by Beth Byers
Gin & Murder
A Violet Carlyle Mystery
Beth Byers
Contents
Summary
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Also By Beth Byers
Also By Amanda A. Allen
Summary
September 1924.
When Violet and Victor are called home to account for their actions, only one course of action is possible. They pack a liberal amount of alcohol and call on their friends to rally round.
They've been outed as writers of sensational fiction! Of falling in love with unapproved individuals! They've bought houses while drunk and had the gall to get sucked into murder investigations! And, it was Violet who was credited with helping to find the killers! The explosion is a story for the ages.
What no one expected was murder. A body soaked in gin is a stretch after what these friends have been through. The real shocker is when the earl asks Jack, Violet, Victor, and their friends to solve the murder and save what remains of the family's good name.
Prologue
Earl’s Children Dishonour Heritage
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MODERN WOMAN, LADY VIOLET CARLYLE, SCANDALIZES BRITAIN WHEN SHE EMBROILS HERSELF IN MURDER PLOT— INSPECTOR JACK WAKEFIELD STEPS IN TO SAVE THE DAY — HER BROTHER IS LEFT IN THE SHADOWS AGAIN
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LONDON, SEPTEMBER 2—Recently, Lady Violet Carlyle traveled to Oxford to attend a lecture for the esteemed Hamilton Barnes of Scotland Yard. While there, an unconscionable murder occurred of this journalist’s own brother. Lady Violet, using her womanly wiles, bright eyes, and infamous turn of mind, maneuvered her way into the investigation.
Would one say that Lady Violet contributed to the conclusion of the case? Perhaps. The question that should be asked, however, is whether she should have been involved at all.
One might know the history of Lady Violet. Born to Lord Henry Carlyle and the late Penelope Allyn-Carlyle, Lady Violet is the twin to Mr. Victor Carlyle. The two write disreputable novels under the unimaginative pseudonym, V.V. Twinnings. With such a pen-name, the audience will not be surprised to learn that the books are of unaccountable value.
Would that were all we know of Lady Carlyle. One of many possible heirs of the notable Mrs. Agatha Davies, the bulk of that fortune was given to Lady Violet rather than to the most appropriate of heirs, John Davies, who was the only male progeny of the late senior John Davies. One will remember as well that in Violet’s family there were many prospective heirs. If only we did not have to add that Mrs. Davies was sent from this life and fortune as yet another murder victim.
It seems that Lady Violet leaves a slew of bodies behind her, starting with her great-aunt and followed by not one but six MORE murder victims. The claim could be made that Lady Violet was never charged in these murders. Yet, one wonders why she was involved at all.
Mr. Victor Carlyle, twin and stooge, is a lesser heir, a lesser author, and a lesser controller of the fortune inherited, whose only claimable talent is crafting a cocktail.
Does the earl know the shenanigans and mischief his lesser progeny are up to? And if so, will he save our country from them? — E. Allen
Chapter One
“Violet, darling! Vi! I’m here. Come kiss me and tell me I’m wonderful.” Isolde’s voice floated up the stairs to Violet’s room, becoming louder with each step. “I have missed you. Oh! Where are you?”
Violet’s head cocked as she listened. She’d been in the process of dressing. With her sister’s unexpected voice, Violet dropped the pale blue dress over her head.
“What’s this?” Victor asked loudly. “What’s this? You call only for the greater twin. I will have you know I make an excellent cocktail and since I’ve seen your suddenly less-precious face, I have learned to make both rum cocktails and champagne cocktails.”
“What’s to learn?” Isolde demanded, as Violet opened her bedroom door and watched her twin pick up their little sister, spin her in a circle, and set her down after an oomph-prompting squeeze. Victor stepped back, hands on her shoulders and looked her up and down as Isolde continued as though he hadn’t greeted her with such exuberance. “You simply dump a little of this, a little of that, shake it up, and proclaim yourself a wonder.”
Isolde had lost her alarmingly youthful appearance. There was a serene glow about her face. Was that because she had been spared the act of marrying the fiend Danvers? Or perhaps instead, it was because she’d finally stepped into herself?
She’d exchanged her long blonde hair for a golden bob that was all the rage. Hers was arranged into smooth waves and held down on the side with pearl hairpins. Her bright blue eyes glinted on a thinner face. Whatever had remained of her baby fat had melted away while Isolde had been traveling the world.
Violet’s gaze flicked over her sister’s dress with the air of a true connoisseur. Isolde had once had a wardrobe that matched the ingénue she had been, but now she looked a woman of the world. She wore a deep rose that accented her creamy skin and set off her blue eyes. Her full lips were painted a deep rose hue that matched her dress, while the rouge on her cheeks accented her healthy glow.
“You cut your hair off.” Victor’s voice was humour-filled and happy. “Now we can see that baby face of yours even better.”
Violet peeked over Victor’s back by pushing up onto her toes and setting her chin on his shoulder. “What’s this? This can’t be Isolde. Look at those knowing eyes. Look at that glow. Look at that sneaky tilt to her mouth. This isn’t our baby sister. She’s an imposter with the same face but shorter hair.”
Isolde squealed, shaking off Victor and throwing herself at Violet. “Vi!”
“I think you mean, ‘favourite sibling!’ Don’t confuse Victor. He’s easily muddled.”
“Being the favourite hardly counts, Vi,” Tomas said from the stairs. “You’re the only other girl. Isolde has to favour you. Everyone knows that.”
Violet grinned at her dark-haired and dark-eyed friend. He still looked haunted, but there was an edge of happiness and peace to him despite the shell shock he struggled with. She winked at him and then turned back to Isolde.
“No, no,” Victor said. “She should favour me as her older—yet not so responsible—brother. I am the one. Protector and instigator of mischief at the same time. Who else can make such wonderful claims?”
Violet was too busy squeezing her little sister tight to join in the banter. Her eyes burned with unexpected tears. “I missed you.” Violet ran her hand over Isolde’s head, rejoicing in the healthiness in Isolde’s face, the shine in her hair, the joy in her eyes. Her sister had left cowed and a little broken and returned sure of herself, something she’d never been.
“I missed you,” Isolde returned as gently. “I missed you so much. I kept thinking ‘what would Violet do’ over and over again. Every time I was nervous and uncertain, you saved me and you weren’t even there.”
Victor heard Isolde and snorted. “So you wrote a book of unaccountable value and meddled in a murder investigation?”
“Don’t say those things,” Tomas ordered Victor. “Isolde doesn’t do that. She’s the good one among you fiends.”
Victor met Violet’s gaze, and they winked triumphantly at each other before they faced Tomas. He’d joined them in the ha
llway, and the two friends threw their arms around each other and pounded one another heartily on the back. “Victor, old man, I have missed your cocktails.”
“Well, they’re famous now, you know? The Piccadilly Press wrote about my talents. They missed a few things, but they focused on what was important. The cocktails—”
Tomas’s laugh filled the hallway, echoed by Isolde’s.
“What’s all this now?” the deep voice of the siblings’ oldest brother demanded. “Quit hugging in the hall and order me some English tea. I have been dying a slow and miserable death without a solid tea done correctly.”
“Oh my,” Violet said, crossing to Gerald and kissing his cheek. “You have become Father, haven’t you?”
Gerald winked at Violet and shook Victor’s hand. “I am not joking about tea, sister. Please, save me. Oh, how I have suffered.”
They walked down the stairs together as Violet demanded, “How was Monaco? How was Málaga? Did you love Casablanca?”
“I loved it all. I have mounds of gifts for you, darling,” Isolde said happily. She moved so smoothly she seemed to be floating. Had her heart set her afloat? The happiness that radiated from Violet’s little sister was like the heat of the sun, and Violet recognized it for what it was. Isolde was in love.
“What about me?” Victor gasped, holding his hand to his heart. “Why did you appear out of nowhere? Were you supposed to be here today? I thought you were certainly supposed to be a few more days. I’d have had my Kate here if I had known.”
“I cannot wait to meet this fantastical female.” Isolde looked back over her shoulder, her gaze glinting at Victor. “She must be an astounding creature to be able to entrance the fickle Victor.”
“Fickle? Fickle? Me? I am wounded! I am not a fickle flower. I am stalwart.”
They reached the parlor, and Violet requested tea to be brought. Isolde turned in place, taking in the newly redone parlor, from the new, deep purple fabric on the Chesterfield to the paisley grey, silver, and purple curtains. “This does look nice.”
“I’ll take a rum cocktail,” Tomas told Victor.
“It’s early, isn’t it?” Isolde asked, still smiling. Her gaze flicked to Tomas.
Violet’s lips twitched as Tomas checked his pocket watch and then shrugged. “I suppose you’re right.”
Violet met Victor’s gaze, and they both turned on their little sister. “It’s love!” they exclaimed as one.
“I knew it would be!” Violet continued. “When is the big day, darling?”
Victor elbowed Violet. “Who cares about that, sweet sister? Do you know what this means? Lady Eleanor is getting what she always wanted, and we’re saved! Isolde is marrying a respectable, well-connected, and gloriously rich man. Surely the woman can’t hold to her rage if she’s overcome by the joy of victory?”
“You’d think that, if nothing else, she would realize we engineered this duo. This is our triumph, brother. Isolde, when you tell your mother, emphasize that. It’ll be harder for her to rage against us and thank us at the same time.”
Tomas choked and Gerald muttered, “I told you’d they guess. You two glow. It’s disgusting.”
“Oh,” Victor breathed, “we might be saved. We could be saved.”
“No, you are still doomed,” Isolde told them with a cheery smile. “Violet can’t marry and have children so Geoffrey is to inherit her money.”
“What’s all this now?” Victor asked. “Violet wouldn’t leave her money to Geoffrey. I mean, I know he’s your full-brother, Isolde, but he’s a devilish little wart.”
“Mother has decided that you are unlikely to marry, the both of you. You’re too connected at the hip, and what man would want to compete with a twin? Once she realizes you both intend to marry and forever snatch your fortunes out of her needy Geoffrey’s hands…well, the only thing worse would be for Gerald to marry.”
“No need to worry about that,” Gerald said idly. He was examining the books on the shelf and demanded, “When did you get Greek books? Why do you have them? I know you two are cleverer than one would think, but you’re not that clever. You have La Fortuna de Los Rougon in French? Which of you is reading novels in French?”
“Don’t be silly, dear Gerald,” Violet told her oldest brother.
Unlike the twins, he was a thick and hearty fellow with broad shoulders, a thinning hairline, and a little cushioning about the middle. His eyes were as kind as Isolde’s and as clever as Victor’s. As the heir of an earl, however, Gerald’s tone and air was far more—snobbish.
Together the twins explained: “Kate.”
“She’s been slowly moving her books from her mother’s to here,” Victor said. “You’ll like her, Gerald. She’s brainy like you.”
“Violet is brainy,” Isolde protested.
“Don’t defend me, darling,” Violet told Isolde. “Kate really is cleverer than I.”
“Vi covers it up with fluff and cocktails, darling. Kate is overtly clever.”
“She can’t be all that brilliant, Victor. She fell in love with you.”
“Against her better judgement,” Victor countered with a grin. “She knows she’s drawing herself into a lifetime of nonsense. Her heart is leading her astray, and no one except her mother is trying to save her.”
The twins grinned at each other, and then Victor added, “Rather like Violet’s Jack. He should know better than to adore Violet. She’s encumbered by so many fools that even if he realizes how clever she is, he’ll still be suffocated by her hangers-on.”
“She’s not so clever,” Gerald said, “that she didn’t get caught by that newspaper woman. How did that article happen, Violet? How did you…ah…get outed?”
Vi explained that the woman who wrote the article about the twins was Jack’s previous intended who wanted him back and who hated Violet from the moment they met.
“I was handicapped,” Violet added, “I didn’t know she existed. When I met her, dumbfounded would be an accurate description of my state of mind.”’
“Flabbergasted,” Victor suggested.
“Regardless—” Violet grinned at the daily maid, who brought in the tea cart loaded with food, tea, and coffee. “I stumbled and she picked up every clue. She might be something of a fiend, but she is clever enough.”
“She has a way with words,” Gerald said, approaching the tea cart with hands rubbing together in glee. He started to load up a plate with sandwiches while Violet poured him a cup of tea and added the cream, sugar, and lemon he preferred. “I’d have winced for anyone who was the target of that diatribe. For you, love, I was quaking in my boots. Of course, I am aware of how our dear stepmother will take it.”
“Ah,” Violet sighed, scrunching her nose and wishing she could go back in time. The article had been published only yesterday. It was a matter of days—at most—before she was taken to account.
Gerald held up a hand. He was sipping his tea with closed eyes, breathing it in between sips.
“Surely they had tea on the steamship,” Violet asked Isolde, noting that her little sister was holding hands with Tomas. “If not every place you visited—”
Vi’s gaze went to her twin, landed on the held hands, and the two of them grinned. Tomas had thought himself in love with Violet since their youngest days. He had proposed more times than Violet would have wished. She loved him—like a brother. When he’d come back from the war, shell-shocked and broken, Tomas had leaned on the twins. He’d come home with waking nightmares that only the twins seemed to be able to help him with. That he’d move on and find love with Isolde had been their goal.
Violet had turned him away the final time he proposed, confessing her love for Jack. Instead, she and Victor had suggested that Tomas spend some time in the sun with their siblings and focus on recovering. It had been the twins’ expectation that Isolde, who was far better suited for him than Violet, would steal his heart. The twins might have rubbed their hands together with glee during their plotting.
“Tea t
astes better in London,” Gerald said, “especially after New York City. Americans don’t understand the intricacies of tea and how it should be.”
Violet’s lips twitched as Isolde shook her head. “Heard this a few times, have you?”
“Americans have excellent coffee. They like coffee better than tea. Who can blame them?”
“I don’t,” Victor pronounced as he poured himself a cup of the twins’ favourite Turkish coffee. “I see no reason to not have both.”
“You’ll come back, won’t you? This eve—” Violet’s question was cut off as the door to the parlor opened and their butler, Hargreaves, entered with an envelope on a tray.
“There’s a wire, Mr. Victor.”
Violet’s brows lifted as she peeked over his shoulder. They didn’t need to read the contents to know who had sent it.
“You’re coming,” they said together, eyeing their siblings and Tomas.
“Where?” the others asked.
“Home. We’ve been called home.”
Isolde pressed her lips together to hide her grin as Gerald told them, “Of course you were. You’re in trouble for certain.”
“They don’t even know we’re engaged,” Victor told the others. “I suspect Kate will pass muster, but Jack—with his paid hobby—will set Lady Eleanor to a diatribe.”
“Somehow we keep forgetting to mention our engagements in our letters,” Violet added.
“We should elope,” Victor said, but without enthusiasm.
“Your mother-in-law will have objections to that,” Violet told him.
