The Case of the Troubled Tycoon: A Gilded Age Historical Cozy Mystery (Shipwreck Point Mysteries Book 5)

by Elise M Stone

  “Warren Chapman has been murdered.”

  Time stopped for a moment. She forgot to breathe, much less speak. Even her heart seemed to stop beating. Fortunately, a moment later, her body resumed its natural rhythms. “When did it happen? How was he killed?”

  “Briefly, last night, and he was stabbed in the neck with a sharp instrument, most likely the invoice spike he kept on his desk.” Titus proceeded to describe his chance encounter with Officer Ryan, his hurried trip to Chapman’s house, the events once he got there, and his confrontation with Arthur Muir.

  “I see why you didn’t have time for coffee,” Campbell said. “Do you really think Muir is innocent?”

  Elisabeth had been wondering the same thing herself.

  “I do. While the man earnestly does want to be commodore of the yacht club and is heartbroken over the loss of the cuckoo clock, I don’t think either of those is a strong enough motive for murder. And, if it were the first, he’d also have to eliminate Dietrich. To the best of my knowledge, the owner of the Whitby Gas Company is alive and well.”

  “Doesn’t that mean that Franz Dietrich had the same motive?” the detective asked.

  The lawyer nodded. “Agreed. But in his case, since Payne is behind his ambition to be commodore, I’d think one of Payne’s henchmen would have done the deed. And they would have come prepared with a knife or a pistol, not grabbed the spike from Chapman’s desk.”

  “So that makes it a crime of passion,” Elisabeth said.

  “That’s what I told Tim Kelley. Although there was the size of the wound.”

  She and Owen exchanged puzzled glances, then stared at the lawyer, and Titus went on to explain his theory.

  “So, the first thing I’d like you to do,” he said as he met Owen’s gaze, “is to determine if there’s a fencing club in Whitby.”

  “If there were, wouldn’t it be run out of the Carlton Club?” the detective asked, naming the town’s only gentleman’s club.

  “That sounds like a good place to start,” Titus agreed. “Then, just to be sure, find out where Franz Dietrich was last night.”

  Elisabeth thought this might be her opportunity to mention what she’d observed at the lighthouse during her painting session. “Speaking of suspects, I think you must consider Duncan Muir as well.”

  “Duncan?” Titus asked.

  “Of course. You remember the argument he had with his father the night of the dinner party?”

  Titus nodded.

  “If it wasn’t evident then, what I saw Sunday afternoon made it clear that the major obstacle to the romance between Duncan Muir and Melissa Chapman was her father.”

  “Where were you Sunday afternoon?” Titus asked.

  “I went to the lighthouse with my easel and watercolors to get some painting in. The couple had obviously arranged a secret liaison for the same time, since first one, then the other, appeared. Duncan got quite heated about Mr. Warren’s opposition to their relationship.”

  “So if Chapman were eliminated, there’d be no barrier to their amorous affections,” Campbell said.

  “No serious obstacle,” Elisabeth agreed. “I’m not sure how her mother feels about the situation.”

  “You’re forgetting about Arthur Muir’s part in the argument with his son,” Titus said dejectedly. “But you’ve reminded me that Melissa Chapman had the same motive as Duncan. And she lives in the house. She would have no problem stealing down the stairs late at night to her father’s office. Is it possible that she decided to take matters—and the invoice spike—into her own hands?”

  Elisabeth shook her head. “I’m afraid not. Stella and I ran into Melissa and her mother waiting to board the ferry when we returned from our trip into Boston yesterday. They were planning on staying at a hotel overnight so they could be at the doors of Holmes Department Store before it opened. There’s a big sale on the new Paris fashions, and I take it that all the society women were vying for first dibs on the dresses.”

  “That’s right,” Titus said, then drank from his coffee cup. “I might need another cup or two of this to stimulate my memory. Tim Kelley told me about the trip into Boston himself this morning.”

  “How long do you think it will be until the police figure out who the bicycle charm belongs to?” Campbell asked.

  “Not very,” Titus said. “I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s noticed it.”

  Owen pushed himself to his feet. “In that case, I’d better get started.”

  Once the detective left, Titus pulled a crumpled rhododendron blossom from his pocket and put it on his desk. Before she could ask him about the faded flower, he said, “This was laying under Chapman’s body. Kelley seemed to think it wasn’t significant, but having learned about tussie-mussies, I thought it was possible it might be. Have you any idea what it would mean to give someone a rhododendron?”

  It was an odd flower for the center of a posy. So large, and the rhododendron flowers didn’t have long stems, and so were rarely cut for bouquets. She shook her head. “I have no idea. But while I was in Boston with Stella, I bought a book about the language of flowers that might have a reference to it. I’ll look it up tonight.”

  Titus smiled at her. “I knew I could depend on you.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Elisabeth rolled her bicycle under the stairs on the main floor where she stored it safely while at work. She climbed the steps to the second floor, wondering what excitement would come today. While the act of murder was a tragedy, she had to admit she relished the intensity in the law office as Titus planned his defense, and of course, directed the investigation.

  Pulling her key from her pocket, she inserted it, only to find the door was already unlocked. She smiled to herself, thinking the lawyer must be as eager as she was to start this day. It was only to be expected.

  What was unexpected was the vase holding a dozen red roses that sat on the corner of her desk. Stunned, it took her several seconds before she tentatively approached. She bent to breathe in their luscious aroma. When she raised her head, Titus was standing in his doorway, watching her, a hint of a smile on his lips.

  “I assume these are from you?”

  He nodded. “I’ve done such a miserable job with words lately, I thought I’d let flowers speak for me for once.”

  He did know what roses meant, didn’t he? “They’re beautiful.”

  He came closer to her until they were face to face, almost touching. He raised his hand and, as if pushing back a lock of hair, stroked her face from eyebrow to chin, sending chills down her spine. “As are you, Elisabeth.”

  She had to believe the flowers were intentional, chosen with care to convey an emotion that he found so hard to speak of. As she did, in this moment.

  Not trusting herself to probe the matter further, she said, “I should start the coffee.” She took a step sideways so she could walk around him and focused on her morning routine while he went back to his desk. She could feel his eyes watching her, but when she glanced in his direction, he was studying some papers on the blotter.

  When the coffee was done, she put his cup beside him and, rather than sitting to chat with him, brought her coffee to her station and began typing up the monthly invoices to send out.

  Titus startled at the sound of the telephone bell. While he knew it could ring at any time, this was the first time it had actually done so. It stopped after the second ring, and he breathed a sigh of relief. But his relief was short-lived.

  Elisabeth appeared in his doorway a moment later. “Chief Morgan would like to speak with you.”

  “He’s here?”

  Her lips twitched as if she were about to smile, but she didn’t. “No, he’s not in the office. He’s on the telephone.”

  “Oh.” He gave the instrument a suspicious look before he picked it up. Removing the receiver from its hook, he raised the pedestal, held the mouthpiece to his lips, and tentatively said, “Hello?”

  “Strong,” the chief bellowed, as if not relying on the
device to transmit his words so that he needed to speak loud enough to be heard without it. “Arthur Muir refuses to say a word until you come down to the police station. You’d better get here before I have to use other methods to get him to talk.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’ll be there right away.” He replaced the receiver on its hook and put down the telephone. Elisabeth was still standing in the doorway. “It appears as if Arthur Muir’s been arrested.”

  “Appears as if? Don’t you know for sure?” she asked.

  He felt a flush start at the back of his neck and had to resist the urge to reach a hand behind his head to check if it felt as warm on the surface as it did inside. “I didn’t think to ask outright.”

  “Let’s hope they’ve just brought him in for questioning.”

  “Let’s hope,” he said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can and let you know.”

  Titus climbed Spyglass Hill as fast as he could and scurried along Griffith Road to the police station. Tim Kelley was behind the desk.

  “You must have run all the way.”

  “Not quite a run.” Titus stopped for a gasp of air. “But close enough to wind me. Tell me, has Arthur Muir been arrested?”

  Kelley nodded his head. “I thought you knew that.”

  “I knew he was here, but not exactly why. I hoped it was merely for a few questions.” He took another breath. “How did the chief decide he was the murderer?”

  “I told him there was good cause.”

  Titus wondered what the police knew. He didn’t want to give them any more information than they already had. “And what was that cause?”

  “Do you remember the charm I found?”

  Titus’s heart sunk. “I do.”

  “It belongs to Arthur Muir.”

  “How did you find that out?”

  “A stroke of luck, really. I didn’t think so at the time, but it turned out to be. I bent the front wheel of my bicycle crashing over a curb this morning. Couldn’t very well ride it that way, so I brought it into Snyder’s Bicycle Shop to get it straightened.”

  Titus could guess what was coming next. He wasn’t disappointed.

  “We were chatting while he fixed my wheel, and I thought he might know something about that charm, so I asked him if he perhaps sold anything like that. He said he didn’t, but he knew who it belonged to. It turns out Mr. Muir came in to look over his store last week. Wanted to make sure his bicycles were being featured there and offered a bonus if Will Snyder would move them toward the front.”

  After sharing a few more details about Muir’s conversation with the store owner, Tim said, “While he was there, he took out his pocket watch to check the time. He said something about an appointment he didn’t want to miss. Anyway, that’s when Will noticed the charm on his watch fob.”

  As he’d suspected, Kelley had been clever enough to find the owner. He’d hoped for a little more time. Titus hadn’t counted on a chance circumstance to accelerate what had to come out eventually.

  “Of course, I came back here as soon as my wheel was mended and told the chief. We went out to the Point straight away and made the arrest.”

  Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall leading to the back of the building. The ample figure of Chief Morgan filled the doorway soon afterwards. “I thought I heard your voice out here, Strong. Come with me to the interrogation room now. I haven’t got time to waste while you and young Kelley gossip like a couple of old washerwomen.”

  It wasn’t soon, after all. It was almost two hours later before she heard his footsteps as he climbed the stairs up to the second-floor office. Elisabeth had been nibbling on her upper lip, and she forced herself to stop before he opened the door. She looked up at him from her desk as he entered, wishing for good news. From the look on his face, he was going to disappoint her.

  “My assumption was correct. Arthur Muir has been arrested.”

  “Oh, no.”

  He gave her a wry smile, then said, “Come into my office. I need to tell someone about it, and I can’t think of anyone but you who might listen to me and still be hopeful at the end of my tale.”

  There was a twinge in her bosom, and she wished she could cuddle him to it, but she hesitated to make an advance so bold in the workplace, where anybody—especially Owen Campbell—could walk in at any time. Instead, she rose to her feet and followed him into his private office.

  When they were both seated, she asked, “So how did the police come to the conclusion that Arthur Muir is a murderer?”

  “It was a stroke of bad luck.” Titus leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers under his chin. “Tim Kelley bent a wheel on his bicycle, and he took it down to the bike shop to get if fixed or, if it couldn’t be fixed, to buy a new one. While the proprietor worked on the wheel, Tim thought to tell him about the unusual charm that had been found at the scene of the crime.”

  “Should he have done that?” she asked.

  “There’s no law against it. And seeing as where he was and to whom he was speaking, it was logical for him to think of it. The bad luck is that the owner had previously seen the charm.”

  “When?”

  “As wouldn’t be uncommon, Muir, the owner of a bicycle company, was interested in looking at the local bike shop as long as he was in Whitby. Apparently, he liked to check out the competition, make sure his bicycles were in stock and prominently displayed, and chat up the sales people to encourage them to recommend a potential customer buy a Muir bike instead of one from another manufacturer. So when he was in the store a week ago, he happened to show the man the gold bicycle charm on his watch fob. He was proud that it was an almost perfect replica of one of his models, and suggested to the man that if he met a certain sales quota, Muir might see fit to give a similar bauble to the proprietor as a reward for his efforts.”

  “So, of course, the bike shop owner would have remembered the charm clearly, if not for Muir’s ownership, then for the idea of having one himself,” Elisabeth said.

  “Right.” Titus hung his head as he breathed a sigh. He raised it and looked at Elisabeth imploringly. “The charm was the only evidence at the crime scene that pointed to a specific person, and of course Tim told Chief Morgan what he’d learned as soon as he returned to the police station. Morgan wasted no time in getting an arrest warrant.”

  “Did you see Mr. Muir at the police station?”

  “I did. Of course, the chief wanted to wrest a confession from him, but I wouldn’t let him say anything that might be seen as an admission of guilt. I had him repeat what he’d told me about being there after Chapman was killed, but not much more than that. I allowed him to say he hadn’t taken anything that might have been evidence from the crime scene, but I’m not sure Morgan believed him. I’m not sure I believed him.” A wry smile came to the lawyer’s face.

  “If all they have is the charm, shouldn’t they still be looking for other potential suspects?”

  “You know Morgan. He always takes the easy way out, if at all possible. Once he arrests someone, he’s no longer interested in looking at other possibilities. He’s determined to have the person he’s incarcerated tried and convicted as quickly as possible and carted off to the state penitentiary.”

  Elisabeth certainly did know Morgan. He was a few years ahead of her in school, and was always the butt of boyhood jokes, not only for his obesity, but for his struggles to keep from being the last in his class. Like most of the government officials in Whitby, he’d attained his position more by what he could do for Ranson Payne than by what he could do for its citizens. And, as chief of police, what Morgan could do best was turn a blind eye to the actions of Payne’s thugs.

  “What do we do next?” she asked.

  “Try to build a case for Arthur Muir’s innocence despite our client’s lack of cooperation. I’m sure there’s something he’s not telling me, something that would prove he couldn’t have murdered Chapman, but for some reason, he’s holding it back.”

  CHAPTER 24

&
nbsp; The next day, Elisabeth had just poured coffee for Titus and herself when Owen Campbell walked through the door.

  “Right on time, I see,” she said, getting up to get a cup for the detective. While her back was to him, she heard him say, “Pretty roses.” She turned to respond and saw he was addressing Titus, not her.

  “I thought it was time,” the lawyer said, his gaze firmly fixed on the detective.

  “Past time, I’d say.” Campbell sank into the chair facing Titus’s desk. “I figured I’d better report what I’d found out as soon as I could.”

  She put Owen’s coffee in front of him, then settled in the chair near the corner closest to her employer. The starch had gone out of the detective’s bearing, and there were hollows under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept much since he was last in this office.

  “Is it a matter of urgency?” Titus’s eyebrows drew together, and Elisabeth knew he was worried about what Campbell might have discovered.

  “I’m not entirely sure. Let me tell the story from the beginning.” He pulled his notebook out of his inside pocket and flipped through it until he reached the page he was searching for. “The easy things first.”

  Which meant there was at least one difficult thing he’d learned. Elisabeth wished he’d begin with that, but Campbell had already made it plain that he was determined to tell the tale in his own way.

  “There’s no formal fencing organization in Whitby, but there is a group of young men who get together every other week at the Carlton Club.”

  “Did you find out who is in that group?” Titus asked.

  “I was just getting to that. Ruben, the bartender there, told me it includes Duncan Muir, Albert Stratton, Bruno Ackerman, and George Rowland.” Campbell looked up from his notepad to add, “Rowland’s the oldest of the bunch, and somewhat of a mentor to the younger men.”

  “An odd assortment,” Titus mused. “Garner’s law clerk, the theater manager, the bank manager, and the son of a wealthy businessman who, as far as I know, has no employment at all. What kind of swords do they use?”