The Moonlit Murders: A historical mystery page-turner (A Fen Churche Mystery Book 3) Fliss Chester (most read book in the world txt) 📖

a uniform, an epaulette. ‘Now, what are you doing down there?’ Fen asked herself, pocketing the epaulette as she carried on searching around the bed.

Once or twice, she had to shake herself back into the here and now as visions of seeing Genie, dead on the bed, kept coming to the fore. One more delve… she thought to herself and hated the fact that at the back of her mind she did wonder if her fingers might suddenly come upon something as hard, but delicate, as a tiara. But no, nothing more under the bed.

Fen knelt upright and then pushed herself up and sat on the eiderdown. It felt odd, bearing in mind Genie had been murdered in that very spot only hours beforehand, but it gave Fen another view of the room, what Genie would have seen…

Fen looked around and her eyes alighted on the bedside cabinet. The drawer at the top of it – the lower part was a cupboard – was slightly open and Fen pulled it further out. Catching the light and twinkling like the stars in the heavens were a pair of the most beautiful diamond earrings.

‘Oh dear…’ Fen sighed as she brought them out of the drawer and held them up to the window. Even the dull, bleak light due to the fog outside couldn’t diminish the sparkle of the diamonds in the beautiful filigree drop earrings. She thought they looked familiar and frowned as she gently placed them on the pillow next to her.

Looking to see what else might be in the drawer, she pulled it out more fully, and the corner of an envelope caught her eye. It was sticking over the back end of the drawer, as if the motion of the drawer being pushed in had forced it down the back and into the cupboard space below. Or had Genie hidden something on purpose…

Fen fished it out and saw that it was addressed, very simply and only by name, to the dead girl. Fen held it in her hands for a moment, weighing up what was morally the right thing to do. She was intent on finding Genie’s murderer, and the poor girl was dead, so… She flipped it over and saw that the envelope had already been opened, the seal roughly stuck back in places but generally intact.

Fen prised it open again and took out the letter within. She was surprised to recognise the French Line logo at the top, meaning this was written and sent to Genie from on board this ship within the last couple of days.

It was the very same logo as the letter paper she had in her own cabin, and on which she’d started writing a letter to Kitty only this morning. Yet, as she scanned down this particular missive, she saw that the contents couldn’t be more different.

Fen folded it up again, almost embarrassed to have read such private information, and she was just taking it all in when James poked his head around the door.

‘Five down?’ he said, clocking the pensive look on her face.

‘Five, six, seven and eight,’ Fen replied, holding out the letter for James to see.

‘Blimey,’ he said as he quickly took on board the information. ‘Pregnant?’

‘It seems so. Dr Bartlett obviously had her in for an examination almost as soon as we left Le Havre.’

‘Do we still think Spencer thought they were flirting?’

‘I must admit, I thought so too.’ Fen got up from sitting on the bed and instinctively smoothed down the eiderdown that had been crumpled under her. ‘But I suppose they were sharing confidences of a Hippocratic nature, rather than a romantic one.’ Fen took the letter back and slipped it into her handbag and, after a moment’s hesitation, took the earrings too. ‘You’re my witness, James, for what it’s worth, but I found these earrings and I’m taking them as evidence, not stealing them.’

‘Fair enough,’ James said and then walked with Fen back down the dark passageway and out to the grand staircase corridor.

‘Any news on Spencer, by the way?’

‘Yes, actually. Sorry, should have said, but they found him slumped over a table in the third-class smoking room.’

‘Drunk? When was this?’

‘Drunk, possibly. About an hour ago; and even in international waters, I think the bar doesn’t serve liquor until eleven. He’s in the brig now, being questioned by the captain and Bisset.’

‘I wonder what his story is?’ Fen wondered out loud.

‘Whatever it is,’ James answered her, ‘it had better be a good one, or it won’t be the theatre review pages of those New York papers that bear his name… he’ll be headlining as a murderer instead.’

30

The brig – those dank, dark cells in the very depths of most ships – was a sorry necessity in boat design. Although even the smartest cabins had riveted painted steel beams and bolts on show, down here there was nothing to soften the clanging of metal doors and echoes of voices. Fen had decided that not only should they question Spencer, if the captain would allow it, but that he should know the truth about Genie’s pregnancy, if he didn’t already. The captain had agreed to let Fen see him while he questioned James about this morning’s grim discovery.

‘I’d like to talk to you too, Miss Churche,’ he’d said, and she’d agreed. ‘Come back to the bridge after Dodman’s taken you to see McNeal.’

Fen had hastily followed the steward down the ever more narrow and claustrophobic corridors. These were a far cry from the airy promenades and galleried terraces on the higher decks, and the tang of salt water, metal and fuel was overwhelming in places.

‘Dodman, can I ask you another question?’ Fen did want to ask a question but also wanted to hear a human voice, even if it was her own, in this most machinelike of interiors.

‘Of course, miss. Mind your step there.’ He guided her over a raised rivet and then helped her bow her head as they passed through another doorway. ‘It’s like a submarine