Russian Roulette by Bernard Knight Page A

really.’
    Gilbert seemed reluctant to leave.
    â€˜Funny that you should hit your throat on the jolly old railings and then fall into the drink … you can’t have been sloshed at four in the afternoon, eh?’
    He spoke jocularly, but it was apparent that he thought Simon’s explanation to be highly unlikely.
    Simon grunted. ‘I’m that sort of chap – if there’s anything to fall over, I’ll find it.’
    Gilbert grinned feebly. Simon noticed for the first time that he had a small tic, a slight twitch of the corner of the mouth every moment or two.
    â€˜The room seems all right’ he said, as the courier made no move to go.
    â€˜As long as you don’t drown again in the damn great bath,’ Gilbert haw-hawed. ‘You want to watch the flush, too, some of ’em go off like depth charges!’
    He turned to the door at last, then looked back.
    â€˜Hope you appreciate the way I fixed the room numbers.’ He cast a roguish eye at the communicating door leading to Liz Treasure’s room, and gave a leer.
    Simon grunted again – he was in no mood for salacious chit-chat. ‘Thanks – I’ll stand you a drink on it sometime – is all the party up on this floor?’
    Gilbert smirked and his mouth twitched again, ‘Only the elite – the “hoi polloi” are downstairs.’
    â€˜Who do you reckon are the elite?’
    â€˜Yourself, of course … Mrs Treasure, the “reverend gentleman”, our little Swiss chappie, “Arty” Shaw – when he’s sober – and a couple of the less senile old dears – and yours truly,’ he added without modesty.
    He moved a little nearer the door. ‘I’ll hold you to the offer of that drink later on – there’s no bar, by the way. In Russia, you have to sit down in the restaurant to tipple – the stuff they sell makes it advisable, anyway!’
    He actually opened the door and said his last piece – ‘Cheerio, hope the old neck improves.’
    Waving his papers with a flourish that almost screamed ‘anyone for tennis?’ he vanished, leaving Simon’s jangling nerves that much more tense.
    â€˜Blasted idiot!’ he mumbled after him, ‘Pseudo-Oxford accent and the brains of a peacock.’
    He settled back to continue his gloomy stocktaking of the crisis.
    He was being got at, in a big way, but by whom? Must be someone in the Trans-Europa party … the same one that knocked off Harry Lee Kramer and searched his own flat the following night. Again, equally clearly, the same person turned over his cabin on the ship two nights before.
    But who – who – who?
    He called down into the deep recesses of his jittery brain, but answer came there none.
    Not finding a ‘who’, Simon turned to the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of it all. The first question seemed straightforward enough – if it wasn’t the Committee of State Security, it must be a competitor for the tool steel. Kramer had hinted as much in the Happy Dragon … who had he mentioned; the Germans and someone else? The French, of course.
    French – Fragonard! The two names slipped together like fish and chips or Laurel and Hardy – yet it seemed ridiculous to accuse the portly little Swiss of murder just because he was the only one with a Gallic name. And anyway, the poor little guy is too short to reach up to my neck !
    Yet the nagging suspicion would not leave him and, with no German in the Party, Fragonard remained as a possible.
    Simon swore as logic fought with prejudice ‘I’m working for the Yanks, but God knows I’m no American, so why should he work for the French – and, hell, he’s Swiss!’
    He left the problem, to think about the ‘how’.
    At first sight it seemed impossible that the killer of Kramer could murder one night and be on the ship after Simon the very next day, unless