by Beth Byers
“He laughed?” Rita asked, not objecting to Ham checking her temperature with the back of his hand. She seemed to lean into his touch.
“What an animal,” Victor said.
“The reverend had poisoned her sherry,” Ham said gently. “She didn’t partake every night, but often enough he could be sure she’d die in the days after her grandson’s death. By the time we rushed to her, she was gone.”
Vi wasn’t sure if it was the excess of ginger wine—her comfort drink—or if it was the fact that the woman had spread dislike and upset, but she wasn’t able to draw up any semblance of grief. In fact, she only just held back the comment that Jane, Ann, and Tobias deserved a life free of that woman.
Rather than revealing her thoughts, Vi asked, “Did you meet the fiancé?”
Smith, Jack, and Ham nodded.
“Is he really kind and good?”
Smith paused and then slowly replied, “I think so.”
“We’ll have to kill him if he isn’t.” Vi laid her head against Jack’s shoulder, ignoring the reaction of the two Scotland Yard detectives who weren’t nearly as amused as Smith. The disgust on their faces hadn’t faded, and Vi thought they’d have been smarter than what she was seeing.
“We need Miss Sinclair,” the first detective demanded.
“She’s sleeping,” Vi said, lifting a brow.
“We’ll have to wake her.” The man looked at his partner and added, “We’ll get her statement, and we’ll be able to go home.”
“Jack,” Vi told him flatly. “Throw them out. Victor, help.”
Jack slowly rose, followed by Victor, and then Ham. “Out.”
“You know we need to do our job here, Jack,” the first replied as though appealing to Jack’s better sense. “Are you really such a puppet to your heiress?”
Jack ignored the last part and said, “Miss Sinclair’s statement can wait until she wakes.”
“She could forget details.”
“She was just beaten by her father after acquiring the confession for you at the price of her blood and pain.” Rita rose from the chesterfield and approached, hands fisted, the personification of divine retribution on her face. “We won’t be waking her to answer questions you could ask Vi and Smith. They were there and they weren’t being beaten.”
The detective held up his hands, but the look on his face said that he was about to wring Rita’s neck. Rita placed both of her hands against him and shoved. “Get out!”
“Barnes! Get ahold of your wife, or I will.” The second detective gave Ham a look of loathing as he shouted.
Lila gasped and jumped to her feet. She leaned in and hissed, “If you think we won’t murder you first, you’re wrong.”
Both detectives laughed sardonically.
“I shouldn’t be surprised that the woman who drove her father to murder fell in with this lot of devil’s shrews,” the first detective muttered and his partner snorted. “The only surprise is Wakefield and Barnes did.”
“First,” Beatrice said, rising to join Lila and Rita, “we’d garrote you. Then we’d bury you in the back garden and plant cherry trees over you, and then we’d throw picnics for our children, never losing a night of sleep.”
“What is this madness?” the detective demanded. “Are you all drunk? We’ll take the lot of you in.”
“Only mostly drunk,” Denny answered seriously.
Vi rose next, joining the row of mostly zozzled and fully furious friends. She pushed past Jack to face the detectives and gently said, “We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here, so let me help you.”
“Help me?” the detective snapped. “Please. You reek of wine and spoilt housewife.”
“Help,” Vi countered in a low, smooth voice. “The young woman you need to interview is currently unavailable. She’s sleeping under the influence of morphine with broken ribs, a cracked cheek bone, and severe bruising. If you take one solitary step nearer to her and expect to ask her questions, we won’t murder you. Obviously that was hyperbole.”
“It was in poor taste.” The detective adjusted his suit jacket. “We are just doing our job here.”
“Your job?” Kate snapped.
Vi, however, smiled slowly, feeling her fury start to break free. “Your job is not to blame the woman who courageously did your job for you, facing off with the man who terrorized her the whole of her life, showing incalculable courage in both living her life on her own terms and then sacrificing herself for justice.”
The detective might have intended to snort sarcastically, but Vi was channeling all the generations of ingrained arrogance that came from being the daughter of an earl. Both detectives froze like birds when the cat was near.
“So, let me be clear,” Vi continued, “should you proceed on your current course, I will ruin your careers and watch you return to your days on the worst beats that London has to offer.”
“Barnes isn’t at the Yard anymore, and he doesn’t have that kind of power. You don’t have that kind of power.” The tone wasn’t so convinced as it had been before.
“Tell that to my father, the earl,” Vi said. “You see, my father finds the idea of a woman being beaten and threatened by the man who should have protected and loved her appalling. You can be assured that whatever lack of patience we might have for you will seem like endurance beyond belief when you watch him appear at his club and ruin you over a glass of port. He’d do it no matter the reason if I asked, given you’re nothing to him. But he’d do it without my request if he were to hear of this complete malarky.”
The two detectives eyed each other and then stepped back.
“We’ll be back tomorrow,” one tried carefully.
“Send someone else,” Vi countered with a silky, steely tone. She lifted a brow and waited as though bored.
“Ah,” the detective started.
“I’ll make some telephone calls,” Ham said. The banked fury was the finishing touch, and the two detectives fled.
“What a day,” Vi muttered the moment the door closed. She turned to face her friends and sniffed her kimono. “So that’s what spoilt housewife smells like.”
“Vi,” Denny laughed, “you’re my hero. Lila, it is moments like these when I know why I adore everything about you.”
Rita gaped and then laughed, taking Vi’s cheeks in her hand and squeezing lightly. A moment later, her mood shifted like lightning and she asked, “Can I cry now?”
They all paused and then Vi wrapped her arms around Rita. “Of course you can.”
“I don’t know what I’m crying for,” Rita said into Vi’s neck. “The baby? Miss Sinclair? It’s all too much.”
Vi whispered, “You don’t have to choose.”
“And then it gets better?” Rita sounded broken again, but it wasn’t quite so hopeless as before. Her gaze was fixed on Lila, who nodded firmly.
“It gets better,” she said solemnly. “I promise.”
“What comes next?” Rita asked, her gaze moving from person to person.
“Another sunrise.” Denny told her, surprising them all. “Another sunset.”
Rita didn’t stop crying, but she said, “That’s sounds nice.”
“It is,” Vi said. “And, as long as we have each other, it’s enough.”
“But if it isn’t—” Denny snaked his arm around Lila’s waist and pulled her closer. “There’s always garrotes, hidden cemeteries, and picnics over unhallowed ground.”
“As long as we have each other,” Rita laughed. And it really was enough.
The END
Hullo friends! I am so grateful you dove in and read the latest Vi book. If you wouldn’t mind, I would be so grateful for a review.
The next book in this series is available for preorder now.
All Hallows 1926
Violet and Jack have been invited to a masquerade by someone who doesn't name himself and gives no details other than all the guests are coming under the same circumstances.
They know something is afoot
, so they aren't even surprised when there's been a murder. What surprises them is the invitation to all those in attendance to solve the crime.
Order here.
The next Poison Ink mystery is also available now.
Georgette Dorothy Aaron is a busy woman. She's gone from being a lonely old maid to the matriarch of an growing family. Her writing career has expanded and for some reason the women in her life turn to her for advice. She's not sure she's qualified to help, but she does what she can.
Only a series of letters reveal that she's become important to someone else. Someone she doesn't know. And they're asking for help--before it's too late.
Now, she's racing to piece together clues and find her pen pal before it's too late.
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Beth also has a fun new historical mystery available right now.
October 1925
Severine DuNoir was twelve when she discovered the bodies of her parents, and the day after the funeral, she was sent to a convent in another country. By the time she resolves to go home, her sole focus is to reveal what happened to her parents.
Coming home, however, unveils a far more sinister plot than she could have expected. It’s clear from her first night that something is afoot. The motives are many and the target is clear: Severine herself.
Order your copy here.
If you’re interested, you can keep on scrolling for a one chapter preview of this book.
A Sneak Peek of Mystery at the Edge of Madness
“I don’t understand,” Severine said, feeling particularly dim.
The gentleman smiled kindly. “I’m your guardian.” He had said it more than once, and his tone and delivery had turned slow to the point of speaking to someone who wasn’t quite capable of understanding.
It wasn’t that she didn’t know he was her guardian. Of course, she did. Regardless of her confusion, she was not an idiot. She’d heard of the mysterious Mr. Brand who watched over her inheritance in trust, but she hadn’t expected this fellow. He was not that much older than she. She’d expected a life-long school chum of her father or perhaps one of his mentors. A much older man filled with wisdom and a shared history with her father.
That was the key factor. Severine would turn eighteen in two days. This fellow had to be in his late twenties. Which meant, given her parents had died almost exactly six years ago, that he had control of the DuNoir estate when he was barely old enough to have his legal majority. He looked as if he were a mere year or two older than herself, so how had he looked six years before? The fellow had pale, nearly white, blonde hair, the sort of pale skin that showed every passing emotion with the shade of red he turned, and the blue eyes that revealed his thoughts. He was tallish, broad-ish, thinnish, and handsome-ish. He was very medium, Severine thought. Unremarkable really, except for that pale, pale skin, which wasn’t very remarkable to her considering her own pale, pale skin.
“Your father came to me just before he died, and he asked me to look after you. We had quite a long conversation, really.”
Her father, who had two brothers, business partners, a best friend, and a slew of friends, had discussed her with him when this man was barely a legal adult himself..
Severine took a deep breath. “It’s not that I don’t understand your words,” Severine repeated. “It’s that I have a half-brother who could have served if Father was going to choose someone so young.”
“Your father didn’t want your brother to look after you. He wanted you to have your freedom. Your half-brother is of quite a different cloth than I am.”
“But Father didn’t love me. Mother either.” Her gaze moved to the convent where she’d lived since her parents’ death. Being raised in a convent didn’t inspire one to imagine a future of early freedom, let alone control of her inheritance and the two houses.
He coughed and avoided her gaze as he cleared his throat and blushed enough for her to be sure that Mr. Brand had suspected the same thing she’d known since before she could read.
“Perhaps rather than trying to understand your father’s reasoning,” Mr. Brand suggested softly, “we can accept him at his word. He wanted you to be safe as you grew up and be free of the meddling of his friends and relatives.”
“Father was murdered,” Severine told him precisely.
“He was,” the man said, looking sympathetic but without answering.
Why! Severine wanted to shout, but she guessed this man was being purposefully vague. He wasn’t looking at her at the moment. He was staring at the statue of Mary and baby Jesus in the garden and taking in the magnificent stained-glass windows. He was avoiding her gaze and side-stepping her questions and offering her the money that belonged to her, without explaining why her father had come up with such an irregular future for her—all just before he had been murdered.
She knew the answer of course: because he had known he was going to die. Or suspected it enough to put plans into place. Plans that meant her father hadn’t been sure of any of the regular choices for guardian. Which suggested, Severine thought with a sudden chill, that she could trust no one.
She listened without commenting as her guardian explained that she would have control of her money, of the houses, of all of it, the moment she returned to the United States. He finished with, “Your father said he trusted you to look after yourself, the fortune he was leaving you, and the accoutrements of being a DuNoir.”
She didn’t repeat that she’d been a disappointment to her parents. Even her name, which they tried to make a joke of later, had been a glaring symbol of that disappointment. Father had told her the story once.
“Sevie,” he had said, using the nickname she’d despised even at ten years old. “We expected you to enter the world screaming. I was prepared to laugh indulgently, press a kiss on your sweet forehead, and tell your mama what a good job she’d done, but you were the most serious little thing I had ever seen—looking as though you were possessed by Lady Justice.”
That had been when he’d laughed nervously. “It’s why we named you Severine, of course. So serious from the moment you entered the world.”
Severine snapped back to the present, completely having missed whatever nonsense the man had been telling her.
When she focused back to him, he blushed again lightly. He cleared his throat a few more times and said, “So, you’ll need me to sign off on things until you’re twenty-one, but for all intents and purposes, you’ll be making the choices. I promised your father that you could make your own way—regardless of my opinion on the matter. That’s a promise I intend to keep.”
Severine hesitated and then demanded, “Why?”
“Your father saved my life during the war.” For once Mr. Brand didn’t avoid her gaze. “I’d have seen him live a long and full life if I had my wish. I didn’t, but I’ll be”—those blue eyes settled on the statue of Mary and he censored himself—“darned if I don’t keep my promise to him.”
Well, Severine thought, that made sense at least. A man who seemed to be one of honor. One who wasn’t connected with Father’s business practices. Who was old enough to stand for her father and beholden enough to him to just do as he wanted. Was this the only man her father had trusted Severine with?
Severine rocked back on her heels. “So if I wanted to go home—”
Severine Euphrasia DuNoir stared at herself in the mirror and saw a stranger. Her face was all sharp angles and high cheekbones. It was what it was, she thought, having vanity thoroughly scoured from her in her youth and then completely buried with living in a convent for six years. She would never be lovely like her mother, and that had been the only useless wish of Severine’s heart when she’d bothered to make wishes. She had once wanted to be pretty and frivolous and as loved as her mother, and she had accepted it would never happen.
The days of useless fairy wishes were long past for Severine and she was stolidly something else. She met the gaze of the shop girl and asked, “Is this a normal dress?”
The dre
ss reached mere inches below her knees, and Severine’s dark brown eyes were fixed on her naked legs. Her legs weren’t actually naked given the stockings, but she certainly felt as scandalous as Godiva on her nude horseback ride after all. The dress was a soft pink that made her want to vomit as she took in her white skin against the color. She looked like a blushing ghost.
She felt naked and ridiculous. Women wore such things here? Clearly, however, they did. The shop girl looked lovely and vivacious. Her pretty dark-brown locks were cut quite close to her head and smoothed into curls that clung to her forehead and cheek. While Severine thought it was quite flattering on the girl, she was sure it would never do for herself, even if one didn’t take into account the difference in their hair texture. The shop girl seemed to be of mulatto descent and had the Creole accent of so many in New Orleans. Severine’s mouth twisted. She had a goal, and that goal required she look the part of one of these bright young things. She had accepted she’d never be frivolous like her mother, so how was she to accomplish her goal?
“This is a normal dress,” the shop girl said gently. “Where you been, cher? The moon?”
Severine paused and admitted, “Almost.” She tried for cheery but failed.
“And people don’t bob their hair where you were? Or—” The girl gestured to the dress rather than explaining. Her horrified gaze was enough for Severine to laugh, but she was positive her humor didn’t really appear on her face.
“Oh.” Severine hesitated, her mouth twisting. “No. Not really.”
“Well, hello, darlin’,” the girl said cheerily, drawing out the hello. “Welcome to the new world.”
