A Subtle Murder

by Blythe Baker

  As I neared the table, the Worthings hushed and turned towards me, and the previously chatty table fell into an awkward lull. Immediately I knew they had been talking about me. Of course they had; the only reason everyone had danced around the topic of the explosion before was because I had been at the table. As soon as I’d left, it had given Mrs. Worthing the opportunity to gossip openly about my tragedy. I couldn’t blame her. Had the tragedy not been my own, I would have been telling everyone, as well. Jane Dixon seemed to be the only person at the table willing to admit the obvious.

  “I’ve just heard the rest of your story, and I am even more impressed with you than before,” she said, her bright eyes glassy and somber. “You are very brave to bear up so well under such tragic circumstances. Was the madman who threw the explosive into the car ever captured?”

  I thanked the young girl, and shrugged my shoulders. “I am not sure.”

  “You haven’t followed the story?” she asked, eyes wide with astonishment.

  I could tell what she was thinking. My family had perished in that vehicle. Wouldn’t I want to know what had become of their murderer? The truth was that I didn’t want to know. I understood that the violence had been political, because of my father’s position in government. Beyond that, I preferred not to dwell on the past but to look to the future, and I said as much to Jane.

  With my return, the conversation turned to more mundane topics, and I was free to sit in silence the remainder of the evening. Talking so openly about the explosion had brought back the memories in full force, and I did my best to fight them back. I couldn’t allow myself to be overwhelmed by the tragedy in public. Achilles Prideaux’s warning—though most likely a lie—had reminded me that there was too much at stake, narrow straits I could only navigate by keeping my wits. One misspoken word or moment of weakness, and even the kindly, guileless Worthings could guess certain truths I wished to conceal.

  Lying in my cabin later that night, moonlight coming through the porthole in a single spotlight on the floor, I grabbed the chain of the locket I always wore around my neck and pulled it free of my nightgown. The locket popped open with a familiar twist of my fingers and a small scrap of paper, yellowed with age, fell into my palm. I unfolded it twice to read the clumsy scrawl: “Help me.” The message was old, written years before in a desperate plea for rescue. As always, seeing the words stirred deep memories of a childhood I wished I could forget. But no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to dispose of the locket or the message within. I slipped the piece of paper back into the locket and hid it between the thin cotton fabric of my gown. I had enough to worry about in the weeks ahead without dwelling on the past.

  I fell into a troubled sleep, one plagued with long dreams I could not escape in which voices followed me, all of them repeating the same question: what really happened in Simla?

  3

  I awoke the next morning to frantic knocking on my cabin door. I grabbed my robe from the hook next to the bed and wrapped it tightly around myself. The mantel clock said it was only seven in the morning.

  “Who is it?” I asked. In the back of my mind was an image of Achilles Prideaux standing on the other side of the door.

  The knocking came again, louder and more frantic, and I realized it was not coming from the hallway, but from the door that separated my room from the sitting room I shared with the Worthings.

  “Oh, thank heavens.” I recognized Mrs. Worthing’s exasperated voice and opened the door to see her standing on the other side, hand pressed to her heart. “You’re alive.”

  “Of course I am,” I said, holding the door open for her to come inside. She was breathing heavily, her hair frizzy and sticking out from under her sleep bonnet. “What made you think otherwise?”

  “A woman has been murdered,” she said, practically screaming.

  I directed Mrs. Worthing to the chair in front of my vanity and helped her sit. Clearly, she was out of sorts. Perhaps a bad dream had awoken her, and she’d taken it for reality.

  “Where is Mr. Worthing?” Her husband always seemed capable of taming her nervous energy.

  “In the sitting room, acting as though nothing has happened,” she said, rolling her eyes. “We are awoken to news of a murder, and you’d think we’d heard nothing more exciting than the breakfast menu.”

  “A woman died?” I asked, only just beginning to wonder whether there was some truth to what Mrs. Worthing was saying.

  She looked at me as though I’d just asked her whether the sky was blue. “Yes, someone has died! That is what I’ve been saying, Rose.”

  “Who?”

  “We don’t know. That is why I woke you up. I wanted to be certain you hadn’t snuck out of your cabin in the middle of the night and found yourself in trouble.” She shook her head, dismissing the thought, and then reached out to stroke my good cheek. “Thank the Lord you are safe.”

  I patted her hand once and then peeled it off of my face. “How did you find out?”

  “A crew member came to the door. You’d think the Captain would have been the one to break the news to the passengers rather than a young boy. It’s an ugly errand to send a child on.”

  “The Captain can’t really be expected to visit hundreds of rooms in a single morning,” I said. “What did the crew member say?”

  “He informed us a female passenger had been murdered and to stay in our rooms until the breakfast bell.” She shook her head again. “Hopefully we can eat soon. I’m famished.”

  Mrs. Worthing had entered my room in near hysterics thinking I’d been murdered in the night and now she was complaining of hunger. Keeping up with her was exhausting. I dropped back down onto my bed and wiped at my eyes.

  “Hopefully the victim isn’t anyone we know,” I said.

  Mrs. Worthing stilled, and I suspected she was thinking of the large number of people I’d recently lost to murder.

  A commotion in the hallway brought me and Mrs. Worthing to our feet once again and racing for the door. Mr. Worthing, who according to Mrs. Worthing had been quite comfortable in the sitting room only a few minutes before, must have also deemed the shouting to be unusual because he joined us in the hallway, eyes wide and searching.

  Colonel Stratton was standing in the doorway of the cabin next to mine, and his usually stern features were twisted in despair.

  “Where is she?” he cried, reaching out for the crew member—a young boy, barely sixteen, with long limbs and a spotty face. The boy dodged the Colonel’s thick arms and pressed himself against the far wall of the hallway.

  “I don’t know,” he said, eyes darting around the hallway for assistance. He knotted his hands nervously in the stiff white fabric of his uniform. “Captain told me to tell the passengers in this corridor not to leave their rooms until the breakfast bell sounded.”

  By this point, the Colonel was shouting incoherently, drawing everyone from their rooms and into the hallway. Women in various stages of undress and men with stubbly chins and white undershirts on were gawking at the drama from their doorways. The young crew member fought for a hopeless moment to usher people back into their rooms, but then gave up, shrugging and shouting, “Stay in your rooms until the breakfast bell.” Then, having technically completed his duty to tell everyone the Captain’s order, he darted through the crowd and around the corner, leaving chaos in his wake.

  “Where is my wife?” the Colonel shouted after the young boy.

  Mr. Worthing stepped forward and grabbed the large man by the shoulders, shaking him. If it hadn’t been for Colonel Stratton’s despair, the sight would almost have been comical—Mr. Worthing’s thin fingers trying to wrap around the dense muscle of Colonel Stratton.

  “Colonel!” Mr. Worthing said loudly. The word had the effect of a bucket of cold water. The Colonel straightened up, and looked into Mr. Worthing’s face, blinking several times slowly. “You are making a scene.”

  “Let me make a scene then,” the Colonel said, his voice a rumble of thu
nder, though his posture had begun to slouch considerably. “My wife is dead. You’d make a scene, too.”

  Mrs. Worthing gasped and slapped her hands over her mouth.

  “Ruby?” I asked, stepping out from behind Mrs. Worthing. I was conscious of being dressed in nothing more than a nightgown and a robe, but I couldn’t help myself.

  The Colonel turned to me, assessing my lack of proper clothing for a moment, and then turned back to Mr. Worthing, acting as though I hadn’t even spoken.

  “Ruby is the woman who was murdered last night?” Mr. Worthing asked, taking a step backward, suddenly leery of the Colonel and his bulk. He had the right idea. Most murders were committed by a member of the family, typically a spouse, and the Colonel had the right temperament for such a violent act.

  Colonel Stratton nodded solemnly, his lower lip tucked into his mouth.

  “Have you seen her?” Mr. Worthing whispered, the thought too gruesome to speak at full volume.

  The Colonel shook his head, and Mr. Worthing drew his eyebrows together. “Then, did the young boy tell you the deceased woman was your Ruby?”

  Once again, the Colonel shook his head.

  Mr. Worthing sighed and planted his hands on his hips. “Forgive me, but I don’t understand. Why do you believe Mrs. Stratton to be murdered?”

  “The crew boy only told us it was a woman. He wouldn’t provide any other details,” Mrs. Worthing said.

  I could imagine her trying to pry information out of the poor boy. Between Mrs. Worthing’s begging and the Colonel’s shouting, he was having a rough second day at sea.

  “She disappeared from the room early this morning,” the Colonel said, running his fingers through the thin hair hanging on to his scalp. “She often has trouble sleeping, so I assumed she went for a walk on the deck, but now there is a woman murdered and my Ruby is still missing.”

  His voice cracked on her name, and his square face was made even more square by the tightening of his jaw. The Colonel was fighting back tears. He shook his head and composed himself.

  “We will find your Ruby,” Mr. Worthing said. “She was probably on deck when the body was discovered and directed to the smoking room or dining room to wait until the breakfast bell.”

  Colonel Stratton didn’t disagree, but I could see that he didn’t believe Mr. Worthing.

  “Let’s go back inside until the bell,” Mrs. Worthing whispered in my ear. “The men will handle the Colonel.”

  Mrs. Worthing lounged back on my bed, her arm thrown over her eyes to block the morning sun pouring through the porthole, while I reapplied my makeup, covering the scar that ran across my cheek. Immediately after the accident, the doctor had told me to keep the area clean as it healed, but as soon as the wound closed, I’d covered it with cream and powder.

  “Do you think there is any truth to the Colonel’s claims? Could Ruby Stratton have found herself in harm’s way?” Mrs. Worthing asked, faux horror dripping from every word. Though Mrs. Worthing liked to pretend she was a well-mannered, high-class woman, her love of gossip revealed her heart. I had no doubt her concern for Mrs. Stratton was real, but she found too great an enjoyment in discussing the topic for it to be entirely proper.

  I fear for my life. Those were the words Ruby had confided to me in the ladies room less than twelve hours before. Had it been only twelve hours? I’d left dinner confident that Ruby had been spooked by a mean trick played by Achilles Prideaux—the same trick he’d tried to play on me—but had it been a trick? Or had Mr. Prideaux known something about Ruby that lead to her demise? And if so, what did that mean for my own secret?

  “I don’t know what to believe,” I said, the answer as vague and truthful as I could manage.

  When the breakfast bell finally rang, I was desperate for a break from Mrs. Worthing’s company. She talked incessantly, barely giving me a moment to sit with my own thoughts, of which I had many. The chief of which was how to discover who the murdered woman was. I prayed it was anyone but Ruby Stratton—not only because I knew Ruby as well as anyone could know someone after one dinner together, but also because her death would make me a likely next target, assuming the murderer was Achilles Prideaux.

  The passengers moved through the hallway in slow groups, everyone suspicious, but doing their best to act as if nothing were wrong. I navigated around them quickly, losing Mrs. Worthing when she forced Mr. Worthing back into their stateroom to change out of his dinner jacket and into a navy blazer.

  “This is a ship, not the embassy,” she scolded him. Mr. Worthing had only been retired two days, and already seemed to be missing his routine. “We won’t be just a minute, Rose.”

  I breathed in the fresh air on the Pomenade Deck greedily. I hadn’t anticipated how claustrophobic the cabin would make me feel, and I promised myself in that moment to spend as much time out of my cabin as possible. Assuming, of course, I was not in any immediate danger. Being out of my room and away from the wild theories of Mrs. Worthing, the idea of Ruby Stratton being the murdered woman felt silly. Colonel Stratton had simply been overreacting, and trapped as we were in our rooms, his fear had consumed us all. And it wasn’t just me benefitting from the effects of the fresh sea air. Everyone seemed in better spirits, almost as if the murder hadn’t happened at all.

  A woman in a white dress and apron brought me a steaming cup of tea, and I thanked her, wrapping my hands around the warm cup and looking out into the ocean. India was no longer visible on the horizon, and turquoise sea surrounded the ship in all directions like a moving island. The thought of isolation should have scared me, but fear was not an emotion I felt capable of just then. With India slipping ever more into the background and on a steady course for my new life in London, I felt free. The RMS Star of India ripped through the water and foamy waves churned and then disappeared back into the ocean, taking all of my worries with them.

  When I heard the Worthings walking towards where I stood at the ship’s railing, Mrs. Worthing hysterical about one thing or another, I was hardly able to even muster the energy to turn around and see what she was going on about. But I did, and I was met with wide, tear-stained cheeks and words too garbled with tears for me to understand.

  “What has happened?” I asked, looking from a sobbing Mrs. Worthing to a stiff, stoic Mr. Worthing.

  Mr. Worthing opened his mouth to talk, but Mrs. Worthing held him off with a wave of her hand still gripping a soaked handkerchief. She wanted to deliver the news herself. She tried again, but I was left open-mouthed and more confused than concerned.

  “Has the news reached you all yet?”

  Dr. Rushforth was walking towards our small group, his hand clutching the railing as if he were afraid he would fall overboard.

  “What news?” I asked.

  Dr. Rushforth leaned forward and whispered, forcing the Worthings and myself to lean forward conspiratorially. “I just spoke to the Captain and he informed me the woman who was murdered on deck last night was—”

  Not to be outdone, Mrs. Worthing broke into a sudden and rather loud sob, effectively interrupting Dr. Rushforth. Once all eyes were on her, she reached out and grabbed my shoulders, drawing me into her. “The Colonel was right. Ruby Stratton is dead.”

  4

  Suddenly, the wind on Deck A felt too cold, and I wished I’d grabbed the shawl I had packed in my steamer trunk. A shiver ran through me.

  “Exactly,” Dr. Rushforth said, agreeing with Mrs. Worthing’s rather blunt take on the situation and shaking his head from side to side. “It is truly horrible news, isn’t it?”

  “The Captain told you this, Dr. Rushforth?” I asked, head tilted in confusion. How had he gained access to such private information?

  He nodded, his features made even more pointed by the forced frown pulling the lower half of his face into a point. “I went to the bridge to see him once I heard the news in case I could be of any assistance. Of course, my expertise is in healing the living, and Mrs. Stratton had, unfortunately, been dead for some time.�
��

  “Did you see her body?” Mrs. Worthing asked, a handkerchief pressed to her nose.

  He shook his head and looked out over the water, a dark expression on his face.

  “How did she…die?” Mr. Worthing asked, the words coming out as if he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to speak them aloud. The situation was beyond the realm of normal day-to-day etiquette, but everyone seemed to universally understand that being too interested in the gruesome details of a murder was not exactly polite. Still, everyone leaned in a little closer in anticipation of Dr. Rushforth’s answer.

  “I did not ask,” said Dr. Rushforth. “Once the Captain told me I was not needed, I left immediately so he could oversee the investigation.”

  “Such a shame,” Mr. Worthing said. “The poor Colonel must be devastated. Has he been informed?”

  Dr. Rushforth pulled his mouth into a tight line. “You overestimate my familiarity with the situation, sir. I have no knowledge of the issue beyond the identity of the victim.”

  “Of course. Of course. Do excuse me. We are all rather out of sorts this morning. I am not myself without breakfast.” Mr. Worthing busied himself staring at his thumbs and tapping his foot.

  “I can’t believe this has happened on our second day at sea,” Mrs. Worthing said, making a tisk in the back of her throat. “It will certainly put a damper on the rest of the voyage.”