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

him, and Fen furrowed her brow until Eloise explained. ‘You know, the night I couldn’t sleep. The night I left Genie’s cabin in that gorgeous boa of hers. Poor Genie. I felt like a million dollars when I was dressed like that and all boring old Aunt M could ever say about her was that she looked like a tart and showgirl. What’s wrong with looking like a showgirl if it means you look fabulous?’

‘Shhh,’ Mrs Nettleton turned abruptly and shushed Eloise.

‘Apologies, Mrs N.’ Eloise raised her palms as if to ask forgiveness.

The old lady turned away, but the captain glared at Eloise for a moment longer, before getting back to his lengthy explanation of North Atlantic weather patterns.

With Eloise shushed, Fen focused her attention on the bridge. A few steps away was the door to the captain’s office and something clicked inside Fen as she looked at it.

With his full attention on the small group he was talking to, and Bisset in full swing describing the instruments on the console over to their right, neither of them would notice if Fen slipped into the office for a moment. There was something about the words she’d seen on her grid before she’d gone to supper that bothered her and she wondered if there might be some more information on the passengers tucked in one of those filing cabinets.

When the captain was fully engaged in explaining currents and wind speeds, Fen took her chance and, with a wink to James, hoping he’d understand and cover her if need be, she sidestepped away from the group and into the office, her breath held until she could be sure that no one had seen what she was up to.

She gently closed the door behind her and switched the overhead light on. The desk was tidy, which suggested to Fen that the captain was the type of man to finish a day’s work and leave his desk neat and sorted. ‘Which means he’ll have filed something like a passenger list away,’ she murmured as she crossed the room.

As she went behind the desk to get to the filing cabinets that were standing there, a photograph caught her eye. Two young boys in clothes that would have been fashionable about thirty years before grinned into the camera, a large trout held out in front of them. It made Fen smile, the simple innocence of it, and she leaned in to see what had been scribbled in the white surround of the photograph. Jean-Louis et Remi 1912. This grinning pair were brothers and Fen assumed one must be the captain, judging by the age of the picture.

She turned back to the filing cabinets and pulled open the topmost drawer. The files were many and well-stuffed, but meticulously labelled, so she easily skipped past administration that was nothing to do with this voyage. Then she found it, the file marked ‘Passenger Lists’. She pulled it out and laid it on the dark green leather top of the desk. De Grasse, November 1945 Le Havre – Southampton – New York the top sheet read, and Fen flicked through.

Sure enough, among the other names, Fen saw Ernst Fischer and a detailed description of his travel plans and, most importantly, that the American government had paid for his voyage. Next to that list she saw the one that had been stamped and verified by the French Line for printing in the pamphlets they all received in their rooms. Signed by the captain, they had a very different look to them, none of the information, of course, about who paid for the voyages or when they applied for passage.

Each list told a different story and she let her finger flow down each, mouthing various surnames as she went. She stopped at a double-barrelled name on the stamped and verified passenger list, her eyes darting over to the admin list to check it wasn’t there. Her hunch about Fischer travelling incognito had been correct; she’d found his pseudonym. Why he was travelling under the bizarre name Wracker-Nayman she didn’t know, but her gut told her that it meant something.

She closed the file and placed it back in cabinet, wary of taking too long in case the crowd dispersed and she was seen leaving the office, or worse, locked in for the night.

39

The bridge was bustling when Fen slipped out of the captain’s office and she sidled up to Eloise.

‘Did I miss anything?’ Fen whispered.

‘Not unless you find Arctic tern migration particularly exciting,’ Eloise said back to her in hushed tones. ‘Though I’ve been a little preoccupied myself.’ She nodded towards where Frank was talking to James.

‘Oh Eloise,’ Fen smiled at her, ‘what are we going to do with you?’

The party dispersed to their cabins or to the bars and Fen decided that an early night might be no bad thing before the excitement of disembarkation in America tomorrow. A thousand thoughts were swirling through her mind, too, and she knew that she was close, perhaps dangerously close, to working out who killed Ernst Fischer, and Genie, too. As for the jewels, they’d have to wait, but something, a glint as faint as a diamond in the dark, made her wonder if they weren’t all connected in some way.

Back in her cabin, Fen undressed and prepared herself for bed. Once under the eiderdown, she thought over what she’d come across in the captain’s office, and although a glimpse of the passenger list had been her primary goal, and glimpse it she had, her mind brought her back to the photograph of the two young boys.

She reached over for the passenger list and her grids drawn on it and thought out loud. ‘Arthur always said, if you can’t solve your one across, look for your five down. Well, one and two across have been who killed the German, Ernst Fischer and poor Genie. And a bonus three across, or maybe it’s a three down, is who stole Mrs A’s tiara.’ She wrote the