by Rhys Bowen
“That's the older man who was following me,” I whispered. The message was passed along the line to the inspector. A low conversation followed. The inspector nodded and glanced in my direction. He shook hands with the other man, who then followed other passengers through the door that led to freedom.
“Wait!” I blurted out the word and stood up behind my potted palm. I saw the inspector glance at me and frown. Hadn’t he said himself that it wasn’t just young single men who would be under suspicion? Then a chilling thought entered my head—he might not be taking this exercise as seriously as I was. It struck me that he might not be observing the people who passed him as much as watching my reactions to them. I might still be the suspect he was observing, or he might be on the hunt for my accomplice.
Then, as the next passengers were ushered in, a note was passed to me.
“The man you identified is an inspector from Scotland Yard, apparently on the trail of a jewel thief. He will now be helping me with my inquiries.”
So there was a jewel thief on board the boat! No wonder robbery was the first motive that Inspector Harris had come up with. And the only person who could have told us if Miss Sheehan had any jewels on board was now lying under a sheet, murdered. I found myself feeling strangely relieved. If the crime had only been an offshoot of a robbery that went wrong, then I myself wasn’t in any danger. I could leave this ship and get on with my quest to find Tommy Burke's sister.
Twelve
As the tide of passengers passing us slowed to a trickle, Inspector Harris rose and came over to us.
“You are free to leave the ship, Miss Murphy. I don’t think
there's anything more you can do for us today.”
The thought did cross my mind to remind them that I was an investigator and maybe there was something more I could do to help. Then I decided that I was still a suspect and might easily have been the victim. Miss Sheehan had deliberately put me in harm's way, and if I were sensible, I’d escape while the going was good.
“So can I collect my belongings from Miss Sheehan's cabin now? It's only a few bits and pieces I have there, but a lady can’t be expected to travel without her toiletries, can she?”
He nodded without smiling. “Very well. I’ll send a constable up with you. And we’ll need an address to forward Miss Sheehan's stuff. Remember, you’re to stick around the area for the inquest.”
“When will that be, do you think? I can’t stay in Ireland indefinitely.”
“Within the next week, I’m sure. I haven’t yet got in touch with the coroner. We’ll let you know the details. I’ll be making the main Cork Police Station my headquarters until this matter is sorted out, so you’ll know where to find me.”
“Thank you.” I picked up the bag I had recovered from Rose's cabin, and went ashore wearing Miss Sheehan's smart, striped two-piece costume. After what she had put me through, I felt it was the very least she could do for me. It's wonderful what clothing can do for a person. No sooner had I stepped down the gangway than I was besieged by cab drivers, all wanting to give me a ride to the train station.
“Where's the rest of your luggage, my lady?” one of them asked, attempting to wrestle my small valise from me.
My lady? That was definitely a step up. I smiled graciously and said that it was being sent on to my hotel. Then I allowed him to lead me to a nearby two-seater cart. He helped me to climb up, and we joined the crush of vehicles attempting to leave the port. Once I was seated comfortably, I had a chance to become aware of my surroundings for the first time, and memories came rushing back to me: the tang of seaweed and fish in the air, the fishing nets drying on the quayside, the seagulls wheeling overhead, and from an open window the sound of a fiddle being played. I was quite unprepared for the flood of emotion these produced in me. I hadn’t thought much of Ireland since I fled almost two years ago. Frankly, I had been glad to get away from it. I hadn’t believed I could ever be homesick, but now I felt tears welling up in my eyes that I was home again and this was my land.
“What did you say?” I asked the driver, aware that he had been talking.
“I was saying it was a grand day to be coming home, my lady. They don’t make skies like that in America, I’ll be bound.”
I looked up at the white puffy clouds scudding across that clear, glass blue sky and agreed with him.
“You’ll be taking the train for Dublin, I don’t doubt,” he went on.
“No, I’m staying in Cork for a while,” I said. “I have business to attend to there.”
“Then why don’t I take you all the way myself,” he said. “Dolly is as willing and frisky as a colt, and I’ll charge you no more than that smelly old train.”
For the first time in ages I laughed. “Do you think I’ve been away from Ireland so long that I’ve forgotten what blarney sounds like?” I asked, and he laughed too. But it was a delightful autumn day, and I was in no hurry. What could be the harm in riding those five miles in the fresh air?
“Very well,” I said, “only let's agree on a price now.”
As it turned out I had been away from Ireland long enough to have forgotten several things, one of them being that the weather never stays constant for more than an hour or so. Dolly proved to be neither frisky nor that willing either and toiled slowly up the long hill out of Queen-stown. I enjoyed the view down to the harbor with the great liner dwarfing the freighters and fishing boats around it until troubling thoughts crept to the edge of my conscious mind, reminding me that a girl lay dead on that ship, and that her killer was still at large. If I had decided not to go to that ball...IfI had sent Rose away and been in the cabin alone, I might have been lying there instead of Rose. There had been other times when I would have wanted to help find her murderer, but I confess that this time I just wanted to get as far away in the least time possible. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat as the horse's head drooped and she went almost into a trance of slowness.
“You said she was as ‘frisky as a colt,’“ I reminded the driver. “I’d like to make Cork before the weather changes. I glanced up at the sky. A stiff breeze had sprung up from the west, sending those clouds scudding faster across the sky. Bigger and darker clouds raced in to take their place, and we were halfway there when the first raindrops spattered onto us.
“Do you have a hood to this contraption?” I asked.
The driver grinned as he shook his head. “A little bit of rain never hurt anybody,” he said. “Don’t you ladies always carry an umbrella?”
“My luggage is still on board the ship,” I reminded him, “and my umbrella with it.”
He did, however, produce an old blanket which I suspect had been used on the horse. I attempted to shield myself from the worst of the rain with it and eventually made him pull up at an inn so I could take shelter until the storm had passed. The gray drizzle persisted, and I arrived in Cork at last, feeling chilled and miserable.
“And where will you be staying?” he asked.
Having been dubbed “my lady,” my vanity took over and I didn’t want to diminish myself in his eyes by suggesting some clean and simple establishment. Besides, my expenses were being covered, weren’t they?
“I’ve never been in Cork before,” I said, “but I’m sure there are some fine hotels here.”
“I wouldn’t know one from the other myself,” he muttered, “not having stayed at a hotel in my entire life, but I’ll take you to St. Patrick's Street. The Victoria Hotel is about the best Cork has to offer, so I hear. It's the sort of place where the gentry hobnob.”
As we approached St. Patrick's Street, a wide and elegant boulevard with gracious stone buildings on either side, we were treated to another dose of cloudburst, so that I went up the steps of the Victoria Hotel looking less like “your ladyship” than I had hoped.
“Who would have thought the weather would have turned on us so quickly?” was the closest the clerk at the reception desk came to acknowledging that I looked like a drowned rat. I showed him my lette
rs of credit and was taken to a spacious room. I’d have been overwhelmed at the opulence of it had I not spent the last week in a first-class cabin and thus become used to such finery. All the same, it was very nice, and I admired the molded ceiling, the velvet drapes, and the regency-striped wallpaper while I waited for the enormous bathtub to fill with hot water in the white-tiled bathroom. If only I could invite my family to visit me here, I found myself thinking—showing, of course, what a shallow person I really was. Then I reminded myself that I could not contact my family. Nobody in county Mayo must know I was here or the warrant for my arrest might resurface. So far I had been lucky, and I had pushed my luck too many times recently. I was here to perform a simple task. I was going to do it and then go back to America and get on with my life.
Which made my thoughts turn to Daniel. He hadn’t entered my head for a day or so. Was that a bad sign? Surely young lovers pined for each other constantly, thought of nothing else, and sighed with deep longing for the moment when they could rush into each other's arms again. I suppose it was because my courtship with Daniel had taken so many strange turns that I had learned to shut him from my mind and not dare hope for a future together. I was still finding it hard to picture that future.
I sat at the writing desk and wrote him a quick note, informing him that I had landed safely and would be based here for the next few days.I didn’t mention Rose's murder or the strange circumstances on the ship. No need to inflict any more worries on him at this moment when he was clearly still in the deepest fear for his own future. I hesitated at signing it “love, Molly” and signed it just with my name instead. Then I repeated the same sentiments in a letter to Sid and Gus and finally a note to Inspector Harris, care of the Cork Police Station, letting him know where he could find me.
The rain had now stopped, so I ventured out to find the police station for myself. Cork was an elegant city with lots of fine buildings, but after New York it felt like a sleepy backwater. Not an automobile to be seen on those broad streets, no electric tram cars, just the occasional horse-drawn cart or carriage. The sidewalks were not crowded with New York's teeming crush of humanity, and it was so quiet that the seagull's cries and clip-clop of horse's hooves were the only sounds over the sigh of the ever-present wind. It was like being in a city that time had forgotten.
At the end of the street I came to a wide river, and I stood on a bridge savoring the feel of the fresh Irish air in my face. And a surge of excitement swept through me—I was back in my homeland, I had money in my pocket, and a straightforward task to fulfil. Free and independent—what more could I wish for?
Then, of course, I was reminded that life wasn’t as simple as I was making it out to be. I wondered how the police were getting on with solving Rose's murder. Had their search turned up any suspects? And more to the point, had Miss Sheehan telegraphed from New York to give some explanation for her strange behavior? I wondered if she felt guilty about what had happened to her servant. Maybe servants were as expendable to her as young lady detectives. Had she really tricked me into traveling in her place because she knew her life would be in danger? In which case, why not report her suspicions to the police? Why not hire a bodyguard to look after her? The more I thought about it, the less sense it made.
I turned away from the river and set off again at a brisk pace. I located the police station and handed in the note for Inspector Harris. The young policeman at the counter eyed me with obvious interest, asked me if I was new in town and where I might be staying. I was gratified to notice his expression change when I told him the Victoria Hotel.
After that I made my way back to the hotel in time for afternoon tea, which I ate among the potted palms to the sound of an orchestra composed entirely of elderly men. It was most civilized, to be sure. I was interrupted in the middle of a chocolate eclair to be told that my luggage had now arrived and had been taken up to my room. I went up to see, opened the door, and stopped short: my train case was on a side table and the entire floor was taken up with five huge trunks. Miss Shee-han, it seemed, did not believe in traveling light.
How on earth was I going to deal with that amount of luggage? I sincerely hoped she would arrange to have it collected right away, or I’d be forever clambering over a mountaineering course to reach my bed. I tried to drag one of the trunks into a corner, but it was too heavy for me to move alone. Two of them were locked and I possessed no keys. One was open. I rummaged through it but it contained only clothes. I supposed that those beaded capes and velvet evening dresses must weigh a ton. I stared at them, puzzled. If she had really not planned to travel in the first place, why pack what must have been a good portion of her clothing? Which brought me back to my first theory: she had spotted someone on board who represented danger to her and had decided to remove herself from harm's way.
I decided to go back to the police station and see if there was any news yet.coming down the steps of the hotel, I bumped into Inspector Harris, on his way to see me.
“I was coming to see you, Inspector,” I said. “Is there any news?”
He shook his head. “Nothing that I can tell you at the moment.”
“So that medical inspection didn’t turn up any suspects? No red hairs on garments or crumpled stewards’ uniforms stuffed into luggage?”
He shook his head with a smile. “I’m afraid not. We saw how nicely our man cleaned up after himself in your cabin. And no fingerprints. He's a careful, tidy sort of chap, by the look of it, and we’ll have a devil of a time catching him. But we’re not about to give up yet.” He glanced up at the imposing portico of the hotel. “I take it Mr. Burke is financing this fancy establishment,” he said.
“I do have traveling expenses,” I agreed, “although I can’t see how I pay for my hotels really has anything to do with you.”
I really hadn’t meant to be so rude, but I was tired and edgy and just a little scared too.
“Oh, but it could be of great interest to me,” he said. “A young girl obviously not born with a silver spoon in her mouth, no clear male protector. She has to come up with the money for a top-notch hotel somehow. And various suggestions come to mind.” He looked at me, cocking his head on one side in that strange gesture. “Now, if you were in league with that jewel thief, for example . . . or in league with the person who killed Rose, or had quietly done away with Miss Shee-han.... Shall I go on?”
“You can go on as long as you like,” I said. “I’m none of the above. I’ve told you who I am and what I am doing in Ireland. I’ve told you the truth about changing places with Miss Sheehan. If you don’t believe me, then you’ll just have to wait until Miss Sheehan verifies that switching cabins with her was entirely her idea.”
The ghost of a smile twitched on his lips. “We’ve just heard from Miss Sheehan,” he said.
“And?” I felt my heart flutter alarmingly. He's come to arrest me, was the thought that flashed through my mind.
“And she backs up your story. So sorry she had to disembark at the last minute. Even more sorry to hear about Rose. She’d like to come over for Rose's funeral, but unexpectedly has rehearsals starting for a new play.” He glanced up at me. “Convenient, don’t you think?”
“She didn’t venture any suggestions as to who had been threatening her or might have wanted to kill Rose?”
“If she had, she has kept them to herself so far. We’re asking the New York police for assistance.”
I felt a powerful emotion shoot through me: the New York police! On another occasion it might well have been my own Daniel Sullivan who could have been put in charge of the case. I almost opened my mouth to tell him I knew Captain Sullivan, and then, of course, I remembered that he was Captain Sullivan no longer but plain Mr. Sullivan, still under suspicion. What a lot of loose ends there seemed to be in my life at the moment.
Another thought struck me. “And her luggage?” I asked. “My hotelroom is full of her trunks. I won’t be keeping on at this hotel. I plan to go tramping all over the countryside, and I
certainly can’t take them with me.”
He fished into his pocket and produced a piece of paper. “This came for you separately,” he said.
It was a telegraph, addressed to me, care of the Cork police.
HAVE BAGS SENT SHELBOURNE HOTEL DUBLIN UNDER YOUR NAME. WILL ARRANGE TO HAVE COLLECTED. THANKS. EXTRA FEE. OS.
I looked up at the inspector. “She doesn’t express any regret at what happened to Rose or what I had to go through,” I said.
“You pay by the word for a telegraph,” the inspector said dryly.
“She wants me to send her trunks to Dublin,” I said.
“So I observed. Were you planning to go to Dublin yourself?”
“Hoping to. I’ll have to see where my search takes me. I was thinking of setting out tomorrow to start searching. I may be away overnight if I can’t find transportation. You’ll not need me before then, will you?”
He shook his head. “The inquest won’t be until the end of the week, I’m sure. It takes time to set up these things, arrange for an autopsy, and to find a court date. If you can tell us where you’re going?”
“I wish I knew. I’m looking for someone whose last known address was in a hamlet beyond Clonakilty, at the time of the Great Famine.”
“About thirty-five miles from here,” he said. “Wild country out there. You’ll take the Cork, Bandon and South Coast Railway. Change at Clonakilty Junction after Bandon. The branch line will take you into Clonakilty. Then I suspect you’re on your own.”
“I’m glad to hear there's a railway line,” I said. “I thought I might have to use my own two feet all the way.”
“We’re not that primitive in Southern Ireland, you know,” he said, smiling. “Did you know that fish delivered to those South Coast ports in the afternoon makes it to Billingsgate Fish Market in London next morning? That's what that railway was built for—carrying fish. No doubt you’ll get a good whiff of it.”