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

the bathroom and met Fen by the wardrobe. She swept all of her dresses and blouses and things to one side and pointed to the floor of the wardrobe, where there were five or six pairs of shoes and not much else. ‘That’s right. They were here, but obviously it was the first place the thief must have looked. We should have room safes. Aunt M has put that in writing to the French Line, I think she might sue.’

Fen nodded and bundled the boa up into her arms. There was something odd about Eloise’s room and it wasn’t just that it was super-glamorous and a heck of a lot more sumptuous than her own. It’ll come to me, thought Fen as she followed Eloise out, moving aside so she could actually use her key and lock her door this time. Before something else terrible happens, I hope…

Lunch was a quiet affair and Eloise was keen to keep Fen by her side, not actually saying out loud that Fen was basically being paid to be there with her, but mentioning as often as not that it was their last full day aboard and how much fun it would be for them and James and Frank to make use of the deck games together.

The sun had managed to sneak through the fog, which was more of a sea mist now, and despite the general chill in the air it was reasonably pleasant, and actually quite fun, to play shuffleboard and quoits out on the deck. Seagulls had started circling overhead, and the sight of them had cheered up many of the Americans on board who knew that land – their land – was nearing.

‘We’ll see Lady Liberty herself by tomorrow morning,’ Eloise said excitedly, clutching Frank’s arm.

‘Trip up to the lifeboat for me then,’ he said, receiving a kick in the shin from Eloise. ‘Ow!’

‘Aren’t the lifeboats being taken down in New York? Revarnishing or—’ Fen chipped in, but Eloise cut her off.

‘That’s what Frank means. He reckons he can beat the queues at the docks if he sneaks into one of those. Honestly, men though!’ Eloise rolled her eyes and gently punched him on the arm again.

‘New game?’ James asked, and the four of them played together until the sun set over the yardarm.

Finally released from organised fun, Fen headed back to her cabin, happy to peel off the damp cardigan and blouse she’d been wearing on deck, and wishing for the umpteenth time that she had a decent winter coat with her.

Tucking her feet up under her, and allowing herself to feel a pang of jealousy for those in the first-class suites as the metal bars of her single bed dug in to her back, she curled up in bed with her crossword, and her own grid she was drawing on the back of the passenger list. Since she’d last filled in her grid, she had explored cabin thirteen and had a snoop about Eloise’s cabin too. She poised her pencil and had a think.

After a minute or two, it looked like this:

The two grids were becoming tantalisingly close and Fen wondered if they would cross over in real life, too. How big a coincidence would it have to be to have two murders on one ship, within days of each other? Fen scratched her head.

The word PARALLELS struck a chord with her too, and she remembered comparing James’s situation with Lady Arabella to that of Eloise and Reginald Vandervinter. But there were other parallels too. Like how similar Eloise and Genie looked…

Fen tapped her pen on the passenger list and let that thought ruminate for a while. It wouldn’t be the first time a case of mistaken identity had ended in tragedy, but who had been mistaken for whom? And why would either of them have been a target in the first place?

38

Having dressed for dinner for the last time on board the De Grasse before they were due to dock in New York the following morning, Fen found herself looking at the easel with the table plan on it, the one that would tell her where she would be sitting that night. She had tarried too long getting dressed, wrapping, unwrapping and rewrapping the long string of pearls round her neck, each time thinking of Genie and the stocking that strangled her.

Finally Fen had settled on letting the long rope hang loosely around her neck, only doubled over, not tripled in a choker-style. She had dashed through the saloon bar and was one of the last through to the opulent dining room.

A cheery wave from James over the other side of the room reinforced what she had just seen on the table plan; tonight they were dining on the captain’s table again, along with Mrs Archer and Eloise. Bisset would be joining them to make up the six.

‘We’re honoured to be with both of you tonight,’ Fen remarked to the first officer. ‘Shouldn’t one of you be on the bridge steering our course?’

‘The ship is in good hands, mademoiselle,’ Bisset reassured her. ‘I only wish the people on board this ship were as reliable as the, how you say, navigational equipment.’ His throwaway comment had probably been intended to reassure Fen, but instead it reminded her of something she’d been meaning to ask him, something that had been pushing its way into the forefront of her mind while she’d been looking at her grid earlier.

‘Monsieur Bisset,’ she asked, trying to sound nonchalant. ‘Did I hear you say that other things had been stolen on this voyage? A flag, was it?’

He looked cautiously at her. ‘I don’t remember saying anything like that.’

When you were being harangued by Mrs A, Fen wanted to jog his memory, but his denial of it was interesting enough. She settled for, ‘My mistake perhaps, I thought perhaps the flag you’d taken from Le Havre might have been…’

Bisset turned fully in his chair to speak to her, his voice low