The Violet Carlyle Mysteries Boxset 2

by Beth Byers

  Chapter 17

  “We’re saved, darling,” Victor told Violet. “Jack has already left, putting on his official hat and escaping into the fog.”

  Violet laughed up at her brother, winding her arm through his. “Absolutely fabulous! Now we were never conspiring against Jack. It’s not our fault he left before we could tell him.”

  “We do have a telephone,” Victor told her, smirking at her quelling look.

  Violet smacked his arm and increased her pace. He strolled behind her as she burst into the breakfast room. Her friends were loading up plates while she glanced around, ensuring that Jack truly was gone. Like Violet, the rest of them looked the worse for wear after the excess of drinks and the late night.

  “Violet,” Denny moaned, turning slowly and glaring at her with bloodshot eyes. “Your love sabotaged us.”

  Vi paused in loading her plate with sausages and eggs. The sickness in her stomach was gone, and she was ravenous. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “I mean that Jack made so many drinks we are all ill. Yet where is the fellow, I ask you? Working, sleuthing, investigating, larking about. He’s Holmes, too savvy for us fools. A wily, conspiring fellow.”

  Violet looked at Lila for clarification. Lila was leaning back. Her face was pale, but beyond that, she was as beautiful as ever. If anything, the paleness of her skin set off her pink lips and red cheeks.

  Lila slowly sipped her Turkish coffee. “Denny believes that Jack helped us all dive into our cups to keep you out of trouble today.”

  Kate paused in loading her own plate and muttered, “The fiend.”

  Violet, however, laughed. “Too late, my friends. Shenanigans abound. Rally round for mischief, my darlings.”

  No one perked up.

  “Food,” Denny said. “I can’t shenanigan until I eat.”

  Violet scrunched up her face, but her whining look didn’t make any of her friends give in. They descended on the food as though they hadn’t eaten in days. Perhaps the eggs and sausages were assisting in recovery now that they’d probably all had hangover-tonics and aspirin.

  Violet’s kedgeree seemed to almost melt in her mouth, and the toast sopped up the acid in her stomach. With her third cup of coffee, her mind was clear even if the light was still bothering her eyes. Violet looked up and found that everyone else had shoved their plates away and were sipping cups of coffee or tea.

  Lila sat with her eyes closed. “I do feel better. I very much prefer that rum concoction Jack made going down the gullet rather than coming back up.”

  “I know what you mean,” Kate said. “Words of wisdom, my dear friend.”

  “I only experienced it going down.” Violet stirred her coffee as she glanced at her friends. “I believe you should consider upon a touch of temperance.”

  “Oh!” Lila growled. “You are a fiend, like Jack. This is why he likes you. The evil.”

  “She’s unnatural,” Denny added. “Unnatural and venomous. Vexing in the extreme. We’ve discussed this.”

  “Not that again,” Kate begged. “I am incapable of ingenious insults. Incapacitated, I say.”

  Denny and Lila groaned at Kate, who smirked and handed her cup to Victor for a refill. “When I return home, I shall dreadfully miss Turkish coffee.”

  Victor glanced up in alarm, but Kate was examining Violet’s necklace. “Oh, I love it. I thought it would be perfect for you when Victor told me he was having it made.”

  Violet ran her fingers along the necklace and then handed the jewelry box to Lila. “Open it.”

  “Darling,” Lila said, “Victor couldn’t keep the secret from anyone but you. We’ve all seen them.”

  “Open it,” Victor repeated, and Lila lifted a brow, flipped the latch on the box, and uncovered the stack of compressed letters.

  “What’s all this?” Denny asked, lifting a letter and unfolding it. His head tilted as he examined the pale pink, perfumed paper. “‘My darling Philip’…” Denny’s mouth dropped open as he flipped to the end of the letter and read, “‘With endless faith, love, adoration, and gratitude—Marie.’ Is that the child?”

  Violet nodded and Victor demanded, “What now?”

  Kate filled in Victor on what they’d learned while he was ill while Violet rose to ring the bell. She requested Mr. Morganson, the new butler, to bring paper and a pen and her journal, then started on her fourth cup of coffee. There would be no naps today with that much coffee, but sacrifices had to be made.

  They had the servants clear the table before separating the letters into piles. There were four from Marie, two from Mrs. Melody Baker, and seven much shorter notes from Chloe Sandford.

  One letter, however, had them all staring. It was from the law office of George, Grendel, and Haliburton and was the start of a divorce.

  “Oh my.” Violet folded the letter. “Mrs. Jones was using the new marriage act to divorce Jones.”

  “How scandalous.” Kate sniffed. It wasn’t judgement so much as shock. She paused for a long moment. “You know, her life has been an endless scandal. She married that man when she probably should and could have done better. Not because of his employment but because of who he was. Then losing her children. His endless affairs. What’s one more scandal? This town was going to talk about her regardless.”

  “The marriage act?” Denny frowned, but he took Lila’s hand as he asked, “Is that the one that lets women divorce their husbands for adultery?”

  “It is.” She squeezed Denny’s hand. “Good for her.”

  “Would you divorce me?” Denny demanded.

  Lila rolled her eyes at him. “Have you been stepping out on me, my lad?”

  “If I did?”

  “You wouldn’t have to worry about it, darling.” She squeezed his hand. “I would just kill you and inherit your money.”

  She was joking, but her words paused all of them.

  “You don’t think…” Victor started.

  Kate shook her head a moment later. “She was divorcing him. Why would she kill him?”

  “I don’t think she could have killed him,” Violet added. “You saw her.”

  Everyone else looked at Violet and Kate, who nodded. “She was beaten. Jack had said so, but seeing it for ourselves—it was bad. She was hobbling just to go into her parlor. I suppose given what happened to me and Violet at Christmas, we had a little more understanding than we’d like.”

  “Regardless,” Lila added as she took the letter from Violet to look at it herself, “she was divorcing him. Why would she kill him if she was ending things another way? This tells me that she didn’t kill him even if she hadn’t been beaten. Everyone in this village knows that he was an adulterer. She wouldn’t have had trouble making the divorce go through. If she knew he was violent, she filed for a divorce knowing he would beat her. Yet, she did it anyway.”

  Violet nodded, playing with her ring. She rose and paced.

  Kate took the divorce letter. “What a sad end to a love story.”

  “I don’t disagree, but she didn’t kill him. She isn’t going to be leaving her house for days, maybe even weeks, while she recovers from whomever beat her. So who did?” Violet flipped through the letters. “Well, let’s read them. Denny, you be Marie.”

  He grinned wickedly. Then, with a high-pitched voice, he read letter after letter. They all choked when Marie referenced an assignation between Jones and the girl.

  “How old is she now?” Victor demanded. “You made it sound as though she isn’t much older than our Ginny.”

  “She’s not,” Violet told him. Their ward was barely into her teen years and far too clever to fall for the nonsense that Marie succumbed to.

  She glanced at Kate, who guessed, “Perhaps sixteen or seventeen?”

  Victor’s expression shifted and Denny stopped reading so mockingly. They were all sick as they heard Denny pour out the girl’s thoughts. She had been well and truly in love. In love, manipulated, and now mourning for someone who Violet wished she had murdered herse
lf.

  “I think I am finished mourning the Philip Jones that could have been.” Violet paced the room with a quicker step. “The problem with this man is that so many people had reason to murder him. The real shocker isn’t that he was murdered but that it took so long for him to be removed from this world.”

  “Indeed,” Victor said. “I’m happy enough to help Hargreaves cousin, but to be honest, now I wish I had clued in how the gardener was a snake in the grass.”

  Kate glanced at Victor, but no one contradicted him. His decision was reasonable but looking back provided so much more clarity.

  Violet picked up the letters that Marie had written. Everything about them—the paper, the tone of her thoughts, the revelations enclosed in the words—all alluded to her extreme youth. Melody Baker, however, could not say the same. The woman was married and Violet had seen her kissing the gardener in the orchard. If she hadn’t just had an assignation with the gardener when Violet and Jack had seen her—Mrs. Baker had certainly had an assignation with him at another time. They were simply too familiar with each other for Violet to believe anything else. Violet asked Lila to read those letters.

  In the end, Violet was unsurprised by what the woman had written. It was clear that there was something between them. Mrs. Baker, however, was clever enough to not write anything that would be proof of her infidelity.

  Chloe Sandford’s letters were flirty at first. They moved from flirty to irritated and then to out and out furious. The last note read only a few short lines. “Stay away from me. Stay away from my family. This type of action will bring you to a sour end.”

  Violet’s brows lifted as her friends broke into chatter. Could Chloe be the woman who was trying to get Jones to talk to her on the street outside the pub? If she was, why had she told him to leave her alone? What had Jones done to make her order him away? Perhaps it was only another round of Marie and Jones, only Chloe wasn’t so young and naive.

  Violet shook her head. “If this Chloe Sandford is married, this threat could be the reason behind why Jones was killed. After all, Meredith Jones was ending her misery with a divorce. She wasn’t able to kill him, regardless, given her state.”

  “Oh,” Kate said. “I sent the doctor to her this morning. I had Mr. Morganson call.”

  “You’re a good woman,” Violet told Kate. Vi had forgotten to make that call and hated that she had. “I should have taken care of it myself.”

  Violet continued to pace the breakfast room as her friends debated which of the women would have been most likely to kill Philip Jones. It was, however, just as likely that someone who cared for one of these women had been the killer. Perhaps even more likely. He had, after all, been stabbed in the wood.

  Was that because he had been lured there or followed there? If he had been lured to the wood, it seemed more likely that a woman was the killer. If he had been followed, it seemed more like that someone who loved one of Jones’s victims was the killer.

  The key, she thought, was who had an alibi. In this case—motives abounded for why Jones was killed. It wasn’t really who had a reason to kill him, but who had the chance and the personality to kill him.

  “Would you kill someone who manipulated me like Jones manipulated Marie?” Violet asked her brother.

  Victor knew that Violet was serious and he leaned back, crossing his fingers over his stomach as he considered. “I—”

  Denny snorted and Victor shot him a look to quell him. The expression was unsuccessful.

  Violet turned and seated herself across from Victor. She was curious. He was one of the most protective people in her life.

  “To be honest, it is hard to imagine that you would fall for this. But…if you were younger. Sixteen-year-old Violet? In love and throwing your life away on a married man? No.”

  Violet’s head tilted while Denny chuckled. Lila smacked his chest to silencing him.

  “Murder isn’t the tool I would need to use, Vi. Father is an earl, and we are wealthy. There would be so many ways to get rid of someone like Jones. But if I didn’t have those options? Maybe.”

  “To me—Marie is a reason that you kill.” Violet played with her ring while her friends turned towards her. “He was ruining her life. Maybe ruined it. How long will it take, do you think, for her to recover from what he has done to her?”

  “Quite a while,” Lila said. “When I was young and in stupid love with Denny at that point—if he’d turned out to be a bounder? I’m not sure I’d have ever trusted anyone like that again.”

  “Luckily,” Denny told her, leering dramatically, “I was the catch you thought.”

  Violet ignored Denny as she continued, “If Marie realizes Jones was manipulating her, will she ever trust another man? Will her family ever trust her again? I am almost certain that Jack will approach the vicar today. Today, a good man is going to realize his daughter—”

  Denny winced and shifted, glancing at Lila before he turned back to Violet. The vicar was going to realize his daughter had been hurt under his watch. He was going to go to bed that night ruined. The best that anyone could hope for after all of this was that the vicar wasn’t the murderer. If he wasn’t…could there be someone else who loved Marie and who might have killed Jones? Perhaps some young local boy? Perhaps a brother or an uncle? Someone with less perspective?

  Violet shook her head to clear it, then winked at Victor. “I wouldn’t murder Jones for you either, brother.”

  Denny giggled like a child while Lila snorted. Kate reached out and took Victor’s hand as he pretended to be wounded. “Victor, darling,” Kate said, “I might have murdered him for you. My little delicate flower with the wounded heart and gullible when it comes to those who declare their love.”

  Victor scowled at Kate’s teasing, but there was humor in his gaze. Violet watched her brother realize that Kate wasn’t just teasing him—she was inferring she loved him. His gaze brightened and his grin widened.

  Chapter 18

  Violet flipped back in her journal and read over her notes from earlier. She’d made them when she hadn’t cared for Jones but had no idea how much she would dislike him after she learned more. The questions were, however, the same. She wrote a new set of notes, starting fresh with what she knew.

  Her friends watched her silently as she gathered her thoughts. There was a low murmur of conversation, and both Kate and Lila were writing themselves. Victor had gathered up the book he’d started, flipping through the type-written pages while Denny leaned back and napped in his chair.

  Violet started her notes, once again, with Philip Jones.

  PHILIP JONES— murdered in the wood. He had some wizardry that allowed him to manipulate women. These women included his wife, who left her higher-class life to marry him, the vicar’s teenage daughter, and two married women. Were there more, currently or in the past?

  Vi had wondered previously if Jones had found something of value in the house when he’d been the only one around it, but that couldn’t possibly be the case. Very unlikely, Violet thought, with all the other motives for him to have been murdered.

  The next person on her list was Mrs. Jones. When Violet had made her previous notes, she’d thought that it might be possible that the wife had killed the husband. Violet no longer thought that in the least. Of all the people Violet had met in association with Jones, the only person that Violet felt must be innocent was Mrs. Jones.

  It wasn’t even because of the loss of her children that made Vi want Mrs. Jones to be innocent, though that would have been enough reason.

  Violet stared at her notes with a twisted mouth. Mrs. Jones had been beaten. She had also started divorce proceedings. Did her husband beat her because she was trying to leave him? Did what happen to her somehow cause his murder? Why was she protecting him if he had been the one who hurt her? Respect for the dead? Why wouldn’t she say who hurt her?

  She considered whether her desire for Mrs. Jones to be innocent was coloring her opinion. Slowly, Violet shook her head and left
a note and nothing else next to her name.

  MRS. JONES— ‘I don’t think she killed her husband. But perhaps she knows who did?’

  She looked up from her journal, glancing around the breakfast room. Denny snuffled and adjusted, but he was actually sleeping. He clearly had not overdone the Turkish coffee as Violet had. She watched Lila shoot her husband a look at his snuffling, shake her head, and return to her letter. Kate had moved on to her Greek book, but her eyes were closed with the book in her lap. Victor was making copious notes on the manuscript.

  Violet returned to her notes.

  JOSEPH FRECKLETON— The brother. Violet could easily recall his face as he’d looked down on the graves of the children. At the time, Violet hadn’t known his parents were also dead. Were they buried there next to the children?

  Did he know his sister had decided to escape her marriage to Philip Jones? Mr. Freckleton had seemed to despise his sister’s marriage choice. If her brother were married to someone that Violet despised—even if it were Gerald rather than Victor—she would be relieved to see the unwanted in-law go, though maybe not through murder.

  Violet still didn’t see why Joseph Freckleton would be the one who killed his brother-in-law unless it was a reaction to his sister’s beating. She frowned. She’d seen him in the graveyard close to when Jones had died. If Freckleton had killed his brother-in-law, he’d left him dying and appeared in time to chat with Violet. If it had been him, he didn’t show any signs at all of being upset about what he’d done. Violet certainly wouldn’t have been able to pull off the casual conversation.

  She frowned again at the next name. Violet didn’t know anything about James Baker. They had the letters from his wife which, combined with the kiss that Violet had witnessed, made it seem certain that Mrs. Baker had been sleeping with Jones. There was no indication, however, that James Baker knew. If he had, would he have been driven to kill over it?

  Violet picked up the letters and glanced them over, looking for dates. Ah…they went back ten months. Perhaps, Mr. Baker had finally realized what was happening with his wife? Unlike the vicar, Mr. Baker wasn’t a man of God who had already given over his life to good works. It was easier to believe that any man other than the vicar had been the killer.