A Tender Little Murder: A Violet Carlyle Historical Mystery (The Violet Carlyle Mysteries Book 39) by Beth Byers

Author:Beth Byers [Byers, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-01-30T13:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

When they reached their cabin, there was no sound from the next door. They both paused outside of Liza’s cabin expecting to hear sobbing or crying, but her sister spoke from behind him.

“Father would have locked her in.”

Vi stared, uncertain of what to say. Finally she said, “She is grown and married.”

“It’s what he always does when she has a fit,” Faye told her.

“Ah,” Vi said, letting Jack slide into the cabin while Vi remained with Faye.

Faye let her fingers trace over her sister’s cabin door and then said, “She’ll have cried it out and then gone to sleep. It’s what she has always done.”

Before Vi could say anything else, they saw Rex and Dolly coming. Vi considered disappearing into her cabin, but the devil in her remained to let Rex and Dolly slide by. Rex looked back at Vi and Faye and then leaned down and kissed his wife on the cheek before leaving her, while he made his way to the tiny room at the end of the corridor.

He went in, shut the door, and Dolly used the opportunity to look over to them.

“Did Uncle just lock her in?”

Faye nodded.

Dolly pressed her lips together, frowning at the door. Her voice sounded broken when she spoke. “I never thought it would be like this.”

Faye didn’t answer, but Vi could see Faye agreed. Vi stepped back. The parents were coming, and Vi didn’t want to interact with them again. She glanced at Liza’s cabin again, wondering where Winston was going to sleep and whether he’d even be able to get to his things.

Would they hear them arguing again later that evening? Would they wake to the sound of Winston banging on his wife’s door and demanding that she beg him for forgiveness or at least give him his toothbrush?

Vi shut and precisely locked their cabin door and then slipped off her shawl, putting it away. She took off her dress, shoes, stockings, and jewelry, finding that Jack had already put on his pajamas and was watching her arrange her things.

She looked at his clothes folded over a chair and hung them in his trunk for him.

“Sloppy,” she told him, winking at him.

There was no sign of the drink-covered clothes and she asked, “Did the steward take your things?”

Jack nodded. “Otherwise, we’d be intoxicated by the fumes. She got me with at least eight or nine cocktails.”

“Did you suggest she not drink?”

Jack nodded. “She was slurring and had stumbled the entire way up the stairs, through the doorway, and then across the floor. You escaped to Jane and the others, but I was concerned she’d fall.”

“She must have been drinking quite a lot in her cabin.” Vi pulled on her favorite pajamas, shivering at the chill in the air. Ships, even small ones, tended to be so much colder than a hotel with good thick walls and a fireplace in the room. She put on her thickest and warmest kimono and then unabashedly added a thick pair of wool socks.

In the remaining sliver of the bed, Vi snuggled in next to him.

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