located on the upper deck in the bow section, it had three walls of continuous windows affording a magnificent view, so that even when the day was overcast there was no need to switch on the lights. The velvet upholstery here was a fine shade of golden brown and the linen table napkins were adorned with the Windsor coat of arms.
    Standing around the oval table with its legs bolted to the floor (a precaution against any likelihood of severe pitching and rolling) there were ten chairs, with their tall backs carved in designs incorporating a motley assortment of gothic