Page 193

“Merde,” whispered Jean-Guy before they dropped their gaze again to the turning tape.

“He was a piece of shit,” said Flossy, and laughed again. “Pardon my French. But I liked his nephew. Aldous. Had a bit of a crush on him. Dashing. But married. Still…” Silence. “But then they were killed.”

“What happened?”

“Will you tell your father?”

“Do you want me to?”

Silence.

“Yes. I do. I should have said something sooner, but I was afraid of them.”

“Who were they?”

“The mob. It was just beginning back then. 1914, it was. Just before the Great War. Such a silly thing to call it. Nothing great about it.”

“Was your employer, Monsieur Morrow, a member of the mob?”

“No. He worked for the government. Something to do with sunken ships. He was a crook. I knew that much. People have no idea how much a cleaning woman sees. And hears. He was stealing and selling to them.”

“The mob.”

“Didn’t I just say that? Yes. The mob. Keep up.”

Jean-Guy grinned. He wondered if Miss Fuller was a relative of someone else he knew.

“The strangest people would show up at the house. Then the Irish mob appeared, and he sold to them too. Even I could see it was a damn fool thing to do. I tried to say something to Aldous, but he wouldn’t listen. And then the Empress sank.”

“The what?”

All three Sûreté officers shook their heads in disbelief. Even in 1967, the Empress of Ireland might as well have never existed.

Flossy explained.

“What was in those documents Monsieur Morrow salvaged?” Solange asked.

“I couldn’t see. They were in a waxed canvas bag. Then one day when I was dusting his office, the papers were out on his desk.” There was a pause, and a slight laugh. “It’s possible I went into his office to look. Curious. My mother always said it was an unattractive trait in a girl. My father said it would be the death of me. But here I am.”

“The documents?” prompted Solange, gently.

“Hold your horses, I’m getting there. I only had time to glance at the top page. I could hear him coming down the hall.”

“What did you see?”

Another chuckle. “I saw enough to know they’d made a mistake. The papers weren’t worth a fortune, like Aldous thought.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because these weren’t plans for the war or a secret weapon. I know that much.” There was another pause, as Flossy thought. “I remember seeing that they’d belonged to someone named Daisy. That was my mother’s name. Daisy. Nice name, but not what someone important could be called.”

Armand closed his eyes for an instant, in relief. There. They had it. Proof, or the next best thing, that they were on the right track. The documents Morrow retrieved from the wreck had belonged to Daisy Wolcott.

“Another word was periwinkle. And I remember there was rosemary.”

“Names of people?”

“Have you ever heard of anyone named Periwinkle? No. They were plants. Mr. Morrow was annoyed. He and Aldous had a big fight. He said Aldous was an idiot, this was nothing but flowers, and Aldous said the passenger claimed the documents were worth a fortune. That there must be some code, or something else in them.”