Excerpts Page
Murder on Black Tuesday - Chapter 1 Excerpt
Boston lay ahead in tiers of brick and slate. Along the wharves, the iron necks of loading cranes swung over the water as the gulls screamed overhead, and the smell of coal smoke, saltwater, and fish rose like a tonic. The mid-October light was thin, a pale wash poured over the low backs of the harbour islands, and the RMS Scythia's steam curled from her funnels in steady, damp gusts.
Ginger stood at the rail of the steamer, gloved hands braced against the cold brass. A film of cinders had settled overnight on the deck and was still belching from the smokestacks, creating pinpricks of black on her camel wool coat with its neat fox-fur collar. Beneath it, a jade silk blouse flashed when the wind worried the lapels, and her pleated skirt of practical navy serge snapped softly against her calves. The wind lifted the brim of her hat, felted to match the coat, and teased strands of red hair she had pinned perfectly in her cabin—New England had its own ideas about order, it seemed.
“Not long now,” Basil said, coming up beside her. His dark fedora was pulled low, his overcoat a sober charcoal with a velvet collar. A neat line of a navy tie showed above a crisp collar; the blue along his jaw was proof of a hurried shave in a restless sea. “Pilot boat’s alongside.”
A squat launch nosed up to the liner’s flank, the hunched form of the harbour pilot visible on its prow. A bell clanged and the ship seemed to answer with a shudder as the engines came to life. Ahead, Fort Independence squatted on its island in the cold slate-coloured water, churned by the ship’s passage.
“America smells different from London,” Ginger said. “Less wet wool and tobacco, more molasses and coal.”
“Opportunity steeped in cod,” Basil replied dryly. “Try not to inhale too deeply.”
She smiled and did anyway, drawing in the scent of a city that had once been her own. Boston had been her home for many years, through schooling and long muggy summers, a wedding and widowhood. Its cobblestone streets had heard her first careless laughter and her first careful white lies. She had met Lord Daniel Gold there, at the family brownstone, and had become Lady Gold on their wedding day.
The voyage had taken seven days, two of them on more than rough seas. Ginger found herself measuring this crossing against another: Boston to Liverpool, 1923. She and Basil had met on the SS Rosa—she, a war widow on her way to take up her father’s inheritance; he, a chief inspector focused on his work to avoid thinking about his struggling marriage. When the ship’s captain was murdered, investigating the case threw them together, although Basil took his sweet time eliminating Ginger as a suspect just because the man had been acquainted with her late father. Occupying herself with the case, for the first time since her father’s passing Ginger had felt her blood move with purpose and not merely obligation.
Ginger reached into her handbag and felt the familiar rasp of papers. The single envelope she kept Haley’s letters in was soft now, its corners blunted, Hartigan House’s address smudged. It was Haley’s invitation that drew them across the Atlantic—ostensibly for a medical conference on the latest in forensic science, “something rather progressive, and of interest to law enforcement”. As a newly minted superintendent of Scotland Yard, this was of particular interest to Basil. Ginger, a private investigator, was equally curious; new tools could tilt the balance in hitherto unsolvable cases. The main pull, of course, was Haley herself—and of course Louisa and Sally, Ginger’s half-sister and stepmother, who still occupied the upscale brownstone that had been Ginger’s home.
Basil was watching a line of men on a pier below, and Ginger followed his gaze. They were brisk and purposeful in their work—many of them with their coats open despite the cold, the sharp rhythm of their hooks biting into the bales they moved to the cranes for loading. A burst of raucous laughter rang out; the foreman’s whistle shrilled and the bustle sharpened. Roaring Twenties bravado winked out from shoe polish and a cocked cap brim, the kind of confident tilt that said tomorrow would take care of itself.
Ginger took in the upbeat energy of the city. “Haley writes Boston is ‘buoyant’.”
“Not quite what we’re experiencing in England these days,” Basil said.
“Yes. Britain has been… wobbly.”
“That’s one way of putting it.” Basil’s mouth curved without mirth. “Banks failing with long queues in the rain, and on the street, the talk is all America—how shares here go up like balloons and never, ever come down.”
Ginger glanced upwards. “Do you suppose they ever worry the string might snap? Balloons are charming, but not exactly reliable.”
“Americans are very good with string. If it frays, they invent a better one and patent it.”
A gull swooped close with a raunchy cry as the pilot’s launch sheared off and a tug took their bow, black smoke wreathing up into the morning.
Ginger’s gaze fell on a poster pasted crookedly along a wharf side shed: a bright, laughing couple in cloche and boater raising bubbling glasses that pretended to be ginger ale and fooled no one. In a careful hand beneath: Buy Now, Before It’s Too Late. Another, half-torn, promised Prosperity for All.
The tug hooted, workmanlike, and the liner answered with a deep, reverberating note as it inched its way into the harbour.
Basil followed Ginger’s line of sight to the posters. “Prosperity for All.”
“Do you suppose they sell the slogan by the yard?” Ginger asked lightly.
“On installment,” he said. “With a small down payment and a large interest.”
She laughed. “You are a dreadful man in the mornings.”
“I’m a realist before luncheon.” He touched the envelope with one gloved finger. “And an optimist when Haley invites me to meddle.”
“Then be both.” She slipped the envelope away and set her shoulders. “We’ll attend the conference, visit with my sister and stepmother, and let Boston show us what it insists we see.”
“I’m eager to be reacquainted with the delightful Hartigan ladies.”
Ginger narrowed her eyes at his bland expression. “Don’t be sarcastic. I know Sally and Louisa can be… challenging. But they are family. And I do love them.”
“Of course you do, love,” Basil said, smiling. “And for your sake I will do my best for them.”
A line thudded wetly onto the deck as the workmen in pea coats hauled with practiced ease; the ship shivered as her engines wound down. A customs banner snapped on the breeze. On the next pier, a woman in a dark coat, clasping a child to her hip, craned her head upward, searching the faces at the ship’s railing with a look of eager hope. Whom did she expect—a husband, a brother?
Ginger scanned the crowd at the foot of the pier for a tall woman with unruly dark curls and a wide, uncompromising mouth. She found her in a heartbeat—no one quite stood like Haley.
“There she is!” Ginger pointed, excitement brightening her voice.
Basil took Ginger’s elbow. “Let us depart this fine vessel, then. I, for one, am ready to feel solid ground under my feet again.”
The gangways creaked into place and clattered against the pier.
Ginger squeezed Basil’s arm. “Come along then, Superintendent. Boston expects us to be impressed.”
“Then let Boston do its best,” he said, but his eyes were already alive with interest. Together they joined the passengers moving eagerly towards the gangway, the city rising to meet them.