Murder Most Posh: A Mrs. Xavier Stayton Mystery (11 page)

   Lucy covered her eyes as the drenched figure of Gerald Hurst was flung overboard.

Chapter Ten

Shaking under a mound of soggy blankets, Maxie Beaumont said, “I can’t believe he slipped from my grip—
my
grip.”

   As the ship pitched to one side, the captain barked out at Mr. Pace, “Sort this mess all out.”

   Dripping wet after we had all gathered to gaze down into the churning sea, I shivered at the thought of what the captain had told Mrs. Beaumont when she demanded that the
Olivia
be stopped.
There is no point. He’s already been pulled under by the screws.

   Mr. Pace watched the captain rush off on his way to the bridge, and then he placed a hand on my shoulder and said, “Oy, I’m still not sure that I understand.”

   Simone sat in the chair opposite from me, and making eye contact with her, I said, “Correct me if I’m wrong, Ms. Wainwright, but Alisa planned to frame her husband for her suspicious death, which was meant to look like a suicide. She would then reassume her old identity to collect the assets left by
the countess.
She needed Gerald Hurst’s help; he had to tell everyone that the countess had no wish to die and was planning on leaving Mr. Farquhar. He could also produce a love letter that would show that the suicide note wasn’t her handwriting. After disappearing, presumably tossed off the ship, she would hide in Cabin B-23. She would leave the ship, make her way to the address she’d arranged for her true identity, and wait to be contacted by the officials of the Red Star Line. A reclusive Alisa Sidorvo, twin sister to the late countess, would become a wealthy and independent woman.

   “But Gerald Hurst concocted a different scheme. Before Alisa could execute her plot, he had Simone create the scene in the ballroom.

   “Alisa had no way of knowing Gerald was behind this, but it worked to her advantage. No doubt, she had planned on picking a fight with her husband and forcing him out of the cabin when the time had come to fake her death.

   “Gerald was waiting, and he went into the cabin as Alisa was setting up the charade of the crime. He then killed Alisa, taking her passport and ID to give to Simone. She would take up the masquerade, not of the countess, but of the countess’s sister, Alisa.”

   Maxie shrugged off her damp blankets, clapped her thick hands together, and said, “Oh, bravo, Mrs. Stayton. Bravo!”

   Mr. Pace looked to Simone. “Well, Ms. Wainwright?”

   The timid woman kept her eyes focused on her lap. “That was the original plan.” When she raised her head, her eyes were red. “But that isn’t what happened.”

   Ms. Wainwright pointed a delicate finger at her former lover, “Mathew killed her before he left the cabin—”

   “I did no such thing!” retorted Mr. Farquhar.

   Simone took a deep breath. “After Mathew left my berth, I telephoned Gerald to let him know that Mathew was headed back to his cabin. Gerald was stunned, and I could tell by the sound of his voice that something was terribly wrong.”

   Mr. Pace said, “Well, what was it?”

   “She was already dead!” exclaimed Simone.

   All eyes fell on Mathew Farquhar. The man stammered, “I didn’t kill my wife; she’s lying! For Christ’s sake, the woman is a scheming liar.”

   Maxie, in a rather droll tone of voice asked, “Yes, but aren’t you also a scheming liar, Mr. Farquhar?”

   I was at a complete lack for words—this was not at all the revelation I had anticipated.

    Michael Emerson, still standing next to his brother, said, “Well done, Mrs. Stayton. Well done.”

   Michael placed a hand on his confused but excited brother and led him out of the reading room.

   Little Mr. Beaumont mumbled something, mixing French and English words into a jumbled statement that meant nothing to me. He then beckoned his soggy wife, and they too departed.

   Mr. Pace gave me a friendly smile and said, “I’ll be damned. Well, you got to the truth, didn’t you, Mrs. Stayton?”

   I could only manage a small, dissatisfied smile as I nodded my chin.

   Mathew Farquhar was once more escorted to his cabin, this time without the master key in his possession. 

   I placed a fresh warm cloth on Lucy’s forehead as she reclined in the bed. She was still chilled to the bone from our previous misadventure on the promenade, and the ship’s movements had also caused her some dizziness.

   Speaking more to myself than to her, I said, “Somehow, we have managed to get off course.”

  “Well, it isn’t a wonder, the way this storm is pitching the ship about.” I had been waiting the entire trip for a bit of slang to confound Lucy, and I was just about to clarify myself when she sighed and said, “But you mean something else, don’t you? You thought Mr. Farquhar was innocent.”

   My only answer was a shrug. I tried to ignore the nagging voice in my head as I tended to my friend. “Another cup of tea?”

   Lucy shook her head, and asked, “Would you hand me my notebook?” I did so, and she asked, “How did you know that Alisa and the countess were the same person?”

   “When we first saw her, she was already aboard the ship. This is because she left her husband so she could check in as Alisa Sidorvo, the name on her passport. After being shown to Cabin B-23, she rushed to the promenade and called for her husband. Mathew remarked something to the effect that this was a regular occurrence. He confirmed this with me later as well. Alisa could not risk having her husband present when handing her passport to someone, in fear they would call her by the name printed within.”

   “How complicated!” said Lucy as she jotted down a few notes.

   “Not a life I would want to live,” I responded.

   “How did you figure out that Ms. Wainwright and Mr. Hurst had become…involved?” asked my friend.

   “Just a hunch; it seemed that for Mr. Hurst to double-cross Alisa, he’d need an accomplice,” I admitted. “When, in one instant, we saw each pair clandestinely meeting, it struck me that the secret lovers had much in common. Much indeed.”

   “And now Gerald and Alisa are dead, with Mr. Farquhar and Ms. Wainwright pointing the finger at each other.”

   I nodded my chin. “Yes, that is where we stand.”

   Lucy looked to me, her big brown eyes wide open. “Who do you believe?”

   Hesitantly, I replied, “I believe both of them.”

   “They can’t both be telling the truth, unless Mr. Hurst lied to Ms. Wainwright,” said my friend.

   “But why would he?” I saw no reason; the two had agreed upon the dastardly dead, so why spare Simone the guilt of being an accomplice to murder?

   “Perhaps Mr. Hurst was holding out on Ms. Wainwright; after all, the countess’s—or rather, Alisa’s—jewelry is still unaccounted for. I bet you a steak dinner that he stashed away the jewels to sell for himself.”

   Aloud, I thought, “Back to the start, a jewel heist…”

   Lucy asked, “Come again?”

   To Lucy’s surprise, I ducked down under the bed and retrieved my jewelry box. Setting it beside her, I quickly looked through the small cherry wood case. My emeralds, sapphires, rubies, diamonds, and pearls were just as I had last left them, quite seemingly untouched.

   “Well?” Lucy peered at me with hopeful excitement. 

   “This wasn’t a crime of passion—this was a jewel heist!” I exclaimed.

   “Alisa was killed by a cat burglar?” The color had certainly returned to my dear friend’s face.

   I turned in the direction of Cabin A-1. “The entire ship knows that Maxie Beaumont has a horde of jewelry in her room…”

   Lucy did a spot-on imitation of the loud woman, “ʻDon’t put your valuables in the ship’s safe. My most prized jewels are at the bottom of the Atlantic!’”

   I replied, “Now you are on the trolley!”

    My expression caused Lucy to smile before she theorized, “The jewel thief obtained the master key, and he made his way through the promenade to get to the Beaumonts’ suite. First, Michael heard him slip by; the criminal passed by our cabin because you had fallen asleep with the light on, but he went into Alisa’s cabin before going to the Beaumonts’, but after killing the woman, he fled.”

   I shook my chin. “No, no, that isn’t at all what happened. Our crook was here, already ensconced within one of these exclusive cabins.”

   Lucy’s dark eyes grew wide. “No?”

   “Yes, think back to when we met Yara; do you remember her little collection of costume jewelry?”

   “Not Yara?” whispered Lucy, her eyes fixed on the door of our shared bedroom.

   “Now!” I told Lucy as we felt the ship rock to one side as another wave assaulted the
Olivia.

   I tossed the door of our cabin open and ran down the short passageway, Lucy on my heels. She called out, “Abandon ship! Women and children first!”

   The Emerson brothers sprang from their cabin, and Michael shouted, “This way, ladies; you are going the wrong way!”

   The door that I stood in front of swung open, and Maxie Beaumont was very startled to see me waiting for her. With one hand, she gripped her diminutive husband by the wrist, and with the other, she clutched a medium-sized hatbox.

   “Mrs. Stayton, we must get to the lifeboats,” she said, her beady eyes fixed on mine.

   I reached out and tried to grab hold of the hatbox. Maxie dropped her husband’s arm and started to slap me away. I managed to pry off the top, and in doing so, the contents fell onto the floor.

   “What is happening?” asked Michael, and just a second later, his question was repeated by a crewman who was rushing toward us.

   Maxie tried to stoop down to the floor as her husband said his first sentence I’d understood, even without translation.
“Ou cela vient-il?”

   I quickly knelt down and scooped up the familiar item before Maxie could balance her top-heavy body. “Yes, Mrs. Beaumont, where did you get the countess’s emerald bracelet?”

   Lucy’s cry of
“Abandoned ship!”
had been repeated by Yara, who had stood out in the promenade. We had wanted to be sure that Maxie would hear the false alarm. Sadly, a great many others had as well.

   Once the ship’s master had quieted the pandemonium we had caused, he joined us in our cabin. (Thank heavens the storm had been so loud that only a few dozen people had assembled on the decks hoping to make their way into a lifeboat. Furthermore, only a few of the ship’s crew had reacted, and only one lifeboat was in the process of being lowered before the little mistake was corrected by the captain.) 

   In a rather hostile tone, the captain started to speak, “Mrs. Stayton—”

   Raising my hands to hold off what I knew he would regret saying, I told the man, “I can explain; just hear me out.”

   Following the discovery of Alisa’s missing jewelry, Lucy, Yara, and I had been locked into our cabin. Poor Mr. Beaumont had asked to join us, as his wife was locked into their set of rooms.

   The captain made no reply to my request other than to cross his arms and glare at me, so I spoke at once. “Neither the countess nor Mr. Hurst had obtained the master passkey. She had bribed her way into second class, and by the cover of darkness, he climbed from one balcony to another. I suspect he came to Alisa’s cabin anticipating she would open the door; he would kill her, leave the incriminating suicide letter, and take her passport after placing her body in the trunk. He had no reason to take her jewelry; after all, once Ms. Wainwright took on the identity of the countess’s sister, she would inherit all of the dead woman’s possessions.”

   The captain’s brow raised, and he asked, “Then where did the master key come from?”

  “Just several weeks ago, a maid assigned to this passageway lost her entire set of keys, and she was sacked on suspicion of stealing items from the suites. But the poor girl was innocent. Maxie Beaumont had managed to get the keys from her. I dare say she distracted the maid with her endless complaining and fussy requests, which was her intent.”

   The captain looked to Mr. Pace, who stood beside the little writing table where the pile of jewelry had been placed.

   The purser remarked, “I had no reason to suspect Mrs. Beaumont. But as I remember, we didn’t find any of the money or jewelry on the girl when we searched her and her room.”

   I went on, “Maxie Beaumont devised a plan. She wanted everyone to know that she kept her jewelry in their room and that they both took a strong sleeping tonic at night. On the evening of her choosing, once her husband was asleep, she planned to take her own jewelry, which was costume, and toss it off the ship. She would then claim to have been burglarized the following morning. Alisa, however, would foil Mrs. Beaumont’s scheme.”

   “How?” asked Mr. Pace.

   “Alisa played her role as a Russian countess quite well, but growing up as a young immigrant in New York, her English was just fine. When she called Mrs. Beaumont’s diamond pendant a crystal, she meant that it was worthless. Mrs. Beaumont couldn’t risk being exposed by her neighbor. Her scheme would have to wait for another time, but then there was a fight, and Mr. Farquhar stormed out of his cabin.