Authors: Sharyn McCrumb
As the plane droned on toward Chicago over dark empty prairies, she found herself wondering if it would have been faster to get to England from the other direction. She supposed not. The Pacific was rather large, not to mention China and Russia. Still, it did seem to take forever to inch across North America and finally into the sky above the vast blackness of the Atlantic.
To make matters worse, just about the time she could have gone to sleep from sheer exhaustion, she managed to burn herself on that stupid light fixture above her seat, causing her to spend most of the Atlantic stretch of the journey in absolute agony. She was trying to turn off the light so that she could sleep, she explained tearfully to the flight attendant. On other airlines (
better
airlines, her tone suggested) the switch was beside the bulb. In this plane, it was on the arm-rest, but how was
she
to know that? In groping for it, she had put her forefinger directly on the white-hot bulb, sending a wave of unbelievable pain through her body. It seemed hours before a flight attendant strolled by to answer her call button. She asked for ice for her finger, which was by now beginning to blister. The stewardess brought it with all the casualness of someone indulging an irrational whim. Alice, mindful of her dependence on this creature’s goodwill for more ice, managed to thank her politely.
Ice, she discovered, made it possible for her to stand the pain without weeping, but she was still unable to sleep. She stared at the meager cup encasing her enflamed forefinger
and watched the ice melt and turn tepid, sending stabs of pain through her injured flesh.
The necessity of staving off the pain forced her to make quite a nuisance of herself with the cabin crew for the remainder of the flight, ringing them whenever her balm melted, and in one instance, when no one answered her summons, venturing for ice herself, much to the dismay of the stewardesses, who were lounging around gossiping in the galley.
Alice remained civil to these slackers, but she was firm in her request for assistance in her medical dilemma. That’s what they were paid for, wasn’t it? Why shouldn’t they help a stricken passenger?
She supposed that they were delighted to see her go when the plane finally touched down at Gatwick. For once she didn’t fret about the plane crashing on the runway. Now, however, she was having considerable misgivings about her ability to enjoy the tour. She exited the plane with her finger thrust into a cup of rapidly melting ice, wondering what would become of her next. An airport attendant told her that Gatwick had a first-aid station—not that anything could be done for minor burns, he added. His directions on how to get there were so endless and complicated that Alice resolved to look for a restaurant instead. Surely someone would sell her some ice.
But first she had to get through customs. Before the plane landed, the flight attendant had recited some carefully memorized instructions on how to proceed. It boiled down to: get your luggage, stand in the appropriate line.
Alice wondered how she was going to carry two suitcases with her finger in a paper cup. She managed to find the metal shopping carts, and was debating the best way to steer one with a hand and a foot, when a slender auburn-haired woman of about her own age approached her. “You look like you
could use some help,” she said in familiar California English.
Alice heaved a sigh of relief. “I sure could,” she said. “I burned my finger on the airplane reading lamp! Did you just get here, too? Were you on Flight 304?”
The woman picked up Alice’s suitcases and set them on the cart. “Yes,” she said. “I’m Frances Coles, from La Mesa. I’m taking a mystery tour of southern England.”
After they had expressed delight and astonishment that they were both on the same tour, Alice reflected that it was not such a remarkable coincidence after all, since they were both from southern California. The travel agency had quite naturally booked them on the same flight, albeit twenty rows apart. But she was nonetheless delighted to find an ally so soon.
“I’ll hold your passport for you,” said Frances, as they waited in the nonresidents’ line for customs.
“Thanks,” said Alice. “I hope we get through fast.” She indicated her paper cup. “My ice is melting.”
“That would be a great way to smuggle diamonds into the country,” Frances remarked. “Burn your finger and hide the diamonds in the ice.”
“You’re welcome to it,” Alice said. “After this experience, I wouldn’t burn my finger on purpose for all the diamonds in South Africa.”
The customs official was cheerful, but brisk, and apparently unthreatened by a couple of middle-aged women with well-worn suitcases, one of whom had a finger immersed in a cup of ice. He was an expert on American eccentricities. He wished the ladies a pleasant stay in England and waved them through.
Frances Coles glanced at her watch. “We still have four hours before the tour assembles. How is your finger feeling now?”
Alice took a deep breath and eased her finger out of the
puddle of ice. She shut her eyes, waiting for the stab of pain. Instead there was only a mild twinge of discomfort. “It’s better,” she admitted.
“Good. I think you should switch from ice to something else now. Aloe, if we can find any. Do you suppose there’s a drugstore in the airport?”
“Bound to be,” said Alice. “I suppose we’d better change some money first.”
Together they trundled off down the halls of Gatwick. The adventure had begun.
At two-fifteen that afternoon a small group of travelers began to assemble in the ground-floor lobby of the airport: a married couple, an English-looking mother and daughter in tweeds and sensible shoes, a pretty young nurse, a Canadian doctor’s wife, a silver-haired lady from Berkeley, Frances Coles, and her new friend Alice MacKenzie, whose burned finger was now shiny with aloe ointment.
Elizabeth MacPherson was the last to arrive, followed by the beautiful Susan Cohen, who had reached chapter thirty-one in the oral history of her life. “And then I got my
second
cat, Wilkie. He’s the tortoiseshell one with the yellow eyes. I have a picture of him somewhere—”
“Oh look!” cried Elizabeth, more with relief than surprise. “This must be the rest of the tour!” She wondered hopefully if any of them were hard of hearing. “Mystery tour?” she asked, striding toward the group.
Several of the travelers nodded.
Elizabeth and Susan added their suitcases to the pile of luggage in the circle.
“Is the guide here yet?” Elizabeth inquired.
“Not yet,” said the tall silver-haired woman consulting her watch. “Oh dear,” she said. “It’s still on Berkeley time.”
The rest of the tour members offered her local times ranging
from two-twenty to two-forty. Elizabeth noticed that there was only one man in the group, a tanned and genial-looking gentleman with peppery hair. He wore a T-shirt that proclaimed
ERIK BROADAXE RULES PRETTY GOOD
. From this evidence, Elizabeth deduced that he was an American; that he had been to the Jorvik, the Norse exhibit at York (whence the T-shirt); and that he had a good sense of humor, always a pleasant discovery in a fellow traveler. His wife, who was half a head shorter than he, was blonde and smiling, and looked equally good-tempered.
“Is everybody here from California?” asked Mrs. Broadaxe (as Elizabeth had begun to characterize her).
“San Diego,” said the pretty, dark-eyed nurse.
“So am I!” said Alice MacKenzie. “And Frances is from La Mesa, which amounts to the same thing.”
“We’re from Colorado,” said the lady in tweeds. Her daughter nodded and smiled.
“Vancouver.”
“Berkeley,” said the silver-haired woman, eldest of the party.
“I’m from Minneapolis,” said Susan, “and our airport, the Minneapolis-St. Paul International, is much more—”
“Edinburgh,” said Elizabeth MacPherson—and instantly regretted it. She then had to admit that she was, in fact, an American; she started to explain how she came to be living in Scotland and why her new husband hadn’t come along.
She was still relating all this when a man in a beige leisure suit approached the group, carrying a canvas shoulder bag and a sheaf of typed papers. “Tour?” he said briskly. “South of England mystery tour? I am your guide.”
There was a moment of silence while the assembly took in the sight of their guide. He was a desperately stately five feet, eight inches, with longish blue-black hair that conjured up images of shoe polish in the minds of the beholders. Such a hue did, of course, exist in nature. Innumerable species of
crows possessed it without resorting to artifice, and, among homo sapiens, certain bands of Comanches may in their youth rejoice in a similarly stygian shade; but in an aging Englishman whose face sported the crow’s-feet to accompany the crow’s color, the shade suggested hairstyling of a suicidal nature: dyed by his own hand and with a reckless disregard for plausibility. His eyes behind dark-framed glasses were similarly dark, and his expression radiated a confidence and self-esteem that belied his unevenly cut, safety-pinned trousers.
“My name is Rowan Rover,” said the personage.
With an exclamation of surprise Elizabeth held aloft her copy of
Death Takes a Holiday.
“Yes, I’ll sign it for you later,” said Rowan Rover soothingly. “Now, I’ll just read out the names on my list to make sure that we are all here. Elizabeth MacPherson?”
“Here,” mumbled Elizabeth, chagrined at having been mistaken for a groupie. She wondered if she could arrange for him to sit with Susan on the bus trip to Winchester.
“It may take me a while to learn your names. Ah, only one gentleman, I see.
That
should be easy.” He beamed at Erik Broadaxe. “Charles Warren, I presume?”
“That’s right, and this is my wife Nancy.”
“Martha Tabram?” The well-dressed woman from Vancouver raised her hand.
“Frances Coles? Alice MacKenzie? Ah, there you are together. Very convenient. Both from California, aren’t you? How lovely. And two Colorado ladies, where are they? Miriam Angel and Emma Smith?”
“We’re mother and daughter,” said Miriam Angel.
“Splendid. No one’s mistaken you for the Judds, have they, dear?” Rowan said under his breath. He had become conversant in country music during the period he referred to as his exile in the academic gulag, by which he meant the
state of Wisconsin. “Any more Californians? Kate Conway?”
The pretty young nurse in the red sweater raised her hand.
“And one more—Maud Marsh.” He nodded toward the silver-haired lady from Berkeley. “That’s it, I think.”
“Excuse me. You forgot me.”
Rowan Rover looked up from his list. “Did I? I thought I had read out all the names. You are …”
“Susan Cohen. From Minneapolis.”
Rowan Rover’s smile faded as he stared at the belligerent-looking blonde. He made a show of consulting his list again. “Susan Cohen. It’s here, of course. It’s just that I thought I’d already said it. No, I wouldn’t forget you.”
After a moment’s silence, during which the color grudgingly returned to Rowan Rover’s face, the members of the group picked up their belongings and surged at him with questions.
He held up a hand to forestall the onslaught. “I am told that the tour coach will be waiting for us in the loading zone just outside. Our driver should be there now unless he has been delayed in the interminable traffic that one inevitably encounters on the motorway. I don’t know who thought up the road system out here, but he evidently came from a family not known for precognition, because he certainly didn’t foresee—”
Alice MacKenzie interrupted his tirade. “Do you want us to go outside now?”
“Yes,” said Rowan. “Let us be optimistic.”
“And will there be a sign on the side of the bus that says
MURDER TOUR?”
Rowan Rover sighed. “No, madam. Definitely not. We don’t want to be mistaken for the IRA.” He ended further discussion by turning and marching for the glass doors of the exit, while the tour members scrambled behind him, balancing suitcases and handbags as they ran.
Once assembled on the sidewalk outside, Rowan Rover turned and faced his charges. “Ladies,” he intoned,
“and
Charles.” He nodded toward the lone gentleman in the party. “If you will all stay here, I will attempt to locate the coach.”
With a reassuring wave, Rowan Rover hurried away. Once out of sight of the party, he took out a cigarette and lit it with trembling hands. Susan Cohen. There she was: undeniably real and unavoidably doomed. He had three weeks in which to kill her. Somehow, despite the arrival of a fiscally sound ten-thousand-pound check, the murder scheme had never seemed more than an idle exercise in theory. Until now. Rowan Rover had spent the past few years making a living out of idle murder theories, and this one had seemed little different from the others. “Suppose Florence Maybrick knew that her husband was an arsenic eater,” he would say in one of his crime lectures. “It would be very easy then for her to purchase some arsenic, or even to steal some of his own private stock …” It was great fun to speculate. But he, Rowan Rover, had never had to buy any arsenic. Or to watch the death throes of the subsequent victim. Now, suddenly, he had to move from the theoretical to the practical—and to accomplish the task before ten potential witnesses, all of them avowed crime buffs. Was he mad?
He looked up to find that a large tour coach had pulled up alongside him. “Mr. Rover?” the driver inquired in a working-class twang. “Mystery tour?”
Rowan took a long drag on his cigarette. “Right,” he wheezed. “They’re just around the corner.”
“Climb aboard, then, and we’ll go and get them.”
Rowan Rover hesitated. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Not me, mate. But if you’re ferrying about a load of American ladies, there’s sure to be objections. Regular health nuts, some of them.” He was young and blond and he looked as if he should be running across a rugby field rather than driving a bus. He smiled again as Rowan Rover mounted the
steps to the coach. “My name’s Bernard,” he said. “I’m from Kensington.”
“And you know where you’re going, I take it?”
“Complete instructions,” said Bernard. “Not as if it ever changes, though. All the tourists want to go to the same dreary places.”