by Beth Byers
“I’m sorry you had to leave whatever you were doing,” she said when he joined her and Parker.
“I’m not, love.” Ham grinned at Violet. “Emily Allen was there. She was wondering what Jack was up to and whether he’d left you yet. She feels certain it’s just a matter of time before you’re left behind, and he’s a free agent again.”
“So she’ll be ready to rescue him from bachelorhood?”
“Just so, my dear,” he told Violet. “She doesn’t realize that Jack is fully shackled to you.”
“Shackled!” Violet glanced at Parker and Jones. “Can you believe this nonsense?”
“Yes,” Parker said, nodding frantically, “that seems the likeliest.”
“Gentlemen,” Violet said with a frown. “May I introduce my keeper, Ham Barnes? My brother sent him to keep the killer from slaughtering me too.”
Ham’s gaze twinkled at Violet as he bowed slightly at her introduction.
“I would wish you luck,” Parker told Ham, “but I doubt anyone could keep her out of trouble. Did you know she showed up at my work, bribed me, and made a date with me?”
“Sounds like Vi,” Ham agreed, holding out a hand to Jones. “Nice to meet you.”
“And you,” Dr. Jones replied. He glanced around the room and then looked to Barnes. “Do you think that you can keep her out of trouble?”
Ham laughed and shook his head. “No one could. Her twin is protective. Tell me, Jones, if you were to guess who the killer is—who do you think did it?”
Jones glanced at Parker and demanded, “Are we leaving Parker out of it?”
“Just for now,” Barnes said. They didn’t know that Barnes was a Scotland Yard man, Jack’s boss, and Jack’s commanding officer during the Great War when both Jack and Hamilton were part of the military police. Barnes was playing his part as a friend at the moment, and he was letting Jack take lead while he was in disguise as Violet’s keeper.
“I don’t know really,” Jones said. “Lovegood isn’t that far from retiring. I’m not sure why he’d be driven to fires and murder after all this time—that goes for all of us, doesn’t it? The one who has the most to lose is your friend Wendell.”
Violet’s mouth twisted at that idea. She glances at Barnes, who didn’t seem surprised at the answer. How many times had Barnes heard accusations thrown about and how did he handle it without turning a hair? “Parker was just going to introduce us to Lovegood,” she told Barnes. “I haven’t met him yet.”
“I wonder how reasonable it is to think that the new man on the job is the killer,” Violet said, as they moved across the room.
“I would imagine that it’s easier to believe a stranger is a killer than a person you’ve known for years,” Barnes answered.
“But,” Violet whispered, “they’re all working on different sites, aren’t they? How close of friends could they be?”
The final group of people in the room was an older archeologist, defined by his tanned face and neck and his thick shoulders, another who was a younger version of the older man, and a very, very slim man who was almost ghostly pale.
“May I introduce Richard Lovegood, his nephew, James Lovegood, and Mr. Lyle Clarkson.”
Parker introduced Violet without explaining that she had been used to draw Jack into the arson cases.
“Now,” Violet said to the two Lovegoods, “you worked one of the Greece digs?”
Richard Lovegood nodded.
“Did you also find one of the obsidian knives?”
He focused on Violet for a moment and then shook his head. “I believe that you mean the knives Greyly sent to us to support his wild theories? They’re not even worth repeating now that Greyly is gone. It was laughable in the extreme.”
“Now, now,” Clarkson squeaked. “We shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
Violet placed her hand on Clarkson and said, “May I ask how you’re connected to Greyly?”
He paled even further before he answered, “I was his assistant.”
“You’re more than that, my boy,” Lovegood told Clarkson, who flushed.
“And his nephew.”
“And his heir,” Lovegood finished.
The pale man flushed, and he repeated in a near whisper, “And Uncle Greyly’s heir.”
“The one,” Lovegood added loudly, “who had the greatest reason to murder the old man.”
“I—” Clarkson lost the flush and turned a sickly greenish white, and then he fainted.
Chapter Thirteen
Violet stared down at the man at her feet and then glanced at Barnes, who leaned down and checked his pulse.
“Do you have smelling salts?” the younger Lovegood asked Violet.
“Smelling salts?” Violet demanded. “What am I? Your grandmother?”
They had been surrounded after Clarkson hit the ground, and Denny replied calmly, “If only he could be so lucky.”
Jack and several police officers rushed into the room with another man following after with a doctor’s bag. Jack pulled Violet behind him as though she were in danger. “What happened?”
“He fainted,” Barnes told Jack.
“Did something happen to make him faint?”
“He’s Greyly’s heir,” Barnes replied with a sigh. “He didn’t look well before he fainted.”
“Violet, Barnes, go into the hall,” Jack said. “The rest of you move to the parlor across the hall. Leave the doctor to work on this man.”
Jack joined them shortly after the rest of the crowd had moved into the parlor. He pulled Violet into the office they’d seen before and sent out the police officer who was searching the room. “We found Wendell’s article,” Jack told Violet. “Even I can identify it as nonsense. Something about trading of the obsidian blades to support worship of Hephaestus and a cult. Vi, it’s ridiculous.”
Violet pressed her forehead against Jack’s chest. “This is the dumbest evening I’ve ever been part of,” Violet told Jack. “Except there’s a dead man.”
“It would have ruined Wendell Lancaster’s career, that article. This Greyly was trying to prove ghosts were real as well. He has been paying quite a sum of money towards mediums and spiritualists as well as these digs. He was obsessed with the Greek god of volcanoes, with the afterlife, with making a name for himself in sharing his obsessions and trying to have them widely accepted.”
Violet looked up at Jack. “I understand why Clarkson would want to kill Greyly if he thought Greyly was throwing his money away. I understand it,” Violet said. “I just understand it. Understand?”
Jack kissed her forehead. “Yes. You’d never even consider such a crime and it makes you sick to your heart, but you see how others think that way. Have you seen the inside of the grey stone house?”
Violet shook her head. “Only the outside. Does it matter?”
“You only care that it’s at the end of the street where Victor lives?”
“And Vi junior. Do you care that we haven’t seen it?”
“Violet,” Jack said, “I don’t care at all. But I have been wondering if by not caring, we’re…being irresponsible.”
Violet took a deep breath. “I don’t know that I care, and we can afford to be irresponsible. Maybe we’re being emotional about where we live. Maybe in choosing to live there instead of somewhere else, we’re paying some sort of emotional tax. Surely, the price we pay for the things we want—that bring us happiness—are worth paying a higher price.”
“I think so. I find that Greyly hauling us into these arsons has made me far more likely to care less about this case. Or maybe it was that in seeing the last victim’s family and how broken they were, this is empty by comparison. No one cares that Greyly died,” Jack told Violet, sounding more bothered by that than by the death of Greyly. “I think that’s even sadder than the poor woman’s children being left as orphans. Can you imagine? Dying and no one even caring?”
Violet shook her head.
“Violet Carlyle soon to be Wakefield?”
“I would be devastated if something happened to you.”
“And I you,” she said against his chest, not understanding why he needed to say it to her right then, but she knew he needed to know she loved him.
“It turns out that truly being in love and loving gives life meaning. What is the meaning to Greyly’s life? He was looking for life’s meaning in all these projects. The futile pursuits of ghosts and Hephaestus?”
“You think that matters?” she asked.
“I think that someone’s life’s meaning is or was at risk. A duel between what Greyly wanted and what the killer wanted.”
Violet pulled away, hopping up onto the desk again. She held up her hand and ticked off names as she said them. “Wendell, Lands, Lovegood the elder, Lovegood the younger, Jones, Clarkson. They all were mucked up in Greyly’s life. He pulled them in with his money, tangled up in his theories and madness. No one liked him; they liked his money. Do I do the same thing?”
Jack shot Violet a look that told her she was ridiculous. She sighed. “I bribed Parker.”
“For Wendell, because you love Lila and Denny.”
“He just needs a chance,” Violet said. “We could give him one and then he can do with it as he pleases. If he fails with the chance we give him, it’s on Wendell. It will no longer matter that Denny got the inheritance instead of Wendell.”
“What now?”
“Turns out earnest, hardworking Wendy is also a bit jealous.”
“Of Denny?”
“The money from the aunt. It feels…familiar.”
Jack shook his head. “Victor didn’t mind that you got more money than he did.”
“What about Algie and Davies? My cousins had every right to expect more from Aunt Agatha or as much as I got.”
“That’s not how inheritance works, Vi. Especially from an aunt. I could see someone being upset if they didn’t inherit more evenly from a parent. But an aunt? No one has a right to look at an aunt and think that money should be mine.”
Violet nodded. “How long are you going to keep them?”
“Not one of them was in the view of any of the guests,” Jack told Violet. “No one who was watching the fireworks noticed them. Where were they?”
“The Lovegoods might alibi each other. It’s not a stretch to assume they were together.”
“Yet it’s also not a stretch to assume that they would lie for each other.”
“Maybe they were all in on it.”
“That would make a good book. The average person would never consider killing someone else.”
Violet glanced around the office. The walls were covered with pictures from digs and discoveries. There were empty spots where the police officers had removed photographs from the wall in order to show them to those they’d interviewed, verifying the suspects location during the party. There were framed coins and pictures of digs. There was an imaginative painting of the sphinx with the sun in the background. It didn’t look like it was in modern times but what it might have been like when it was completed.
Violet loved the painting, and it made her want to see it desperately, but it lent nothing to the moment.
“Jack, maybe we should go and leave it to another investigator. Simply move on with the things that matter to us?”
“This does matter to me. I am offended by myself,” he told her. “That I care less about Greyly than I should. Perhaps it would be good to break after the last case, but first, we need to do what we can to find Greyly’s killer.”
There was a knock on the door, and Barnes came into the room. “Nothing?” Ham asked.
Jack shook his head. “No one saw anything. The servants were preparing warmed cocktails. They weren’t in the ballroom nor were they watching the show. Greyly was at the back of the show in the shadows of his own house. It would have been simple for someone to come up behind him, stab him, and slip away.”
“Given that everyone was outside, any footsteps aren’t conclusive of anything.”
“There aren’t any footprints anyway,” Jack told him. “Greyly was standing on a stone path. He fell backwards or was pulled backwards. It was possible to kill him from behind and get away relatively clean. Especially if you knew what to expect.”
Jack recapped what he’d found so far concerning Greyly, and Violet listened to her love speak. Jack’s voice was a little deeper, a little husky, a little distracted. He was, she thought, rather like herself after they’d gone home. She’d been near useless because of her bad dreams. She thought that Jack might come away from the poor murdered mother and orphaned children with his own nightmares.
“Ham,” Violet said. “The last case is wearing on Jack.”
Hamilton Barnes winced. “That was a rough one. It has been weighing on my thoughts as well.”
“We need to wrap this case up, and then you need to give him a break. I know he gets pulled in on the harder cases, the ones that are more sensitive or less clear cut. Like that poor viciously murdered mother. It’s not good for Jack’s heart.”
Hamilton examined Violet’s face. They had become friends, the two of them. Violet felt that she would always care for Ham by his own right, and not because he was like a brother to Jack. Even still, Violet met Ham’s gaze fiercely.
“You’re protecting him,” he said.
“That’s what you do when you care about someone.”
The comment had them all pausing and staring at each other. “What if it is as simple as that?” Hamilton asked. “What if the killer was protecting someone? The rest of this doesn’t make sense. The Hephaestus idiocy. The ghosts and mediums. Perhaps…”
“Perhaps,” Jack said, taking Violet’s hand, “we are grasping at straws for a reason behind this killing that makes sense to us. Though I don’t disagree with you. I—” He shrugged. “Just playing devil’s advocate.”
Violet looked down at their hands where they were tangled together and relished the sight of his fingers wrapped around hers. “If it is that, we need to know who they all love.”
“Or what they all love,” Hamilton added. “People love things sometimes as much as the living.”
“You’ve talked to them the most, Violet. While I’ve been in here swimming through this nonsense.”
Violet nodded, distracted. “The Lovegoods probably love each other. Uncle and nephew and working together.” She tapped her lip. “I seriously doubt that Jones cares about being an archeologist anymore. He has a backup plan and has for a while. I think Greyly’s murder simply expedites things for Jones, though maybe makes them a little more difficult.”
“Wendell?” Jack asked.
Violet didn’t want to answer that question. She had a pretty good feel for Denny’s brother, and she had little doubt that Wendell loved Dr. Lands like a second father. She suspected that Dr. Lands loved Wendell like a son.
She hesitated long enough that Jack nodded.
“Like Jeremiah Allen and myself?” Jack asked, referring to the young man who had looked up to and followed in Jack’s footsteps.
“Except their relationship is current and unencumbered by a broken engagement.”
“We could be overlooking the obvious.” Barnes sighed. “These men have all been attempting to find a treasure in the past. Maybe one of them did?”
Chapter Fourteen
“If there is a simple reason for someone to slaughter another person, it’s money. Change that money to actual gold or jewels or such, and you may just have an unconquerable temptation.”
Violet stood and paced the office, playing with her ring while Jack and Barnes discussed the merits of the most obvious theories. Violet had little doubt the investigators would continue to comb through the letters and papers from Greyly and maybe they’d have an eventual reason to narrow their focus down to something else.
She had seen Jack follow the trail of clues more than once. He would take note of anything out of
place in all the evidence and suddenly what was small would become important. It was why he was so good at discovering killers. Violet had meddled in more than one case, but she followed the people angle. The things she knew about those who had died. Sometimes, she’d used her status as an earl’s daughter or a woman of wealth to get people to talk to her.
When someone had been murdered in her father’s home, Violet had somewhere to start because the servants were willing to talk to her. The biggest problem with that was these men weren’t connected to the people here. Likeliest person to have been starting those fires was the archeologist who didn’t have a cheating spouse or alert servant to give up clues.
These men weren’t stupid either. Regardless of getting involved in Greyly’s idiocy, they were men of education. They’d simply been bought.
“If we were on their dig sites,” Violet suddenly announced, cutting into the conversation between Jack and Ham as they discussed a letter about finances, “there would be diggers or assistants or locals to tell us more. These men—they’re not connected to anyone here. We’re held back.”
“That’s why we need to know why they were upset.”
“But we already know that. Greyly had bought them with his money and the chance to work in archeology. He was, however, moving his interest towards ghosts. He had brought them home to cut them loose. This was a well thought out crime, however,” Violet told them. “No mess on the killer? Hundreds of possible killers and witnesses but not one? It was risky. Terrifyingly risky to go after Greyly when they did.”
“You don’t think it was a crime of the moment?” Ham asked. He was testing her, and she shot him a disapproving look.
“You don’t passionately kill someone in the middle of a crowd. Not with one of the knives he was using to muddy the waters of their findings. This was planned.”