by Beth Byers
Chapter 14
She’d lost her temper. That was all there was to it, and she could guess that Jack had some pretty strong opinions about antagonizing the inspector. Jack came in with more coffee, but the problem was he was followed by everyone else.
“What did you do?” Smith asked.
Oh! That wicked grin. Vi tried for a casual shrug, but she was still too furious.
“Livingstone seemed upset.”
“That man is determined for us to say Smith or Beatrice left the room.”
Jack gave her a look that said he leaned towards the investigator, but Violet’s expression promised she’d make him regret his inclination towards someone he identified with. “He was worse with me than he was with you.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“Because you are also a man,” Violet told him and rolled her eyes. She glanced at Beatrice. “He was rude to you?”
“I had the overall feeling that I was a servant who didn’t know my place.” Beatrice’s expression said it wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling.
“Ladies,” Jack started, and she could see that his experience had been different.
Before he finished, Vi lifted a brow and her look demanded that he re-think what he was about to say. She might have played at being hysterical before, but she wasn’t, and he knew it.
“Perhaps he acted differently with me.”
“He was fine with me,” Ham said, “but, of course, we are retired Yard men not—”
“Spoiled women with too many emotions and not enough respect for mankind?” Rita asked with a narrowed gaze.
“He wanted to know why you were married to Ham,” Lila said. Her quiet, mischievous wit was easy to overlook as she so rarely employed it. It was, however, the exact right phrase to make Ham and Jack lose their uncertainty about interfering with another investigator. “Seemed to think that was the most unusual thing about our group of friends. Beyond Smith and Beatrice, of course.”
Neither of them said anything, but Jack’s anger increased. He went from wanting to placate Vi and tell her that meddling only worked with him because he loved her enough to deal with her shenanigans.
“He’s either an idiot,” Violet announced, “or he’s in on it. He seems to be certain that we’re lying to him, but I’m sure we’ve all said the same thing.”
They all looked at each other, and it was like the Last Supper, with each of them wondering if they were the betrayer.
“I don't want to be too complimentary, but I’ve never seen anyone stick together the way you do.” Smith looked among them and then leaned back. “Something is definitely amiss, and I suspect it isn’t us.”
“If it’s not us…” Beatrice said and then trailed off, pausing.
“Then it’s that investigator,” Rita finished with an expression that dared Ham, specifically, to disagree. Her husband, however, just took her hand and squeezed it.
“He also asked if we all shared beds.”
Ham frowned and glanced at Jack. Neither of them liked either of those questions.
“Smith,” Vi said, “you’re our best villain. You and Ham need to break into the dead man’s home. We need an idea of why. Then,” she glanced as Jack winced deeply and added, “Beatrice and Jack should break into the police station.”
“Why can’t I have Beatrice with me?” Smith asked, though she thought he already knew.
“How good is she at getting through locks?”
“Nearly as good as I am.”
“None of the rest of us have that skill to a worthy level.”
“Plus,” Jack said, “you two are his main suspects if Vi is right—”
“I am,” Vi inserted because she was terrible. She grinned at his long-suffering expression and then winked at him. “Where is he now?”
“Verifying our sick ones are actually sick and probably interviewing the nannies.”
They all tensed and then Lila rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry.”
“What about the rest of us, Vi?” Denny asked, rubbing his hands together. “We’re without chalkboards. I think we should just write on the walls.”
Vi rolled her eyes. “What are we supposed to write? We have nothing to work with.”
“Well that’s not quite true,” Jack said. “There’s the woman you saw in the woods with Kate. We could find her.”
Violet’s head tilted and she said, “The caretaker is clearly involved. He’s the one who said everyone in the village was sick, wasn’t he, Ham?”
Ham nodded. “I will question him myself. MacAdam said he’d come back and make sure we were all right after helping the doctor and the other constable deliver the body with his sleigh. Let’s see if we can’t get him to help us.”
Violet nodded and added, “Someone might have a big truck that’s rather high off the ground. Surely with Christmas Eve and Christmas, they might be willing to let us use it for a premium price?”
“I’ll see what MacAdam can help me find. It would be good to get the telephone working as well. He said he’d be stopping by that fellow’s house, so hopefully he brings the man back with him.”
Violet ticked off on her fingers as she spoke: “Livingstone, the station master, the caretaker, and the nameless woman. We’ve never had less to go on.”
“Should be fun.” Denny’s grin was contagious and even Jack’s expression softened.
He crossed to her and took a seat by her side. “He was rude?”
“He wasn’t just rude,” Violet said, shaking her head. She tucked her hair behind her ear and promised herself a long hot bath the second the constable left the house. “He was trying to pressure me to say that Smith or Beatrice had left. He either doesn’t want to work around Christmas, or he is involved. It doesn’t take a genius to realize we don’t have a motive. In fact, surely given the station master had no call to be in this house, anything that happened to him—as a housebreaker—might well not be considered murder?”
Jack paused and then glanced at Ham.
“It’s a rather hard sell to say it wouldn’t be murder with a cut throat, Vi.”
“And none of us were bloody. Was it so possible to have murdered this man and then walk away with clothes that weren’t covered in blood?”
Jack nodded. “I know you hate this—”
She waited. There was very little she truly hated. Given the situation, she could guess what he was going to say.
“Your father has a lot of connections, Vi.”
“So does Ham,” she tried.
Ham muttered, “Scotland and Scotland Yard are two very different things.”
“But you have connections.”
“I’ll call if you’ll call,” he said. Then added, “Assuming we can make telephone calls at all.”
“What else do we do?” Rita asked. She then rolled her eyes. “They were looking for something. We need to find it.”
“Unless the killer took whatever they were trying to find,” Lila pointed out and yawned. “You might have made an enemy of the detective, but I didn’t. Excuse me while I go flirt.”
“What now?” Denny demanded and then chuckled, but his eyes were wide and worried.
Lila grinned evilly at him, and lightly patted his cheek. “Do look after Lily. She needs more than Nanny.”
Denny’s mouth dropped open as Lila sidled out of the room. “I—I—I don’t know what to do with that.”
“She’s loved you, inexplicably, since we were twelve years old,” Violet told him comfortingly. Then she added with a smirk, “She was bound to be bored of you eventually.”
Jack laughed at Denny’s expression.
“Lila is flirting,” Denny said with legitimate distress. “Ham, Jack, Smith and Beatrice are breaking the law. We’re searching the house? Surely we can do better than that.”
“Of course we can,” Vi said. “We’ll start with the cook and move onto Mrs. MacAdam if we can get to her. I would wager that these local ladies have a pretty good idea of what shenanigans
have been happening around their village.”
Jack waited while the others filed from the room and then he said gently, “Violet, we need to tread carefully here.”
“Jack, we aren’t going to be bulldozed by some local Scotland constable into throwing one of our friends to the hangman’s noose.”
“Right, obviously,” he said. “It’s just important that we respect the boundaries of the law.”
Violet wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her face into his chest. She had no intention, whatsoever, of respecting a law and a worker of the law that was lazy. The best that could be said of this slothful man was that he’d jumped to conclusions. The worst that could be said was that he was actively trying to frame them.
Violet took a deep breath. The horrible thing about all of this was that she wasn’t even upset. There had been a body in the house…was it even gone? She didn’t know and she was surprised to find she almost didn’t care. The fact that someone died bothered her less than the fact that someone had tried to get rid of her friends and cause this situation.
“You’re not going to promise me to be nice, are you?” Jack asked.
Vi’s snort of laughter was enough of an answer.
He muttered a dark curse and then said, “I’ll call your father and he can lean on Scotland Yard since Ham doesn’t want to.”
“What will that do?”
“If they agree that things are odd here? It means that the high-level types call each other casually and then the casual conversation ends with someone leaning on their underlings. It will entirely depend on that high-level relationship.”
“Father does love to have those high-level, throw your weight around conversations.”
“Vi, darling, you could make that call. Your father might be the earl, but you are wealthy. How would Denny describe it? You have the Midas touch?”
“The non-murdering Midas touch. Everything turns to gold, and no one dies. Didn’t Midas turn a person to gold? Or maybe he starved because he couldn’t eat? I can’t remember now.”
“I’d be dead right now,” Jack said with a laugh. “Thank you for the non-murdering version, I guess.”
“Beatrice is the Midas touch now. Do you wonder if she’s using her skills with her and Smith’s income?”
“Of course she is. I’m not worried about the skills you taught her; I’m worried about what Smith has taught her.”
Vi rolled her eyes. “She’s not a puppet for Smith and me to pass between ourselves. Her choices are her own.”
Jack leaned in and hissed, “I heard what you and Smith got her to do today.”
Vi’s evil laugh was followed by, “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Chapter 15
“He nearly asked us to have our temperature taken,” Kate said as Violet checked in with Kate and her brother. “Victor cut it off by hacking so terribly it seemed like he had whooping cough.”
“The classic Victor move when he’s trying to avoid having to do something he doesn’t want to do.”
“The lingering illness that demands breakfast in bed and possibly a foot rub,” Kate agreed.
“I am plagued by devils,” Victor said and then took a deep breath, coughing so horrifically Violet took a step back. He grinned angelically and then added, “I wouldn’t say no to a tray of snacks in my bed.”
“Why is it you think I should get that for you?”
“Not me,” Victor said, pleadingly. “Kate. She’s feeding herself and the baby, you know.”
“What I know is that baby Lion is a good excuse,” Violet announced. “Also there’s two girls helping and a cook. We have yet to determine, but it’s possible that there might be good food ahead.”
Kate closed her eyes in sheer relief. “I do hate cooking. I probably agreed to marry Victor just so I wouldn’t have to cook anymore.”
“It wasn’t my good looks?” Victor demanded.
Violet laughed and asked, “Do you remember when Martha was throwing herself at Victor? She had an eye on the pocketbook. Oh my goodness.” Vi laughed so hard she had to wipe away tears.
Violet leaned back and said, “What do we think? Shall we just succumb to this holiday and leave when we can, or shall we ride it out to the end?”
“No,” Victor said as he sat up and swung his legs out of his bed. The striped pajamas were silk and luxurious and Vi could just guess how much they had irritated Livingstone. “I think we should solve this and get on a train and go home.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “They won’t let us leave given how we’re suspects. Then it will be Christmas. Once the case is solved, we’ll leave.”
“I vote for Livingstone,” Victor joked. “He doesn’t like you Vi.”
“I know!” She laughed. “We should probably be looking over our shoulders for him eavesdropping.”
Victor rose and went behind the screen to change out of his pajamas and into one of his more casual suits. Kate changed as soon as he was done, and then they went to visit the children.
Nanny Jane eyed them darkly as Vi lifted Agatha and Victor scooped up Vivi. Kate took the fussing Lion while Vi found one of the more comfortable chairs. “Are you quite all right, Nanny?”
Both nannies had taken up residence in the one-time nursery and had turned it into the coziest part of the lodge. Nanny Poppy was feeding Lily bits of bread while Nanny Jane had been walking the baby. As sisters, they were similar, and their expression was similarly frustrated.
Nanny Jane, who looked after Vi’s nieces and nephew, shook her head. “That constable acted as though Poppy and I were lying. As though we stay up to monitor when you all go to bed. He was bothersome, and I’ve been stewing.”
Victor’s gaze narrowed while Kate reached out and squeezed Nanny’s hand.
“He made the twins cry.”
“And,” Nanny Poppy cut-in, “he asked about Smith and Beatrice. He seemed to think you were lying about being friends with them, as if their presence here wasn’t obvious evidence that you are friends.”
Vi rolled her eyes.
“What did he ask?” Kate asked easily as she clucked to Lion.
“He asked when you went to bed.” Nanny turned from arranging baby clothes to scoff. “I told him you came for Lion around midnight and that was the end of it. He asked question after question and they all had the same answer. You came for Lion at midnight and the rest of you could have gone to bed at noon or dawn and we’d never have known.”
Violet would have crowed in triumph if it wouldn’t have given them away as liars. Instead, she danced with Agatha until her niece yawned. The nursery dinner came for the little ones and Vi helped Agatha eat and then held her close and sang to her until she slept.
Victor, Kate, and Vi left the nursery at the same time to change for dinner. The scent of chicken and herbs was in the air, and Vi’s stomach almost clawed itself with the need for food. She had never been happier about someone stepping in and cooking than she was now.
Only then she stepped into her bedroom and saw that her dresses had been steamed. She found her way to the bathtub, and it had been scrubbed out and smelled fresh and clean of bleach and lemons. Vi lingered in the bath, then lingered over her dress selection.
Jack came in just as Vi left the bath.
“Was the telephone fixed?”
He nodded. “Someone cut the lines.”
“What now?”
“The lines themselves weren’t down; someone cut the line inside the house, Vi.”
She paused in pulling up her stockings to stare at him. “Inside the house?”
He nodded. There was a look on his face that said he was one breath from committing murder himself.
“What did Livingstone say about that?”
“He asked Iain if it was clear who had cut it, as though the poor telephone man would be able to tell by looking at a cut cord.”
“What?” Vi scoffed. “What a fool! Did he expect one of us to have signed our name?”
“It turned against him. Iain scoffed and demanded why a bunch of strangers who were snowed in would cut their own safety line. He then asked Livingstone what he was playing at and told him to start finding out who’d been tromping through the woods to harass a poor family on holiday.”
“Oh I like him. Do overpay him.”
Jack laughed. “I did.”
“That Iain fellow also muttered loud and long about how everyone knew the Lewis Camdyn was struggling for money for years and now he has a new auto.”
“Oh really,” Vi said with a grin. She rubbed her hands together with glee. “That is interesting.”
“I made the telephone calls the moment the telephone was working, and I fear at that point I didn’t hide it.”
“So Livingstone knows that you aren’t satisfied and pulled strings?”
“He does,” Jack said. “Conveniently, your father knows the right man. He’s a hunting friend.”
Vi chose a dark green dress with fringe and beads down the front that flickered in the light. She placed a headpiece over her hair and then applied a layer of red lipstick.
“How long will it take for Father’s friend to contact Livingstone?”
“He already did. Your father hung up the telephone, made his own call, and then that fellow called the house. Livingstone has just exited.”
Vi laughed again. “I suppose I should have sent Father a better present.”
“What did you send him?”
Vi shrugged. “Victor and I sent our recent books.”
“I sent your father some of those Cuban cigars as well.”
“We’re safe,” Vi laughed.
Jack paused and then asked, “What did you send Lady Eleanor?”
Vi had considered sending her stepmother nothing. She and Victor had debated it. And she had sent Lady Eleanor a box of those wonderful chocolates, knowing that she was attempting to reduce. But, in the end, Violet had sent a cameo as well. It was lovely, finely made, and resembled one that Vi had once taken.
