Murder Is Not Included

Chapter One

The brass railing came away in Peggy’s hand at 6:40 in the morning.

She stood holding it. Eleven inches of it, gold-coloured, lighter than a baguette. Somewhere below her the ship’s first paying passengers were being handed champagne by a man who had been a lifeguard until Tuesday.

Vesna arrived with a bucket. She looked at the railing, then at Peggy.

“Where.”

“Promenade. Starboard. By the towel station.”

“Is it the whole rail or one piece?”

“One piece.”

“Good.” Vesna took it and put it in the bucket, where it clinked against four other pieces. “Do not tell Saffron.”

“How long to put it back?”

“Is not going back. Is sleeve. Sleeve is plastic and the plastic is finished.” Vesna lifted the bucket and shook it once. “Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Today is Saturday.”

“Can you take that section out of service?”

“Photographer is on the promenade at nine.”

Peggy said nothing.

“Bow to stern. No people, no rope.” Vesna put the bucket down. “Saffron came to the engine room to ask me. She has never been to the engine room.”

“How long would the rope be up?”

“Rest of the season.”

“Then take it out of service.”

“Guests will see rope.”

“Guests will see rope,” Peggy said. “Better than guests seeing the sea.”

Vesna went aft to find Freddie. The rail she left behind ran forty feet to the towel station and looked, in the grey light before the sun came up properly, like the rail of a ship that cost two hundred million pounds. It had cost twelve thousand, fitted, in 2009. The invoice was still in a folder on Deck 5, with the rest of the December paperwork.

Below, on Deck 4, somebody laughed. The Sunrise Sailaway Celebration had started at six. The ship sailed at five in the afternoon. Saffron had named the event herself and was very pleased with it.

· · ·

The crew corridor on Deck 2 smelled of coffee at seven, because the good machine was down there and nobody had mentioned it to the passengers.

Yannick was coming up it with his jacket over his arm. Twelve minutes late, and it was the third time in eight days.

“Morning,” Peggy said.

“Mrs Nunn.” He got the jacket on without breaking step. “The alarm on my phone, it doesn’t—”

“Stores.”

“Sorry?”

“You were in stores. I sent you down for napkins at half six, and stores is on One, and the lift takes six minutes.” She did not slow down. “Get a second alarm. A proper one. Not the phone.”

He caught her at the stairs. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“No.”

“Then why did you?”

“Two hundred covers at eight,” Peggy said, and went up.

· · ·

Freddie was on the promenade with a coil of rope, doing the job Vesna had gone to find somebody to do.

“Fourth one off that run,” he said. “Fifth, if you count the one in the Lucky Lady days, only they never replaced that one, they turned the whole rail round so the bad bit faced the bulkhead, and if you go down to Four and look at the stanchion by the old cashier’s window you can still see the old holes where they—”

“Is the rope long enough?”

“Rope’s long enough.” He tied it off. “It’s the joints. It’s always the joints. They put the sleeving on over good steel, and now the steel’s fine and the gold comes off in your hand.”

“Don’t say that to a passenger.”

“I have never said anything to a passenger in my life.” Freddie stood back and looked at his work. “That’s very smart, that is. You could hang bunting off that.”

“Please don’t hang bunting off that.”

· · ·

The Sunrise Sailaway was in the Terrace Bar on Deck 4. A hundred and eighty people had come aboard the night before for the relaunch. About forty of them were up.

“Peggy!” Jonty had a microphone he was not using. “Forty. At six in the morning. That’s engagement.”

“That’s the time difference.”

“That’s engagement,” Jonty said. “We brought it down off eleven. You can’t do sunrise round a pool with a cover on it. A cover reads as closed.”

A man in a cricket jumper left the rail to meet her.

“Are you the one to ask about the loungers?”

“I am.”

“Halloran. Deck eight.” He opened a folded deck plan against the rail, and Peggy moved him off it without appearing to. “I’ve read the booklet. It says loungers can’t be reserved.”

“They can’t.”

“Can’t, or mustn’t?”

“Mustn’t,” Peggy said. “So they can.”

Halloran laughed. “That’s the first honest answer I’ve had since Tuesday.” He put a finger on the plan. “Position fourteen, port side. Only lounger on this ship that gets shade after two, because of the funnel. I worked it out from the photographs in the brochure.”

He was right. It was the only one.

“Then I would get up early,” Peggy said.

“I intend to.” Halloran folded the plan into quarters. “One more thing. The spa. The booklet says open from day one.”

“It’s operating in-cabin this voyage. For your comfort.”

“In-cabin.”

“For your comfort.”

Halloran put the plan in his jacket pocket. “Right,” he said, and did not take it out again.

· · ·

The Purser’s office on Deck 5 was a room with a counter, a safe, a binder of manifests and a chair. Peggy used it in the mornings because it was the only office on the ship with a door that shut, and because nobody else ever went in.

She filled in the morning report at ten past ten. It had a box called Maintenance, Guest-Facing, and a box under it called Maintenance, Other.

She wrote in the second box: Promenade rail, starboard, section four. Scheduled works. Roped.

Then she read it back.

Nothing in it was untrue. The rail was roped. The works were scheduled, in the sense that Vesna had scheduled them in her head. The section was Other because Peggy had put it there.

She pressed send.

Saffron came in at twenty past with two coffees and handed one over.

“Morning! How are we looking?”

“We’re looking lovely.”

“We are.” Saffron sat on the edge of the counter. “I’ve been up since five. Do you know what I love about a sunrise event? It sets an intention for the whole voyage.”

“It does.”

“Anything I should know?”

“Nothing that won’t keep,” Peggy said.

“That’s what I love about you, Peggy.” Saffron stood and straightened her jacket. “You never bring me problems. You bring me a ship.”

She went out.

Peggy drank the coffee. It was from the passenger machine and it was not good. She put the cup in the bin. On the wall by the safe there was a crew list. Ninety-one of the names on it were on Kastrovian articles. If the ship stopped sailing, ninety-one contracts stopped with her.

At eleven the gangway opened and four hundred and thirty-two people came aboard. Every one of them stopped at the gap in the railing to photograph the sea, past a very smart length of rope.

· · ·

The first complaint came aboard at ten past eleven and was holding a brochure.

“Mrs Prentice. Seven oh two four.” She had it open at the itinerary and folded back so it stayed there. “Four ports.”

“Four are printed.”

“And we are calling at one.”

“We are.”

Peggy had learned in twenty years that the useful thing to do with a silence was to leave it where it was.

“Well?” said Mrs Prentice.

“Grand Turk on Thursday. Eight in the morning until five. That is nine hours, the tender is a two-minute walk, and it is the good beach.” Peggy turned the brochure the right way round. “The other three became sea days in November. It is in the booking amendment.”

“Nobody reads the booking amendment.”

“No,” Peggy said. “They don’t.”

Mrs Prentice looked at her for some time.

“You could have told me it was for my comfort.”

“I could have.”

“Hm,” said Mrs Prentice, and took her brochure back, and went to find her cabin.

By one o’clock four hundred and thirty-two people had come up the gangway. Reception had a queue of fourteen. One lift was working.

Peggy walked the queue from the back, which is a thing that works for about eight minutes before people notice you are not actually fixing anything. In eight minutes she moved three families to the desk on Deck 5 that nobody knew about, took two more complaints about the ports, and found a boy of six who had decided, correctly, to stay where he was until his mother came back.

· · ·

The galley at noon was thirty-one degrees. Dario was reading a delivery note and did not look up.

“Six hundred and twelve.”

“I know.”

“Rated for four hundred. Two sittings, half six and half eight. The second sitting eats what the first sitting did not order, which is why the second sitting is happier, and in twenty years nobody has worked out why.” He put the note down. “One oven.”

“I know.”

“Eleven times I have asked in writing.”

“Twelve now.”

“Twelve.” He pushed the note across the pass with two fingers. “Sign this.”

“What is it?”

“It says I received what is on it.”

“Did you?”

“No.” Dario held out the pen. “The chicken is on the note. The chicken is in Miami.”

Peggy read it. Everything listed had come aboard except forty kilos of chicken.

“What are you serving on Wednesday?”

“Something else.”

“Will it be good?”

“It will be very good. That is not the question.” He kept the pen out. “The question is whether the man in Miami who has my chicken sends an invoice for chicken.”

“Then don’t sign it.”

“If I do not sign it, there is no stores delivery on Wednesday, and on Wednesday I have six hundred and twelve people and one oven.” He waited. “Somebody should know I signed for a thing I did not get. Now it is two of us.”

Peggy signed the note. Dario folded it once and put it in a drawer that did not shut properly, because of how much was already in it.

· · ·

At two o’clock Mr Halloran was on Deck 11, in a chair that was not position fourteen.

“It’s taken.”

There was a towel on fourteen. There was also a paperback, a pair of reading glasses and a sun hat, and no person.

“Since when?”

“Twenty past. I was in the lift.” He was not angry. He was a man establishing a record. “Prentice. Seven oh two four.”

“I met her at ten past.”

“Ten past eleven she was at the gangway,” Halloran said, “and twenty past she was up here with a hat. That is a woman who knew what she wanted before she came aboard.”

“It is.”

“I respect it.” He settled back into the wrong chair. “I want that understood. I respect it enormously, and it is not going to make any difference.”

· · ·

Jonty caught her outside the theatre with a stack of paper against his chest.

“Tomorrow’s! Still warm.” He handed one over. “Tell me what you think.”

The daily programme ran to four pages. The front said SEA DAY SANCTUARY in a typeface that somebody had chosen.

“When was this printed?”

“All seven. Miami, Thursday, before we loaded.” He was already looking past her at somebody coming up the stairs. “It’s cheaper by the run. Much cheaper.”

“All seven days are printed.”

“All seven! Locked and lovely.”

“What happens if something changes?”

“Nothing changes,” Jonty said. “That’s the point of printing them.”