by Beth Byers
“I like your father,” Violet told Jack.
“He likes you as well.”
She grinned and wiped away a tear. “Tell Jack everything while I eat. Though that laugh…it did help my head feel better.”
Victor took Vi’s journal and flipped to the last pages as he explained the things that Violet had noted about those staying in the house. Victor added his own thoughts as he discussed Violet’s, and Jack took notes. It made Violet feel very useful to have helped.
Victor finally cleared his throat, blushing as he said, “Bettina wasn’t the only one who tried to…ah….well…Juliette…both of them seemed to be willing to throw themselves at anyone who was rich enough to set them up.”
“Juliette attempted to catch your interest?” Violet asked.
“Honestly, it was a bit like being a fox during the hunt,” Victor said. “She made it apparent that she wouldn’t say no. When you add in Bettina’s pursuit and Violet being distracted, I was utterly defenseless. I felt a bit like Vi, honestly. That inheritance and the fact that she’s rather charming really brings out the hounds to chase my Vi.”
“Enough about me,” Vi snapped. “Juliette Boutet was pursuing you? Those siblings are good at how they manipulate people into paying for them. They got Tomas to pay for them even though he didn’t even like them very much.”
“Siblings?” Jack asked.
The twins both nodded, glancing at each other and back at Jack.
He shook his head. “Well. Yet another inconsistency. I didn’t like how they were answering my questions. So I requested their identification. They’re not brother and sister. They’re married, which they didn’t tell me when I questioned them. I didn’t ask them anything other than why they were here. To dance, they said. Now that I think back, they were careful in what they said. I might not have realized that they’d been playing siblings if you hadn’t said anything.”
Violet had paused as Jack spoke, a sip of tea in her mouth. She swallowed it hastily and told Victor, “That does make Juliette’s pursuit of you rather mercenary, doesn’t it? What a terrible life for them.”
Jack nodded, but it was Victor who laughed. “Tomas cannot be trusted alone. Look what happened when we started avoiding him.”
“I can’t handle being his security blanket,” Violet told Victor, but she saw the gleam of interest in Jack’s eyes as she admitted, “I don’t think I can do that long-term. We need to figure something else out for Tomas.”
Victor tossed back the last of his tea. “I’ve been thinking on that, dear one.”
Violet raised a brow. Jack was glancing between them without a word.
Victor set down his teacup and pushed his plate away. “You are right about Isolde. She’s the softer version of you. You are too much of a handful for Tomas. The way your mind bounces about would leave Tomas a crumpled wreck. But Isolde—she’d focus on him. She’d enjoy talking him out of his memories. She’d monitor him like a mother hen and probably keep him from ever really descending into the madness. Being desperately needed like that would make her happy.”
Chapter 15
“What possible purpose could the Boutets have for manipulating their marriage like this?” Violet asked. The memory of François Boutet watching Juliette struggle in the arms of Charles Stroud was bothering Violet more than she could say. “Surely it isn’t worth the price it costs them?”
“François uses his wife to get money out of people. By Jove, Violet,” Victor said, “you know it was why he didn’t help Juliette when Charles Stroud was grabbing her. You just don’t want it to be true.”
Violet nodded, tracing a pattern on the breakfast table. She was a little surprised no one else had come down for breakfast, but when she thought further, she realized that people were trying to keep their secrets safe by hiding away. Or perhaps they stayed away to keep themselves safe since one of them had certainly killed Bettina.
“Is there no chance that the killer was some passerby or indigent? The folly has a roof. Perhaps they took shelter there and were surprised by Bettina in her rage?” Violet knew she was looking for the killer to be someone else. Not out of love for any of their party but because it was just easier to accept a murderous man in the bushes rather than a murderous friend in the house. One was far more sinister than the other.
Victor took Violet’s hand and shook his head.
“We will, of course,” Jack said, “ensure to the best of our ability that wasn’t the case, Violet. I rather think you know that someone in this house killed Miss Marino. There are too many undercurrents for a normal house party.”
Violet nodded, biting her lip. The last thing she wanted was for some poor person to be strung up for a crime they didn’t commit, even if it was less terrifying.
“Let’s start with Mrs. Boutet,” Jack said. “Though irregular, I will allow you to stay during questions, so you can help me identify the lies. That will be the quickest way to cut through this.”
Violet got a second cup of tea while they waited for Juliette.
When she came in with François, she said, “I hope you don’t mind if François is with me? I fear I am a bit nervous after losing poor Bettina.”
Jack stood with a polite smile. “I am afraid that I cannot allow that. Everyone will be questioned separately and kept separately until I have spoken with all of you. I have discovered a pile of lies that I must sort out.”
“I will not allow you to—” François started furiously.
Jack cut in with a sharp shake of his head. “You will cooperate. You and your wife.” The emphasis was on ‘wife.’ Both of the Boutets leapt in their skin. Jack hadn’t said anything about their marriage the night before and had no reason to know that they’d been lying to the others.
François was a hard man. He didn’t turn a hair at the implication, but Juliette glanced at him with fear. Her husband, not the police. She was in trouble and probably had been, Violet thought, since she’d met François Boutet.
Jack opened the door and called out. “Come Haversby, take Mr. Boutet to another room alone. Stay with him.”
Jack’s voice was chilled as he spoke. “Mr. Boutet, let me remind you that a woman has been killed and that you were in this house under false pretenses. You are at the top of my suspect list.”
Jack closed the door with a precise click and then sat down across from Juliette.
“You are in trouble, Mrs. Boutet,” Jack said clearly and coolly. Violet shuddered at the tone. She hadn’t heard that tone from Jack, ever, directed at her. Perhaps they’d been on the path to fall in love longer than she’d realized if he’d been gentler with Violet than he was being with Mrs. Boutet. “Are you going to allow us to help you get out of that trouble?”
Mrs. Boutet was all fine lines in her body and smooth golden hair. It was held back from her face with a hairpin just above her ear. The bob showed off her swan neck, but it was her creamy skin with flushed cheeks and her lips bruised from biting at them that made her seem like a doll come to life. She gazed up at Jack with cornflower blue eyes and then down at her hands, shuddering. Her fists were clenched in her lap and she didn’t speak.
Violet thought Mrs. Boutet looked rather like a beautiful, but beaten, dog. The sight infuriated Violet. With a demand she didn’t know was coming, Violet asked, “Why don’t you leave him? You could divorce him. How can you allow him to make you his...his…whore?”
“I…” Juliette glanced up at Violet and back down at her hands. “You don’t understand. I can’t survive alone. I…”
“Yes, you could,” Violet said. “You are one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. It would be easy for you to find someone like Algie, someone dumb and gentle, to take care of you.”
Juliette shook her head, staring at her hands. She finally whispered, “François would never let me leave him.”
“Do you want to?” Violet’s voice was even, but she wasn’t able to hide the absolute bewilderment.
“I can’t,” Juliette s
aid, meeting Violet’s gaze. “He’d kill me. I’m not like you. Adored and willful. I never had someone like Mr. Carlyle looking out for me. I…this…I have always been helpless against François. I believed his lies when I was young and I have been trapped ever since. Women like you—spoiled and loved—you could never understand.”
“Isn’t it funny what money can do,” Violet said with a sudden inspiration. “It would be so easy for you to go to America. Sneak away and leave.”
Juliette bit her lip and shook her head. She was shaking again. “He’d never let me. He’d find me. There’s nothing I can do. I will be with François until he is done with me. Which will be when I have nothing left to give.”
Jack and Victor were staring at them in shock. Men didn’t understand this kind of thing. They never did. Good men like Jack and Victor, who were used to things being a certain way and the kind who only associated with those who would never treat a woman this way—they didn’t realize that mothers had been whispering to their daughters to choose carefully. Choose wisely. Careful, wise, or repent at leisure.
“I object,” Violet said. She glanced at Jack and Victor and then back at Juliette. “You are not chattel. Women are not chattel. We make our own choices. Make a different choice.”
“I did make my choice,” Juliette shot back. “As a stupid girl! I wasn’t even seventeen. I made a choice and now I am paying for it.”
Violet sniffed. She could see that Jack and Victor were both horrified by what Juliette was saying. It would be easy, Vi thought, for Juliette to manipulate either of them.
“I have a lot of money,” Violet said, “Too much really.”
“Well, isn’t that nice,” Juliette snapped.
“Enough to make you disappear and give you a start. Pick a place.”
“If I tell you François killed Bettina? Protect your precious Tomas? I won’t lie. I have some honour left. Not much, but some.”
“I would have helped you before all of this,” Violet told Juliette. “There is no price beyond honesty.”
“And if I tell you that Tomas killed Bettina?”
Violet sighed. “You know you would be lying. Tomas walked off his memories. He stumbled across Bettina.”
Juliette sighed and then carefully asked, “How can I trust you?”
“What you need—the ability to disappear—that would be easy for me. All it really takes is money, of which I have buckets and buckets. You’re a caged bird. Time to fly the coop.”
Those cornflower blue eyes were searching Violet’s face. Desperate to find a lie, to find the truth, to see beyond maybe—to see inside of herself. Could she do this? Could she save herself? And would she?
“What do you need to know?”
Violet barely kept back a crow of triumph. “Why were you here?”
“Charles Stroud,” Juliette said. “We’ve known Bettina for a while. Long before any of us knew Mr. Stroud or Mr. Allyn or Mr. St. Marks. Bettina came to François. She knew how he used me.”
Violet shuddered. She couldn’t imagine living the life Juliette had been living, but to have others—people like Bettina—see what was happening to Juliette and then…then…giving François marks for Juliette.
Juliette’s gaze was fixed on her hands again, so she didn’t see their reaction. Maybe she’d seen it before, though, and she knew to look away? Her voice was a mere whisper as she spoke. “Bettina suggested that I target Charles since she’d moved onto Algie. She thought she could get Algie to marry her. She invited us to a party where they’d all be. She wanted me to distract Charles to give her a righteous reason to throw Charles over and throw herself at Algernon.”
“Why did François allow that?”
Juliette bit her lip. “He wanted me to get Charles to offer to marry me. Bettina laid it all out for François. He bought it all. Decided before we’d even met them that we’d be able to get good money from Charles. Maybe even live off of Charles for years. Charles is a rich man. With the right setup, François was sure we could steal him blind. I…I…think he’d have actually let me marry Charles.”
Violet reached out and took Juliette’s hands. “I will help you get away. This part of your life can be over.”
“Why did Bettina attack you?” Jack asked, using the same gentle tone Violet had acquired. They both were speaking to Juliette as if she were a wild, wounded bird.
Juliette bit her lip. “She told Charles about me. How it was all an act. That I just wanted his money. He was furious. He was so angry. That was when you saw him grab me.” She glanced up at Violet. “I thought he might kill me, and Bettina hadn’t even told Charles the worst of it—that I was married. She’d only told him that it was all an act. She made herself a victim. She said we knew something about her and we’d blackmailed her to leave him.”
Juliette wiped a tear away. “He was squeezing so hard. I thought he might have killed me if he hadn’t found me in the hall. If he’d had me alone…well…it would have been so much worse.”
Violet barely hid her disgust. “So Bettina realized that Tomas would never offer for her and saw that Victor was disinterested?”
“She tried,” Juliette whispered, “To get Mr. Allyn to propose and he laughed at her. Said he’d never marry someone who whored herself to all his friends. There was only Mr. Stroud left. She had to have him back or she’d be out on her ear, and she was desperate. There was quite the row between her and François when she told him we had to move on or she’d reveal it all.”
“What,” Jack asked as Victor gave Juliette a cup of tea, “did François tell you to do?”
“Deny everything, cry pretty tears, and let Mr. Stroud have his way with me if it would calm him down. He told me to beg, plead, throw myself at him, and swear that Bettina was lying and was jealous. To fix it.” The last three words were bitter indeed.
Violet was sick. “Did you?”
Juliette nodded slowly. “I tried. He believed Bettina. Believed that we’d chosen him to mark him. Said I’d always been too eager. I think I could have said or offered him anything and he’d have still wanted to wring my neck. I told François so, and he said if I didn’t fix it, he’d be wringing my neck instead.”
“So Bettina repented. Threw herself at Charles again. Told him…she was sorry? That she loved him?”
Juliette nodded as Violet laid it out, trying to understand.
“She must have tried to make amends with him and finagle herself back into his arms. Perhaps she told him that she let her need for security blind her to the needs of her heart.”
“I’m not sure,” Victor said, finally joining in, “that Charles has much of a forgiving or trusting heart. Always was a cold fish.”
Violet rubbed her brow. “I don’t understand why Bettina didn’t realize Charles was rich.”
Juliette shook her head. “She knew he had money, but he doesn’t wave it about like Algernon does. When she realized that Charles was far more wealthy than Algie and that she wasn’t going to get anywhere with Tomas, she was furious. She said she’d been meanly tricked.”
Violet’s laugh was not amused.
“She’s right, Vi. You and I know Charles is wealthy. We’ve met his family, seen his home. But, why would an outsider? He always acts like he’s a bit pinched.”
Violet had never thought about Charles that way or his money at all, so she supposed she wasn’t the best judge. “Does Charles know you’re married to François?”
“I don’t think so.”
Violet looked up at Jack. She was sick, but she didn’t have any more questions. Not at the moment.
“Mrs. Boutet,” Jack said, “I am going to have you put in a new bedroom. Beatrice, Violet’s maid, will stay with you.”
She nodded and slowly rose. Juliette turned to Violet. “Will you really help me?”
“I will. Anywhere you want to go. A new start. I can do nothing less.”
“I’ll let you know where.”
Chapter 16
“That is horrifyin
g,” Victor said after Juliette walked out. “How does he do that to her? Why would you do that to your wife? She should be the most precious person to him in the world.”
Jack rose and paced around the table while Violet pulled out her journal and took notes about what they’d heard. She wasn’t even all that surprised anymore. She remembered that cold look on Mr. Boutet’s face as he watched Juliette try to escape the furious Charles. Mr. Boutet was a monster in a nice suit.
“It is a motive for Charles,” Jack said. “And François. Either of them had reason to kill Bettina after that. What a viper she was.”
“If Bettina actually knew about Juliette and François being married,” Victor said, “she might have threatened them to back off or be revealed. I’m not sure that Mr. Boutet could be counted on to back off.”
Violet placed her hand against her chest. She felt suffocated on behalf of Juliette. On behalf of women. She had to make herself take in slow breaths and stop imagining how horrible it would be to fall in love when you were too young to make such big life decisions and then repent for the entirety of your life.
She played with her teacup and tried to clear her mind. Just a little of her bruise was peeking through the bracelets and her long sleeve. Violet herself was hiding, having been hurt by a man in her life. Why did women do this? Understand, forgive, and hide what had been done to them? Was Violet just like Juliette? Better circumstanced because the men in Vi’s life, at least, were honorable and good?
She could see it so easily when she thought too hard about it. It was what had happened with Tomas but on a grander scale. Violet knew Tomas hadn’t intended to hurt her. So, Violet concealed and protected. Maybe Juliette made excuses too?
She rubbed her fingers over her mouth. “Let’s lay out our instincts about what we know so far. What does your gut tell you?”
“You mean like Bettina Marino was killed by someone she knew?” Jack asked.
Violet nodded, turning her teacup on the saucer.