Maiden Voyage

FIFTY-SEVEN

After luncheon was over, many of the passengers took to their cabins to doze off the effects of the special Irish celebration. The first course had brought before them a selection of asparagus soup, crimped salmon, fillets of gurnet, flamed brill, and soles aux fines herbes. This had been followed by lamb cutlets, tendrons de veau au jardiniere, lobster patties, and larded sweetbreads. Then the stewards had brought on boiled capons, saddle of lamb, boiled calf's head, ham, and roasted chickens. And for any passenger with any appetite left, there bad been roasted leverets, broiled goslings, prawns, cheesecakes, custards, fondues, and plovers' eggs. Coffee, chocolates, ices, and fruit had been served to those still upright.

"The terrible beauty of it is," wrote Julius Briggs, "that one retires to one's bed, with the shades tightly drawn so that passing promenaders may not peek in and marvel at the size of one's distended corporation; and even as one lies there in the twilight, breathless and exhausted, one is conscious that within one and a half hours, tea will be served in the Palm Court, with whipped-cream fancies and anchovies on toast and cucumber sandwiches; and that only three hours after that it will be time for a fancy-dress dinner, which tonight will feature lobster rissoles, mutton cutlets a la Maintenon, ragout of of duck and green peas, and trout a la Genevese. One cries to whatever gods there may be to curb the salaciousness of one's appetite, and to ease the strenuousness of one's digestion!"

That may have been the terrible beauty of it, but the strange truth of it was that none of the first-class passengers would manage to eat their way through more than fifty pounds worth of food in four and a half days. Keys could have cut the first-class fare by more than three hundred pounds and still made a moderate profit. Stanley Keys' philosophy about serving food in first class had always been: Give them more than they can possibly eat, because then they'll feel that they've had their money's worth. "The cost of throwing away a few ducks and a few joints of beef, at wholesale prices," he had written, "is nothing compared with the profit we will make if our first-class passengers feel they have been outrageously spoilt and will book with us again."

Edgar Deacon went back to his stateroom to work on a lengthy draft agreement. Percy Fearson had been waiting for him, but had fallen asleep in one of his armchairs, and was snoring with a ducklike quacking of his lips, followed by a loud whistling whoop. Edgar stood beside him and listened to him for a while, and then smiled. He felt quite tired himself, although he had been careful only to eat a little sole, and a couple of slices of chicken breast. He mixed himself a gin and French and crossed his living-room to his desk.

There was a knock at his door. He called, "Come in!" but when nobody did, he went over to answer it. Outside hi the corridor was a tall man with thinning white hair, and the look about him of a rather destitute aristocrat. He said, "Mr Keys, is it?" in the booming voice of someone who has never had to speak quietly.

"Mr. Keys passed away last week," said Edgar.

"Ah!" said the man. "So who are you?"

"My name is Edgar Deacon. I'm the managing director of Keys Shipping, for the time being."

The tall man stepped uninvited into Edgar's living room, propped his hands on his hips, and looked around. When he saw Percy Fearson fast asleep in an armchair, he raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Mr Fearson," explained Edgar. "He's been working all night. I thought he deserved a nap."

"Well, I'm glad somebody thinks they can afford to nap on this ship," said the tall man, in his loud, unmodulated voice. "Because it seems to me that the rest of us can't, on account of what might happen to our lady-folk if we do."

Edgar closed the stateroom door. "I beg your pardon?" he said.

"Well, you might do," said the man, stalking around the room with his hands still perched on his hips, and his lower lip stuck out. 'You might indeed beg my pardon. But an apology won't really help."

"Do I know you," asked Edgar.

"You should do," the man retorted. "I've been travelling on this Godforsaken ship of yours since it left Liverpool."

"I'm sorry you feel that way," said Edgar carefully.

"Sorry! It's not for you to be sorry! I'm the one who's sorry! Sorry I ever let my wife travel by Keys Shipping. That's what I'm sorry about!"

Edgar said patiently, "Do you think you could explain yourself? You appear to have some complaint about the ship, but I'm not sure what it is."

"It's my wife!" the man exclaimed.

"Yes, sir," said Edgar, "but who is your wife?"

"You don't know my wife? You call yourselves a luxury shipping line, and you don't know my wife?"

"If I knew who you were, sir, I might—"

"Well, that's it, isn't it!" the man declaimed. "You don't even know who I am! And that's the trouble! It seems to me that you don't know a damn thing! Stupidity one can forgive, but not ignorance!"

Edgar said, "Would you care for a drink, Mr.—?"

"Mister!" exclaimed the man. "That's just it! Mister!"

Percy Fearson woke up now and stared around him in bewilderment. Edgar said, "Percy! This gentleman is insisting that we should know him. Are you familiar with him?"

Percy rubbed at his eyes and tried to focus. But before he could make a guess at the identity of their irate visitor, the man himself said, "I am Lord Thomas FitzPerry. I have been travelling on the Arcadia in a certain disguise, in order to avoid publicity."

Edgar clicked the heels of his deck shoes together and gave Lord FitzPerry a nod of understanding and welcome. "In that case, sir, we're delighted to have you aboard. Now I come to think of it, you must have been the gentleman in the wig and the sunglasses and the silk scarf."

"Indeed I was, and nobody recognised me. But what a penalty I have paid!"

"What's up?" asked Percy Fearson, easing himself out of the armchair and brushing his crumpled tweed trousers. "You don't have anything to complain about, surely?"

"I suppose it depends on your moral outlook," said Lord FitzPerry. "But I have evidence that one of your officers set his hat at my wife, whom he believed to be travelling alone, and therefore unprotected, and then went about seducing her in the most calculating and inhuman fashion, a seduction which included practices so degrading that one could not even mention them out loud in a court of law. And more's the pity, because a court of law is where your officer's infamous behaviour is going to be judged."

Edgar was no longer smiling. "This is a very serious allegation, Lord FitzPerry."

"You may be sure that it is," Lord FitzPerry told him. "If it comes out in the yellow press that no woman is safe aboard the Arcadia because of the unbounded lechery of her officers, then your trade across the Atlantic is going to decline as rapidly as it deserves to! You have a crew of blackguards, Mr. Deacon! Blackguards and bounders! Not to mention cads!"

Percy Fearson said, "Who, exactly, is the officer concerned?"

Lord FitzPerry flared his nostrils, like an irate Arabian horse. "He calls himself "Dicky". Or so I've been led to believe."

"Dick Charles," said Percy, in some surprise, looking across at Edgar. "I wouldn't have thought it of him. Too much of a dark horse, that lad."

"Even dark horses seem to harbour the desire to be stallions," said Lord FitzPerry caustically. "At least this one certainly does. He set upon my wife from the moment she came on board. Fortunately, she told me about the outrage, and I took the trouble to borrow the Edison recording machine from the ship's library and conceal it beneath her bed the following night."

He held up a phonograph cylinder. "Here, Mr. Deacon, is your evidence. The voice of your officer as he avails himself of my wife! He speaks words to her that would make any respectable person faint."

"Did he make your wife faint?" asked Edgar gently.

Lord FitzPerry didn't answer that, but shook the wax cylinder in the air. "The evidence is here, Mr Deacon. There's no getting away from it."

Edgar stayed silent for more than two minutes. When Percy Fearson tried to say something, he raised his hand and quickly shook his head, making it dear that Percy ought to keep his opinions to himself. Then at last he said, "How much do you want for that cylinder, Lord FitzPerry?"

Lord FitzPerry twisted around in a parody of that classic sculptural position known as contrapposto. "How much? Do you honestly believe that I'm trying to blackmail you?"

"Yes," said Edgar. "I believe that you are."

"I wouldn't accept a thousand pounds for this cylinder. I want to see you dragged into court, and punished as you ought to be punished."

"Would you accept fifteen hundred?"

"Absolutely not."

Edgar said in a measured voice, "I am trying to be accommodating, Lord FitzPerry."

"Accommodating? When your officers behave like creatures from some Darwinian pre-history?"

"It just strikes me," put in Percy Fearson, in his stolid Northern accent, "it just strikes me that if you were as upset about what Mr. Charles was doing with your wife as you pretend to be, then you'd have waited behind the cabin door for him and punched him on the nose, rather than left an Edison recording machine under the bed."

There was a silence. Then Lord FitzPerry said, "I won't accept anything less than six thousand pounds and a written apology."

"Fifteen hundred's my limit," said Edgar.

"Well, then," said Lord FitzPerry, "it's obviously going to have to be court."

Edgar said very gently, "I'm giving you one last chance, Lord FitzPerry."

"You're giving me one last chance!" declared Lord FitzPerry, puffing up his starched shirtfront like a belligerent pigeon.

"Lord FitzPerry," said Edgar, "it hasn't escaped my notice that you are a regular and notorious gambler. Neither has it escaped my notice that you recently sold most of the furniture from Wrekin Hall to pay off some of your creditors. I do read an occasional newspaper, you know. I don't know what you and Lady FitzPerry are actually playing at, but it strikes me that you are both engaged in what I can only call a game of extortion. You had to leave England for a while, to escape bankruptcy proceedings, and in the process you thought you'd make yourself a little extra money."

"I shall sue you for slander, as well as indecency,' bellowed Lord FitzPerry.

"You may certainly try," said Edgar. "But you'll have a difficult time proving either."

"I have this cylinder."

"The cylinder, Lord FitzPerry, belongs to the Keys Shipping Line. If you examine it closely, you will see the words, "Property of Keys Shipping Company Ltd," stamped around the end. If you attempt to remove that cylinder from this vessel, I will have you arrested for petty theft."

Lord FitzPerry began to look uncertain. "Nonetheless," he puffed, "what your officer did to my wife was inexcusable."

"Any more inexcusable than anything else your wife has done during the past ten years?"

Lord FitzPerry at last sat down. He said under his breath, 'It's quite barbaric, of course."

"You know what they say," replied Edgar. "We live in barbaric times."

Lord FitzPerry didn't know what to say. Edgar glanced across at Percy Fearson, and Percy Fearson shrugged. It was quite obvious to both of them who had devised this little scheme: Lady Diana FitzPerry herself. To seduce a ship's officer and then try to claim compensation from the shipping line was just her style. Most of her jewellery and her furs had probably been gifts from eminent suitors who had been alarmed at the prospect of their wives and colleagues finding out about their liaison with her. It was well known in Fleet Street that her diamond necklace had been given to her by the Standard Assurance Company, after she had amused herself with their chairman. Silence, in Lady Diana FitzPerry's book, was golden.

Edgar said, "I'll give you a cheque for fifteen hundred now, and in return you'll give me that cylinder. What's more, you'll agree to press no charges of assault."

Lord FitzPeny sighed.

"This is your last opportunity," said Edgar. "If you don't say yes now, then I'll have you thrown out of my stateroom, and you won't get a penny. If you want anything, you'll have to fight for it in the courts."

"Very well," said Lord FitzPerry at last. "Although I don't know what her ladyship will say."

Edgar went to his desk, sat down, and opened a drawer to take out a Keys chequebook. He wrote a cheque in green ink for 1,500 pounds, blotted it dry, and held it up to Lord FitzPerry. Lord FitzPerry accepted it glumly, and then handed over the Edison cylinder.

"here's one more thing," said Edgar. "I don't expect either you or Lady FitzPerry to travel on a Keys steamer again. If you apply for a cabin, I regret that all the accommodation will be filled."

Lord FitzPerry folded the cheque, tucked it into his breast pocket, and went to the door.

"I'm sorry your wife went to so much trouble for so little," said Edgar. "I just hope that our officer gave her some amusement, along with the work. Good afternoon."

Lord FitzPerry hesitated, as if he wanted to say something. But then he went out, and closed the door very precisely behind him.