All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred ninety-nine)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Eight

Things Relative

(part one hundred ninety-nine)

ii.

Accident on board

Crimes aboard ship might take place outside all jurisdiction, save the captain’s. On the sidewheeler Chief Complanter, the death ruled by a Cook County coroner’s jury foul play, triggering these hearings of witnesses before a grand jury, had occurred within Monaghan’s purview.

If a murder story begins with the finding of the corpse, then Regina Demrose Cloughman Buckley Demrose’s began with a cabin steward, seventeen-year-old Zbigniew Lubinski, shaken as he made to climb to the luxury staterooms near the promenade deck’s bow-end, by his foot landing askew on a thing both soft and hard. Under the tray with its two pitchers of ice water, he could not see the floor, his shoes entangling in fabric. Then a dance of balancing to save the glass.

The pitchers, and a week’s wages, survived. Lubinski’s accident had, however, marred the body; in no material way, but leaving the skirts of a nightgown and dressing gown drenched. Dr. Olhausen, a pathologist rowed out to the Chief for examination in situ, commented in his notes and testimony that interference with evidence at the scene could not (to young Lubinski’s evident despair) be regarded out of the question.

Monaghan arrived next, though his work had begun via telegraph. He had asked the captain to confine the passengers, with travel-mates if not alone, to their cabins. And for the good that might be done of requesting it, to keep them (when they defied this order) from gathering.

The plea went over badly, but Monaghan counted it well. Anger is a great preoccupier. The identity of the lady had needed determining…thus, along with the accident-on-board notice, had gone a second notice, for “anyone who is missing a member of their party”.

Until the dawn of day, no one was.

Ebrach said: “But Mrs. Demrose was a passenger of some importance. Not only Ryan-Neville accompanied her, but the daughter, and a servant…a lady’s maid, if the term is still in use.”

“You bring up a point.” Monaghan looked at Élucide, saying so. “Why Demrose, if that were not the fellow’s proper name?”

He wanted her to call Regina domineering, tidy up the question of motive with a well-liked scenario. She thought so, but said, “Why were you confining people? What did Dr. Hausman think was…what do I want to say…?”

“Olhausen,” Weem murmured.

“Incompatible. With an accident, what anyone would assume?”

Monaghan slipped a wise glance to Phelan.

211

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part two hundred)

(2025, Stephanie Foster)