David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

‘Didn’t have much, did he?’ He looked critically at Pinker’s clothes as he sorted through them. He stuffed them haphazardly back into the salesman’s bag and picked up the wallet still lying by Pinker’s pillow. There were some banknotes in it, an invoice or two and some calling cards. Valentine took the money out and folded it into his own pocket.

‘For King and Country, old man,’ he said when he saw Paul’s expression. ‘It’s of no use to Pinker anymore and the steward will only take it.’ He cast a jaded eye over the rest of Pinker’s possessions. ‘Well, I’d better get up top and scout out the lie of the land,’ he said. ‘You can finish up here.’

Paul locked the door and sat disconsolately in the chair looking at the mess Valentine had made of Pinker’s belongings. Paul had already been through them once and found nothing of value or interest, so he packed everything away again and stood the bags by the door for the cabin steward to collect. He lay on the top bunk and, in lieu of Pinker’s novel to read, drifted off to sleep. The steward woke him, returning Paul’s laundry. The man left with Pinker’s bags and Paul locked himself in the bathroom along the corridor. He washed and put on a clean shirt and underwear. There was still an hour before dinner but he couldn’t stand the cabin any longer so went up top to the saloon.

‘It is my opinion,’ the Reverend Pater said at dinner, ‘he was taken ill and leaned over the rail, losing his balance.’

‘Is that how you think it might have happened, Mr Filbert?’ Mrs Hogarth enquired, as if his loss was greater than the others. ‘Such a nice man,’ she added.

Paul nodded, lips pursed in the hope his reticence might be taken for British fortitude. As far as he could remember, Mrs Hogarth had done her best to evade Pinker’s conversational gambits. But then, as he had often noticed, death warmed the character of most people in memory.

He had moved up a chair in Pinker’s absence and now found himself sitting at table directly opposite Ragna Andresen. Valentine was late and the Reverend Pater had been faced with the dilemma of whether to occupy the chair between the two women, or stay in his original place on Miss Andresen’s right. Given whichever he chose still left Valentine in a seat next to the object of Pater’s concern, he eventually settled for his original chair between the girl and First Officer Gunnarson.

When sitting down, Pater had cleared his throat loudly, looked pointedly at Valentine’s vacant chair and had suggested they say a prayer for the soul of Pinker. He intoned some words on the subject of God’s mercy, which in Pinker’s instance obviously hadn’t stretched as far as a case of mistaken identity, and had then assured them all of the dead man having attained everlasting life in heaven. A destination, Paul couldn’t help thinking, that for Pinker, had he been given the choice, would have run a poor second to Schleswig-Holstein.

There was a moment’s silence while they waited for Pater to give them the all-clear before a general movement was made towards the napkins.

With the loss of Pinker, Captain Nordvik’s weathered face had dropped closer towards the sombre end of barometric emotion and with slumped shoulders, he had announced: ‘Care must be taken on deck even in calm weather,’ before resuming his wallow in the low of Scandinavian introspection.

At the other end of the table his first officer briefly tried to raise the tempo of the conversation but soon foundered on the shallow reef of his linguistic incompetence. Paul for his part offered no assistance to a seafarer in distress, being more concerned as he was with the prospect of dinner.

Hunger had tuned his expectations to a pitch that would have made even last night’s greasy mutton stew acceptable. The soup, when it finally arrived — a clear, thin liquid of indeterminate provenance — represented the only food he had had in twenty-four hours, if one ignored the half-sandwich the cabin steward had brought him earlier. He finished his soup along with two bread rolls before Miss Andresen had barely started hers. He still caught her watching him — as had Pater who, Paul feared, might now add his name under Valentine’s on his list of dangers to Ragna’s moral health. On the few occasions Paul was able to observe her unnoticed, he found something audacious in her manner towards everyone. She had a habit of staring, of invariably ignoring remarks addressed to her, and, when finding that having to say something was unavoidable, used hardly more than a monosyllable in reply. Just why Pater regarded her as susceptible to Valentine’s blandishments was beyond him; she might look slightly cherubic in a bland north-European way, but Paul suspected that beneath it lay the frigidity of a Danish winter.

Where was Valentine anyway? Given his appetite, Paul thought him an unlikely candidate for missing a meal.

‘Is Mr Darling not dining with us?’ he enquired generally.

When no one answered he turned to Solokov. The Russians had been in the saloon when he had arrived, still assiduously pouring over their speech to the Petrograd Soviet as if they might be under the delusion that posterity was going to regard it as a Russian Magna Carta .

‘Have you seen him since we—’, he was about to say since we gave up on Pinker, but caught himself in time, ‘—resumed our course?’

Solokov lifted his chin towards the door.

‘Do not worry, Filbert. We do not lose Darling. He comes now.’

Valentine took his seat apologising for his tardiness.

‘Dropped off, don’t you know. All that fresh air.’

Turner placed a bowl of soup in front of him. Valentine ran a spoon through it, asking after the women either side of him while he did so. Paul sat waiting. Now there would be a delay in serving the main course while they waited for Valentine to finish. He seemed to be forever waiting on Valentine.

The prayers for Pinker’s soul and Valentine’s late arrival proved the highlight of dinner. The death cast a pall over the meal and conversation was sporadic. After coffee in the saloon first the women and then Pater said goodnight, followed by Valentine who theatrically stifled a yawn. Paul sat with Korbelov and Solokov for a while but they talked guardedly in Russian between themselves, pausing every time they noticed Paul listening. Finally he made his excuses and returned to his cabin.

Closing the door behind him, he discovered that the lock was broken. He stared at it, trying to get the thing to hold but couldn’t make it work. Something or someone had broken the mechanism. It was deliberate, he was sure. He tried jamming the chair up against the door but that wouldn’t work either as every time he applied the slightest pressure on the door the chair slid across the floor. He sat on it and wondered what to do next.

Had it been done to allow someone access in the night? Who? He had locked the door that afternoon so it could only have happened after he had gone up to dinner. But that meant it could have been anyone. They had all appeared after him except the Russians, and even Solokov left for several minutes after Paul arrived on the pretext of getting more paper from their cabin. Pater and the women had turned up next and Valentine had been later than any of them.

Valentine?

The thought was nonsense. Wasn’t it? But he knew there had to be a spy in Cumming’s organisation, someone who knew exactly what their plans were. Why not Valentine? He was the one who overheard Pinker say he was sleeping in the upper bunk. But he had had all sorts of other opportunities, so why stab Pinker in the middle of the night? And having failed he could have done for Paul after they had tipped Pinker over the side. No one would have been any the wiser. No. Not Valentine, surely. Who then? Whoever it was, he couldn’t risk falling asleep in his bunk with the lock broken. Not if he wanted to survive the night.