Lenora opened the door to her stateroom to peer, again, at the clock in the lobby. Ten minutes before six in the morning. Her maid, Sarah, was almost an hour late! Lenora tried to be charitable, as the girl wasn’t actually her maid, but a worker for the airship line. But still, an hour?
Lenora McAllister was a woman on the young side of her middle years, with lustrous black hair in tight curls and stunningly high cheekbones she attributed to her Gypsy ancestors. Her blue eyes missed nothing, but added a great deal to her beauty.
She spun at the sounds of a miniature waterfall to glare accusingly at Pepe. The small dog had, indeed, just done her business against the oak cupboards. Lenora wagged her finger at the unabashed Chihuahua. “Bad girl! You could have waited for me to put the newspaper down.”
Lenora was about to close her door when the clatter of running footsteps drew her attention to the hall.
Sarah arrived panting in a rush with fly-away hair, flushed cheeks and teary eyes. Her apron hung in one hand and her dress had been buttoned out of sequence, with one button off.
Lenora sniffed, how unprofessional.
The girl bobbed a curtsy and slipped into the stateroom, trying ineffectually to straighten her dress and hair. Lenora frowned at her, she had little time for flitterbits. Young women needed to be responsible; able to look after themselves in the world.
A tear leaked from the girl’s eye, but she hastily wiped it away with a bit of handkerchief. Lenora sighed, it wasn’t a common thing for women to be strong and self-sufficient the way she was, though they should be. Lenora had done quite well by herself, though it galled her to admit that it was through marrying well, and not by her own efforts.
“There, there now girl, you’re only an hour late.”
“Forgive me, ma’am, it won’t happen again. My…my young man and I had a bit of a row this morning. But it’s over, so that won’t be a problem in future.” Sarah stood tall, her lip barely quivering and a tear suspended on her eyelashes. She looked so brave, standing in her mis-fastened dress and apron in one hand.
Lenora’s heart melted. Why, she was just such a girl when she was young. Strong, impulsive in love, not always the best taste in men…. But no matter, she had things to be about.
“I am afraid that I have important matters to attend to, so why don’t you tidy yourself up, then clean up Miss Pepe’s booboo by the cabinet? We’ll not speak of your tardiness again.”
The girl nodded, bobbed up and down and ran for the washroom. Lenora sighed. She didn’t understand young women anymore. Why that girl must be eighteen. At her age I was married to my dear Esperanzo. And I was only fourteen when I left home to make my own way.
Lenora snapped her fingers. Pepe jumped into her arms and she left the stateroom. She hurried along the oak paneled hall to a small, almost unnoticeable door marked crew. She lifted the hem of her elegant, ankle-length coral skirt, and pushed the door open to hurry down the stairs.
She felt deliciously sneaky taking the back way to the radio room. She could have gone the long way—the approved way—along the decks and down the grand staircase. But she had been expecting an important cable that morning and it should have been slipped under her door by 3:00 a.m. What could have gone wrong? It was times like this that, as much as she loved airship travel, she hated how cut off they were from the world. They wouldn’t get a connection again until they tied up for coal and fresh produce at Quebec City. Three days from now.
Pepe’s low growl alerted her to someone in the hall below. She froze in place, hoping that they wouldn’t be heading up the stairs. They continued along the corridor. She set Pepe down and hurried across the hall to the exit onto the lower deck.
“Well, let’s just hope that my luck continues and my cable is waiting to be delivered.” She whispered at Pepe, who tinkled a little bit on the door.
“Bad dog.” Lenora sighed.
“Hello?” Lenora tapped brightly at the radio room door. After a pause, she tapped again, louder.
“No-one is here, how odd.” She looked down at Pepe, puzzled. “Do you suppose he’s on his way to our cabin and we missed him? Or should we go in and see if he’s just distracted?”
She took Pepe’s non-committal stare as approval to go in, and opened the door.
“Hello?” She was surprised to hear an odd quaver in her voice, as if her primitive brain had recognized something wrong, which her civilized brain had not. She nervously decided to go back to her room to see if the cable had been delivered when Pepe exploded into a furious, barking mass and charged into the room.
“Oh dear, that’s that decision made for me.”
She gasped as she stepped into the room. Everything was limned in the most beautiful pink hues. Where most airships had brass on the levers and around the dials, this one had gorgeous, glowing rose-gold. She stepped deeper into the room, it was just lovely in the early morning sunlight. They should give tours, I must suggest it, she thought.
Then her nose wrinkled. She smelled something coppery and that was just wrong. Gold doesn’t smell coppery, in her experience, only two things smelled like that.
“Oh dear,” she whispered, as she stepped closer to a pink dusted dial and peered at it. “I do hope someone’s been polishing pennies in here.” But as she swiped her white cotton glove over the dial she knew pennies had nothing to do with it.
Her fingers had left a smudged trail through the—yes, she must admit it—through the blood. She peered at the red liquid soaking into her gloved fingertips. It was fresh.
“Oh my, I do hope Pepe isn’t getting into anything.” But she could hear the dog’s nails clicking rapidly in excitement against the polished wooden floor. And the sound of her yipping, trying to get Lenora to join her.
Lenora slowly walked around the room, peering about for some sign of a crewman she could talk to—someone to tell her she was imagining things; someone to tell her she was wrong.
Then she stepped on something firm but giving. It reminded her of that time she discovered a dead rat by stepping on it. Her eyes remained fixed on the far side of the room for a long moment as she drew a deep breath.
She looked down at what lay beneath her expensive kid boot. It was a hand. She followed the arm back to a headless body. Well, mostly headless, she believed that the scraps hanging onto the neck and suit collar used to be his head.
“I thought my gypsy senses were warning me away, I do wish I would be wrong once in a while.”
Pepe rushed over, leaving tiny, bloody paw prints on the light oak. She immediately bit into the hand and tried to drag it away from Lenora’s foot.
Though she would later deny it, Lenora screamed as loudly and shrilly as she could. She then sat on the nearest chair and rested her head on her arms, crossed over her knees to prevent the dizzy feeling from becoming a fainting spell. Unfortunately, that put the pool of blood and unidentified bits directly in her line of sight.
When Pepe came over and put bloodied paws on her morning skirt and pushed her red smeared little face between Lenora’s hands, it was too much for her to handle. Lenora fainted dead away.
Lenora gazed about the windowless room that Captain Lewis had moved her and Pepe to for questioning. It felt like a cell in a jailhouse, though having no experience of jails, she imagined it was much cleaner. There was nothing to look at except the small russet dog snoozing on her lap with her tiny feet still wet from a vigorous washing, her utterly ruined blouse and satin walking skirt, and the captain himself.
The airship captain was acting every inch a captain, and not the least bit like a gentleman. He was brusque to the point of rudeness, and kept looking at her like she’d stepped in dear Pepe’s boom-boom.
Well just you wait until I can get a word in. Then we’ll see who’s no better than they should be, you trumped up cabin boy.
Lenora thinned her lips in disapproval, there was no need for being so unpleasant. Why the aspersions he was casting her way, as if she was in any way at fault for that poor man’s death.
After a few more minutes, during which she listened to nothing the captain said, the Contessa noticed a pregnant pause in the conversation.
“Were you speaking to me, sir?” She asked in her plummiest English tones. She watched with interest as the blood rose up the captain’s neck staining it and his jowls deep red. She could see him biting back harsh words.
“I asked your name, ma’am. Which you utterly failed to provide earlier.” His words were clipped, but the Contessa smiled, they provided exactly the opportunity she’d been looking for.
“I am the Contessa Lenora, widow of his Excellency, the Sicilian Count Espranzo di Sarducci, and of Lord Sir Archibald McAllister. You may refer to me only as La Contessa. Perhaps as my Lady if we are at dinner.”
She was surprised to find that she held back the name of her other deceased husband. She hadn’t intended to, but it wouldn’t do to show all her cards at once. So she glared across the table and tried to ignore the suspicious note in the captain’s voice as he demanded that she repeat her story again.
“Perhaps if I go back to the very beginning and use smaller words, Sir?” She smiled graciously as his lips thinned and noticed the slight but definite curl to his lip. “So you don’t like being talked down to? Good, neither do I.”
That being said, she rested back in her chair and turned her thoughts to the events before the event, as it were.
“I was awakened at midnight when the ship cast off its moorings. I am a light sleeper, you see, and the noise of the fans engaging and the motors starting was quite noticeable. I went back to sleep, but was dressed and ready for my cafe by five-thirty.”
She paused, gathering her thoughts. How to explain why she’d gone to the radio room without giving away her familiarity with airships? Then she decided not to explain at all.
“I was under the impression that usually any cables or wires are tucked under your door by five. I am expecting an urgent cable from Ottawa, you see. So, when it hadn’t arrived by six, I decided to save the poor man in the radio room a few steps and fetch it myself.”
“What made you think you had a message to fetch? And how did you know where to look for the radio room?”
Yes, his voice was definitely showing suspicion. “Oh dear, smaller words, pet?”
She smiled again as his face flushed. She was beginning to think that she disliked this man. She loved men! Three times a widow, never one to overlook a handsome face, and yet this gammy-man made her yearn to be mean to him. Nevertheless, she tried to reign in her temper.
“I was a frequent flyer in Europe, and while these American ships do have some superficial differences, the very nature of an airship requires that certain elements be placed in the same location on every ship. I am not one of those vapid floozies that hang about the bridge railings hoping for a glimpse of the dashing captain. I am an educated woman of the world. So I would be grateful if you would treat me as such.”
His lip curled again, ever so slightly. So, he hated intelligent, independent women even more than those moaning limpets. Interesting.
“As I was saying, I was expecting a very important cable from the Prime Minister’s secretary,” There. That ought to instil a little respect into the man. “And even allowing for things to be more,” she searched for a less insulting term than shoddy, “relaxed, here in the colonies, there are five hours between midnight and five in the morning. That’s plenty of time to write out the messages and deliver them, so I was a touch concerned that there had been a problem.”
He just stared at her, so she continued. “I brought Pepe as I didn’t want her to get out of my stateroom and get lost. And it was fortuitous, as it turned out.” She smiled at the captain again. “That means that it worked out well.”
The only response was a muscle twitching in his jaw. So Lenora eased up a bit.
“When I reached the radio room, my first thought was how lovely it looked in the morning light. All the brass was shining that particular shade of pinkish-yellow you only see at sunrise. It was then that I first smelled blood.”
“Familiar with that scent, are you?” His tone made it sound dirty, scurrilous.
“I do consult with the Prime Minister on matters of national importance, my good man. It is not for fashion tips that he sends me cables so close to Canada’s second anniversary of independence.” Her nose tilted up despite her best efforts to remain polite. “I am not at liberty to discuss the details, but I may say that yes, I am familiar with the monsters that walk about as men.”
The captain remained silent for a long moment. Perhaps finally impressed with the woman before him.
“So you were snooping where you shouldn’t have been.”
Lenora gasped, that was beyond rude. She was done with coddling this annoying little punter.
“I beg your pardon? I do not snoop. I inquire into matters that concern me.”
The captain was silent at last.
But it was a tense silence: Lenora staring down her nose, the captain close to openly glaring back. Suddenly Pepe jumped from her lap to bark and leap at the door.
“Pepe, come here.” Lenora patted her lap. But Pepe spared her not a glance as a firm knock sounded on the doorframe. The tiny dog nearly exploded with renewed vigor, leaping as high as her tiny legs could propel her.
“Come!”
The captain raised one hand to his eyes to identify the crewman silhouetted against the bright sunlight in the door.
The man stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. He smelled of oils and smoke as he stood meeting the captain’s gaze. It was a manly enough smell, and it took her back to her days as a girl in London.
Lenora inhaled his scent in a deep breath, and coughed gently. The man turned to her. Pepe had stopped barking, but now sniffed madly at him, as high and as thoroughly as she could reach. Her tail waved madly, nearly dragging her off of her feet a few times.
Before Pepe could tinkle in excitement, Lenora snapped her fingers, summoning the dog to her side.
“Bad girl, you know better than to jump on people. Now apologize to the man.” She turned towards the crewman, holding Pepe up to him for absolution.
The man bowed deeply, “Forgive me for not greeting you, madam, I failed to see you in the shadows. And how I wish I had not.” The man gazed up through his lashes at Lenora. She felt her heart skip a beat. The crewman smiled rakishly, a dimple showing on one cheek.
This man was no callow youth, despite his attempt at flirtation. His eyes were like her dear Count, the color of darkest chocolate with a twinkle of fun in the corners. His hair silvered at the temples, but was thick and full with a slight curl at his collar. A dusting of ash and oil droplets splashed across his cheeks like freckles. He bowed again and doffed his hat.
Her face flushed and, suddenly breathless, Lenora held out a hand in greeting. Her heart pounded when he took her hand to his lips for a proper European greeting. Her voice utterly failed her.
It was only as he turned to report to the captain that she caught the faint trace of a Scottish accent, but not one a lady should know. Certainly not one a Lady’s heart should react to, as it sounded of docks and back alleys. He reminded her of her dear Esperanzo, that was all. She certainly wasn’t a foolish girl to be chasing a pair of dark eyes and hint of bad boy.
“If my chief engineer is done with making cow eyes at my murder suspect….” The captain left the rest of the sentence hanging as the engineer spun to face his superior and nod his head. He was done with her, his stance seemed to say.
She took the opportunity to walk out without so much as a by-your-leave.
She did not have to answer to the captain.