There is a wheeze from Constance, which Billie only later thinks might have been a laugh. She manages to get Constance downstairs, giving the tiniest sigh of relief as they reach theground floor. She doesn’t dare take her through the garden and the rest of the party, so she makes her way to the front door.
Just as she puts her hand on the knob, she hears a voice.
“Leaving already?”
She turns to see Cassandra Ketcham-Flint, the hostess, smiling in a harried way and hurrying forward with a lavishly wrapped bag.
Billie gestures towards the bloody handkerchief in Constance’s hand. “Nosebleed. She gets them often, but this one was a devil,” she says in a thick Lancashire accent. “A bit of a lie-down and she’ll be right as rain.”
“But where is your charge?” Cassandra asks suddenly. “Surely you came with a child.”
Without a pram or toddler in tow, it looks as if Billie and Constance are leaving a child behind. Billie smiles.
“Oh, we came with Dorothy,” she says, plucking a name out of thin air. “She’s in the bouncy house with the children. I am about to take over for her, so I’m shadowing her for a fortnight. Nanny here”—she nods towards Constance—“is technically retired, but she does love to come see the little ones when they have a day out.”
“Of course,” Cassandra says, already past caring about the domestic arrangements of strangers. She holds out the bag. “Don’t forget your favor.”
“Thanks very much,” Billie murmurs as she reaches for it. A thin line of the target’s blood is etched beneath her fingernail, a crescent of scarlet.
“You’ll want to wash that,” the hostess says, her mouth setin an expression of faint distaste as she sees the blood. Her gaze goes to the older woman with the gore-stained handkerchief clamped to her face.
“Yes, ma’am,” Billie says in a tone of embarrassed deference. “Good afternoon, ma’am.”
Cassandra opens the door for them, but doesn’t wait to see them down the front steps. She closes the door smartly and returns to the party to harass the caterer about a tray of vol-au-vents that were unsatisfactory and to see if the housekeeper has managed to reach the plumber after hours. When she discovers her godmother’s body, an hour will have passed, and the blood on her bathroom floor will have begun to congeal, ruining the grout. She will have forgotten everything of significance about the pair of nannies who left together.
They were only the help, after all.
Chapter Seven
Over the next two dayson the ship, we established our surveillance of Lazarov. Helen and I, in the role of monied divorcées, dressed ourselves in expensive athleisure and took watercolor classes and twisted ourselves into pretzels during deck yoga. Mary Alice and Natalie sat on their asses in the Chart Room, eating, drinking, and chatting with other passengers before heading off to dance class. We caught the planetarium show and Shakespeare lectures and spent too much time in the casino. There were fencing lessons, cooking classes, and a memorable whisky tasting, and by the end of the second day, Mary Alice came to my stateroom for a debrief.
She yanked off her wig and tossed it aside before kicking off her shoes to massage her feet. “Oh god. My bunions. I should never have taken that samba class,” she moaned. “I danced for two hours with a retired maître d’ from Barcelona and his wife.”
“What sort of samba class encourages threesomes?”
“The wife is Brazilian. She likes to lead,” she explained. She looked around. “Where’s Helen?”
“Sushi-making class,” I told her. “Where’s Nat?”
“Listening to live jazz in the Carinthia Lounge,” she said in her best travel agent voice. She pointed at me to sum up. “What do we know?”
“Lazarov isn’t a joiner,” I said. “We haven’t seen him in any classes or lectures. He’s skipped all the entertainment apart from forty-five minutes at the casino last night where he won a few thousand bucks and mostly looked bored. He had a manicure, had his hair cut at the barbershop, and bought three books at the bookstore.” She gave me a quizzical look and I knew what she was asking. “Two Agatha Christies and the latest Janice Hallett.”
“He likes it twisty,” she said. “I saw him talking to a couple from Liverpool. Nat and I chatted with them later and managed to get a little information but nothing useful. Apparently, they talked to him about pears. Or bears. They were both extremely hard of hearing—probably because they were older than Adam’s housecat. Like everybody else on this ship.”
“Don’t be so ageist,” I scolded mildly.
“Ageist? I love it,” Mary Alice said earnestly. “We are the youngest people on board by a mile. I’m bringing Akiko next time. And I may never vacation with anybody except the elderly again. It’s doing wonders for my self-esteem.”
I grinned, wondering if Akiko knew what she was in for. Like samba threesomes. “Back to Lazarov. He seems perfectly content to read in the Chart Room or stay in his suite.That indicates to me that he’s not impressed with the ship. We know he’s made the crossing before, probably enough that he’s seen and done it all.”
Mary Alice nodded thoughtfully. “It’s like flying transatlantic in first class on Virgin. The first time, you get so excited by all the fun little perks—the popcorn and ice cream and those cute little salt and pepper shakers—and you can hardly wait to change into the jammies they give you. It’s a little less exciting the second time. By the third time, you’re wondering why they can’t give you the right size pajamas and why the serving of ice cream is so small.”
She paused a minute and I took the chance to voice something that had been bothering me.
“Something is off about Pasha,” I began.
“Off?” She was still scrutinizing her feet. “Damn. I’m starting a blister.”