by Beth Byers
Everything about this was quite irregular, and she wasn’t going to apologize for making them wait. They filed out while Beatrice handed Violet a pleated navy skirt, a new pair of stockings, and a blouse with a large, loose jumper over the top. Nothing about her was fashionable, but she was somewhat cozy. What she wanted—Jack holding her tight—wasn’t something she could have at the moment. She could, however, have the comfort of her large, manly sweater.
She opened the door after brushing her hair and placing a turban over her damp hair. She joined Jack and Victor, who were waiting in the hallway when she left her bedroom. The inspector was just far enough away to make utterly clear that something he said had bothered the other two.
Violet glanced at her brother, and he lifted a brow. She smiled slightly, and he looked at Jack. Their silent conversation passed with the inspector watching, not understanding that Victor was making sure Violet didn’t need him and then making sure that Jack would protect Violet as though Victor were there. Vi’s expression told them both she’d be fine on her own, but they were welcome to come torment the inspector with her.
Vi walked towards the inspector, noting the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. They seemed to be more from frowns than laughter, and Violet felt a flash of sympathy. But then those cold eyes focused on Violet, and she realized that he was suspicious of her. Did she look like she’d murdered the man? Why would he automatically think it was her who was the killer?
Violet followed the inspector down the stairs as he said, “Your father has made the blue parlor available to us. It’s quite late, I know, but we do need to get started on fact-gathering.”
“I don’t mind answering your questions despite the hour,” Violet said.
Jack was pacing alongside Violet, and when she glanced his way, she could see he was angry.
The inspector gestured to the room, and Violet smiled at him prettily without stepping into the small parlor. “We’ll wait for my father.”
“Ah.” The inspector clearly objected but didn’t say anything.
Violet wasn’t surprised to see Smalley nearby despite the lateness of the hour.
“Smalley, would you mind terribly fetching the earl.” Violet placed the smallest amount of emphasis on her father’s title. She would not be convicted of a crime simply because she’d been the unlucky fool to stumble over his body.
Violet refused to enter the parlor and stood by simply waiting, an insipid smile on her face, while the inspector looked between her and Jack. She had little doubt that Jack would have to be told to go before he’d leave her to an inspector inclined against her.
“Have you lived in the village long?” Violet asked the inspector.
“All my life,” he answered. “Except for the war of course.”
“Of course.” She wasn’t merry about it, but it was the expected answer.
“Didn’t see much of you about.”
“We were very rarely here.” Violet heard movement and turned to her father, who lifted his eyebrows as if to ask what this was all about. “Jack and Victor would prefer that I wasn’t questioned alone.”
Father laughed, choking on a snort. She guessed that he would add something about her not being helpless if he hadn’t already scolded one of the local constables about Violet’s character. Father gestured to Violet, who stepped into the room. When Jack followed, Father didn’t object, and Violet saw the inspector frown.
Violet crossed her fingers in her lap and placed her most pleasant expression on her face.
Chapter Ten
“I understand that you spent some time with Mr. Wakefield in the folly?” The way the question was phrased made it seem quite…salacious.
Violet’s gaze narrowed on the inspector. She didn’t think he even saw her reaction. “I did.”
“You were there when Mr. Theodophilus Smythe-Hill arrived?”
“We had just left the drawing room and entered the garden when his auto arrived.”
Violet didn’t elaborate. She didn’t care for the tone of this man, and she wasn’t going to indulge him.
“And then?” His lips twitched a little bit.
“Then I walked with my betrothed through a few of my favourite parts of my father’s garden, where we talked about our future, kissed, and returned to the house after a while.”
“How long?”
Violet shrugged. “I wasn’t keeping track.”
“Ahh.” Again with the salacious inference.
Violet glanced at her father, but he seemed to be snoozing. She smiled at him. The big…big…faker. She’d bet her fortune Father was taking in every word and gesture despite his eyes being seemingly closed.
“When we left the drawing room, I had little concern for the time nor do I have a curfew, Mr. Wright.”
“Inspector.” He frowned at her.
“Of course,” Violet said, with enough attitude to make him wonder if she was mocking him. She was, in fact, so she credited him as being a better detective than she would have thought.
“Did you have further questions, Wright?” Jack’s voice was smooth and cool.
The inspector scowled at Jack. It must be difficult to be in charge of a case where one of London’s most respected detectives was looking on. Violet might have been sympathetic if he wasn’t so determined to focus his ire on her.
“So you left your lover—where?”
“I was in the kitchens, speaking with Cook. Jack and I entered through the kitchen door, spoke with Cook for a few minutes, who was making a tray. I made myself a plate of biscuits. Jack left to speak with Father, who was in the library as he always is at that hour, and I stepped into the drawing room to gather up a bottle of ginger wine.”
“The bar cart was across the room on the other side of the body. How did you trip over it?”
Violet shuddered at the memory. She had thought to be sneaky and turned out she had been stupid. If she had simply turned on the light, she could have screamed, gotten help, and had an alibi. If she hadn’t wasted the time moving through the room in the dark, digging through the cart, feeling the bottles rather than using a light. Instead, she’d practically rolled over the body, contaminating it and herself.
“I had hoped to avoid other guests.”
“It was dark.” The inspector’s voice showed doubt, and Violet didn’t blame him for it. It would have even been silly if it hadn’t ended with a body.
“I knew I could find the bottle in the dark.”
The inspector looked dubious.
“Victor always buys the kind that has stars on the bottle. You can feel them even when it’s dark.”
“Do you drink a lot in the dark?”
“Only ginger wine,” Violet told him rather too honestly. “It’s my comfort drink. If only I found comfort in warmed milk.”
“Yes. Well.” He glanced at Father and Jack as though to ask if they could believe it. Since they knew Violet, she expected they believed it quite well. “So you rifled through the bar cart in the dark. You must realize that makes no sense.”
“Of course it does. You just don’t have all the pieces to form your picture.”
“Form it for me then,” the inspector snapped, seeming to lose patience.
Violet simply stared unblinking until the man back down and then said, “Father.”
Without even opening his eyes, Father said, “Her stepmother invited a slew of suitable lads here with the hopes of persuading Violet to throw over Jack. Of course Vi was slipping through the house like a burglar. She was stealing away their hope of living off of her fortune.”
Inspector Wright’s eyes widened, and he turned to Jack, who sat stoically to the side as though he were entirely unbothered by the conversation. “I hadn’t realized you had motive as well.”
“I don’t,” Jack said smoothly. “What I have is the heart of a woman who is not easily persuaded.”
“Her money must be of a great potential loss.”
“I have little need of her money,” Jack sai
d smoothly.
“I am a bit too well aware of the income of an inspector.”
Jack crossed his leg and folded his hands in his lap. He didn’t seem to need a reason to defend himself, but Violet was far more inclined to defend him than herself.
“Jack’s family is wealthy and he has no need of an income. He works because he’s excellent at discovering killers. It was for that very reason we met.”
“Yet,” he said to Jack, “you didn’t catch the killer in time to save her aunt and now your betrothed is quite wealthy. Do I have the order of those events correct?”
Violet wasn’t able to speak. She was roaring inside, a shriek of fury. Her nails dug into the palms of her hands, and she was shivering with the need to let loose her anger.
“It’s interesting that you’re focusing on that,” Father said to Inspector Wright with a bit of mockery. “James Wakefield, Jack’s father, is one of the cleverest, well-connected men in the country. Jack has an income that exceeds that of my heir and has little need to allow a murder to take place on the off-chance that he might persuade my head-strong daughter to yield her heart.”
The inspector started to speak, but you don’t cut off an earl, and Father’s telling pause choked the inspector silent. “You’ll find if you did some actual investigating that Jack is wealthy in his own right. Violet is wealthy in her own right. The murderer of Mrs. Agatha Davies confessed to her crime and is in a mental asylum. Inferring that they had something to do with that murder is a road you would be quite unwise to take.”
Again Inspector Wright began to speak and Father cut in. “Melrose Nelson had as much chance at persuading my daughter to marry him—even without Jack’s existence—as does a snail. He was a dull, prosing, punctilious man with too much affection for rank and for expecting certain behavior from women. You can be assured, if they had become further acquainted, Nelson would have lectured my daughter, she would have mocked him, and they’d have ended their association with a unified dislike. If you suppose that aspersions on their character and inferences about their motives will get these two to confess to a crime they didn’t commit, you are very wrong. If you think any jury will accept such rough-shod work, let alone your own superiors, you are again quite wrong.”
“Your daughter had the best chance to have murdered Melrose Nelson.”
Father’s head tilted and he waited.
“She could have killed him,” Inspector Wright tried again.
“So could have I,” Father said. “Most of this blasted party had gone to their rooms yet I was on the main floor. Perhaps it was me.”
The inspector blinked, his mouth gaping. “I won’t have a fake confession, if you please, my lord.”
“And you won’t get one. From myself or my daughter. Be clear, however, that I wasn’t, in fact, with another person for most of the time around Nelson’s death. You think that somehow my daughter met Nelson by chance in the drawing room, incapacitated him, stabbed him, and then ran for us? All without a motive or reason to want him die?”
“He might have attacked her.”
“She is quite capable,” Father said. “But he had six stone on her and if he attacked her, she would have cried for help, and Jack would have slaughtered him while I looked on with satisfaction.”
The inspector stilled.
“We’d then get rid of the body on my acres upon acres of property. I doubt you’d ever have found it.”
“I…”
“That’s not what we did, though, is it?” Father asked merrily. “Instead we called for you because one of the grasping sponges masquerading as house guests murdered another. It’s a real dilemma.”
“I…”
Father ignored the inspector to move the interview along. “Violet, you tripped on the body after you found the wine?”
Violet nodded.
“Then?”
“It took me a moment to recognize the scent of blood.” Violet reached out and took Jack’s hand. Her fingers dug into his flesh as she remembered the feel of warmth and that distinct smell. The unwarranted warmth on her hands that ended with the most horrible of realizations. “I pushed myself up and turned on the light. I didn’t look at the body. I didn’t want it in my head.”
“Of course,” Father said.
Vi glanced at him, biting her lip. Her voice quavered and she wanted nothing more than to crawl in Jack’s lap as though he would be able to shield her from the memories. She knew he couldn’t protect her from what was in her head—but it felt as though it might be possible. Or maybe he’d be able to distract her from the memories until they lost their power. “I looked down. I saw the blood. I knew the smell. I…I ran for Jack and Father. I knew where they were. Then, I left the body to them. I didn’t, I don’t…want it in my head. I knew that Jack could carry that burden. That he’d take care of the poor victim.”
“You didn’t even look?”
“I have bad dreams,” Violet told Inspector Wright, giving him the chance to see the weight of those dreams.
“You’ve been involved in more than one murder case?”
Violet let the tears well in her eyes. It was too fresh after the feel of blood on her hand, and perhaps, too soon after the rage she had been feeling earlier in the day, the reinforced knowledge that her mother had died, her aunt had died, and Violet would be marrying without either of them. There was a little girl inside of her who had never stopped hoping for a mother, and every time she and Lady Eleanor had one of their little spats, Violet was reminded—yet again—that she didn’t have one.
None of that had anything to do with the murder, but all of those emotions were jumbled inside of her with the horror of murder and the anger that the man she loved more than anything wasn’t good enough for her stepmother. Even while Violet was a suspect in this crime, she knew she’d be safe. The man she loved would ensure that she never, ever, suffered for a crime she didn’t commit. She felt as though he wouldn’t let her suffer for a crime she did commit.
“My aunt,” Vi’s voice cracked again, “was murdered for her money. It was never clear who her heir was, so one of those heirs decided to kill her to improve her circumstances.”
“You were her heir?”
Violet glanced at Jack, the loss of Aunt Agatha haunting Violet, and a tear slipped out. She wanted her mother and her Aunt Agatha to celebrate her wedding with her. This feeling taking over her was the reason she’d kept her engagement hidden. Lady Eleanor would never fulfill the role of mother like Aunt Agatha would have, and when Violet’s day arrived, she’d have to marry with the hole in her heart of her missing mother.
“Technically, we all were. I inherited the majority, but we all received enough to change our lives.”
“Why you?”
“Aunt Agatha tried to teach us all how to care for her empire. I was the only one who learned.”
Inspector Wright grunted. “Tell me about the other deaths.”
“My sister Isolde was to be married to a Mr. Danvers. He pursued her because his son was obsessed with Isolde. Father and son hated each other. Danvers somehow convinced my stepmother that he was a man of fortune, and my stepmother convinced Isolde that he was a good choice. His son, however, killed him.”
“He also confessed,” Jack told the inspector mockingly.
“The rest?”
Violet shook her head, and Jack answered. “The next four cases all involved people who were in the periphery of our lives. I was called in on the cases because I was nearby when the murder occurred. Violet’s whereabouts on each of those cases were carefully tracked and documented. There was never any suspicion that she was the killer, though her own cleverness assisted in the discovery and apprehension of those killers—sometimes leaving herself at great risk and causing her physical harm. She is quite lucky, in fact, that she wasn’t another name on the list of victims.”
“This is all documented?”
“Of course. Documented with notes, supporting testimony, and confessions.”
Inspector Wright leaned back and smiled affably as if he hadn’t been a horrendous rat. “I did have to make sure. The rumors about her—well, I’m sure you’re aware.”
No one agreed with him, and he flushed slightly before clearing his throat.
There was a knock on the door that cut off the awkwardness before it could descend into something else, and the Inspector excused himself, leaving them in the parlor alone.
“I wasn’t aware you’d been quite so at risk, Violet.”
She looked at her father and pressed her lips together. She had deliberately left the descriptions of her wounds quite vague in her letters. Father’s expression said he just realized what she’d done. She winced at his expression.
Father adjusted in his chair, glanced at Jack, shook his head, and said, “I can see I’ll need to be discussing this further with you, your brother, and Jack.”
Violet grinned winningly, but it seemed Father saw far more than she realized. So she shrugged and said, “I’m fine now, Father.”
“Mmm.” His simple reply didn’t make Violet feel any better.
The inspector came back into the room. “There’s sign that the gin was poisoned.”
“Where did the blood come from?” Violet’s question burst from her. He couldn’t have been poisoned. He was very clearly injured in a way that left quite a puddle of blood. She gripped Jack’s hand even tighter.
“He was stabbed,” Jack told Violet.
Yes, she remembered, the ice pick. Oh heavens. Her stomach roiled with the thought. She wasn’t sure knowing how he’d died and the instrument of his death instead of seeing the body was better. It seemed that the questions were nearly as bad as the images. She hated that she could compare the experiences.
“And poisoned?” Violet asked the inspector.
“According to the doctor, the bottle of gin was poisoned.”
“Why?” Violet shuddered. “Were there two would-be killers or one person who wanted to be very, very sure?”
