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Set For Murder (Showbiz Is Murder Book 1)

Page 8

by Jolie Beaumont


  “But yes. I saw the Watson woman go to the little cubbyhole where the steward sits. I do not envy that one.”

  Ah, so that it explained it. Miss Watson might have been blocking the entrance to the pantry, which was narrow, while she asked for the extra pillow.

  “Anyone else?” asked Travers, ignoring the reference to Mabel Watson and her employer.

  “Lady Lambton-Keene passed me in the corridor and gave me a look.”

  “Does she often do that?”

  “That one does not approve of the lipstick.”

  Travers looked at the Frenchwoman’s red-stained mouth. Obviously Marianne had no such prejudices.

  “And you say you remained in your cabin the entire evening? Did you not get bored, or want to get a breath of fresh air?”

  Marianne shrugged again. “I read my novels. The steward brought me a tray with my dinner. When I was sleepy, I went to bed.”

  “You didn’t return to your mistress’s cabin, to see if she needed anything before she retired for the night?”

  “I have said before. My orders were to never disturb Madame, unless she called for me. Not while we were on the ship.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “No.”

  “Did you not think it strange?”

  “It is not my place to think.”

  “Perhaps she expected a late-night visitor?”

  Marianne shifted her attention to the nails on her left hand, ignoring the question. Servants, like clergymen and lawyers, usually had a right to keep silent. That right could be denied in a murder investigation, but Travers didn’t press the point. The maid had already suggested that her mistress was on the prowl, something that the duchess’s drunken behavior of that first night at sea seemed to confirm.

  “If your orders were to never disturb your mistress, why did you go to her cabin at six, even though she had not summoned you?”

  Marianne made a gesture of deeply-felt exasperation. “Because of the dressmaker, the Roberto person. He wanted to speak to Madame about one of his gowns. She did not answer when he telephoned, so he told me to knock on her cabin door and return the dress he had been repairing. Or so he said. Me, I did not see that the dress looked any different.” She gave a careless pat to her perfectly arranged curls, suggesting that the conversation of dressmakers—even one of Roberto’s international stature—was beneath her notice.

  “Did the duchess open the door for you?”

  “She had given me a special signal to use, if she did not answer at once. Knock twice. Wait. Knock once. Wait. Knock twice. Like so.”

  Marianne demonstrated the signal.

  “Was the duchess alone when she opened the door?”

  “How would I know? She did not allow me inside.”

  “How was she dressed?”

  Finally, a show of interest appeared in the young woman’s eyes. “She was wearing a negligee, very chic. The ivory one with the lace about the bodice and wrists and the small buttons like so.”

  Marianne demonstrated buttoning about a dozen small buttons that began at the bottom of a plunging neckline and ended at the hips. Travers had no trouble imagining the negligee. The duchess had been wearing it when she died.

  “What exactly did your mistress say to you?”

  “I have already said.”

  “You can say it again.”

  Marianne stared at the Scotland Yard inspector with undisguised dislike. But even stronger than her general dislike of policemen was her aversion to remaining in the presence of one longer than necessary. She therefore said, without further argument, “It was like so. I said, ‘Pardon, Madame. Monsieur Roberto wishes to speak with you, about the lavender dress.’

  “ ‘Tell him I’ve changed my mind. I won’t be wearing it. I won’t be going to dinner.’

  “ ‘Does Madame wish me to—’

  “ ‘Madame wishes you would go to hell.’

  “ ‘As you wish, Madame,’ I said. I gave her the dress. She closed the door and I returned to my cabin, as I have already told you. A million times.”

  “Only three times, by my count,” said Inspector Travers. “I have just one more question and then you can go.” He observed the muscles in Marianne’s face begin to relax. “Was the Duchess of Tarrington wearing her pearls when she came to the door?”

  The transformation was astounding, as the young Frenchwoman jumped up from her chair with flashing eyes and pointed fingers poised to claw. “So, it is like that? You accuse me of taking Madame’s pearls? You policemen are all alike. But I know what Monsieur le Duc told Madame before the trip, that he might have to sell the pearls because there is no money. That he wished they might be stolen so he could collect the insurance money. If the pearls are missing and you try to accuse me, I talk to the newspapermen. I know how to make the scandal. Madame is not the only one.”

  Inspector Travers made no attempt to stop the flow of words. He had no idea how much, if any of it, was true, but it would be worth following up. The fact that the duke might have been planning to cheat his insurance company by faking the theft of the pearls, while Travers was on the ship keeping an eye on them, was enough to raise the inspector’s hackles. He didn’t like being made a fool of.

  When the maid finally ran out of steam, Travers posed his question a second time.

  “Madame wore no jewelry,” said Marianne. “With such lace there is no need for more ornaments.”

  And, having given her final word about negligee fashion, Marianne flounced out of the room.

  “A pretty story, if it’s true,” said Jeffrey Baird, who had been sitting in his usual seat off to the side, where he had been taking notes of the conversation.

  “We might find out, once those wires I’ve requested come in.”

  “Shall I go check?”

  “No.” Travers perused his passenger list for Corridor B.

  “I suppose you don’t want me to see what is in the wire from the Foreign Office about me.”

  “No, I don’t,” replied Travers. He then added, as a conciliatory gesture, “I think we can cross those two American dancers off the list. If we assume the murder was committed sometime between eight and eleven, they were either in the dining room having their dinner or performing in the ballroom.”

  “What about that half-hour or so in between dinner and the performance?” Baird had decided not to become ruffled by the inspector’s lingering suspicions. His own work for the Foreign Office was of a nature that he had to be suspicious of the loyalties of colleagues too.

  “They were rehearsing. An entire orchestra saw them.”

  “Beware of the watertight alibi, Inspector.” Jeffrey Baird grinned and shook a finger at his temporary superior.

  Travers appreciated the remark and grinned back. “And Sir William and Mrs. Hardwick were playing bridge in the card room until about one o’clock. A very tired steward can vouch for them.”

  “Unless we can pin this thing on Bert Ayres or Roberto, things are looking bleak for me.”

  “Yes, they are,” Travers replied, cheerfully.

  As it turned out, Travers needn’t have been wary of Baird. The wire from the Foreign Office confirmed that the grandson of Lord Croftsbury—who had been one of the crustiest generals defending the empire of Queen Victoria in an age when unflinching strict discipline was the norm—was one of their own, called back to England for a short vacation to be followed by a new assignment. Several of the other wires also confirmed that the passengers were on the level. Nick and Penny Garnett were Broadway stars about to appear in London’s West End. Cora Hardwick was a member of Philadelphia’s high society; she had been born into it, married within it, and most likely intended to leave it only when she died.

  Cecil Arden was a somewhat well-known figure in London society. In addition to being a nephew of the previous Duke of Tarrington, he hosted a popular literary show on the BBC. He had gotten into a few scrapes as a young man—car smashups, some black-marketeering of rationed supplies during
the Great War, and that sort of thing. But with the approach of middle age he seemed to have faded into a blameless, if rather aimless, life.

  The Lambton-Keene report also held no surprises. Sir William’s bank had been hit hard by the Depression, but so far it was managing to stay afloat. Frederick’s contribution to scholarly life at Oxford seemed to have been minimal, but he was a good cricketeer, which in his circle probably meant more than being able to intelligently discuss the poetry of Donne or Milton. Lady Lambton-Keene, known to her family and friends as Bunny—not because she resembled a cuddly rabbit, but because she had won the county Sally Lunn buns eating contest during a charity fete when she was thirteen—was that rarity in public life, someone who did what she liked and said what she liked and yet didn’t have an enemy in the world.

  The report about the Duke of Tarrington was strictly standard issue. If the duke was experiencing financial trouble, it hadn’t reached the stage where it was publicly known—or gossiped about.

  Lady Margaret seemed to be one of those unfortunate souls doomed to be despised, no matter what she said or did; in fact, the very opposite of Lady Lambton-Keene. Before taking up the plight of the proletariat, the young woman had advocated for the rights of animals; in particular, she had tried to get fox hunting banned—a move that had done nothing to endear her to her peers. She had also tried to get musical motion pictures banned, on the grounds that the films, with their scantily clothed actresses, were degrading to women. For that she had been ridiculed mercilessly in the lower sort of newspaper and scandal sheet. By the time she turned socialist, she was more of a liability to the cause than sought-after champion. But the organizers were willing to take her money and let her join in their protests, and the government didn’t consider her to be any real threat to the prevailing world order, a fact that probably rankled more than the kidding she received in the press.

  Her husband, Peter Carroll, was more interesting, at least from the standpoint of Inspector Travers. The American’s origins were obscure: the teeming masses of New York City. What he was doing in London when he met Lady Margaret was also obscure. “Adventurer is his most probable occupation,” wrote the government official who had filled out the report, and Travers could see in his mind’s eye a thin-lipped, balding, bespectacled, and very British government clerk filled to the brim with middle-class indignation at this young American who had dared to leap over the class boundaries that the English held so dear.

  As for Travers, he wasn’t overly fond of professional bounders who preyed upon very wealthy and very susceptible young ladies just out of finishing school; since neither Lady Margaret nor Peter Carroll seemed to fit either of those descriptions, he had nothing against Carroll, just because the young man had married well. Yet he filed the young man’s name in that corner of his mind which he labeled, simply, I wonder.

  The one-paragraph report on Roberto was surprising. The dressmaker, who had been all the rage for the better part of a decade, was quietly buying up property in the better parts of London. There was nothing wrong with that, of course. It only meant the man was a more astute businessman than his hand-kissing public persona would suggest.

  Travers had not bothered to wire about Countess Scharwenka; he had gotten an up-to-date report before the ship sailed. The presence of jewel thieves, even ones who hadn’t committed a theft in several years, always made insurance companies nervous. “They’re like alcoholics,” the insurance head had commented, when he briefed Travers about the job. “They can resist temptation for years, even decades. And then one fine day something happens and they fall back into their old ways, as though they had never left them.”

  That left the wires for the three people he was most interested in: the duchess, Bert Ayres and the woman called Watson.

  The Duchess of Tarrington had been written about extensively in the newspapers before her marriage, and the new report included little that Travers didn’t already know. This was disappointing, because he suspected the deceased woman had at least a few secrets she had succeeded in carrying to the grave; whether or not he would discover them and they would prove to have a bearing on the case could only be assigned to his mental file marked Early Days.

  More to the point was the brief report about Bert Ayres. After the end of his vaudeville career the former song and dance man seemed to have drifted. He had worked for a few months for an airplane manufacturer, as he had mentioned to Travers, but that job had ended a year ago. What had he been doing since then? And how had he paid for this ocean voyage, if he had no income?

  Without a doubt, out of all the passengers on the ship, Bert Ayres was the most likely suspect. Whether the motive was love or money—the main reasons for a murder—a plausible case could be built up against the man. He even looked the part, with his too fleshy features going to seed. But this held true only if the murder was connected to Honey Holdendale’s past, when she was still Honey Lynde. If she had associated with unsavory characters in her new life as the Duchess of Tarrington, Bert Ayres might not figure in the story after all. Also in the man’s favor was that Ayres had remained in the ballroom during the performance—although he might have slipped out for a quarter of an hour or so. Travers would therefore need a second interview with Ayres, both to discover more about his financial situation and his movements on the night of the murder.

  Travers turned his attention to the few lines concerning Mabel Watson. Like Peter Carroll, she was a “teeming masses” story. She had been born in one of the poorer parts of New York City. Presumably, she had gone to school, gotten her first job, maybe even fallen in love once or twice. But the only thing on record after her birth seemed to be her application for a passport to come on this sea voyage to England. Ordinarily that wouldn’t be enough of a reason to cast suspicion upon her character. There were plenty of people who lived out their lives in quiet corners, undisturbed until their name appeared in the death notices. But murder wasn’t ordinary, and so he would need to fill in the blanks of Mabel Watson’s seemingly uninteresting life.

  Travers stuffed the wires into his coat pocket. He was on his way back to his office when he passed the music room and heard someone playing the piano. If it was Peter Carroll working on his symphony, Travers thought he might as well interview the composer now. But it was Nick Garnett who was seated at the piano and playing one of those popular songs that one suddenly heard all the time on the radio, until it was replaced by the next great thing. His sister Penny was sitting slumped in an armchair. A piece of paper was dangling from her hand, which Travers recognized as one of the ship’s telegrams.

  When Penny caught a glimpse of Travers standing in the doorway, she sat up and said, without preamble, “You’re wrong about Bert Ayres.”

  “Am I?”

  “He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “Then he’s a very rare individual. Most people are rather cruel when it comes to killing flies.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, and I hope you won’t be terribly offended, Miss Garnett, if I say that your opinion on the subject means nothing to me. Unless, that is, you can tell me everything about what Mr. Ayres has been up to since he and his former dance partner parted ways about a decade ago.”

  “Well, I don’t know everything.”

  “Face it, Penny, we only know what Bert told us on this ship,” said Nick. “And that wasn’t very much.”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “Our side.” Nick turned to the Scotland Yard inspector. “We got a telegram this morning from our producer, Fred Baker. Read it to him, Penny.”

  Penny read the telegram aloud, without enthusiasm: “Heard about Duchess. Stop. Scandal bad for box office. Stop. Stay out of newspapers. Stop. Hide in cargo if you must. Stop. Baker. Stop.”

  Travers took the telegram and read it over. “I see you’re not taking your producer’s advice,” he said, handing it back to Penny.

  “We most certainly are not going to hide,” replied Penny. “We’re going to
find the murderer—the real murderer.”

  “And what makes you so sure that person isn’t Bert Ayres?”

  “Bert told us he had no idea the Duchess of Tarrington was going to be on this ship, and we believe him. He also told us he didn’t kill the duchess, and we believe that too. If you knew Bert better, you’d agree with us and for a very simple reason. Bert never had a day’s luck in his life. When he was in show business, he was the kind of guy who got top billing in the morning and sprained his ankle in the afternoon, before he was supposed to go on. If he had tried to kill the duchess, there would have been a butter knife on that tray and not a steak knife. When he tried to leave the cabin, he would have tripped over a steward carrying a tray and sent the whole thing clattering. That’s the kind of guy he is. So if the murderer got away without being seen or heard, it couldn’t have been Bert who did it.”

  Inspector Travers smiled. “There’s something to what you’re saying, Miss Garnett, although a person can have a change in his luck, even if it’s just once in a lifetime. By the way, how did you know the duchess was killed with a steak knife?”

  “We overheard the stewards talking, when we were on our way back to our cabins. After we performed in the ballroom.” Penny glanced over at Nick.

  “That’s right,” Nick added, on cue. “There was a regular pow-wow going on in the pantry. I assume that by now everyone knows how the duchess was killed.”

  “And by any chance do you have a theory about who did kill her?”

  “We know we didn’t do it,” said Penny, moving to the piano, where she took a stance behind her brother.

  “There has been talk that you boasted of marrying a duke on this trip, Miss Garnett.” said Travers, quickly realizing that the two Americans didn’t understand his dry British humor.

  “Maybe I did,” said Penny, getting defensive. “But I never said I was going to bump off a duchess to do it. There must be plenty of eligible dukes in England. I was talking about marrying one of them, no matter what that Philadelphian Pickled Fury says.”

 

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