“I’ll deal with the women first,” French explained. “You say that there are sixty-seven on board, as against about twice as many men. Besides, I have more information about Mrs. Vane than her husband. Now, if you don’t mind, let’s get on with them.”
The purser ran his finger down the list.
“Miss Ackfield is the first,” he explained. “She is a lady of between fifty and sixty, I should say. You can easily see her, but in my opinion there is not the slightest chance that she could be otherwise than what she seems.”
French noted the particulars.
“Right,” he said. “Next, please.”
“The next is Miss Bond. She’s also pretty well on in years, but she couldn’t be your friend because she’s at least four inches taller.”
“Very good.”
“Then there is Mrs. Brent. She is a young girl. Her husband is on board, and they are evidently newly married. She’s too young.”
They worked on down the list, provisionally eliminating the unlikely. Mrs. Cox was too tall, Miss Duffield too short, Mrs. Eaglefield too stout, Miss Felton too thin, and so on. In the end they had reduced the number to ten, of which French had to admit that not one seemed in the least promising.
There was indeed one couple who had at first appealed to him, a Mr. Pereira da Silva, and his daughter, Miss Maria da Silva, because they kept almost entirely to their cabins, mixing but little with the life of the ship. Mr. da Silva, a man of over seventy, Mr. Jennings thought, was an invalid, and had come on board with difficulty, leaning on a stick and his daughter’s arm. He was practically confined to bed, and Miss da Silva was assiduous in her attention to him, reading to him and keeping him company when many another similarly placed daughter would have been on deck or in the saloon, amusing herself among the other passengers. The two had their meals together, and the lady, though friendly enough when she did go on deck or when occasionally she sat in the saloon, was but rarely seen. This was, thought French, a likely enough ruse for the fugitives to adopt, and his suspicions were strengthened by the fact that Miss da Silva’s general appearance was not unlike that of Mrs. Vane. But Mr. Jennings soon demolished his house of cards. The da Silvas were obviously Brazilian. They, or rather the girl, for the old man had been too feeble even to deal with the business of the tickets, spoke fluent Portuguese, the Portuguese of a native, and her English was not only broken, but was spoken as a Portuguese alone speaks it. Besides, she looked like a Portuguese. They lived at Rio, so Mr. Jennings had gathered, and had visited England to see Mr. da Silva’s brother, a London merchant. They had booked to Para, near where other relatives lived, and from where they would return to Rio. They had taken tickets and reserved their staterooms some time before the Vanes.