Murder Most Posh: A Mrs. Xavier Stayton Mystery (5 page)

   Politely bored with our company, my eyes fell on a lovely young lady who stood at the back of the ballroom. The woman had dark glossy black hair and skin that suggested a South American origin. She leaned against a pillar and watched the band with great intent. It appeared to me her eyes were focused on the handsome fellow playing the piano.

   It struck me that she seemed very much in love with the musician, and I was happy for her. Love is the richest feeling, to be cherished above all else.

   My attention was captured when Mrs. Beaumont asked the countess, “Are you vacationing in America?” This seemed a queer question as she had pointed out to Lucy and me the fact that the woman had just learned of a relative in the States.

   The countess and her husband exchanged quick glances before she said, “I have discovered that my sister survived the purge. Like I, she was hidden from the revolutionists. She’s in New York.”

   Mrs. Beaumont’s beady eyes were fixed on the countess as she replied with little enthusiasm, “How nice for you.”

   The countess nodded. “Yes, it is good; so few of us there are.”

   Mathew Farquhar’s face darkened, and it struck me that perhaps he thought otherwise. I knew the difficulties I had faced after marrying into a wealthy family, whose ways are so different from my own. Xavier had been such a joy and so very supportive. I wondered what life was like for Mathew: new to money, new to a lifestyle, and married to a creature who seemed demanding and cold. I did not envy the pair. 

   I think, perhaps, for the first time throughout the evening, Mr. Beaumont took notice of me. After a startled jolt, he leaned into his wife and spoke to her in French. She shot me an inquisitive glare and remarked, “Well, I’ll be, you are
Mrs. X.
”

   The
countess gave me a questionable glance as her husband said, “Ah, yes. You were in all of the papers. You solved that murder at Pearce Manor.”

   “Murder?” exclaimed the countess.

   Rather excited, Mathew said, “Yes, the culprit was hanged—he was the family butler, wasn’t he?”

   Mrs. Beaumont gave a mighty chuckle. “The butler did it! What a cliché!”

   Lucy chimed in, “He was so polite, too, very pleasant—I never would have imagined he was a coldblooded murder.”

   The countess’s eyes swung toward her husband, and she remarked, “No one can ever understand mind of killer.”

   Mathew gave her a nervous smile, seemingly perplexed by the comment.

   Maxie Beaumont grew tired of being ignored and remarked, “I too have been in the papers.” She raised her thick hands into the air and clenched them. “They called me Maxie ʻGrip
’
Beaumont!”

   Mathew and his wife looked at the hefty woman with curious expressions. Taking the greatest of joy, she retold her story of the
Tatiana’s
sinking. At the conclusion, she suggested to the countess, “Heed my warning, and keep your jewels with you; if the ship goes down, you don’t want them locked in the purser’s safe.”

   The countess took a moment to survey the many bobbles on Mrs. Beaumont and remarked, with a sneer, “Such shame.”

Chapter Four

After Lucy bade me goodnight, I slipped out to our private promenade. It had been a long evening, and rather taxing. It would be a lie to say I enjoyed the company of our neighbors, and we still had so many days at sea with them.

   The little promenade was closed in; still, the sound of the sea penetrated the sealed glass windows. It was a beautiful, tranquil sound. My thoughts quieted as I looked to the distant horizon. Starlight glistened and reflected from the moving ocean before turning into the blackness of night. In that visible and still unseen void was Heaven. Xavier was there, just out of my sight, just beyond my reach, but he was there. As far away as this place was, my heart was very near his; his presence surrounded me, just like the night sky.

   Attuned to the sea, to the night, I felt the discomfort of the evening fall away. At peace, growing tired, I was about to leave the serenity of the promenade when I heard the neighboring cabin door open. The sound was to my left, and a column of light appeared in the window of the door that separated our private decks. A man’s figure passed through. It was not Michael Emerson, but his brother, Rory.

   Though a full-grown man, he smiled at me in a rather childlike fashion. I smiled back as he peered through the window and looked me first up and then down; his eyes seemed to linger at the decking beneath me.

   His brother’s voice called out, “Rory, don’t be peeking into the ladies’ balcony. They might see you. Do you want to get in trouble again?”

   Rory turned back and rushed inside the cabin. In an instant, he was gone, as swiftly as the peace and serenity I had just experienced.

    The following morning, I woke early. Sitting up in bed, I reached for my little notebook and jotted down a few random thoughts.

   Maxie Beaumont presented me with the perfect character for my next whodunit. In fiction, she would need to be sympathetic, to win the heart of the reader. This would take some work. In my story, her constant mention of the loss of her jewelry on board a doomed ship would gain the attention of a cat burglar. As this heroine would warn others about keeping valuables in the ship’s safe, it would become known that her own jewels were an easy target, kept in her stateroom.

   I would need to devise a clever thief: someone acting out a part, perhaps portraying herself as a wealthy countess who would be above suspicion, or a young man who appeared not all there in the head, but was, in fact, a diabolical criminal. I thought of Michael’s words to his brother the night before, “They might see you; you don’t want to get in trouble—again.”

   Putting my notebook down, I glanced across the bedroom and spotted my pearl necklace and earrings on the dressing table beside my open jewelry box. Emeralds, rubies, and sapphires reflected in the morning’s light. I decided at once to ignore Maxie Beaumont’s advice.

   “This should just take a moment,” I assured Lucy. “Then we will get breakfast.”

   Agreeable as always, Lucy replied, “Of course.”

   With my little jewel case in hand, we stepped inside the purser’s outer office. My intention was to lock up the many valuable gems that Xavier had given me. If the
Olivia
suffered the same fate as her sister ship, at least I would know where my jewels were. This seemed preferable to some master criminal absconding with them.

   Within the outer room, we found a young woman crying as two crewmen stood to either side of her. I recognized her instantly. She was the young woman I saw in the ballroom the night before. She was still wearing her glamorous gown.

   Mr. Pace, the ship’s purser, held up a hand to pause the hushed conversation he was attempting to hold with the upset young lady. “Just a tick.”  He then turned to me, “Hello, Mrs. Stayton. How may I be of service to you?”

   Still clutching my jewel case, I asked, “What seems to be the matter here?”

   One of the crewmen said, “Stowaway.”

   The young woman broke out into fresh tears. “I just wanted to follow Francisco to America—”

   The same crewman remarked, “He’ll be fired over this—”

   “Enough,” said Mr. Pace in a low tone. He smiled at me and said, “Nothing for you to worry about, Mrs. Stayton; now, how can I help you?”

   I handed my jewelry box over to Lucy and said, “I would like to pay for this young woman’s accommodations.”

   The young woman called out in her native tongue what I believed to be a blessing as Mr. Pace fumbled for words.

  “Lucy and I can share one of the bedrooms, and she can have the other.” I turned to her and asked slowly, unsure how much English she spoke, “What is your name, dear?”

   “Yara Pinto; you are a saint—”

   Mr. Pace interrupted, “Mrs. Stayton, this is really not your concern.”

  “I must disagree with you, Mr. Pace. It is the duty of any Christian woman to lend aid when she can. Send a telegraph off to my business manager. Mr. Jack will see to it that her passage is paid for in full. She will be my guest.”

  The purser and the two crewmen looked at me with great astonishment. (Of course, upon returning home and finding out just how much the passage on board the
Olivia
costs, it struck me that the true Christian thing to do would be to travel third class and give the rest of the fee to charity— a variety of charities in fact.)

   I took Yara by the hand and led her away, knowing that Mr. Pace had no choice but to adhere to my wishes.

   Tears of joy replaced the tears of fear on Yara’s exotic face. She was a very pretty girl, with a lovely smile.

   In her state of excitement, English failed her as she said, “
Obrigado, obrigado
.”

   Lucy leaned toward my ear and said, “She’s saying
thank you
in Portuguese. I believe that’s what they speak in Brazil.”

     “Well, now, enough of that,” I told Yara, patting her hand. “We need to have some breakfast.”

   We returned to our room, and while I hid my jewelry case under the bed, Lucy found a nice frock for Yara that was more suited for breakfast.

   Only after we arrived at a gaily decorated café and ordered our meal did Yara find composure, and her English.

   “Never have I done anything like this, I promise,” she told us, explaining her daring actions.

   Smearing a bit of honey onto my toast, I replied, “Well, I certainly would hope not.”

   “Where are you from?” Lucy inquired.

   “Fortaleza, Brazil,” Yara responded.

   “However, you were obviously last in England, France, or Ireland,” I said politely, curious as to how she had come so far.

   Yara dropped her piece of bacon and tossed her little hands into the air as she laughed. “
Sim,
I was in London, this past year. I worked as a maid. That is how I was to meet Francisco, my
doce-de-coco
.”

   Lucy gave a giggle, and then apologized, and I asked, “This Francisco, is he the one who plays the piano for the orchestra?”

   “
Sim, sim,
but this job is just to get him to America,” Yara replied.

   “Once you arrive in America, what will you do?” asked Lucy.

   “Francisco and I will marry; he has the promise of a good job in Miami,” she assured us.

   This all seemed very romantic. “How did you get on board the ship?” I asked.

   “I followed close behind a wealthy woman with much luggage. I pretended to be her maid and went right up the gangway.”

   “Wearing that evening gown?” asked Lucy.

   “Oh no, I had that in a bag. I wore simple clothing to go unnoticed,” she explained. “I thought I could hide in a lifeboat, but it wasn’t so easy.”

   I became a little concerned. “Does your family know that you are on board this ship?”

   “No, they think I’m still in London, working in that grand house,” she replied.

   Nodding my chin, I told her, “We’ll need to send word to them. You don’t want them to be worried about you.”

   Our food arrived, and Yara told us about her romance with Francisco. He had been hired to play the piano at a party hosted by her employer. Through the night, as she served champagne to the guests, their eyes had met. At the end of the evening, she watched him take a pen from the pocket of his jacket. He wrote something down on a corner of his sheet music and tore the edge from the page. Making sure that he’d once more caught her eye, even as she was tending to the departing guests, he placed the note on the keys of the piano and shut the lid.

   After every guest was gone, and her employers had left her and the other domestics to clean, Yara hastened to the piano and retrieved the note. The message asked if she believed in love at first sight, and said that if she did, she was to meet him the next afternoon in a nearby café.

    I was so happy that we had met Yara. Contented and sweet, she would make for a breath of fresh air in first class. 

   Returning to our suite, Lucy moved her belongings to my room, even as Yara insisted she could sleep on the divan in the parlor.

     This suggestion was politely ignored.

     We then journeyed with Yara to the lifeboat where she had hidden the bag that contained all her earthly possessions. I must admit that I was somewhat embarrassed as passersby gawked at us while Yara climbed about the little boat.

   Lucy did a double take and asked, “That’s all you have?”

   Yara opened the bag so that we could take a glimpse her maid’s uniform and several pieces of brightly colored beaded jewelry.

   “Francisco will buy us everything we need once we reach America,” she told us with all the wonderful confidence of a child looking forward to receiving a nickel from the Tooth Fairy.   

   Exhaustion soon captured Yara, and she retired to her new room to take a nap. Lucy and I went for a stroll, taking in the fresh air on the open promenade at the rear of the ship.

   This deck looked down on to the second-class promenade. After glancing below, I looked back to the sea. I felt rather uncomfortable in the spot; it felt rather exalted. It was not my place to look down upon anyone, and literally doing so while divided by class seemed most unchristian.

   I was about to lead Lucy away when she exclaimed, “Oh, look, it’s Mr. Hurst.”

   Gerald Hurst, the fellow we’d met at the hotel, had vanished from my mind. I hadn’t thought we’d see him since he was traveling second class.

   It seemed that Lucy had caught his eye, for she started to wave her little gloved hand. I stepped forward to do the same. Looking below, my eyes fell not at first on him, but on the woman beside Mr. Hurst.

   Gazing up toward us, Countess Orlov appeared very startled to see Lucy and me waving to her and her companion.

  “The countess…” said Lucy, her arm freezing in the air as she stuttered.

   “Yes, Lucy, let’s leave them to their business.”

   With one last wave, I stepped away and tugged a confused Lucy with me.

   “How did she get to the second-class promenade? What business would she have with Mr. Hurst?”

   I hadn’t an answer for my friend’s questions. “I don’t think that it should concern us…”

   We were just passing the first-class reading room when, through the window, I saw Mathew Farquhar. He did not see me; his attention was directed toward a slender woman with very blonde hair, wearing a garish pink dress with black polka dots. I could not see her face for two reasons: there was a glare on the window, and her face was pushed against Mr. Farquhar’s as they kissed.

   “Dear Heaven!” exclaimed Lucy when she realized what I was looking at.

   “This has nothing to do with Heaven,” I murmured.

    With shaking hands, I jotted in my notebook all we had witnessed. Lucy paced the floor of our shared bedroom, repeating a single word: “Scandalous!”

   Once through with my notes, I looked up and said, “I have all the characters; now I just need a crime…”

   Lucy and I both jumped when there was a knock at the door. Passing by our sleepy new friend, Yara, in the parlor, I opened the door to the hall. Mr. Pace stood outside with his hat in his hands.

   “Good afternoon, Mr. Pace,” I said, my heart still racing.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Stayton,” he replied and paused to find just the right words. “I say…well, it’s just…you see…well, dash it…”

   “Yes, Mr. Pace?”

   “I wanted to tell you…I admire that spirit of kindness and generosity of yours.” He bowed his head, and then looked back to me, and his mouth opened, but no words came out. He shrugged and smiled.

   “That is very sweet of you, Mr. Pace.”