Vivian Conroy - A Proposal to Die For

‘It is not a game,’ Dubois said. He was not looking at the countess, but at Alkmene, almost as if he was trying to warn her.

She pretended not to notice and took a large bite of her pie that had mainly gone unnoticed so far.

Dubois said, ‘I hope the coroner can figure out how a healthy man takes a tumble in his own library and is suddenly dead.’

‘Well, some people do seem to suffer from egg-shell skull,’ Alkmene said round another large bite of chocolate cake with whipped cream and kirsch filling. ‘They are born with a skull that is thin and breakable, but nobody knows it until some fatal day when they either fall or are hit by something… There are several recorded cases of it where just a slight contact could lead to severe damage and even death.’

Dubois hitched a brow at her. ‘How would you have access to such recorded cases? Is your father or brother perhaps involved with the courts?’

She would have to have heard via a male contact of course. Like women couldn’t figure out anything on their own!

The countess tittered. ‘Oh, no, Alkmene is a real lady. She has not stolen her English title like me, by marriage, but has inherited it from a straight line going all the way back to the days of William the Conqueror. Her father can tell you all about it.’

Dubois’s jaw set. He emptied his cup in a single draught and stood. ‘You ladies must excuse me. I have other things to do. Good day.’ And he slammed his hat on his head and walked off.

The countess waited until he had left the tea room, then shot up straight. ‘Oh, dear me, now I have forgotten to return this.’ She pointed at Dubois’s damp handkerchief left on the table where it had soaked up Oksana Matejevna’s spilled tea. ‘Be a dear and run after him to give it back. You are young and can do it, not me.’

Alkmene would normally have declined any errand that involved running after haughty newspapermen, but Dubois seemed to know more about the death of Silas Norwhich, the art collection, and the wily niece, now sole heir. That might be worth looking into.

So for the sake of the case only, she put on her gloves, picked up the handkerchief and left the countess to finish her tea and pie alone. Also to pay the bill, coincidentally. Her father had left money with the household staff to make sure she was provided for in his absence, giving her only a small allowance to get by. That could better be spent on information than on chocolate cake.

Outside Alkmene looked down the street in one direction, not seeing Dubois’s tall straight back anywhere. She turned her head and sought him in the other direction. Nothing either. He could not have gone far…

Had he hailed a cab and dived into it so quickly she had missed him?

Suddenly her eyes focused on the hotel on the other side of the street. Of course.

He had said he had other things to do…

She bet they involved an attractive American heiress who had been very quick to leave the house where her uncle had died a tragic death.

At her hands? Dubois had asked if she suspected someone in the household of involvement in a tone that suggested he could hardly believe it. But she bet he had not missed the fact that Evelyn Steinbeck would inherit her uncle’s entire fortune. Including his coveted art collection.

Alkmene crossed the street, avoiding a heavy laden brewery wagon, and smiled at the hotel porters as if she came here every day. She wished she had put on her better clothes anyway, because first-rate hotels could be picky about admitting just anybody and she had no wish to be asked, however discreetly, to leave.

Inside she breathed in the scent of the thick carpets, well-waxed oak furniture and fresh flowers that had just been put on the tables in the lobby. A chambermaid in a crisp black and white ensemble was rearranging a stem here and there, lingering as if she didn’t want to return to the heavier duties upstairs: cleaning rooms and making beds.

The hushed silence as of a giant old library forced Alkmene to progress with slow steps, avoiding any harsh ticking of her hard-soled shoes. Dubois had probably taken the elevator upstairs to search for the heiress’s suite.

Then a hand arrested her arm, and she was whooshed behind a palm. Gasping in indignation, she stared up into the hard features and dark eyes of Dubois. ‘What are you doing here?’ he hissed.

Wordlessly Alkmene held up his stained handkerchief. He wanted to take it from her, but she pulled back. ‘Tea stains can be tricky. I suppose you have no one to launder for you?’

He huffed. ‘My landlady, but she has already ruined one of my best shirts with her starch.’

‘Then let me launder it for you and return it to you later this week.’ She wanted to know where he lived so she could get in touch with him later. He was the closest thing to a detective she had right now and she was not about to let him walk away.

He gave her a patronizing little smile. ‘I bet you do not launder. I bet you do not even know how to launder. Or how to cook.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ Alkmene retorted, although painfully aware she had no idea how her stained skirts from gardening or her blouse with inkblots got clean again. Cook’s niece did the laundering, a nice woman with freckles and too many children crammed into a little house on a back alley. If the stains were particularly difficult, Alkmene made sure to give some extra money to Cook to pass on and she had always felt that was about as much as she needed to know about the process.

Now this man made it sound like a crime that she didn’t know how to get this handkerchief cleaned up herself.

Probably a communist dead set against English aristocracy.

Believed everybody should live on the kolkhoz and share all the work and income equally.

But cleaning his handkerchief had to be simple enough, and she would prove it to him.

‘You will get it back, cleaned by my own hands,’ she promised.

The corners of his mouth jerked up as if he was about to smile for real, but then he increased the pressure on her arm and pulled her further back.

‘What the…’ Alkmene spluttered and then fell silent with pure surprise.

There in the lobby of the grand Metropolitan hotel was Oksana Matejevna, speaking to a bellboy who looked about him furtively as he breathed answers.

‘Either that bellboy happens to be fluent in Russian,’ Dubois said in a low voice beside her, ‘or our dear superstitious country lady speaks better English than she pretends to do.’

‘I could have sworn she was soaking up every word we said,’ Alkmene responded in a half grim tone. ‘What on earth is she doing here, asking questions?’

‘I suppose she is after the same person we all are,’ Dubois said pensively.

Alkmene stared in fascination as the mousy Russian woman fished a coin from her purse – probably her employer’s money too! – and handed it to the bellboy who accepted it with another guilty glance around him. Then, satisfied it had been unobserved, he stepped away from her and resumed his duties.

Oksana Matejevna walked to the exit, her head held high, and disappeared into the brisk morning.

Alkmene snapped to it and focused on Dubois. ‘The same… You mean, Evelyn Steinbeck? The dead man’s heiress?’

Dubois nodded. ‘Oksana had a chance like all of us to see her go in here. She must have made up that excuse of being so scared about talk of death and murder to be able to leave ahead of the countess and come in here to bribe that bellboy into giving her information.’

Alkmene chewed her lower lip. ‘Or the countess instructed her to do it. I do not understand Russian so I am not sure what she said to her exactly before she left. You?’

Dubois stood staring at the floorboards, deep in thought. She touched his arm. ‘Are you sure the countess sent her to the dressmaker’s?’