The cabin was full of the sour-sweet smell of sickness and there was physical evidence of that sickness everywhere. Antonio lay not on his bunk but on the carpeted deck beside it, his head arched impossibly far back until it was at right angles to his body. There was blood, a great deal of blood, not yet congealed, on his mouth and on the floor by his mouth.

The body was contorted into an almost impossible position, arms and legs outflung at grotesque angles, the knuckles showing ivory. Rolling around, the Count had said, sick, a man on the rack, and he hadn't been so far out at that, for Antonio had died as a man on the rack dies, in agony. Surely to God he must have cried out, even although his throat would have been blocked most of the time, he must have screamed, he must have, he would have been unable to prevent himself: but with the Three Apostles in full cry, his cries would have gone unheeded. And then I remembered the scream I had heard when I'd been talking to Lonnie Gilbert in his cabin and I could feel the hairs prickling on the back of my neck: I should have known the difference between the high-pitched yowling of a rock singer and the scream of a man dying in torment.

I knelt, made a cursory examination, finding out no more in the process than any layman would have done, closed the staring eyes and then, with the advent of rigor mortis in mind, straightened out the contorted limbs with an ease that I found vaguely surprising. Then I left the cabin, locked the door and hesitated for only a moment before dropping the key in my pocket: if the Count were possessed of the delicate sensibilities he claimed, he'd be glad I'd taken the key with me.

"Dead?" Otto Gerran's puce complexion had deepened to a shade where I could have sworn it was overlaid with indigo. "Dead, did you say?"

"That's what I said." Otto and I were alone in the dining saloon: it was ten o'clock now and at nine-thirty sharp Captain Imrie and Mr. Stokes invariably left for their cabins, where they would remain incommunicado for the next ten hours. I lifted from Otto's table a bottle of raw firewater on which someone had unblushingly stuck a label claiming that the contents was brandy, took it to the stewards" pantry, returned with a bottle of Hine and sat down. It said much for Otto's unquestioned state of shock that not only had he not appeared to note my brief absence, he even stared directly at me, unblinkingly and I'm sure unseeingly, as I poured out two Fingers for myself: he registered no reaction whatsoever. Only something pretty close to a state of total shock could have held Otto's parsimonious nature in check and I wondered what the source of this shock might be.

True, the news of the death of anyone you know can come as a shock, but it comes as a numbing shock only when the nearest and dearest are involved, and if Otto had even a measurable amount of affection for any one, far less for the unfortunate Antonio, he concealed it with great skill. Perhaps he was, as many are, superstitious about death at sea, perhaps he was concerned with the adverse effect it might have on cast and crew, maybe he was bleakly wondering where, in the immensity of the Barents Sea, he could lay hands on a make-up artist, hairdresser, and wardrobe man, for Otto, in the sacred name of economy, had combined all three normally separate jobs in the person of one man, the late Antonio. With a visibly conscious effort of will power he looked away from the Hine bottle and focussed his eyes on me.

"How can he be dead?"

"His heart's stopped. His breathing's stopped. That's how he can be dead. That's how anyone can be dead."

Otto reached out for the bottle of Hine and splashed some brandy into a glass. He didn't pour it, he literally splashed it, the spreading stain on the white tablecloth as big as my hand: his own hand was shaking as badly as that. He poured out three fingers as compared to my two which may not sound so very much more but then Otto was using a balloon glass whereas mine was a tulip. Tremblingly, he lifted the glass to his mouth and half of its contents disappeared in one gulp, most of it down his throat but a fair proportion on his shirt front. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that if ever I found myself in a situation where all seemed lost, and the only faint hope of life depended on having one good man and true standing by my right shoulder, the name of Otto Gerran was not one that would leap automatically to my mind.

"How did he die?" The brandy had done some good, Otto's voice was low, just above a whisper, but it was steady.

"In agony, I would say. If you mean why did he die, I don't know."

"You don't know? You-you're supposed to be a doctor." Otto was having the greatest difficulty in remaining in his seat: with one hand clutching the brandy glass, the other was barely sufficient to anchor his massive weight against the wild plunging of the Morning Rose. I said nothing so he went on: "Was it seasickness? Could that have done it?"

"He was seasick, all right."

"But you said a man doesn't die just from that."

"He didn't die just from that."

"An ulcerated stomach, you said. Or heart. Or asthma-?'

"He was poisoned."

Otto stared at me for a moment, his face registering no comprehension, then he set his glass on the table and pushed himself abruptly to his feel?, no mean accomplishment for a man of his bulk. The trawler rolled wickedly. I leaned quickly forward, snatched up Otto's glass just as it began to topple and at the same moment Otto lurched to one side and staggered across to the starboard-the lee-door of the saloon leading to the upper deck. He flung this open and even above the shrieking of the wind and the crash of the seas I could hear him being violently sick. Presently he re-entered, closed the door, staggered across the deck and collapsed into his chair. His face was ashen. I handed him his glass and he drained the contents, reached out for the bottle and refilled his glass. He drank some more and stared at me.

"Poison?"

"Looked like strychnine. Had all-"

"Strychnine? Strychnine! Great God! Strychnine! You-you'll have to

carry out a post-mortem, an-an autopsy."

"don't talk rubbish. I'll carry out no such thing, and for a number of excellent reasons. For one thing, have you any idea what an autopsy is like-it's a very messy business indeed, I can assure you. I haven't the facilities. I'm not a specialist in pathology-and you require one for an autopsy. You require the consent of the next of kin-and how are you going to get that in the middle of the Barents Sea? You require a coroner's order-no coroner. Besides, a coroner only issues an order where theirs a suspicion of foul play. No such suspicion exists here."

"No-no foul play? But you said-"

I said it looked like strychnine. I didn't say it was strychnine. I'm sure it's not. He seemed to show the classical symptoms of having had tetanic spasms and opisthotonos-that's when the back arches so violently that the body rests on the head and the heels only-and his face showed pure terror: there's nearly always this conviction of impending death at the onset of strychnine poisoning. But when I straightened him out there were no signs of tetanic contractions. Besides, the timing is all wrong. Strychnine usually shows its first effects within ten minutes and half an hour after taking the stuff you're gone. Antonio was at least twenty minutes here with us at dinner and there was nothing wrong with him then-well, seasickness, that's all. And he died only minutes ago-far too long. Besides, who on earth would want to do away with a harmless boy like Antonio? Do you have in your employ a raving psycho who kills just for the kicks of it? Does it make any kind of sense to you?"

"No. No, it doesn't. But-but poison. You said-"