Four Red Diamonds (A Lady Marmalade Mystery Short Story Collection Book 1)

by Jason Blacker

  Lewis shook his head.

  “Twenty-five thousand pounds is not my entire fortune,” he said. “Yet because of the Major’s miserliness towards you and your mother, your situation could have been much improved. It makes my twenty-five thousand look like small change.”

  “I wasn’t that hard done by growing up with just my mother,” said Winnie, her German accent was beginning to show a little now that she was becoming upset.

  “I know a lower class woman when I see one,” said Lewis, “you can’t hide behind those curls and put on accent.”

  “Please,” said Lady Marmalade, “if you’ll allow me to do the questioning, this will likely be over quicker.”

  Captain Houghton and Ethel returned to the dining carriage, giggling. Winnie looked up at them. Then she looked at Lady Marmalade.

  “Something you might be interested in,” said Winnie before Ethel and Captain Houghton made their way to the table, “is that I overheard Ethel and the Captain talking about the Major.”

  “What did they say exactly?” asked Lady Marmalade.

  “Well, I overheard Ethel say that she wished her father would just give her the inheritance already. That she was tired of playing nice with him just to keep in his good books so that he didn’t cut her off.”

  “How much was the inheritance?” asked Lady Marmalade. “Did she say?”

  Winnie shook her head.

  “No, she didn’t say. But then I heard the Captain tell her that there were ways to bump someone off and make it look like an accident. They both laughed at that. They thought it was quite funny. And when I walked by they quickly shut up.”

  “Is that exactly what he said?” asked Lady Marmalade. “That being ‘bump someone off’?”

  “Yes, he said ‘bump someone off’,” confirmed Ethel.

  Joseph stood up and brought another two chairs to the table. It was crowded now around this wooden table that was made to seat four.

  “So,” said Captain Houghton, “did we miss anything?”

  “Inspector Warrick in York has told us to give Lady Marmalade all the help she needs in solving this murder,” offered Joseph, sitting down again with them.

  “Right,” said Captain Houghton, smiling at everyone.

  “You seem all very cheery,” said Winnie at Captain Houghton, “considering there’s been a murder and there’s a murderer amongst us.”

  “Well, I am,” said Captain Houghton. “I find this all very exciting, and we have a real sleuth with us to help us find our whodunit.”

  “You might not be all that cheery, if she finds out you did it,” said Winnie.

  That wiped the smile off Captain Houghton’s face. He was all business now.

  “No, that wouldn’t make me all that happy. Though I’m not going to deny the fact that I’m not sorry he’s dead. You all knew him, however briefly. He was a horrid man.”

  “Have you figured out who did it then, Lady Marmalade?” asked Ethel.

  Lady Marmalade turned to look at her.

  “Yes,” she said, “I believe I have, but I’d like to ask some more questions first. If you don’t mind?”

  “Not at all,” said Ethel. “Like the Conductor said, we need to give you our full cooperation.”

  It was hard to tell if Ethel was being facetious and sarcastic, it sounded like she was, but there might also have been some legitimate honesty in her words too.

  “How much money will you inherit, Ms. Carpenter, now that your father is dead?” asked Lady Marmalade bluntly.

  Ethel raised an eyebrow at Lady Marmalade.

  “How do you know about my father’s estate?” Ethel asked.

  “You were overheard,” said Lady Marmalade.

  Ethel looked over at Winnie and frowned at her.

  “Nice going,” she said to Winnie.

  Winnie looked down at her lap.

  “Well?” asked Lady Marmalade again.

  Ethel looked at Lady Marmalade through sharpened glassy eyes. She blew her breath out at her hair in exasperation.

  “About a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, if everybody must know,” Ethel said angrily, “and that’s not all. There are also other assets and the estate.”

  “Not bloody likely,” said Lewis. “You’ll not be getting a penny of that until I get my twenty-five thousand pounds back first.”

  Ethel looked over at him coolly.

  “If you have the paperwork to prove it, you’ll get it back,” she said.

  That shut Lewis up. He nodded and the beginnings of a smile creased his cheeks.

  “We have also heard, Ms. Carpenter, that you were tired of playing nice with your father just so you could stay in his good books and not be kicked out of the will,” said Lady Marmalade.

  Ethel blew air from her mouth up towards her hair again. She was exasperated at the insinuations and the interrogation.

  “Yes, I am tired of it. You’ve all seen what a horrible man my father was. Is it any surprise that I wished him dead? Doesn’t mean I did it,” said Ethel.

  “But perhaps you did, Captain Houghton,” said Lady Marmalade.

  “Preposterous,” he said, “I did no such thing.”

  Captain Houghton stood up and started pacing up and down the dining carriage. When he got back toward them Lady Marmalade spoke to him.

  “We heard you say that you knew how to bump someone off.”

  He looked over at Winnie and Ethel and frowned. Ethel shook her head.

  “It wasn’t me,” Ethel said.

  “Ok, okay,” said Captain Houghton, “I said it. But we were joking. Ask Ethel? We weren’t serious. You all know what a belligerent bugger the Major was, and I had to work under his command for several years. Can you imagine?”

  “No, we weren’t serious,” said Ethel, “we were just joking around, trying to blow off some steam.”

  “And that’s just the thing,” said Lady Marmalade, “You were standing right over the Major when the lights came back on. Why were you standing over him like that?”

  Captain Houghton was drumming his fingers on the back of Joseph’s chair. He poured his free hand through his thin hair.

  “I was standing over him,” Captain Houghton stammered, “because I had dropped my knife and I was getting up to find it as soon as the lights came back on. We were lurching around in the train and I fell against him and leaned on him to balance myself. Anyway, that’s not my knife in his chest. I found mine on the floor.”

  “I know that,” said Lady Marmalade. “We’ve already determined that the knife used to murder Major Moss was Winnie’s.”

  Captain Houghton nodded.

  “Well, there you go,” said Captain Houghton, “she must have done it”

  “If only it were that easy,” said Lady Marmalade. “It is my opinion that the murderer took Winnie’s knife in the opportunity that the dark provided in order to kill Major Moss.”

  Captain Houghton looked glum.

  “Well, I didn’t do it,” he said.

  “You certainly weren’t happy with him at dinner. I recall you being very upset about the men you lost when you were under Major Moss’ authority,” said Lady Marmalade.

  Captain Houghton was tapping his fingers and now started to tap his right foot too. He looked like a nervous wreck. His forehead had a slight sheen to it in the light from the dining carriage.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, his eyes fluttering about in his sockets. “I carry the images of those men, their distorted, dead bodies with me every day. They haunt me. I had to leave the army because of it. It was horrible. To this day, I still have nightmares and I’ve developed a nervous condition, as you might tell.”

  He said the last bit about his nervous condition softly, self-consciously.

  “I wasn’t a good fit for war,” he continued, “I can’t stomach the violence and the death. The senselessness of it. I didn’t kill him, I’ll tell you that much.”

  Captain Houghton had lost any healthy glow to his skin. He looked pale, sickly
. He looked around nervously, almost with a pleading puppy-like expression on his face. His eyes rested on Evan. Evan was seated with his hands clasped in front of him on the table, his eyes cast downward at the table.

  “What about him,” said Captain Houghton pointing to Evan, “he threatened to kill the Major. I never did.”

  Lady Marmalade looked over at Evan.

  “Yes, Captain,” she said, “you have a good point. Mr. Cross, you did in fact threaten the Major’s life, didn’t you?”

  Evan Cross swallowed nervously and then looked up at Lady Marmalade very briefly. He looked back down at his hands on the table in their white gloves, took them off the table, and folded them into his lap.

  “I was upset,” said Evan, “I didn’t mean it.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to do better than that, Mr. Cross. You sounded very sincere to me,” said Lady Marmalade. “But what concerns me more was the aggressive way you were leaning in towards Major Moss when the lights came back on. You were practically falling into him, situated as you were between Ms. Smith and Ms. Carpenter.”

  Evan looked up sheepishly at Lady Marmalade.

  “I was just coming over to check on the lights on this side of the carriage,” Evan said, pointing towards the right side where lamps were positioned between the windows.

  “And just as I was crossing the table, we lurched and I fumbled to find something to stop me from falling,” he continued.

  “Convenient,” said Ethel, looking at Evan sideways.

  “You also wanted him dead,” said Winnie to Ethel, “I overheard you and Captain Houghton.”

  “I want to hear from Evan, please, ladies,” said Lady Marmalade. “Mr. Cross, you are right handed are you not?”

  Evan nodded.

  “Would you mind showing me your hands, please?” asked Lady Marmalade.

  Evan didn’t say anything and he kept his hands in his lap. Joseph looked at him.

  “Show her your hands, or I’ll make you,” he said with the authority of a seasoned Train Conductor.

  Evan slowly brought his hands up and placed them palms down on the table. They were covered in white gloves.

  “Can you turn them over, please?” asked Lady Marmalade.

  Slowly, Evan turned his hands over. On the tip of his thumb and index finger were small smudges of red. Likely blood.

  “How did you get that blood on your gloves?” asked Lady Marmalade.

  Evan shrugged, not looking at anyone in particular.

  “I guess it must have come from the steaks in the kitchen,” he said. “The cook asked for my help and I grabbed the plate they were on and gave them to him to cook. The juice or blood must have gotten onto my gloves then.”

  Lady Marmalade shook her head.

  “No, Mr. Cross, that’s not how it happened. You’ll have to do better than that,” she said. “I noticed your hands when you served me and again when you served the Major who was the last person at our table whom you served. Your gloves were not stained at that point.”

  Evan pushed himself away from the table and stood up. He walked over to the bar counter. He put his hands to his head and shook it. Then he turned around again.

  “Okay, the truth of the matter is this. I was going to check on the lights like I told you. The lights on the far side of the carriage. As I passed by, the train lurched and I stumbled by the table. My legs got snagged in either Ms. Smith’s or Ms. Carpenter’s chair legs and I felt myself falling onto the table. I reached out frantically and I think I landed with my hands on the Major so I used him to push off, but it wasn’t quite enough so I had to reach for the table to push off again, which is when the lights came on. The Major must have been stabbed before that, because I probably got the blood on my hands when I pushed away from him. I did feel something hard against his chest but I thought it was a pen in his shirt pocket or something like that.”

  Evan looked around at everyone.

  “You’ve got to believe me,” he said. “I didn’t come here to kill him. I came here to confront him. I’ve never met him before. I just wanted to ask him about my father.”

  Evan’s eyes misted up but he didn’t cry.

  “I should never have gotten this stupid job in the first place,” he said mostly to himself.

  He leaned against the bar, his face disheveled; the look of a broken man. His hair was a mess and he stared deeply at the floor as the train made its way towards York. It would be there in less than fifteen minutes.

  “That doesn’t sound like a likely story to me,” said Joseph, looking at Lady Marmalade.

  Lady Marmalade smiled at him and nodded sweetly.

  “I know,” she said, “it doesn’t sound like a likely story, or even a very good one. But it is the truth, however improbable it seems. And if it wasn’t for the real murderer who is here, Mr. Cross might end up being our best suspect.”

  Evan looked up at Lady Marmalade and gratitude was written all over his face. He smiled thinly. The best he could do under the circumstances.

  “Well, then who is it?” asked Joseph.

  “Our killer is Mr. Lewis Bryan,” said Lady Marmalade looking over at him.

  Lewis pushed away from the table and stood against the window, his face was red and sweat had started to bead upon his forehead.

  “This is preposterous,” he said. “Not once did I threaten to kill Major Moss.”

  “You didn’t have to,” said Lady Marmalade, “though you did tell him you wanted your money back ‘or else’.”

  “Or else I was going to sue him. That’s all I meant,” said Lewis.

  “This is how I see it,” said Lady Marmalade. “Twenty-five thousand pounds is a large sum of money…”

  “It’s actually very little for me,” protested Lewis, though he sounded unconvincing.

  “I don’t think so,” said Lady Marmalade. “There is no shame in poverty, Mr. Bryan, but it is shameful to kill another man.”

  Lewis was shaking his head.

  “No, no, you don’t understand… I’m not poor,” he said.

  “You protest vocally,” said Lady Marmalade, “yet, your clothing belies you. The cut of your suit is not current and the cuffs on your jacket and trouser legs are slightly frayed. I would imagine that twenty-five thousand pounds is likely your life’s savings.”

  “So what,” said Lewis, “I’ll sue him, I’ll get my money back. In any event, Ms. Carpenter has promised to pay her father’s debt.”

  “Yes, that is some good fortune for you,” said Lady Marmalade, “but you did kill him, didn’t you?”

  Lewis shook his head vigorously.

  “No, no I didn’t. You can’t prove it,” he said.

  “I can, Mr. Bryan. I can,” said Lady Marmalade. “You see, you are the only one among us who is left handed. Winnie, conveniently sitting to your left is right handed and so her steak knife would be on her right. Just within reach of your left hand. But first you had to place your steak knife on your right hand side and when you reached over for it in the dark you cut yourself on your right finger as you fumbled in the dark for it. Then you grabbed Winnie’s knife and leaned over the table stabbing Major Moss in the chest.”

  Lady Marmalade looked around to take in her audience. She was fairly certain that Lewis Bryan was the murderer, but she wanted to look for any tells in any of the others that might point her in a different direction.

  “You see, Mr. Bryan, you could be the only murderer because of the way the knife is stuck in the Major’s chest. That’s why I didn’t want you to remove it,” Lady Marmalade said to Captain Houghton. “That, and because it might contain Mr. Bryan’s finger prints.”

  Lady Marmalade pushed her chair away and stood up from the table.

  “If you will all come with me, I can show you what I mean,” Lady Marmalade said.

  They all got up and walked over to the far side of the table. Each of them staring at Major Moss who was still slumped backwards in his chair. The knife was still protruding from his
chest, just above his big belly and his mouth was still agape in surprise.

  Lewis stayed where he was, his back towards the window, looking nervously over at the group as they crowded around the dining table.

  “You see,” said Lady Marmalade, to the group, “I heard the Major grunt shortly after the lights went out. When they came back on, Lewis was reeling back in his chair after having stabbed the Major, and Evan was leaning on the table with blood already on his gloves. He couldn’t have killed the Major because Lewis had stabbed him very soon after the lights went out. And just before the lights had gone out, Evan was standing over there by the bar. It would have taken him too long to travel across to this side of the table, pick up Winnie’s knife, and stab the Major by the time I heard the Major grunt.”

  Captain Houghton was resting his right elbow in his left hand and tapping his chin with his right index finger.

  “Makes sense,” said Joseph.

  “Exactly,” said Evan. “I told you all I didn’t kill him.”

  Evan looked around at the group for validation but they were all still looking towards the dead Major Moss.

  “But, what firmly excluded Captain Houghton and Mr. Cross especially, but this also excludes both Ms. Smith and Ms. Carpenter is the angle that the knife is at. You’ll notice that the knife’s handle is parallel to the floor. Both Evan and Isaac were standing when the lights came on. If they had stabbed him, the knife’s handle would be at an angle upwards, towards the ceiling.”

  “I see,” said Winnie, “but how does that exclude Ethel and I?”

  “You’re right,” said Lady Marmalade, “that piece doesn’t exclude you, but this next one does. You’ll notice that the serrated edge of the blade if pointing off towards the Major’s left. The knife has been thrust in with the blade horizontal and not vertical. A right-handed person would have thrust the knife in vertically from where you, Ms. Smith, were seated. As for Ethel, she couldn’t have reached past you and stabbed her father without you noticing, or more importantly, without bumping into Mr. Cross. Furthermore, as soon as I realized it had been your knife, Ms. Smith, that had been used, I realized there was no way for Ms. Carpenter to access it.”