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

‘He remembered killing her a few hours ago, whatever he says now,’ Lagrande told her. ‘I have a signed confession.’ The captain pulled one of the papers on his desk out and briefly showed it to Fen, who could only make out that it was a typed-up sheet on the ship’s headed paper with a near-impossible-to-make-out scrawl at the bottom.

‘A confession?’ Fen racked her brains. Spencer hadn’t tried to deny Genie’s murder, but he definitely hadn’t seemed like someone who had recently confessed to one. ‘Did he say why?’

Lagrande glanced over at the signed document in front of him. ‘Querelle d’amoureux, you know, the quarrel of the lovers. Stockings tightened around her throat too much before he realised…’ The captain looked up at her. ‘Now, Miss Churche, I’m afraid I am a busy man and I do appreciate your help with these murders, but this one is already solved and I don’t imagine there’s much appetite among my passengers or crew to see anyone punished for killing a German. You find those jewels, that’s the real case here. Mrs Archer could become a redoubtable foe for all of us if we don’t find her precious tiara. You have my full permission to search where you need to now.’

Fen took her cue to leave and pushed herself up from the chair. ‘Good day, Captain, and thank you for the offer of free passage home.’

She left the captain shuffling papers, as if by doing so the ship would magically steer itself, and was accompanied by Dodman off the bridge.

‘Sounds like we’ll have the pleasure of your company, miss, on the way home. That’s a fair prospect, if you ask me.’

‘Thank you, Dodman.’ Fen smiled more warmly for the steward. ‘Let’s hope the journey home is slightly less eventful.’

And a lot less murderous… she thought.

32

‘Free passage home? For both of us?’ James asked over lunch in the dining room. By Fen’s watch, which was now set to some compromise between Greenwich Mean Time and New York’s time zone, it was well past lunchtime and her stomach had started to grumble to make sure she knew it.

So she had been mightily pleased to find James lurking near her cabin when she returned from seeing the captain, especially when he suggested a slap-up fish-and-chip meal in the second-class canteen. It was less fancy that the dining room they’d been using, but that rarefied atmosphere wasn’t what was needed right now, and Fen appreciated the background noise of plates and cutlery being cleared and clanked around them as they spoke.

‘Yes, that’s if you want to come home. I know you’re not quite ready yet, but I don’t think I can keep Kitty waiting much longer, let alone my poor parents.’

‘Demons should be faced, I suppose,’ James said, before putting a large piece of battered cod into his mouth.

‘Demons?’ Fen asked.

‘Well, not demons so much as memories,’ James admitted.

Fen didn’t know if now was the time to push for more details. He’d said he’d tell her more about his family when he’d encouraged her to stay on board and travel to New York as Eloise’s guest. For him to mention ‘demons’ though… James interrupted her thoughts with a question of his own.

‘I never asked how you found out about my parents and Oliver. Was it Arthur?’

James knew, of course, that Arthur had written several letters to Fen, and often in their own crossword-style code, but Fen shook her head. As easy as it would be to let him think that, she didn’t want to lie to him. There was enough of that going on on this ship already.

‘Kitty. Well, Dil really. They took it upon themselves to “vet” you, if that’s the right way to describe it—’

‘If you’re feeling charitable,’ he interrupted grumpily, before forking a piece of battered fish into his mouth.

‘I’m afraid it’s a downside to your elevated status, James. These things become matters of public record.’

James snorted and carried on eating.

‘I’m sorry you lost a fiancée too.’ Fen remembered the letter Kitty had written. James’s fiancée had been killed in the same bomb blast as his parents. James merely nodded and speared a chip with his fork. Fen pushed her mushy peas around her plate, hating the silence between them. Perhaps she shouldn’t have brought it all up again and feared saying anything else unless it really did step over the line. She remembered what he’d said to her though, and after a few more mouthfuls, added, ‘It’s all right to be sad, you know. About the war, and your family. We need to find memories to cherish, rather than those of which we’re afraid.’

James looked at her for a moment, and then nodded. ‘You’re right, of course, it is those memories I have to come to terms with. And the responsibilities. Somehow it feels easier to run from them. I never wanted the house or title, and never expected them, either. That was all to be Oliver’s, and I was more than happy with my lot. A career in diplomacy and then something more spicy when the war came. Boy’s Own annual stuff. Maybe a living later on as part of the estate, I don’t know.’

‘What about Lady Arabella?’

‘Oliver’s too.’

‘Excuse me?’ Fen was confused. She was sure Kitty had written to say that James had lost a brother and a fiancée, not a brother and his fiancée.

‘Bella was Oliver’s intended before he died. Then I inherited her. A bit like Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon.’ James said this all so matter-of-factly that Fen was at a loss to find the words to challenge him on it. But the fact that he’d inherited a fiancée… well that was a bit Tudor, to say the least.

‘I have to say, James, I’m a bit shocked,’ Fen finally managed. ‘Did you love her? Did she love you? Was it arranged? Oh gosh,’ the thought suddenly came to her. ‘You’re like Eloise and Reginald Vandervinter. All these arranged marriages, it’s a mite