Murder on the Minneapolis (19 page)

‘And Mr Hersch works for them?’ At his nod she continued, ‘He doesn’t strike me as a thug.’ Flora jerked her chin back as a thought occurred to her. ‘You’re trying to distract me with one of your stories, aren’t you?’

His gaze met hers and held. ‘Is it working?’

She nodded. ‘You’re a nice man, Mr Harrington.’

‘I try. I’m also truly sorry about the way I reacted when you hugged me earlier. No, don’t pull away, I know you’re embarrassed and I made it worse by my behaviour. I was taken by surprise, but in an agreeable way.’

‘B-but I thought—’

‘I know what you thought,’ he whispered, his arm gently encircling her waist. She made no attempt to pull away, nor did she wish to. ‘I really like you, Flora. I had hoped our first embrace wasn’t going to take place in public while I was soaked to the skin, and gasping air like a landed fish.’

First. He said first. Flora’s stomach did a strange but pleasing lurch, though left her unsure as to what was expected of her now. Too embarrassed to ask, she eased away, preparing to offer polite thanks and a formal goodnight.

Before she could speak, he pulled her back into his arms, brushing his mouth across hers in a feather light touch that ended before it really began. His arms remained round her and he pulled back his chin, studying her closely while his hold tightened again. This time his
mouth pressed on hers was not tentative, but confident, even possessive.

Having never kissed anyone in passion before, Flora had no time to worry whether her reaction was appropriate or not as instinct took over. Her arms moved of their own accord to encircle his neck, her head tilted at just the right angle to meet his. The pressure of his mouth increased under hers, his touch insistent, even fierce. His breathing quickened, and when the tip of his tongue flicked over her bottom lip, her nerves jumped.

She didn’t hear any footsteps until Hersch’s cheery, ‘Goodnight, Mr Harrington, Miss Maguire,’ sent them springing apart, though he moved swiftly along the deck without looking back.

‘I-I had better—’ Flora stammered.

‘Um – yes, yes of course.’ Bunny retreated a pace, ducked his head, both hands jammed into his pockets. ‘Goodnight.’ He backed away, smiling.

She searched for an excuse to make him stay longer, but Eddy’s grinning face with his nose pressed against the window glass changed her mind.

F
LORA STOOD WITH
Monica at the rail, watching the boys play an enthusiastic game of shuffleboard on the boat deck below.

‘I fail to see how a treasure hunt can be considered frivolous, and thus insulting to the dead, whereas a dance is not,’ Monica complained. ‘My Ozzy was so looking forward to it.’

‘Eddy was too, though the horse racing will go ahead this afternoon,’ Flora pointed out.

Monica sniffed in evident disapproval. ‘Oh, look, Ozzy has scored a point. He’s not on form you know, these deaths have affected him badly. He’s such a sensitive boy.’

‘Really?’ Flora’s eyebrow rose as Ozzy proceeded to leap in the air, screaming at the top of his lungs.

‘It doesn’t count!’ Eddy shouted above his friend’s delighted cries. ‘Anything above fifty is subtracted. Don’t you know the rules?’

Despite Flora’s incipient worry, Eddy had slept well the night before, followed by a pre-breakfast conversation
where she reassured him Mr Hersch had everything in hand.

She took refuge in the knowledge children were resilient; safe in the knowledge that however bad things became, they would be shielded from the worst of life’s tragedies by the grown-ups.

‘It appears,’ Monica leaned closer, lowering her voice, ‘the steward had to chastise the boys at dinner last night for exchanging lurid details of poor Eloise’s death. All imagination of course. We wouldn’t dream of telling him what really happened.’

‘Do
you
know what happened?’ Flora asked, immediately alert.

‘Well, not really, but most murders of pretty girls tend to be throttling, don’t they. At least in novels.’

Flora only wished that were true, but chose not to contradict her.

‘I’ll escort the boys to luncheon myself, one cannot be too careful with dangerous people about.’ Monica’s glance over Flora’s shoulder elicited a knowing smile. ‘Not that you will be lonely, my dear, for here comes your beau.’

Flora was about to correct her but Monica was already halfway down the deck.

Bunny withdrew a brown envelope from an inside pocket and handed it to her, his expression grim. ‘This was waiting in my cabin when I returned from breakfast.’

Flora took it gingerly, though reading the slip of paper proved a frustrating exercise as the corners kept curling in the wind on a quest to escape her fingers.

‘Not unknown anymore,’ Flora murmured as she handed it back to him. ‘Marlon van Elder is at this moment lying under a sheet in the doctor’s office.’

‘That’s the conclusion I came to.’ Bunny re-folded the page.

‘What it doesn’t tell us, is what his relationship was with Theodore van Elder? Brother? Cousin or something else? And why was he travelling with Eloise?’

‘Flora,’ Bunny’s voice held a warning note. ‘You’re going to have to consider the possibility that Parnell and Eloise killed Theodore van Elder, and were escaping the country.’

‘He was blackmailing her. Why would he do that if they were in it together?’

‘Greed? A falling out of villains, maybe?’

‘I may have accepted that as late as yesterday, but now I think Eloise was as much a victim as Parnell.’ Flora couldn’t bring herself to call her Estelle, she would always be Eloise to her.

Bunny replaced the telegram back into its envelope. ‘I’ll give this to Hersch straight away. We don’t want him thinking we’re keeping any more secrets now he has an official investigation under way.’

‘I wish I had told him everything sooner,’ Flora sighed.

‘That would have been an interesting conversation.’ Bunny cleared his throat, addressing a spot over her head.
‘Mr Hersch, about that clipping I stole from the dead man’s cabin when I was looking for a large amount of money with the girl who was herself murdered yesterday. I—’

‘All right, all right, I get it.’ Flora hushed him. ‘What do
you
suggest?’ She worried the side of a thumbnail with her front teeth.

‘Well, I—’ he broke off and glanced past Flora’s shoulder, gave a low groan and hurriedly tucked the envelope back into his pocket.

Flora turned to where Cynthia strolled the deck in a peacock blue dress with a matching coat that enhanced her grey eyes.

‘How is Max coming along?’ Flora asked as she came to a leisurely halt beside them.

‘Bruised and sore, poor dear.’ Cynthia’s face relaxed in relief. ‘He has no memory of why he was out on deck in that storm, and I shan’t badger him.’ The implication that no one else should either went unspoken. ‘I’m so glad the dance is going ahead tonight. It will give us all a welcome distraction from this awful business.’

She stroked Bunny’s forearm with a manicured hand. ‘You must promise to dance with me, Bunny, because no one else will. No doubt the other passengers will mutter about me not remaining glued to my husband’s bedside.’

‘I’ll be happy to, Cynthia,’ Bunny said. ‘What about you, Flora?’

Flora hesitated. ‘I haven’t made up my mind yet. I’ll think about it.’ It didn’t seem right somehow so soon after Eloise’s death.

‘Of course you’ll be there.’ Cynthia levelled her clear gaze on Flora. ‘You cannot possibly waste that gown, it looks wonderful on you.’ Her pretty face lit at the clear note of the bugle announcing luncheon. ‘Oh good, I’m
quite famished, though I’ve done nothing all morning except pour tea and plump Max’s pillows. It must be this bracing sea air.’ She turned on her heel and tripped across the deck with a backwards wave.

‘It’s as if Eloise never existed,’ Flora said, mildly repulsed.

‘They were hardly friends, though I admit, I didn’t take her for the callous sort.’

‘I know I said we hadn’t learned anything last night,’ Flora said slowly. ‘But didn’t Cynthia admit she went to Eloise’s stateroom with some tea yesterday afternoon?’

‘I seem to recall she did,’ he said. ‘She said there was no answer.’

‘Cynthia has lied before, remember.’ She also remembered that Mr Hersch hadn’t been at the table when that question was asked.

Flora dragged her feet towards the dining room, thoughts of Cynthia quickly replaced by something about the telegram that niggled at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t recall just then what it was.

Flora’s post-prandial walk brought her to the rail of the promenade deck, where she paused to watch the foam-topped waves crest and fall in the distance. A sharp pain in her chest reminded her that this was where she had met Eloise on their second day at sea.

‘Good afternoon, Miss Maguire,’ a slightly accented voice dragged her from her sad musing.

‘Hello, Mr Hersch,’ she replied without turning her head.

‘Oh, my dear, are you still brooding about the unfortunate fate of Miss Lane?’ He rested his elbows on the rail beside her.

‘Does that surprise you?’ Flora resumed her contemplation of the sea.

Ignoring her question he asked, ‘Are you not joining the ladies today?’

Flora looked to where Miss Ames and Monica sat talking with Mrs Penry-Jones on steamer chairs on the deck below.

‘I could do without having to endure Mrs Penry-Jones’s comments about governesses with ideas above their station, or actresses getting their just desserts.’

‘People like her belong to the past. You should embrace the modern age, my dear. Mr Harrington, for example, is well-equipped to tackle this new century with that horseless carriage of his.’

Despite herself, Flora’s possessive pride rose in her chest. ‘I’m sure he’ll succeed in his world.’

‘His world? Why not yours too?’ At Flora’s shrug he went on, ‘If you would take my advice, I think your pride is getting in the way of a meaningful friendship with that young man.’

‘We move in different worlds.’ Flora aimed for pragmatism, but he had unwittingly stirred an elusive hope in her. One she continued to fight. ‘He’s used to more sophisticated company.’

‘How interesting that it’s the working classes who cling most tenaciously to the “different worlds” adage.’

Flora squirmed, wishing he would change the subject; grateful when he appeared to sense her unease and fell silent, the only sound between them the whoosh of the sea accompanied by the gentle rise and fall of the ship as it cut through the waves.

‘It must have been a dreadful shock, seeing Miss Lane like that?’ he said after a moment.

‘Indeed it was, although the purser hustled me out before I could take a proper inventory of her stateroom.’

‘Is that your way of asking me to tell you what we found?’

‘If you feel so inclined.’

His eyes slewed sideways, regarding her with a calculating gaze. ‘If I didn’t know better, I might imagine I’m being manipulated, Miss Maguire.’

Flora smiled. He always used her full name when he teased her. She quite liked it.

‘What I can tell you,’ he went on, ‘despite the disarray in her stateroom, there was no sign of a struggle, therefore I assume—’

‘Eloise knew her attacker and let him in willingly.’

He nodded. ‘And therefore was someone she had no reason to suspect.’

‘Another member of the crew, perhaps?’

He twisted toward her, as if his next words required a certain gravitas. ‘What we do know, is she received three deep stab wounds; two just below her ribcage and one in her right breast. Dr Fletcher says they were inflicted with a thin, straight-bladed knife.’

Flora fought down a wave of nausea as the image of Eloise’s body flashed into her head. Three stab wounds. Someone really hated Eloise. Or wanted to make sure she kept quiet. Then something struck her and she turned her head, meeting his gaze. ‘The knife wasn’t found in the stateroom.’

He frowned. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Because you described what might have inflicted her injuries. If you had the weapon, you would know.’

Hersch chuckled. ‘If Pinkerton’s ever decide to employ women again, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend you.’

‘Again?’ Flora asked. ‘Has there ever been such a thing as a lady detective?’

‘Indeed, yes.’ Hersch chuckled. ‘There was an infamous one during the Civil War by the name of Kate Warne, who was Allan Pinkerton’s mistress. Then there was Hatty Lawson and Rose Greenhow. All very effective information gatherers from what I understand.’

‘Did they actually uncover any crimes, though?’ His use of the term information gatherers implied the women were merely busybodies and gossips, character traits assigned to most women and hardly flattering.

‘Absolutely. Kate Warne uncovered an assassination plot on Lincoln before that infamous theatre incident, and Rose moved in illustrious circles, thus was able to pass information about Bull Run to Jefferson Davies. I believe you would make a more than credible lady detective, my dear.’

‘There is something I should have mentioned,’ she began, warmed by his flattery. ‘Eloise gave Mr Parnell $3,000 the night he died.’

‘Really?’ His mouth twitched, whether in annoyance or scepticism she couldn’t tell. ‘That explains why you asked about whether we had found any money in Mr Parnell’s stateroom.’

‘I should have told you before, but—’

‘You felt your observations were being treated as trivial?’ His penetrating gaze made her squirm. ‘Under what circumstances did Miss Lane reveal that information to you?’ She opened her mouth, but he silenced her with an upraised hand. ‘Perhaps I don’t wish to know, and no, we didn’t find it in either stateroom.’

‘Was Theodore van Elder murdered?’ Flora asked.

Had Flora not been watching for the small start he gave, she would have missed it.

‘The coroner’s report said he died from a gastric complaint.’

Flora wasn’t fooled by his mock innocent expression, and suspected he had his own theory.

‘Who hired you, Mr Hersch?’ She hardly expected an answer, but it was worth a try.

‘Do you really expect me to reveal that? Good day, Miss Maguire.’ He stepped away from the rail and set off along the deck at a brisk, confident stride.

Flora’s gaze remained on his retreating back. The man was infuriating.