Free Dead Calm by Charles Williams

showed on his face, for she smiled a trifle wearily and said, “Yes, I am, aren’t I?”
    “Momma likes ‘em young and mixed up,” the man said, and Ingram decided today probably wasn’t the first time he’d been slugged by somebody. Even people otherwise in full command of their faculties must have found the urge too much to resist.
    He introduced himself and added, “We were bound from Florida to Papeete.”
    “I’m very glad to know you, Mr. Ingram,” she said. “But sorry about the circumstances. This fringe-area human being is Mr. Bellew. If you’ve been wondering why my husband cracked up, perhaps the mystery is clearing. Just multiply your brief acquaintance by twenty-six days.”
    But there was still the fourth one. “And Mrs. Bellew?”
    Bellew turned toward Mrs. Warriner, his eyes bright. “Why don’t you tell him, honey? Nobody ever likes my version.”
    “Estelle drowned,” she said. “Or was killed by a shark—”
    “Or she was hit by a hockey puck, or some drunk in a sports car.” Bellew took a final drag on his cigarette and dropped it between his knees into the water in the cabin. “Hughie-boy killed her.”
    “That’s a lie!” Mrs. Warriner’s voice was under control, but Ingram could see the fury in her eyes.
    “Oh, not deliberately, perish the thought.” Bellew looked at Ingram and made a deprecating gesture with his hands. “Hughie-dear wouldn’t even dream of killing anybody—unless she happened to be in the way when he was trying to save his precious neck. Naturally, you can’t have that sort of thing. What kind of world would it be without Hughie?”
    “You were the one, if anybody was, you blind fool!” Mrs. Warriner started to get up, her self-control beginning to slip. “If you’d watched what you were doing—”
    “Break it up!” Ingram’s command cut through the scene with a parade-ground bark that halted her. “Both of you! You can fight some other time, if there is one. Get back to work.”
    With a venomous glance at Bellew, Mrs. Warriner took the pump. The other stood up and reached for the bucket. “And then Hughie hit this nasty old shark right on the nose, and he says you take that, you nasty old shark you. My wife can whip your wife.”
    Mrs. Warriner started to turn, her face pale. Ingram caught her arm and wheeled her back to the pump. At the same time he barked at Bellew, “Shut up and start throwing water!”
    Bellew looked at him with lazy insolence for a moment, as though on the point of refusing out of mere curiosity as to what would happen. Then he shrugged and dropped the bucket through the hatch. “You might have a point there, sport. Drowning makes an awful mess of my hair.”
    Ingram returned to the hatch forward of the deckhouse, dropped the bucket, and began furiously throwing water overboard, conscious of the wasted minutes. What kind of madhouse was this? With the boat sinking under their feet, you had to tear them from each other’s throats and drive them to make them try to save themselves. Well, they’d pump, God damn them; they’d pump till they were standing on their tongues.
    What had happened to the fourth one, Estelle Bellew? At the moment he didn’t care, but it was a way to keep from thinking of Rae. Didn’t they even know? How could one call it an accident and the other say Warriner had killed her? Warriner was fleeing from something, there was no doubt, from some terror that had pushed him over the edge into madness. Or was he only running from Bellew? If you were weak and unstable to begin with, twenty-six days of Bellew’s sadistic bullying and amused contempt would drive anybody around the bend. But why in the name of God had they ever started out together in the first place, to sail across the Pacific, four of them in an unsound boat? Well, they must have been friends then, friends and too lacking in experience to know what being cooped up on a small boat for weeks at a time could do to clashing