The Woman in Cabin Ten Ch. 19-21

Okay, so I went and saw Crazy Rich Asians today and boy, was that a trip and a half.

I loved it.

Secretly, I love romance novels.

I mean it's not much of a secret, I admit, but wow, do I love them. Like, Hallmark levels of sap sometimes too. We shall not speak about the Hallmark channel and how it makes its way onto my television way too often these days.

But I've read the series this movie is based off of - well it's based on the first one, so I have hopes for the sequels! And I loved them so, so much so I was super excited and also worried because movies never live up to the books. And sure, there are differences and some things that got left out that I would have loved to have seen, but I know you can't fit everything in and things that work on paper don't work on the screen, yadayadayada. I liked a couple of the changes a lot and I realized that I've never seen mahjongg actually played in my life. I've only ever done the little matching game thing on the phone and it is apparently not like that at all. Which makes sense.

Still, it was fun and so lovely and everyone who gets a chance should go see it.

Anyway.

All I'm saying is that I had a pretty crappy week this past week with work being insane and some personal stuff.

*sigh*

Adulting.

But Crazy Rich Asians cheered me up and now I'm writing about murder and watching Tremors and not Avengers Infinity War because I don't need that kind of pain in my life right now, thank you.

Fuck Thanos.

Moving on to the murder!

Okay, so we start with Lo getting back to her room and eating the food that's been left for her.

Which, I know that she asked for food and that if we don't eat we die and all but 1) if there is a murderer on the boat and you've been running around telling everyone that you semi-witnessed their murder, maybe eating randomly left out food is a bad idea? and 2) Prawn and hard-boiled egg on rye sounds awful and I don't know why that is a thing that exists. Kill it with fire.

We go over the fact that Cole, Alexander and Archer were all at least one time in the same room as murdered girl, maybe? If it is her. Even though Lo seems sure, she also can't exactly remember the girls face anymore so maybe not? And hallelujah she's realizing that maybe she can't trust Ben! 184 pages in and she thinks that maybe he has his own reasons for lying to her.

Jesus.

Archer's alibi is dependent on Ben, and Ben's alibi is dependent on Ben and on Lo's trust in him which I have said is over the top and he doesn't deserve it.

Also, still no WiFi connection.

I'm with you Lo, this seems suspicious.

But then again, you're out in the middle of the ocean, so maybe not?

I'm not swanky enough to go on a boat like this but I also kind of think that they'd have their own internet provision. Like...if I turn it on, my phone acts as a hotspot and lo, I have internet. So....

Lo decides to go talk to Lord Bullmer without Ben, thank you, but of course he's not in. His wife Anne answers the door and she's been crying.

Lo wants to ask what's wrong, but there's the perfectly understandable problem of asking someone that you definitely do not know, who you know has been very ill, what's wrong. I'm sure that some people would, but I, for one, was raised to know that internal problems stayed internal. You don't ask someone else about their business unless they volunteer and you surely do not volunteer your own business.

So unless Anne Bullmer collapses coughing blood, I too would ignore her tears and just try to get on with my business. Because it's none of my business and I will leave her with her dignity.

And then Lo asks her about her treatment, which makes me cringe, please, no, we were doing so well with not asking people inappropriate questions...

Lord Bullmer is apparently in the hottub, so after Lo shames us all with her terrible terribleness she bops on up there to find Bullmer, Cole, Chloe and Lars all in the tube doing some sort of mad polar bear thing? Where it's super hot in the tub and the air is cold and there's also a cold shower that they hop out into and then back into the tub? Crazy people.

Bullmer doesn't want to wait to hear whatever Lo has come to say, so in front of the other three she tells him the story. Lars is a dick about it, so fuck you Lars, and Cole breaks his champagne glass conveniently.

Listen, man, you and Chloe are having an affair, so I really hope it's not you who's the murderer because I kind of like you and Chloe.

Bullmer takes charge, gets people to treat Cole's hand and then comes to talk to Lo about what she heard in the dining room. He takes it well? Or at least has a great deal of control over himself and pumps her for all the details he can get. After he's heard the story a couple of times he breaks to let Lo rest, let the crew set up the dining room and to go ponder all of this.

He also seems to take Lo's shaming by Nilsson (I mean is it shaming? Dismissal, at the very least) because of her drinking and the drugs she takes and the break in badly but that could just be lip service. There's something...slimy about Bullmer. Maybe it's just rich douche syndrome.

Lo runs into Ben (UGH) and tells him about Bullmer, etc. Then Ben tells her that Cole, when he was cutting up his hand, accidentally knocked his camera into the water so the SD card, you know, the one with the picture of murder girl? Is ruined.

*taps fingers*

I mean that's suspicious.

So Cole could have knocked it into the water by accident. Or on purpose because...something else was on the card? Sure you can delete those things but they can generally bring them back if they really need to and just saying you lost it if questions come up looks extra suspicious. Or someone else knocked it in the water and Cole is just assuming that he did it because that makes sense to him? Like you can't remember doing the thing, but you probably did do the thing because it happened and the theoretical story makes sense.

Hah! But no, Lo remembers that the camera was on the deck before the accident, so it definitely wasn't accidentally dropped into the tub.

Excellent.

Also, they will be in Trondheim the next day, and as we know from the blurbs, Lo vanishes the day they go into Trondheim.

Intersting happenings at dinner:

Karla maybe hints that someone *was* in the cabin, like someone let a friend use it, but then she denies that anyone was there or that she's saying anything of the sort and hey, maybe don't get us all fired because we need these jobs, thanks.

Cole is in pain, drunk, and upset about his camera. He's hoping to get some of the pictures back from an expert he knows (supposedly) but nothing is happening at the moment. Also, some of the other pics he had on that card were from a gentlemen's club called the Magellan - Archer belongs to it, as does Bullmer.

Bullmer was called away with an emergency. But I assume he's still on the boat, since there wasn't another boat that pulled up alongside or a helicopter or whatever.

Anne Bullmer has some pretty bad bruising, which could be from the chemo. Or not. *frowns*

Owen White is there as a potential investor, but he's not buying. The guy who was supposed to be in cabin 10, Solberg, was another potential investor, but his house was broken into and so he stayed home to be with his wife and children.

ALSO BEN IS STILL A FUCKING TOOL

He tried to save a seat for Lo, but she sat elsewhere, so now he's being a dick and then when she tells him that hey, you lied, so maybe I don't trust you, he's all butt hurt about it like it's all about him and oh, hey, he's such a nice guy but she's just *wounding* him by not accepting his help and friendship and damn, fuck you Ben.

Lo gets back to her cabin, leaving Ben outside LIKE A DICK and takes a bath.

When she gets out, she checks that Ben is gone, then goes to get her phone and realizes that it's gone out of her purse.

ALSO, the veranda doors don't lock from the outside. WHICH IS A PROBLEM.

I'm with you Lo.

Safety measure, sure.

But now I, too, do not feel safe in this room. Because there is a footprint and the phone is gone and someone definitely snuck into the room while she was in the bath.

And she's all, 'I just have to make it to Trondheim' but if she does go missing in Trondheim then this is not true and everything is about to be worse.

We break for another insert. This one from a web forum, a lot like the ones that really exist for true crime fans and arm chair detectives, so called.

Bit of a thread about the disappearance of Lo and someone anonymously claiming to be a family friend saying that hey, Lo was taking anti-depressants and was maybe suicidal and others talking about how the ex (BEN) or her boyfriend (poor innocent Jude) are likely involved and then of course Jude gets involved and then the thread gets shut down because that's how the internet rolls.

The Woman in Cabin 10 Ch. 16 - 18

Hey, hi, sorry, so last week I just didn't budget my time well.

I write as a hobby and I've been in a slump of no ideas and just BLAH and then last Sunday I was struck and I wrote something for the first time in forever. Of course, I also felt like if I stopped writing it to a) finish reading the three chapters I was supposed to read and b) post about it, I was going to lose the muse.

So I made my choice. I regret nothing, because it's some good fic is what it is.

And then I was going to post on Monday, or any other day of the past week, but we're doing a lot of upgrades and changes at work and honestly I was too tired to even go to the gym after work all last week. I mostly just collapsed onto the nearest horizontal surface and watched really bad 'true' paranormal tv (I grew up watching A Haunting and I love it still) or those megalodon 'documentaries' from Shark Weeks past. Also the one they did this year where they had actual scientists talk about the megalodon just to make myself laugh. Those poor people.

Keeping in mind that I love the megalodon as a concept, I am also still really glad that it's extinct. It was a good, giant smooth ocean puppy, but that is a concern that I do not need.

I've also seen The Meg because I have trashy, trashy taste sometimes. I've also read all but the latest book in the series that it was based on and actually they improved the damn thing. Which would admittedly not have been a hard task. They're some awful books.

Some days you just want to watch a giant prehistoric shark eat all the things.

ANYWAY.

Here we go, a week late because I am not good at managing time.

Start off at the spa, where Tina is spying on the guest list or whatever else she can get off of the spa computer for reasons of being shady. I don't think Tina is the problem here - she's too obvious. I mean she might be up to no good, but I don't think it's related to the murder. Lady Bullmer shows up, all deathly and tragic, and then we get to discover that oh, hey, the treatment rooms are inside the ship which is going to go well for Lo and her claustrophobia.

She tries to get out of staying down below for a treatment, but there's no other options and she's determined to get through this so she heads off for her mud wrap which just sounds awful to me, I'm not going to lie. I don't have claustrophobia, but being stuck inside a little room with no windows and then being naked and wrapped in muddy bandages just sounds awful. I, too, would try to nope out of this.

We also get some sort of apology from Tina about her behavior the night before but I think it reads more like someone who doesn't want anyone poking around why she was so snippy as opposed to someone who actually feels bad about behaving badly.

Somehow, Lo falls asleep wrapped in all this mud, I do not know how except maybe she's just that exhausted. We get a bit that's reminiscent but not exactly the same as the beginning of the book, Lo dreaming of a body in the water, and it's eerie and beautiful all at the same time. Then, of course, Lo wakes up and also in an echo of the very beginning of the book, she hears the shower (still in the treatment room) running, goes in, and sees that someone has written STOP DIGGING in the steam on the mirror.

We get an inset from a newspaper article dated September 28th, claiming that Lo Blacklock's body may have been found by Danish fishermen. I mean we know that there's theoretically another body of the right age range floating around out there, but I hope it's not really Lo. I kind of like her.

Lo does her best, absolutely loses her shit, but gets it back together using CBT techniques which, apparently, is short of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Google CBT at your own risk, because it stands for at least one other thing that is not at all about meditative techniques for helping yourself through an anxiety/panic attack. In fairness, it's not so much the actual CBT that gets Lo through this as it is her rage at the smug therapist who tried to teach it to her. So....victory?

She's going to call Nilsson, but realizes that the words are vanishing because they're written in steam and that Nilsson will never believe her. She's on her own.

Lo talks to Eva on her way out, learns that the door she took down is supposedly the only way into the treatment area below decks, though there is an emergency fire exit but it's one way and alarmed so no one came in that way. So...unless there's a secret entrance (I rule nothing out) then the one who wrote the words on the mirror had to be one of the women that was down there with her. Tina, Chloe, Ulla, Hanni and Klaus. Also, Eva, because she had access.

I guess also Lady Bullmer and the manicurist. Would Eva mention it if the ship owners wife slipped below decks for a second? Maybe not.

ALSO FUCKING BEN.

Who was looking for Lo.

UGH.

Lo runs into Chloe and Cole up in the dinning room and they chat for a bit. She's playing detective, asking them both about the poker party that happened the night of the murder. They were both there, but poker is absolutely boring to watch, maybe even if you're into poker. Chloe went to bed, and Cole was there in the room for about half an hour. He does, however, remember that FUCKING BEN left to get his wallet at one point, which he conveniently left out of his story to Lo.

Cole offers to let Lo look at the pictures from the party and oh, hey, he definitely has a thing for Chloe. In case you were wondering. Lo does that thing we all do, when someone hands you their phone to look at a picture and you flip too far back or forward and see some other even that you're not interested in. Only in this one pic, conveniently for the plot, is a waitress (she's not the focus of the pic so it's not extra super weird) who Lo is certain is the woman from cabin 10.

Again, she does the smart thing and doesn't mention this to Cole or Chloe because hey, someone on the ship is a murderer and someone has made the only piece of evidence Lo had vanish so maybe don't draw attention to this other piece of evidence. Good, great, thanks.

Lo scoots out of the dinning room, asks for a sandwich to be delivered to her room, and finds FUCKING BEN. Who she proceeds to tell all about the incident in the spa room like she doesn't ALSO suspect him of maybe being the one to write the ominous words on the glass!!!!

But sure, yes, lets keep telling him things.

Jesus.

Ben, however, has been snooping, ostensibly on Lo's behalf, but who knows, and he thinks that Archer (the asshat who twisted Lo's arm at the first night's dinner) was trying to text a young woman named Jess who looks like Lo's description of the woman. Of course, the internet is still down, but Ben gives Lo a rundown of their movements, and the fact that Eva was not, in fact, at her station the whole time, so someone could totally have snuck downstairs if they'd really wanted to.

Lo panics, realizing how easily someone could have killed her as opposed to just writing threats, so she bolts up to the deck to puke. Ben follows her, probably out of a nice impulse, I'm going to give him that much, and Lo doesn't puke on him which I suppose is fine. Might have been satisfying though.

More importantly, we get a lot of maybe alibis and tying people down to a location when the murder happened.

Tina, apparently, was having a little personal visit from one of the room attendants. Cole was for some reason roaming Lo's end of the ship - his cabin is at the other end and Ben maybe had a young woman sneaking out of his. All of this information brought to you by the resident over weight foodie - Alexander. Who, I'm guessing, just likes spying on people.

I mean I think we can guess that maybe Cole was down there to visit Chloe. Because they are totally having a thing. And Ben is protesting too much about not having anyone in his room. Which is nuts because hey, Ben, Lo is not dating you and does not care who you're seeing.

I really wish Lo would stop telling Ben All the Things. Though she didn't tell him about the photo, so there's that.