A Treasured Little Murder: A Violet Carlyle Cozy Historical Mystery (The Violet Carlyle Mysteries Bo

pay the others for,” Vi said. “We want you there, Beatrice. Besides, will Smith return to the country where Jack and Ham are working?”
Beatrice nodded and it was amusing how the mention of where Smith would be going was enough to quash her resistance. The unspoken teasing was wrapped around Smith, which caused Beatrice to blush deeply, but she finally relented. “All right.”
In mercy, Vi told Beatrice, “Bring your bathing suit.”
“Oh, and a party dress,” Rita added. “We’ll be having a midnight, roller-skating, trying Victor’s new line of spirits, ice cream, lobster-something party.”
“That’s a long name,” Beatrice said dryly. “I don’t know if it’ll fit on the invitations.”
Vi snorted. She drew out the paper with the lists that she and Rita had made. “We need to move quickly. I think London is maybe a full thousand degrees hotter than the country. We’ve got to send the invites out while we’re here and then gather up what we can.”
“We’ll need something to wear the morning after the party when nearly everyone is still around.” Rita added to the list, leaning over Vi’s shoulder to make sure that it was written down. “Maybe more roller-skates.”
Vi nodded and added to the list as the other two called out ideas. When they had finished, Vi asked, “Who was the fellow so rudely demanding me?”
“Hollands,” Beatrice answered with a look of frustration. “He wasn’t here for you, Vi, but Rita, but you seemed united in turning him away, and honestly, he’s come so many times, I rather delighted in it. He’s been a right nuisance.”
“Which one?” Rita asked with a frown. “And seek me here?”
“Mostly Edward, sometimes the doctor. Because you were gone from your home in the country, and you don’t have a London house. Those brothers knew you’d be here if you came back, and your father told him that he didn’t want to see him around again.”
“About the goblet?” Vi guessed. “He is determined, isn’t he? Why does he care so much?”
Beatrice shook her head with the air of a woman who did not care in the least why, though it was also evident that she very much wanted the man to stop coming by. “After the last visit, I swore on my mother’s grave that I’d warn you as soon as I saw you, but they must have been watching the house.”
“That’s just disturbing,” Rita muttered.
“Feels like what happened to Kate,” Vi repeated. “Or poor Harriet.”
“Or you,” Beatrice added. “Bates didn’t just stalk Simone Reeves, he stalked you, Vi.”
Vi shuddered, and then she pushed the memory away. “Ices. Roller-skates. But ancient goblets? Anything else, please. I won’t be able to sleep if we talk about what happened and Jack isn’t here to make me feel safe.”
“Well, your bedroom isn’t that comfortable for all of us, and it is coolest in the library,” Beatrice suggested and Vi nodded immediately. They followed Beatrice down the stairs carrying the cucumber sandwiches and cooled coffee.
“Isn’t your mother alive?” Rita asked Beatrice a moment after they settled themselves. “I could have sworn that Hargreaves said he was visiting her while we were on that terrible journey to Norway.”
“She’s alive. I swore to tell you on Mother’s grave, so it would be believable,” Beatrice agreed with a grin. “Hollands, however, didn’t know that, and he really was being most pressing. He kept demanding your address, and I could hardly comply simply because he was insistent. Some other man came by several times after that, never leaving his name and never arriving when Smith was here. He wanted to talk to you too. I think Edward Hollands must have found himself someone else to come by and bother me.”
Rita frowned with a deep forehead crease. “That doesn’t sound like Hollands. I mean…he wasn’t my favorite friend, but he is a friend.”
“He didn’t come across like one,” Beatrice told Rita flatly. “Are you so sure?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if he did something that I didn’t love, but I don’t think I’d be afraid of him.”
Beatrice shrugged. It was clear that the Hollands brothers had made an enemy of Vi’s one-time maid, one-time secretary, and current friend and business manager. Regarding the matter, Vi found that she trusted Beatrice’s opinion over Rita. Not because Vi didn’t think well of Rita’s judgement, but because Rita had always been the beautiful heiress who people did whatever was necessary to be around. How a man treated a random woman, his mother, and a woman in a position of lesser power was far more telling than how he treated the wealthiest woman he knew.
Beatrice crossed to the library door. “I’ll just send Jemmy off for noodles and ices, shall I?”
Vi nodded and followed after, digging through the kitchen ice box for cocktails mixings, promising Beatrice something cold, and then Vi brought the ice bucket back to the library. “Did you want something to drink, Rita?”
“It has been giving me headaches,” Rita muttered. “It’s quite hard to be me right now. What with the protective, loving husband, the child on the way, and the future sibling.”
Vi looked up from the bar they’d installed in the library and lifted a brow. Rita was laid full out on one of the sofas, fanning herself with a piece of paper. Her ankles were crossed, and she wasn’t pretending at anything other than an evening at home with a nightgown and no shoes. Let alone those torture devices that stockings had become.
“This is cozy,” Vi said. “I could use some coziness in my life after that boat trip. Something like an afternoon tea with a vicar, strawberry scones, and peacefully drifting in a rowboat.”
Rita laughed so hard she cried and then admitted, “I miss Ham, and I’m an idiot.”
“You haven’t even been gone a day,” Vi mocked as though she wasn’t already thinking that bringing up Preston Bates had ruined any chance she had for sleep without Jack.
“But my bed will be lonely without him.”
“It’s too hot to snuggle,” Vi suggested, but