Murder Most Posh: A Mrs. Xavier Stayton Mystery

by Robert Colton

  Softly, I asked, “What does it explain, Mr. Farquhar?”

  He looked in my direction, but he didn’t seem to see me as he replied, “She had been so cold, so distant.”

  While he was still very far away, I picked up the suicide letter from the nearby table, and the torn envelope. I only gave the letter to Gerald.

  In an instant, he exclaimed, “This isn’t her handwriting.”

  Mathew looked toward the man, quite numb, and responded, “No, it isn’t.”

  The captain inquired, “You knew this? You recognized the fact and didn’t mention it to Mr. Pace?”

  Mathew simply nodded. I flashed the envelope into the air, and pointed at the lettering. “This bears the Red Star Line’s ensign; however, the parchment used for the letter is different. Can you explain this, Mr. Farquhar?”

  He shook his head like a child refusing to admit he’d broken a porcelain figurine.

  I stepped beside him and turned to face Lucy, Gerald, the purser, and the captain. “I suspect that Mr. Farquhar found the suicide note, and sealed it in the envelope in a panic when he realized it wasn’t his wife’s handwriting.”

  The distraught man craned his neck to look up to me. “Yes,” he said, almost under his breath.

  As I watched Lucy reach into her purse for her notebook, I went on, “Your wife was furious with you after the embarrassing incident in the ballroom. Returning to your room, you two had a nasty row, then you stormed off. Hours later, you returned. Your wife was missing, but the letter was lying on the table under the lit lamp. You read it and knew it wasn’t actually hers.”

  I pointed at the chair he sat in. “You required a witness who would agree to your story of returning to the cabin to find her gone, and this note in her place. After folding the letter and placing it in a fresh envelope from the writing desk, you wedged the chair under the door handle. You then passed through the door of the promenade into ours, and then through to the Emersons’ so that you could make it appear the cabin was locked from within.”

  “But why?” asked Gerald.

  “He planned on breaking out the window of the promenade, to make it look as if she had flung herself from the ship.”

  Mathew let out a heavy sigh.

  “Why didn’t you, then?” asked Mr. Pace, spellbound by the unfolding story.

  I replied, “Because he saw that our cabin was lit, and we might still be awake; we might have heard the glass breaking.” I rested my hand on the man’s shoulder and added, “I had fallen asleep on the divan without switching off the lamp.”

  The captain asked, “This is all true, Mr. Farquhar?”

  In a low voice, he responded, “It is. I don’t know what happened to my wife, or who wrote that note.”

  I spoke before anyone else might. I felt it was my prerogative as the sleuth, “Perhaps the culprit is Ms. Simone Wainwright?”

  The haggard man slumped even deeper into his chair. “How do you know about her?”

  “Even before her brazen stunt in the ballroom, the two of you had been witnessed together,” I informed him.

  Mathew shrugged. “I don’t know what came over her. We had been so discreet, and then she appeared on the dance floor. I felt sick, as if I were having a hallucination. The two of them, face-to-face…” He gave a strange laugh and finished, “I don’t know why she did it. I think she went mad.”

  The captain asked, “Have you seen Ms. Wainwright since the incident?”

  Mathew closed his eyes and shook his head.

  “She is now missing, and there appears to have been a struggle in her cabin,” said the captain, gravely.

  This information caused Mathew to rise to his feet. “You don’t think…”

  Gerald sternly suggested, “He’s hiding her.”

  Mathew forced an ugly laugh. “Why would I do that?”

  “If we could just take a quick look around the rooms?” said the captain, with polite authority.

  “Suit yourselves,” Mathew replied offhandedly.

  The captain gestured for Mr. Hurst to remain where he was, while the purser opened one of the two bedroom doors. I noticed that the couple’s luggage was stacked in the unused room.

  My stomach soured, and my eyes went blurry for a moment. It took me a second before I found my voice and said, “Mr. Farquhar, that steam trunk that was delivered to my cabin. I recall you arguing with the porter that it wasn’t yours.”

  Mathew’s eyes narrowed, and he glanced toward the large piece of luggage. “I don’t recall seeing it before. It doesn’t match Dominika’s other cases.”

  The purser recalled my words from the time he came to inspect the odd object. He lifted the smaller cases off of the steam trunk and opened it.

  As Mr. Pace leapt back, gasping from shock, I rushed forward. Just before poor Lucy fainted, I caught sight of Countess Dominika Orlov’s crumpled body.

  As predicted, the Olivia encountered a mighty storm at tea time. Lucy and I sat in dreadful silence, nibbling on buttered toast in a nearly deserted parlor as we watched the rain beat against the windows.

  The ghastly sight of the countess’s body remained in my mind’s eye. She had been fully dressed in an evening gown, high heels, and a little beaded headband with a black feather. The sash of a bathrobe had been spun around her neck; it appeared that she had been strangled.

  At last, my dear friend said, “I can’t fathom what has happened.”

  I sipped at my tepid tea before telling her, “We must review the facts. The countess is penniless and married Mathew Farquhar for his money. Mr. Farquhar grew up poor before inheriting his wealth. Once the countess began giving her affections to Mr. Hurst, Mr. Farquhar found a lover more suited to the social class he came from.”

  Lucy nodded as she jotted down these points in her notebook.

  I went on, “The countess planned on leaving her husband and starting a new life in America with Gerald Hurst; that is, according to him.”

  Lucy’s wide eyes raised from her notebook. “Do you think that he is lying?”

  “I have no reason to believe so. In fact, I’d dare to guess he’s recently spent time in the States.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Lucy.

  “I’m sure you’ve noticed the same clues I have,” I suggested.

  “All the American slang he’s used!” she exclaimed.

  “Indeed,” I agreed.

  “Go on,” said Lucy, tapping her pencil to the paper.

  “Ms. Simone Wainwright, for reasons unknown to us, forgoes discretion and causes a scene in the ballroom. Afterward, it would seem that just before Mr. Farquhar left his cabin, he killed his wife and placed her body in the empty chest to stage her suicide, or he departed from the cabin, and she was killed by persons unknown, who then left the phony letter and put the body in the steam trunk.”

  “Possibly Ms. Wainwright?” asked Lucy.

  “Perhaps; and now she herself is missing, and she has been left with a ramshackle room.” I paused and then added, “But it wasn’t, actually.”

  Lucy dropped her pencil. “It wasn’t?”

  “No, it was left to appear so. You saw how small the room was, yet nothing was disturbed on the dressing table. Ms. Wainwright disheveled the room herself, and afterward, she sat down at the dressing table, touched up her lipstick and brushed her hair, placing all the items neatly on the table out of habit.”

  Lucy smiled and nodded her chin, very impressed with my deductions. “Why?”

  “That is our true mystery,” I responded.

  Before we could ponder more, Maxie Beaumont rushed into the open parlor. Her bulk wasn’t easily controlled when she attempted to come to a halt.

  “Mrs. Stayton, Ms. Wallace, there you are! Something dreadful has happened to that Brazilian friend of yours,” she exclaimed.

  She rushed from the room, and we followed her back to the little hallway connecting our berths. The sound of a man crying could be heard from the open door of the Emersons’ cabin as we rushe
d past.

  Within our own cabin, we found Yara reclined on the divan, attended by the ship’s doctor. Mr. Pace was standing beside them.

  “What has happened?” I demanded.

  In a low tone, Mr. Pace replied, “Mr. Emerson, Rory Emerson, that is…attacked Ms. Yara.”

  Still flushed, the woman’s glassy eyes met mine. The doctor quickly informed me that he’d given her a sedative and that she was unharmed, just frightened.

  Michael Emerson edged inside our cabin, stepped behind me, and said with his Irish brogue, “I can explain this.”

  I spun around and replied, “Then do so, Mr. Emerson.”

  With all eyes on him, his freckled face reddened. “You see, my brother has a…fetish…a foot fetish.”

  I felt my own face growing red. Looking to Lucy, I could see that she appeared as distressed as she had been on our first day at sea.

  Michael pointed toward Yara, or rather to her feet, which were clad in beach sandals. As he stuttered, I recalled how he had a habit of glancing down to the floor when we encountered him, and his brother had done the same the single time we had met. Neither had been looking at the floor. Michael had been inspecting our footwear, and Rory had been attempting to catch glimpses, I suspect, preferably without footwear.

  “The lad can’t control himself; when he sees women’s toes, he loses all control…”

  Lucy gasped as she looked down to the sensible patented black leather shoes that she wore.

  Michael went on, “It isn’t his fault; when he was young, he fell through an iced-over pond, and after he was revived, well, he just never grew up. My parents sent him off to an asylum…after…”

  “After what?” demanded Maxie, as she stepped uncomfortably close to the nervous fellow.

  “Rory loses his temper, when his feelings are hurt; he doesn’t understand…he’s like a child…”

  “He’s attacked other women, hasn’t he?” Maxie’s voice was cold and stern. “You brought a dangerous man aboard this ship, and set him loose on us women without any warning.”

  “No!” Michael protested and then wavered, “Yes, but I kept him in the room…”

  Mr. Pace asked, “Are you saying that your brother has a history of violence?”

  Michael became most overwhelmed, and I thought he might break down crying as he responded, “Yes, yes, he does.”

  Maxie pointed a thick sausage-like finger toward the cabin between ours and hers. “It was Rory who killed the poor countess.” Her eyes grew wide, and she exclaimed, “And you hid the body and left the suicide note!”

  Michael Emerson sobbed out, “No, no—that isn’t what happened at all.”

  The ship’s master appeared in the doorway and said in a calm and authoritative tone, “Then tell us what did happen.”

  Michael took a very long and deep breath. “I sleep in the parlor, on the davenport, so that Rory cannae make trouble. I heard a wee bit of the fighting that everyone else heard, that was all. But later, something woke me, a noise on the deck out there. By the time I got up, looked about, tweren’t nothin’ to see.”

  I spoke just a breath before the captain could. “Are you saying someone passed through your balcony?”

  Michael reluctantly shrugged. “I just don’t know, but I did hear something, and I swear to the Almighty, Rory was sleeping the whole night, in his room.”

  Chapter Seven

  The ship rocked from side to side as the storm churned the sea. Lucy was forced to take to bed. Yara fared little better as the sedative the doctor had given her left her quite drowsy.

  I sat on the divan with my notebook in hand and stared toward the door to our promenade. We had too many suspects; this would never do in a brilliant whodunit.

  The unhappily married man was the prime culprit. Handsome and wealthy, but ill-bred, with a hussy on the side to boot—yes, this described Mathew Farquhar. Where is the hussy? I asked myself.

  Then we had the Emerson brothers. Poor Michael, he was only looking out for his brother. No wonder he’d booked the parlor suite for them; he couldn’t keep his brother cooped up in a single room day after day at sea.

  I thought about Rory’s childlike expression, and how he had peeked down at my feet. What violence might he be capable of?

  I jotted down the question on my notepad, but it was quickly followed by another: How could he get into her cabin?

  I rose from the divan and stepped into the private promenade. To my left was the Emersons’ cabin, to my right, Mathew and the countess’s. The connecting door to the Emersons’ had been unlocked, but I had thought the crewman with a passkey had to unlock the door connecting our balcony to allow Mathew inside his cabin.

  Another question struck me, and I crossed through our cabin and entered the hallway. A rather stocky fellow stood next to the door of Mr. Farquhar’s suite, as he had been politely confined to his rooms. I passed the curious guard and tapped at the Beaumonts’ door.

  Maxie bellowed for her husband to answer. He did so, and I suspect he greeted me in French as he straightened his thick glasses. The open velvet robe that he wore allowed me to see that he was nearly dressed for dinner; quite the dandy, all that was missing was his jacket.

  “Who is it now, Jerome? Has someone else been molested? That Brazilian girl never should have been allowed in first class.”

  What her husband said in response, I haven’t a clue other than his words ended with Madame Stayton.

  Maxie’s bulk swung from behind a partially closed door, and she gave me quite the embarrassed smile. “Oh, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded; your friend is lovely, just lovely.”

  I felt my eyes narrow as my tongue thoroughly ignored my brain and said, “And so is her jewelry.”

  One of Maxie’s satin-gloved hands reached up to strum the colorful Brazilian marble beads around her ample neck. “Aren’t they unique? Well, it didn’t take a mentalist to surmise the poor child needed cash. I bought them from her. No one in Quebec will have seen anything like these before,” she said triumphantly, her shame quickly gone.

  “I’m sure.” Pointing toward the door that led out to the promenade, I asked, “May I test a theory, Mrs. Beaumont?”

  Utterly perplexed, she responded, “Why, please,” and with a degree of condescension, she added, “I’ve never seen a sleuth at work.”

  Briskly, I paced past the Beaumonts, doing my best to ignore the familiar surroundings, and entered the private balcony. Hesitantly, I went to the door separating this promenade from the countess’s. I placed my hand on the door handle, and it turned. This meant that all of the doors that connected the private promenades had been unlocked. I can’t say that I was any less confused.

  ***

  At my summons, Gerald Hurst met me in the purser’s office. Dear Mr. Pace appeared too worn down to resist my insistent request.

  Without formal greeting, Mr. Hurst exclaimed, “I don’t believe what I’ve been told; a deranged Irishman might have killed Dominika!”

  “It is possible, but the theory leaves many questions unanswered.” I looked him in the eye and said, “I believe that you lied to me before. Understand me, Mr. Hurst, when I say this: only the truth will bring your beloved countess justice.”

  The man’s expression darkened. “Yes, Mrs. Stayton, of course you are right…but what lie did I tell you?”

  “When I asked you how the countess managed to make her way into the second-class promenade, you told me that Dominika bribed a member of the ship’s crew, but that wasn’t true, was it?”

  Gerald glanced to Mr. Pace, and then back to me. “Honest to God, it was the truth. How else could she have?”

  “With a master key,” I retorted, watching the man’s eyes.

  Mr. Pace’s voice cracked as he cried out, “Where did she obtain a passkey?”

  Gerald shrugged his shoulders. “How could she get her hands on one of those?”

  “You’ve spent a good amount of time in the States, haven’t you, Mr. Hurst?” I ask
ed.

  “I lived there for a few years, what of it?” he asked, cautiously.

  “This isn’t your first trip aboard the Olivia, is it?”

  Gerald’s eyes narrowed, and he replied, “Nor is it yours, Mrs. Stayton.”

  I looked to Mr. Pace. “Would you know if a master key went missing?”

  Mr. Pace nodded. “I say, a maid claims to have lost her keys, just a few weeks ago, but she was stealing from the cabins. Otherwise…”

  Mr. Hurst let out a sly chuckle. “A few weeks ago, I was in Paris. I haven’t been aboard this ship in six months.”

  I produced my most innocent smile and responded, “The question had to be asked.”

  Gerald pointed at me. “I appreciate your efforts, even if you did just accuse me of swiping a key. No one else on this tub seems to care about what happened to Dominika.”

  Before Mr. Pace could argue with Mr. Hurst, I asked, “Did the countess ever make mention of her husband being violent?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed, and he considered his answer. “The term she used was volatile.”

  “I have but one last question: do you have an address for the countess’s sister?”

  Gerald scratched his chin. “No, come to think of it, I don’t. I know that Alisa is staying in Manhattan, but nothing more.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Hurst,” I replied.

  His eyes lit up. “Was that all helpful?”

  “Very,” I replied, and gave him a smile that indicated our conversation was concluded.

  Reluctantly, Gerald left the purser’s office. I looked Mr. Pace in the eyes and told him, “I must speak to Mr. Farquhar.”

  “Every detail, Mr. Farquhar; nothing but the truth will solve this most confounding puzzle,” I told the man sternly.

  He sat rigidly on the divan, and nodded his head glumly.

  “For reasons unknown to you, your lover showed herself to your wife, and Dominika did not believe this to be a chance encounter. You returned to your room and fought, denying the truth, but she wouldn’t have it, and you stormed out of your room—yes?”