Half an hour later, Léon, the chief veranda-deck steward, came in. Dessard looked up, impatiently. “Yes, Léon?”
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I thought you should know…”
“Hm?” Dessard was only half-listening, his mind on the delicate task of completing the seating arrangements for the captain’s table for each night of the voyage. The captain was not a man gifted with social graces, and having dinner with his passengers every night was an ordeal for him. It was Dessard’s task to see that the group was agréable.
“It’s about Mme. Temple…” Léon began.
Dessard instantly laid down his pencil and looked up, his small black eyes alert. “Yes?”
“I passed her cabin a few minutes ago, and I heard loud voices and a scream. It was difficult to hear clearly through the door, but it sounded as though she was saying, ‘You’ve killed me, you’ve killed me.’ I thought it best not to interfere, so I came to tell you.”
Dessard nodded. “You did well. I shall check to make certain that she is all right.”
Dessard watched the deck steward leave. It was unthinkable that anyone would harm a woman like Mme. Temple. It was an outrage to Dessard’s Gallic sense of chivalry. He put on his uniform cap, stole a quick look in the wall mirror and started for the door. The telephone rang. The chief purser hesitated, then picked it up. “Dessard.”
“Claude—” It was the third mate’s voice. “For Christ’s sake, send someone down to the theater with a mop, would you? There’s blood all over the place.”
Dessard felt a sudden sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. “Right away,” Dessard promised. He hung up, arranged for a porter, then dialed the ship’s physician.
“André? Claude.” He tried to make his voice casual. “I was just wondering whether anyone has been in for medical treatment…. No, no. I wasn’t thinking of seasick pills. This person would be bleeding, perhaps badly…. I see. Thank you.” Dessard hung up, filled with a growing sense of unease. He left his office and headed for Jill Temple’s suite. He was halfway there when the next singular event occurred. As Dessard reached the boat deck, he felt the rhythm of the ship’s motion change. He glanced out at the ocean and saw that they had arrived at the Ambrose Lightship, where they would drop their pilot tug and the liner would head for the open sea. But instead, the Bretagne was slowing to a stop. Something out of the ordinary was happening.
Dessard hurried to the railing and looked over the side. In the sea below, the pilot tug had been snugged against the cargo hatch of the Bretagne, and two sailors were transferring luggage from the liner to the tug. As Dessard watched, a passenger stepped from the ship’s hatch onto the small boat. Dessard could only catch a glimpse of the person’s back, but he was sure that he must have been mistaken in his identification. It was simply not possible. In fact, the incident of a passenger leaving the ship in this fashion was so extraordinary that the chief purser felt a small frisson of alarm. He turned and hurriedly made his way to Jill Temple’s suite. There was no response to his knock. He knocked again, this time a little more loudly. “Madame Temple…This is Claude Dessard, the chief purser. I was wondering if I might be of any service.”
There was no answer. By now, Dessard’s internal warning system was screaming. His instincts told him that there was something terribly wrong, and he had a premonition that it centered, somehow, around this woman. A series of wild, outrageous thoughts danced through his brain. She had been murdered or kidnapped or—He tried the handle of the door. It was unlocked. Slowly, Dessard pushed the door open. Jill Temple was standing at the far end of the cabin, looking out the porthole, her back to him. Dessard opened his mouth to speak, but something in the frozen rigidity of her figure stopped him. He stood there awkwardly for a moment, debating whether to quietly withdraw, when suddenly the cabin was filled with an unearthly, keening sound, like an animal in pain. Helpless before such a deep private agony, Dessard withdrew, carefully closing the door behind him.
Dessard stood outside the cabin a moment, listening to the wordless cries from within. Then, deeply shaken, he turned and headed for the ship’s theater on the main deck. A porter was mopping up a trail of blood in front of the theater.
Mon Dieu, Dessard thought. What next? He tried the door to the theater. It was unlocked. Dessard entered the large, modern auditorium that could seat six hundred passengers. The auditorium was empty. On an impulse, he went to the projection booth. The door was locked. Only two people had keys to this door, he and the projectionist. Dessard opened it with his key and went inside. Everything seemed normal. He walked over to the two Century 35-mm. projectors in the room and put his hands on them.
One of them was warm.
In the crew’s quarters on D deck, Dessard found the projectionist, who assured him that he knew nothing about the theater being used.
On the way back to his office, Dessard took a shortcut through the kitchen. The chef stopped him, in a fury. “Look at this,” he commanded Dessard. “Just look what some idiot has done!”
On a marble pastry table was a beautiful six-tiered wedding cake, with delicate, spun-sugar figures of a bride and groom on top.
Someone had crushed in the head of the bride.
“It was at that moment,” Dessard would tell the spellbound patrons at his bistro, “that I knew something terrible was about to happen.”
BOOK ONE
1
In 1919, Detroit, Michigan, was the single most successful industrial city in the world. World War I had ended, and Detroit had played a significant part in the Allies’ victory, supplying them with tanks and trucks and aeroplanes. Now, with the threat of the Hun over, the automobile plants once again turned their energies to retooling for motorcars. Soon four thousand automobiles a day were being manufactured, assembled and shipped. Skilled and unskilled labor came from all parts of the world to seek jobs in the automotive industry. Italians, Irish, Germans—they came in a flood tide.