“What about Santo Domingo?” I asked. “Do they stop there?”

“Yes, that’s a regular port all right. They all vary their itineraries. What sort of ship do you have in mind?”

Quickly David jotted down the various points and the nights upon which the attacks had happened, without an explanation, of course.

But then he looked crestfallen.

“No,” he said, “I can see it’s impossible, myself. What cruise ship could possibly make the journey from Florida all the way to Curaçao in three nights?”

“Well, there is one,” said the agent, “and as a matter of fact, she sailed from New York this last Wednesday night. It’s the flagship of the Cunard Line, the Queen Elizabeth 2.”

“That’s it,” I said. “The Queen Elizabeth 2. David, it was the very ship he mentioned to me. You said his father—”

“But I thought the QE2 makes the transatlantic crossing,” said David.

“Not in winter,” said the agent, agreeably. “She’s in the Caribbean until March. And she’s probably the fastest ship sailing any sea anywhere. She can do twenty-eight knots. But here, we can check the itinerary right now.”

He went into another seemingly hopeless search through the papers on his desk, and at last produced a large handsomely printed brochure, opening it and flattening it with his right hand.

“Yes, left New York Wednesday. She docked at Port Everglades Friday morning, sailed before midnight, then on to Curaçao, where she arrived yesterday morning at five a.m. But she didn’t stop in the Dominican Republic, I’m afraid, can’t help you there.”

“Never mind that, she passed it!” David said. “She passed the Dominican Republic the very next night! Look at the map. That’s it, of course. Oh, the little fool. He all but told you himself, Lestat, with all his mad obsessive chatter! He’s on board the QE2, the ship which mattered so much to his father, the ship upon which the old man spent his life.”

We thanked the agent profusely for the maps and brochures, then headed for the taxis out front.

“Oh, it’s so bloody typical of him!” David said as the car carried us towards my apartment. “Everything is symbolic with this madman. And he himself was fired from the QE2 amid scandal and disgrace. I told you this, remember? Oh, you were so right. It’s all a matter of obsession, and the little demon gave you the clue himself.”

“Yes. Oh, definitely yes. And the Talamasca wouldn’t send him to America on the Queen Elizabeth 2. He never forgave you for that.”

“I hate him,” David whispered, with a heat that amazed me even given the circumstances in which we were involved.

“But it isn’t really so foolish, David,” I said. “It’s devilishly clever, don’t you see? Yes, he tipped his hand to me in Georgetown, chattering away about it, and we can lay that down to his self-destructiveness, but I don’t think he expected me to figure it out. And frankly, if you hadn’t laid out the news stories for me of the other murders, maybe I never would have thought of it on my own.”