Page 13 of Murder on the Brighton Express
“How do you know?”
Aware that our conversation could be overheard by a telephone operator, I gave him the barest details. “She mentioned that newspaper when I met her in Brighton.” It explained why she’d mentioned onlythatnewspaper in her threatening message to me. “Monty, she wanted me to help her with something, and she planned to speak to me about it once we were back in London.”
“I’ll pass that on to the detective. Hopefully he’ll want to question you.” From his tone, he didn’t sound convinced.
I hung up, then asked Peter if he had a few moments to join me in the staff parlor. I signaled for Goliath to come, too. He fetched Frank then went to the kitchen to see if Victor was free.
Harry watched us from behind his newspaper. As I drew closer, he arched his brows in question. He wanted to know what was going on.
I smiled and wiggled my fingers in a cheery wave identical to the one he’d given me earlier.
A few minutes later, the four men sat in the staff parlor, cups of tea in hand, and listened as I explained the case of the missing Ruth Price, and my connection to her. I finished by telling them Scotland Yard were not yet treating her disappearance as suspicious.
“The lead detective thinks she ran off with a man,” I said. “Mind you, he has no evidence to support his theory. Monty isn’t impressed and wants me to look into it.”
“Monty, eh?” Goliath snickered. “You and him courting, Miss Fox?”
“No.”
“You soon will be, I reckon.” He winked.
Frank made a sound of disgust in the back of his throat. “That doesn’t mean anything, idiot. She calls us by our first names, too.”
“That’s not the same thing. We’re staff. He’s her equal. When folk who are social equals start calling each other by their first name, it means something.”
Frank looked aghast at him. “Her equal? You really are an idiot.She’sa Bainbridge. That fellow is just a local plod.”
“I’m a Fox, not a Bainbridge,” I cut in before the conversation got heated.
“And that fellow is a detective sergeant,” Peter said with a glower for Frank. “He deserves some respect.”
Victor rolled his eyes. “Being a sergeant or detective doesn’t mean he should be respected. It’s character that matters.”
Before he worked for the hotel, the baby-faced cook had led a colorful life conning wealthy people out of their money. While he’d reformed his ways before the law caught up to him, he was not inclined to think favorably of policemen. He’d seen too many bad ones to blindly respect them all.
Frank and Peter looked like they’d disagree with Victor, so I quickly moved the conversation on before I lost control completely. If Harmony were here, she wouldn’t have let them stray off course as quickly as they had. Victor, for one, would listen to her.
“I need your ideas,” I told the men. “There may be something I’ve missed, something obvious. Ruth Price got on the train ahead of me. I passed her in her compartment before taking my seat. She was alone. To reach the next carriage, she would have had to pass our compartment, but I didn’t see her.”
“Your door had a window?” Frank asked.
“Yes. We could see anyone who passed.”
“You didn’t close your eyes?” Goliath asked.
“No. I was reading, but I would have seen someone pass.”
“Doesn’t the express make some stops before it reaches Victoria Station?” Peter asked.
“There are two. I wanted some air, so I opened the window and looked out while we stopped. No one got on or off our carriage. The conductor confirmed that, when I asked him once we reached our final destination and I realized she was missing. I asked Flossy if anyone passed our compartment on their way to the next carriage while I had my head out of the window, but she saw no one. So, what do you all think?”
“Perhaps she fell out of her compartment window,” Goliath said.
“She would have screamed. She didn’t, so that also rules out the possibility that she was pushed out while conscious.”
Peter had a theory that could explain that. “What if she did scream, but the train whistle masked it?”
Frank scoffed. “It would be impossible to get the timing right not knowing when the whistle was going to blow.”
