Murder on the Minneapolis (10 page)

I
N THE DINING
room that evening, enthusiastic greetings and swapping of places to chat went on at the other tables as normal, though few ventured near Flora’s; as if those who had shared the victim’s last evening had been tainted by Parnell’s death.

Flora watched the door, but Eloise didn’t put in an appearance. Knocks at her stateroom during the day had gone unanswered, and whenever Flora encountered her on deck, she contrived to be in a group, rendering private conversation impossible.

The meal proved uneventful, marked only by Max’s pre-occupation with his belongings as the diners prepared to adjourn to the bar for coffee and after-dinner drinks.

Flora was about to excuse herself on the grounds she didn’t want to leave Eddy alone, then remembered she had engaged a stewardess to sit with him. On reflection, this struck her as overly cautious, for as time passed, she began to feel Dr Fletcher was right and she had imagined the croaky-voiced man.

‘I must have dropped my tie pin somewhere.’ Max rummaged through his pockets as he left the table. ‘The catch is loose, so it’s probably my own fault.’

‘Is it valuable?’ Miss Ames asked, the pink bows she had attached to her upswept hair bobbing like butterflies.

‘I suppose so, it’s set with a rather exquisite diamond.’ Max turned to where Gerald scoured the floor around the table. ‘It’s not there, old boy. Take my word for it. I’ll ask the waiters to keep a look out.’

Cynthia slipped her hand through his as they negotiated the staircase to the upper deck.

‘Don’t fuss so, Max. It’s only jewellery. At least, that’s what you’re always telling me.’ She exchanged a knowing look with Monica, who rolled her eyes in silent sympathy.

When Eloise finally made an appearance in the bar, she did so on the arm of Gus Crowe.

‘I knew it!’ Flora’s sharp nudge dislodged Bunny’s elbow from his chair. ‘She’s definitely avoiding me. Why else would she miss dinner, then choose a sleazy fellow like Crowe as an escort?’

‘Maybe she’s embarrassed about last evening?’ Bunny suggested.

‘She won’t escape me that easily.’ Flora sniffed, ignoring his oblique criticism. ‘I’m determined to find out more about that photograph.’

‘Maybe there isn’t any more to find out,’ Bunny said, one eyebrow raised.

Flora wasn’t convinced.

The lack of seating in the small bar on the upper deck necessitated a reorganization of seating. Chairs were allocated to the ladies, leaving the men to perch on stools. Once settled, Max ordered drinks for everyone, while Gerald’s insistence he share the tab was garrulously declined, as was Bunny’s offer to cover the next round.

Gus Crowe took that moment to excuse himself for a trip to the men’s room, returning in time to receive his
brandy without a word of acknowledgement.

He caught Flora looking at him, and inclined his head with a reptilian smile that didn’t reach his eyes, his glass held aloft for another drink, despite it being three quarters full. Flora wrinkled her nose in distaste. Thus far, the man had refused nothing; a drink, an extra helping, or a cigarette offered by another passenger, accepting whatever came his way with an oily smile.

She was about to mention this unsociable behaviour to Bunny, but he was deep in conversation with Max about an industrialist who wanted to see his designs.

‘He knows Frederick Lanchester, the inventor of the disc brake,’ Bunny said, breaking off a conversation briefly. ‘He invented the electric starter too.’

Flora adopted a suitably enraptured expression, though he might have been speaking Chinese for all she understood, and instead, listened with half an ear to one of Monica’s anecdotes about her daughters, ending with an ostentatious dab at her dry cheeks with a lace handkerchief.

‘No waterworks tonight, please.’ Gerald grimaced. ‘We’ll be back with the little harridans within the week. Then you’ll complain you never get a moment to yourself, despite having a house full of servants.’

Monica threw him a glare cold enough to freeze lava. ‘I don’t expect a mere man to understand a woman’s maternal feelings.’

‘Do you have family, Mrs Penry-Jones?’ Miss Ames asked, distracting attention from the Gilmores’ burgeoning spat.

The old lady’s sharp gaze flicked to her questioner over a pair of rectangular pince-nez. ‘I had a son, once.’

Flora waited for more, but no further explanation was forthcoming.

‘How sad,’ Miss Ames also seemed eager to hear more. ‘Though nature tends to soften the blow with time, don’t you find?’

‘I do not.’ Mrs Penry-Jones sniffed. ‘Nor should one comment on another’s misfortunes unless one knows the circumstances.’ She rose unsteadily to her feet, setting the stool behind her into a precarious wobble. ‘It’s quite stuffy in here. I think I’ll retire.’

Hester scrambled to her feet, stopped in her tracks by her employer’s long-suffering sigh.

‘Really, girl, I wish you wouldn’t bob up and down whenever I move. I’m quite capable of returning to the suite alone. I shan’t require you until the morning.’ Manoeuvring with her stick, she caught an arriving passenger on the shin, and almost tripped the steward who sprang forward to assist her.

‘Oh, dear, I seem to have upset her.’ Miss Ames dropped two cubes of sugar into her coffee. ‘Funny old thing.’

‘Mrs Penry-Jones is rather fond of grand exits, isn’t she?’ Gerald whispered in Flora’s ear, earning him a glare from Monica.

‘What a shame about her son,’ Flora said, turning an enquiring look on Miss Smith.

Hester shrugged. ‘She’s never mentioned a son to me.’

‘Perhaps she lost him quite recently, and her pain is too raw to speak about.’ Cynthia pinned Hester with a look filled with dislike.

Ignoring her, Hester turned a flirtatious look on Mr Crowe. ‘You promised to teach me how to play poker. I appear to be free now if you have the time?’

‘Ah yes, I believe I did.’ Crowe delved into a pocket and withdrew a pack of cards.

‘The first rule of gambling for money, Miss Smith, is never trust a man who uses his own cards.’

Hersch’s voice brought Flora’s head up sharply. She hadn’t noticed him arrive. Her gaze slid to a brown envelope in his hand, the kind used to deliver telegrams. He saw her looking at him and tucked it hurriedly into his pocket.

‘My advice,’ he continued, taking a chair, ‘would be to ensure the pack is unsealed in front of you.’

‘Are you accusing me of underhand dealings?’ Crowe’s handsome but sly features suffused with colour.

‘Not at all,’ Hersch said, unruffled. ‘Though I doubt the lady is in your league.’

Crowe rolled back his shoulders, and dropped the cards back into his pocket, brightening again when Gerald, ignoring his wife’s resigned sigh, said, ‘I’ll join you for a hand or two.’

Flora tried to catch Eloise’s eye, but she appeared disengaged. Her untouched glass in front of her, she ran her pendant absently through the gold chain round her neck. Then she snatched her bag from the table and rose, shouldering her way through the crowd round the bar.

‘Excuse me. I won’t be a moment.’ Flora whispered to Bunny before hurrying after her.

Flora entered the lobby in time to see the door to the ladies’ powder room close on Eloise. Following her inside, she stepped into a subdued haven of pink and gold, where elaborate gilt mirrors graced the walls. A marble-topped counter strewn with bottles containing perfume, lotions and fragrant soaps had been piled into porcelain dishes along with piles of fluffy towels.

Apart from a uniformed attendant in a corner reading
a book, Eloise was the only occupant. She stood before a wide mirror, her chin jutted forward as she applied an unnecessary coat of lipstick.

‘Hello, Flora.’ She shot her a quick look before continuing what she was doing. ‘Where have you been hiding?’

‘I’m not the one who’s been hiding.’ Flora slapped her velvet clutch bag onto the counter. ‘You’ve been avoiding me.’

Eloise pouted, the lipstick held in mid-air. ‘I thought you and your young man preferred some privacy to get to know one another.’ She turned back to the mirror, smoothing her lower lip with a finger.

‘He isn’t my young man. He’s simply been very kind to me since—’

‘Kind? You shouldn’t be so modest.’ Eloise returned her lipstick to her bag, withdrew a tiny sheet of oiled paper and applied it to her lips. ‘The pair of you have been inseparable since we left New York.’

Flora’s immediate rush of pleasure dissolved as common sense reasserted itself.

‘I think he’s attentive to any woman he meets. He’s been brought up that way.’ At the same time the idea of Bunny as her beau appealed more each time she saw him.

‘I know infatuation when I see it.’ Eloise pouted at her reflection. ‘Those delicious glasses are quite appealing, don’t you find?’

‘Don’t change the subject.’ Flora pushed away from the wall and stepped closer. ‘I came to ask you about your young man, not mine.’

Eloise’s eyes darkened for half a second, followed by a decisive shake of her head.

‘I don’t have one. My career is too important to me. Besides, what man would be willing to traipse round the
theatres of the world after his wife?’

‘Who said anything about a wife?’ Flora said, triumphant when Eloise’s face paled.

‘Don’t you find these electric lights unflattering?’ Eloise flicked to the attendant in a silent plea for discretion. ‘Too stark for me, but then I suppose it’s cleaner than gaslight. All that sticky soot ruins everything.’

The attendant chose that moment to leave her seat and disappeared through a door marked ‘Private’.

Eloise flung her bag on the vanity, swivelled sideways and glared at Flora. ‘Now, will you kindly tell me what this is all about?’

‘All right.’ Flora began. ‘Last night when we searched Mr Parnell’s cabin, I found a photograph in his shirt drawer.’

‘Really?’ Eloise picked up a glass bottle of perfume on the vanity, removed the stopper and lifted it to her nose. ‘What sort of photograph?’ Her voice remained causal but the stopper shook slightly in her hand.

‘I assumed it to be your wedding portrait.’

‘I suppose you think you’ve been very clever.’ Her face drained of expression and she gave an awkward shrug. ‘All right. I was married once, what of it?’

‘Then you won’t mind if I tell Mr Hersch where to find the photograph?’

‘Why would you tell
him
anything?’ Confusion clouded her features. ‘What’s that German got to do with it?’

‘He’s been asking questions about Mr Parnell. He and the captain.’ Flora pushed her advantage. ‘They aren’t happy about how he died.’

‘What? Oh!’

The bottle slipped from Eloise’s hand, spilling perfume onto the counter. A cloying smell of roses filled the air, and with it a dismayed cry. Eloise’s hand lowered the
bottle to the vanity with a clunk; miraculously it stayed intact. With her other hand, she scrabbled in her bag, tugging out a handkerchief. As she did so, a circle of gold slid onto the floor, rolled along the carpet and came to rest beside Flora’s shoe.

Flora bent and retrieved a thick gold bangle with a safety chain and an inscription on the inside.

‘Give that to me!’ Eloise plucked the bracelet from Flora’s fingers, but too late to prevent her reading what was engraved on the inside.

To E on our Wedding
Day, T
.

‘I’d forgotten about this.’ Eloise rolled the bangle in the fingers of one hand. ‘I should have thrown the thing overboard when—’ she broke off on a ragged breath. ‘Do you trust me, Flora?’

‘That’s a big thing to ask after all the lies you’ve told me.’

Eloise’s bravado drained away, leaving her white and trembling. ‘I
am
asking.’

‘Then I was right. It
is
you in the photograph with the man who gave you that.’ She indicated the bangle. ‘Why are you so afraid? Mr Parnell is dead, he can’t show it to anyone.’

‘That German is asking questions, you say?’ At Flora’s nod, Eloise’s delicate features crumpled. ‘It wasn’t meant to happen like this. Everything is sliding away from me. If he sees that photograph the game will be up. I have to get it back.’ Desperation burned in Eloise’s eyes and she opened and shut the bracelet clasp with rapid clicks until Flora’s own fingers twitched to snatch it away.

‘Why are you so frightened of Mr Hersch?’ Flora asked. ‘He just wants to know who killed your friend, as do I. There’s nothing sinister in his questions.’

‘Frank wasn’t a friend.’ Eloise snorted. ‘I hadn’t even met him until after Theo died. He turned up at a café across from our apartment block one morning. I was upset and scared, and he was sympathetic. Or he pretended to be. Parnell most probably wasn’t his real name.’ She jammed the bracelet back into her bag and snapped the metal catch shut.

‘Go on,’ Flora prompted.

‘Theo and I eloped, which shocked everyone as he was quite a bit older than me, but that didn’t matter to us.’ Her breath hitched. ‘We were supposed to be together. Then quite suddenly, he died.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry, that must have been awful for you.’

‘It was.’ Eloise gave a shudder. ‘The worst part was when the gossip began, implying that I had something to do with it.’

‘Did the police think you were involved?’

‘If they did, they never indicated as much to me.’ Eloise twisted the bag in her hands. ‘Although I received suspicious looks and murmurings wherever I went. Then the letters started.’

‘What letters?’

‘I received two letters from a lawyer.’ Eloise swallowed. ‘The first one saying that Theo’s family were challenging his estate. He hadn’t made a new will after our wedding, you see, so by law everything came to me. The second one said they were unhappy with the coroner’s verdict of death by natural causes and sought a prosecution.’ Her face crumpled. ‘As if losing Theo wasn’t bad enough, they wanted the world to think I had killed him. That’s when I panicked. I emptied Theo’s safe and booked passage on this ship.’

‘Couldn’t you reason with his family?’

‘I’ve never met them, and didn’t want to once the
correspondence began. They wouldn’t want to hear what I had to say. They had made up their minds.’