by Beth Byers
“Yes, my lady,” Hargreaves said just as Denny entered the room.
“The chalkboards have arrived,” Denny said, happily rubbing his hands together. “I heard you had bad dreams. Darling Vi, don’t be sad. This will be fun. At least it isn’t someone we liked.”
“Is he dead?” Violet gasped.
Denny paused and then nodded slowly. “He didn’t make it through the night. Detective Clarkson appeared at the door and then lingered about while Jack went to talk to Victor. Vi, you matter more to Jack than the case.” He said it with as much soberness as Denny ever got, and, as usual, it didn’t last as he continued gleefully. “He had me on the suspect list. I added my name to the board as the first suspect but Clarkson told me if I were the one who stabbed the bloke, he would give up detecting and take up being a fishmonger.”
Violet watched Denny build a hefty plate.
“Where is Lila?”
“She’s fooling around with her makeup.”
Violet considered the toast and fruit in front of her and then popped a strawberry into her mouth. It didn’t make her stomach roll, so she ate another and then tried the toast. Her stomach didn’t rebel again, so Violet finished the toast. She wondered if that was how Kate had spent the past several months eating, testing each bite.
Rita arrived just as Violet was standing to leave for the parlor. “I just want tea. I’ll follow you in a moment.”
Lila was already in the parlor when they arrived, and Kate and Victor had arrived as well. To Violet’s surprise, Detective Clarkson and Jack were also there.
Violet lifted a brow and Jack shrugged, but Detective Clarkson was in a full flush. “It’s become something of a legend at Scotland Yard that your method works.”
“You mean writing names on the chalkboard and gossiping?”
Detective Clarkson paused, but then he gave her a nod. “Jack and I agree that we’d like this case to be over quickly and ensure both your safety and the safety of everyone involved.”
Violet crossed to the board since she wasn’t going to get out of it. Denny had already listed all the names. They read:
DENNY LANCASTER — Denny doesn’t care if Bobby is a criminal. To be perfectly transparent, Denny thinks Bobby is a wart who deserved to be stabbed.
LILA LANCASTER— Lila wouldn’t stab anyone just because the blood might ruin her dress or her shoes.
VIOLET WAKEFIELD—Violet would stab someone without question. She’s an ominous woman who will protect those she loves. She does not, however, love Bobby. Unless she fell in love with him in an instant and has already cuckolded poor Jack.
MARTHA POTTER (PRINCESS)—Princess has always been trouble. She once broke a poor innocent doll in a rage. If she would do that as a child, what would she do when she was snubbed by a low-class criminal who manipulated her pin money out of her?
HEATHER FLYE—She snores excellently and apparently can pull a rescue out of a by-passer—like Vi—without even fluttering her lashes or releasing a manipulative tear.
SALLY—Terrible dancer, terrible dance instructor. Completely untrustworthy.
JOSHIE—The man can play trumpet with soul and heart and could not possibly have stabbed anyone and then played so perfectly after. Certainly innocent.
THAT OTHER GUY—does anyone remember his name? The bass guy. Probably a criminal. Who knows?
Violet shook her head at the chalkboard. “You’ve been busy this morning.”
“It’s why I was so hungry. Brainwork will wear you out. Make you need to recover. A nap is likely.”
“Don’t you nap daily?” Violet asked Denny, who grinned.
“It’ll never be so well-earned.”
“Are they always like this?” Detective Clarkson asked.
“Yes,” Jack said evenly and then rose to refill his coffee.
Violet erased the board. “Ring for Beatrice, would you?” she asked Victor.
As he did so, Violet rewrote the names in the same order.
DENNY LANCASTER
LILA LANCASTER
VIOLET WAKEFIELD
She paused at her own name with her new last name, feeling a surreal rush of happiness. Considering the terror that had woken her in the night, the happiness surprised her, but she attributed it to the knowledge that the people she loved most in the world were safe and sitting in her new parlor.
MARTHA POTTER—
“Add princess,” Denny said. “She’ll love that when we demand explanations.”
Vi added princess. It was then that she paused and considered the rest of the names. The most likely people to have stabbed Bobby were those who were closest to him. At least in normal circumstances. But this was a bloke who ran underground dance clubs in abandoned buildings. Surely his business itself could have been the reason for the murder.
“What about business partners?” Vi asked.
“Leave those to Clarkson and the Yard,” Jack answered. She smiled at him, a bit relieved to keep their involvement to a minimum.
“Really,” she said, agreeing, “we just need to clear Martha so she can go to Siam with Rita.”
“You aren’t going to Siam, are you, Rita?” Jack asked.
“Oh, I’m going,” Rita replied. “I hear their oceans are lovely.”
“It can’t be safe,” Clarkson said, his mouth open with shock.
“I believe a man we associated with was stabbed just the other night in London and none of us even realized he was bleeding,” she told him wryly. “At least in Siam, I know I need to be on my guard and careful.”
Detective Clarkson stared at Jack. “Your friends are odd.” No one argued with him.
Violet wrote down the names of every one of her friends who had been present when Bobby could have been stabbed and then included all of the associates of his that they’d met. When she was finished, it read:
DENNY LANCASTER
LILA LANCASTER
VIOLET WAKEFIELD
MARTHA POTTER- PRINCESS
JACK WAKEFIELD
RITA RUSSELL
HEATHER FLYE
SALLY
JOSHIE
HENRY
DOOR MAN
Violet stared at the list and then she wrote a series of questions on the second chalkboard.
BOBBY — Who wanted to kill Bobby? Who had a reason? Did Martha stab him because she realized he was pursuing her for the money? Did Joshie kill him because Bobby owed him money? Did Henry kill him because Bobby was a jerk who was manipulating the girls? Did Sally kill him because he was violent with her and got her dismissed from her job at the tango club?
Did all the girls really prefer Bobby over Joshie and Henry? Perhaps there were passing lovers that created a quiet hatred? What was so special about him over the more-talented Joshie or the kinder Henry?
Violet turned back to the first chalkboard and started on her own name as Detective Clarkson asked, “Is this how it usually goes?”
Jack added some whiskey to his coffee and then poured some into Clarkson’s.
“I’m working,” he protested.
“You’re going to need it. So far you’ve seen Denny and Lila on good behavior.”
Clarkson stared for a moment and then shrugged and sipped his tea.
“I could just make cocktails,” Victor offered.
“It isn’t even time for afternoon tea,” Clarkson said, shocked.
“We don’t really obey the clock,” Victor told Clarkson.
“We’re far too spoiled to be dictated to by clocks,” Lila said lazily. “Dear Victor, I do think your wife needs something to put those ham hocks she calls ankles on.”
“You are mean,” Kate told Lila. “Wait until it’s you.”
“Don’t say such things.” Lila shuddered, and then made Kate a cup of tea.
“This doesn’t make calling my feet ham hocks better,” Kate said as she accepted the tea.
Violet ignored them both and cocked her head at the chalkboard.
VIOLET WAKEFIELD— Victim claim
ed she stabbed him. Violet spent the entirety of the evening with Jack, Lila, Martha, and Rita. There was no opportunity to have stabbed Bobby without a witness. Why did he claim it had been Violet who tried to kill him?
Violet sniffed as she paced in front of her question. Whoever stabbed Bobby had a motive. Was he simply confused by the drugs and the blood loss? Perhaps he remembered that he was angry with Violet over the situation with Heather. If so, he might have conflated his anger with who hurt him. But what if he wasn’t confused? What if he realized who had stabbed him?
She added a line to the section under her name: If he knew who killed him and claimed it was Violet, he must have loved the killer enough to lie with his dying breath.
Chapter Twelve
“Ah,” Clarkson said, reading the board as Violet played with her wedding ring, pacing.
“Don’t interrupt,” Denny said. “The way her mind works is my favorite part. Except for when she corners someone and makes them confess.”
Violet shot Denny a quelling look. It wasn’t as though she were putting on a show. She wrote under Jack’s name next.
JACK WAKEFIELD — No motive. No opportunity to stab Bobby. Even if Jack hated Bobby, why would Jack stab Bobby when connections at Scotland Yard could destroy him easily?
“Perhaps,” Detective Clarkson said, “because Bobby threatened you. I understand that he did.”
Violet shrugged, unbothered by Clarkson’s assertion. Jack hadn’t had a chance to stab Bobby and Clarkson wouldn’t be able to get around that.
“You know,” Lila added idly, “if Jack were going to murder anyone, it would be someone who threatened Vi, and if Bobby wanted revenge for his death, he’d try to pin his murder on Vi. Nothing would torture either of them more than being separated.”
“Lila, darling,” Victor said, “shut your impish mouth.”
Violet glanced over to wink at her brother and then went to Lila’s name. Vi wrote:
Too lazy to murder.
Under Denny, Violet wrote:
Even lazier.
Violet studied the board before glancing at her friends, thinking. No one spoke as she returned to the board.
RITA RUSSELL. No fan of Bobby, but no chance to kill him either. She arrived late to the tango club and then spent the rest of the evening in direct contact with her friends.
“Is she putting all of your names on there just to satisfy me?” Clarkson asked Jack as though the rest of them weren’t present.
“Maybe,” Jack replied. “Sometimes she does it just for fun. Sometimes she does it because she knows they’re a real suspect even if she doesn’t believe one of us killed whoever died.”
Violet glanced at both of them. “I am not a performing monkey. I’d like to see Martha on her way before her father arrives and that is all that is happening here. Bobby was a nasty wart and probably deserved to be stabbed even if I disagree with murder itself.”
“That makes no sense,” Clarkson told Violet.
She shrugged in reply.
Victor glanced over her board. “The key is the claim that Violet was the killer,” he announced, but he was speaking to Vi. He crossed to his twin and stood next to her, holding his hand out for the chalk. She handed it over and he crossed through all of their friends’ names, leaving only the people they’d met who had associated with Bobby and worked with him.
“If he wasn’t confused,” Victor said, “then he was protecting one of these people. It rules out all of his business contacts as well. If this were one of our books—I’d focus on these.” Victor circled the names:
Martha, Sally, and Heather.
“I agree,” Violet said.
“I don’t,” Lila objected. “If it is Martha, my mother will claim it’s my fault from now until the end of time. We will meet at the pearly gates of heaven and Mother will remind me of how she trusted me with Martha and I failed.”
Violet drew a line under Heather’s name. “Bobby actually said he loved her. She showed up at the warehouse after she had gone home. Maybe she realized that he had lied to her about her parents?”
Rita leaned forward. “You know, we don’t know why Heather didn’t go home before. It took her being defenseless and drugged to want to go home. Perhaps the reason she didn’t go was because of something Bobby had said to her. Maybe he had even lied to her. What if she’d wanted to go home for some time, and he’d convinced her—through lies—that her parents wouldn’t take her back?”
Kate sniffed and Violet glanced back to see her rubbing her baby. “It won’t happen to Violet Junior,” Violet told her sister-in-law as though Violet herself hadn’t woken terrified for the baby in the middle of the night.
“What a world we live in,” Kate said, and a tear rolled down her face. Victor started towards her, and she ordered, “Leave it be. It’s just…” But she couldn’t finish.
“Anna George told me she’d never cried so much as she did when she was expecting,” Lila said, watching Kate as though she were mysterious. “Said she cried every single day from before she realized she was with child all the way through to when her baby turned half a year old.”
Victor cleared his throat, and Violet elbowed him when she realized he’d paled.
“What’s a few tears?” Denny asked Lila. “We’ll buy a stockpile of handkerchiefs. We’re going to be the most amazing parents.”
Violet turned back to the chalkboard. “We need to know how much money Bobby owed Joshie and whether it was enough for Joshie to risk his freedom over.”
Jack crossed his legs. “You can’t simply ask him that and expect him to answer honestly, Vi. He’d lie if he killed Bobby or if he realizes it is enough money to implicate him.”
“He’s probably already returned to his barrister father,” Violet added. “If there’s anything to get one to mend the bridges between father and son, it’ll be the threat of prison. We need Martha.”
“She’s a suspect,” Clarkson protested.
“But she didn't do it,” Violet told him.
“How do you know?”
“Because,” Violet told him, “she’d already made other plans. Princess is the right term for her. She romanticized these people, realized they were mocking her, and decided to put her crown back on.”
“That makes no sense,” Clarkson said.
“Whoever stabbed him didn’t do it in a calculated maneuver. They flew into a rage. Martha might have killed him when she heard him refer to her as princess, but we were all there. She did talk to Sally for a bit without us present, but she came back resolved to leave England and travel with Rita.”
“That doesn’t mean she didn’t stab him,” Clarkson protested. “It proves nothing.”
“They don't care about that,” Jack told Clarkson and watched him groan.
“How do they find murderers?”
“It’s that whole plot bit,” Jack said dryly. “They try to find the details of the story and add things up.”
“There’s no proof that way.”
“They aren’t detectives,” Jack told Clarkson. “They don’t care about fingerprints and what not. They care about gossip and motives and whether they’d believe it. None of them can see Martha as the murderer, so they don’t take her seriously.”
Clarkson groaned again and then shook his head. “I can’t waste my time this way. What a bunch of nonsense. I can only assume that they’ve stumbled across the killer by sheer happenstance in the past. Bloody hell, Jack, you’re a well-respected detective. I don’t know how you can sit there and listen to this.”
“I suppose,” Jack said easily, “Vi and her friends just aren’t to your taste.”
“I don’t see how they are to yours,” Clarkson said. “Let alone Barnes.”
“By their fruits, ye shall know them,” Rita told Clarkson cheekily and then grinned as he flushed and left.
“By Jove!” Denny declared. “That took forever. I thought he’d never go once Jack started pouring whiskey and Clarkson didn’t stalk out offe
nded. He was ruining all my fun with that gaze weighing our actions and finding us wanting.”
Lila laughed. “His exit requires a chocolate cocktail, I think.”
Victor moved to the bar while Rita demanded, “Is that what you did when I first started coming by?”
“I don’t think so,” Lila said. “We mostly liked you from the beginning.”
“Any girl who’d been on a safari,” Denny added, “is our kind of people. Then there’s how Ham stares at you. That’s particularly entertaining. I’m not ready for him to stop.”
“Denny!” Lila hissed.
“Oh,” Denny said, not sounding repentant. “Was I not supposed to talk about that?”
Lila huffed and then told Victor, “You had better go heavy on Rita’s cocktails. Denny is considering playing matchmaker.”
“It just makes sense,” Denny added. “Otherwise they’ll eventually marry someone else, and we’ll have to add two more to our group. No one wants our little family to become overcrowded. We haven’t even started adding the little mites yet.”
Rita’s blond complexion and blue eyes truly gave her the ability to turn a brilliant red, Violet thought as she crossed to Denny. “Leave it,” she warned him, “or you can’t have any more cocktails.”
Denny gasped. “Violet, that’s just cruel.”
“So is teasing Rita about Ham.”
“But Ham loves her. Probably. Maybe. Ham certainly thinks she’s quite pretty.”
Violet kicked Denny in the shin and told him precisely, “Anyone with eyes thinks Rita is pretty. She’s quite lovely, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
“I haven’t,” Denny lied. “I only have eyes for my wife.”
“Liars go to hell,” Violet told him. “That’s one of the Ten Commandments.”
“You lie all the time.”
Violet winked at him. “At least we’ll have each other in our fiery pit.”
“Too true,” Denny said, lifting his teacup in salute. “To our eternity burning, dear one.”
“Shall we get back to work?” Jack took the tray of cocktails and passed them around. “Also, Violet will be spending her eternity with me even if I have to drag her out of hell.”