Flora's Secret

by Anita Davison

  Bunny shook his head. ‘Not her, and I doubt it’s more than a mild flirtation.’

  ‘As far as you know,’ Flora said. ‘Maybe Gerald did have a similar flirtation with Eloise. One which went wrong when she threatened to tell Monica.’ Flora’s thoughts took flight. Maybe not all Gerald’s secrets are innocent. Monica could be abrasive sometimes, but she was a kind, motherly woman with no malice in her. Or were Gerald’s flirtations simply that, harmless and short-lived?

  ‘Rumour says the lady in question enjoys his admiration, but has no wish to pursue it.’ Bunny’s upper arm pressing against hers. ‘Apparently, she has set her sights on a certain wealthy widower who lives in Manchester.’

  ‘How do you know all this? Have you been listening at doors?’

  ‘Like you, I have begun to regard our fellow travellers through suspicious eyes.’

  ‘You’ve persuaded me that men enjoy gossip every bit as much as us women.’

  She tugged her shawl tighter as a salt-tanged breeze raised goose bumps on her arms. Perhaps this dalliance of Gerald’s should be no surprise. Monica had a kind heart, but her social climbing and penchant for an expensive lifestyle must be a burden on any man, no matter how successful.

  Bunny shook his head, frowning. ‘I doubt Gerald is our man. A roving eye doesn’t necessarily lead to worse crimes.’

  ‘I suppose not. It also means we didn’t learn anything new tonight, did we?’ she said, disappointed. A sudden sharp gust of wind swept the deck and Flora shivered.

  ‘You’re cold, perhaps we should keep moving.’ He offered his arm and they set off again along the deck in comfortable silence before halting outside her door where he turned to face her. ‘We must trust Hersch to live up to the Pinkerton Detective Agency’s reputation.’

  ‘What do you know about Pinkerton’s?’ Not that she cared. It was enough for her then to be the entire focus of Bunny’s attention. His face was inches from hers, and even in this low light, the sprinkle of freckles across his nose were clearly visible.

  ‘Pinkerton was a Scotsman.’ He removed his glasses and gently polished them with a handkerchief as an aid to thought, another habit she was growing used to. ‘In the 1850s, his agency guarded President Lincoln on his way to his inauguration in Baltimore. They even foiled an assassination attempt.’

  ‘That sounds more like muscle for hire,’ Flora said.

  ‘Indeed. For years they were regarded as strike-breaking thugs, employed by businessmen who objected to their employees making demands about their working conditions.’

  ‘What did that have to do with solving crimes?’

  ‘Very little.’ He held the spectacles up to the electric light on the bulkhead, checking them before putting them on. ‘Then in the 1870s, the president of the Philadelphia Railroad feared the activity of the coal mine trade unions would reduce his profits. Pinkerton’s agents were employed to infiltrate a mining organization called, coincidentally, the Molly Maguires, and as a result, over twenty members were executed.’

  ‘My goodness, that’s awful.’

  ‘Perhaps, but the “Mollys” weren’t entirely innocent. They contributed to the violence, so it was justice of sorts. After that, employers threatened with union action paid Pinkerton’s to disrupt their meetings. They didn’t spare the sap, either. A lot of heads got broken in the process.’

  ‘And Mr Hersch works for them?’ At his nod she continued, ‘He doesn’t strike me as a thug.’ Flora jerked her chin back as a thought occurred to her. ‘You’re trying to distract me, aren’t you?’

  His gaze met hers and held. ‘Is it working?’

  ‘You’re a nice man, Mr Harrington.’

  ‘I try. I’m also truly sorry about the way I reacted when you hugged me earlier. No, don’t look away, I know you’re embarrassed and I made it worse by my behaviour. I was taken by surprise, but in an agreeable way. I really liked it.’

  ‘B-but I thought—’

  ‘I know what you thought,’ he whispered, his arm gently encircling her waist. ‘I had hoped our first embrace wasn’t going to take place in public while I was soaked to the skin, and gasping for air like a landed fish.’

  First. He said first.

  Her stomach did a strange but pleasing lurch, but too embarrassed to ask what was expected of her now, she eased away, preparing to offer polite thanks and a formal goodnight. Before she could speak, he placed both hands on the wall on either side of her shoulders, pinning her in place with a smouldering look. She could hardly breathe as he stared into her eyes in an unhurried way as if he enjoyed simply looking at her.

  Without warning he brushed his mouth across hers in a feather-light touch that ended before it really began. He eased back a few inches, his gaze roving her face again. When his mouth pressed on hers a second time, he was not tentative, or light, but confident, even possessive.

  Having never kissed anyone in passion before, Flora had no time to worry whether her reaction was appropriate or not. Instinct took over and her arms moved of their own accord to encircle his neck. The pressure of his mouth increased under hers, his touch becoming insistent, even fierce. His breathing quickened, and when the tip of his tongue flicked over her bottom lip, her nerves jumped.

  Oblivious to the deck around her, Mr Hersch’s cheery, ‘Goodnight, Miss Maguire, Mr Harrington’ sent them springing apart, though the detective didn’t so much as pause in his brisk stride down the deck.

  ‘I-I had better—’ Flora stammered, certain he could feel her heart thump against her chest.

  ‘Um – yes, yes of course.’ Bunny dropped his arms and retreated, ducked his head, and jammed both hands into his pockets. ‘Well, goodnight then.’

  She searched for an excuse to call him back, but the sight of Eddy’s grinning face with his nose pressed against the window glass changed her mind.

  Chapter 18

  Thursday

  ‘I fail to see how a treasure hunt can possibly be considered frivolous and thus insulting to the dead, whereas a dance is not,’ Monica complained as she and Flora watched the boys play an enthusiastic game of shuffleboard on the saloon deck below. ‘It’s too bad, when my Ozzy was so looking forward to it. He’s excellent at puzzles.’

  ‘Eddy is also disappointed, although he changed his mind when they announced the horse racing will go ahead this afternoon,’ Flora said.

  Despite Flora’s incipient worry, Eddy had slept well the night before, followed by a pre-breakfast conversation where she reassured him Mr Hersch had everything in hand. She took refuge in the knowledge children were resilient; safe in the knowledge that however bad things became, they would be shielded from the worst of life’s tragedies by the grown-ups.

  ‘My boy’s not on form at the moment, you know.’ Monica’s sharp features softened in concern. ‘These deaths have affected him badly.’ She clamped a hand onto her hat and waved. ‘Oh look, Ozzy just scored a point.’

  Flora’s eyebrow rose as she watched Monica’s sensitive boy leap in the air, screaming at the top of his lungs.

  ‘It doesn’t count!’ Eddy shouted above his friend’s delighted cries. ‘Anything above fifty is subtracted. Don’t you know the rules?’

  Ozzy’s shoulders slumped visibly, though he accepted defeat magnanimously and returned to stand behind Eddy so he could take the next shot.

  ‘It appears,’ Monica leaned closer, lowering her voice, ‘that the steward had to chastise the boys at dinner last night for exchanging lurid details of poor Eloise’s death. All conjured from their boyish imaginations of course. We wouldn’t dream of telling Ozzy what really happened.’

  ‘Do you know what happened to Eloise?’ Flora asked, immediately alert.

  ‘Well, no, not really,’ Monica faltered. ‘Although most murders of pretty girls tend to be throttling, don’t they? At least it’s so in novels.’

  Flora nodded, but chose not to contradict her.

  ‘I’ll escort the boys to luncheon myself,’ Monica insisted. ‘One cannot be too
careful with dangerous people about.’ She glanced over Flora’s shoulder and smiled. ‘Not that you will be lonely, my dear, for here comes your beau.’

  ‘No, actually, he isn’t my—’ Flora broke off when she realized Monica was already halfway down the deck and unlikely to hear her.

  Bunny halted beside her and withdrew a brown envelope from an inside pocket and handed it to her, his expression grim. ‘This was waiting in my cabin when I returned from breakfast.’

  ‘From your reporter friend?’ Flora took the slip of paper gingerly, though reading it proved a frustrating exercise as the corners kept curling in the wind on a quest to escape her fingers.

  Confirm Theodore van Elder born Baltimore 12th April 1859, died 15th Feb. 1900. Leaves wife, Estelle van Elder, and child from previous marriage. Father deceased 1880, mother believed still living. Only other family member known, Marlon van Elder born 1865 – arrest record held by New York Police for various misdemeanours, including issuing valueless cheques and minor fraud. Aliases include Joseph Ellerman, Frank Ellerman, Frank Parnell. Whereabouts currently unknown.

  ‘Not unknown anymore.’ Flora handed it back to him. ‘Marlon van Elder is at this moment lying under a sheet in the doctor’s office.’

  ‘So it seems.’ Bunny refolded the page.

  ‘What it doesn’t tell us, is his exact relationship to Theodore. Was he a brother, a relative by marriage? And why was he travelling with Eloise?’

  ‘Flora,’ Bunny’s voice held a warning note. ‘You’re going to have to consider the possibility that Parnell and Eloise killed Theodore van Elder, and they were escaping the country.’

  ‘He was blackmailing her. Why would he do that if they were in it together?’ She shook the thought away, refusing to contemplate she had been so wrong about Eloise.

  ‘Greed? A falling out of villains, maybe?’ Bunny replaced the telegram back in its envelope.

  ‘Eloise was as much a victim as Parnell.’ Flora couldn’t bring herself to call her Estelle, she would always think of her as Eloise. ‘I wish we had told Mr Hersch everything sooner.’

  ‘That would have been an interesting conversation.’ Bunny cleared his throat, addressing a spot a few inches over her head. ‘Mr Hersch, about that clipping I stole from the dead man’s cabin when I was looking for a large amount of money with the girl who was herself murdered yesterday. I—’

  ‘All right, I see your point.’ Flora gestured for him to stop. ‘What do you suggest?’ She worried the side of a thumbnail with her front teeth.

  ‘Well, I—’ he broke off and glanced past Flora’s shoulder. ‘Oh look out.’ He gave a low groan and tucked the envelope back into his pocket, patting it.

  Flora turned to where Cynthia strolled the deck in a peacock blue dress with a matching coat that enhanced her grey eyes.

  ‘How is Max coming along?’ Flora asked as she came to a leisurely halt beside them.

  ‘Bruised and sore, poor dear.’ Cynthia’s face relaxed in relief. ‘He has no memory of why he was out on deck in that storm, and I shan’t badger him.’ The implication that no one else should either went unspoken. ‘I’m so glad the dance is going ahead tonight. It will give us all a welcome distraction from this awful business.’

  She stroked Bunny’s forearm with a manicured hand. ‘You must promise to dance with me, Bunny, because no one else will. Max will come too of course, but his arm won’t be healed enough to dance with me. No doubt the other passengers will mutter about me if I take the floor with another man, but I do love to dance.’

  ‘I’ll be happy to, Cynthia,’ Bunny said. ‘What about you, Flora?’

  Flora hesitated. ‘I haven’t made up my mind yet. I’ll think about it.’ The prospect of leaping round a dance floor didn’t seem right somehow with Eloise lying dead in the doctor’s office.

  ‘Of course you’ll be there.’ Cynthia levelled her clear gaze on Flora. ‘You cannot possibly waste that gown, it looks wonderful on you.’ Her pretty face lit at the clear note of the bugle announcing luncheon. ‘Oh good, I’m quite famished, though I’ve done nothing all morning except pour tea and plump Max’s pillows. It must be this bracing sea air.’ She turned on her heel and tripped across the deck with a backwards wave.

  ‘It’s as if Eloise never existed,’ Flora said, mildly repulsed.

  ‘They were hardly friends, though I admit, I didn’t take Cynthia for the callous sort.’ He patted his pocket where the telegram lay, ‘I’ll give this to Hersch straight away. We don’t want him thinking we’re keeping any more secrets now he has an official investigation under way.’

  ‘Good idea, and I know I said we hadn’t learned anything last night,’ Flora said slowly, ‘but didn’t Cynthia admit she went to Eloise’s stateroom with some tea yesterday afternoon?’

  ‘I seem to recall she did, but there was no answer to her knock.’

  ‘So she says. Cynthia has lied before, remember, when she claimed she had never met Parnell.’

  With Bunny’s reassuring form close to her side as they walked to the dining room, something about the telegram niggled at the back of her mind but remained elusive. Then she conjured Bunny’s kiss the night before in her head, hoping it would be repeated, and soon, but not quite knowing how to create the right circumstances.

  *

  Flora’s post-prandial walk brought her to the saloon deck, where she stood to admire the foam-topped waves crest and fall in the distance. She took her allotted steamer chair with her name in elegant script on a pasteboard label, dragging it along the boards so it was apart from the militarily spaced line of similar chairs. A glance upwards sent a dull burning sensation in her chest, reminding her that the exact point on the deck above was where she had met Eloise on their second day at sea.

  A shadow fell across her outstretched legs. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Maguire,’ an accented voice dragged her from her sad musing. ‘May I join you?’

  She shielded her eyes with a hand. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Hersch, and please do,’ she replied, unsmiling.

  ‘Oh, my dear, are you still brooding about the unfortunate fate of Miss Lane?’ Ignoring the other steamer chairs, he dragged out a folding wooden seat from a pile set beneath the companionway, shook it open with an expert hand and crouched on the slats.

  ‘Does that surprise you?’ Flora resumed her contemplation of the sea.

  ‘Are you not joining the ladies today?’ he asked, ignoring her question.

  Flora looked to where Miss Ames sat further along the row with Hester, while Mrs Penry-Jones commanded the attention of two older ladies who had formed her small coterie since boarding.

  ‘Not today. I could do without having to endure Mrs Penry-Jones’s comments about governesses with ideas above their station, or actresses getting their just desserts.’

  ‘Don’t let her bother you, my dear. People like her belong in the past. You should embrace the modern age, like Mr Harrington, for example. Now there’s a young man well-equipped to tackle this new century with that horseless carriage of his.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll succeed in his world.’ Despite herself, Flora’s possessive pride rose in her chest.

  ‘His world? Why not yours too?’ At Flora’s shrug he went on, ‘If you would take my advice, I suspect your pride is getting in the way of a meaningful friendship with that young man.’

  ‘We move in very different circles.’ She aimed for pragmatism but knew she failed, her cheeks burning as she recalled he had caught them kissing outside her door. ‘He’s used to a more sophisticated company.’

  ‘How interesting,’ he stroked a finger and thumb down either side of his moustache as he talked, ‘that it’s the working classes who cling most tenaciously to that maxim.’

  He didn’t speak for a moment, as if giving her time for the thought to sink in, the only sound between them the whoosh of the sea, the only sensation the gentle rise and fall of the ship as it cut through the waves.

  ‘It must have been a dreadful shock, seeing Miss Lane l
ike that?’ he said after a moment.

  ‘Indeed it was.’ She tried to banish a sudden, shocking image that invaded her head. ‘The purser hustled me out before I could take a proper inventory of her stateroom.’

  ‘Is that your way of asking me to tell you what we found?’

  ‘If you feel so inclined.’ Her lips twitched but she fought the urge to smile.

  His eyes slewed sideways, regarding her with a calculating gaze. ‘If I didn’t know better, I might imagine I’m being manipulated, Miss Maguire.’

  Flora allowed herself a tiny smile. He always used her full name when he teased her. She quite liked it.

  ‘What I can tell you,’ he went on, ‘is that despite the disarray in her stateroom, there was no sign of a struggle, therefore I assume—’

  ‘Eloise knew her attacker and let him into her room willingly,’ Flora finished for him.

  ‘Exactly. Therefore it was someone she had no reason to suspect.’

  ‘A member of the crew, perhaps?’

  He cleared his throat, as if his next words required a certain gravitas. ‘What we do know is she received three deep stab wounds; two just below her ribcage and one in her right breast. All inflicted with a thin, straight-bladed knife.’

  Having not expected such candour, Flora fought down a wave of nausea. ‘Three stab wounds. Someone must have really hated Eloise.’ Or wanted to make sure she kept quiet. ‘But you still haven’t found a weapon?’

  ‘No. And I assure you a thorough search was carried out.’ He twisted his hat between his splayed knees.

  ‘Thus the killer took it with him, or you didn’t find it, because it didn’t look like a weapon, so it was overlooked.’

  ‘An interesting idea, Miss Maguire.’ His eyes when he glanced up and held her were filled with surprised admiration. ‘If Pinkerton’s ever decide to employ women again, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend you.’

  ‘Again?’ Flora asked. ‘Has there ever been such a thing as a lady detective?’