"Food poisoning."

"Food poisoning! But people don't die of food poisoning. You mean ptomaine poisoning?"

I mean no such thing for there is no such thing. You can eat ptomaines to your heart's content and you'll come to no harm. But you can get all sorts of food poisoning-chemically contaminated-mercury in fish, for instance-edible mushrooms that aren't edible mushrooms, edible mussels that aren't edible mussels-but the nasty one is salmonella. And that can kill, believe me. just at the end of the war one variety of it, Salmonella enteritidis, laid low about thirty people in Stoke-on-Trent. Six of them died. And there's an even nastier one called Clostridium botulinum kind of half-cousin of botulinus, a charming substance that is guaranteed to wipe out a city in a night-the Ministry of Health makes it. This Clostridium secretes an exotoxin-a poison-which is probably the most powerful occurring in nature. Between the wars a party of tourists at Loch Maree in Scotland had a picnic lunch-sandwiches filled with potted duck paste. Eight of them had this. All eight died. There was no cure then, there is no cure now. Must have been this or something like this that Antonio ate."

I see, I see." He had some more brandy, then looked up at me, his eyes round. "Good God! Don't you see what this means, man! We're all at risk, all of us. This clostridium or whatever you call it could spread like wildfire."

"Rest easy. It's neither infectious nor contagious."

"But the galley-"

"You think that hadn't occurred to me? The source of infection can't be there. If it were, we'd all he gone-I assume that Antonio-before his appetite deserted him, that was-had the same as all of us. I didn't pay any particular attention but I can find out probably from the people on either side of him-I'm sure they were the Count and Cecil."

"Cecil?"

"Cecil Golightly-your camera focus assistant or something like that."

"Ah! The Duke." For some odd reason Cecil, a diminutive, shrewd, and chirpy little Cockney sparrow was invariably known as the Duke, probably because it was so wildly unsuitable. "That little pig see anything!

He never lifts his eyes from the table. But Tadeusz-well, now, he doesn't miss much."

"I'll ask. I'll also check the galley, the food store, and the cold room. Not a chance in ten thousand-I think we'll find that Antonio had his own little supply of tinned delicacies-but I'll check anyway. Do you want me to see Captain Imrie for you?"

"Captain Imrie?"

I was patient. "The master must be notified. The death must be logged.

A death certificate must be issued-normally, he'd do it himself but not with a doctor aboard-but I'll have to be authorised. And he'll have to make preparations for the funeral. Burial at sea. Tomorrow morning, I should imagine."

He shuddered. "Yes, please. Please do that. Of course, of course, burial at sea. I must go and see John at once and tell him about this awful thing."

By "John" I assumed he meant John Cummings Goin, production accountant , company accountant, senior partner in Olympus Productions and widely recognised as being the financial controller-and so in many ways the virtual controller-of the company. "And then I'm going to bed. Yes, yes, to bed. Sounds terrible, I know, poor Antonio lying down there, but I'm dreadfully upset, really dreadfully upset." I couldn't fault him on that one, I'd rarely seen a man look so unhappy.

I can bring a sedative to your cabin!'

"No, no, I'll he all right." Unthinkingly, almost, he picked up the bottle of Hine, thrust it into one of the capacious pockets of his tentlike jacket and staggered from the saloon. As far as insomnia was concerned Otto clearly preferred homemade remedies to even the most modern pharmaceutical products.

I went to the starboard door, opened it and looked out. When Smithy had said that the weather wasn't going to improve, he'd clearly been hedging his bets: conditions were deteriorating and, if I were any judge, deteriorating quite rapidly. The air temperature was now well below freezing and the first thin flakes of snow were driving by overhead, almost parallel to the surface of the sea. The waves were now no longer waves, just moving masses of water, capriciously tending, it seemed, in any and all directions, but in the mass still bearing mainly easterly. The Morning Rose was no longer just corkscrewing, she was beginning to stagger, falling into a bridge-high trough with an explosive impact more than vaguely reminiscent of flat, whiplike crack of a not-so-distant naval gun, then struggling and straining to right herself only to be struck by a following wall of water that smashed her over on her beam ends again. I leaned farther outwards, looked upwards and was vaguely puzzled by the dimly seen outline of the madly flapping flag on the foremast: puzzled, because it wasn't streaming out over the starboard side, as it should have been, but towards the starboard quarter. This meant that the wind was moving round to the northeast and what this could portend I could not even guess: I vaguely suspected that it wasn't anything good. I went inside, yanked the door closed with some effort, made a silent prayer for the infinitely reassuring and competent presence of Smithy on the bridge, made my way to the stewards" pantry again and helped myself to a bottle of Black Label, Otto having made off with the last of the brandy-the drinkable brandy, that is. I took it across to the captain's table, sat in the captain's chair, poured myself a small measure and stuck the bottle in Captain Imrie's convenient wrought-iron stand.

I wondered why I hadn't told Otto the truth. I was a convincing liar, I thought, but not a compulsive one: probably because Otto struck me as being far from a stable character and with several more pegs of brandy inside him, in addition to what he had already consumed, he seemed less than the ideal confidant.

Antonio hadn't died because he'd taken or been given strychnine. Of that I was quite certain. I was equally certain that he hadn't died from Clostridium botulinum either. The exotoxin from this particular anaerobe was quite as deadly as I had said but, fortunately, Otto had been unaware that the incubation period was seldom less than four hours and, in extreme cases, had been known to be as long as forty-eight-not that the period of incubation delay made the final results any less fatal. It was faintly possible that Antonio might have scoffed, say, a tin of infected truffles or suchlike from his homeland in the course of the afternoon, but in that case the symptoms would have been showing at the dinner table, and apart from his odd chartreuse hue I'd observed nothing untoward. It had to be some form of systemic poison, but there were so many of them and I was a long way from being an expert on the subject. Nor was there any necessary question of foul play: more people die from accidental poisoning than from the machinations of the ill-disposed.

The lee door opened and two people came staggering into the room, both young, both bespectacled, both with faces all but obscured by wind-blown hair. They saw me, hesitated, looked at each other and made to leave, but I waved them in and they came, closing the door behind them. They staggered across to my table, sat down, pushed the hair from their faces and I identified them as Mary Darling, our continuity girl, and Allen-nobody knew whether he had another name or whether that was his first or second one-the clapper-loader. He was a very earnest youth who had recently been asked to leave his university. He was an intelligent lad but easily bored. Intelligent but a bit short on wisdom-he regarded film-making as the most glamorous job on earth.

"Sorry to break in on you like this, Dr. Marlowe." Allen was very apologetic , very respectful. "We had no idea-to tell you the truth we were both looking for a place to sit down."