the bos’n.
Goddard went forward to the lounge. It was empty. He wondered if Karen and Mrs. Lennox had gone to their cabins. Then he saw them pass in front of one of the portholes. He went on deck and around to the forward side of the midships house. They were leaning on the rail, still looking badly shaken as they watched the reddening western sky. He told them Egerton was dead.
Madeleine Lennox said faintly, ‘I’ll have nightmares the rest of my life. That poor man.’
All three exchanged a glance then with the identical thought: Which one?
‘What will happen to Mr. Krasicki?’ Karen asked.
‘They’ll turn him over to the Philippine authorities,’ Goddard said, ‘but after that it’ll be like Kafka with LSD. An Englishman is murdered on the high seas by a Pole with Brazilian citizenship who’s obviously insane and couldn’t be legally guilty of murder in the first place, and it all happens on a Panamanian ship that’s probably never been to Panama. He’ll be committed, but at his age I doubt he’ll live till they figure out where.’
‘And what about poor Mr. Egerton?’ Madeleine Lennox asked. ‘Will he be buried at sea?’
‘I don’t know,’ Goddard replied. ‘Depends on what they hear from the next of kin.’ It was probably another twelve days to Manila, but the body could be preserved by packing it in ice if the Leander’s facilities were up to it.
Karen Brooke shuddered. ‘It’s so horribly senseless. Just because Mr. Egerton reminded him of somebody.’
‘Some German, apparently,’ Goddard agreed. ‘The chances are he was in a concentration camp during the war. Incidentally, why do you say Mr. Egerton, if he was a colonel?’
‘He asked us to,’ Karen said. ‘He was retired, he said, and “colonel” sounded pompous and Blimp-ish.’ Tears came into her eyes then, and she brushed at them with her fingertips. ‘Oh, damn! He was so sweet.’
They fell silent, watching the splendor of sunset as the Leander plowed ahead across the gently undulating sea. Goddard thought moodily of man’s journey through this flicker of light between the two darknesses, a journey he fondly believed he charted and scheduled in spite of the fact it lay across a landscape subject to a random precipitation of falling safes. Egerton lived through the attempts of countless trained and dangerous men to kill him during World War II, and then was casually swatted by a frail and helpless old man about as deadly as Peter Rabbit except that he was mad. As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.
Lind came around the corner of the deckhouse then, and beckoned to him. ‘I want to show you something,’ he said. Goddard followed him. They went back to Egerton’s cabin. The bos’n and AB were standing outside the door, and Captain Steen was just inside. Egerton’s body was still on the bunk, now covered with a sheet, the ends of the stretcher projecting from under it.
‘Look at this,’ Lind said. He stepped to the head of the bunk and pulled back the sheet from Egerton’s face. The black eye patch had been removed and was lying beside his check. Goddard gave a little start of surprise.
‘I’ll be damned,’ he said. Both the eyes were closed, but the left, which had been covered with the patch, bore the same rounded contour of lid as the other.
‘It came off when we were rolling him onto the stretcher,’ Lind said. With a thumb he gently pushed the lid up as far as the iris, and then closed it again. ‘Perfectly normal eye. The patch was a phony.’
‘Why?’ Goddard asked. ‘But maybe there was something wrong that made it light-sensitive.’
‘Photophobia?’ Lind said. ‘He obviously didn’t have measles, and in iritis and other inflamed conditions the eye’s as red as a grape. Anyway, it was on his passport picture.’
Captain Steen held out the passport, opened to the photograph. It was a perfect likeness of the slender, patrician face, and the eye patch was there. ‘We’re involving you in this, Air. Goddard,’ Steen explained, ‘because obviously you are already involved. We’ll all have to testify at a hearing in Manila.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Goddard said. ‘But I don’t get the fake eye patch.’ He looked at Lind. ‘Any ideas?’
Lind shook his head. ‘No. Unless he was mentally a little off himself, but it didn’t show in any other area.’
‘Beats me,’ Goddard said. ‘But what about burial? Docs his passport give the name of somebody to be notified?’
‘Yes,’ Captain Steen said.