Finn sighed. He couldn’t dodge the divorce much longer. Yet ending his marriage to Rose felt wrong on every level. He loved her, and somewhere deep down, she must still love him, even though he had bungled terribly and mucked up their lives.
Unlocking his door, it caught on something as he pushed it open. As soon as he saw the official-looking envelope, he didn’t have to look inside to know what it contained.
“Damn,” he muttered and tossed it onto his washstand. Reed Malloy was a persistent man, but at that moment, Finn was too exhausted to care. There’d been no joy in his life recently — except Louis’ cooking — and far too little rest.
At that moment, he decided to skip the former and opt for the latter. Removing his boots, Finn sprawled across the bed, then rolled onto his back. A sigh escaped him, and he let his eyes drift closed, intending to relax merely a few minutes before getting some dinner.
In his dream, Rose stole into his room, unable to stay away, and he held her and told her how much he loved her. Finn was not surprised to feel a hand shake him into wakefulness. However the eyes peering out of a face masked by a kerchief and staring down at him were definitely not his lovely wife’s.
What’s more, he didn’t feel Rose’s perfect lips pressed against his temple but rather the cold, blunt steel end of a gun. Was this the end?
“I could blow out your brains before you even wake up,” grated the intruder’s voice.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Not the honeyed words Finn was hoping for.
“You could. Rather loud though,” he pointed out. “There are probably a lot of people in the dining room, not to mention the staff.”
“I’m not afraid of a few cooks,” the man muttered, holding up his free hand — large and calloused — and demonstrating how well he could make a fist. Clearly, he worked a tough job for a living. Judging by the size of him, maybe a stevedore.
“Besides you’re talking fimble-famble. The restaurant’s empty,” the brute told him. “It’s the middle of the bloody night.”
Then Finn had best get himself out of this mess. “Who sent you?”
The man might have smiled. Finn couldn’t tell in the darkened room.
“Not important” he said. “Here’s the message — too many people know you’re alive. You’ve done a lousy job of hiding.”
“If you kill me, each and every one of those people will know I’ve been murdered, and some of them may even give a fig. You can’t kill everyone who knows about me.”
“True, and the boss knows that. You’ve taken a job instead of leaving. Boss knows that, too.”
So clearly, this man’s boss wasn’t Gilbert, who had given Finn the job.
“You can’t kill me, and you can’t starve me out since I’ve found work. And I have no family here for you to threaten.”
This time Finn was fairly certain the man smiled.
“No family, mate, but there is your pretty Rose.”
Finn kept his tone placid. “Not mine anymore. That’s old news.”
He started to sit up, and the man put his beefy paw onto Finn’s chest.
“Here now, what are you up to?” the brute asked.
“Let me prove that Rose is nothing to me anymore. I’ve got divorce papers.”
He shoved the man’s hand aside and sat up. Reaching for the envelope, he tore it open and found Reed’s note about taking the signed documents straight to his office. He put that aside and showed the intruder the first page.
“Right there, ‘Rose Malloy versus Phineas Bennet in a suit for divorce.’”
Over his handkerchief mask, the man’s eyes scanned the document while his bushy eyebrows drew together. So long did he peruse the page, Finn began to believe the goon couldn’t read and was only looking for some word he knew.
Helping him out, Finn pointed to the word Rose and said, “That’s all legal, do you see?”
After another moment, the man agreed. “Looks to be, yes. So?”
“So your boss can stop threatening her because she’s nothing to me, nor I to her. At the risk of getting my brains blown, as you say, I’m telling you that I won’t investigate anything more about the Garrard or anything to do with her sinking. I’m simply working at the shipyard, and that’s it.”
“Boss don’t want me to kill you tonight or give you a bash on the smeller. Looks like you’ve already had that done to you anyway.” The intruder gestured with the end of the pistol to Finn’s still cur and bruised face.
“Nah, he wants me to fix it so you can’t work,” he finished.
Finn’s heartbeat, already racing from being awakened by a thug, sped up further, and his skin felt clammy. He wasn’t about to let some faceless coward who sent goons out to do his dirty work take anything more from him.
As the gunman shifted his weapon toward Finn’s knee, Finn erupted into movement.
Shoving the larger man with all his strength, Finn had the benefit of surprise even as they both hit the floor in a tangle. Straddling the intruder’s expansive chest, Finn thrashed out at his head with his fists, over and over, until the man’s arms went slack and his head lolled to the side.
Grabbing for the gun as he arose, Finn stepped away from the prone figure, his bum leg aching from the tussle on the floor.
Christ! He just wanted to get back the girl he loved and then design a few goddamn ships. Was that too much to ask?
Dressing quickly, he slipped the gun into his coat pocket. He wasn’t about to try anything stupidly heroic. He headed straight for the police department and convinced a detective and a sergeant to return with him to his room.
Gingerly, the detective pushed the door open while Finn peered past him.
“Fuck!” he swore. The man was gone.
***
“Mama, you are not going to change your plans to marry Mr. Nickerson. Do you hear me? You are not.”
Rose had returned from class to find Evelyn ringing her hands.
“I have decided that I can’t leave you. Not alone in this enormous house.”
“The house is quite reasonably sized, and I assume I will still have an allowance from Father’s will and can keep Emily and Jillian, though I may let Bridget go as two maids seems excessive.”
“Maids and cooks are not family,” her mother reminded her. “Besides Emily and Jillian go home at the end of the day. If you terminate Bridget, you will be all alone at night.”
“Then I won’t. Or I’ll think about it. I don’t have to decide at this moment. Why are you suddenly in such a state, Mama?”
Her mother sighed. “It was one thing to know you were moving out to live with your husband, and I with mine. It is another for me to be the one to move out and leave you here, a single girl.”
A widow, Rose nearly said, as that was how she had become used to thinking of herself for so very long. Before William. Ever since he’d left the States, she almost felt like one again.
“Not simply a single girl,” Rose pointed out. “A divorced woman.” Or nearly so, if Reed would get on with it. “As such, it is perfectly appropriate for me to stay here alone. What’s more, I love this house, Mama, and can think of nothing better than remaining in it and caring for it. I want to continue to dine where we have had so many lovely meals together and to sit in Father’s study, where I still sometimes think I can smell his aftershave.”
Her mother stared at her. Then she smiled. “Maybe it is I who is afraid to move on. I have lived here so very long.”
Setting down her shopping bag, Rose considered her mother a moment. “Do you love Mr. Nickerson?”
Her mother blushed prettily. “I do.”
“Then you must marry him and enjoy many years with him. His house is so lovely. All it lacks is your warmth.” She clapped her hands with enthusiasm. “Once you are there, it will feel like your home because you will make it so.”
Her mother looked unconvinced.
“Think of the gardens,” Rose added. “All yours to putter in.”
&nbs
p; “I do not putter,” her mother admonished, though a flash of keenness crossed her face. “Mr. Nickerson does have some fine planting beds, not to mention an Italian-crafted fountain.”
“Knowing how everything has turned out for me,” Rose confessed, “if I had the opportunity to start a new life with the man I love, I wouldn’t hesitate. And neither should you.”
Her mother crossed her arms and stared. “How did you become so grown up and so wise, my little flower?”
Rose simply smiled. She wished she hadn’t learned all her lessons the hard way. However, since she was staying put on Beacon Hill, she thought about her new plans for her old home.
“Mama, if I do wish to redecorate or change anything around, you won’t mind, will you?”
“No, of course not. You will be mistress of No. 7 Mount Vernon Street and you can do as you please.”
Rose nodded. It was actually more than a little thrilling — the notion that she was to become an entirely independent woman with no one to whom she would answer. Good grief, she could barely conceive of such freedom. She might redecorate the sitting room in a fashionably medieval style. Or with some Empire pieces that had recently come back into style. Perhaps even an exotic oriental style. Squinting, Rose let her gaze wander around the room and imagine it.
Hm, maybe she would just get a cat.
“I’m going to put on an apron and try out a recipe I learned today,” Rose told her mother, who had long since stopped appearing shocked that her well-bred daughter liked to work in the kitchen alongside their cook.
“I may have to send someone out if Emily doesn’t have everything I need, such as coriander.”
“Will we be having your creation for dinner?” Evelyn asked.
“I do hope so, if it comes out well.” Rose picked up her bag with its fresh fore-quarter of mutton, kissed her mother’s cheek, and hurried down the hallway to the kitchen.
It did come out well, and when Reed and Charlotte turned up unexpectedly later in the evening, they enjoyed a taste of Rose’s mutton curry.
Speaking freely since everyone in the room was well-aware of Rose’s marital status, Reed explained how he had been unable to contact Finn in days.
“Do you think he has found employment?” her brother asked her.
Rose shrugged. “I couldn’t possibly know. I doubt he’s at Kelly’s yard where he used to work, as he told me he was tossed out.”
“Strange,” Charlotte said. “Even though I was questioning the overseer about the Garrard, he didn’t mention being visited by one of her ghosts, back from the dead.”
Rose considered. “Finn said he only spoke with the owner.”
However, now her curiosity was piqued. What was Finn doing with his days? Reed was certain he was still in Boston, as asserted by Chef Louis. Moreover, Finn had mentioned he was at work on that terrible day she encountered William outside her husband’s room. She supposed she could move things forward and become a free woman if she spoke with him herself. Her previous compulsion to be near Finn had vanished. Apparently, her anger with him over hurting William had extinguished those feelings of excitement and wonder at seeing her dead husband among the living.
On the other hand, she could certainly stomach her indifference and insist he march himself over to her brother’s offices.
First, Rose had to find him.
***
Charlotte pointed out Walsh’s office as she walked onto the East Boston shipyard, this time in the company of her husband. After coming to an understanding that they would work together to help Rose, they decided to revisit Kelly’s. However, the office was locked.
Reed asked one of the yard’s only visible workers, hurrying past with a bucket of tar, where they might find the overseer.
“Mr. Walsh went on an unexpected holiday,” the man said. “That’s all I know,” he added as if expecting a follow-up question. “Grabbed his stuff and took off for parts unknown.”
“So you don’t know when he’ll be back?”
“No, sir.” The man set his bucket down. With old man Kelly never here no more, and now Walsh gone, I don’t know as how this place’ll continue.”
“I suppose we could go find Mr. Kelly at home,” Charlotte wondered.
“I hear he’s taken to his bed after some bad news. Took his health right from him.”
“Maybe Mr. Walsh has not left the area yet for his holiday,” Reed suggested. “Where does he reside?”
The man stared hard at Reed, and it occurred to Charlotte he was not meaning to look aggressive, but, rather, he was wearing his thoughtful expression.
“I can tell you that,” the man said, wiping a grimy hand under his nose, leaving a streak like a tar moustache. “Moved out of his walkup on Everett Street a few years back and bought hisself a fine house, on Bunker Hill. Quite the place, I hear Not sure I’d want to go away if I lived there.”
The back of Charlotte’s neck prickled. A few years back, perhaps four? Maybe Walsh came into quite a bit of money? Even though his name wasn’t officially on the ship’s insurance policy.
“That must have made Mrs. Walsh quite happy,” she said. What’s more, if Walsh went away without his wife, perhaps she would receive them in her home and be forthcoming on their good fortune.
The man let loose a short laugh. “I doubt that, as our overseer’s never been married. There ain’t no Mrs. Walsh.”
With that, and a quick tug on the front of his cap, he picked up the bucket and strode away.
Charlotte felt her stomach drop, an unpleasant sensation that often assailed her when she at last understood something. Particularly if that something was abject evil.
Obviously, Walsh was a consummate liar. Moreover, he had known how unstable the ship was and had let young men go to their deaths needlessly. She would bet her last laying chicken that he’d been paid handsomely from the insurance money, a generous cut paid either by Dilbey, the ship’s owner, or by Liam Berne.
“I know that look. What are you thinking?” Reed asked her.
She told him about Walsh’s wedding excuse for not going on the Garrard.
Reed took her arm in his, and they turned toward their carriage.
“I suppose Berne was put on that policy and yanked off the boat not so much because he’s a ruthless blackmailer or even smart enough to cook up insurance fraud, but because he was duped into being the patsy should anyone ever start asking questions.”
“Most likely,” Charlotte agreed.
“And when do you think the overseer will return from his time away, dear wife?”
“Never,” she surmised.
“Most likely,” Reed echoed her words. “I think we should send the police over to Dilbey’s place before he disappears, too, if it’s not already too late.”
“What of Mr. Kelly?” she asked.
“I don’t think he had anything to do with it. He was making good money every year until the disaster, and he wouldn’t have risked his yard’s reputation on a one-time payoff.”
“Agreed,” she said. “What of Mr. Gilbert?”
Reed shook his head. “I’m not sure. What do you think?”
“He had to have known that the boat was poorly designed unless he was utterly incompetent. What’s more, a yard overseer couldn’t order the likes of Finn Bennet to build a ship incorrectly. Gilbert had to be party to this terrible scheme. Tantamount to murder, isn’t it?”
“I believe a judge and jury will see it that way, yes.”
“For all three of them?” she asked.
Reed nodded. “Maybe four. Perhaps we can get Berne to tell us more if he understands it will save him from being held accountable.”
“Good idea.” Charlotte climbed into their carriage. “Should we try speaking to Mr. Gilbert at the Navy yard?”
“Yes. With a goodly sized police presence,” Reed suggested.
***
Waving slightly at Chef Louis in his white uniform, busy at his stove, Rose went up to Finn’s room.
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bsp; The door was ajar. Inside, the chamber looked nothing as it had when she’d been there last. Instead of tidy and shipshape, as Finn called it, his things were strewn about as if someone had been looking for something. The chair she’d sat upon had been tipped over, and even his mattress was askew.
Not knowing what else to do and hoping Finn would return while she was there, she set to righting the place. She began by putting his clothing back in his chest of drawers and that was when she found the locket.
With a gasp, she retrieved it from the back of the top drawer, pulling the familiar chain out with a trembling hand. She didn’t have to open it. She knew what was inside, a lock of her own hair that she’d given him along with the locket and gold chain on their wedding day — a memento and hopefully a talisman to keep her husband safe. She recalled years earlier how bitterly she had cursed the abysmal job it had done of bringing Finn back to her after the ship went down, and then she’d thought of it no more.
Apparently, he’d kept it around his neck, and it had survived the shipwreck and his rescue and his years in the British Isles. Then apparently, when back in Boston, he’d removed it.
The fact that the gold, shining in her palm, was still in his ransacked room meant that this had not been a robbery, or at least not a very thorough one. Someone had been looking for something specific or perhaps merely intended to scare him.
When she had thoroughly straightened up the room to her satisfaction, she adjusted her hat and put on her gloves, and went downstairs.
“Chef Ober,” she said, wishing she didn’t have to disturb him while he was working.
“Oui, mademoiselle?” He didn’t turn.
“I apologize for interrupting you, but can you tell me where I might find Mr. Bennet?”
She saw the man pause in stirring his sauce and then he resumed a gentle motion with the spoon.
“Your brother asked me the same thing the other day. As did another man. Everyone wants Phineas. All for different reasons, I suspect.” He looked up from the pan. “Why do you want to find him?”
Rose felt her cheeks grow warm. Why did she want to find him? She certainly didn’t owe this man an explanation. Walking closer, she glanced at the sunny yellow sauce with flashes of rich orangey-red.
An Inconceivable Deception Page 29