The steward was still shaking his head. “I’d have caught him if not for you two lurking about. I recognize you now. You’re Lady Phoebe Renshaw, aren’t you? What on earth are you doing here?”
Phoebe raised her chin defensively. “My maid and I came out to collect more of my sister’s things. We looked for you, as a matter of fact, but couldn’t find you anywhere.”
“That’s because I was otherwise engaged chasing down an intruder. I’ll wager he was collecting things, too—for himself. And I’d have had him if not for you,” he lamented again.
Phoebe chose to ignore the accusation. “Did you happen to get a look at him?” She held her breath, then let it out in a whoosh at his reply.
“Too dark, and he was too fast.”
“I’ll wager you saw more than you think you did.” When he scowled at Eva, she compressed her lips and looked contrite. “Sorry for that bash on the shoulder. I cannot abide anyone harming my ladies. However, think about the intruder. Did he have to duck through the doorways? Did his figure fit easily on the spiral stairs from the galley, or did his girth cause him to sidestep his way up? Was his hair darker than the shadows, or did a glimmer of moonlight catch it?”
The steward wrinkled his nose. “What are you doing? Writing a novel?”
“Don’t be impertinent,” Eva snapped back. “Think. Any detail that comes to mind might be of help.”
“Help to who, miss?”
Eva, obviously losing her patience, drew herself up. “Just please think about what you saw. For instance, could you make out his hair color, if it was light or dark?”
The man made a show of scrunching up his features, as if deep in thought, and sighed dramatically a couple of times, but then his expression changed, and he blinked. “Now that you mention it, he was a good-sized bloke, and he might not have had hair at all.”
“You mean he was bald?” Sir Hugh, perhaps, Phoebe thought.
The steward nodded slowly. “I remember the moonlight catching him as he raced across the dining room. I saw a flash of a light color—not hair, mind you, because it seemed perfectly smooth. With a bit of a sheen. So now I’m thinking he was either bald or wore some kind of cap.” He paused, regarding the two of them. His gaze narrowed speculatively. “If you don’t mind my saying so, I hardly see why I’m describing anything or anyone to you. The pair of you don’t exactly look like bobbies to me. And if you expect me to believe you were only here to collect some of the viscountess’s things, well . . .” He sniggered.
“I’ll thank you to curb your rude insinuations.” Eva pointed her torch at him, and he lurched a step backward. Phoebe knew Eva didn’t mean to hit him again, not with the initial fracas over, but apparently, the steward felt no such assurance.
“See here,” Phoebe broke in. “Let’s go wherever it is you have communications equipment and wire the Cowes police. They need to know about this intruder, and other things, as well. You’ll probably want to wake the captain. And I suggest the lot of you devise a more efficient means of guarding the Georgiana.”
Grumbling all the way, the steward led them below to the wireless room. The captain, yawning and tousle-haired, his hastily donned coat askew, joined them and ordered his equally sleepy radio operator to contact the police. That was how, some twenty minutes later, Phoebe and Eva found themselves on a police cutter on their way back to Cowes, with Detective Inspector Lewis standing over them, looking none too pleased.
CHAPTER 13
“Detective, tell your pilot to stop.” Eva pointed out over the water at another craft coming around the bow of the Georgiana. “That’s our boatman.”
“Where on earth has he been?” Lady Phoebe stood up in the police cutter and waved her arms in the air.
“Please sit down, Lady Phoebe,” Detective Inspector Lewis said stiffly. “I take it that was the man who rowed you out.” His mouth became a flat line, and he shook his head, demonstrating his disapproval, as he had done numerous times already.
Lady Phoebe sat back down with a huff. “He’s coming this way. Please have your man slow down so he can catch up to us.”
“Whatever you and that drunkard have to say to each other can be said tomorrow.”
“Oh, then you know him,” Eva couldn’t help saying, for she had reached the same conclusion: a drunkard. Which probably explained why he had gone off and left them stranded.
The inspector scowled. “You’re both lucky you’re not under arrest or at the bottom of the Solent. That boatman is a menace, and no decent citizen should ever hire his services. The only reason we haven’t arrested him or run him out of Cowes is that he hasn’t killed anyone—yet.”
“We only hired him because no one else was available,” Eva told him, repeating Lady Phoebe’s own justification for putting her trust in such a character.
“Exactly,” the man shot back. “Everyone else of any repute was already engaged.” He shook his head again. “What is Lord Wroxly thinking, allowing the pair of you to go running around at night?”
Lady Phoebe once more pushed to her feet. “Leave my grandfather out of this. He isn’t well. We had good reason to row out to the Georgiana, and as it turns out, we were right. If you had only agreed to go aboard and view the evidence we found . . .”
“It’s for the police to decide what constitutes evidence, Lady Phoebe.”
“How can you decide if you don’t see it?”
Seeing her lady about to lose her temper, Eva reached up to take her hand and gently tugged her back onto the bench seat behind the partially enclosed helm. She feared they had made a hash of things. Not that she regretted their actions, or at least their intentions, but had they paid closer attention to events on the yacht, perhaps the steward would have caught the intruder and they would right now know his identity, not to mention he’d have joined them on this boat ride back to the island. As it stood, Detective Inspector Lewis acted as if he didn’t believe there had been anyone else on board tonight, and even managed to half convince the steward he had been chasing Eva and Lady Phoebe all along. Or if there had been someone, Mr. Lewis chalked it up to a common thief, taking advantage of the absence of the Georgiana’s owner.
It seemed the inspector was determined to ignore all evidence except that which incriminated Lady Julia.
A police car awaited them at the pier, and he herded them into it as if they were common criminals. She and Lady Phoebe slid into the backseat, while the inspector rode up front with the driver. A none too steady ride through the narrow streets and around sharp corners had Eva feeling queasy all over again, as if she still trod the Georgiana’s decks. She and Lady Phoebe traded only a few words, knowing everything they said would be overheard.
They were hustled into the police station and to a room that made Lady Phoebe shudder when the door closed upon them. For the moment they were alone, having been told by a uniformed bobby to make themselves comfortable while they waited for the detective inspector to return. The room held a table and a few inhospitable chairs. A gray linoleum floor and slightly lighter gray walls presented a bleak prospect for anyone having to spend more than a few minutes there. Eva hoped they wouldn’t be there longer than that, and wondered if the police could stop them if they chose to simply walk out. They hadn’t been charged with anything, so far.
“Are you cold, my lady?” Eva started to unbutton her coat, with the intention of throwing it over Lady Phoebe’s shoulders. “You’re shivering.”
“I’m not cold. It’s just that this was the room where Julia and I talked only this morning. And the thought that she’s somewhere in this building, in a cell, behind bars . . .”
“Try not to think about it.”
“Do you suppose they’ll let us see her?”
“Considering the time, I doubt it very much. Perhaps we should consider how to get out of this pickle we’ve found ourselves in.”
“They’ll let us go. Detective Inspector Lewis brought us here to frighten us. But it hasn’t worked. All I am is angry.”<
br />
The door opened, and the detective inspector strode in. “Angry, are we?”
Lady Phoebe set her hands on her hips, but it was Eva who spoke. “Indeed we are, for the way we’re being treated. We’ve done nothing wrong.”
“I have a list of pending charges that say differently, including obstructing justice and interfering with a police investigation.”
The man circled the table and sat in the single chair on the other side. He gestured for them to sit opposite him, like criminals about to be interrogated. Eva felt her gorge rise with indignation. Still, she held one of the chairs for Lady Phoebe and then lowered herself into the other one.
“Also, trespassing.”
Eva folded her hands on the tabletop with a good deal more poise than she felt. “My lady, and any member of her family, for that matter, has every right to board the Georgiana at any time of day or night. The vessel is owned now by her sister, need I remind you?”
“Not if she murdered her husband, it isn’t.”
Lady Phoebe spoke from between gritted teeth. “She hasn’t been found guilty.”
“She hasn’t been on trial yet,” the man quipped.
Eva’s queasiness returned. “Please,” she said, making a great effort to appear meek. “Won’t you at least listen to what we have to say? We might have simply waited for our boatman to return, or had one of the Georgiana’s crew row us back to town, but we didn’t. We radioed the police to tell you of our findings.”
“Your findings.” The man sat back with a smirk.
“Yes, our findings.” Lady Phoebe looked and sounded in danger of losing her temper again, so Eva spoke up before she could.
“The blood in the stateroom implies that Lady Annondale bled from cutting herself on the mirror, but it doesn’t make any sense that she would leave without wrapping a bandage around the wound. And that would have staunched the blood had she then gone after Lord Annondale.”
“She might not have wanted to take the time,” the inspector said. “The viscount hobbled out on crutches, and she realized it was her chance to overpower him and push him overboard.”
Lady Phoebe groaned.
“We discovered a letter opener missing from the viscount’s desk,” Eva countered. “Perhaps he used it to defend himself and slashed whoever murdered him.”
Mr. Lewis looked less than convinced. “What does this letter opener look like?”
“We . . . uh . . . don’t exactly know.”
The inspector’s jaw tightened. “What does that mean?”
“We’ve never exactly seen it,” Lady Phoebe admitted in a small voice.
“Then how do you know there was one?” he demanded. “And what kind of letter opener could cut someone enough to make them bleed that much?”
“Wake my sister and we can ask her.”
“You may visit her tomorrow, if you like,” the man said blandly.
“And then there was the intruder on board tonight.” Eva reached up to touch her hair. “A man who the steward said looked to be bald. Sir Hugh Fitzallen is bald.”
The man leaned forward so suddenly that Eva, and Phoebe beside her, pulled back sharply. “You are not to go accusing a man like Hugh Fitzallen without proper evidence.”
Lady Phoebe recovered her vehemence. “Why must we not suspect Sir Hugh, when you’ve slapped my sister in a jail cell?”
“That’s different. Sir Hugh Fitzallen is a former war hero and a diplomat. He’s done this country good service.”
“Implying what?” Lady Phoebe slapped both palms on the table for emphasis. “That my sister is guilty by default? Because a man who might have been prowling about the Georgiana tonight for who knows what reason is too virtuous to be considered a possible suspect?”
While Eva recognized the irony in Lady Phoebe’s question, the detective inspector, apparently, did not. His eyebrows lifted. “That’s exactly right.”
Fearing Lady Phoebe might hyperventilate, Eva leaned to clutch both of her shoulders and gently massaged them. “Inspector, please allow us to see Lady Annondale.”
“It’s late. Tomorrow.”
Implacable man. Isaac Perkins, the whiskey-tippling chief inspector at home, always grumbled at her and Lady Phoebe’s unwanted assistance in cases like these, but he never threatened them with incarceration or spoke to them—leastwise not to Lady Phoebe—with such blatant disregard. She feared they might have met their match in Detective Inspector Lewis.
“All right, the two of you can go, for now. But this isn’t over. And don’t go meddling again, or your next visit to this police station will be an extended one.” He came to his feet, signaling them to do the same.
Lady Phoebe remained seated. “Wait, there’s something else. This morning we made another discovery on the Georgiana.”
Eva cringed as Lady Phoebe prepared to reveal their earlier trip out to the yacht. Mr. Lewis’s darkening expression didn’t reassure her as he sank back into his seat.
“This was not the first time the pair of you snuck out there?”
“We didn’t sneak anywhere,” Eva replied rather hotly. She didn’t like anyone speaking that way about her lady. “We went out to gather some of Lady Annondale’s things to bring to her here.”
“Yes, and while we were there, we discovered a stack of RSVPs to the wedding,” Lady Phoebe put in. “They contained threats, some subtle, others rather blatant.”
“And you did what with them?”
“We brought them here and attempted to give them to you,” Lady Phoebe said a bit self-righteously. “You weren’t available, however, and I didn’t like to leave them with just anyone, so they’re in my hotel room.”
“Lady Phoebe, the policeman manning our front desk isn’t just anyone.” The inspector’s patience was wearing thin, Eva could tell.
Lady Phoebe gave a slight shrug. “We’d have brought them tonight, but we never expected to end up here.”
“Tell me what these notes said, if you can remember.”
“Certainly, I can remember.” Lady Phoebe recited the contents of the RSVPs, putting the most emphasis on the one that read, Your ignorance will be your undoing.”
The man sat back, his hand moving back and forth across the underside of his chin. “Except for that last one, they’re hardly even vaguely threatening, and none of them are what I would consider alarming.” He shook his head. “I’d like to see these cards, but I’ve the feeling each one can be easily explained. Now . . .” He stood once more. “It’s late, and I’ve had rather enough of the two of you. Don’t let me catch you interfering with police business again. I don’t care who your grandfather is.”
He opened the door into the corridor and called out. “Hewitt, would you walk these two out, please? And see that they get into a taxicab.” He turned back to Eva and Lady Phoebe. “You’re to go straight back to your hotel. No more adventures tonight.” With that, he left them.
A woman with thick brown hair that curled around the edges of her cap, a calf-length wool skirt, and a matching belted jacket filled the doorway in the detective inspector’s place. The badge over her right breast pocket identified her as a member of the police force. “I’m Constable Hewitt. Come this way, please.”
Lady Phoebe exchanged a surprised look with Eva and moved to follow. “You’re a policewoman. That’s splendid.”
The woman replied without looking back, “I find it fulfilling.”
Lady Phoebe hurried a little to match her pace. “Do you ever face dangerous criminals?”
Constable Hewitt shook her head. “Not as a matter of course. The rough ones are left to the men on the force. We women mostly enforce traffic laws, but any police work comes with its risks.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Lady Phoebe mused. “I’d wager you’re as capable as any of your male counterparts.”
“Be that as it may, rules are rules.”
They reached the street door, which Constable Hewitt held open for them. Despite the hour, motorcars and a few
horse carriages traversed the street outside. On the pavement, Lady Phoebe turned to her.
“You must know my sister is here. Lady Annondale. I wonder if you might . . . check on her occasionally, just to see that she is all right. I’ll return tomorrow to visit her, but the nights are long and . . .”
“It’s my job to look in on the female prisoners. But don’t worry. Your sister’s being well treated.”
Lady Phoebe’s mouth slanted in disbelief. “If Mr. Lewis has his way, she’ll be tried and convicted by tomorrow.”
“My lady,” Eva murmured, knowing alienating a member of the force wouldn’t help Lady Julia. The constable’s next words, however, surprised her.
“The detective inspector’s a bit of a prig now, isn’t he?”
Lady Phoebe nodded, a slight smile curling her lips. “You noticed it, too?”
“There’s a reason,” the woman replied in a confidential tone. “He bumbled a case a while back—a big one. Listened to the wrong informant, got the wrong information. A killer went free. Lewis was with the Met back then. Got transferred down here because of it. Had to start all over again, a bobby on a beat. Ah, here comes a taxicab.” She raised her arm high to signal the driver. The motorcar stopped, and Constable Hewitt opened the rear door for them.
“That certainly explains a lot,” Lady Phoebe whispered to Eva as they approached the vehicle. “It must have been galling to have to leave the Metropolitan Police in London for a small-town operation here in Cowes.”
“Yes,” Eva agreed as they slid inside. “And unfortunately, it means no matter what we discover, Detective Inspector Lewis is highly unlikely to listen.” Dismay forced a sigh from her. He has his suspect, and he’s going to do his best to hold on to her.
* * *
Phoebe rose with a single intention the next morning: find Sir Hugh and ask him where he was last night. She wondered whether he—assuming it had been he—had been aware of Eva’s and her presence on the Georgiana and had purposely used them to outwit the deck steward, or had the confusion been a happy accident for him?
Not that it mattered. If Sir Hugh had gone out to the Georgiana last night to search through Gil’s office, it was an admission of guilt, as far as she was concerned. She could only surmise he’d gone looking for the threatening invitations, obviously not realizing Phoebe and Eva had already found them. Despite their anonymity, he must fear they might be traced back to him. He had sought to frighten Gil, had toyed with him, and then had struck a blow when Gil had been at his most vulnerable. The only question remaining was why. The two men shared so much personal history, Phoebe felt certain there must be something in the past, whether recent or remote, that had set Hugh on a path for revenge.
A Murderous Marriage Page 17
