Chapter 10
Appalled, Daisy saw the man plummet down the ship’s side and plunge head first into the turbulent water. A moment later, a life-belt landed beside him.
“Man overboard!” Daisy shouted, but even if her voice had overcome the wind’s reverberation, no sailors were in sight.
Alec was fully occupied in leaning over the rail, his shoulders heaving, so Gotobed must have thrown the belt. His broad face a mask of horrified shock, he watched it recede as the Talavera steamed on.
“Have you seen him surface?” Daisy asked hurriedly.
“Not yet. He were shot!”
Daisy looked around. No man with a gun, but the two men who had been standing at the rail nearer the bows were running towards them. As far as she could see, no one was heading for the bridge.
“I’ll stop the ship.” She pelted forward, burst into the tranquil bridge without knocking, and panted out, “Man overboard!”
From the first mate down, everyone gaped at her. Even
the man at the wheel turned his head and gasped, “Strewth, not another ’un!”
The first mate quickly recovered his mental equilibrium. “Does he have a life-belt?” he snapped.
“One was thrown, but he hadn’t come up when I left.” How long? she thought desperately. It had seemed like forever, but … “A minute, not more than two.”
“Where did he fall?”
“Left rear. I mean, port aft.”
He flashed her a smile as he barked out orders which sent men running. Scanning the ocean, he reached for a speaking tube, but he addressed the helmsman. “Can you hold her if we lose all way?”
“Not agin one o’ they cross-seas, sir.”
“He’ll be beyond the screws’ turbulence by now.” More orders flew.
Daisy felt the engines slow beneath her feet until their vibration was barely perceptible.
Having set the rescue attempt in motion, she was superfluous.
One of the orders she had understood was to wake the Captain, and she decided she’d rather be gone when he arrived.
She slipped out. Aft, toiling sailors under the third mate’s command were already swinging a life-boat over the ship’s side.
Alec still leant against the rail, hanging on to it in a white-knuckled grip. He was in need of distraction. What better to distract him than Gotobed’s extraordinary report that the man overboard had been shot?
Gotobed and the other men had all left. Through blowing spume, Daisy saw a group which was probably them down on the promenade deck at the stern-rail.
She thought she saw Gotobed’s distinctive hat among them, and she hoped he had got over the shock enough not to be blurting out his story to all and sundry, à la Brenda.
Joining Alec, she said, “Darling, I have something to tell you. Let’s walk.”
He turned his head, his eyes the same dull, leaden grey as sea and sky, focussed inward. “I daren’t leave the side.”
“You feel better walking; you said so yourself. We shan’t be far from the side, and we’ll stay to leeward.” She had sorted out leeward and windward in her mind since last using the term. “This is important. Come along.”
“What is it now?” he grunted irritably, yielding to her tug on his arm.
She gave him a critical look. “I take it you saw the man fall overboard?”
“I’m not blind.”
“No, but your attention was definitely elsewhere. The thing is, Gotobed said he was shot.”
“Shot! Great Scott, what next? I’m no more deaf than I’m blind, and I heard no shot. Did you?”
“No, but it’s frightfully noisy out here.”
“And I dare say the marksman could have used a silencer. But if the shot was inaudible, Gotobed couldn’t hear it either. And speaking of marksmen, how the deuce could anyone shoot straight on this corkscrewing deck? Another case of hysteria!”
“No, but, darling, can you imagine anyone less hysterical than Gotobed? Though admittedly he was in a state of shock. So was I.”
“There’s your answer then. Between shock and the din, you misheard him.”
“I suppose I might have. Could he have said the chap was dotty? Maybe he threw himself over in a fit of madness?”
“I don’t know, and frankly, just now I can’t bring myself to care. I’m going to lie down.”
Disconsolate, Daisy watched Alec hurry down the forward
companion-way and disappear. She turned back, heading for the group of men at the stern. Alec might not care at present, but someone ought to find out what Gotobed had really said, and why.
A second life-boat was being lowered. On her way aft, Daisy stopped to see the first boat splash down.
A ship’s boy was shouting something at its crew through a megaphone.
The sailors below cast off the chains and started heaving on the oars.
Daisy presumed the boy had given the third officer instructions as to which way to steer, but they must be pretty near guesswork.
The chances of finding the missing man seemed minimal, even if he had surfaced and caught the belt.
Contemplating the frail cockleshell as it crawled up the side of a wave, bobbing on the choppy water, Daisy only hoped she would never have to trust her life to one.
She stopped again at the top of the aft companion-way. From there, a stretch of the ship’s wide, white wake was visible through the murk. An arc. The Talavera was turning. Daisy scanned the trough between the great rollers, but she could not pick out the life-belt.
It was surely several waves back by now, but she leant forward a little, hanging on to the rail, as if the extra six inches might enable her to see more clearly.
From the corner of her eye, she was suddenly aware of a swell approaching from quite the wrong direction. Before she could react, it hit. The Talavera lurched. If Daisy had not already been holding on tight, she would have pitched down the ladder-like steps head first.
Breathing rather fast, her heart thumping, she picked her way carefully down.
Gotobed was no longer with the dozen or so men at the rail. When she reached them, she noticed Chester Riddman. He had on a narrow-cut overcoat in blue, the latest in London
fashions for men, and for once he was without his truculent, disgruntled air. In fact, he looked quite as “het up”—in the American idiom—as he had accused Brenda of being.
The whole group had crossed to starboard to watch the first life-boat.
Moving in the opposite direction from the Talavera , it was already some distance away.
As the ship’s stern slid down into the trough, the boat disappeared over the crest of the next wave; but before it vanished Daisy saw that the third mate was standing up at the tiller, gazing back.
She and several others looked to see what he was staring at so intently. A sailor had climbed high on the nearest mast and was making hand signals. Perhaps from his vantage point he could see the life-belt.
“Perhaps they’ll find him after all,” someone said.
Lowering her gaze, Daisy saw Gotobed coming down the companion-way. She went to meet him. He looked shaken still and uncharacteristically undecided.
“Mrs. Fletcher,” he said in his most formal English, “I was going to ask you to pay no heed to what I said in the heat of the moment. I had no business burdening a young lady with such a dreadful shock.”
“But?”
“But I have just been to the Captain to report what I saw, and he instructed me to inform Mr. Fletcher, who is, he gave me to understand, a police detective.”
“Mr. Arbuckle didn’t tell you?” Daisy asked. “He spilled the beans to Captain Dane when Denton fell overboard and Lady Brenda claimed he’d been pushed.”
“I feel a great deal more sympathy now with that young lady. Captain Dane actually told me to take my ‘imaginings’ to Fletcher.”
“I suspect he’d have brushed you off altogether if you’d been a third-class passenger.”
“Ee, lass, happen he would,” Gotobed sighed.
Daisy seized her chance, not sorry to be distracted from the new disaster.
“Mr. Gotobed, do you mind if I ask you a question that has been preying on my mind? Sometimes you speak perfect King’s English and sometimes broad Yorkshire.
I think I’ve worked out at least partly what brings on the change, but I’ve been wondering whether it’s deliberate or just happens. ”
“Sometimes one, sometimes t‘ither,” Gotobed said with a smile. “When I made up my mind I was going to get on in t’world, I reckoned t’first thing to do was learn proper English.
I were right chuffed to find I’ve a gift for it.
I also found a great many gentlemen underestimated me when I spoke Yorkshire, so I’d use it in business negotiations, but not in situations where I wanted to be accepted as a gentleman. ”
“But then in situations where you feel at home, at ease with friends, you relapse.”
“Ay, that I do, think on! Any road, t’next step were when I started looking into export markets for special steels. French and German come almost as easy to me as good English, and I have some Italian. It’s no bad thing to be able to speak to customers in their own lingo.”
A halloo from the mast top made them both look up. The look-out was signalling again to the invisible life-boats, pointing over to starboard.
“Surely that must mean he’s seen the man,” said Daisy hopefully.
“Likely just the life-belt.” Gotobed had lost his cheerfulness.
“I hope you can advise me, Mrs. Fletcher. As I said, Captain Dane wants me to report to your husband, but on my way to the bridge I saw you go to him and it seemed to me he’s—not well.
In fact, I went round by the port side so as not to embarrass him. ”
“He’s feeling rotten, poor darling. As a matter of fact,” Daisy went on, no doubt with what Alec called her deceptively
guileless look, “I’ve been involved with him in several of his cases. Why don’t you tell me what happened, and I’ll report to him?”
Gotobed hesitated. “It’s not pretty.”
“I’m no shrinking violet.”