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Clothe My Villainy: A Violet Carlyle and Friends Mystery (A Smith Investigates Mystery Book 3), page 1

 

Clothe My Villainy: A Violet Carlyle and Friends Mystery (A Smith Investigates Mystery Book 3)
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Clothe My Villainy: A Violet Carlyle and Friends Mystery (A Smith Investigates Mystery Book 3)


  CLOTHE MY VILLAINY

  A SMITH INVESTIGATES MYSTERY

  BETH BYERS

  CONTENTS

  Summary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Sneak Peek of Death By the Book

  Also by Beth Byers

  SUMMARY

  Smith doesn't pretend to be anything but a man of blunt opinions and a fierce heart. His wife, however, is far gentler, far kinder, and somehow able to see the best parts of him.

  Then along comes someone who knows him. And that person is obsessed with Beatrice. Obsessed with a woman who seems to make all the worst parts of Smith better. Obsessed with a person who could love someone like him. It turns out that Smith's heart is fiercer and more dangerous than even Smith knew, but only when Beatrice is at risk.

  CHAPTER 1

  The coffin was lowered into the ground with a slow, careful glide, barely disturbing the spray of flowers on its lid. The ominous black box held my grandmother. Every day since she'd died had been a constant blur, and it was only now, as I watched Grandmother disappear into the earth, that her death seemed real.

  I glanced at those who stood by and realized that nearly everyone had gone. Only Uncle Hargreaves, a few of my cousins, and Smith and I remained. For me, I wasn't ready for this to be the last moment I had with my grandmother.

  I'd been gone so much in the last years. I was rarely home once Lady Violet hired me, and I hadn't realized the consequence at the time. Those lost years with grandmother couldn't be recovered. If I hadn't followed Vi from where the rest of my family lived and worked, I might have had more time with her. I had missed Christmases and birthdays with Grandmother. I hadn't made it back in time for her last words and she hadn't seen my face before she'd died. She'd already slipped into a sleep that she never woke from, and I would never be able to say goodbye to her as I'd wished.

  Aside from my family, who else would miss Grandmother? She'd outlived her siblings, her spouse, and her friends. Those who'd known her when she was young were gone. Even the world around her had changed into something unrecognizable.

  She had been approaching ninety. Had Grandmother been happy her time had finally come? I wished I could have asked her. I wanted to believe she was relieved and ready to go. I wanted to believe that she knew I loved her and carried it with her to whatever followed death. I wanted to believe that she knew that she mattered to me.

  Smith placed his hand on my lower back and I stepped closer, leaning into his warmth. I looked beyond the grave and beyond the guilt, past the gravestones that I didn't want to see, and wondered if Grandmother knew I had tried to make it before she'd gone.

  "She knew," Smith said, reading my mind.

  I sniffed, looking up at him. Here, more than anywhere, Smith looked angelic. The supernatural way he read my mind only added to his otherworldliness. Especially with the light breaking through the trees and the shadow of the stone angel behind him, it truly wasn’t a stretch to envision him as a visitor from above, his warm brown eyes delivering an unspoken message of hope and peace.

  "How did you know what I was thinking?"

  "I know everything about you," he said with the same confidence one would use discussing the sun rising on the morrow.

  I gave him the dubious glance he deserved, and his eyes crinkled the merest amount before he looked over his shoulder. He stiffened and his face smoothed into nothing. I jerked my gaze around. There was nothing there, not a soul beyond the grave diggers waiting to fill in the hole, and his eyes were not on those two. What had he seen?

  Or perhaps, he was trying to distract me from that hole in the ground. I sighed, my attention returning to those shovels in the grave diggers’ hands. I pressed my face into Smith's shoulder.

  His voice was a murmur when he asked, "Would you like to go?"

  I shook my head. The mere idea of leaving her for the last time, after being late, was too much.

  After some time, he said carefully, "Darling Bea, they're waiting for us to go before they fill the grave. I'll stand with you forever, but you do care more about that thing than I do."

  I bit down on my bottom lip and then shook my head. "I can't yet."

  He didn't argue. He stepped away from me, and a moment passed before I heard the muted tones of his voice. When he was back, I looked up at him, taking in those eyes of his and the perfect way they asked nothing of me. Instead, he wove his fingers through mine and waited with me.

  My cousins had gone and it was only myself, Smith, and Uncle Hargreaves.

  Uncle Hargreaves was only a few feet away. He cleared his throat as though he'd just arrived with the tea, but his voice was hoarse when he spoke.

  "When I was a boy, she was handy with a wooden spoon."

  I tried to imagine Uncle Hargreaves, of all people, being naughty enough to push Grandmother that far. "She was?"

  "But in the evening, she sang until I drifted off to sleep. She had the loveliest contralto."

  His words conjured a memory of her voice in the church, carrying from among the choir. I'd forgotten that—the sound of her when she sang.

  "You have her eyes," Uncle Hargreaves said. "Not only the color, though that's the same, but the brightness. The way you squint a little when you're thinking hard. The curve of your chin and your lips, they're all Mother."

  "I wasn't here when she was still alert.” My voice trembled. “She doesn't know I—we—came."

  "She does," Uncle Hargreaves countered. "She knew we loved her. We'd told her repeatedly, hadn't we?"

  I paused. Well, yes. "I did."

  A sudden warmth encompassed me, and the tears I'd been holding back started to fall. Smith wrapped his arm around my shoulders, pressing his handkerchief into my hand. Uncle Hargreaves stepped away. He was gone but for a moment and he returned with one of the shovels.

  "What are you doing?" I asked as he lifted the full shovel of dirt.

  "It's the last thing I can do for her," he said, somehow avoiding mussing his perfect suit.

  I blinked as he lifted another shovelful. He took no mind of his perfect suit, nor did he try to put on his usual impervious expression. His mouth was downturned, his eyes were bright with tears, and he swallowed thickly every few moments; but if you didn't know him, you might think he felt nothing at all.

  Rather than watching him, I took another shovel and helped, and Smith joined us. It took longer than I expected, even with the three of us working. When we finished, the sun was setting, my shoes were muddy, and my shoulders and back were burning. Even still, I arranged the flowers that had been brought to the funeral on the mound of earth and knelt next to the place where the gravestone would go.

  "What was her favorite song?" I asked.

  "Abide with Me," Uncle Hargreaves answered. He brushed off his hands and somehow, I saw, he'd remained clean. I would need to wash up and change clothes at the inn where Smith and I were staying before joining my family at the house where they were gathering. The thought of the crowd of relatives made me shudder.

  "I—" I bit my bottom lip and then confessed. "I'm not ready to go back to the house."

  "It’ll be all right,” Uncle Hargreaves told me. “I’ll take care of it.”

  I wasn’t foolish enough to think that only I was grieving Grandmother, but my family was used to being together to share in the emotions. I felt the pressure to be with them, as unaccustomed to it as I was now. Grieving for her together made it more significant than I could manage.

  I started to rise and Smith handed me up instead. He tucked my hand onto his elbow and asked, “Would you like to go for a walk?”

  Very much, but I hesitated, guilt pressing against me. “What will people think?”

  “Do you really care?”

  I started to shake my head and paused. I did, a little.

  “You don’t have to grieve any particular way.” He spoke with experience that shouldn’t have surprised me.

  “Do you remember your grandmother?” I had never asked him. He didn’t like to talk about the past, and I didn’t push him. We so rarely discussed his past, I was afraid he wouldn’t answer.

  “She had my mother late in life. And my mother died when I was born, so she raised me, even though she was too old to deal with someone like me.”

  I imagined that the boy-Smith was as devilish as the man. The poor woman. “Was she as beautiful as you?”

  “She was rather plain.” His tone was even, but he was staring at the street at our feet. I felt the slight tension in his body. For him, those slight reactions were telling. “To me, however—”

  My gaze moved over his face and I couldn’t help but marvel—once again—at his beauty. A walking statue. Michelangelo’s David had nothing on Smith. Then I imagined a plain, elderly woman trying to chase after the young Smith.

  I shivered when he lifted my hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss against the inside of my wrist before speaking. “She was
all that was good and kind, and anything good in me was planted by her.”

  I didn’t ask him when she’d died. I knew he’d spent much of his life alone. I knew that his ties to anyone beyond myself and my friends were few. “I wish I could have met her.”

  He said nothing as we walked, and I stopped caring if the neighbors I’d grown up with cared that I wasn’t at the house mourning with my family. I was certain that Grandmother wouldn’t have minded how I grieved her. There wasn’t, as Smith had said, a right way to miss someone. And Smith was right—I didn’t have to apologize for how that happened for me.

  My friend and employer, Vi, had told me once that grief came and left in waves with moments of desperate longing. She’d said to me once she’d do almost anything to speak with her great aunt again. What I’d give to tell my grandmother goodbye. If I only had made it home in time.

  How had I said goodbye the last time I’d been home? I was almost positive it had been a kiss on the forehead and a quick word. Something like, “I have to go. I love you.”

  I wondered how long it would be before I forgot her face. How long would it be before the thought of Grandmother didn’t hurt? If this was what grief was like for someone whose approaching death was anticipated, how did it feel to lose someone unexpectedly? Someone young and robust, with no shadow of death or doom upon them?

  I’d seen so many murders at Vi’s side and now Smith’s. Too many, I knew. It made me colder than I would have been. Those experiences made me more careful as well. I looked over my shoulder when I walked. I considered the faces of those around me. I pondered the hearts of strangers on trains and the road and wondered if their families and friends were safe with them.

  All of these murders had taught me how fragile life was and how likely it was that a common face hid a killer walking amongst potential victims. I shivered and purposefully turned my thoughts to my grandmother. I was flooded with burning gratitude that none of Grandmother’s days had been stolen from her.

  CHAPTER 2

  When I woke at the inn, I turned onto my side to face Smith, but his side of the bed was empty. The stillness declared he was off causing trouble. I closed my eyes and sighed. I had to go to my family home again before we left, but I’d already warned my mother that I needed to return to London shortly.

  It had been an out-and-out lie. Vi would have let me take whatever time off I wanted. What I wanted, however, was my cat, my house, my bed, my routine. I wanted to slip back into the life I’d crafted with Smith and not linger in mourning with everyone else.

  Was it wrong of me that I had a deep desire to dress for a night out and dance in a shadowed club with a band wailing in the background? I thought my family, especially my mother, would say yes. I knew that Vi, Rita, and Lila would go with me without a second thought.

  I pressed my lips together, knowing I was making a face that Vi often made. Even still, I rose, bathed, and packed, hoping that Smith would be back soon. I debated waiting and then started taking our things down to the auto and decided to go ahead to the house.

  Once the auto was loaded, I glanced around the inn, hoping Smith would pop up like a well-timed hero, but he was nowhere to be seen. I could, perhaps, try to see if he’d gone to the house already, though I didn’t know why he would. If I did that, though, and he wasn’t there, I’d never get away easily. I’d be trapped until Smith arrived. I’d have to have a cup of tea with my mother and listen to my sister’s idle comments about having a baby in between remarks that it must be nice to have the position I did.

  I had been lucky. I’d helped Vi when she’d needed it, and she’d hired me when she’d inherited the money to have a maid of her own. I had never expected anything more than that, but Vi had slowly trained me and helped me to be something more than the woman who looked after her dresses, stockings, and jewelry.

  I tapped my fingers against the top of the auto and then left the inn, walking towards the cemetery once again. I supposed I could say goodbye to my grandmother one more time while I waited for Smith to appear. Once I reached the churchyard, however, I couldn’t quite make myself go in. I didn’t like to think of her there, in that cold dirt, flowers crushed against the top of the black casket by the weight. Absolutely no sound and no light—

  I shoved those images out of my mind and headed back towards the inn. I wasn’t doing myself any good staying at the cemetery. The last thing I wanted was the fall apart while standing alone where anyone passing by could see.

  I checked with the desk and verified Smith hadn’t returned, and then I ordered breakfast at the attached dining room. I ordered absently and when two platters were placed in front of me, I could only hope that Smith would appear and save me from the excess of food.

  By the time I’d made it through a piece of toast and a cup of tea, Smith hadn’t appeared, but Uncle Hargreaves had. He eyed me for a moment and then settled himself across from me, helping himself to one of the platters of food.

  “All well?”

  I nodded even though we both knew it wasn’t. “You?”

  He nodded his own lie. “Are you returning to London today?”

  “If I can ever find Smith.” I made a face, knowing I was too edgy for Smith’s very reasonable decision to go for a walk and take some air.

  “Mmm,” Uncle Hargreaves murmured. “Well, should you find him, might I motor back with you?”

  I gave him a look that question deserved, because of course he would come with us, and then sighed, leaning back. “I can’t understand where Smith went.”

  Uncle Hargreaves eyed me with an expression that said he knew more than I.

  “What?”

  He tried shaking his head.

  “Uncle Hargreaves—”

  “I saw him speaking with someone in the street.” His tone was layered with far more information than he gave with that sentence.

  “And?” My tone had gone from bored to angry, and he winced. I tried shooting him a dark look, but Uncle Hargreaves slid on his butler’s face, and my scowl wasn’t enough to crack that facade. “Was he angry?”

  Nothing.

  “He must have been,” I said when he didn’t answer. “It wouldn’t have been noteworthy otherwise.”

  Uncle Hargreaves stayed silent, taking a sip of his coffee with the same expression he’d use if someone tracked mud into Vi’s house. I pasted an unbothered expression on my face, one I’d learn in the years I’d been a maid. We finished breakfast with the silent feud of practiced façades and then I rose to leave the inn.

  If I were Smith and I were angry, where would I go? I considered, wandering along the street, looking for the place where Smith might drag a foe. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I sighed and glanced behind me.

  If we didn’t leave, eventually a family member would find us, and then I’d get pulled in again. That was one thing on good days and entirely another on bad. I wondered what would happen if I simply got into the auto and left. I couldn’t stop the wicked grin spreading across my face as I turned back to where we’d parked.

  Unsurprisingly, but annoyingly, Smith was leaning against the driver’s door, arms folded over his chest as he watched me approach. He lifted a perfect eyebrow, his lips curving in a taunting smirk. “What were you thinking? With that evil grin, I imagine I’d approve.”

  “I thought you knew everything about me.”

  “I do,” he said, stepping forward to catch my hand in his and tug me towards him.

  Before he succeeded in yanking me into his side, I said, “Uncle Hargreaves will be driving back to London with us.”

  Smith paused with a glint in humor in his eyes before he dropped my wrist. “Well then, I suppose I’ll have to torture your secrets from you later.”

  It was me who lifted my brow then. “And who were you arguing with in the street?”

  Smith did grin at that. “You have spies?”

 
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