Murder By Chocolate

by Beth Byers

  “I’ve heard,” he said gently as she swallowed the aspirin and added another dollop of alcohol to her glass and crossed to him.

  “Writing fiction cultivates the imagination. It’s like your mind becomes practiced at creating scenes in your head. I’m rather afraid that my mind keeps replaying poor Anderson’s death.”

  Aina sat as Violet did.

  “Did you tell Jack you were questioning me?”

  “I did,” Aina said. “I asked him if he objected to me questioning you alone, though, and I can send for him if you need him.”

  She smiled sardonically, actually amused for a moment. “I believe I can answer a few questions.”

  “Why was Anderson Wakefield staying here?”

  Violet sighed and then admitted, “It’s my fault.”

  “How so?” Aina asked, his gaze fixed on her face. He had perfected that trustworthy expression and gentle questioning that would lead a stupider person to confess their crimes, thinking they had a friend in him.

  Violet, fortunately, had done nothing wrong. “It seems in the Wakefield clan there’s a bit of…ah….resentment towards those who chose to not partake of the bounty contained in the family business.”

  Aina frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “James and Jack,” Violet told Aina. “James married and helped with the wife’s properties rather than the business his father built. Then Jack chose to pursue Scotland Yard. They’re the black sheep. Can you imagine?” Her disgust was clear and it seemed she’d surprised Aina.

  She sipped the drink and then shuddered at the way it burned her throat and stomach. “Oh, that’s strong.” She rubbed her brow as she sighed. “Grandfather Wakefield is old, Aina. He’s old and he’s going to die in the coming years, and I hoped that Jack could invite his grandfather to our home and have one good memory. It seems I am a romantic fool.”

  Aina made a note and then asked, “Why did Anderson come?”

  “He was there. Jack invited them both when he went to invite his grandfather.”

  “He didn’t invite them to try to persuade them to change the will?”

  Violet laughed meanly. “I can see you’ve been talking to Hyacinth. No, we don’t care about the money or the business.”

  “Are you aware of how rich Anderson Senior is?”

  Violet shook her head and then admitted, “Well, I hadn’t really thought about it. But I did see the house.”

  Aina huffed a laugh.

  Violet’s mouth twisted. “It’s possible they have more money than I do. Given the house, I’d say probable.”

  Aina waited.

  “It’s just—there’s a point where more money is just keeping score. As arrogant as it sounds, that is where Jack and I are. We have more money than we will spend and enough for whatever children we might have.”

  “That house is something extraordinary,” Aina said. “Many a person would covet a house like that.”

  “I was raised in mansions,” Violet told Aina. “My father’s country estate is an actual castle. Jack and I have a villa on the Amalfi Coast, a hunting lodge in Scotland, and a house in London. I suppose a shiny new mansion might hold some appeal. Not for us.”

  Aina leaned back. “It’s rather hard to believe from my perspective as well.”

  Violet shrugged. “We’re obvious suspects because the murder happened in our home using an avenue that I put together. I understand why you’d be suspicious.”

  “So why shouldn’t I suspect you?”

  Violet huffed. “Because we didn’t do it?”

  “Who knew that you were going to have this chocolate evening?”

  “I have no idea,” Violet told him. “No one was surprised. It wasn’t a secret. I believe that Anderson said he told some of the family. I don’t know which of the family was there when he mentioned it.”

  Aina nodded and scratched a few notes into his notebook. He looked up and met her gaze as he asked, “How did you arrange things with Mrs. Jenkins.”

  “I told her I wanted a variety. I wanted to sample it all. I wanted it to be beautiful. I wanted to see what she was capable of.”

  “What about the cakes?”

  Violet sipped her drink. “It was the avenue of the poison, I assume?”

  “We tested it on a rat,” Aina said. “It died immediately.”

  “Poor blighter,” Violet sighed. “I didn’t arrange for the cakes. I hadn’t thought of it, but I loved them once I saw them. Small cakes with names? Each decorated differently? Those are the excessive touches that makes something memorable. I was thrilled to see them. I thought if Mrs. Jenkins was that clever my investment would repay itself time and again.”

  “Or stand as bribery,” Aina suggested. “A way to get her help.”

  “Clearly she wouldn’t have done it if she didn’t think the order for the cakes came from me. She was working for me, and she wanted my investment so she could grow from supplying the local teashop and bakery to her own establishment.”

  “She did think the order came from you.”

  Violet wasn’t surprised, and she wasn’t worried. The constabulary wouldn’t be able to tie her to this case, and she didn’t have a real motive. “The order came with pistachios as well?”

  “And an order to use every scrap of them for the cake because Anderson was greedy with pistachios.”

  Violet shuddered. “I didn’t know that, you know. I had no idea that Anderson Wakefield loved pistachios.”

  “Jack could have known.”

  “Perhaps,” Violet agreed. “No jury will believe it and you don’t have real evidence.”

  Aina nodded. “Not yet.”

  “You don’t think it was us either.”

  Aina didn’t agree with her there, but she didn’t need an answer to know it was true.

  Chapter 11

  Jack was waiting for Violet when she left the library. She lifted her brows at him and asked, “Did you get removed from the case?”

  “I got a shadow to back up whatever I might do.”

  Violet glanced beyond Jack to a bright-faced, young uniformed officer who was bone thin. She winked at him, and he blushed brilliantly.

  “Clever,” Violet said as she walked to Jack and pressed her face against his chest. She didn’t care if Jack’s shadow was watching her every move. “Aina gets your help both with the case and training this young lad.”

  Jack didn’t laugh like he would have any other time. She pulled back and looked up at him. She saw his jaw clenching and there was a rage in his gaze that she’d rarely seen. “They did this in our house.”

  She nodded, her expression as frustrated and upset as his. Their gazes met and they both could see that growing sickness in the other’s stomach. Violet sighed, fighting another rush of tears. He was alive, she told herself. Just because Anderson had similar eyes and had looked to her for help didn’t mean anything when it came to Jack.

  “Father said Anderson had a bad heart, Vi. He didn’t have all that long left. Why steal what was left to him?”

  Violet didn’t answer. Money, of course, blighted money. Perhaps power, but certainly money. Instead she just pressed her face into his chest again.

  “It must do with the will,” Violet said.

  “Father insists that Grandfather Wakefield has never said what was in it. Uncle Anderson and Father talked about it recently.”

  Violet sighed. “Maybe someone just thinks they know. Maybe someone broke into the solicitor’s office or bribed a clerk or just assumed.”

  Jack didn’t answer, and why should he? There wasn’t an answer. They had no idea what the killer had been thinking. If they had been able to work that out, they'd already know who the killer was.

  “If this wasn’t your family,” Violet asked Jack suddenly. “Who would you think did it?”

  Jack paused and then admitted, “Not us, of course. We have too much money to be real possibilities. Victor, Denny, Lila, and Geoffrey are automatically out. Without some other reason, all
of Hyacinth’s daughters aren’t likely.”

  A throat cleared behind them, and they found Grandfather Wakefield. His mouth was moving as though he were chewing, but he wasn’t. His eyes were bloodshot, his jaw firm, and his gaze as enraged as Jack’s.

  “I was going to change my will.”

  Violet gasped. “Who knew that?”

  “Only Anderson. He was the one who wanted me to do it.”

  Jack glanced meaningfully at his youthful shadow. “You have to tell Aina.”

  “I’m telling you.”

  “I’m a suspect,” Jack told his grandfather, who cursed. “We all are, especially us younger ones.”

  “You didn’t kill Anderson.”

  “Of course he didn’t,” Violet snapped. “Why would he?”

  “Aina still has to proceed as though I might’ve,” Jack said flatly. “Let’s talk to him together.”

  Grandfather Wakefield led the way into the library where Aina was glancing over his notes. “I have information.”

  Aina gestured to the chair. “I’d prefer to speak to you alone.”

  “I’m not speaking to you, Aina. I’m speaking to my grandson. He’s one of England’s best investigators, and I’ll be damned if you sideline him. You can listen in since he demands it.”

  Aina didn’t argue further, and Grandfather Wakefield took his seat. “Anderson didn’t have children. With death duties and such, he wanted me to leave him out of the main will. He’s always been wise with his money. Anderson wanted both himself and James left out of the will.”

  “My father as well?”

  “Do you object to that?” Aina asked, but the expression on his face said he had to ask the question

  “I just wonder if Father knew.”

  “Even if he didn’t,” Grandfather Wakefield said, “Anderson had a good point. James doesn’t need money. He and your mother inherited from her family, and I’d always given him an allowance like I have all my children. James let his friend Agatha Davies invest his money.”

  “I didn’t realize,” Violet said and glanced at Jack, who shook his head. As usual, the thought of Aunt Agatha brought a bittersweet sadness to her mind, but Violet didn’t let it linger.

  “James didn’t need the money,” Grandfather Wakefield continued. “Anderson said the old ways weren’t good for anyone. He said that Hyacinth and Herbert were counting on the business. Their safety and future were wrapped up in it. Anderson was convinced that James would understand.”

  “He would,” Jack agreed. “He hates the fighting around the business. Everyone feeling as though they had a bigger right. He told me when Agatha died that money brought the mongrels out in people who should love each other. They fight like jackals over the scraps and forget that they once cared more about the other person.”

  Violet agreed with that assessment and the memory that brought it up—the murder of her great aunt, the woman who had raised Violet—oh, it never stopped being painful.

  Grandfather Wakefield had that growl to his voice that Jack got when he was enraged, and Violet shivered as Grandfather Wakefield said, “One of those fiends Anderson was trying to help killed him.”

  Violet rubbed her brow and echoed his growl. She wanted to curl up into her bed in London with Jack wrapped around her body. She wanted to feel safe, and this house didn’t feel it anymore. She didn’t feel safe in the home where she intended to raise her children, and she had a fierce desire to revenge herself and Anderson against the person who killed him.

  Grandfather Wakefield demanded, “Do you object to my removing your father-in-law from the will?”

  “I object to the fact that Aina has to consider me and Jack as suspects and you just gave him a reason to move us up the suspect list. If you succeeded in your plan, well, now we have a modicum of a motive. I object to the fact that Anderson had the same eyes as Jack, and I watched those eyes fade from life to death. I object to the nightmares I’ll have tonight and for months after. I object to the fact that my twin is currently battling himself about leaving me here and going home to his pregnant wife. I object to the fact that my little brother is worried for my safety in my own house. I object to the fact that—yet again—humanity is lost among those I claimed as my own. All so we can grapple in the dirt for filthy lucre, entirely forgetting that the things that make life worth living aren’t gold-trimmed plates or new gowns, it’s our families. It’s the people we love. I object to everything about this except for the fact that we were being removed from the will. Bloody hell, man, keep your money.”

  Violet was breathing heavily as she finished. She hadn’t shouted. It had been a cold, fast diatribe, but it hadn’t been loud. She met Jack’s gaze and saw his fury. The protector in him had been out already, but if he were a knight—his sword would have been drawn.

  Grandfather Wakefield seemed fascinated. It took him a minute to reply. “I wasn’t taking Jack out of the will. Only James. I was going to split the money evenly between all of my grandchildren with a controlling interest of the company for Herbert, my only son who would continue to work for the company. The will favors Herbert some, but not overly.

  “Did anyone know the details of what you were going to do?” Violet asked. Her head was pounding, and the late evening had turned to full night. She wanted to go to bed, but she knew she wouldn’t sleep without Jack.

  “I ordered the appointment made after a board meeting at the company. All the boys who work for the company could have heard me mention it. They might not have known why I wanted to talk to my solicitor, but it would have been possible to guess.”

  “That explains why the argument about the inheritance was so fierce when we arrived at your house, Grandfather,” Jack sighed. “Someone must have heard. Someone must have mentioned it.”

  Grandfather Wakefield snarled at the idea. “Whoever it was stole my boy from me. I’ll take it all from them. I’ll deconstruct that business and tear it brick from brick. I’ll leave them with nothing. Nothing.”

  “Calm down,” Violet snapped at him, not bothering to hide her disgust. “You are going to ruin everything you’ve done due to one of them?”

  “What are you saying? You think they should get it after what they’ve done?” Grandfather Wakefield demanded.

  “How many grandchildren do you have?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “You spent the entirety of your life working for those fourteen grandchildren and four children. You sacrificed endlessly for them, and some of them are deserving of that love and care. Why don’t we just find the rotten one? He’ll hang, and the rest will continue to be deserving.”

  “Your wife consigns my grandchild to an easy hanging,” Grandfather Wakefield told Jack.

  “She isn’t at her most gentle when someone dies in her drawing room.” Jack tangled his fingers with Violet’s. “We have, both of us, seen too many murders. It’s difficult to scrounge up all that sympathy for someone who will face the same fate they enacted. This wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t even an act of sudden rage. It was a cold, planned murder.”

  Violet rose and began to pace. She felt the men turn their gazes to her and she said, “I wonder why they feared so greatly you changing the will? Why Anderson? He was ill, wasn’t he?”

  “He’s had heart trouble for some time,” Grandfather Wakefield admitted. “He wasn’t given a good prognosis, but no one knew the extent. He could have gone on forever with his heart pills, at least as far as anyone knew.”

  “So they might have feared that you were going to adjust in his favor.”

  “We had been spending a lot of time talking together,” Grandfather Wakefield admitted. “He had thought to retire and go to the sea. Somewhere warm. He wanted to eat fresh fish and lay in the sun for his final months. He said, if he was very lucky and very calm, he might steal a year or two.” Grandfather Wakefield’s voice cracked and he wiped away a sudden tear. “He was always such a good son.”

  They gave him a few minutes to gather himself and then
Jack said, “They must have feared you were going to favor me. I married, I have the last name, my children will be Wakefields. What’s in your current will?”

  “It’s split equally between my four children.”

  Violet rubbed her finger over her mouth. “What about the house?”

  “Currently? Anderson.”

  “And if you changed it?”

  Grandfather Wakefield sighed and then said, “Hyacinth.”

  Violet glanced at him, surprised at his answer.

  “Herbert said it was a monstrosity.” Grandfather Wakefield shifted uncomfortably when Violet laughed. “James likes his house where he raised his boy and lived with his wife. He’d never have appreciated it. Hyacinth helped me decorate it. She enjoyed it more than I did, really.”

  Vi went back to pacing. “But they must have been afraid that you would leave the money to Herbert. Your grandchildren are smart, they must know you think they don’t have the experience to run the company.”

  “They don’t,” Grandfather Wakefield said. “I’m not sure about Herbert either, but those who have the demeanor don’t want it.” There was a telling look to Jack, who just lifted a brow.

  “Who do you think killed him?” Aina asked Violet.

  She glanced at Jack, who nodded. “Hyacinth or one of her sons. The fools didn’t realize things would work out better for them with the change. They must have been concerned that Jack and I were arriving.”

  Jack nodded. “Aunt Hyacinth made a big deal of you being an earl’s daughter.”

  “Successfully keeping the Davies inheritance making money is of far more interest to me,” Grandfather Wakefield said. “I’d be more impressed if I thought you were helping keep that fortune strong,” he said to Jack.

  “Violet doesn’t need my help,” Jack told his Grandfather. “And quite frankly, I have nothing to offer her in that arena.”

  Violet met his gaze with an amused glance. She took a deep breath and then told Grandfather Wakefield, “You didn’t create this business for me to dabble in. You created it for your children and grandchildren.”

  Grandfather Wakefield nodded. “What about the grandchildren you are going to give me someday? They’ll be Wakefields, and they’ll have a mother to teach them the ways and hows of business.”