Murder by the Sea

by Beth Byers

  Martha stomped her foot. “He threw me over!”

  “He seemed to want to make amends when we met him at the carnival.”

  Martha crossed her arms over her chest and hissed, “He wanted me to talk to Rita and Vi about giving him money. He’d begged me to talk to Rita the whole steamship voyage. He’d have been pursuing her too if he’d thought—for a second—she’d give him a chance.”

  Rita shook her head and looked towards where the body was being loaded onto the stretcher. Even from this distance, they could see his arm drop from under the blanket and dangle lifelessly.

  “Oh,” Violet said, turning away. She should have turned away long before. “Bloody hell.”

  “Let’s go home,” Rita said. “Our being here will just distract Jack and Ham.”

  Victor nodded, and they turned towards the stable, walking the horses back. Jack and Ham’s horses had passed them long ago and had already been stabled by the time they’d returned.

  “At least they are well trained enough to go home,” Violet said when they passed Jack’s horse.

  “They just know where their food comes from.”

  They left the stables and walked towards the house. Denny disappeared on the way, and Vi had little doubt that their parlor would be full of chalkboards. Before that happened, she wanted to attempt a nap.

  She climbed the steps to her bedroom and knocked on Lila’s door.

  “Yes?”

  Violet pulled off her boots the moment she reached Lila’s room and then lay down on the end of Lila’s bed. A moment later, Rita joined them.

  “You look terrible,” Lila told Rita.

  “Thank you,” Rita told Lila. “You might be glowing.”

  “It’s the baby.”

  “Have you decided upon a name?”

  Lila shook her head. “Denny only likes names that are also funny, and I’m not doing that to our daughter.”

  “Denny is currently getting chalkboards.”

  Lila groaned.

  “He’s very excited.”

  “I am sure he is.”

  “It’s Samuel Richards,” Rita told Lila and watched her drop her face into her hands. “The dead man.”

  “Martha is going to be intolerable.”

  “Denny told her she’s the main suspect. He’s an evil genius since it took her from wailing to insisting upon all the reasons she’s innocent.”

  Lila shook her head. “My mother will never forgive me.”

  Violet lay back on the bed, dropped her arm over her eyes, and muttered, “We are cursed. You’ll have to explain to your mother that we didn’t mean to offend whichever god has laid this on us, and that if we could only find out who, we’d find a way to make things right.”

  Rita laughed and then took the space next to Violet. “You know, to the local boys we’ll be suspects.”

  “And all your lovers,” Lila said. “They had to have known Richards from the steamship. It’ll be fun to watch Ham question them and see who whines to you.”

  Rita did not look nearly as amused at the prospect.

  “At least it’ll divide the whiners from the rest of the pack.”

  “There is no pack,” Rita said flatly. “There is either Ham or none of them.”

  “But there will always be us,” Lila said, patting Rita’s hand. “From a person who waited longer than I wanted to marry, there really is no reason to rush. You can give yourself and Ham time to figure out what you want and make sure you fit.”

  “First,” Rita groaned, “let’s find the killer and get rid of these fortune hunters.”

  “Then you can slowly torture Ham until you’ve deemed it enough for turning your love aside.”

  “He didn’t,” Rita admitted.

  Vi lifted her arm, staring and Rita dropped her own arm over her face.

  “He told me he loved me more than he thought was possible. He said I made him believe in fairytale love. He told me he wanted me more than he wanted his next breath.”

  “Oh lovely,” Lila said, tearing up and then scowling as she had to smudge away the tear before it ruined her kohl liner.

  “Then he said he was too old for me, too poor for me, too set in his ways for me, and he’d never, ever be good enough for me.”

  Violet rolled her eyes. Boys were so dumb in their misplaced chivalry.

  “Oh!” Lila groaned.

  “Lila!” Martha shouted from the hall and then burst into the room. Her kohl liner was smeared, but Violet’s head cocked.

  “You didn’t have kohl on before.”

  Martha glared at Violet, and then she twisted her face in horror and went to throw herself on Lila’s shoulder, but Lila held up a quick hand. “I might sick up.”

  Violet noticed the lie in Lila’s gaze.

  Martha dropped to her knees next to where Lila had been napping and took her sister’s hand. “Lila, it’s the most devastating news!”

  “The man who decided to exchange his love for you for money has died, and you’re a suspect in his murder?” Lila said blandly.

  “No! Why would I be? Who could think that I would kill anyone?”

  Lila’s mouth pursed. “Well, perhaps anyone who knew you at eleven years old? As I recall, you cut off one of my braids.”

  “Mother let you bob your hair after, so you should have thanked me.”

  Lila’s narrowed gaze was not enough to quell her sister.

  “I’m going to tell Mother.” Martha fell back on her same old threat.

  “You know,” Rita said musingly. “Kate made an interesting point about how having a baby on the way will pull Lila ahead of you. You aren’t going to be able to blame everything on her anymore. Perhaps your mother will even point out how you should be helping her instead of blaming Lila every time you dig yourself a hole and jump in.”

  “She won’t!”

  “She will,” Rita told Martha in a way that declared it an utter certainty. For the first time that day, Martha paled.

  “She won’t.” It was not convinced. It could even have been described as tremulous.

  “She will, and she’ll be extra furious with you. Now your choices are your own fault and you made things harder on your sister.”

  Martha shook her head, but she was pale. Far paler, it seemed, than being a murder suspect caused. Far more upset than when Samuel Richards had chosen missionary money over her.

  “In fact,” Rita mused, “I think I’ll be writing to her myself about what I witnessed on the steamship. Lila can send it with her own letter updating her mother on how she feels.”

  “Lila never writes to Mama!”

  “Lila is too smart to miss this advantage.”

  The noise Martha made next could only be described as a squawk.

  “Unless,” Violet said slowly. She glanced between Lila and Rita and then back at Martha.

  “Unless?” Martha looked wretched and hopeful at the same time.

  “I suppose I could be persuaded to keep my thoughts to myself,” Rita started. “Not tell your mother of your, shall we call them, indiscretions?”

  “I don’t think we should,” Martha said. “Light-heart foibles.”

  “Regardless,” Rita said, lifting a brow. “You’ll need to answer each and every question that Violet, Jack, and Ham put to you regarding Richards.”

  Martha nodded frantically.

  “Without,” Rita sat up and directly met Martha’s gaze, “and I cannot make this clear enough—theatrics.”

  Lila snorted and Martha shot her a nasty look.

  “With respect towards the rest of us,” Rita added.

  “She won’t be able to do that,” Lila said.

  “Then her mother will hear about Mr. Benedict Stover.”

  Martha shook her head frantically.

  “We’ll start when Denny gets back,” Violet told Martha. “Go away. Lila is resting.”

  Martha frowned and then snapped her mouth shut, stomping from the room. She bypassed Kate in the hallway where she walking
one of the twins and patting her back.

  Chapter 11

  “Kate!”

  She came into the room and handed Violet baby Agatha. “Let me just get Vivi.”

  A few moments later and Vivi joined Agatha on the bed, kicking her legs. Both of them were bright-eyed and curious as Kate looked down on them.

  “How was it when we got back?” Rita asked carefully.

  “I crept up the stairs like a thief in the night, put my ear to the doorway, and found Poppy rocking Agatha’s cradle while Jane was singing to Vivi.”

  “So they were fine?”

  Kate frowned fiercely at all of them, but no one was teasing her. “They were fine. Completely happy. I felt let down.” Violet’s head cocked and Kate continued. “I wanted them to have wanted me and been unhappy without me. I wanted them to wail in relief at my presence and then make that little trembly lip that says they’re sad but all is well when Mama is here. I might have cried and then told Victor I had gone mad and sent him out for ice cream, chocolate, and fish and chips.”

  Violet bit down on her bottom lip and fiddled with her wedding ring in a failed attempt to not laugh at Kate.

  “Shut up,” Kate moaned and then placed a hand on Vivi’s head as Violet placed Agatha on her lap.

  “They love you more than anything,” Violet told Kate carefully.

  “They stop crying for Victor more than me.”

  “Did you want us to hold your hand and agree that all is very hard because your beautiful, healthy babies are happy?” Lila asked dryly.

  “Wait until it’s you,” Kate said meanly. “You think you won’t go mad, know you’ve gone completely crazed, and won’t be able to stop yourself? Because it’ll be you too.”

  Lila’s expression said that it would never be her.

  “Oh what do you know? Look at your ankles! They’re beautiful. Have you sicked up even once?”

  “Twice.” Lila’s evil grin made Kate throw a pillow at her. Rita and Violet were carefully saying nothing.

  “Wise,” Kate said to them, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I—”

  Rita patted Kate’s leg before she apologized again. “Ham said he wanted to have children right away.”

  The silence immediately shifted to a tenseness with everyone holding their breath and not wanting to say the wrong thing.

  “I want to marry him and have babies right away.”

  Violet put her hand over her mouth to hold back all of the things she needed to say about that.

  “But, I don’t know if I can trust him that far. I don’t know if he won’t shift on me again.”

  Violet was nodding behind her hands, holding everything in.

  “I’m angry,” Rita said blankly. “I’m so angry it’s boiling up in me and I don’t know how to get past it. I threw my heart at his feet and he acted like he was doing me a favor by telling me no.”

  Violet dropped her hands. It wasn’t like she didn’t see how that would break everything down.

  “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life remembering how that felt, and I don’t know if I can forget, so instead, I’m just holding my breath to see if things change.”

  “That’s wise,” Kate told Rita. “Anger and hurt is no foundation for a marriage. Forgiveness, however, is.”

  “So wait until I decide if I can truly forgive him?”

  Lila nodded. “While we’re throwing out wisdom, no one is going to make you angrier or more hurt than Hamilton Barnes if you marry him. It isn’t all sweetness, kisses, and love. There’s a lot more feelings to marriage than that.”

  “I have wanted to murder Victor at least two dozen times.” Kate let her finger trail over Vivi’s brow. “I was about one blunt instrument and scream of rage from doing it when he let our last nanny go.”

  Denny threw open the door and demanded, “Did you hear?” He paused in the doorway. “I can see you did. It’s very tense in here. Did I do something wrong or is this about Ham?”

  “It’s not about you, laddie. That’s all you need to know.” Lila held out her hand and Denny pulled her up and then scooped up Vivi. “Hello, my little princess. Hello, darling. May I use you for a shield, sweet angel? These ladies are scary right now. The first thing you need to know is that you’re a dangerous creature too.”

  Lila rolled her eyes, but she had a gentle smile.

  “The chalkboards have arrived. I bribed them to a ridiculous extent, but they aren’t the pretty matching things of your London house, Vi.”

  Violet rose and followed Denny down to the parlor. The house they’d taken for the week was quite a massive thing with a parlor that left the one in her London house almost too small. The fireplace was at the far corner with two couches and several chairs in front of it. There was a second seating area farther down the room which was too long to comfortably talk with someone near the fireplace to the door. It ran the full length of the large house which had taken all of Violet’s party without a problem.

  Martha was sitting with her arms folded, pouting. She scowled at Violet, who glanced around the room with the baby in arms.

  “Line them up against that wall,” Violet told the servants. “Move the furniture, and then line the sofas so that there are two layers of seating while we examine this situation.”

  “Ma’am?” The housekeeper had nodded to the maid and two young men who worked in the house to start moving the furniture. “What situation, may I ask?”

  “There’s been a—”

  “Murder!” Martha finished, too excited for anyone’s comfort. She let a slow tear drop. “My—my—betrothed.”

  “Oh! You poor dear!” Mrs. Levitt took the prettily weeping Martha into her arms, and Violet didn’t bother pointing out that Martha was breaking the agreement for theatrics. Rita could police that while Violet turned her attention to the details of this madness.

  She took the new box of chalk and one of the half-dozen chalk holders that Denny had purchased and put it together. The maid had scrubbed down what looked like a pub menu from the first board, and Violet wrote down the names:

  SAMUEL RICHARDS—

  MARTHA LANCASTER—

  PARKINGTON BIDLAKE—

  IAN FYFE—

  OSCAR WATTS—

  VERNON ATKINSON—

  THOSE TWO BIG BLOKES FROM THE FAIR—

  Vi’s mouth twisted as she added on a separate board:

  DENNY LANCASTER—

  LILA LANCASTER—

  VIOLET WAKEFIELD—

  JACK WAKEFIELD—

  RITA RUSSELL—

  HAMILTON BARNES—

  VICTOR CARLYLE—

  KATE CARLYLE—

  The maid was staring at Violet in utter horror. Vi grinned and winked. “Don’t worry, dear. We didn’t kill him, but it’s always best to be able to tell the constables why it wasn’t you when you had a bit of a reason.”

  The maid’s expression looked no less horrified. “But why would you have a reason?”

  “Oh we all hated him,” Violet said casually. “If I were a colder creature, I would say he wasn’t much of an addition to the human race, but I am trying not to be a heartless wretch.”

  Martha sniffled, but she was careful to make sure her voice carried when she spoke. “You aren’t doing a very good job of it.”

  “We haven’t thrown you onto the street yet, have we?”

  Violet turned from Martha and looked at the worried maid. “Maybe you could have Cook send in a rather large selection of sandwiches and tea things?”

  The maid rushed from the parlor as though the hounds of hell were chasing her just as there was a knock at the front door. Vi glanced towards the door, at Martha who lifted a lazy brow and shook her head, and then went to answer it herself with Agatha still settled in the crook of Vi’s arm.

  There was a constable on the steps. He was young, tall, handsome, with large blue eyes, a baby face, and a uniform that bulged with rather a lot of muscles.

  “Hello,” Violet said, trying to hide h
er smile at his earnest expression.

  “I’ve been sent to Mrs. Wakefield by Mr. Barnes and Mr. Wakefield.” He looked down at his feet and Violet noticed the trunk along with two suitcases. “They’ve assigned me the job of working through this paperwork and said I might find a willing secretary here.”

  Vi rolled her eyes and stepped back, gesturing towards the double parlor. She followed him in closely to see Martha take him in and then sit up quickly. She went from lazy to lounging goddess in one swift shift.

  “This is the destroyed betrothed.” Vi’s dry tone was lost on the constable who nodded and then crossed to her, holding out his hand.

  “Martha Lancaster.” She held hers out palm-down, but he didn’t take the bait to kiss it.

  “My deepest condolences.”

  “This is the constable that Jack has sent,” Violet told Martha. “I didn’t catch your name.”

  He blushed furiously as he hadn’t given it. “Constable Henry, ma’am.”

  Violet smiled at him. “We’ll get to that stuff. We’re waiting for everyone else to come down.”

  The constable stared, only realizing in the coming moment that she had already taken over. Instead of objecting, he slid into the role of her helper naturally.

  “Separate what you’ve found in there, will you? I supposed Jack and Ham already looked it over?”

  “They said he was a rather odd fellow with all these things.” Constable Henry was already spreading the contents out on a table.

  Violet glanced them over and then opened one to look it over more carefully. “If I had to guess, I would say this is a ledger of shipments not scriptures.”

  “That is what Detective Inspector Wakefield said. He also said that you might be able to make heads or tails of it.”

  There wasn’t even the slightest trace of doubt on Henry’s face, and Violet liked him all the better for it. For once the rarity of her having something to contribute and being female wasn’t causing every passing male a loud moment of disbelief.

  Denny was the first to arrive with Vivi still in his arms. He was followed rather more slowly by Lila, who swanned into the room, noted her sister’s obsession with the constable and groaned. Rita, Kate, and Victor were next, followed by the maid.