Murder on the Titania and Other Steam-Powered Adventures

by Alex Acks

  Marta unfolded the wills and looked them over first but found nothing amiss with either; both were done by a typewriter, the only handwritten portions the signatures. Miss Nimowitz’s signature wasn’t significantly different between the two, but the handwriting was quite wobbly. She turned her attention to the Compendium and its three different sets of handwriting. She easily recognized the hand of the shaky notes peppered throughout as Clementine’s. Some of the comments, while difficult to read, were quite insightful. Others had been scratched out and replaced by one set of the neater handwriting, which offered coherent commentary where there had been only confusion before. The second of the neat hands was a mystery, its notes never corrected, but always quite intelligent.

  Marta followed the notes all the way to the end and discovered a slip of folded paper glued to the inside cover of the book. “Hm.” She unhooked one of the folds and shook out a slim key, obviously mass-produced and milled on a standard sort of machine. She encountered keys like it all the time, and they could go to any number of locks. None of the locks she’d encountered in Miss Nimowitz’s house had been for this sort of key, however.

  Curious, that.

  Out of idle habit, Marta retrieved a thin square mold she kept as part of her regular kit and made an impression of the key. She set the key down on the desktop and began another go through of the Compendium, searching for any hint of the key’s origin or intended purpose.

  In the middle of her third go through, as she’d begun to recopy some of the notes in their varied handwritings to see if there were similarities in wording, a breath of air stirred one of the pages.

  That was her only warning as a black-booted foot, at the end of a leg concealed in flowing black trousers, swung in from the side at her head.

  Marta shoved away from the desk, tipping the chair over and continuing to roll backwards. A person covered head to toe in black, eyes cunningly obscured with a thin piece of black gauze, paused to sweep an arm across the desk, swooping up one of the wills.

  Marta regained her feet and lunged at her attacker, going for a double-fisted attack. Always more of a brawler when it came to fisticuffs, she wasn’t quite prepared for the lightning fast block and counterattack. A hand straight as a knife blade slammed into her ribs. Marta gasped, but bulled forward, using the natural momentum to slam her elbow into her attacked arm, and then drive her other fist into his—her?—solar plexus.

  The attacker made another clean, graceful block, hand snapping sideways and up. Marta tried to block the blow and only succeeded in bouncing it a bit higher so it hit her in the nose instead of the throat. While that might have been a good thing for her vital state, the stunning, cracking pain didn’t help her efforts at fighting. Blood poured from her nose.

  Marta gasped and retaliated, this time more carefully keeping her fists up. She exchanged a series of blows with her assailant, catching him a decent blow across the chin. The black-clad figure reeled to the side, half-landing on the discarded chair. Marta hurried to press her advantage, only to be caught as her attacker snatched up the chair and smashed it into her side.

  Momentarily stunned, Marta stumbled back to catch herself on the bedpost, only a firm grip saving her from a fall. The attacker took a quick glance around the room and snatched up the satchel, all but forgotten under the desk. Marta grabbed the item closest at hand—a cheap and ugly vase, what passed for decoration at this hotel—and flung it toward him, her hand steady despite the hits she’d taken. In a lightning fast movement, the attacker kicked the vase back at her—that felt somehow very unfair—and then dove out the window as Marta dodged her own projectile.

  Marta flung herself at the window, sticking her head out just in time to see the feet of her attacker yank out of view, accompanied by the whining hiss of gears rapidly reeling up a rope. She grinned with blood-painted lips and jumped through the window and sprinted up the rickety fire escape.

  The roof was deserted by the time she made it up and cast around. All of the nearby buildings were close enough that any could have been an escape route. Marta took another good look around, considering this new wrinkle. She was quite good when it came to fighting, thus it had been a while since she’d been that thoroughly put on the ropes. However, reviewing what had happened, much of it had been because of the factor of surprise, of being faced with an utterly foreign style.

  Also interesting was the fact that the person she’d faced had been a bit shorter than her own natural height. Which was right about the size for Deliah—or Morris. Though she couldn’t help but recall the lithe movement of Deliah’s hand as she drew her fan as if it were a blade rather than a bit of decoration. That, versus Morris’s apparently legendary temper.

  “This just got a bit more interesting,” she murmured to herself as she climbed back to her room. Only then did she note that the person had taken the key as well as one of the sheaves of paper. Even more interesting was which will had been taken: the more recent one, naming Morris as the sole heir.

  Once he was out of the hotel, Simms decided to make his walk a long one. The night air was pleasantly cool, and the parks in this section of the city were quite well maintained. It was nice to, for once, be able to take a stroll on a level path and without having to carry a machete as a precaution besides. The streetlights had come on and the streets were beginning to surge with people headed to supper appointments as he finally turned back toward the hotel, Chippy still eagerly bouncing ahead of him.

  “Mister Smythe, a moment if you please?”

  Simms managed to keep from jumping, but it was a near thing. Firmly reminding himself that he was Mister Smythe and there was absolutely nothing at all amiss in his lovely world of tea parties, he turned to face the source of that request—Morris Nimowitz. “Ah, Mister Nimowitz. It is jolly good to see you, if a bit…unexpected.” Simms cast a quick glance at Chippy, hoping for a growl or some canine indication of yes him, he’s the one wot did it, but the dog’s attention seemed wholly fixed on nosing a patch of verge.

  Morris waved a hand. Whatever coat he’d worn tonight, the yellow light of the streetlamps rendered it a rather sinister black, his face above it shadowy. “I come by here often, just for a bit of time to myself.” Sweat glittered on his brow; if he’d been walking, he must have been doing so at a furious pace.

  Simms would have had to be blind to miss that several of the man’s knuckles were split. “Been in a spot of bother?” he asked, nodding.

  “What? Oh.” Morris shook his head. “I… had a small fit of temper this afternoon, I’m ashamed to admit. I thought it best to burn it off athletically.” He fell into brooding silence.

  “Did—”

  At which point, Morris burst out with, “It’s that impossible harridan, Deliah. She always does try to twist my buttons.”

  Simms blinked owlishly, but decided to take a tack that had proven successful in the past. “Well, women tend to be like that.”

  “She’s no woman. She’s a jackal that’s been trained to walk on its hind legs.”

  “I say, Morris…”

  Morris shook his head. “I’m sorry. We barely know each other, and I’m dragging you into the family muck. But your wife seems quite taken with her, and I’d worry about that, were I you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Unnatural ideas,” Morris said. “They’re like a disease, and the weaker sex does tend to fall prey to them.”

  “Ah…” Simms nodded, hoping he looked suitably wise as he did so. “Does that mean your Grandaunt…?”

  “She was always a bit funny, I’ll admit. Had some odd ideas, but everyone’s got one of those in the family. You just do your best to ignore them at Christmas. But when, well… I took a bit of a beating on some investments, she was willing to help us out with a bit of cash.”

  Recalling what the Captain had said about the state of Morris’s dress and his house, Simms was forced to wonder if he was still making these bad investments. Or if “bad investments” was wealthy twit speak for “comp
ulsive gambling.” “Oh?”

  “And then Deliah showed up from one of those extended trips of hers and put some sort of poison in Grandaunt’s ear. Oh, she was still friendly enough, but then she turned tight with her money.” Morris snorted. “She said she wanted to set up a scholarship fund for girls, or some sort of greenhouse, or… Well, it changed all the time. But it always had something to do with plants, the woman could never leave the sodding things alone. And she’d do it all through Deliah, you see, with her guidance. Grandaunt said she couldn’t keep the details straight in her own head any longer.”

  “Seems like a good cause.”

  “Help the huddled masses and leave your own blood to be eaten alive by creditors?”

  That actually sounded just fine to Simms as well, but he firmly reminded himself that Mister Smythe had different priorities than Mister Simms. “Right. When you put it like that…ghastly.” At his feet, Chippy, who had been sniffing around, paused at Morris’s shoe and made an odd little noise.

  “She would have been far better off letting me invest her money, and she’d wanted to. But after Deliah showed up, she changed her mind so suddenly. I can’t imagine what sort of nonsense my cousin poured into her ear.”

  Simms nodded, hoping he’d managed to screw his face into something approximately sympathetic. “Ladies don’t seem to have a head for money, I’ll admit.”

  “Indeed. But oh no, it was Deliah, Deliah, Deliah…” Morris looked down, sniffing and frowning.

  Simms sniffed as well. There was suddenly a very particular and unpleasant sort of aroma in the air.

  Morris looked up, mouth snapping shut in a look of rage for a moment. “Mister Smythe, I say!”

  Simms looked down, just in time to see Chippy finish making a rather large, mushy, and redolent deposit on Morris’s shoe. So much for the dog not having an opinion of the man, he thought in near hysteria. Simms carefully cleared his throat, fighting to not smile. “Oh, I am sorry, Mister Nimowitz. I think the little chap must have eaten something naughty, to make a mess like that.”

  Morris took a hasty step back. Simms caught a slight glitter, perhaps the hint of something slithering within the mess. Hastily he patted his pocket and offered Morris his handkerchief, which the man stared at in horror. “Your dog,” Morris ground out, “ruined my shoe!”

  Simms stepped forward, carefully skirting the mess. His eyes watered from the smell, but that allowed him to hide the worst of it from view. “Frightfully sorry. You’ve no idea. Please, wipe it off as best you can and send the details of your size and the like to me at the hotel. I’ll buy you a new pair. I couldn’t possibly expect you to wear these again.”

  Morris seemed to calm at that suggestion, perhaps at the prospect of having a brand new pair of—no doubt expensive, and Simms wagered, with the price further inflated—shoes he didn’t have to buy for himself. He snatched the handkerchief from Simms’s hand. “Not after the leather has been so…so traumatized.” Breathing pointedly through his mouth rather than his nose, he bent to mop at his shoe, and then tried to hand the handkerchief back to a horrified Simms before discarding it on the ground. “Good evening, Mister Smythe.”

  Relieved, Simms nodded. “Good evening, Mister Nimowitz.” He resisted the urge to shoo the man away with his hands. Morris left quickly enough, walking awkwardly as if he was afraid to put any weight on the shoe.

  Simms looked down at Chippy, who gave him a canine grin, tongue lolling. “And you, Mister Chippy. I don’t know if I ought to give you more of that jerky or set your bum on fire. How you produced something that massive, I can’t imagine. Not to mention the stench.” He carefully poked the discarded handkerchief over the worst of the mess with a bit of a stick from nearby. No, a stick was not going to cut it. Off they went in search of the nearest groundskeeping shed. Simms liberated a bucket and trowel, and returned to the site to dig for gold.

  Simms had the bucket in one hand, another handkerchief covering its top in an ineffectual effort to hold in the smell. Chippy trotted happily alongside, looking disturbingly pleased with himself. Then again, Simms supposed, it was as if a great weight had left—or ejected—from the little animal. The lobby of the hotel was mercifully empty, though the clerk at the front desk jerked his head up in Simms’s wake, one hand covering his nose. He made it to the elevator before the man called for his attention, the words cut off by the doors closing.

  As he held his breath for the next four floors, he was forced to wonder if this was perhaps not the wisest decision he could have made. Perhaps the stairs next time.

  Oh, heaven forbid there’d be a next time.

  Simms opened the door to the hotel room and paused, bucket and stench momentarily forgotten as he took in the overturned chair, the shattered vase, and Captain Ramos, a bloody handkerchief clutched to her nose, sitting in the middle of it all.

  She turned toward him, grinning around the limp crimson cloth. “Ah, Simms,” she said. “I hope you had an interesting walk.”

  “Not by your standards, I’d guess.” He held out the bucket toward her. Her eyebrows went up, presumably as the stink penetrated even her thoroughly abused nose. “But I got you some jewelry,” he said, deadpan. “Though I’m afraid you’ll have to take it as-is.”

  Marta ventured out to hide the jewelry in one of their drop boxes before any other discussion was had, taking the most twisting and circuitous route she could find. Remembering her attacker’s frantic snatch for the satchel, she had little doubt the missing jewelry had been the aim as the most valuable things that she and Simms had liberated.

  A thoughtful Simms greeted her upon her return. He’d at least swept all the debris out of the way and cleaned the blood from the floor before returning to his newspaper. Chippy lay sprawled across his lap, snoring gently. “Didn’t get to tell you before you ran off, but I saw Morris just now,” he said over the top of his paper.

  Marta paused. “Is that so?”

  “Yeah. He was a bit out of breath when we started talking, too.” Another glance. “Coincidence, that.”

  Marta picked up the Compendium and retreated to her own bed to sit. “Sometimes a coincidence is just that.”

  “Also had some freshly split knuckles.”

  She grimaced, lightly touching her nose with one finger. It was going to take a lot of makeup to conceal the worst of the damage. “I’ll admit, Simms, the prospect of having had my nose broken by Morris Nimowitz is not one I relish.”

  “The man is a twit.”

  “For now, while we still have two operating hypotheses, let us leave it be.”

  Simms grinned evilly at her. “You’re the boss. Oh, and two telegrams came. I tucked them into the book.”

  She hurried to open the little volume, only to have Simms say, “She wrote it, apparently.”

  “Wrote what?”

  “The first telegram says that Clementine Nimowitz is George L. F. Kensington. Or rather he was her beard, I suppose.”

  “Ah.” That, she had expected; it wasn’t exactly uncommon for a woman to publish under a man’s name in such circumstances. And that added some sense to the notes, to be certain; they were the changes to be made for the next edition of the book, presumably. Which would—

  “And the second says that the pages for the third edition were turned in last week.”

  —which would then make it the final project completed by Clementine Nimowitz before her death. “Oh my…” Marta breathed, ideas swirling through her mind as she connected this idea, of one last scholarly work completed, to the handwriting, the odd throw-away statements that had been made about Clementine. And why would a dedicated horticulturist be in a house without plants? Might she have given them all away first, wanting to see them well-looked-after? It added up to an interesting but still incomplete picture, the solid beginnings of why, ready to branch out into how and why now.

  “Hm?”

  “You said Miss Nimowitz’s maid was at Saint Joseph’s, correct?”

  “Yes, but the
y said she was unconscious last they heard.”

  “It’d be helpful if she was awake, but not necessary.” Marta shut the book. “We’ll be at the hospital as soon as the doors open for visiting hours.”

  “Fine with me. Means I get to sleep in for once.” Simms stretched out his arms. “Dolly does like to get me up early.”

  It was Marta’s turn to grin evilly. “Little Mister Chippy may have something to say about that.”

  And indeed he did, twice during the night. But it was Marta who took him out for both walks. She had no idea how Dolly managed to wake her father as he claimed, considering he snored cheerfully on through whining and yelping and scratching at the door. She’d heard him once described as sleeping like the dead, though she’d never known a corpse to be so noisy.

  When Simms finally did deign to crack an eyelid open, they had a strangely leisurely breakfast, coffee and soft-boiled eggs and shockingly nice steaks, to which Marta added a bowl of chili, much to Simms’s dismay. Leisurely or no, she dragged them promptly from the hotel in time to catch the trolley that would take them to St. Joseph’s. Chippy spent most of the journey in Simms’s arms, cheerfully covering his brown jacket with fine white hair and panting hotly against his ear.

  The matron for the third floor took them to see Elizabeth Strickland with a murmured, “So good of you to visit. Poor lamb, I think she can hear you even now.”

  That answered all Marta could have asked about the woman’s condition—still unhelpfully unconscious. And she did look a mess when they were shown into her section of the room, divided off by a series of curtains. Elizabeth Strickland had probably been a woman made pretty by animation; still and pale, she became wholly unremarkable, wisps of brown hair poking from under the bandages swaddling her head. Marta sincerely doubted the poor lady would ever hear anything again.

  Simms doffed his hat, looking down at her. Chippy squirmed out of his hiding place in Simms’s coat and refused to hold still until set on the bed. There he snuffled at her fingers, nosing them disconsolately. “I’m sorry, little man,” Simms said, his voice gone rather hoarse. “I don’t think she’ll be waking up.”