The Moonlit Murders: A historical mystery page-turner (A Fen Churche Mystery Book 3) by Fliss Chester (best ereader for pc .txt) 📗

She couldn’t shake the thought that, throughout their whole conversation, Spencer had not once denied the accusation that he had killed her.

31

Dodman escorted Fen back up to the bridge, which took up the entire front of the top deck of the ship. Despite being reasonably fit due to all the ‘digging for victory’ she did in the war, Fen was slightly out of breath by the time they finished climbing stair after stair, rising up from the very depths of the great liner to the uppermost storeys.

The heat from the furnaces that had made the brig deck so claustrophobic was replaced by an icier chill as they emerged onto the same deck where the lifeboats were fastened, and where only two nights earlier Fen had found Albert’s body.

They had to walk down an open-sided promenade deck next to the lifeboats before coming across another stairwell and smaller staircase that was marked PRIVATE and CREW ONLY.

Dodman indicated that Fen should proceed, and she climbed the last few steps to where there was the most amazing set of windows, and in front of them all the technical equipment that was used to manage, steer and control the great ship.

‘The bridge, miss. Quite a sight, isn’t it?’ Dodman helpfully informed her. ‘Just along here please, if you don’t mind.’ He pointed towards a door, much like those used in the lower decks, that was rounded and able to be sealed by a large wheel, and Fen stepped through it over the raised threshold.

‘Good morning, Miss Churche.’ Lagrande rose from behind his desk and greeted her. He then checked the clocks on the wall, all three set at different time zones, and corrected himself. ‘Or, indeed, good afternoon, if you acknowledge the time zone change.’

‘Yes, indeed. I’ve been winding my watch back an hour a day, is that right?’

‘Bonne idée. Please, sit down.’ He gestured towards the chair the other side of the desk from him and Fen sat, pleased to rest after climbing all those stairs.

She looked around the office as the captain sat himself down. It was spartan, with only the clocks on the internal wall, a bank of filing cabinets under them and one large map of the world on the wall behind his desk. Large porthole windows looked out to the port side of the ship, though much like the view from the bridge as she’d passed through, the ocean around them was shrouded in fog.

The room itself was like those in the rest of the ship, bolted and riveted together, with the steel painted in a light clotted-cream colour. Lagrande’s desk, being an old mahogany inglenook one with a well-worn green leather top, stood out in stark contrast to the utilitarian decor of the rest of the office.

Fen stopped her eye from wandering and concentrated on the captain when he spoke again. ‘I apologise that your journey with us has been so… how would you say, eventful. Perhaps you rue the day we left Southampton with you still on board?’ He gave a laugh but immediately turned it into a cough.

‘It has been interesting, certainly,’ Fen agreed, and waited for the captain’s interrogation to start. But rather than tease out every bit of information from her about how she found the bodies and her movements, he started talking about how the French Line would like to compensate her.

‘Your return passage in comfortable first class will be complimentary, of course, with full board for yourself and a friend. Perhaps Lord Selham will chaperone you home once we’ve made the appropriate crew changes and had the lifeboats revarnished in New York.’

Fen was somewhat taken aback by this. After gratefully accepting the free return travel, she waited again for the captain to refer to the investigations. When he didn’t, she asked, ‘Are you not going to quiz me about anything I’ve found out about the murders? Or the jewel theft?’

It was the captain’s turn to look nonplussed. ‘I assume you will speak to the New York police department?’ Fen nodded. ‘Eh bon. If you can keep Mrs Archer from fussing by trying to find her jewels, I will be grateful. As for the two bodies in the morgue,’ he gave a very Gallic sigh. ‘I have a ship to run and I can’t, how would you say, enquêter… investigate how they got there.’

Fen was shocked by this. ‘I thought a ship’s captain had power to do all sorts of things?’

‘Power, of course. Time and resources, non. We have a vast ship with a skeleton crew, and I am trying to keep to the high standards for which the French Line was renowned before the war. You see I have over nine hundred souls on board, some much more demanding than others. If the barman from the smoking saloon is trying to find a murderer, then who will serve whisky and soda to the twenty or thirty men a night who depend on him? Or if my chef has to guard the lifeboat deck to protect the scene of the crime, well who then will make the lamb rissoles for tonight’s first-class dining-room guests?’

‘I understand.’ Fen could see his point.

‘You see, Miss Churche, it’s why I let you go back into Mr McNeal and Miss Higginbottom’s cabin. You have more free time than my chef. I assume you didn’t find any clues in there?’

‘No, not really,’ Fen lied. There had been something about the captain’s complete dismissal of the case that had made her reluctant to share. She relented though and added, ‘Except a letter from Dr Bartlett, saying Genie was with child.’

The captain stopped shuffling papers around his desk and let out another Gallic sigh. ‘C’est malheureux. I mean, that is unfortunate. Poor Miss Higginbottom.’ He sighed. ‘Love is incomprehensible at times.’

‘Do you think Spencer McNeal killed Genie?’ Fen asked him outright.

‘Of course,’ the captain said simply.

‘He says he can’t remember a thing about last night, which I do find odd, but he did seem genuinely upset about her death.’

Even if he