fringe peeked out below the sides of his cap, and his small hands seemed dainty in white kid gloves. For all his unassuming aspect, Garrett was not fooled. It took something for a man of Irish descent to rise to captain a paddle boat that happened to be the pride of the North River Day Line—and the O’Briens were descended of Brian Boru, High King of Ireland…and draoi. Druid, an English speaker would say.
Not that that meant that O’Brien would inevitably be a sorcerer—but wizardry, like scholarship, had a tendency to run in families.
Garrett extended a hand. O’Brien took it. Their eyes met; she was the taller. It did not seem to trouble him.
Beneath her laced boots, the decks shivered as the great paddle wheels drifted to a halt, then began more vigorously to turn in a forward direction, taking advantage of the inflowing tide to push The Nation fast and hard for Albany. And Garrett was alone aboard her with a corpse, a crime, and the unknown factors of the crew and captain.
***
In a civilized nation, no vessel with a murdered man aboard would have been permitted to flit casually from the docks, waiting with bad grace and—figuratively speaking—restive stamping for the presence of the Crown’s Own. But the Colonies were not a civilized nation, with civilized checks on the behavior of powerful men. At least two of those men—Duke Richard, the highest aristocratic authority in the New Netherlands, and Peter Eliot, Lord Mayor of New Amsterdam—had a vested financial interest in the North River Day Line’s monopoly and operations.
If a messenger hadn’t raced on his velocipede directly from the offices of Robert Cook, president of the North River Day Line, to the offices of Peter Eliot as soon as the murder was reported…Detective Crown Investigator Garrett would eat her carpetbag full of the tools of the forensic sorcerer.
As Garrett followed O’Brien’s narrow shoulders along the port side rail, she trained her investigator’s awareness on the vessel. The Nation was at the top of her line, a broad-beamed behemoth strung everywhere with glittering lanterns that reflected from bronze and red and violet paint and from gilt on every surface. Garrett thought she must have used The Nation’s twin sisters in her own occasional trips upriver, though she could not recall having been on this particular vessel previously.
The Nation’s wood finishings were ornate, scrolled and pierced with jigsaw work like the latest style in houses. Deck passengers milled among the cargo piled and lashed in tidy stacks, and the air of excitement led even those who had booked cabin passage to join them. Normally, these more well-heeled passengers would avoid the dirt and poverty of the decks. There would be a main cabin where they might mingle, and at either end of it a salon for the ladies and a saloon for the men. As The Nation was normally a day line ship, and should already have been approaching the safety of her berth in Albany, she did not book out sleeper cabins. And Garrett thought the level of excitement vibrating through the passengers was well beyond what the salon (or saloon!) or even main cabin could have contained. Garrett wondered what the captain had told them, and what additional rumors might be sparking like wildfire from one passenger to the next.
They’d be up all night at this rate.
Well, so would she.
Captain O’Brien paused before a stateroom door, beside which stood a crewman in a dirty-kneed uniform. Mostly, passengers traveled the day line boats on deck, or in the salons—but there were a limited number of cabins available for the shy, or overly moneyed, or those who did not care to mix even with the middle class patrons amid the silver and mirrors in the cabin.
“Here,” he said. He produced a key from his pocket—it was on a numbered fob—and unlocked the door. With no signs of a flourish—only a drab practicality, which—Garrett had to admit—seemed largely appropriate to the somber circumstances—he drew the panel open.
The space within was lit by a single lantern, but that was more than adequate. It was a little room, essentially—more a closet than a chamber—with an easy chair and a shuttered porthole. The curtains had been drawn against the inside. There was a good rug on the floor—anywhere else, it would have been a runner for an entryway—and atop the rug there was a dead…woman.
A book had fallen beside her, and a china teacup figured with cherries lay miraculously unbroken beside her splayed hand.