Murder on the Minneapolis (26 page)

A
T
H
ERSCH’S INSTIGATION
, they re-assembled in Mrs Penry-Jones’s sitting room; silent and absorbed with their own disturbing thoughts.

The devastation caused by the spilled tea tray had been cleared up; the Korean dagger repositioned on the mantle. A damp area of carpet evidenced a vigorous scrubbing, but otherwise the room looked untouched.

‘I saw everything from the upper deck.’ Mary Ames bustled into the room and plucked at Flora’s sleeve. ‘Has the captain ordered we go back to look for Hester?’

‘I-I believe so,’ Flora stammered, still numb. ‘He’s ordered a lifeboat lowered, but—’ She shook her head, arms wrapped round her midriff as the image of Hester floating away from the rail repeated in her head.

If by some faint chance Hester had survived the fall, did instinct take over? Did she fight to stay afloat, then watch in horror as the stern of the ship sailed steadily away from her?

‘Flora?’ Bunny’s voice came to her as if from a long way off. ‘Are you all right?’

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

Miss Ames fussed over Mrs Penry-Jones, who ignored
her completely. ‘At times like this, I feel the tragedies of life can be mitigated by portraying them in art.’ She patted her pocket, where the outline of her notebook stood out. ‘In this case, literary art.’

‘She’s going to put Hester’s story in a book?’ Flora said to Bunny. ‘Can you imagine that?’

‘It’s quite a good plot actually.’ Bunny shrugged. ‘We all have our own coping strategies.’

‘Really? What was Hester’s?’

‘Maybe she couldn’t face the prospect of dying at the end of a rope. It isn’t a pleasant way to go.’

‘And drowning is?’ Flora murmured, not expecting an answer. Her ankle began to ache, which she contemplated using as an excuse to return to her suite. Passengers had been running all over the ship during the last half hour and soon everyone would know what had happened. She didn’t want Eddy to find out via shipboard gossip.

‘Then this entire fiasco was for nothing?’ Mrs Penry-Jones spoke at last. Fat tears carved lines in her face powder, hovered on her upper lip and dropped onto her clasped hands that sat like bundles of bones in her lap. ‘Hester deceived me, too.’

‘I’m afraid that’s true, dear lady.’ Hersch spoke with restraint, though Flora imagined he would have liked to say a great deal more had his innate good manners not prevented him.

Max comforted Cynthia, his uninjured arm across her shoulders while he whispered into her hair.

‘Max,’ Flora asked as something occurred to her. ‘Did you see Hester leave Eloise’s stateroom after she … well, you know. Is that why you were on deck in the storm?’

Cynthia lifted her face from his shoulder and stared up into his face. ‘Max?’

‘I-I saw someone coming out of Eloise’s room in a cloak just like the one I bought Cynthia in London.’ Max blew air between his pursed lips ‘It was obvious they didn’t want to be seen, and I thought—’

‘That it was me?’ Cynthia said, aghast.

‘No, I mean maybe I did.’ He licked his lips. ‘I couldn’t be sure. The storm was severe by then and the deck awash. Then the wave hit me, and Mr Harrington dragged me back.’

‘You never told me any of this,’ Cynthia said.

‘How could I? When I woke up in our stateroom an hour later to find out Eloise had been killed, I thought—’ He massaged his forehead with his free hand. ‘I knew you blamed her for your father’s death. My first thought was to protect you. No matter what you had done.’

‘Oh, Max.’ Cynthia crumpled into his one armed-embrace. ‘It
was
my cloak. I lent it to Hester, but I didn’t kill Eloise.’

‘I know that now,’ he whispered. ‘I feel terrible for having thought you capable of such a thing. I’m so sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’ Cynthia ran her hand down his jaw. ‘I should have insisted you tell me what you were doing outside in that storm, but I didn’t want to hear it.’

Max’s face paled. ‘You thought
I
had done it?’

Cynthia’s lips parted, whether to issue a denial or not, Flora couldn’t tell. What damage had been done to their marriage with so much doubt she couldn’t imagine. They would have to learn to live with it.

‘I think we should go,’ she whispered to Bunny, who nodded, laced his fingers with hers and drew her to her feet.

Hersch followed them onto the deck, leaving the captain and Officer Martin to do whatever was necessary.

‘Well,’ Bunny said, when they came to a halt outside Flora’s suite. ‘That explains how Matilda ended up on the other side of the boat deck. Hester must have undone the straps when she hid the knife.’

‘I cannot help feeling that had I linked Dr Fletcher with that land deal earlier, at least two people would still be alive.’

‘You cannot be held responsible for that,’ Flora said. ‘Had Mrs Penry-Jones informed the agency they were all travelling under different names, you would have known what was going on.’

‘Instead, she chose to wrap herself in intrigue, convinced she sought justice for her son.’

Flora followed the German’s gaze to where small groups of passengers gathered at the rail, necks stretched and talking earnestly among themselves. A knot of sailors clustered round an empty lifeboat support below them on the boat deck.

‘Have they found anything?’ Flora asked.

‘I doubt it,’ Bunny sighed. ‘But they have to go through the motions.’

‘I suppose so.’ She bit her lip, sad that two women’s lives had been wasted. And for what?

‘There’s nothing more we can do, so I’ll wish you both a good night.’ Hersch performed a polite bow and left them, his rhythmic footsteps receding along the deck.

‘Well, who would have thought,’ Bunny said. ‘No one was who they pretended to be. A secret wife, a vengeful mother and a grieving daughter.’

‘Everyone can be whom they choose aboard ship. Which is what I said at the beginning.’

‘Indeed you did. I shall have to listen to you more closely in future.’ He leaned against the door frame, arms folded.

Flora returned his admiring smile and hoped there might be a time in the not too distant future when he could do exactly that.

‘In a way it’s admirable that Max was prepared to protect his wife to such an extent,’ Bunny said.

‘I regard it as sinister that Cynthia will always remember her husband believed her capable of murder. With a knife.’

‘Hmm. I didn’t think of it like that. Is it romantic that Hester’s passion for her husband turned her into a killer?’

‘I don’t think romantic is the right word.’ Flora recalled that moment at the top of the companionway, and the vicious shove that had sent her to the bottom. In that second she had felt something inherently evil behind her.

‘We arrive in London tomorrow.’ Bunny nodded at a pinpoint of light that blinked in the distance. ‘That must be the Eddystone Lighthouse.’

‘Yes,’ Flora sighed, though the prospect of home seemed less attractive than it might have done.

‘I expect you’re tired, so I’ll say goodnight too.’ His hand slid down her arm, pausing to squeeze her hand. Something entered his eyes and for a moment she half-expected him to kiss her again, but the moment passed. Instead, he coughed, dropped a light kiss on her cheek and walked away.

Flora watched him go, a hand braced against the doorframe. When he reached the corner, she whispered, ‘Goodnight, Ptolemy Harrington.’

‘Is that you, Flora?’ Eddy’s voice sounded from the sitting room.

‘Yes, it’s me.’ She stayed where she was for a moment, staring at the tiny blinking light as the ship carried her closer to home.

Eddy’s face appeared round the door jamb. ‘C’mon, Flora. This steward they sent to sit with me can’t play chess for toffee. I’ve beaten him three times already. By the way, what was going on down on the boat deck earlier? He wouldn’t let me look!’

‘Have you finished your packing, Eddy?’ Flora called to him through his bedroom door.

‘I did mine last night.’ He wandered into the sitting room, buckling his belt over a hastily tucked in shirt. ‘Can’t wait to see Ozzy this morning. I’ll bet he doesn’t know about Miss Smith.’

‘I imagine his father will have told him. The entire ship must know by now.’

‘Oh, bother!’ His face fell for a second and then his eyes filled with concern. ‘I forgot to ask, how’s your ankle?’

‘Much better.’ She flexed her foot to demonstrate. ‘It still aches a little, but that’s all. I recovered quicker than I thought.’

‘You
are
going to see Mr Harrington again when we get home, aren’t you?’ He leaned against one of the wicker chairs, fixing her with a speculative stare so like his father’s, she looked away, disconcerted. Lord Vaughn was a formidable employer.

‘Doesn’t that rather depend on what Mr Harrington wants?’

‘What about you? What do
you
want?’

Flora paused in the act of transferring her vanity case to the pile of trunks lined up by the door. ‘Maybe I should look further than Cleeve Abbey now that you’ll
be at Marlborough. I could take a position at a school in London, or go to Paris to teach English to French children.’ Her heart lifted with new enthusiasm, her voice with it.

‘You’ll be alone,’ Eddy said, despondent. ‘Is that what you want?’

‘I-I don’t know. But whatever I do, I cannot rely on Mr Harrington, or any other man to make my happiness for me.’

‘You’ll always come home to Cleeve Abbey, though, won’t you?’

‘Possibly.’ A smile tugged at Flora’s mouth. Where else could she consider home? ‘Now go and say goodbye to Ozzy. We’ll be leaving soon.’

A look of abject horror crossed Eddy’s face. ‘Gosh, yes. I don’t even have his address. See you later, then.’

The porter arrived and removed their trunks, after which Flora surveyed the empty suite, bereft now of the items which marked it as having temporarily been hers. Like her hairbrushes on the dresser and her negligee on the end of the bed.

The morning she had found Parnell’s body seemed a long time ago now. So much had happened since then. What had Bunny said about stripping the emotion to lessen the impact of the past? She doubted she would be able to do it at Cleeve Abbey; no one at home had ever been willing to discuss Lily Maguire.

What had her mother done that was so reprehensible? Or maybe it was more what had been done to her. Whichever it was, maybe Bunny was right and it was time to find out for once and for all. Too much hurt was caused by secrets, as the Van Elders could attest.

Retrieving her handbag from a chair, Flora stepped onto the promenade deck, where the discordant clamour
of mechanical noise combined with the rumble of loaded trolleys across the deck. A line of carriages waited on the quayside for city-bound passengers.

‘Someone will be here to meet you, I assume?’ Bunny said, coming to her side.

‘Lord Vaughn will send a driver, I expect.’

She looked past him to where a group of police officers stood beside a black closed carriage on the quayside beside the gangplank. Bunny followed her gaze to where Gus Crowe and Dr Fletcher emerged from beneath the superstructure, both with shackled hands and flanked by two policemen.

‘Mr Crowe has regained his jaunty look,’ Bunny said, as a low murmuring went up amongst the crowd waiting to disembark.

‘The charges against him have been reduced to theft and assault,’ Flora said. ‘Oh and they found Max’s tie pin and cufflinks hidden in his stateroom as well.’

The doctor kept his head down, his shoulders hunched. Flora could only imagine how he felt now, with the hangman’s rope his only future. Did he envy Hester, perhaps, or would he do anything to prolong whatever life he had left?

As the metal door slammed on the windowless Black Maria, she flinched, aware she would never know the answer to that question

‘So, what of the future of Flora Maguire, the intrepid detective?’ Bunny asked once the carriage had moved off.

‘She’s retired before reaching her zenith. Too dangerous – and complicated.’

‘Hersch told me you were right about that bracelet by the way.’

‘Oh?’ Flora turned to face him, forcing herself not to
flush beneath his steady gaze. ‘Did they find it?’

‘Amongst Hester’s things. Why she took it is a mystery. The inscription would surely only serve as a constant reminder of how it was obtained.’

‘I believe there was a more prosaic reason than that. She would most likely have sold it at her first opportunity.’

‘You’re probably right.’

‘Flora!’ Eddy called from the end of the deck. ‘Papa’s carriage is here. They’re loading our trunks right now.’

‘I’m coming!’ Flora replied, her heart doing a small dip of disappointment. She hesitated, studying Bunny from the corner of her eye.

He glanced away and then back again, followed by the straightening of his tie. Was it her imagination, or was he looking for a way to prolong the conversation?

‘Goodbye, Bunny Harrington.’ She placed her gloved hand in his and shook it firmly. ‘If you want any murders solved, I hope I will be the last person you think of.’ She tossed her head and with a bright smile, turned on her heel and began to walk away.

Was he going to let her leave just like that? A shipboard friendship destined to shrivel the moment they stepped onto dry land again? In her head she offered a plea to whatever fate organized such things that he would think of a way to stop her.

‘Flora!’ His voice brought her to a stop. She didn’t turn round in case he saw the wide smile that had crept into her face.

He overtook her, then stepped in front of her. ‘I cannot let you leave without trying to express a little of what has happened to me during this voyage.’

Flora waited, not daring to hope his feelings may reflect hers, and yet how could she not?

‘When I boarded at New York, my every thought was about Matilda, the business I am going to set up in England, and very little else.’

‘And now?’ Flora’s breath caught.

‘When you hit your head on the support and were angry, guilty and defensive all at the same time, I haven’t been able to think of much else. You’ve become almost an obsession, Flora.’