by Beth Byers
“It’s pretty small, Ro. Do you think we can actually intimidate anyone with it?”
“If they don’t know it’s not loaded, why not?”
They hid in the corridor in a smaller passageway until the train security officer knocked on Amy’s door. “Mr. and Mrs. Greenfield?”
Amy answered the door, her drunk facade securely reassumed. “Yes. How can we help you, officer?”
Hettie rolled her eyes and Ro did her best not to laugh.
“If you and your husband would please come with me. Officer Fishe and I need to speak with you.”
“Of course,” Amy slurred. “I believe we have information that will help you solve Cecil’s murder.”
Suddenly she didn’t sound drunk anymore and Ro wondered how many times she’d slip in and out of that particular mask during the interview.
“Please accompany me to the dining car,” he said, not giving any indication if he noticed how she slipped in and out of her act. Ro was fairly certain he’d noticed by the set in his shoulders. “They’re serving food again. Perhaps you’d like to eat while we discuss.”
“Excellent, I’m starving. Frederick. Let’s go.”
Ro looked on in disbelief that their luck had worked out and also that Amy, if she really had murdered Cecil, was capable of being so heartless after she’d killed a man. She suppressed a shiver and followed Hettie as soon as Frederick and Amy were out of their room. Ro stood lookout while Hettie went to work on the lock. Not to minimize Hettie’s skills, but she did seem to have a natural gift for burglary. However, when Hettie opened the door in less than two minutes, Ro felt less than secure in their compartment knowing there was a murderer on board and that the locks couldn’t keep an amateur criminal out.
Once in the room, they rummaged quickly through all the drawers and shelves looking for the papers Ro had seen earlier. There was no sign.
“Check the wastebasket to see if they’ve thrown them away or burned them,” Hettie said. “I’ll check the suitcases. She may have tucked them away for safekeeping.”
Ro checked all the wastebaskets and ashtrays. No sign.
“Found it!”
“Oh good. I don’t think we should linger much longer. Are you going to read them now or should we just take them?”
“Hmmm. If we take them, she’ll know they’ve gone missing, which will really send her into a panic.” Hettie’s grin was malicious.
“I like it,” Ro said instantly.
“It does sound like the perfect plan. Let her sweat a little. Plus, I don’t want to be in here when she returns. I cannot promise I’ll be able to stop myself from pulling her by the hair into a snowdrift.”
Ro folded the papers and stuck them into the coat pocket that wasn’t occupied with her revolver. She grimaced, still uncomfortable with being in such close proximity to a gun. Her father’s antique guns from the war were one thing, for she’d handled those her whole life. But she’d never shot this revolver. Even without bullets, it made her nervous. She followed Hettie out of Amy’s room and stared at the locked compartment that contained Janet and Humphrey’s things and Cecil’s body.
“I need to talk to Janet,” Hettie said, following Ro’s gaze. “We should find out if they were in fact with Amy and Frederick in the bar car all day and to see if I can determine whether the possibility of Janet having an affair with Cecil is real or if my dear sister is simply deflecting focus onto poor Janet. As though both Amy and Janet didn’t marry for money.”
“Your sister has money of her own, doesn’t she?”
“It’s all about winning.” Hettie looked at the compartment door and down at the hair pin in her hand. “Uncle Humphrey and Janet must be done with their interview since they took Amy and Frederick. Only they won’t be in their compartment since—you know—Cecil. Where should we go to look for them?”
“Probably the bar car if I had to bet my life on it.” Ro winked. “You brought up an interesting point, though. Janet and Humphrey aren’t in their compartment.”
“Mmmm?”
“Since we are so good at breaking in…”
Hettie lifted a brow and waited.
“…we should take advantage,” Ro finished. “See if we can discover anything else.”
“We are so good at breaking in?” Hettie teased. “I recall doing all the work.”
“Being the lookout is important,” Ro told her. She patted her pocket and arched her brow. Lookout and guard.
Hettie was even faster the second time around, and they were stepping into her uncle’s train compartment moments later. They slipped in, quietly closing the door behind them.
They both looked down and shuddered. Even though someone had covered Cecil’s body with a sheet, it was disturbing to be in a room with a corpse. This was too close to having been trapped under the bed with a corpse at the adventure club, a moment that still haunted them, and Hettie admitted she’d had more than one terrifying dream from it.
“What are we looking for?” Hettie asked.
“I don’t know. Anything that catches your eye or that looks odd or out of place.”
“When we first saw them today, the conductor was standing here,” Hettie said. “Stand here.” She placed Ro where Mr. Ribsy had stood. Ro obliged, trying to forget what was at her feet. “Cecil was on his back, his hand outstretched. Ribsy said he’d rolled Cecil over. His arm was outstretched. It’s been bothering me.”
“The killer must have been behind him,” Ro said and Hettie glanced back to nod. “He landed face down if Ribsy turned him over.”
“So if he dropped what he was holding instead of having it taken away…” Hettie knelt, trying to avoid the drying blood. “Before he was flipped, his arm would have been pointing…there.”
Hettie reached under a table and after a moment pulled a sparkling amethyst and diamond bobble out from underneath. She held it up. “This has to be what he had been reaching for in his final moments.”
“What is it? A ring?”
“It’s a brooch. It doesn’t look familiar.” Hettie examined it. It was still attached to fabric as though it had been ripped from whatever dress or coat it had been fastened to. Had Cecil ripped it from the garment of the murderer?
They both froze when they heard muffled voices in the hall. Even through the door, it was very clearly Amy and Frederick. Hettie jumped to her feet, put her finger to her mouth, and leaned her ear against the door to listen.
“He’s a fool,” Amy was saying. “We’ll pull this off without any trouble. Even with Hettie’s suspicion, this isn’t going to be a problem. Barely even a challenge.”
They’d passed and whatever Frederick said in response was muted.
“Bloody hell. I couldn’t hear what he said,” Hettie whispered. “But I heard her. Did you? She’s convinced she’ll get away with it, whatever it is, and Frederick is in on it. He’s too soft and takes entirely too much abuse at the hands of my sister.”
“We won’t let her succeed. But let’s get out of here. I think I had a heart attack.”
Chapter 12
“We should look at these documents, but the bar car is on the way to our compartment, and I have a headache.”
“So a drink?”
“With an aspirin,” Hettie replied.
“We might as well stop by and see if we can also find your uncle and his wife. Then we’ll secret ourselves away with our cocktails and these papers and see what sense we can make of any of this.”
“We can’t dive too deep,” Hettie warned. “We need our wits about us to figure this out. If I don’t have the full use of all of my faculties, it could be that Amy will succeed in burying me with Cecil. Trust me on this.”
Ro pouted. “I’d never let that happen. But I can at least get a club soda with lime. I’m thirsty and my lookout skills will be inferior if I’m focused on how dry my mouth is.”
“I’m not saying no cocktails. Don’t be ridiculous. I’m saying one.”
“One,” Ro agreed instantl
y.
Hettie rolled her eyes and Ro’s face lit up. Good. Even under the pressure, they were still them. They made their way to the bar car in search of Janet and Uncle Humphrey.
“There they are,” Hettie said. They were exactly where she’d expected they’d be. Humphrey and Janet Banks sat in overstuffed chairs, he with a whiskey and she with a drink that had olives. They weren’t sitting, if Hettie were honest with herself. They were lounging. Hettie wouldn’t have thought anything of it if not for the sour look on Humphrey’s face and the stray tears on Janet’s. There was an unopened book on Janet’s lap while Humphrey wasn’t pretending to do anything other than drink and scowl.
The pair had always been an odd one as far as Hettie was concerned. He was easily twenty years his wife’s senior. He had a pot belly, bad breath, and a head of thinning, wiry, grey hair. She was tall, young, had flowing black hair, and the most perfect red lips Hettie had ever seen.
Janet came from money, so it hadn’t been a financially motivated marriage as far as Hettie knew, but nothing else made sense. Hettie couldn’t fathom that they’d married for love. Amy’s accusation was at the forefront of her mind as she saw the unlikely couple in such contrast next to each other.
Hettie needed time to read through the thick stack of papers, but this was her chance to interview Janet and discover if Amy was lying about her alibi or about the possible affair between Janet and Cecil. She approached her uncle and his wife, considering how to bring up her suspicions. Ro let her lead, staying a few steps behind.
“Uncle Humphrey, Janet. How are the both of you faring?”
“Fine, fine. Too bad about the boy,” Humphrey said without any believability in the slightest. If anything he looked annoyed.
“This was quite an ordeal for you, I’m sure,” Hettie said to Janet.
Janet looked up from her closed book, her eyes bloodshot and weary looking. Hettie was taken aback by how bad Janet looked. It did seem rather suggestive that Amy’s accusation of an affair was correct, because otherwise she was taking the inconvenience of Cecil’s body in her compartment a bit too far.
Humphrey spoke before Janet replied. “This ordeal has been most troublesome for your aunt. A dead body, lying amongst her private things. It really is too much for a person of her delicate sensibilities.”
Janet started crying at Humphrey’s statement and he glared at Hettie as though the whole thing was her fault. She resisted the urge to remind them that the one worst inconvenienced was Cecil. Instead Hettie let tears well in her eyes. She looked to her Uncle Humphrey and stammered until he was paying her full attention.
“I’m afraid, genuinely afraid, that Amy had something to do with Cecil’s murder. She said she and Frederick were here with you from luncheon until his body was found. Is that true?”
Janet and Humphrey exchanged looks, and then Janet nodded as Humphrey spoke. “I’m afraid that we have the same concern. Amy was involved with Cecil in a most immoral way.”
Hettie gasped with a horrified expression even though the idea wasn’t as shocking as it should have been. Disturbing, yes, but it did explain how united her sister and Cecil had become.
It was also sickening that her sister had been trying to push her lover onto Hettie. She exchanged looks with Ro, who wore a look of disgust.
“Combined with his focus moving to you,” Humphrey continued, “and whatever business idiocy they were trying to engineer, I’m afraid your sister has been a bit unhinged.”
“Oh, Humphrey,” Janet said, her speech slurring. “Why would you say so?”
“Amy is throwing suspicion onto Hettie, who has barely returned home. We saw Amy briefly in here,” he told Hettie, “but she was only here for about thirty minutes. The rest of the afternoon, I don’t have any idea where she was. Didn’t she borrow your cloak, Janet?”
Janet picked up where Humphrey left off. “Yes, I’d forgotten. She borrowed my cloak and said she wanted to get some air. That was the last time I saw her. I think she’s been hiding away in her compartment since the body was discovered. To be quite honest, we are concerned for you as well, Hettie.”
“She’s emotional, as all women are,” Humphrey declared. “Your public display at lunch was quite unlike you.”
Hettie choked, and Ro snorted. “Is saying no to a proposal so mad?”
“I don’t blame you for not wanting Cecil,” Humphrey said. “I only assumed that all women were prone to believing the romance.”
“Cecil was a good man,” Janet argued. “He would have been a good match. So connected to the family. What we all wanted—”
Humphrey shot his wife a dark look. “Did you kill Cecil, darling? Perhaps you hired that Ribsy fellow to take care of your little problem? You aren’t pregnant, are you? Tell us, and we can find a way to help you. I’m sure your father could—”
Hettie had enough. “I refused Cecil’s proposal because I have no interest whatsoever in marrying him.”
“Perhaps you have better taste than I give you credit for. After Harvey—so clearly a blackguard—I assumed you were stupid, Hettie.”
“I was naive,” she shot back. “I’m not anymore.”
“Oh ho,” Humphrey laughed. “It doesn’t matter who killed Cecil. For our purposes, it was the conductor. Even if it were Amy—or you for that matter—our family name needn’t be sullied by this sort of scandal. No, the conductor will take the fall.”
“Humphrey!” Janet hissed.
He ignored her. “Regardless of who actually murdered Cecil, he’ll be arrested the moment we arrive at the island and we won’t have to think of this nasty business anymore.”
“What about Ribsy?” Hettie demanded.
“What about him?”
“Why should he pay for the crime?”
“He should have known better than to touch the body. He’ll be punished for stupidity.”
Hettie sighed. Was this truly what her family had become?
Cecil’s problems were not a problem for him anymore. Whoever had killed him, and Hettie was determined now more than ever to find the guilty party and protect Ribsy from any attempt to ruin the man, had more to lose now.
Hettie sighed. It took all her self-control to not slap the idiocy right out of her aunt and uncle. “For the last time, neither I nor Ribsy had anything to do with Cecil’s death. I won’t allow him to take the blame.”
Without waiting for a response, Hettie left Janet and Humphrey with Ro following. They made a beeline for their compartment.
“Do you think Amy was having an affair with Cecil?” Ro asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t like either Frederick or Cecil, but I’d rather have Frederick in my bed than Cecil.”
“Yes, but you have a special reason to despise Cecil.”
Hettie agreed with that statement. She didn’t feel bad, in the least, about Cecil’s death. She felt relieved that he wasn’t going to pop up and bludgeon her with a wedding ring.
“Perhaps Humphrey and Janet are trying to take the attention off of themselves?”
Hettie rubbed her temples with her thumb and forefinger. “I have no idea. Amy’s certainly not above plotting and scheming, but I don’t exactly trust Janet and Humphrey’s comments about my sister. Integrity isn’t any of their middle names.”
Ro groaned. “Real life is entirely too real.”
“We’ll have to drink until we forget we are real.”
Ro laughed, and to Hettie’s eyes, she looked a bit lighter. In the future, Hettie vowed to only go on adventures that were at least a country, if not a continent, away from her family. For Ro’s sake, if not her own.
Chapter 13
Once in their compartment, they locked the door, and then after a moment, stacked their suitcases in front of it. As soon as they felt secure, they opened the papers and started pouring over them.
Hettie looked up and rubbed the back of neck. “I think I’ve finally put this together, but I’m not sure if it helps us solve the murder. It certainly sh
eds light on my sister’s business dealings with Cecil and Jonas, though.”
“I’m glad one of us understands. I only see a bunch of legal papers and official documents. A company is merging with another company or—I don’t get it, Hettie.”
“I’ll explain. If you didn’t happen to know the details of my father’s businesses, you wouldn’t be able to draw the lines that I can see. Are you ready? This is a bit complicated.”
“Ready. Wait….” She got up and poured more gin, not bothering with the ice this time. “Okay, now I’m ready for real.”
Hettie shook her head at Ro, a bit tipsy from her own cocktail but still clear enough to put the information together.
“This document,” Hettie held up a paper, “shows my sister selling part of her shares in Father’s company to Cecil.” She picked up another page. “This document shows those same shares being sold later by Cecil to Jonas. You do recall that Jonas is Cecil’s uncle and my father’s business partner?”
Ro nodded. “I think I follow so far. Amy sold part of your father’s company to Cecil, though we don’t know why. Cecil then sold that bit of the company to Jonas. We don’t know why that happened either, correct?”
“Correct. We don’t. But I can guess because of this document.” She picked up another one. “Father held more shares of the business than Jonas. They weren’t truly partners, but they were closer to it after Father gave part of his company to Amy when she married and part to me when I did. When Jonas bought the shares from Cecil—the document was signed and dated yesterday—it brought Jonas closer to owning more than Father. If Cecil had convinced me to marry him, and he sold my shares to his uncle, Jonas would have had controlling interest of Father’s company.”
“If your father were here, he’d have an excellent motive to murder Cecil or Amy or Jonas.”
“But he isn’t,” Hettie said. “And I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to give Cecil full access when I kept Harvey out of my money so carefully. Father would have known that. I mean…I loved Harvey. And Father was the one who pulled me off of Cecil after he cut off my braids.”