Murder Most Posh: A Mrs. Xavier Stayton Mystery

by Robert Colton

  “This should just take a moment,” I assured Lucy. “Then we will get breakfast.”

  Agreeable as always, Lucy replied, “Of course.”

  With my little jewel case in hand, we stepped inside the purser’s outer office. My intention was to lock up the many valuable gems that Xavier had given me. If the Olivia suffered the same fate as her sister ship, at least I would know where my jewels were. This seemed preferable to some master criminal absconding with them.

  Within the outer room, we found a young woman crying as two crewmen stood to either side of her. I recognized her instantly. She was the young woman I saw in the ballroom the night before. She was still wearing her glamorous gown.

  Mr. Pace, the ship’s purser, held up a hand to pause the hushed conversation he was attempting to hold with the upset young lady. “Just a tick.” He then turned to me, “Hello, Mrs. Stayton. How may I be of service to you?”

  Still clutching my jewel case, I asked, “What seems to be the matter here?”

  One of the crewmen said, “Stowaway.”

  The young woman broke out into fresh tears. “I just wanted to follow Francisco to America—”

  The same crewman remarked, “He’ll be fired over this—”

  “Enough,” said Mr. Pace in a low tone. He smiled at me and said, “Nothing for you to worry about, Mrs. Stayton; now, how can I help you?”

  I handed my jewelry box over to Lucy and said, “I would like to pay for this young woman’s accommodations.”

  The young woman called out in her native tongue what I believed to be a blessing as Mr. Pace fumbled for words.

  “Lucy and I can share one of the bedrooms, and she can have the other.” I turned to her and asked slowly, unsure how much English she spoke, “What is your name, dear?”

  “Yara Pinto; you are a saint—”

  Mr. Pace interrupted, “Mrs. Stayton, this is really not your concern.”

  “I must disagree with you, Mr. Pace. It is the duty of any Christian woman to lend aid when she can. Send a telegraph off to my business manager. Mr. Jack will see to it that her passage is paid for in full. She will be my guest.”

  The purser and the two crewmen looked at me with great astonishment. (Of course, upon returning home and finding out just how much the passage on board the Olivia costs, it struck me that the true Christian thing to do would be to travel third class and give the rest of the fee to charity— a variety of charities in fact.)

  I took Yara by the hand and led her away, knowing that Mr. Pace had no choice but to adhere to my wishes.

  Tears of joy replaced the tears of fear on Yara’s exotic face. She was a very pretty girl, with a lovely smile.

  In her state of excitement, English failed her as she said, “Obrigado, obrigado.”

  Lucy leaned toward my ear and said, “She’s saying thank you in Portuguese. I believe that’s what they speak in Brazil.”

  “Well, now, enough of that,” I told Yara, patting her hand. “We need to have some breakfast.”

  We returned to our room, and while I hid my jewelry case under the bed, Lucy found a nice frock for Yara that was more suited for breakfast.

  Only after we arrived at a gaily decorated café and ordered our meal did Yara find composure, and her English.

  “Never have I done anything like this, I promise,” she told us, explaining her daring actions.

  Smearing a bit of honey onto my toast, I replied, “Well, I certainly would hope not.”

  “Where are you from?” Lucy inquired.

  “Fortaleza, Brazil,” Yara responded.

  “However, you were obviously last in England, France, or Ireland,” I said politely, curious as to how she had come so far.

  Yara dropped her piece of bacon and tossed her little hands into the air as she laughed. “Sim, I was in London, this past year. I worked as a maid. That is how I was to meet Francisco, my doce-de-coco.”

  Lucy gave a giggle, and then apologized, and I asked, “This Francisco, is he the one who plays the piano for the orchestra?”

  “Sim, sim, but this job is just to get him to America,” Yara replied.

  “Once you arrive in America, what will you do?” asked Lucy.

  “Francisco and I will marry; he has the promise of a good job in Miami,” she assured us.

  This all seemed very romantic. “How did you get on board the ship?” I asked.

  “I followed close behind a wealthy woman with much luggage. I pretended to be her maid and went right up the gangway.”

  “Wearing that evening gown?” asked Lucy.

  “Oh no, I had that in a bag. I wore simple clothing to go unnoticed,” she explained. “I thought I could hide in a lifeboat, but it wasn’t so easy.”

  I became a little concerned. “Does your family know that you are on board this ship?”

  “No, they think I’m still in London, working in that grand house,” she replied.

  Nodding my chin, I told her, “We’ll need to send word to them. You don’t want them to be worried about you.”

  Our food arrived, and Yara told us about her romance with Francisco. He had been hired to play the piano at a party hosted by her employer. Through the night, as she served champagne to the guests, their eyes had met. At the end of the evening, she watched him take a pen from the pocket of his jacket. He wrote something down on a corner of his sheet music and tore the edge from the page. Making sure that he’d once more caught her eye, even as she was tending to the departing guests, he placed the note on the keys of the piano and shut the lid.

  After every guest was gone, and her employers had left her and the other domestics to clean, Yara hastened to the piano and retrieved the note. The message asked if she believed in love at first sight, and said that if she did, she was to meet him the next afternoon in a nearby café.

  I was so happy that we had met Yara. Contented and sweet, she would make for a breath of fresh air in first class.

  Returning to our suite, Lucy moved her belongings to my room, even as Yara insisted she could sleep on the divan in the parlor.

  This suggestion was politely ignored.

  We then journeyed with Yara to the lifeboat where she had hidden the bag that contained all her earthly possessions. I must admit that I was somewhat embarrassed as passersby gawked at us while Yara climbed about the little boat.

  Lucy did a double take and asked, “That’s all you have?”

  Yara opened the bag so that we could take a glimpse her maid’s uniform and several pieces of brightly colored beaded jewelry.

  “Francisco will buy us everything we need once we reach America,” she told us with all the wonderful confidence of a child looking forward to receiving a nickel from the Tooth Fairy.

  Exhaustion soon captured Yara, and she retired to her new room to take a nap. Lucy and I went for a stroll, taking in the fresh air on the open promenade at the rear of the ship.

  This deck looked down on to the second-class promenade. After glancing below, I looked back to the sea. I felt rather uncomfortable in the spot; it felt rather exalted. It was not my place to look down upon anyone, and literally doing so while divided by class seemed most unchristian.

  I was about to lead Lucy away when she exclaimed, “Oh, look, it’s Mr. Hurst.”

  Gerald Hurst, the fellow we’d met at the hotel, had vanished from my mind. I hadn’t thought we’d see him since he was traveling second class.

  It seemed that Lucy had caught his eye, for she started to wave her little gloved hand. I stepped forward to do the same. Looking below, my eyes fell not at first on him, but on the woman beside Mr. Hurst.

  Gazing up toward us, Countess Orlov appeared very startled to see Lucy and me waving to her and her companion.

  “The countess…” said Lucy, her arm freezing in the air as she stuttered.

  “Yes, Lucy, let’s leave them to their business.”

  With one last wave, I stepped away and tugged a confused Lucy with me.

  “How did she get to th
e second-class promenade? What business would she have with Mr. Hurst?”

  I hadn’t an answer for my friend’s questions. “I don’t think that it should concern us…”

  We were just passing the first-class reading room when, through the window, I saw Mathew Farquhar. He did not see me; his attention was directed toward a slender woman with very blonde hair, wearing a garish pink dress with black polka dots. I could not see her face for two reasons: there was a glare on the window, and her face was pushed against Mr. Farquhar’s as they kissed.

  “Dear Heaven!” exclaimed Lucy when she realized what I was looking at.

  “This has nothing to do with Heaven,” I murmured.

  With shaking hands, I jotted in my notebook all we had witnessed. Lucy paced the floor of our shared bedroom, repeating a single word: “Scandalous!”

  Once through with my notes, I looked up and said, “I have all the characters; now I just need a crime…”

  Lucy and I both jumped when there was a knock at the door. Passing by our sleepy new friend, Yara, in the parlor, I opened the door to the hall. Mr. Pace stood outside with his hat in his hands.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Pace,” I said, my heart still racing.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Stayton,” he replied and paused to find just the right words. “I say…well, it’s just…you see…well, dash it…”

  “Yes, Mr. Pace?”

  “I wanted to tell you…I admire that spirit of kindness and generosity of yours.” He bowed his head, and then looked back to me, and his mouth opened, but no words came out. He shrugged and smiled.

  “That is very sweet of you, Mr. Pace.”

  Bashfully, he smiled and replied, “Right. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

  “A compliment is far from a disturbance, Mr. Pace,” I assured him before he bowed his head once more and departed.

  The rest of the afternoon passed without incident. Before dinner, Lucy and I turned Yara into a sort of dress-up doll. Going through our collective attire, we found that she looked most stunning in a crimson evening gown that Mother Stayton had insisted I purchase for myself.

  Far too flashy on me, the dress complemented Yara’s dark complexion and beautiful black hair. From her small stash of personal effects, she produced a necklace made from large, colorful marble beads.

  Compared to our exotic friend, Lucy and I appeared quite mild mannered. Lucy wore a dark purple gown of soft velvet, and I lent her my emerald necklace and earrings. She looked ever so elegant. I wore a simple black gown and my favorite pearl earrings. It suited me just fine that my companions would be the center of attention.

  Dressed and hungry, we made our way to the dining room. The steward led us to the same table as the evening before. Of course, the Beaumonts were already there.

  Quickly, I introduced Yara and explained, “There was a problem with her accommodations, so she is sharing our suite.”

  (I knew it was wrong to tell a lie, but in truth, there certainly was a problem with the young lady’s accommodations—she would have been incarcerated in the ship’s hospital.)

  Tiny Mr. Beaumont mumbled something, mostly in French, while his wife gazed skeptically at Yara. Rather than making any sort of greeting, she asked, “What kind of stones are those?”

  Yara ran a graceful finger over her necklace and replied, “Brazilian Marble.”

  Maxie Beaumont’s head popped up from a fold of chins, and her eyes grew wide. “Marble, you say?” she began, but her attention was caught by the approach of Mathew Farquhar and his wife.

  To both my surprise and discomfort, the couple sat at our table. Each of them spoke quick words of greetings, and I introduced them to Yara. (Should I mention that I had to give Lucy a little kick under the table because she was staring strangely at Mathew and his wife?)

  Our meal was excellent, although the conversation was almost painful. Maxie overcame her coldness toward Yara and proceeded to tell the story of the Tatiana’s sinking.

  This caused our new friend undue distress that seemed to please Mrs. Beaumont.

  The countess made nervous eye contact with me several times. Her expression seemed a plea for me not to mention seeing her earlier in the day. Or perhaps that was just what I made of the pained looked.

  Mathew, who had no idea what Lucy and I were aware of regarding him, made several attempts to keep a steady flow of conversation. It wasn’t until the mention of the Emerson brothers that he succeeded.

  “I met one of the chaps on our little privileged hall; Michael Emerson. Nice enough fellow, a sort of nervous disposition.”

  Maxie retorted, “I gather there is something wrong with that brother of his; keeps him locked up in that room.”

  “Taking him to a farm. Sounds a little odd to me. I rather have the notion that his brother was in the looney bin,” said Mathew.

  “What is looney bin?” asked the countess.

  We all looked to each other, and Lucy, who seemed to know the definition of every expression, answered, “An asylum.”

  The countess pouted and replied, “How awful for him.”

  “Michael said life on the farm will be good for him; they have horses…”

  Speaking in a mixture of French and English, Mr. Beaumont made some sort of boisterous remark that annoyed his wife.

  “I don’t love horses! People say they are majestic; well, I don’t see it,” snapped Maxie.

  Her husband sputtered out another sentence that I couldn’t understand, yet everyone else at the table chuckled.

  “Only when they win!” exclaimed Maxie.

  Those around me laughed once more, perplexed, and I nodded my chin and smiled.

  “My little pug boy on the tracks; he loved his horses,” Maxie said as she gazed at her husband rather affectionately.

  I thought this to be strange term of endearment, and the expression on my face must have been telling. Lucy leaned toward me and whispered, “A pug boy is what they call jockeys while they are in training.”

  I felt my mouth gape a bit. Of course, Jerome Beaumont had been a jockey. I could imagine him in the colorful outfits they wear, with a whip in one hand and goggles in the other.

  Jovially, Mr. Beaumont replied to his wife’s comment. Again, I understood nothing the man said.

  As the rest of the table made polite chuckles, Mrs. Beaumont replied with great mirth, “Oh, no, I lost more money than I won when I placed bets on you.”

  Chapter Five

  It was now our fourth day at sea, and we were past the halfway point. Yara slept in, and Lucy and I took a quick breakfast at the little morning café.

  Afterward, we found a quiet spot in a sumptuously decorated reading room. With notebooks in hand, we began whispering to each other.

  “We have an unfaithful husband of newly inherited wealth married to a penniless countess,” I said as I read through my notes.

  Lucy looked over hers and added, “With a sister in America.”

  “Yes. Then we have Mr. Hurst in second class; how does he know the countess?” I asked rhetorically.

  “We also have the Beaumonts,” Lucy replied.

  “And Mrs. Beaumont’s jewelry. We just need a cat burglar.”

  “One of the Emerson brothers…or Yara!” Lucy’s voice raised above a whisper.

  I thought of my jewelry hidden under the bed and hoped that Yara wasn’t a jewel thief. “She would make a good red herring.”

  Lucy nodded and scribbled her thoughts down in her notebook. “What will you call this book?”

  “Deception at Sea,” I replied melodramatically.

  “Oh, that’s brilliant. I’m so excited.”

  I smiled and went on, “We have to give reasons for everyone to be aboard the ship. We know the countess is off to America to see her sister. The Emersons to go to a farm. Yara is following her fiancé. Why were the Beaumonts in France?”

  “They were there for the horse races,” replied Lucy.

  “Oh, how do you know that?” I asked, pu
zzled.

  “Mr. Beaumont mentioned it,” Lucy replied, just as puzzled as I.

  “I cannot understand a word that man says,” I was forced to admit.

  Lucy chuckled and scribbled down another note.

  I cleared my thoughts and then said, “I just need to come up with a clever way for the thief to steal Mrs. Beaumont’s jewels.”

  We sat in silence as we pondered my dilemma.

  By luncheon, Mrs. Beaumont’s jewelry was still quite safe. The spark of literary genius had not yet struck. Yara joined us, and we had a pleasant meal in the cheery little café. We were just about to leave when we encountered Michael Emerson.

  “Ladies,” he said with that nervous smile of his.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Emerson,” I replied. I then introduced him to Yara, and his eyes went straight to the patterned linoleum floor beneath us. When he looked up, his smile was rather pained. It dawned on me that I had never met a man so awkward among women.

  “You and your brother really must join us for dinner; we have but two more evenings until we arrive,” remarked Lucy.

  “Two evenings, pity. I hadn’t read the post yet, but I had hoped we’d travel faster.”

  Lucy repeated the announcement she had read earlier. “The seas have been rough; apparently, we are soon to hit a storm that will slow us down.”

  “Still, six days isn’t bad. My last trip took seven,” I remarked, noticing how uncomfortable Michael appeared.

  “Yes, of course,” he said, and then we made our polite farewells to one another.

  We walked Yara to the ballroom where the orchestra rehearsed, and left her to visit Francisco.

  Passing through a seemingly endless corridor, we came to one of the first-class stairways and found none other than Mrs. Beaumont arguing with a well-tailored fellow. A placid steward played referee.

  “You, my dear sir, are a card sharp.” said Maxie, as she pointed a chubby, jeweled, finger in the face of the angry gentleman before her.

  With a crisp, distinctive German accent, the man replied, “I am a professional gambler, it is you who are a cheat!”

  “Do you know who you are speaking to?” Mrs. Beaumont replied, aghast.