Murder on All Hallows

by Beth Byers

  Murder On All Hallows

  A Violet Carlyle Historical Mystery

  Beth Byers

  Contents

  Summary

  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

  Preview of Philanderer Gone

  Summary

  All Hallows, 1925

  Vi Wakefield decides it is time to embrace the fun. She’s arranging a scavenger hunt with prizes, specialty cocktails, and costumes.

  What she doesn’t expect is a series of pranks that ends in a body. Once again, Vi, Jack, and friends are faced with a body, a series of mean and quite dangerous pranks, and the baffling cruelties of mankind. Will they be able to discover what is happening and why, or will this criminal escape into the night?

  For my Noah.

  You’re one of my greatest joys.

  Chapter 1

  “Ginny, darling, I find myself both appalled and delighted by your presence.” Violet cupped her ward, Ginny, by the face and soundly kissed both cheeks. “You look fabulous for a criminal.”

  “They deserved it,” Ginny said flatly, sniffing once. “It’s not my fault.”

  She tilted her dark head and glanced about with inquisitive eyes. There was not a single gram of guilt in her gaze. In fact, if anything, Ginny was challenging. Violet hid her instinctive reaction and watched as Ginny’s gaze flicked from person to person.

  First she looked at Violet’s twin, Victor, and his wife, Kate. They were each holding one of their twin babies. From them, Ginny’s gaze moved to Lila and Denny and on to Jack. Rita was the last person that Ginny paused on. She didn’t know Rita as well, and their last friend—Hamilton Barnes—was at work.

  “I believe,” Violet said carefully, “that when you take a girl by the hair, drag her through the halls, and shove her face into the sink to wash out her mouth with soap you can no longer claim that it was not your fault.”

  Ginny shrugged and did another one of those sniffs. Violet thought that might, in fact, be an imitation of Vi and her friends. “It’s not like I didn’t warn Dorothy. ‘Never call me guttersnipe again.’ I had said it time and again. So often that she mouthed it with me. It was time for consequences.”

  “I agree with Ginny,” Denny said, sniffing. “It was time for consequences.”

  “I agree as well,” Rita said carefully, eyeing Violet. “Though perhaps the consequences should have been less violent.”

  “I might have done the same,” Victor admitted and then winked at Ginny.

  Violet turned on them with a dark look. Only Rita held up her hands in surrender.

  “I’m not saying that Dorothy Poppington isn’t a horrendous creature,” Violet tried, but Ginny had quite a powerfully sarcastic snort.

  “She is!” Ginny inserted and sniffed.

  “I’m not saying that she didn’t deserve consequences,” Violet said again very carefully, controlling all sniffs, snorts, winks, and lifted brows.

  “She did.”

  Thank goodness Ginny didn’t sniff again, Violet thought, as she was about to smack her ward on the back of her head.

  “But it wasn’t your place,” Violet told Ginny flatly. “You cannot manhandle and assault your peers. You needed to report the problem to the teachers.”

  “I did,” Ginny told Violet. “Miss Entley witnessed the entire event and did nothing. She didn’t even scold Dorothy. I swear she laughed, though I didn’t see it. I did see the other girls smiling her way. Dorothy’s henchwomen, I mean.”

  “She did what now?” Victor asked, gaze narrowed. He had leaned forward, and the cool threat in his voice had baby Agatha squirming.

  “Nothing.” Ginny lost her cool as she snapped, voice low. “She did nothing.”

  Violet took a long breath in, fists curling. She rose and left the house, walking down to the street. Violet didn’t even take her coat or hat. She was wearing a gray, pleated dress, gray silk stockings, and simple gray shoes. Her hair was held back with a silver pin on the side. It had been an appropriate dress for a morning with the family.

  Thankfully, it was a short drive through the city to the ladies club where Mrs. Partridge, who ran the school that Ginny attended, stayed while in London. The Partridge woman was, after all, staying at Violet’s own invitation.

  Violet strode up the steps and past the attendant at the door. Violet rarely visited the Piccadilly Ladies Club despite being a member, but the staff knew her all the same.

  “Where is Mrs. Partridge?”

  The girl heard the cool fury in Violet’s voice. “The dining room, my lady.”

  Vi stalked into the dining room and found Mrs. Partridge sitting at a table with three other ladies. “Oh! Violet, dear. How nice to see you. I was just telling these ladies about your Ginny and our hopes to add more scholarship students.”

  Violet took a seat, noting the reporter, Emily Allen, at the table. They were not friends—not even close—but the Allen woman enjoyed publishing a good story.

  Violet nodded once and only at Miss Allen, who arched her brow. To the others, Violet said flatly, “Ginny is not a scholarship student. I pay rather significantly for her to attend. In fact, I believe that my brother and I donated rather a lot to the school for you to even consider her acceptance.”

  Mrs. Partridge blushed and stumbled. “Well, you are her benefactress, of course. Her scholarship provider as it were. She’s come so far. I believe that other children can be similarly—”

  “Bullied?” Violet demanded. “Treated as lesser though I paid significantly more for her to attend? I told you flatly when I placed her in your school I was trusting you with her. That she had a terrible burden of a beginning. I believe I stated quite clearly that my brother and I consider Ginny our family. We even gave her our name. My father, the earl, considers Ginny family. My stepmother, who likes no one, likes Ginny Carlyle. Yet—”

  “This is neither the time nor the place to discuss your street ward, Mrs. Wakefield,” Mrs. Partridge interrupted, omitting the title that she preferred to use whenever possible. Mrs. Partridge looked down her significantly pointy nose at Violet, but Vi had been looked at thus by her own stepmother for the entirety of her life.

  Violet shifted in the way she did when she put on the persona of the earl’s daughter—a persona she avoided. “Oh, I am sorry. I was confused by your lies. Let’s be clear, then, this is the time you’ve set aside to lie to the rich women of my club and tell them that you accept and encourage young women when you do not? You seek to manipulate them with the story of my ward while she was forced to defend herself in your hallowed halls.”

  Mrs. Partridge’s gaze narrowed. “Your ward is a street rat thief who torments the other children, jealous of her betters.”

  Violet rose, a cold smile on her face. “You are a cold, cruel woman without the imagination to see what lies ahead. Let me help you. Dorothy Poppington will marry a drunkard who doesn’t love her. He’ll burn through her fortune, and when she’s penniless she’ll be a burden on the people around her, but she’ll still believe herself better than you.”

  Mrs. Partridge put her hand over her chest.

  “While Ginny Carlyle with her intelligence, kindness, bravery, and friends will be a successful woman capable of doing anything she wants. But, here’s the rub
, she will be better than you then. She is better than you now. She was better than you when she was a hungry orphan taking care of her sick grandmother and still willing to risk herself to save Isolde Carlyle.”

  “Don’t think you can bring her back to my school. She’s a…a…hoodlum!”

  Violet slowly smiled. “Do you remember our contract? Because it was specific. You should read the details of it once again. You should remember that the funds I provided were not a donation. You sold your soul, Partridge, to be able to use my name and accept my ward. Consider me the devil calling your bill due.”

  Marissa Partridge paled.

  “I’ll be taking control of the school, or you’ll be returning my funds. I believe the contract gives you three days. Those start now. Enjoy your brunch, ladies.”

  Violet met Emily Allen’s gaze as it lifted. “Perhaps we may have a meeting later, Lady Violet?”

  “Indeed,” Violet nodded. She didn’t care for Jack’s one-time fiancée, but Emily took her position as a reporter seriously. And her paper would gobble up the news of Lady Violet, her ward, and the school Violet did not want to own or run.

  Violet was vindictive when it came to those she loved. Therefore, she both made the appointment with Miss Allen to Mrs. Partridge’s stuttering distress and then crossed to the club management and revoked the invitation for Mrs. Partridge to stay at the ladies club.

  Violet left the club and found Jack outside with her coat and hat.

  “What are we going to do?” He pressed a kiss on Violet’s forehead before he plonked her hat on her head and held the coat for her.

  “I don’t know.” Violet peered past Jack’s broad shoulders to the street, pressing her fingers to her temples. She told him of the meeting, and his fury was a heat Violet could warm herself against. “I’d like to just keep her home, but I—Jack? Is that the right thing to do? I can’t trust that fool Partridge with Ginny again, but do I trust another school? I can’t actually take the school over, and Partridge will fight me. Even without that stupid woman running the school, it’s not as if idiots like Dorothy Poppington are unique to any school we’d send Ginny to.”

  Jack shook his head and then carefully said, “You know, Ginny might have her own opinions.”

  Violet pressed her face into his chest. Caring about young people and having no idea how to help them was more difficult than anything else she’d faced. She had no idea how her Aunt Agatha had raised her and Victor with so much grace. Had Aunt Agatha paced the halls, worrying over them? Had she been sleepless? Had she been too sick with worry to eat or focus her mind on anything else? What Violet wouldn’t give to throw herself in Aunt Agatha’s lap and ask what to do about Ginny.

  “When I think about it,” Violet glanced up at him through her lashes, “my mind is an utter blank. All I can think is that I’m not ready for this—”

  He laughed and then stiffened. His gaze was fixed beyond her. Violet turned and found Emily Allen standing on the steps of the club watching them.

  “Em,” Jack said, nodding once. He was as stiff as steel and Violet tangled their fingers together.

  “Jack,” Emily Allen said, nodding once. Her gaze moved to Violet, landing for a moment on their hands and then traveling to Violet’s face. “I was wondering if I might speak with your ward as well. Or is she adopted?”

  “Officially, she’s adopted,” Violet said. “She prefers the word ward because she doesn’t want to feel as though she abandoned her original family. They were good people and worthy of remembering and acknowledging.”

  “Then why didn’t she remain a ward?”

  “My father convinced her to become a Carlyle.”

  “The earl?” Miss Allen asked.

  Violet contained her vicious sniff, snort, wink—all of the things that Ginny had picked up that Violet now regretted immensely. Instead, Violet nodded once and hoped that she didn’t seem too stiff.

  “You can interview Ginny with me there,” Jack told Emily. “Violet is in the middle of a book deadline.”

  It was an out-and-out lie, and Violet didn’t care for Miss Allen’s slow grin. Vi wasn’t worried about Jack’s intentions, so she bit back any reaction that would give Miss Allen an idea of Vi’s worries. She ignored Miss Allen’s flirting, and Jack’s replies and watched the traffic go by. It was nearly All Hallows, Violet thought. They should have a party while they worked out all the issues associated with Ginny and her schooling.

  Violet considered that they could easily have that party that Denny had half-imagined. A rented museum. Actors playing ghouls and other creatures. Fantastic costumes. Exotic cocktails. Something to distract herself from being entirely inept as the parental adult in Ginny’s life.

  “What’s going to happen to me?” Ginny asked that evening as she brushed Holmes’s coat. Rouge was in the basket with her four puppies and unwilling to abandon them for a snuggle.

  “I—” Violet wanted to explain in detail about what had happened with the Partridge woman, but at what point did she need to hold things back? To not put her worries on Ginny? To tell Ginny, I need you to behave in this particular way learning from what I say, not what I do? “I am not going to send you back to that school.”

  Ginny’s shoulders dropped a little as though in relief. Her face was nearly emotionless, and it seemed almost as though Violet had lifted a weight off of her ward’s shoulders. “What am I going to do?”

  Violet pressed her lips together and admitted, “I don’t know.”

  “Would you object terribly to my staying here?”

  Violet had to hold back her instinctive answer and instead consider. “Do you want to go to university?”

  Ginny nodded.

  “You’ll have to deal with the likes of Dorothy Poppington then, you know.”

  Ginny took in a slow breath and held it. She didn’t say anything else, but her dark eyes were wide, fixed, and filled with an emotion that Vi couldn’t quite read.

  Praying silently that she wasn’t making a terrible mistake, Violet said, “It’s much more difficult, though, to avoid those who aren’t worth your time or attention in a boarding school than at university. Things will be different there than boarding school.”

  Ginny’s hands curled into fists, but she was otherwise quiet. Violet’s gaze landed on the fists and then moved past to the floor so Ginny wouldn’t hide her reactions.

  “We can try you staying here and studying with a tutor, but I do think we should look into another school for you. Maybe you’d like to do the research and see if there is something that feels right?”

  Ginny asked, “I can choose?”

  Violet nodded, hoping she wasn’t making a terrible mistake.

  “What if I can’t find one?”

  “Then you had better study hard with your tutor.”

  Ginny contained a crow of triumph and Violet contained an instant desire to change her mind, afraid she’d made the wrong choice. Considering, she watched as Denny and Victor discussed the possibilities of cocktails while she leaned back to consider her own costume.

  Chapter 2

  Violet woke the next day to Jack getting up and dressing for brunch with Emily Allen. She sat up and watched him dress. He disappeared into the bath, and she pulled her journal from the nightstand while he washed and shaved. When he returned to the bedroom, he was wearing a light tan morning suit with Vi’s favorite blue tie. He smelled of cologne and he was carefully adjusting his jacket.

  “Good morning,” Violet said, raising an intentional brow.

  He examined her face as she stared at him. “Are you jealous?”

  She shook her head and then asked, “Did you want me to be?”

  He grinned suddenly, a surprised laugh escaping him as he admitted, “Perhaps a little.”

  Violet groaned and flopped onto his side of the bed, curling herself around his pillow while he smoothed his hair back in the mirror. “You look handsome, you giant troll.”

  “Em thinks I’m handsome,” Jack told Vi
olet and watched her snuggle into his pillow. “I might end up being jealous of my own pillow.”

  “I would tell you I was going to rage shop, but you wouldn’t care.”

  “By all means, rage shop.”

  Violet lifted a brow.

  “Did I just dare you to do something?”

  “Yes,” Violet told him. “You certainly did. I’m going to win.”

  “Are you?” The idle question was enough to spur along her frivolity.

  She threw his pillow at him and rolled the other way out of the bed, running into the bedroom. She reached the door, glanced back, and then said, “I’m going to spend a shocking amount of money today. On ridiculous things. Your back teeth will ache.”

  “I doubt it.”

  She grinned evilly, shut the bath door in his face, and turned on the water to the tub. Violet haphazardly tossed salts and oils into the bath and dropped into the bubbles, dunking under the water.

  She lingered until Jack and Ginny were well gone, and then dressed with an eye towards smuggling Kate with her. What would it take to get Kate away from both the babies and Victor? Or! Was Victor a chance?

  Violet wrote a note to her brother, sent it with a maid, and then dressed in a soft blue day dress, silk stockings and pretty shoes, and put a broach at her throat along with bangles on her wrists. She wanted Turkish coffee, a scone with clotted cream and blackberry jam, thick bacon, and a long day without wondering exactly how she was going to avoid ruining Ginny.

  Violet found Victor in the breakfast room with the coffee already poured.

  “You’re an excellent brother,” she told him as she filled her plate. The kitchens hadn’t left them wanting, and she joined her brother, who had loaded his own plate with all the same things along with a pile of fried tomatoes and sausages.