Death Misconstrued

by Beth Byers

  A fraud in more ways than Hettie could count, he’d spent months prostrating himself at her feet, romancing her, wearing down her defenses until she’d strapped on the old white dress and discovered she’d gotten a drunken, spoiled, rude, lying ball and chain.

  “Do you hate him too?” Hettie asked, wondering if she were commiserating with one of her husband’s lovers. She would hardly be surprised.

  “Oh, so much,” the woman said. Her gaze met Hettie’s and then they snorted almost in unison. “Such a wart. Makes everything a misery. It’s a wonder that someone has not clocked him over the back of the head yet.”

  Hettie shocked herself with a laugh, totally unprepared to adore one of her husband’s mistresses. “Oh! If only!” She lifted her glass in toast to the woman who grinned and lifted her own in return. “Cheers, darling.”

  “So, are you one of his lovers?” the woman asked.

  “Wife,” Hettie said, and the woman’s gaze widened.

  “Wife? I hardly think so.”

  “Oh, believe me,” Hettie replied. “I wish it wasn’t so.”

  “As his wife,” the woman said with a frown, “I fear I must dispute your claim.”

  Hettie’s gaze narrowed and she glanced back at Harvey. His blonde hair had been pomaded back, but some hijinks had caused the seal on the pomade to shift and it was flopping about in greasy hanks. He and the man he’d been molesting earlier clinked their glasses together and guzzled the cocktails. Harvey leaned into the man, and they both laughed raucously.

  “Idiot,” the woman said scornfully. “Look at him gulping down a drink that anyone with taste would have sipped. The blonde one, he must be yours?”

  Hettie nodded with disgust and grimaced. “Unfortunately, yes, the blond wart with the pomade gone wrong is my ball and chain. So the other fool is yours?”

  The woman laughed. “I suppose I sounded almost jealous. I wasn’t, you know. I’d have been happy if Leonard was yours.”

  “Alas, my fate has been saddled with yon blond horse, Harvey.”

  They grinned at each other and then the other woman held out her hand. “Ro Lavender. So pleased to meet someone with my same ill-fate. Makes me feel less alone.”

  Hettie held out her own hand. “Hettie Hughes. I thought Leonard’s last name was Ripley.”

  “Oh, it is,” Ro said. “I try not to tie myself to his wagon unless it benefits me. At the bank, for instance.”

  “Shall we be bosom friends?” Hettie asked.

  “I just read that book. Do you love it as well?”

  “I’m Canadian,” Hettie replied, standing to twine her arm through Ro’s. “Of course I’ve read it. Anne, Green Gables, Diana, Gilbert, Marilla, and Prince Edward Island were fed to me with milk as a babe. Only those of us with a fiendish brute for a husband can truly understand the agony of another. How did you get caught?”

  “Family pressure. We were raised together. Quite close friends over the holidays, but I never knew the real him until after.”

  Hettie winced. “Love letters for me,” she said disgustedly. “You’d think modern women such as ourselves wouldn’t have been quite so…”

  “Stupid,” Ro replied, tucking her bobbed hair behind her ear.

  The laughter from the crowd around the table became too much to hear anything and Hettie asked, “Shall we escape into the nighttime?”

  “Let’s go to Prince Edward Island,” Ro joked. “Is it magical there? I’ve always wanted to go.”

  “I’ve never been,” Hettie admitted, “but I have a sudden desperate need. Let’s flee in the darkness. You know they won’t miss us until their fathers insist they arrive somewhere with their respectable wives on their arms.”

  “Or, I could murder yours and you could murder mine, and we could create our freedom. If our families want respectable, I would definitely respect a woman that could rid herself of these monsters.”

  “That sounds lovely. Until we can plan our permanent freedom, I suppose our best option is simply to retreat.”

  Ro lifted her glass in salute and sipped.

  Hettie set aside her champagne flute and then turned to face her husband, who had pulled Mrs. Stone, the obvious trollop, into his lap and was kissing her extravagantly. Hettie scrunched up her nose and gagged a little. Mrs. Stone had been in Nathan Brighton’s lap just last week.

  “She slept with Leonard too,” Ro informed Hettie in an even tone.

  Hettie reveled in the camaraderie she found in Ro’s resigned tone. “Have you met Mr. Stone?”

  Ro nodded. “He doesn’t realize. He’s not the type of man to be cuckolded like this. So…overtly. Have you heard of the marriage act they’ve proposed?”

  Hettie nodded with little doubt that her eyes had brightened like that of a child at Christmas. “I will be there on the very first day. If Harvey had any idea, any at all, he’d be rolling over in his future grave. The money’s mine, you know? My aunt never liked Harvey and she tied up my money tightly. He gets what he wants because it’s easier to give it to him than listen to him whine, but he won’t get a half-penny from me the day I can file divorce papers. They say it’s going to go through.”

  “I couldn’t care less about the money,” Ro replied. “Though my money is coming from a still-living aunt. Leonard has enough, I suppose, but his eye is definitely on Aunt Bette’s fortune.”

  “So he needs to go before she does.”

  Ro choked on her laughter so hard she had to wipe away tears.

  “Darling!” Harvey hollered across the room. “We’re going down to Leonard’s yacht. You can get yourself home, can’t you?”

  Hettie closed her eyes for a moment before she replied. “Of course I can. Don’t fall in.” She crossed her fingers so only Ro could see. Ro’s laugh made Hettie grin at Harvey. He gave her a bit of a confused look. Certainly he had shouted his exit with the hope she wouldn’t scold him. Foolish man! She’d welcome him moving into Mrs. Stone’s bed permanently and leaving Hettie behind.

  The handsome servant from earlier picked up Hettie’s abandoned glass and shot her a telling, not quite disapproving look.

  “Oh-ho,” Hettie said, making sure the man heard her. “We’ve been overheard.”

  “We’ve been eavesdropped,” Ro agreed. Then with a lifted brow to the human work of art serving champagne, “Boyo, our husbands are aware of our lack of love. There’s no chance for blackmail here.”

  “Does your aunt feel the same?” he asked insinuatingly.

  Hettie stiffened, but Ro only laughed. “Do you think she hasn’t heard the tale of that lush Leonard? She’s written me stiff-upper-lip letters. ‘Watch your step and your mouth or you’ll lose your position despite your pretty face,’” she repeated in a pinched tone. “‘It doesn’t matter how you feel, only how you look. No one is paying you to think.’”

  The servant flushed and bowed deeply, shooting them both a furious expression as he silently backed away.

  “Cheeky lad,” Hettie muttered. “You scolded him furiously. Are you sure you weren’t taking out your rage on the poor fellow?”

  “Cheeky, yes,” Ro agreed. She placed a finger on her lip as she considered Hettie’s question and then agreed. “Too harsh as well. I suppose I would need to apologize if he didn’t threaten to blackmail me.”

  “But pretty,” they said nearly in unison. They laughed as the servant overhead them and gave them both a sultry glance.

  “Oh no, boyo,” Ro told him. “Toddle off now, darling. We’ve had quite our fill of philandering, reckless men. You’ve missed your window.” Ro’s head cocked as she glanced Hettie over. “Well, shall we?”

  “Shall we what, love?”

  Ro grinned wickedly. “Shall we be bosom friends? Soul sisters after one shared breath?”

  “Let’s. As the man I thought was my soulmate was an utter disaster, I’ll take a soul sister as a replacement.”

  They sent a servant to get an auto. “I was thinking of going to a bottle party later,” Ro told her. �
��At a bath house. That just might distract us.”

  Hettie tilted her head as she considered. “Harvey does expect me to go home.”

  Ro lifted her brows and waited.

  “So we must, of course, disillusion him as perfectly as he has me.”

  “There we go!” Ro cheered, shaking her hands over head. “It is only fair. I have been considering a trip to the Paris fashion salons.”

  “Yes,” Hettie immediately agreed, knowing it would enrage Harvey, who preferred her tucked away in case he needed her. “We should linger in Paris then swing over to Spain.”

  “Oooh, Spain!”

  “Italy,” Hettie suggested just to see if Ro would agree.

  “Yes!”

  “Russia?”

  Ro paused. “Perhaps Cote d’Azure? Egypt? Somewhere warmer. I always think of snow when I think of Russia, and I only like it with cocoa and sleigh rides. Perhaps one or two days a year.”

  “Agreed—” Hettie trailed off, eyes wide, as she watched Mrs. Stone enthusiastically kiss the cheeky servant from earlier and then adjust her coat. She winked at Hettie on the way out, caring little that both of them knew Mrs. Stone would be climbing into Harvey’s bed later. Or perhaps it was Harvey who would be climbing into Mr. Stone’s bed. “Is her husband really blind to it?”

  “Oh yes.” Ro laughed. “He’s quite a bit older, you know, and even more old-fashioned than my grandfather. He’s Victorian through and through. He probably has a codicil in the will about her remarrying. The type of thing that cuts her off if she doesn’t remain true to him. Especially since he’s in his seventies, and she’s thirty? Perhaps?”

  Hettie shook her head and put Mrs. Stone from her mind. “They have a rather outstanding blackberry wine here. Shall we just—ah—borrow a bottle or two for the party?”

  Ro nodded and walked across to the bar, digging through the bottles to pull out a full bottle of blackberry wine, another of gin, and a third of a citrus liqueur. “Hopefully someone will think to bring good mixers.” She handed one of the bottles to Hettie and then tucked one under each arm.

  The butler eyed them askance when they asked for their coats as a black cab arrived in front.

  “Don’t worry, luv,” Ro told the butler. “Your master doesn’t mind.”

  None of them believed that whopper of a lie, but Ro’s cheerful proclamation somehow made it acceptable.

  “Thief,” Hettie hissed innocently as the driver opened the door to the black cab. She dove inside. Struggling with the cork, she asked, “Are we going to the baths nude or shall we grab bathing costumes?”

  “My brother-in-law lives with us,” Ro said, looking disgusted. “I’ll be going nude before I go back and face that one. Oh…” Her head cocked as the black cab sped up. “I think that’s him!”

  “I’m a bit too round to really want to go full starkers,” Hettie said, uninterested in seeing the brother-in-law.

  “The men love the curves,” Ro told her. “If you wanted to step out on your Harvey, you’d just need to up the attitude and cast a come-hither gaze.”

  “Like this?” Hettie asked, attempting one but feeling as though she must look as though she had something in her eye.

  “Like this,” Ro countered, glancing at Hettie out of the corner of her eye. “I’m thinking of a scrumptious plate of biscuits.”

  Hettie tried it and Ro bit back a laugh. “Are you angry with the biscuits?”

  “Let me try imagining cakes. I do prefer a lemon cake.” Hettie glanced at Ro out of the corner of her eye, imagining a heavily-iced lemon cake, and then smiled just a little.

  “No, no,” Ro said, showing Hettie again what to do.

  “Oh! I know.” Hettie imagined the divorce act that the parliament was considering.

  “Yes! Now you’ve got it! Was it a box of chocolates?”

  Hettie confessed, sending Ro into a bout of laughter and tears that saw them all the way to Hettie’s hotel. From her hotel room to Ro’s rooms, there were random burst of giggles and stray tears. Once they reached to bath house, Ro said, “I’ll be drinking to that divorce act tonight. Possibly for the rest of my life.”

  “If it frees me,” Hettie told Ro dryly, “I’d paper my house with copies of it to celebrate those who saved us from a fate I should have known better than to fall into.”

  Order your copy here.

  Also By Beth Byers

  The Violet Carlyle Historical Mysteries

  Murder & the Heir

  Murder at Kennington House

  Murder at the Folly

  A Merry Little Murder

  New Year’s Madness: A Short Story Anthology

  Valentine’s Madness: A Short Story Anthology

  Murder Among the Roses

  Murder in the Shallows

  Gin & Murder

  Obsidian Murder

  Murder at the Ladies Club

  Weddings Vows & Murder

  A Jazzy Little Murder

  Murder by Chocolate

  A Friendly Little Murder

  Murder by the Sea

  Murder On All Hallows

  Murder in the Shadows

  A Jolly Little Murder

  Christmas Madness: A Short Story Anthology

  The Hettie and Ro Adventures

  co-written with Bettie Jane

  Philanderers Gone

  Adventurer Gone

  Holiday Gone

  Aeronaut Gone

  The Poison Ink Mysteries

  Death By the Book

  Death Witnessed

  Death by Blackmail

  Death Misconstrued

  Deathly Ever After

  The 2nd Chance Diner Mysteries

  Spaghetti, Meatballs, & Murder

  Cookies & Catastrophe

  Poison & Pie

  Double Mocha Murder

  Cinnamon Rolls & Cyanide

  Tea & Temptation

  Donuts & Danger

  Scones & Scandal

  Lemonade & Loathing

  Wedding Cake & Woe

  Honeymoons & Honeydew

  The Pumpkin Problem

  Also By Amanda A. Allen

  The Mystic Cove Mommy Mysteries

  Bedtimes & Broomsticks

  Runes & Roller Skates

  Banshees and Babysitters

  Hobgoblins and Homework

  Christmas and Curses

  Valentines & Valkyries

  The Rue Hallow Mysteries

  Hallow Graves

  Hungry Graves

  Lonely Graves

  Sisters and Graves

  Yule Graves

  Fated Graves

  Ruby Graves

  The Inept Witches Mysteries

  (co-written with Auburn Seal)

  Inconvenient Murder

  Moonlight Murder

  Bewitched Murder

  Presidium Vignettes (with Rue Hallow)

  Prague Murder

  Paris Murder

  Murder By Degrees

  Copyright © 2019 by Beth Byers, Amanda A. Allen

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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