In Dublin's Fair City (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #6)

“Who could have blabbed,” Henry pointed out. “They often do.”


I shook my head again. “Like I told you, I’m only going to Ireland to look up the sister of a friend. Nothing of a criminal nature, I assure you. No, I’m sure somebody wanted to kill Miss Sheehan—some unbalanced young man, mad with unrequited love, I shouldn’t wonder.”

The captain turned to the other officers. “Then where the deuce do we start? We can’t line up all the younger men on this ship and see if Henry recognizes any of them by their hair or their voices.”

“You could find out who ordered a large display of flowers this evening,” I said, “although I shouldn’t think the murderer would have been stupid enough to order them in his own name.”

“Worth a try, I suppose,” the captain said.

“If you want my advice, sir,” the doctor said, looking up from his seat at the desk, “we should make sure nobody goes ashore and then turn this over to the Irish police. We may well bungle the whole thing ifwe try to conduct our own investigation. These things have to be done with a great deal of subtlety.”

“Are you insinuating that I don’t know what the hell I am doing?” the captain demanded.

“You said yourself that you’d never conducted a murder investigation before, sir,” the doctor said calmly. “It may be wiser, in the circumstances, to put the whole thing into the hands of trained professional detectives.”

“Oh, very well, blast it,” the captain grunted. “I don’t know how we’re going to prevent the passengers from going ashore without a full-scale mutiny on our hands.”

“Tell them it's a health scare, sir,” the doctor said. “A passenger has come down with a suspected infectious disease and nobody is allowed ashore until they’ve passed a medical inspection.”

“Brilliant, man.” For once the captain looked pleased. “That way we can take a good look at all of them. A medical inspection. That's the ticket.” He clapped his hands. “Right. Make sure you stand guard outside Miss Sheehan's cabin all night, Henry. Nobody is to go anywhere near it. And the rest of us will try for a couple of hours of shut-eye. We’ll all need our wits about us in the morning.”

“What about me?” I asked. “Where am I to sleep?”

“In your own cabin on E deck, I suppose,” the captain said.

“I’ll need to collect my few possessions from Oona Sheehan's cabin first,” I said. “I can hardly go to sleep dressed like this, and I have to return the costume to your store.”

The captain sighed. “Very well. Go with her, man, and make sure she doesn’t touch anything she doesn’t have to. They can take fingerprints these days, so I understand.”

“My fingerprints would already be all over the cabin, since I’ve lived in it for a week,” I said. “And don’t worry, I’ll not disturb anything.”

With that I left the room.





Ten


Of course I found it impossible to sleep. The narrow bunk was cold and hard and the deep dull thunk, thunk, thunk of the engine noise seemed to resonate through my skull. I suppose that delayed shock was setting in too, because I couldn’t get warm. My horror until now had been for poor Rose. Now it was just beginning to sink in that had I returned from the party earlier and dismissed the maid, it might have been me lying covered in that bed, staring out with dead eyes. I pulled the coverlet up around me and hugged my knees to my chest. I didn’t like to think what tomorrow might bring. So much for slipping into Ireland quietly without anybody noticing me, I thought, before I finally drifted into an uneasy sleep.

I awoke to loud sounds of clanking and grinding and sat up, with heart pounding, only to hit my head against the upper bunk. This, of course, reminded me where I was and the full horror of the night before came flooding back into my memory. It appeared that we had come into Queenstown harbor during the night and were now docking. I got up and peered out under the lifeboat. It was still early—a gray dawn, streaked with rose in the east, the sort of day we Irish would know meant no good would come of the weather. Seagulls wheeled around mewing plaintively, and with that sound came the realization that I was truly home again. There were seagulls in New York, of course, but somehow they weren’t the same. These were the cries that had accompanied my childhood outings into Westport or to meet the fishing boats when they delivered their catch to a dock near our cottage.