“It is, the one with a miniature painting of your grandparents inside it.” She dropped the locket back inside the reticule. “There are other items in here as well, but what is truly concerning to me is that I discovered these in the possession of a young lady I found sneaking around theCornelia, a lady who claimed she was a paid companion to none other than a Mrs. Davenport.”
A sense of dread descended over him. “This young lady wouldn’t happen to go by the name of Miss Gertrude Cadwalader, would she?”
Cornelia blinked. “Good heavens. You know Miss Cadwalader?”
“She’s thatdelightfullady I mentioned before, and a very dear friend of mine.”
Cornelia blinked again before she lifted her chin. “Perhaps you really are far more obtuse than I’ve imagined, because Miss Gertrude Cadwalader is not delightful in the least. She is a confidence artist and a thief. And as such, she deserves to remain in jail, which is exactly where the authorities I summoned took her.”
Chapter
Eighteen
“Surely you must realize it’ll go easier on you, Miss Cadwalader, if you simply make a full confession while also providing me with a complete list of your associates.”
Resisting the urge to bang her head against the scarred wooden table in front of her because she’d been asked to confess and divulge names of her associates for the past four hours, Gertrude lifted her chin.
“We’ve been over this about a million times, Officer Huntington. I don’t have any associates. I’m simply a paid companion, not a professional criminal.”
Officer Huntington looked up from the notes he’d been compiling. “That’s what all criminals say, Miss Cadwalader. Now, tell me, who exactly is this Mrs. Davenport you mentioned to Mrs. Sinclair when she found you in possession of items that didn’t belong to you, and what part does Mrs. Davenport play within your criminal organization?”
“Mrs. Davenport is not a criminal. She’s a respected member of New York society.”
Officer Huntington removed his spectacles, wiped the lenses with a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket, returned the handkerchief, and then pushed the spectacles back over his nose. “Why would a respected member of New York society bother to associate with someone of the criminal persuasion?”
“I’mnotof the criminal persuasion. I’m a paid companion who was running an errand for my employer, which, unfortunately, did not turn out quite the way I’d expected.”
“Ah, so Mrs. Davenport has no idea she employs a thief?”
“I’mnota thief.”
“Why were you caught red-handed with possessions that didn’t belong to you?”
“That’s a little tricky to explain, but allow me to simply say that those possessions were never taken from theCornelia, so in actuality, they’d never been stolen.”
“Only because you were caught before you were able to leave that ship.”
Gertrude leaned back in her chair. “Which is a valid point, Officer Huntington, but again, I wasn’t trying to leave the ship with items that didn’t belong to me. I was only trying to return them to their proper place.”
“Which is an odd thing for a thief to do, but it implies that someone took those items to begin with. However, here’s what I believe happened. You slunk around the ship looking for valuables while attending what sounds to me like a night of frivolity. Then you returned when you thought the coast was clear, using an excuse that’ll be easily dismissed once Miss Edwina Sinclair is located, that claim being rather flimsy since you and I both know there were no plans for you to meet Miss Edwina Sinclair today.”
“Fine,” Gertrude admitted, knowing Officer Huntington was right in claiming she’d been slightly less than honest. “I didn’t have plans to meet Edwina on board theCornelia, but I didn’ttravel to the yacht to rob it. I truly was only there to fetch that reticule and return items that were inadvertently stashed inside the reticule to their proper owner.”
“You do realize that sounds completely mad, don’t you?” Officer Huntington asked before he bent his head over his pad of paper and began jotting down a few notes. Raising his head as his hand stilled over the page, he caught Gertrude’s eye. “If you’ll just give me a few names, I promise I’ll have the judge go easy on you.”
“Why do I feel as if I’ve suddenly been deposited directly into a dime novel, one complete with an overenthusiastic detective and a dupe of a suspect who seems to be destined to spend the rest of her life behind bars in some derelict jail?”
Officer Huntington simply stared at her for a good long moment before he began writing in a rather forceful fashion.
Drumming her fingers against the table, a nervous habit she’d developed after her father died, Gertrude stilled when Officer Huntington lifted his head and sent her a scowl. Placing her hands in her lap, she cleared her throat.
“Could I perhaps send a note to Mrs. Davenport, asking her to send me an attorney or some type of counsel?” she asked, earning another scowl from Officer Huntington in the process.
“If this Mrs. Davenportwassomehow involved in this heist, and if she’s truly a society matron,” Officer Huntington began instead of answering Gertrude’s question, “should I assume she lost all of the money that has allowed her to travel within society and has resorted to theft to maintain appearances?”
For the briefest of seconds, his question gave Gertrude pause, until she recalled that her employer never kept any of the items she stole, and she paid everyone on her staff a more than generous wage. She also, now that Gertrude considered the matter, never had creditors pounding on her door seeking payment for accounts past due.
Gertrude shook her head. “Mrs. Davenport’s finances seem to be in fine order, sir, not that she discusses such matters with me, her paid companion.”
