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nodded again.
    â€œIt sounds fascinating, all the clues and sleuth work that you had to do.”
    I thought about the state the body had been in and involuntarily shivered.
    â€œLord love you, Cordi. How can you be shivering in a sauna?” Martha asked.
    â€œMaybe someone stepped on her grave thinking it was mine.” I swivelled my eyes over to look at Sally. That was a funny thing to say. These were a rum pair.
    Martha jumped into the silence and changed the subject rather too abruptly. “Sally is part of our writing group and rumour has it she’s a dynamite writer.”
    Sally, who looked as though she had been crying for twenty years, waved away the compliment.
    â€œI just wish you’d read some of your novel to us in class so we could enjoy your talent.”
    â€œSorry, it’s just something I never do.”
    â€œCouldn’t you hand out a copy, or even just an excerpt? Anything?”
    Sally mournfully shook her head. “Sorry, I can’t do that because …”
    Sally was interrupted by Sandy, who said with the finality of a full stop period, “Sally doesn’t like crowds,” and again they exchanged glances.
    â€œBut that doesn’t mean she can’t …” Martha started, before thinking better of it when she caught sight of Sally, who had large tears pounding down her face. For a while I thought that maybe it was just a whole lot of sweat and we could ignore it, but then she started to gurgle a bit.
    Martha and I looked at each other and then at Sally.
    â€œYou know, it’s okay to cry,” said Martha. “It helps the pain.”
    â€œHow would you know what kind of pain I’m in?”
    â€œSweetie, we’re on a boat. There are only a hundred and ten or so of us and the rumours have been flying. You haven’t exactly kept your sorrow to yourself. You’ve been moping about the ship for all to see.”
    â€œWhat rumours?” she asked.
    â€œTake your pick. For example: you just lost a child in childbirth and are suffering from postpartum depression.”
    Sally gave a weak smile and shook her head.
    â€œHow about: your business just went bankrupt and you are in debt over your earlobes?” Where did Martha find these metaphors?
    Sally slowly shook her head.
    â€œOkay then. You’re a murderer, intent on revenge.”
    Sally suddenly covered her face and shook her head.
    Sandy squeezed her on the shoulder, in an attempt to comfort her, but Sally shook her off.
    Martha caught my eye and knowing what she was about to do I began shaking my head, but she pretended not to see me. “Final scenario: Cordi here accidentally overheard your conversation with Arthur on the plane.
    He broke up with you.”
    Sally began sobbing then and Sandy gave us the hairy eyeball, but we stayed put.
    Eventually Sally choked out, “He said he loved me.”
    The words, though muffled and tear laden, were easy to hear — the universal story of love’s cruel side.
    â€œI don’t know how I can survive without him,” she said, then whimpered. “I don’t think I can.”
    We were saved from all the normal useless platitudes that accompany such a statement by the sauna door open – ing and two more women coming in. They were as close to Mutt and Jeff in size as any friends I’d ever seen. One was the woman who had tried to muzzle Peter, and had asked the question about how to get away with murder on the boat. She was very thin and at least six feet tall.
    She had short, wavy black hair and a no-nonsense sort of face with an aristocratic air to it.
    The other was the woman who Terry had skewered.
    She was nudging five feet on her tippy toes. She had really frizzy, grey streaked hair and watery grey eyes that matched her complexion. She was a woman of angles — everything sharp and pointy from the top of her head to her nose and chin to the hipbones sticking out through her bathing