Holiday Gone

by Beth Byers

  Ro snorted, choked, and coughed until her eyes teared up.

  “Enough gin,” Hettie suggested.

  “Don’t be mean,” Ro whined.

  Hettie frowned. “I simply don’t understand how this is connected to Cecil’s murder. Jonas would be happy to have the ownership in the company, and Cecil would have part of his money problems solved by reselling those shares to his uncle. I would assume that Jonas paid more for them than Cecil did. The Cavanaugh family came out of the deal with a good result.”

  “But why would Amy sell?”

  “Exactly. Why would my sister, heiress of my father’s company, sell her shares to Cecil, knowing that the Cavanaughs would be closer to having a controlling interest in the company?”

  “What would your father do if he learned?”

  “Whatever the Cavanaughs do with their shares, Father owns the rest. He’ll feel betrayed by how close he came to losing control. He won’t leave Amy anything else. She wants Father’s house, but if he sees these papers? I will inherit significantly more than expected. In fact—the only way Amy might avoid losing is if I do something that makes him as furious.”

  “No wonder she wanted you to marry Cecil so badly.”

  “And why she wants me to be the one who goes down for his murder.”

  “Your sister is a fiend.”

  Hettie nodded. She reached for her coat and wrapped it around herself to ward off the chill in her heart.

  “It really doesn’t make sense,” Ro said. “Maybe she needed the money? That’s usually why people sell things, isn’t it?”

  “I’d agree with you, except look at this paper. She sold it for a pittance of its actual value. Look.” She passed Ro a document. “She basically gave away her interest in my father’s company for nothing.”

  “Why?”

  “Why, indeed.”

  “Your sister is not charitable,” Ro said, stating the obvious. “There’s no possibility that she didn’t benefit in some way.”

  “I’ll be asking her, certainly. Now look at the amount Cecil sold the shares to Jonas for.” Hettie passed another document to Ro, who gasped appropriately.

  “Cecil made out quite handsomely on the deal, didn’t he?” Ro leaned back. “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, he would have made out handsomely, but I think Amy pulled a fast one on Cecil.” Hettie took in a deep breath. She was disgusted and it was affecting her ability to think.

  “How do you mean?”

  “There’s another document, dated today. It’s a record of the sale of those shares she’d sold Cecil being sold back to her for even more money than Cecil got from Jonas.” Hettie lifted the paper and read it again. What in the world was happening?

  “You are saying that Cecil sold the same shares to both Jonas and to Amy? If so, he ended up with a ton of money, Amy ended up with the shares and her ownership of the company still intact, and Jonas ended up with—what?”

  “A reason to want Cecil dead, I’d say.” Hettie bit down on her bottom lip.

  “I don’t understand how Cecil could sell anything to Amy that he’d already sold to Jonas. How is that even possible?”

  “It isn’t. One person tricked another, and we don’t know who or why.” Hettie rubbed the bridge of her nose as she stared at the paperwork.

  “So we have another suspect with a solid motive.”

  “Who was also on the train,” Hettie added.

  Ro groaned. “We still have no way of knowing if Amy killed him because she was having an affair with him or because of this business transaction, or if Frederick killed him because he was shagging Amy, or if Jonas killed him because Cecil had found a way to double-cross him with his business shares. Do I have it about right?”

  Hettie rubbed her face, groaning. “Yes, that sums it up.”

  Ro stood and paced. “Remember when we were in Janet’s room and Amy said to Frederick that they’d thought they’d gotten away with it. What if they were talking about the money and not the murder? With documentation of the sale back to Amy complete and Cecil dead, no one, meaning your father, would be the wiser that she’d sold them in the first place.”

  Hettie nodded. “And it leaves Jonas with the best motive. Perhaps Jonas learned of the sale and snapped, killing Cecil in a fit of rage. I could see him picking up that clock and striking him down.”

  “That works for me,” Ro agreed.

  “Maybe,” Hettie said slowly. “But why would Cecil and Jonas be in Janet and Humphrey’s room? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It doesn’t. We need to get inside Cecil’s compartment. We’re fools for not having thought of it sooner.”

  Hettie dug through her coat pocket until she found her hairpin. “Perhaps he’ll have documentation that will complete the picture for us. And while we’re at it, I want back in Humphrey and Janet’s compartment as well. They are involved in all of this, maybe because of the rumored affair? There’s something tickling the back of my brain—”

  “We do have to consider it. What if—” A knock on their compartment door interrupted Ro’s thought. Irritated, she called out. “What? Come in.”

  “Ro!” Hettie said, laughing. The two of them worked quickly to move their luggage and then Hettie swung open the door. “Yes?”

  It was the train security officer.

  “Pardon me, but Officer Fishe has arrived by horseback and he wishes to speak to you both.”

  “All right,” Hettie said, glancing at the paperwork.

  “It seems that several passengers have pointed the finger at you.”

  “Yes, I know,” Hettie said, glancing at Ro.

  “Seems you two are a bit afraid.” He eyed the pile of luggage barely shifted out of the way of the door.

  “Well yes,” Ro admitted, “a person we know murdered Cecil.”

  “Well, Officer Fishe still needs to speak with you. Ribsy told me about you two. I wouldn’t worry.”

  “We were with each other the whole time,” Ro told him. “That has to help, right?” Hettie nodded, encourage agreement.

  “Your family has suggested you two would lie for each other, Mrs. Hughes,” the man answered.

  “We would,” Hettie agreed. “But we didn’t. We also don’t have a motive.”

  “This way please,” the security officer replied.

  “One moment. I need to adjust my stockings,” Hettie lied.

  Once he closed the door behind him, Hettie whispered. “As soon as we are done with this interview, we’ll talk to my sister and check out Cecil’s compartment and perhaps revisit Humphrey and Janet’s compartment. Not necessarily in that order. We are close. I can feel it.”

  “Close to what? Lunacy? Because I can feel that too.”

  Hettie grinned wickedly in reply. She picked up her hair pin, fluffed her hair and then used the hair pin to hold back a few locks of hair. She winked at Ro and then jerked her head at the door.

  She gestured to Ro to proceed. “Wenches first.”

  Chapter 14

  Hettie and Ro sat in front of Officer Fishe.

  “Is your horse outside?” Hettie asked.

  Officer Fishe paused and then nodded.

  “Isn’t he cold?

  “She’s used to working in the snow,” the officer replied. “Tell me why it wasn’t you who killed Cecil.”

  “Because I didn’t care enough about him to want to bother,” Hettie said. “Also my friend and I were together. Ro can tell you that I didn’t murder him and I can tell you she didn’t.”

  “But you two are close friends, aren’t you? I understand from your sister that your husband was murdered along with Mrs. Lavender’s and you were both suspects.”

  Ro’s mouth dropped open. “So your case for us having killed Cecil is that we were once suspected of killing our husbands and found innocent?”

  “I was told that the murderer got away with their crime.”

  “That is not true,” Ro snapped. “My husband was murdered by his lover’
s husband and his brother. Arrests have been made, and we were found innocent. Hettie was never a real suspect anyway.”

  “Enough,” Hettie snapped. “Enough of this. Officer Fishe can contact Scotland Yard to confirm that what we’ve said is true and what they’ve said is lies. My sister and her husband cannot offer you the same assurances.”

  Officer Fishe wrote down a note in his book. “Well, that is an interesting point. This doesn’t have to be solved by the end of this journey like your uncle believes. It was him, by the way, who suggested you murdered your husband.”

  Hettie glanced at Ro but didn’t react any further.

  “I understand you had a grudge against the deceased. Tell me more about that.”

  “He cut off my braids when I was a child,” Hettie said. “It was bad enough being a ginger. But the only girl with short hair? Humiliating. I’ve despised him since.”

  Officer Fishe snorted before he could quite stop himself.

  “Officer Fishe,” Ro told him, “if Hettie didn’t kill her husband—and she didn’t—she wouldn’t have killed Cecil. She had far more reason to murder Harvey Hughes than she had to murder Cecil.”

  “But,” Officer Fishe said, “it must have been humiliating to have him push you around earlier in the dining car.”

  Hettie took in a breath and let it out slowly. “It was terrifying to realize how weak I am—was—in comparison to him.”

  Officer Fishe blinked and then leaned back, crossing his hands over his stomach. “How much money did you stand to gain from your marriage to Cecil Cavanaugh?”

  And there it was. The question that would result in the answer heard ‘round the world.’ Or at least heard by everyone in the dining compartment at the time.

  “Officer Fishe, I’m a convenient scapegoat for whoever killed Cecil because he became enraged when I told him no multiple times for proposing marriage.”

  “Your sister said you were playing games with him. That you wanted a bigger and grander proposal. You wanted romance.”

  Ro groaned, and her sarcastic response had Fishe turning her way and then back to Hettie.

  “Please listen to me while I speak very clearly on this,” Hettie said. “I returned to Canada because I knew my mother wanted me to marry Cecil.”

  “And you intended to comply?”

  “No,” Hettie said. “I intended to avoid being trapped by her. If she came to where we were living”—Hettie gestured to herself and Ro—“then I couldn’t escape. I’ve visited my mother, invalidating her excuse to come to England because she misses me. And now we’re on this train because we were escaping.”

  Fishe’s brows lifted.

  “You came to visit and escape?”

  Hettie nodded. “We were thinking of Cuba.”

  “Cuba?”

  “It’s far from here and not where Mother would expect me to go, which is back to England.”

  Officer Fishe glanced between the friends. “Is this really how you live?”

  “I’ve been unhappily married before, Officer Fishe. I never intend to become unhappily married again.” She paused before delivering the final blow to his suspicions. “The main problem with your motive for me is that I’m already rich.”

  “You didn’t need Cecil’s money?”

  “Cecil needed mine,” Hettie told him. “His father lost their fortune. Which is also a point you can verify.” She sat back. “Cecil was my childhood nemesis. I have never even liked him, let alone loved him, and nothing he could do would change that. Cecil had nothing to offer me that I didn’t already have.”

  Officer Fishe’s brows lifted. Hettie and Ro exchanged looks. Ro nodded.

  “You’re missing key information,” Hettie confessed to the officer. “I borrowed documents from my sister that delineate a business arrangement intended to steal my father’s business from him. There are family rumors that Amy was sleeping with Cecil. And that he was also sleeping with Janet Banks, though I don’t know how seriously I take them given that those same people said I killed Cecil.”

  Ro nodded when Fishe looked at her for confirmation.

  “If Amy was having an affair,” Hettie continued, “then you need to consider her husband, Frederick. He’s a nice enough fellow, but even nice folk have their limit. Perhaps he realized he was being cuckolded.”

  “You are as quick to turn on them as they were on you, aren’t you?” Fishe asked.

  “They started it,” Hettie said with a sad laugh. “I won’t help them frame me or—for that matter—poor Ribsy.”

  “Why are you defending Ribsy?”

  “Because he didn’t do it,” Hettie said. “Anyone with even a partial brain would realize that Cecil was murdered by a person he knew. Ribsy had no reason to kill him. He was only the unfortunate man who found the body and tried to help.”

  “The only reason you even consider Hettie a suspect,” Ro said to the officer, “is because of the nonsense her family is telling you about her and Cecil. He followed her on to this train in hopes of pressuring her into complying with his proposal.”

  “Does that work?” Fishe asked. “My sister would box a man’s ears for trying.”

  “They use money as a cattle prod,” Ro said. “Young girls, like myself, have everyone they know saying how marriage is the only way to contentment and happiness and anything else would be ruinous. My whole purpose here is to keep Hettie from being pressured. We’re weaker when it’s our parents. What would your sister do if a mother, grandmother, father, every person she knew and trusted told her that the boy she’d known her whole life was perfect for her?”

  “She’d scream us deaf,” Fishe said. “But she’s a harridan.”

  “I’m not a harridan,” Hettie said, “at least that I know of, but I am experienced now.”

  “So you did say no.”

  “Ask anyone who isn’t related to me. Cecil ensured it was all very public.”

  “I have asked,” Fishe told Hettie. “I’m not an idiot. I’ll be looking into everything you said that is verifiable.”

  They stood to return to their compartment when Fishe said, “I’m going to need those documents you borrowed, Mrs. Hughes.”

  Hettie’s mouth screwed up in irritation but she nodded. He followed her to their compartment and she handed them over. Ro closed the door and locked it after he left.

  Hettie sat on the bench. “I’ve been thinking. We have all this evidence about the suspects, but we don’t know much about the actual murder. We found a brooch at the crime scene—”

  “Which we conveniently left out of our interview,” Ro added wryly.

  “He didn’t ask if we found anything,” Hettie answered innocently, then she turned serious. “We need facts, not just suspects. I think it’s time to resort to bribery, Ro.”

  “Who are we bribing?”

  “Staff, of course,” Hettie said.

  All too often, Ro thought, the first class types were idiots. They were rude to the staff and working fellows around them. It made the bribing of said staff very easy. They asked Ribsy, who grinned at the money they’d slipped him and suggested that they speak to a couple of the maids.

  He directed them to the car reserved for employees and when Ro pulled out the money, those gathered there looked up in interest.

  “Maria is in another car working, but she would agree with me,” a maid named Linney said. “That dead man was ornery. The type of man only a mother could love. And a dim, blind, deaf mother at that.”

  Hettie snorted.

  “He made me clean his compartment right after he arrived and watched when I had to bend down and move his things out of the way. He even insisted I put them where they belonged. Speaking of those devil’s mitts, he was rather free with them, if you get my drift.”

  Hettie nodded. “I understand all too well. I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t pinch my bottom,” Linney said.

  “What else can you tell me about him?”

  “I saw him outside of that snooty
couple’s compartment—twice—in the span of about an hour. We’d barely got underway. And then he was there before luncheon, too.”

  “That’s a lot of time with your uncle,” Ro told Hettie.

  “Oh it was the lady who was there. Pretty woman. Black hair.”

  Hettie’s mouth dropped open.

  Linney nodded. “When he left the first time, he was speaking with a woman in a dark cloak. They were friendlier than they should have been.”

  “And the second time?”

  “I didn’t see her. I saw her cloak, but I didn’t see her face. He was acting funny though. Seemed as if someone had him dumbfounded and I might have enjoyed it more than I should have.”

  “Was she as upset?” Ro asked.

  “Well, I only really saw the cloak and that Cavanaugh fellow. I didn’t see if she was surprised or upset.”

  “Do you think they were lovers?” Hettie asked.

  “Looked like it to me,” Linney said, “but it’s not like I walked into the compartment and found them sharing a bunk.”

  “Would you do me a favor?” Ro asked. “Would you make sure that Officer Fishe and your security officer know what you saw?”

  Linney hesitated. “Part of my job is not seeing all of what is going on around me. But Ribsy is my friend.”

  Ro nudged Hettie and said, “Show her the brooch.”

  Hettie pulled the amethyst bobble out of her pocket. “Have you seen this before?”

  “It was on the woman’s cloak. The snooty one with black hair.”

  Hettie was prepared for the answer, but there was a part of her that was shocked to her core.

  “Thank you,” Ro said, putting money in Linney’s hand. “You’ve been quite helpful. If I think of anything else, I can find you here?”

  She nodded. “Yes, of course.”

  Hettie and Ro returned to their compartment. It wasn’t until Hettie and Ro shut the compartment door, stacked their luggage in front of it, and pulled out the revolver that they calmed down.

  “I think we may have found our murderer,” Ro said.