Set For Murder (Showbiz Is Murder Book 1)

by Jolie Beaumont

  “Witnesses, eh?” said Dr. Wallace.

  “The word of three is better than the word of one,” Travers replied, as he went over to the safe. He had already inspected the door—there were no signs of someone trying to force it open—and since the safe and its contents had already been checked for fingerprints he could do his inventory check without fear of destroying evidence. After he placed a pile of jewelry boxes and pouches on the writing table, he took out a piece of paper from his pocket and a pen.

  “If you would open the boxes one by one, Dr. Wallace, and show both of us the contents, I’ll make a note by the appropriate description on this insurance list.”

  The work went quickly. Fortunately, the duchess hadn’t brought along all her jewels. Yet there was one very important item missing: the Tarrington pearls.

  Travers checked the safe a second time. He then had the ship’s detective and the physician look inside. Both men agreed the safe was empty.

  “Shall we check the boxes again?” asked Dr. Wallace.

  “You bet,” said Rogers. Remembering he wasn’t in charge, he glanced over at Travers, who nodded his assent.

  The physician reopened each box and pouch and checked its contents a second time. “They do seem to be gone,” he said, when he had come to the last box.

  “Unless ...” said Rogers.

  Inspector Travers followed the detective’s gaze. “We’ve checked under the bed already, for a sleeping draught packet. We didn’t find it, or any pearls.”

  “I was thinking to check under the pillows.”

  They looked under the pillows. There was nothing there. Then they removed the pillows from their cases. A blue velvet pouch fell out from one of the cases.

  “Strange,” said the physician.

  “Nothing is strange when it comes to dames and jewels,” said Rogers.

  Inspector Travers picked up the pouch and looked inside. He pulled out a man’s handkerchief. In the corner was a monogram: HAM.

  “That’s convenient,” said Dr. Wallace.

  “Too convenient, if you ask me,” said Rogers, giving the handkerchief a suspicious once-over.

  Travers didn’t disagree.

  CHAPTER 7

  AFTER THE JEWELS had been returned to the safe and the cabin locked and sealed, Inspector Travers gave his instructions to Rogers. The ship’s detective might not be helpful in a murder investigation that needed a certain amount of finesse, but Rogers knew every nook and cranny of the large ship like the back of his hand. His predilection for gambling with the crew—and losing as often as he won—meant he was also on good terms with most of them, knew their characters, and could engage their loyal assistance. Although Travers’s instinct was telling him this wasn’t an “outside” job, he didn’t want to overlook any reasonable possibility—and that included the possibility that the pearls had been hidden in the second or third class decks. A stickier possibility was that a crew member was involved, but that was Rogers’s problem.

  “Don’t worry, Chief,” Rogers said cheerily. “The honest crew members—and I‘m happy to say that’s most of them—don’t tolerate the dishonest ones any more than you would. If any of them saw or heard something fishy, they’ll let me know.”

  Travers wanted to personally question the steward who had been on duty in Corridor B earlier in the evening, and so he went immediately to the stewards’ pantry at the end of the corridor. The steward, whose name was Thomas and who informed the inspector that he had once been a jockey but had taken a bad fall, which was why he walked with a limp, was scared stiff. This was his first voyage working on a first class deck; before he had attended to second class passengers. He had wanted to make good, he told Inspector Travers, and now this murder had happened—and it had happened during his shift!

  “I won’t lose my job, Inspector, will I?” the steward pleaded.

  Travers could offer the man no guarantee, but he did try to calm Thomas down by asking the steward how he spent the hours before the passengers left for the dining room for the evening meal.

  “My bells were ringing nonstop,” Thomas explained. “I ran up and down the corridor fetching extra soap and towels for the ladies and gentlemen who were dressing for dinner. Then there was the gentleman in Cabin 11 who lost a shirt stud and asked me to help search for it.”

  Travers knew he was referring to Cecil Arden.

  “The sickly lady in Cabin 7 requested a fresh pot of tea. She’s suffering from seasickness, I suppose, poor thing.”

  That would be Lady Margaret.

  “The companion to Mrs. Hardwick requested another pillow be brought to Cabin 8 before Mrs. Hardwick retired for the evening.”

  “Why do you know Mrs. Hardwick’s name and not the others?” asked Travers.

  “I believe every steward on this corridor knows of Mrs. Hardwick of Philadelphia, sir.”

  Travers could believe it.

  There were perhaps other passengers moving about the corridor, but a man didn’t have eyes in the back of his head, nor could he see through cabin walls, Thomas explained. Therefore, someone might have approached the duchess’s cabin, Cabin 9, when he was busy elsewhere. But again, maybe they didn’t.

  “What about during dinner? It must have been quieter then.”

  “It was,” Thomas agreed. “The sickly lady remained in her cabin and requested a dinner tray. Oh, and the countess with the funny name—“

  “Yes?”

  “The lamp by her bed wasn’t working, and she asked me to fix it, very polite like. It just needed a new bulb. I got it working in a jiff.”

  “About what time was that?”

  Thomas glanced over at the small clock that hung in the pantry. “A bit after ten, I’d say. I’d just poured myself a cup of tea, when she rang.”

  Travers mulled over this information as he made his way to the bar. Lady Margaret had been in the corridor all night. Thus, she had ample opportunities to enter the duchess’s cabin. Countess Scharwenka had sat at his table at dinner, so he could account for her movements between eight and about nine-thirty. He hadn’t seen her in the ballroom afterward, during the performance. Assuming she had returned immediately to her cabin, she would have had about ninety minutes to enter the duchess’s cabin, murder the woman and steal the pearls. But if she had, in fact, murdered the duchess, why would she call attention to her presence in the corridor during the crucial period of time? Was it because her announcing her presence in the corridor to the steward was supposed to establish her alibi—she had been reading and was unaware of the murder that had taken place just a few doors down?

  He stopped to make a note in his ever-present notebook. Tomorrow, he would need to question them all about their movements between eight and eleven o’clock. Then he continued on to the bar, which was nearly empty at that late hour. As he had hoped, Sir William and Lady Lambton-Keene were seated at one of the tables. Freddie was also there, his dark hair still immaculately brushed, but his collar dangerously close to being crumpled.

  “Sit down, Inspector,” said Sir William. He was no longer a young man, and tonight his face looked as gray as his military-style cropped hair and the thin mustache that looked more like an afterthought than a mark of distinction. “My wife has told me the dreadful news. We are still trying to comprehend it.”

  Travers sat down. He felt as weary as the others looked. But he had been raised by the rules of the old school by his mother, who was widowed when Travers was only nine. Her no-nonsense approach to life—a credo where duty was duty, and never mind that life was sometimes difficult and often unfair—had gotten him through the hell of trench warfare during the Great War. In comparison to that, forcing his mind to work at this late hour was child’s play.

  He therefore said with more energy than he felt, “I shall have to ask questions of many of the ship’s passengers. I’ll also need to take fingerprints, to compare with those we’ve found in the duchess’s cabin.”

  Sir William nodded his head. “We shan’t give you a
ny trouble. Do ours first, if it will help to set an example.” He then added, “Just find who did this terrible deed, Inspector. Find him.”

  Travers returned the gaze of Sir William. “Is there something that makes you assume the murderer was a man, sir?”

  “Running ahead of the hounds, am I?”

  “Not if you know something.”

  Sir William shut his eyes. He clenched his hand into a tight fist and slammed it down on the table. “I was playing bridge—bridge!—when that poor woman was being ... I wish to God I did know something.”

  “Take it easy, Pater,” said Freddie. “It won’t help anyone if you get another one of your headaches.”

  Sir William wearily nodded his head. He then reached for his whiskey and finished it off.

  “By the way, Sir William,” said Travers, “what do you take for your headaches?”

  It was Lady Lambton-Keene who answered. “We get the sachets at the chemist’s. It’s an ordinary preparation.”

  “Did the Duchess of Tarrington use the same headache powder?”

  “She had her own medicines. I believe she preferred aspirin tablets to a powder.”

  Inspector Travers did recall seeing an unopened aspirin bottle in the medicine cabinet. Whatever had caused the duchess’s drowsiness, it hadn’t been due to an overdose of her own aspirin. Not that she seemed the type to take her own life. Still, there was too much about her that he didn’t know.

  “It would help me to have a complete picture, before I question the others,” he therefore said. “I have a good notion of her activity after she boarded this ship. But may I ask what the purpose was of your trip to the United States?”

  Sir William glanced over at his son. “Frederick joined the bank after he came down from Oxford. These aren’t easy times to start a career, but I think he will be a credit to the family.”

  “Pater, he doesn’t want to know about me,” said Freddie. The young man turned to Inspector Travers. “My father wanted to meet with some banking people in New York. He thought it would be a good idea for me to meet them as well. One never knows when a personal connection will come in handy.”

  “So you spent most of your time in New York City?”

  Freddie stifled a small smile.

  “We were mostly in the country, in the Saratoga area, for the last of the summer season,” said Sir William. “Freddie played in one of the polo matches, met some of the young people, chaps like him who are just starting their careers. There was also some horse racing in the area.”

  “The political situation in Germany was discussed during cocktails at the country club,” said Lady Lambton-Keene.

  “I see,” replied Inspector Travers. “And was the duchess interested in the political situation in Germany?”

  Lady Lambton-Keene laughed. “No, she was not, and neither was I. That’s why we wouldn’t let the men spoil our dinners with their gloomy talk.”

  “Did the duchess like horse racing?”

  “If that’s your polite way of asking if the duchess had a gambling problem, Inspector, the answer is no. We did spend a little time at the polo grounds and the race course. But we were mostly interested in the aerodrome. Flying is a hobby of mine. And since the flying instructor was a rather good-looking young man, the duchess developed an interest in airplanes too.”

  Then, remembering the serious matter that had brought them to the bar at this late hour, Lady Lambton-Keene assumed a more sedate expression. “We all thought it would be good for both Gerald and Honey to have a short break from each other. That’s why we asked Honey to come along with us to the States.”

  Inspector Travers turned his attention back to Sir William. “I will ask you the same question I asked Lady Lambton-Keene earlier. Did the Duchess of Tarrington say anything to you about anyone on the ship, anything about being annoyed by the presence of someone—perhaps even frightened?”

  Sir William shook his head. “I don’t believe I was ever with the duchess when my wife wasn’t present. And we haven’t been on this ship for very long, have we?”

  “That’s what I was saying to my husband, Inspector, before you joined us. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for the murderer to strike right before we docked at Southampton? So he—or she, if you like—could slip off the boat disguised as a customs official, or something like that, before the body was found?”

  “It’s early days to go into the whys and wherefores, my lady,” replied Inspector Travers. “If I had to make a guess, I’d say the murderer saw his chance and took it, rather than take a chance on another opportunity presenting itself.”

  Sir William yawned, despite his efforts to remain alert. “Is there anything else, Inspector?”

  “Not for tonight. But you will be asked for your fingerprints tomorrow.”

  Sir William stood up, as did Lady Lambton-Keene. “Coming, Freddie?” she asked.

  “There was that man on the dance floor,” said Freddie. “She spoke to him while we were dancing the tango.”

  “Yes, I did see that,” said Inspector Travers. “Did she say anything to you about him?”

  “No. But afterward, she seemed preoccupied. Her mind wasn’t on the dance. You can always tell with the tango.” Freddie also stood up. “Of course, it might not have meant anything. But I did think you ought to know.”

  Inspector Travers escorted the family to the door of the bar. Before he let them go, he asked one more question. “About Lady Margaret, I understand she didn’t like her stepmother very much.”

  He could feel the gaze of Lady Lambton-Keene go icy cold. “My niece is a Holdendale, Inspector Travers. Holdendales do not go around sticking steak knives into people they dislike.”

  Lady Lambton-Keene swept out of the room, the very picture of righteous indignation. Sir William followed.

  Freddie stopped and turned back to Inspector Travers. “Of course, we were all wondering about Margaret. But there are two things against her.”

  Inspector Travers made a gesture for the young man to continue.

  “For one, if you’d ever seen Margaret shoot a gun or on the archery range, you’d know that she couldn’t possibly murder anyone. The chances of her aiming for someone’s heart and hitting the target are practically nil.”

  Inspector Travers was starting to dislike the young man and his too flippant manner. It was a feeling he often got—and just as often had to squelch—when working on a case that brought him into contact with the younger members of the rich and privileged class. Perhaps he was just being overly sensitive about his own working class roots, but Travers always felt like he was being sized up—his accent that still bore traces of his old Manchester neighborhood, his clothes that were bought off the rack, his lack of what the gentry used to call “polish”—and coming up short.

  “And the second reason?” he asked, keeping his voice blandly professional.

  “No motive,” the young man said with a shrug. “The estate is entailed. If the Duke of Tarrington dies without siring a male child, Margaret won’t inherit.”

  “Will you by any chance inherit, Mr. Lambton-Keene?”

  “Not I. But you will probably be interested to know that the next in line to the Tarrington title and fortune does happen to be on board this ship.”

  “And who might that be?”

  Sir William had reappeared in the doorway. “Your mother is waiting for you, Freddie.”

  “Sorry, Pater.” Freddie then nodded his head in the direction of Inspector Travers, as he walked out the door. “The inspector was asking me about Cecil Arden.”

  Travers considered this parting piece of news with interest, especially since there was no reason to think the information wasn’t correct. Tomorrow, he would be sending wireless messages to both London and New York, requesting information about several of the passengers on board. If Freddie Lambton-Keene was trying to steer him astray, the young banker would soon be found out.

  No, the real question was why the young man decided to volunteer infor
mation that his parents had decided to withhold.

  “I thought you might come this way.”

  Travers turned in the direction of the voice. It was too dark on deck to see who had spoken.

  He had decided to get some air, before retiring to his cabin. Since it was already after two in the morning, he had expected to find the deck empty. Instead, against the backdrop of the rumble of the still-choppy waves, he had heard the distinct clink of two shuffleboard pucks meeting in the fog-chilled night. This was followed by a swooshing sound, which Travers assumed was another puck traveling across the shuffleboard court’s wood floor. Curious about the identity of this late-night player, he had walked in the direction of the sounds, until the dark mass of a man came into view.

  “You must know me better than I know myself, then,” replied Travers. “I thought I was on my way to bed, when I decided to come out here. Are you always up so late, Mr. Baird? It is Mr. Baird, isn’t it?”

  Jeffrey Baird sent another puck flying across the court. It knocked off the puck that had been sitting in the “8” square.

  “I saw you rush off with the chief steward, and I followed,” said Baird. “At a respectful distance, of course.”

  “Are you always so observant, and curious?”

  “I wouldn’t last long in my job if I wasn’t.”

  “By any chance did you observe who killed the duchess?”

  “Unfortunately, she wasn’t really my type. If the opportunity had arisen, I’m not saying I wouldn’t have taken it. But, no, I didn’t follow her about the ship like a sick puppy. I therefore arrived on the scene right after you did. Care for a turn?”

  Travers refused the offer of the shuffleboard stick. “From what I gather, after your game of tennis she retired to her cabin and didn’t leave it—until the ship’s physician had her body removed.”

  “Then your job should be easy. Interview the steward on duty in the pantry at the end of the corridor and find out who went into her cabin.”

  “And what if the night steward didn’t see anyone go into the duchess’s cabin?”