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

‘Genie can only really be accused of one thing. Looking like Eloise.’

‘I’m so sorry…’ Eloise whispered, realising perhaps for the first time the enormity of what her midnight flit up to the lifeboats had set in motion.

‘That night we had been getting rather carried away and Eloise left Genie’s cabin covered in her make-up and even wearing her red boa. It had been fun.’ Fen shook her head. ‘And when Eloise then took the jewels and smuggled them up to the lifeboats to hide them, she admitted to passing someone she later realised must have been Fischer on the stairs. I found a note in his cabin asking him to meet someone up there – a lure and nothing more.’

Fen said all this while studying her grid again, her finger running over RENDEZVOUS and LIFEBOATS. ‘Anyway, Lagrande saw Eloise, but, of course, thought she was Genie, and why wouldn’t he. You both look… looked, so alike, and with full make-up and a boa on, you could easily pass as her.’

‘Her death was your fault though.’ Everyone turned to look at the captain, as he had uttered those words and raised both his manacled hands in order to point to Fen. ‘If you hadn’t found the body of Fischer, then I wouldn’t have had to kill the girl.’

Fen felt a rush of blood blush her face as she realised the captain was right. Finding the body had meant that he had had to erase any witnesses. ‘I’m so sorry…’ Fen felt quite deflated and was about to call an end to the whole proceedings when she felt a comforting and strong hand on her shoulder.

‘None of this is your fault, Fen,’ James said to her. ‘Carry on.’

Fen took a deep breath and briefly touched James’s hand in thanks. ‘The captain is right in a way. Finding Fischer before the De Grasse got to New York did cause him to start worrying about who might have seen him, and he did go after Genie, thinking she might be a witness.’

‘I thought you said that the young man over there had confessed?’ Mrs Archer piped up, the fate of her own jewels now seemingly forgotten, finally, in the face of the murders.

‘Lagrande couldn’t just kill again without setting up a scapegoat,’ Fen thought out loud. ‘And knowing that Spencer and Genie had a turbulent relationship – we all saw that over the dining tables night after night – he probably correctly thought that Spencer would be the ideal fall guy, as they say in the movies.’

‘How did he get a confession out of him?’ Eloise asked, wringing her hands now in anticipation of it all.

‘He drugged him. Simple enough to send a note via a steward to ask him to come to the bridge, and then dose him up. He was insensible to anything; I saw that when I spoke to him the morning after. He could barely focus and I know that was no hangover. He was still suffering the effects of the drug and couldn’t remember a thing. Fen looked straight at the captain. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the signature is a forgery, or if not, then signed under duress, but who would take the word of an actor over the more-than-respectable ship’s captain? Lagrande had his patsy, and by then going back to kill Genie with her own pair of stockings, had erased his witness. That one of his epaulettes had been ripped off in the struggle was a problem for him, but with the costume basket in such disarray, and a confession from Spencer, it wasn’t enough for anyone to really suspect him.’

‘But Genie wasn’t the witness, I was.’ Eloise raised her hand to her throat.

‘And us discussing how similar you looked to Genie when we were on the bridge last night almost signed both of our death warrants.’ Fen shook her head.

‘You made me realise that I had killed the wrong witness,’ Lagrande sneered.

‘If I hadn’t asked Dodman to hide you...’ Fen scraped her teeth over her lower lip. ‘Eloise, I’m sorry that I placed you in danger.’

‘Apology more than accepted. It’s my fault for being up on that deck in the first place…’

‘Speaking of which, could one of you please go and retrieve my jewels.’ Mrs Archer, having momentarily forgotten about them in the face of much more serious crimes, was now as single-minded as ever.

‘I’ll go,’ Frank untangled himself from Eloise and, ignoring the look on Mrs Archer’s face, turned up the collar of his coat and headed out.

‘I don’t know what you see in him really, dear,’ Mrs Archer snootily said to Eloise. ‘I hope he brings them all back with him.’

‘Aunt M, you are a snob and a… Oh!’ Eloise stomped her foot, infuriated with her aunt. ‘I knew you would never agree to me marrying Frank, just because he’s not from one of those families you say we should be connected to, but he’s a good man and if you only knew what he did for us in the war.’

‘Well?’ Mrs Archer raised an eyebrow.

‘I think I can answer that one,’ James moved around from behind Fen and spoke to Mrs Archer. ‘If he was anything like me, he was sabotaging enemy communications, and then some. Most likely keeping your safe-house château off the radar of the Nazis, so that Eloise and you were safe for the whole war. It wouldn’t have been easy. Americans were being rounded up as soon as they joined the Allied forces. He would have risked a lot.’

‘Lord Selham, I appreciate you want to stand up for the man, but—’ Mrs Archer was silenced by a look from her niece.

‘Aunt M, you really don’t understand, do you?’ Eloise looked at her. ‘Without Frank’s protection, and those in his network, we would have been captured and likely sent to a concentration camp. He was just another faceless soldier in an ill-fitting uniform to you, but I think what he did for us gives him the