58 pages • 1 hour read
Ruth WareThe Woman in Cabin 10
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
After dinner, during which the guests switch seats twice more, Lo spots Lord Bullmer and makes a break to chat with him. Somehow, despite being moved so much, she never got the chance to meet him. As she walks, Cole Lederer comes out of nowhere and startles her with a camera flash. She gets upset with him, and then attempts to save face by explaining that she was just trying to catch Lord Bullmer before he left for the night. Cole apologizes, and then calls Lord Bullmer over–Lo is embarrassed but agrees to meet with Bullmer in his cabin the next day, to sit down for a brief meeting.
Lo returns to her cabin later that evening, completely drunk. She fishes for her room key in her bra, but can't seem to find it–at the same time, Ben Howard looms in the hallway, and asks in a snide voice if she wants help. Lo keeps fishing and rejects his advances, but Ben comes up behind Lo, tears her dress, and aggressively fondles her breast. In response, Lo kicks Ben hard in the groin, and he falls to the floor.
A few moments later, Ben ices his groin in Lo's room while the two apologize to each other for their behavior. Ben is particularly apologetic after Lo explains that she has been on guard since the burglary. Ware then reveals that Lo and Ben had a brief relationship, which Ben ended. Ben begins to talk about his continued feelings for Lo, and offers to sleep on the couch, so she feels safe. Lo reassures him she will be fine. Ben leaves, and Lo goes to bed.
Lo wakes up with a start, her heart racing. All seems to be quiet, but Lo has a death-grip on her blanket and is terrified. She reassures herself it’s just her traumatized brain, checks her emails, and then tries to read. But as she tries to focus, she is distracted by the thought that she has some vague memory of a scream. Then, she hears the balcony door to Cabin 10 slip open, quietly, and the loud splash of what sounds like a body hitting the waves. The section ends with frantic Facebook messages from Judah to Lo's friends, family, and coworkers a few days after her departure. He is asking if anyone has heard from her and is obviously concerned. No one, including Lo's mother, Pam, has heard from Lo since the first evening of Lo’s stay on the ship.
Chapter 10 Summary
Lo jumps out of bed and runs to the balcony, searching the waves for the body that she is sure is rapidly sinking into the North Sea. She sees nothing in the darkness other than a glimpse of what could be a woman's white hand. Lo peers around the privacy screen between her balcony and the next, and sees a smear of blood on the sliding glass door. Realizing that if she can see into Cabin 10, the murderer can likely see her, Lo rushes back to her room and bolts to door. She then calls Karla, who sends Johann Nilsson, the head of security, to investigate the situation. As she waits for Nilsson, Lo is disturbed by the state of her room–though she left it a mess before dinner, it’s now spotless. Maids have come and unpacked her luggage during the evening. Though she knows this is standard practice, the idea of someone invading her privacy is troubling to Lo. Finally, Nilsson arrives and Lo explains what she heard. Nilsson and Lo investigate the glass door, which is now spotless. They enter Cabin 10, which appears completely empty–Lo is shocked by this, as she had seen the room full of the mysterious woman's luggage just before dinner. Lo tries to convince Nilsson that the murderer could have cleared the room, but realizes such a notion is absurd. Nilsson then tells Lo that Cabin 10 has always been empty–the guest who was supposed to stay, a financier, had to cancel his plans just before departure, and never arrived.
Chapter 11 Summary
Lo doesn't believe what Nilsson tells her about Cabin 10–she is convinced there was a woman who was staying next door. Nilsson then asks gently how much Lo has had to drink, and Lo realizes that she looks insane. Nilsson eyes the empty gin bottles and tonic cans in her trashcan, and Lo is immediately embarrassed and angry. She insists that Nilsson wake up the crew, but he refuses, claiming that it is illogical to wake anyone up without evidence of an emergency. He agrees to tell the captain and the purser before returning to bed, and to check in with Lo at the beginning of his shift at 8am. He also reassures Lo that he will introduce her to any off-duty staff, to see if she might be able to identify the woman she met in Cabin 10. Lo returns to bed, her heart still pounding, and realizes that she and her companions are in danger, and no one else knows it.
Chapters 9-11 Analysis
The water and drowning imagery in these chapters build to a climax, as the symbolic idea of drowning becomes reality when Lo hears a body hit the water in the middle of the night. She describes her sleep as “a sleep so deep, it felt like drowning” (84), which becomes darkly symbolic after she is startled awake by a couched scream and rushes to her balcony to see what at least could be a woman's hand disappearing under the waves.
The images in the Prologue are clarified here–Lo's dream of the drowning woman is obviously indicative of this scene. Lo's trauma, and her drinking to cope with it, become reason for her lack of credibility, and she begins to doubt her own senses after Nilsson leaves her room. A narrator admitting their own potential lack of reliability complicates things and further builds suspense.
It’s worth noting that Lo and the woman who supposedly was staying in Cabin 10 share a number of characteristics. Lo describes her to Nilsson as close to Lo’s own build, dark-haired and brown eyed, pretty, and English. Lo also notes that the woman appeared out of place in her Pink Floyd t-shirt, and Lo herself is a fish out of water among millionaires and models on this trip. The physical similarities of Lo to the potential murder victim foreshadow the danger that Lo is in, and the mysterious connection that the unnamed victim and Lo share.
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By Ruth Ware
