My Warehouse
[+] Writings[+] Art Works
[+] Others
My Collections
[+] Favorite Pics[+] Music
[+] Lyrics
Site Information
[+] Main[+] About the Webmistress
[+] Guestbook
[+] Link In/Out
[+] Terms
Sister site: Love For Eternity
London Cruise
By Shadowcat
'I hate this trip.'
The evening wind chilled past my shoulders, bringing only the fresh smell of salty sea water, which had made me even sicker of this unnecessary trip. Suddenly I felt pain in my heart like some force was pushing right on it. I struggled to make it go away, and it did. Not knowing why, I never knew why I this pain always happened whenever I was near the ocean. Not to mention going on a 5-day cruise like this one.
I liked London. I was born there. Throughout the whole day on this ship, I still didn't understand why we had to go and visit an aunt who lived far away in New York, and one whom I had never seen before. We could've gone on an airplane, at least. However, mother had this crazy idea of going on a cruise, especially when she knew how I acted around the sea! Why would she do that to me? I haven't got a clue.
Eventually, mother came out and called out to me. "Ruby, hurry and come back to our cabin! It's getting late, and you might catch a cold if you continue to stay out there."
I sighed, and then replied unenthusiastically, "Coming, mother!"
I looked back once more to the deep sky, the twinkling stars, and the beautiful white strands of moonlight. It was a fabulous view, yet it had only made my thoughts firmer.
'I hate this trip.' The thoughts repeated in my mind once again as I walked towards the gates to the cabins.
The sunlight shone onto my eyes and forced them to open. Even though it was morning, I still wanted to remain in my dreamland, rather than facing the reality. Anyhow, I dragged myself out of the comfy bed, and stepped into the washroom. I picked up a hairbrush and pushed it through my thick, golden curls. Also, I splashed some cold water onto my face, just to wake up my sleepy eyes. Mother said that I had father's eyes. They were light blue, instead of the blue of the ocean, which I so dearly hate.
After I was finished, I went into the living room, and was surprised that mother was sitting on the couch reading papers.
"Finally, you woke up. Let's go and have breakfast, shall we?"
The rest of the day went by pretty quickly. I had spent the whole morning in the cafe, reading books I brought and drinking soft drinks. After lunch, I spent hours at the gym working out. I tried about everything in sight to pass the time on this ship. Just before sunset, I took out my sketchbook and started my first sketch of the sea. Sketching is one of my favorite pastimes, and besides, I can express myself in a way others cannot comprehend.
With all the rustling of my pencil on the drawing paper, I still noticed the pair of eyes behind me. It had stared, at my unfinished sketch for a very long time.
"That's a pretty sketch." A sweet feminine voice came from behind.
"Thank you." I simply replied.
"You should definitely color it. The expressions will be a lot more visible." She finally stepped beside me.
"I sketch for fun, so I'm afraid that I wouldn't be able to spend too much time on these kind of after-works like coloring and such." I smiled slightly as I answered her.
"Very interesting. My name is Kathy Houndure. " She held out her hand.
"Ruby Gothic, nice to meet you." I took it, as an action of politeness.
Just when she was about to say something, mother's voice appeared.
"Ruby, it's dinner time! I'll meet you at the lobby, all right?"
"Sure, mom!" I turned and made a friendly gesture to Kathy. "Care to join me?"
Turned out, Kathy was one of the first-class people as well. At dinner, we also met up with several others that were in the first-class range: Mr. And Mrs. Lynn, who had just finished their honeymoon in London; Ms. Mia Waters, who was a lawyer; Dr. Larry Broom from London Hospital; Kathy's father, Captain Houndure, who was actually the captain of this ship; and finally, Mrs. Wolners, who I guessed was a very rich widow, since she didn't talk a lot.
I suppose it was an enjoyable evening.
On the third day of the trip, Kathy hauled me to all the activities she liked. After breakfast, she talked me into going swimming with her. I wasn't used to it at first, but after a while, it seemed pretty fun. At lunch, I used up all my might and convinced her that I was too tired to do anything too exciting for the afternoon, so we had decided that we were going to just watch TV, and walk around the deck.
"So, you don't like the ocean and you have no idea why?" After hearing about my tremendous hatred of the sea, Kathy was just a tiny bit surprised.
"Nope, not a clue. It's like the sickness just appeared out of nowhere."
"Well, you shouldn't. The ocean is very beautiful." Kathy looked down into the deep water, as if she was seeking something. "Its deep colors can hide many different things: mysteries, fantasies, maybe even a dead body..."
"Huh?" I believe that anybody would have been surprised when they heard the last phrase.
"Oh, I'm sorry. It's just that my mother died in the sea." Kathy gave a strained smile.
"No, I should be the one who's apologizing." I immediately stopped her.
"It's all right, that was a long time ago anyway." Kathy gazed upon the gloomy sky, "It looks like there's going to be a storm coming."
Just then, a woman with amber hair and emerald eyes came out of the door near us. It was my mother.
"Ruby, I'm going to the buffet. Are you coming with me?"
"No, mother. I'll go later with Kathy."
"All right. Just remember that it closes at 9:30." She looked a little disappointed.
"Don't worry about it." I shouted, since she had already gone back inside.
"Your mother is certainly a very gorgeous woman." Kathy glanced at the door for a moment, then rotated her sight back to the sky. "Consider yourself lucky to be able to be with your mother all the time."
I didn't say anything, I knew I wasn't supposed to.
We decided to go back to our cabin and get dinner after half an hour, because the rain was pouring by then, and we were getting very cold. The exact moment we arrived at our hallway, we saw Ms. Waters, who sat right outside of a door, pointing to something. She was not able to speak at all. We rushed over to see what was the matter. When we laid our eyes on the scene, Kathy suddenly screamed out uncontrollably.
It was Mrs. Wolners lying in her own pool of blood.
"From what I just analyzed, she died around 8:30-9:00 tonight. The death was cause by pocketknife wounds right in the lungs. Poor thing probably had to struggle a few seconds before she had her last breath." Dr. Larry Bloom had to examine the body since he was the only legal medical expert we had. A couple of police officers had arrived to check on the case. All the first-class people stayed behind to give affidavits of our whereabouts when the murder occurred, since the passage to the first-class cabins were given to first-class passengers only.
Kathy and I were the last ones on their list, so we had to sit through all the others before we could go. This was all located in the lobby, so there was a lot of murmur coming from the other passengers. One of the strangest things I heard was that someone had suspected it was the "Phantom Thief" who had killed Mrs. Wolners.
"Hey, did you hear? All of the old woman's jewels were stolen."
"Maybe the Phantom Thief has reappeared..."
"Henry...?" Even though it was said extremely lightly, I still heard mother gasp when she heard that comment. There was a sparkle in her eyes, and quickly, it disappeared without a trace. "Ruby, I'll wait for you back at the cabin." She said calmly, as usual.
"Okay... I guess." I wasn't sure if there was something wrong with mother.
I thought about mother's unusual behavior on the way back to the cabin. Accidentally, I had overheard a conversation between two workers in the hallways.
"God darn it! My handkerchief got a stain on it, and I had just washed it yesterday!" one of the workers waved the handkerchief. It clearly had a linear red stain on it."
"What happened?"
"It fell onto the blood mark in the room."
"What blood mark?"
"Oh, you know, the "IV" one? It was just beside the corpse."...
I didn't pay much attention to it, not knowing it would be very important afterwards.
When I got back to the cabin, mother was flipping through some old album. I didn't even know that she had brought it with her. She didn't seem to have noticed my arrival.
"You must be very interested in this Phantom Thief fellow, aren't you?" the sudden words had startled me. I looked at her again, but her head did not rise.
"Come here, I want you to see something." I walked toward her as I was told. Mother pointed out a picture to me as I sat down. "See that? That man was your father. His name was Henry Gothic, or, as what others knew him for, the 'Phantom Thief'."
I couldn't believe my very own ears. My father was a thief?
"He wasn't a bad guy, you know. And he did stop after we were married as well." She sounded like if she had known what I was thinking. "Just once, he had to do his job for the last time---that was 15 years ago, on your one year birthday, he left."
The word "left" had such a meaning to it. I sighed.
"I held you in my arms, and watched as the Blackfire floated out of the harbor. That night, there was a terrible storm. I stood by the window, prayed again and again that he would be safe. He didn't return." Blackfire was also the name of our ship.
"What happened?" I asked eagerly.
"The ship sunk. There were no survivors found. As if it had disappeared into thin air." Mother answered as she closed the album in her hand.
That night, I was filled with very complicated emotions. I didn't decide on anything else, but my heart was set on to keep "Phantom Thief" out of this case. After all, I'm sure he doesn't want to get blamed for something he didn't do. Nobody wants that.
'The investigation will begin tomorrow.' I thought to myself as I went to sleep.
Just as I had planned, my investigation of this case started the next morning.
I told Kathy about it, and it turned out that she was very interested. It was a good idea for her to join me, since I needed a partner for this. I left as soon as breakfast was over and told mother that I was going to spend the day with Kathy, just so she wouldn't get worried.
I tried to refresh all my memories about last night. The murder had occurred during 8:30pm to 9:00pm. The suspects were the first-class people, since they are the only ones that had access to that section of the cabins. If that was so, there must have been five suspects all together, including my own mother. Yet, three of them had an alibi except for Mrs. Lynn, who had stayed in her cabin alone watching television; and Ms. Mia Waters, who had also stayed in her own cabin until she went to Mrs. Wolners' cabin like she was asked to at lunch.
Mr. Lynn had stayed at a bar called "Emerald Cocktail" during the time of the murder.
Dr. Larry Bloom had been in the "Emerald Cocktail" as well, which had made possible of his, and Mr. Lynn's alibi.
Also, my mother was at the buffet since 8:oo. Surprisingly, she was with somebody that whole time. That explains how she could have eaten for that long.
I couldn't believe that I had remembered all that, although I did have an extreme headache.
We stayed in the cafe for ages, and all I got was a piece of paper with all the suspects listed out on it. In other words, we hadn't made any progress since morning! I had almost wanted to give up, when I thought of what the workers had said, and the linear stained handkerchief. An idea flew into my mind, so I ran to the cabin where it had all started. Good thing too, because the guards were on a break.
"You guys having fun?" We passed Ms. Mia on the way. She had a camera hanging from her neck.
"Yeah, sure, Ms. Mia." We answered as swiftly as we could, since we were in the middle of something important.
I bent down carefully to take a look at the blood mark. When I saw the small "IV" on the floor, I sighed and stood back up again. A couple of documents on the desk caught my attention.
"What is it, Ruby?" Kathy didn't get what was going on.
"That's roman number '4'." Replied as I flipped through some of the documents. There was certainly a lot of it piled up on the desk.
"Four? Isn't that the number of this cabin?"
That's right, I thought. We had returned to the beginning once again.
After ten minutes of examining the documents, I roughly had an outline of the whole thing. It was no more than papers that were linked to lawsuit, or writing a will. Mrs. Wolners was probably trying to fix up a will.
'But, that couldn't be?! Unless...' Just then, I realized something very important.
Finally, I had the answer.
1. Mrs. Wolners was murdered from 8:30pm to 9:00pm. If the murderer was dumb enough to leave the weapon behind, and not faked an alibi, I'm pretty sure it was an accident.
2. Mrs. Wolners wouldn't have opened her door for strangers. She was an old, rich widow. Locking the door would be very necessary for she had a lot of small yet valuable jewels with her.
3. Usually human plasma needs 30-60 minutes to dry out, so Dr. Larry Bloom had told the right time of death. What's interesting was that the blood mark "IV" had only left a linear stain on the handkerchief, which meant that the "I" was not dried, nor written by the victim. Then, who wrote it? Well, the murderer, of course. The person had to do it without others knowing, but they had to get in the scene of the crime.
4. The cabin was off limit after the police got here, so the only ones who went into the scene of the crime were Kathy, Dr. Larry, Ms. Mia, and I.
5. Ms. Mia was a lawyer. Mrs. Wolners had probably wanted to discuss with Ms. Mia about legalizing her own will. If Ms. Mia was supposed to come at 9:30, then why did Mrs. Wolners prepare for it an hour early?
Ms. Mia must have arrived at Mrs. Wolners' cabin around 8:30pm, saw the jewels she kept, and then planned to steal them. Killing the old woman was probably to shut her up. Then, later, Ms. Mia returned to the scene of the crime, discovered that her room number was recorded on the floor. She quickly added to the "V" to make sure she was not discovered. When she wanted to exit the cabin, she heard Kathy and me walking in the hallway. She knew that there was no way she could've escaped, so she pretended to be the discoverer of the body instead.
So, in conclusion, the killer could've been none other than Ms. Mia Waters.
The lost jewels were found in Ms. Mia's camera. It was very weird that she had carried it with her when the day was so cloudy from the storm. I figured that there was something wrong with it, and I was right. It's amazing how those valuable jewels could fit right into a camera.
After the police took Ms. Mia Waters, the P. I. made an announcement:
"The Blackfire will be arriving in New York Harbor tomorrow morning at 9:30am. Please get ready for your leave. We hope that you had a wonderful time on the Blackfire."
It was hard to leave Kathy, but I had to go. We said farewell to each other, then went back to our separate cabins.
"Oh, you're back." Mother greeted me as she quietly packed up some of our stuff for tomorrow morning's departure. "Listen, Ruby, I'm sorry that I made you go on this trip..."
"It's all right, mother. I understand." I handed her the books and a couple of other things I found on the counter. Then, I turned to check in the washroom. I felt the warmth coming from behind me. It felt pretty nice.
You came on this cruise, hoping that the ship will also revive father, didn't you?
I'm with you, mother, all the way.
Kathy was right. I am very fortunate indeed.
All rights reserved.