“Yes,” Charlotte agreed. “Let’s put one flat brick under another.”
Rose stared at her.
“That is to say, that sounds like a good plan,” her sister-in-law clarified.
Choosing her words carefully, Rose explained that she’d known one of the sailors — “Mr... . um ... Mr... . Tim ... Tim Bennet” — before he left and how he had told her the ship was top heavy. She also relayed how no one at the yard would listen because the expense to change the vessel’s construction once it had been started was too great.
“After the sinking, if you read the papers,” Rose continued, “you’ll see that not a man interviewed from the shipyard mentioned any fault with the ship’s design. It’s Kelly’s yard, over in East Boston. However, ships have made it through far worse storms than that one. Why, as soon as the waves started to churn, the fore deck was swamped and under water.”
Charlotte stared at her, and Rose realized her mistake.
“I mean, it surely would have been if what my friend Tom said was right.Beforehe left, I mean.”
“Tim, you mean.”
“I beg your pardon?” Rose asked mystified.
“You said his name was Tim.”
“Did I? How silly of me!” She took a huge gulp of the brew and proceeded to choke and splutter.
“Don’t have an apoplectic fit over a misremembered vowel.”
Rose smiled weakly.
“So you would like me to discover whether anyone at the yard knew of the faulty design and kept mum about it. In essence, you think someone is to blame for the sailors losing their lives, including this man Tom. Or Tim.”
“I do. But I don’t know who. And it may be a conspiracy of more than one.”
“It would have to be,” Charlotte said. “No one man designs and builds a ship, nor an ill-conceived mill building.”
“Oh dear,” Rose exclaimed. “I almost wish I hadn’t said anything to you. You have to be extremely careful. Reed would never forgive me if anything happened to you. Nor would I forgive myself.”
“Why do you think anything could come of my digging around a little?” Charlotte asked, and Rose saw she already had a journalistic twinkle in her green eyes.
“Because men may have died needlessly.”
“Yes, but people don’t commit mass murder on a whim. Why would anyone knowingly send men to their deaths? Usually money is involved if something nefarious is afoot. Perhaps someone benefited from the sinking.”
“How could anyone benefit from that?” Rose wondered aloud.
Charlotte looked thoughtful. “Believe it or not, people can make money over just about anything.”
Rose shrugged.
“I suppose my not telling Reed what I’m investigating is imperative?” Charlotte asked.
Rose realized a sense of discomfort in asking a wife to withhold information from her husband, especially as, in this case, she’d already asked the husband the same thing. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words asking Charlotte to do that; she could do no more than look down at her hands, noticing only then that she was crumbling the rest of the fairy cake on her plate. She dropped the piece and brushed off her fingers.
“Because you don’t want to explain your prior friendship with the deceased Mr. Bennet?” Charlotte asked.
Rose flinched slightly. Hearing even Finn’s last name on her sister-in-law’s lips made Rose wish she’d had her wits about her to change it entirely. It was too late now.
“Honestly, Rose, I cannot imagine Reed having a burr under his saddle after ... what?” Charlotte glanced at the newspaper on top of the pile. “After nearly four years. He’s not such a stick that he’d begrudge you a little youthful flirtation.”
No, Rose thought, but what about a little youthfulmarriage? Reed was not laughing that one off, she knew. And if he thought there was anything untoward to investigate, he would be beside himself.
All she could do was shrug slightly. “I would rather keep this between the two of us if at all possible. At least for the time being.”
