The Lusitania Murders by Max Allan Collins

maid or servant. My theatrical background was perfect—disguises are part and parcel of the Pinkerton approach.”
    “Did you leave the stage?”
    “Yes, I was achieving some notoriety in the Chicago theatrical scene, but the financial rewards were frankly slender . . . and I had a mother and two sisters to support.”
    “And the Pinks paid well.”
    “They did and they do . . . and I worked for a year before I married Phillip, though I think I fell in love with him the day we met. You see, he loved me, really truly did, in an unconditional way that is rare . . . he didn’t care that we couldn’t have children . . . an illness in my childhood . . . anyway. Phillip was killed two years ago, in the line of duty. Shot by a damned thief.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said, and I was: as much as part of me was relieved to hear her husband was no longer on the scene, the pain in her eyes seemed all too palpable. “Did they find the bastard?”
    She didn’t blink at my language. “I found him. And killed him.”

    That called for another round of brandies, which she kindly fetched.
    Leaning back on the sofa, snifter in one hand, her other hand on my arm, she said, “Since then I’ve worked part-time for Pinkerton . . . on a case by case basis. You see, I’ve begun acting again . . . meeting Mr. Frohman is a hidden agenda of mine, taking this assignment, I must admit.”
    Lost in her eyes, I said, “I would love to see you perform.”
    “I thought you might,” she said, and kissed me.
    Soon the lights had been dimmed, and we kissed and petted on the sofa, like teenaged spooners.
    “Are you married, Van?” she asked.
    “Does it matter?”
    “Yes it does . . .”
    “I’m divorced.” *
    “So you’re a man of the world.”
    “As you’re a woman of the world.”
    “And we need partake of no pretense.”
    “Not by my way of thinking.”
    It took a while to get out of all those clothes, but we managed, and the wrought-iron bed for one accommodated two, nicely, particularly since sleep was not what we had in mind.
    Nonetheless, afterward she did fall asleep in my arms, clinging close, and I dropped off, as well, into a contentedslumber. Madame DePage must have returned at some point, but I did not hear her come in, out in that adjacent suite. Something else, later, did wake me—I was not sure what, I merely sensed noise, perhaps a commotion in the hall—and I slipped from the bed and gathered my clothing.
    I held my pocket watch near the sliver of light from the hallway door and saw that it was five minutes after two a.m. After getting back into the monkey suit in a rather half-hearted, half-buttoned fashion, I bent over the bed and kissed the slumbering goddess.
    She smiled and murmured something, and fell back into a deep sleep.
    I left her bedroom feeling giddy as a schoolboy with a new crush. Miss Vance was a lively, sophisticated woman, and I could hardly have hoped for a better partner in a shipboard romance . . . let alone for said romance to have blossomed so quickly, so fully.
    So distracted was I that I almost tripped over the corpse that lay on its side in the hallway.

SEVEN

First-Class Murder
    When she replied to my knock, Miss Vance peered through the cracked door and at first seemed as confused as she did sleepy; then, seeing it was me, she smiled in a lazy, half-lidded manner that normally would have struck me as quite endearing.
    “Miss me already?” she almost drawled, opening the door a bit, her curvaceous form barely concealed in her camisole.
    “Put something on,” I told her. “There’s a dead body in the hallway—and I suspect foul play.”
    She said nothing, her lethargy replaced at once by alertness. Leaning out into the hall, she saw—a few paces down, toward my cabin—the slumped figure of what appeared to be a ship’s steward.
    Frowning, she asked, “Is that—?”
    “It’s not a steward I killed, coming out of your room, to save your