“As would I.” Evelyn paused. “I’ll purchase tickets for the three of us and invite Elise as well.”
“And Claire too, please, Mama,” Rose requested, though her friend wasn’t always so patient for lectures. She’d heard that Miss. Barton’s stories of the war brought even grown men to tears.How thrilling!She couldn’t wait. At that moment, however, she wanted more than anything to hear Charlotte’s news.
“Mama, what time do you have to be at your gardening meeting?”
Evelyn brushed the crumbs from her fingers and stood up. “Now, in fact. I shall see you both anon. I’m taking the carriage. Does that suit you, dear one?”
Rose stood and kissed her mother’s cheek.
“Fine. I don’t have any plans. If I do go out, it won’t be far.”
“I can always give her a ride,” Charlotte offered.
As soon as they were alone, Rose nearly pounced upon her sister-in-law.
“Do you have anything to tell me?”
“Of course. Let’s get right to it, shall we?” Charlotte pulled a notepad out of her satchel. “Naturally, large sums of money were paid out because the ship was fully insured. The underwriters paid the expected collectors — the yard that built her and the ship’s owner, one Mr. Dilbey. However, there was one not so expected.” Charlotte paused, then asked, “Do you know a Mr. Liam Berne?”
The beat of Rose’s heart increased at the mention of his name. “I don’t,” she said truthfully. “At least, not personally. However, I have heard his name.”
“Oddly, the man should be dead,” Charlotte said, scanning her notes.
“Why do you say that?”
“His name was on the ship’s roster that was printed in the paper, along with your Mr. Bennet’s.”
Rose flinched at hearing “your” attached to Finn’s name coming from Charlotte’s lips.
“Though apparently you were wrong twice,” Charlotte concluded.
“What do you mean?”
“Neither a Tim nor a Tom,” her sister-in-law said, regarding her sharply. “APhineasBennet perished upon theGarrard. I suppose he is the one who mentioned Mr. Berne to you.”
Rose looked down at her lap where she fiddled with her fingers. Of course, Charlotte would have looked at the list.
“It was a long time ago,” she muttered.
“Indeed,” Charlotte said. “In any case, Liam Berne received a hefty amount of money from the ship’s underwriter. He signed the receiving document himself.” She eyed the youngest Malloy sister. “Naturally, I am wondering how a dead man collected money. I shall take a trip to the yard that built the ship as soon as I have some free time.”
“Kelly’s yard,” Rose intoned, thinking of how the yard’s docks and moorings and even its sheds and cranes were etched in her memory? And now she had the new recollection of finding her dead husband sitting there on a bench.
She realized Charlotte was still staring at her. Rose hedged, “I suppose he didn’t sail on theGarrardthat day.”
She couldn’t possibly explain how she knew that Liam Berne hadn’t been on board when even the papers hadn’t. She sighed.
Charlotte cocked her head. “Why do you think this Berne fellow bet against his own yard’s creation?”
“I couldn’t say.” Indeed, it sounded like a nefarious thing for Finn’s friend to have done.
“This might be a case of fraud or perhaps something even more reprehensible,” Charlotte suggested.
“What do you mean?”
“Why would a shipbuilder take out insurance on the vessel he was to set sail on? How would he ever hope to collect since the policy was only payable for catastrophic destruction?” She tapped her pen’s nib against the paper, unmindful of it leaking as she stared into the middle distance between them. “Yet Mr. Berne did precisely that.”
“Very strange,” Rose agreed. “So perhaps he never intended to go on it.”
