Dead water - Barbara Hambly [112]
Geranium-red with fury, Mrs. Tredgold stormed up the steps, nearly shoving Mr. Souter over the rail. Davis and January darted at once to the stateroom door, to which Davis bent with a key, probably obtained from Thu. Mrs Fischer strode in their wake like a black-sailed ship fully rigged for a race and Theodora Skippen brought up the rear, not a tear on her face and the only redness visible being her rouge. From the hurricane deck voices drifted down, mostly Mrs. Tredgold's.
“That's just what we need,” muttered January as Davis unlocked Molloy's cabin door. “Lundy quitting on us . . . because there isn't a pilot under the sun who'll put up with being told what to do. . . . Ladies,” he added, turning in the doorway as the two bereaved caught up with them. “It is my intention simply to make a medical examination of Mr. Molloy's body—”
“And cut him up,” demanded Theodora shrilly, “as you did poor Mr. Weems? How dare you? How can you permit . . . ?”
To Mrs. Fischer—ignoring the younger woman's tirade—he continued. “Mr. Davis here will vouch for it that I do nothing else while in the room. Perhaps, Madame, if you could give Mr. Davis a description of what you are looking for, he could locate it without the unseemliness of ransacking the room, as Mr. Weems's was ransacked?”
The woman stood for a moment, staring up into January's face. Her dark eyes were like an animal's, that calculates its opponent's strength, a crimson flush of anger rising under the sallow skin of her cheeks. Though no black man was supposed to meet a white woman's eyes January did so, quietly challenging her, and he was interested to see that she didn't react like a woman born to command slaves. She met his eyes as an equal, an opponent.
Then she turned to Davis and snapped, “I never thought I would live to see the day when a Southern gentleman would stand by and let a lady be insulted by an impertinent Negro!”
And without waiting for Davis to reply, she turned, and strode toward her own stateroom. Miss Skippen wavered, clearly not up to challenging both January and Davis. January wondered whether she would faint. Instead she burst into somewhat artificial-sounding sobs, and hastened away in the same direction with her handkerchief pressed to her face.
“And I,” panted Davis as he locked the stateroom door despite the suffocating heat, “never thought I would live to see the day when a woman—not a Southerner, I perceive—would so unsex herself . . .”
“There's a great deal of money at stake, sir,” said January. “Men speak a great deal about women being worse than men, if they decide to take to crime, but I suspect that's because crime is one of the few ways a woman can get her own money, and need not rely on a man. But it's curious, isn't it, that both ladies are acting as if what they're looking for is small enough to be easily palmed, or concealed in a pocket—either mine or hers. So Miss Skippen doesn't seem to think there's six hundred pounds of gold, or several trunks full of securities, hidden in here.”
He knelt beside Molloy's body on the narrow bunk, turned the head gently, and withdrew a bullet-probe from his small medical kit. The pilot's closed eyes had begun to settle back into his head; blood and brain matter leaking from the wound had soaked the pillow, and in spite of the closed door the room was droning with flies. January inserted first the probe, then a pair of long-nosed bullet forceps into the channel cut by the bullet, which had cracked the skull on the other side.
Davis, after a rapid search of Molloy's portmanteau and the few drawers in the tiny dresser, came over to January's side, looking down over his shoulder as he withdrew the bullet from the wound. “That's no pistol-ball,” he said at once. “I loaded those pistols. That ball wouldn't have gone down the barrel.”
“I'm glad to hear you