All Bedlam Courses Past (part two hundred eight)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Eight

Things Relative

(part two hundred eight)

I don’t discount Arnulfa. She does far more than I would do.

A question seemed raised again, whether Miss Buckley got on well with her mother.

What do you really want to know?

Shute, coming across circumscribed in his allowances for proprietous conduct, said he merely wished to know if there had been points of dissent.

Yes and no. I dissented a great deal on her idea of me, but I didn’t say so. It would have made no difference at all, so I didn’t say so. Mother would have told you I was a good daughter.

And you suggest…you tell me…that you had neglected to…

Please. Neglected is the word, I don’t doubt. I ate lunch with Mother. She was served at noon, she was a slow eater, so I estimate I stayed an hour perhaps after one, and Mr. Demrose stayed. Did I say three earlier? I really don’t know. Between two and three. I left hers and went through to my own cabin.

Mr. Demrose?

Escaped when he could. No, forgive me. Left ten minutes or so after I had. I took some time splashing water on my face, and I changed into another frock. Then I went to the reading room, and sat under a fan. I read the American Quarterly, if you’d like that in your notes.

Élucide said, “Mr. Monaghan, answer me this. Did the person understand… Really. It sounds phrasey, but…understand this to be a murder inquiry?”

“Murder inquiry. An excellent phrase. The one understood it to be so, the others perhaps not, prior to the coroner’s inquest being called.”

Mr. Demrose had fetched Myra from the reading room. After six days afloat, the custom had grown on them. They dined, in the restaurant attached to the Longhouse Lounge; they spoke of nothing memorable. Demrose had gone to the bar, and Myra had gone to sit in a deck chair. A man arrived, taking the seat next to her.

Subsequent investigation named him a Mr. Chiles Gorman.

“That is not a double surname. The fellow’s Christian name is Chiles.”

Mr. Gorman struck Myra drunk. He smelled of spirits. Encouraged by Mr. Shute to elaborate, as medicinal smells can have a character of spirits…

Whiskey. I guess this, as Mr. Demrose drinks whiskey.

“Is she saying he drinks so much of it that… He’s taken to reeking?”

Élucide’s settled choice of words drew a grin from Monaghan. “Mr. Demrose did not reek, in my acquaintance of him, but Mr. Shute failed to catch the implication you did, and so he failed to ask. Be sure I’ll mention it.”

Phelan began: “In your own acquaintance, Miss…”

220

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part two hundred nine)

(2025, Stephanie Foster)