The boy's eyes widened again, but he said nothing.
"You understand you must tell no one of this?"
"Yes," the boy whispered.
"Good," the captain said. "Here is one coin in advance. The other will be yours when you report back to me. You may go now."
The boy took the coin and stared at it for a moment in the palm of his hand. Then he turned to leave.
"And Carthalon," the captain said very quietly to his retreating back. "Be very, very careful. Shadows can be dangerous."
"L ARA,"CLIVE WAS saying in a loud and rather accusing tone, "I've just had a call from a reporter with the National Post about an article he's writing for tomorrow's newspaper. Something about an accident on our tour!"
"Rick Reynolds is dead," I said, holding the phone away from my ear.
"Dead! What do you mean dead?" he said even more loudly.
"Dead. You know, deceased, passed away, gone to a better place. Dead."
"Dead!" Clive repeated. "This is not the kind of publicity I had in mind, Lara."
"That may well be, Clive, but I don't think I can be held responsible for someone who is dumb enough to go out swimming all by himself before anybody else is up and then takes a very deep dive into a very shallow pool," I said. "Right in front of signs in four, count 'em, four languages, warning him not to do so."
"Oh," he said. "I see. Well, I'll just have to put the best spin on this I can."
There he was, using one of those odious marketing expressions again. "You do that, Clive," I said.
"You're rather touchy, aren't you?" he said. "How is everybody else taking it?"
"Surprisingly well," I replied. As indeed they were. It was a testament to just how unpopular Rick was, with his "hey" this and that and his incessant babbling about how important and busy he was, together with his inability to establish any kind of rapport with his fellow travelers, that, after expressions of shock--genuine, I'm sure--everyone on the tour seemed to be carrying on very much as before. Shortly after noon, we'd packed them onto the bus and sent them to catch up with the afternoon part of the day's itinerary, a visit to the ruins of the Punic city of Kerkouane.
"In fact," I added, "I think the only thing that's really worrying them at this point is how we'll make up the four-hour scenic tour of Cap Bon, which we had to miss this morning due to the police investigation."
"Idiot," Jimmy had said, echoing, I'm sure, much of the sentiment in the group. "Couldn't have made the No Diving signs much bigger, could they? Can't he read?"
"Not anymore," Ed said.
"Hush, Jimmy," Betty said. "You must have more respect for the dead."
"Too bad," Ben said, looking down at the body. "Do you think they're serving breakfast yet?"
"How can you eat right now?" Chastity demanded. "That's gross." For once I agreed with her.
"Mors certa, hora incerta," he replied. "Death is certain, the hour uncertain."
Nora didn't show up at all. I gathered she went into the hotel from her run without seeing what had happened. Susie turned up some time later, but she was remarkably subdued, perhaps having worn herself out trying to catch up to Nora.
Come to think of it, the only person showing much emotion was Marlene, who, acting in a fashion I would have expected more from her daughter, set about shrieking and screaming to such an extent that I almost had to hold my ears before she collapsed against Emile, who stood, a peculiar expression on his face, patting Marlene's head.
The good news, however, was that the auberge had nothing to fear from Rick's death. The depth of the pool was marked very clearly in both meters and feet and there were very prominent signs, as Jimmy had pointed out, saying NO DIVING in Arabic, French, English, and German. Khelifa Dridi, the hotel owner, was hastily called after efforts to revive Rick proved singularly unsuccessful. He did all the talking to the police, bless his heart, and there seemed no doubt about what had happened. Rick had gone out early for a swim and had taken a dive into only three feet of water. His head was thoroughly bashed in as a result, although the cause of death would later be officially listed as drowning. The blow had rendered him unconscious, and he'd died in the water. The police officer in charge of the investigation, perfunctory in the extreme, summed it all up rather succinctly. "Stupid tourist," he said, snapping his notebook closed with some finality.
Others were somewhat more charitable. "I think perhaps it's fortunate that he's dead," Khelifa said, holding Chantal's hand as he spoke. "He'd be almost certainly paralyzed if he wasn't." Khelifa and Chantal were, to put it politely, close. There was a wife around somewhere, I was reasonably certain, but both he and Chantal seemed perfectly happy with the arrangement. I wasn't sure whether Khelifa was basing his comments on any knowledge of what happened to people who did what Rick had done, or if he was just trying to make us feel better. If it was the latter, I wasn't sure it helped.
The Canadian embassy in Tunis was called, and staff there took over dealing with the arrangements to ship Rick's body back home. The local tour company handling our itinerary in Tunisia also assigned someone to deal with this problem, much to my relief, and it was all very straightforward after the initial shock of it all.
"None of them have asked for their money back, or anything, have they?" Clive asked rather nervously.
"Nope," I told him.
"Well, that's something," Clive said. "What about Kristi Ellingham? Where is she on this subject?"
"I think she's rather enjoying the whole spectacle, Clive," I said, a vision of Kristi as I'd seen her right after the accident flashing across my brain. She was standing, as she always did, off to one side, silver lighter in one hand, freshly lit cigarette in the other. I was certain she'd have been scribbling away in her nasty little notebook, too, were it not for the fact that the notebook was resting in a bush near the main gate at that moment, as I knew only too well. She was obviously trying to look concerned, but knowing what I did, I interpreted her expression rather differently.
She turned to me, and perhaps seeing something in my face, dropped the mask for a moment. "This is a rather fascinating tour you're putting on, Ms. McClintoch," she said. "I can't wait to see what will happen next."
"Is that good or bad?" Clive said.
"Who's to say?" I replied. Personally, I could almost see the headlines in First Class magazine: "Death Takes a Holiday with McClintoch Swain." Or worse: "See Carthage and Die--the McClintoch Swain Tour." In my opinion this idea of Clive's was well on its way to becoming an unmitigated disaster. "It's the only thing about the trip so far she's liked, though."
"What hasn't she liked?" Clive said.
"Just about everything," I said. "I don't think this trip is quite Kristi's cup of tea."
"For instance?"
"No diet cola. No elevators. Boring ruins."
"Surely you can do something about the diet cola," Clive said peevishly.
"I'm trying," I replied. "I've put out an all points bulletin. We may see a case or two come in on a ship in the next few days."
"Isn't there anything else she likes to drink?"
"Yes," I said. "Gin. Lots of it. At about ten dollars a shot, I might add."
"Whew!" he exclaimed. "I wonder if I could buy a case of diet cola and have it air-freighted to you."
"Not a bad idea, Clive," I said. "At the rate she's going through the gin, you could just strap the case into a seat. Business class."
"Oh. Well, keep on it," Clive said.