Free Garrett Investigates by Elizabeth Bear Page A

O’Brien could peer over her shoulder. She said, “I think a woman would be strong enough to manage that .”
    He replied, “So—it looks as if ‘Mrs. Abercrombie’ may have been smuggling something. Do you suppose whoever relieved her of it was an accomplice? I’m surprised he didn’t toss the trunk overboard when he had emptied it.”
    “Tossing steamer trunks overboard by day is rather noticeable,” Garrett replied. She thought—but did not add aloud—that there was also the possibility that the suspect might not be listed on the passenger manifolds. Which meant he would not be free to move around the ship, unless he could find some means of escaping notice.
    If that was the case, though, it mean that Garrett was and had been looking in all the wrong places for a killer. And outside the portholes, the long night was wasting.
     
    ***
     
    Garrett sat behind the Captain’s desk, the dead woman’s book open on the blotter before her, the broken pen laid next to it. The ink matched—she’d checked that carefully—and now she lifted the pen and turned its barrel with her fingertips.
    The empty trunk had given Garrett her first real hint of means and opportunity, though motive—and thus perpetrator—still floated amorphously somewhere outside of her ability to define. The comprehensive search had turned up no evidence of sabotage or stowaways, but Garrett was convinced—a hunch, an induction, a leap of logic she could not yet adequately defend—that her as-yet unidentified suspect was not a member of the crew.
    She didn’t exactly feel that her time spent interviewing them was wasted, however. There was something about Clemens…
    In any case, she needed a fresh and effective tack. And she needed it now.
    Failing that, she’d settle for a desperation move.
    She set the pen aside, rose, and went to the door. Having opened it, she leaned out and made sure Carter was there. She dismissed him to his other duties—over his protests, but she was sure she was easier work than whatever else he might have been detailed to accomplish.
    At last, he stepped away, shoulders square. As if the thought had just struck her, she called after him—“Steward?”
    He paused and turned. “Madam?”
    “Does this boat have a library?”
    “The Captain’s books are right there—”
    “No,” she said. “A library for passengers. Fiction and such. Improving literature.”
    “Of course,” Carter said. “It’s in the main cabin.”
    “Thank you, Carter,” she said. She shut the door. And then, on a whim, she turned to O’Brien’s book shelf and pulled down a selection of reference tomes that would, she imagined, have been exquisitely useful to the captain of a top-of-her-line luxury steamer. She did wish he had a copy of a recent edition of Registered Wizards and Sorcerers , but she had to admit that was rather a specialized taste.
     
    ***
     
    Now that The Nation was underway and a meal was being served, those who had paid for more than deck passage had largely retreated to the main cabin. As Garrett approached, its broad glass windows sparkled with light and fluttered with the motion of people bustling within. Garrett caught glimpses of the white coats of stewards through beveled panes, the shimmer of silver as they held their trays high. She picked out the balding back of Carter’s head as he sidled through the crowd and wondered at the length of his workday. Under the circumstances, none of the crew would have slept. She spared them a moment of pity, then collected herself and paused outside the doors of the main cabin.
    She raised her eyes to the moon, to the light that scraped down the high cliffs to either side and The Nation ’s own gilded superstructure. Veils of mist swayed above the river like a ghost bride’s petticoats, and trees just softening with young leaves lined the clifftops.
    Some of the passengers would know who she was—Garrett was no stranger to innuendo and scandal—and they would