Death by Blackmail

by Beth Byers

  Nancy frowned, but she calmed, seeming to accept that Georgette hadn’t noticed her lapse. “I don’t understand how Mr. Lawrence’s lover would know Harriet’s secret and my mother’s.”

  Georgette busied herself pouring everyone tea. She added two sugars for Nancy and only milk for Harriet and then added an excess of milk for herself with honey instead of sugar for her throat.

  Georgette considered for a long time and then asked slowly, “How do you know your mother’s secret?”

  Nancy scowled. “Jasper. He liked to torment me with it. I’m sorry for my parents that he went to prison, but I am happy for me. He was the worst brother.”

  “Jasper?” Georgette asked.

  Harriet glanced at Georgette. “Don’t get excited. Bertrand didn’t like Jasper either. I think only his mother must.”

  “I don’t think my mother likes him either,” Nancy muttered.

  Georgette sipped her tea and sighed. It might just be Earl Grey, but it was a good Earl Grey. She sipped it slowly again and wondered what she’d do if she had placed Jasper in a book. Some enemy who followed him?

  “Does anyone miss Jasper?” Georgette wondered aloud, thinking of his mother who might be relieved he was gone as well.

  “His slew of lovers,” Nancy answered. “He could be charming when he wanted to be. He had this way of making you feel good about yourself only to crush you harder when he turned dismissive and cruel, but his lovers just came back for more.”

  Georgette leaned back. “Lovers? Lovers who would be female and local?”

  “You don’t think,” Harriet asked, setting her teacup aside, “that Jasper and Bertrand had the same lover?” The thought obviously filled her with disgust.

  “I think this is a small town with a limited number of women who would take a lover.” Georgette frowned and then asked, “Do you know who your brother’s lovers were? Aside from the one we already learned of with the baby.”

  “Someone he called Priss and Lithe Baby.”

  Georgette gritted her teeth before she sighed. “Lithe Baby could be Jennifer Enoch, who is also being blackmailed. We know she’s being blackmailed, and she is thin and beautiful. It would make sense that she is being blackmailed about an affair with Jasper Thornton. No one else really fits as lithe or young.”

  Nancy winced. “Her father is a nightmare. If he found out, she’d be lucky to not be locked into some sort of reform prison for wayward girls.”

  Being blackmailed, facing a terrifying father, no way of getting money, it would make you desperate. Perhaps desperate enough to start a fire. Especially when you were very young and probably a little stupid if you believed Jasper Thornton was anything other than a lying fiend.

  Not a conclusion Georgette intended to make aloud.

  “How bad is your mother’s secret?” Georgette asked Nancy. “Do you think she’d pay forever rather than risking it being revealed?”

  Nancy nodded. Georgette glanced at Harriet. “And you?”

  “My secret protects someone I love more than my life,” Harriet admitted. “I will never, ever, ever do anything other than protect that someone.”

  Georgette had read Bertrand Lawrence’s book On the Behavior of Women and its dedication. He’d suggested to Harriet a lifetime of repentance and pursuit of the ideals in the book. Georgette had never liked Bertrand before that dedication, but she’d have hated him after reading it.

  “I suspect,” Georgette told Harriet, “that the blackmailer simply knows of the existence of who you are protecting and not a name or location.”

  “I can’t risk that,” Harriet said. “I just can’t. I won’t.”

  Georgette didn’t argue. It wasn’t something that she wanted to be wrong about and risk whoever Harriet was protecting. Georgette turned to Nancy. “Who is your mother protecting?”

  Nancy hesitated. ““Me. And my father. I mean, our family, of course,” she added unconvincingly, but Georgette didn’t react.

  “We need to find a way to silence the blackmailer and punish her.” Georgette’s head tilted as she studied the others. “There has to be a way.”

  “But she knows our secrets,” Harriet said, biting down on her bottom lip.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Nancy muttered. “We don’t know who she is.”

  “If we look at our list of blackmailees,” Georgette said, “we have connections. Such as your mother, who must have paid blackmail because of something Jasper knew that he let slip to the wrong person.”

  Nancy crossed her arms over her chest. “It feels like we’ll never be rid of him.”

  Georgette didn’t disagree with that statement. She assumed Jasper would haunt his parents’ lives along with his sister. “We have Jennifer Enoch, who could be Jasper’s Lithe Baby. If they were having an affair, she might have confided everything to Jasper.”

  “All right, but what does that tell us?”

  “Just a moment,” Georgette said, thinking furiously. “Mrs. Yancey was blackmailed, which could link back to Jasper and him possibly knowing the details of Mrs. Yancey’s situation through your father, who, in a way, was involved. That’s four of us linked together.” But how would Jasper or Bertrand know she was Joseph Jones? Or of Miss Hallowton’s illicit money-borrowing?

  “If Jasper and Bertrand had the same lover,” she said, putting off the other questions for now, “and the only other woman we know of who was with Jasper was the one he called Priss, then Priss was most likely your husband’s lover as well.” She looked to Harriet, who hadn’t reacted. “So Priss must be lovely.”

  Georgette nibbled her thumb, thinking of Juliette Hallowton. There was simply no way that Miss Hallowton was Priss. But how did the blackmailer find Miss Hallowton’s secrets? Juliette Hallowton worked almost constantly. She struggled hard to survive. She wouldn’t have been involved in any way with Jasper or Bertrand.

  “Oh my goodness,” Georgette breathed out slowly. “Oh my goodness! Priss is a term for someone who thinks they’re too good for everyone.”

  “Yes,” Harriet said slowly.

  “It’s Miss Hallowton. The connection, that is. Thank goodness she told me her secret. She’s not friendly. She’s not open or sharing. She’s focused on surviving and scraping by. She…don’t you see? She wouldn’t have told anyone what she did. Not ever. But someone living with her might have known.”

  “She hasn’t had a female boarder in a while,” Harriet said. “There was those Aaron men, that fellow with the mustache. And—”

  “And the one with the motorcar,” Georgette told Harriet. “Who seemed wealthy.”

  Harriet blinked and then shook her head.

  “She’s lovely,” Georgette told Harriet. “Lovely enough for Bertrand.”

  “She is but—” Harriet shook her head again, her eyes wide and stricken.

  “She’s conceited and rude. The personification of prissy when you use it meanly.”

  Harriet’s eyes were shining now with tears. “That would mean that she slept with Bertrand.”

  “She has the freedom to have lovers. What other single women are there who are lovely enough and would appeal to both Bertrand and Jasper? For Jasper, she probably thought she might persuade him to wed her. She casts her eye to any man who can support her in the style she wishes.”

  Harriet had closed her eyes and slumped back into her chair. She swallowed and then said, sounding sick, “She doesn’t have a discernible income, but she has new clothes. She hasn’t been cut off from the shops she loves. Her maid hasn’t left her. I always sort of thought that was days away.”

  Georgette nodded and then glanced at Nancy, who demanded, “Who?”

  “Virginia Baker,” Georgette told Nancy, who gasped yet again.

  “She’s your friend!” Nancy gaped at Harriet.

  “No,” Harriet ground out, “she isn’t.” She stood slowly, her hands fisted.

  “Wait!” Georgette said, grabbing Harriet’s arm. “You can’t just go and challenge her.”

&nb
sp; “Why?”

  “Because she knows those secrets, yours and Nancy’s mother’s and Miss Hallowton’s, secrets that none of you wish to share. At least not yet, and not by her.”

  Harriet paused and then took a deep breath in. “You’re right.”

  “I’m right,” Georgette agreed. “But we have Joseph on our side.”

  Georgette hurried from the parlor and found Eunice. “We need Charles and Joseph!”

  “Did you figure it out?”

  “I think so,” Georgette said.

  Eunice lifted her brows, and Georgette whispered, “Virginia Baker.”

  Eunice gaped and then her gaze narrowed and she nodded, “I can imagine that all too easily.”

  “We need Detective Aaron and Charles. Would you?”

  Eunice nodded and then called, “Robert, my lad, we’ve an errand.”

  “I can’t just pretend that I don’t know she was committing a crime,” Joseph complained.

  “Do you know what women will suffer for endlessly?” Georgette asked.

  Joseph shook his head.

  “Their children. Harriet is protecting the identity of a child.”

  “Did she say that?”

  “She didn’t need to,” Georgette told Joseph, glancing at Charles.

  “And Agnes Thornton?” he asked.

  “If I were to lay a wager?”

  He nodded.

  “I don’t think Nancy is Mr. Thornton’s child.”

  Joseph gaped.

  “If I were to guess,” she added.

  “Why do you think that?” Charles asked.

  “Mrs. Thornton could go to her husband about nearly anything. He’s a good man. But she’s protecting both him and Nancy. Yet it’s not something Nancy did or the blackmail would be aimed at Nancy as well.”

  Joseph sighed. “So what do you want to do about it? I still have a little girl to arrest.”

  “Surely you can treat it as an accident and get her away from her father?”

  Joseph shook his head. “I can, perhaps,” he said, considering, “emphasize the fear the poor girl was in and that no one could have known about the man sleeping in the attic.”

  Chapter 15

  Georgette Dorothy Marsh

  “Virginia!” Georgette called as she entered Theodora Wilkes’s parlor. She coughed into her arm. “Oh my, that cough is killing me. Did you get too much smoke as well?”

  “I’m just not as weak as you,” Virginia replied, glancing at Theodora and then at Harriet. Virginia lifted a brow and then said, “I wasn’t aware you were coming.”

  “I do love tea,” Georgette admitted. “Also, I’ve always envied your friendship. Thank you for inviting me.”

  Virginia scowled. “That article proclaiming you as the author Joseph Jones is all the talk.”

  “It’s quite a surprise, I think,” Georgette agreed, “except for you. You figured it out, didn’t you? It was the money. Claiming an uncle who was looking after me? When everyone else was having trouble and buying old potatoes.”

  “Whatever do you mean?” Virginia asked, laughing lightly. She glanced at Theodora and Harriet, who didn’t smile back.

  “Did you know,” Georgette told her, “that Miss Hallowton worked her issue out with Mr. Thornton and the city council. They’ve decided to be lenient.”

  Virginia laughed again. She sounded like an upper class snake with that smooth, perfect chuckle. She glanced again at her friends and her mask faded some more.

  “Did you also know that Detective Aaron spent some time with Jasper Thornton in prison? They got him a few comforts to explain just who he’d told the secrets to. What shocks me isn’t that you were having an affair with Jasper,” Georgette continued before Virginia could respond. “He did have a chance at quite a nice inheritance. What surprises me is that you were having an affair with Bertrand Lawrence.”

  Virginia’s cool, hollow laugh rolled out again, but she shifted enough to have Georgette smiling. “You know, you caused two deaths of innocent people so you could have a new wardrobe.’

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “We know it was you, Virginia,” Harriet told her. “It’s obvious. Your maid has been interviewed, Jasper has been interviewed, your victims are being interviewed. It will be so easy to trap you now that they know where to look.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Virginia whined. “I’m your friend. You know that.”

  “Bertrand wrote about you in his papers,” Harriet lied, her face stone. “I looked for it once I knew what to look for. You know, of course, literary men keep journals.”

  Virginia paled, and Georgette laughed. “You can go to jail for blackmail. Some of the others won’t make a complaint, but I will. I wonder if you can be important and beautiful in jail. Maybe you can slither your way into one of the prison guard’s beds? Maybe that’ll get you an extra blanket?” It was a nasty thing to say, but Georgette was beyond mercy for this foul woman.

  Virginia shook her head, her gaze terrified. “I—”

  “Or,” Georgette said slowly.

  “Or?” Virginia gasped. “Please, I can’t go to jail!”

  “For?” Georgette demanded, “Say it. Admit it and apologize.”

  “I’m sorry!” Virginia wailed. “I’m sorry! I was desperate.”

  “So was Juliette!” Georgette shouted and then had to cough into a handkerchief. “She was working three jobs and you made her help you pay for your dresses.”

  “She stole money!”

  “You stole it! What about Harriet? What did she do that was so wrong? Admit what you did!”

  Virginia snapped her mouth shut, refusing to turn to her one-time friend.

  “Admit it or the deal is off.”

  “I blackmailed people for money.”

  Georgette wanted to sigh with relief. It was done. She’d did it. She’d helped clear the last of the foulness from the village.

  “We’ll make you a deal,” Georgette told Virginia. “I heard you confess, Theodora Wilkes—the honorable doctor’s wife—heard you confess. Harriet Lawrence heard it. Detective Joseph Aaron and Charles Aaron heard it.”

  The door to the hall opened and Charles peeked inside. Georgette scowled at him and put a peppermint sweetie in her mouth before facing Virginia again.

  “You can have your freedom as long as you keep the secrets you know.”

  Virginia nodded frantically.

  “But you have to leave Bard’s Crook.”

  She gasped, tears falling as she looked to the men. She thrust out her chest to put her bosom on display, and she looked up at Charles and Joseph through her lashes as her lip trembled prettily and pitifully. “Where will I go?”

  “Anywhere but here,” Harriet told Virginia flatly. “If my secret or Agnes Thornton’s secret is discovered—at any time—I will make certain you are found, and I will do whatever it takes to ensure you pay for what you have done. This is your second chance and you’re only getting it because we care about others more than punishing you.”

  Virginia let one tear fall and then another, appealing to the Aaron men until she realized they would not be moved, and then she fled the drawing room of the doctor’s house. Joseph followed her.

  Harriet, Theodora, and Georgette stared at each other for a moment and then Georgette rose. “I have packing to do.”

  “You aren’t still leaving, are you?”

  Georgette laughed weakly. “I might not be the villain that Virginia Baker is, but I might as well be in Bard’s Crook.”

  “Please don’t go,” Harriet said softly.

  Georgette hesitated, looking at the two women. “All I ever wanted was to have a good friendship and a few people who cared about me. I don’t have that here and I don’t think I ever will.”

  “We overlooked you too often,” Theodora said. “We’ll do better.”

  “Don’t you see?” Georgette asked as she crossed to Charles and placed her hand on his arm. “I’ve found wha
t I wanted elsewhere.”

  Charles put Georgette on the train to Bath before running to catch the train to London. She found a seat, pulling the magazine that contained her written revelation that the simple Georgette Dorothy Marsh was Joseph Jones and turned to find the article.

  “Going somewhere?” Harrison Parker asked, taking the seat across from her. “I didn’t think I’d be so lucky to find you on the same train to my cousin.”

  “I—” Georgette smiled and then confessed. “Yes, I’m joining Marian for a week by the sea and gathering up my dogs.”

  “I have been looking for you,” Harrison told her. “Etta, my love, when I discovered that you were the famous Joseph Jones, the most delightful prospect rolled out before me. Harrison and Georgette Parker—married authors who work together. It’ll be wonderful.”

  “Oh,” Georgette said, staring at him. “I—”

  “We’ll have little literary children who will all take firsts at Oxford.”

  “Um,” Georgette nibbled her bottom lip, staring in horror at Harrison Parker.

  “The dogs will have to go, of course,” Harrison said, snatching her hand. “I don’t care for animals in general.”

  “I—what?”

  “The dogs. We’ll find some farmer or something. Don’t worry.”

  “Mr. Parker,” Georgette began, trying—unsuccessfully—to free her hand.

  “Surely you see it?” He smiled at her with that charming and far, far too handsome grin. “I don’t mind that you’re plain, Etta. I have always been more drawn to wit than looks.”

  “Mr. Parker,” Georgette began again, and then he hauled her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss on it.

  “We’ll marry immediately.”

  “No,” Georgette snapped and yanked her hand from him.

  “What?”

  “No,” Georgette told him. “No.”

  “But—” He stared at her. “I’m handsome.”

  “You are.”

  “Marian is my cousin.”

  “She is.”