A Friendly Little Murder

by Beth Byers

  Vi knocked back the glass Lila had poured and gasped against the burn.

  “What happened?” Jovie asked again.

  “Murder,” Violet told her. “It’s always murder.”

  “Always?” Jovie’s elfin eyes flicked between the two women. “How could you possibly mean that? There’s a body? Someone was hurt? Has the doctor been called? Why are we locked away?”

  “The poor, sweet, innocent lamb,” Lila repeated, taking Vi’s glass to refill it.

  “Murder is the only conclusion for a body on a path.”

  “What about an accident or a health concern?” Jovie demanded. “How could it be anything but an accident?”

  Lila handed Violet a full glass and said, “Because we’re here.”

  “Jack wouldn’t have sounded so grim if it wasn’t obviously a murder.”

  “It was obviously a murder,” Lila said, sipping her drink again. Her color had not improved and Violet was concerned for the baby. But Kate had made it through more than one murder and the twins had survived. Surely it would be the same for Lila’s baby.

  “How do you know it was obviously a murder?” Jovie demanded.

  “I saw the body.” Lila had wrapped both hands around the glass, the gesture revealing how unsettled she was regardless of how she kept her tone calm, even bored.

  “Who was it?” Jovie demanded.

  Vi shuddered.

  “You’ll know eventually,” Lila told Violet gently.

  With her fingers pressed against her eyes, Violet nodded.

  “Lyle Craft.”

  Jovie gasped and Violet shook her head against the assault of images.

  “How?” Jove demanded.

  Vi shook her head. She didn’t want to know. Not yet.

  “I slept after tea,” Vi told Lila.

  “I know. We peeked in on you.”

  “It was lovely,” Vi groaned. “I felt like I could fly after I woke up.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jovie complained.

  “Stick with us, and you will,” Violet said. She crossed to call down to the desk for tea. It was rude and at a terrible time when the staff would have more to deal with than was fair, but she didn’t care. She ordered the tea, ignoring the apologies about a delay and just requested that it comes with scones, fruit, and the usual accoutrements.

  Chapter 9

  “Lyle!” Jovie sat down suddenly. “That couldn’t be a health problem. I suppose it could have been an accident.”

  “It was not an accident,” Lila said flatly. Her face, tone, and color made it clear that Lyle’s death had been ugly.

  “How do you know?” Jovie demanded.

  “Don’t,” Vi said. “Don’t. I don’t want to hear the details. You don’t either, Jovie.”

  “I do! He was my friend. Of course I want to know. I need to know.”

  “You don’t,” Violet shot back, but her voice was gentle in its fervency. “You don’t want to know because he was your friend.”

  Violet rose and crossed to the window again, staring out and seeing the constables scurrying about.

  Jovie stood suddenly. “Someone has to tell Pamela and the others.”

  “No.”

  “The poor lamb,” Lila added.

  “Why are you saying that?” Jovie cried. “My goodness. Lyle? Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Lila pressed her hands to her face. “I might be taking a page out of your book for the next few days, Vi.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “Nightmares,” Lila and Violet replied.

  “We still need to tell my friends.”

  “We aren’t going to do any such thing,” Violet said, still gently.

  Jovie glanced between them and then there was a knock on the door. Violet and Lila both froze until they heard, “Room service!”

  Violet crossed to the door, peeked out, and noted the uniform and the loaded tea cart.

  “They hate you right now,” Lila told Violet, who couldn’t help a dry laugh as she opened the door.

  “Dig some money out of Jack’s billfold,” she ordered Lila. “It’s there on the bedside table.”

  Lila pulled out more than they’d normally tip, but it was very early.

  “Why can’t we tell my friends?” Jovie demanded as Violet shut the door and locked it once more.

  Vi studied her new friend. Jovie’s hair was bound by a wrap, her pajamas were a deep royal purple, her eyes had lost their spark, and there were circles under them that proclaimed she hadn’t had enough sleep.

  “Jovie,” Violet told her. “One of your friends killed Lyle.”

  “What? No. Perhaps some sort of…of…”

  “Don’t say it,” Lila said. “It’s never the servant or the tramp or the passing gypsy or whatever it is that people like to claim. It’s always the friends. The lover or the betrayed best friend or the son or the cousin or the heir, but never the tramp.”

  Jovie stared at Lila’s clear certainty before facing Violet, who nodded wearily.

  “Let’s change.” Violet dug through her bags until she found her extra kimono and a pair of pajamas and tossed them to Lila. They took turns changing. Violet was running a brush through her hair when Jovie found her voice.

  “Never?”

  “Never,” Violet said clearly. No good would come from giving Jovie hope that anyone but an acquaintance had killed her friend.

  There was another knock at the door and Violet crossed and found Denny. His hair was wet, he was out of his robe and dressed for the day, and she recalled as she opened the door that he’d fallen over a body.

  “Bloody hell,” Violet said, examining him for the remains of blood that must have been on him.

  Lila stepped up behind Violet and pulled the door from Vi’s grasp to let Denny in. Lila handed him her drink. “Good, you washed.”

  “Three times,” Denny admitted. “It was horrible.”

  “Stop please,” Violet said. “Save the telling details for when I’m not around. I’ve already heard too much to be able to sleep for the next several months.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jovie said.

  “This has happened too many times,” Lila replied. “Why we always have to have a front row seat, I don’t know.”

  “We’re cursed.”

  “Obviously.”

  “What’s happening?” Jovie asked, glancing among them like they were crazy.

  Denny crossed to the teacart to load up a plate and sat down with an exhausted sigh.

  “They’re taking pictures of the body and looking around the scene for clues,” Violet explained to Jovie. “As soon as they have what they need, Hamilton, possibly Jack, and one of the local detectives will go and knock on Pamela’s door. They’ll tell her about Lyle and then they’ll start searching and questioning.”

  “For what?” Jovie asked, glancing between them with wide, horrified eyes.

  “The murder weapon,” Denny told Jovie without sympathy. They were, all of them, becoming inured to it. “Evidence that one of your friends killed him. They’ll try to find footprints or signs of a scuffle on one of you. They’ll look into your financials and the rumors and all the things that were happening between you.”

  Violet watched the horror on Jovie’s face as she realized what they were trying to say.

  Her voice was hoarse as she asked, “You really think one of my friends killed Lyle?”

  “Yes,” they all said.

  Jovie took the tea that Lila made her, dumped the remnants of her bourbon in the tea and then sipped it slowly. “Which one?”

  None of them answered.

  “Regardless of whoever it is,” Jovie said, “all of our secrets will be poured out and examined.”

  There really wasn’t anything to say about that either.

  Jovie watched in horror while Denny woodenly ate a scone with clotted cream and jam. It was overloaded with both, just how he liked it, and Vi was sure he wasn’t tasting it. Not really. Lila watched Denny e
at, holding his hand.

  Jovie finally seemed to come to herself. “It doesn’t seem possible. He was just alive,” Jovie said, pacing with Vi. “I was thinking how much I disliked him at luncheon when he made some comment about Pamela having become larger than he expected.”

  Denny winced.

  “Did she cry?” Lila asked.

  Jovie nodded. “Pamela has always been quite vain.”

  “Denny,” Violet advised, “don’t make the same mistake.”

  “I never would. Lila loves me round. How could I not love her when our baby is growing within her? That’s just…magical.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Vi crossed to Lila and wrapped an arm around her, laying her head against her shoulder. “Little Vi and Agatha are my bright lights. That’s what you’re doing, making a bright light.”

  “Let’s not get too hasty,” Denny said with that mischievous light in his eyes. “Geoffrey is your stepmother’s bright light.”

  Vi winced as Jovie asked, “Who is Geoffrey?”

  “My little brother, the wart,” Vi answered absently, crossing to the window again. She caught sight of Jack’s large silhouette squatting near the ground. There were lanterns out there now, their bright light circling the ground.

  Vi would guess that they were searching for a murder weapon. Someone would be taking pictures of the body. The police would be hoping to recover whatever they could from where the crime had happened, whatever hadn’t been destroyed by Denny falling over the body and the rest of them walking blithely around in the dark as though the world weren’t a horrible place where longtime friends murdered and betrayed each other.

  “Vi,” Jovie asked, reaching out and taking her hand, “are you all right?”

  Vi shook her head. No. Of course she wasn’t. None of them were. They were, all of them, not all right. Perhaps being all right would come again. Perhaps, in the coming weeks, they’d wake up and realize that it was a beautiful day and what had happened wasn’t their fault.

  That day wasn’t, however, today.

  “What do we do?”

  “We can’t trust any of them,” Violet told Jovie. “It doesn’t matter what you think you know and who you think you can trust. You can’t.”

  “Is that how you would feel if it were Denny lying dead and your friends as suspects?”

  “No,” Violet told Jovie bluntly. “But we’ve already established that my friends are not your friends. When Denny had to go to Hong Kong for a year for his work, Victor and I took Lila with us. Victor didn’t romance her, but he did distract her. We wrote Denny letters about how she was and took her to the earl’s grounds with us. We got Aunt Agatha to bring us all to the sea. When Victor and I were called home to face family ruckus and trouble, Lila and Denny came and they were who we could trust when everything seemed ruined.”

  Jovie’s lips quivered.

  Violet continued. “When my cousins were all suspects and my aunt lay dead, Lila and Denny didn’t flee. In all the madness we’ve seen since, none of us has abandoned the other. Your friends have been turning on each other. You already wanted to avoid them. It’s over, Jovie.”

  Her eyes were shining as she whispered, “It has been for a while, hasn’t it?”

  Denny nodded.

  Violet didn’t know what else to tell Jovie. Vi didn’t believe in a version of events where all went well. Not anymore. She was….it was so much more than tired. She was soul weary. It seemed there was a level of having something horrible happen to you time and again that calloused you to the terrible thing happening. What did Jovie have to whine about, Violet thought, hating herself for thinking it. Jovie had only lost one friend who wasn’t really a friend.

  Another thought struck Vi a moment later. In all the times she’d lost a friend or discovered a body or gotten sucked into another case, she’d never been alone. Empathy burned through her as she crossed to Jovie. “Losing someone you know is terrible. It’s terrible when you know that one of your friends is the likeliest killer and that in the coming days one of them will be uncovered for what they did. You’ll discover the nature of your friends in ways you didn’t want to know.”

  “You sound like you’re trying to comfort me, but the things you are saying…”

  “No one gets what you’re going through like we do, Jovie. You aren’t alone.”

  Jovie glanced among them. “What do I do?”

  “Be kind to your friends, but maybe don’t be alone with them.”

  Jovie’s watery laugh was echoed by Vi’s. “This is horrible.”

  Vi nodded and added more bourbon to Jovie’s tea. “When my aunt was murdered, I thought I could understand. I thought I could move past it. I couldn’t, but I thought maybe. Then my sister’s fiancé died. I stumbled over his body and my twin got me thoroughly drunk afterward. I hated him. The fiancé, I mean. I adore my twin.”

  “And then?”

  “Then it was a money-chasing woman who thought to entice another of my friends into marriage. Then a man who obsessed over and murdered a girl we knew…I could go on, but I don’t want to. It doesn’t get easier.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Jovie asked, dismayed.

  “It doesn’t get easier, but friends make it easier. You aren’t as alone as it feels. And maybe, at the end of this, when you’ve witnessed the true nature of your friends, you’ll be more settled about the choices you make for the future.”

  Jovie’s mouth twisted and she curled onto the end of Vi and Jack’s bed. Jovie didn’t so much weep as silently watch the movement of the lights outside. The sun began to rise and the lanterns disappeared.

  They heard a scream.

  “Pamela,” Jovie said.

  Violet closed her eyes. Perhaps the relationship between Pamela and Lyle had been injured and broken, but it was a marriage. Perhaps she had loved Lyle. She was—possibly—carrying his baby, but she had received news that would change the rest of her life.

  “Poor Pamela,” Jovie said. She hadn’t cried for Lyle on her own, but the sympathy tear that rolled down Jovie’s face was quickly followed by a flood. Violet rubbed Jovie’s back as she sobbed, and they all waited for Jack or Hamilton to arrive. They couldn’t stay locked in the bedroom forever, but Violet had little doubt that the orders for her safety and Lila’s would reach them quickly.

  Chapter 10

  “Don’t go anywhere alone,” Jack told Violet.

  His gaze moved from her in a clear, overt order to Denny and Lila. The command was nearly as strong to them and then his gaze moved to Jovie. Vi knew him well, so could see the doubt in his eyes. Jovie hadn’t been swimming with the rest of them. She might have no reason to kill Lyle that the rest of them could see, but she wasn’t well and truly out of Jack’s suspicion.

  “Are you concerned that whoever killed Lyle will kill someone else?” Jovie asked.

  “We don’t know why Lyle was killed yet,” Jack told Jovie. He had changed out of his damp bathing costume and into his customary suit. “The chances of the killer being a madman who intends on killing repetitively is unlikely. Most people don’t kill indiscriminately. But if they are murderers, they’ll kill again to hide their crime. All it takes is you discovering the killer getting rid of their bloody clothes, and you’ll die too.”

  Jovie’s gaze was wide and horrified. “So you’re saying I can’t trust any of my friends?”

  “I wouldn’t,” Jack told her flatly. “Chances are very high that one of your friends is the killer. We’ll find out who as soon as we find out why.”

  “I can’t just stay in this room, in my pajamas, while you investigate. Even if it’s not safe, I don’t have a choice. I have to check on Pamela and let my cousin know I am all right.”

  “Walk Jovie to her room, Denny. Lock the door, don’t open it for anyone. Get dressed for the day. Violet will dress and come for you. She’ll go with you to visit Pamela Craft and your cousins.”

  Violet had little doubt he wanted her to eavesdrop. She would have, of co
urse, anyway, but he was slipping her right into the middle of the investigation when usually he tried to keep her out of it.

  Denny took Lila and Jovie with him.

  Jack approached Violet. “Are you all right?”

  Obviously not, but Vi didn’t want to add to his burdens, so she only shrugged. His look was unimpressed by her omission, but he knew her well enough to know what she was doing, and she knew him well enough to know she hadn’t been successful. The last thing she needed was another body on her mind while she was trying to convince her own body to sleep again.

  “Did you see?” he asked.

  “I didn’t look.”

  Jack cupped the back of her neck and pulled him into her chest. “Try not to think of it.”

  Vi’s sarcastic laugh was sufficient to tell him how well that request would be honored. If she could stop remembering the terrible things, reliving them over and over, she’d have done so a long time ago. At least she wasn’t fighting the blues as well, she thought, and then pushed up on her toes to kiss his chin.

  “Have you and Ham been officially assigned?”

  Jack nodded. “Ham said to tell you to consider a sea holiday as this one has shifted to work.”

  Vi grinned at that idea. “Ooh. Maybe we can get Victor and Kate and the babies too.”

  Jack pressed another kiss on Violet’s forehead. “Be careful with Jovie. She trusts these people. She thinks she knows them. They will, however, speak more freely around Jovie. Hopefully they won’t think too deeply about you being connected to Ham and me, especially with Jovie’s reactions.”

  Violet nodded and then walked Jack to the door. She knew he’d stand on the other side of it until she locked it. The second she did, she watched through the peep hole as he hesitated, checked the door, and then walked away. There was a constable at the end of the hall, and Violet had little doubt that Jack was behind someone watching over their rooms.