All I could see, and it was enough to see, was that the tops were now being torn off the waves, white-veined on their leeward sides, and that the seas were breaking clear across the foredeck of the Morning Rose, the white and icy spume hissing into the sea on the starboard. A night for carpet slippers and the fireside. I turned foreword towards the accommodation door and bumped into someone who was standing behind the ladder and holding on to it for support. I couldn't see the person's face for it was totally obscured by windblown hair but I didn't have to, there was only one person aboard with those long straw-coloured tresses and that was Mary dear: given my choice of people to bump into on the Morning Rose I'd have picked Mary dear any time. "Mary dear', not "Mary Dear': I'd given her that name to distinguish her from Gerran's continuity girl whose given name was Mary Darling. Mary dear was really Mary Stuart but that wasn't her true name either: Ilona Wisniowecki she'd been christened but had prudently decided that it wasn't the biggest possible asset she had for making her way in the film world. Why she'd chosen a Scots name I didn't know: maybe she just liked the sound of it.

"Mary dear," I said. "Abroad at this late hour and on such a night." I reached up and touched her cheek, we doctors can get away with murder . The skin was icily cold. "You can carry this fresh air fanatic bit too far. Come on, inside." I took her arm-I was hardly surprised to find she was shivering quite violently-and she came along docilely enough. The accommodation door led straight into the passenger lounge which, though fairly narrow, ran the full width of the ship. At the far end was a built-in bar with the liquor kept behind two glassed-in iron grill doors: the doors were kept permanently locked and the key was in Otto Gerran's pocket.