The Butler Did It
“He didn’t do it,” Faye remarked calmly. “Jacks wouldn’t have had the strength to bash the Marquis’ head in with the candlestick.” The Marquis of Greenoaks head had a large dent in the temple area. His skull was fractured. That took a terrific amount of force, Faye knew. The killer was very strong. Perhaps even supernaturally strong.
At Faye’s words, Lady Swan turned white and swooned, dropping her sewing. She was always sewing jackets for her brothers or some such stuff.
Baroness White, standing in front of the large chest with seven glided drawers, gasped, her hand to her throat.
“Please, Miss Grimm, have a care at what you say,” Baron White protested. “There are ladies about.”
Meaning that she was not a lady, she supposed. But that would be untrue. Her father was s Baron and her sister had married a German Prince. It was her odd business, her no nonsense way of talking, and her limp, however, that kept people from automatically labeling her a lady of the first order.
Lowering her head to stare at him, Faye remarked, “Baron, you asked me to come here to help you solve a mystery.” Baron White had been worried about his wife and had wanted Faye to find out if someone was out to poison Baroness White.
“It appears I now have another mystery at hand, a murder and I am telling you that the butler didn’t do it.”
“Then who did?” Professor Appleton asked, his white busy eyebrows lowered, his thin-lipped mouth drawn. “When I entered the room, Jacks, was standing over him, blood on his hands. It looks like an open and shut case to me.”
Staring at Jacks, Faye noted his pallor and his shaking hands. “Jacks, were you trying to help the Marquis, to see if he was still alive?”
Jacks nodded, tried to speak and gulped. ‘Ye….yes. I saw him laying there with all that blood and I….I thought maybe he was just hurt badly.”
“The man’s lying through his teeth,” Colonel Pepper said sharply. “They all like…criminals. They’ll tell you the sky is green and they are innocent. I’ve seen it before. Why in the campaign of 1872, we had…”
Baroness White interrupted, wringing her hands, “A Marquis has died at our house partly. I can’t bear the shame. Why couldn’t it have been a mere Sir or the local Squire? Why a Marquis? Why me? No one will ever attend another party of mine, if my staff goes around killing people.” So saying she sank gracefully down on the sofa, the picture of a forlorn maiden.
Recovering from her swoon, Lady Swan patted her dear friend on the shoulder. “Perhaps no one will notice his absence. He does travel abroad a bit.”
“I imagine his wife might have something to say,” Countess Bloodworth said, her French accent softening the slight rebuke.
Faye had to bite her lip to keep from smiling. Lady Swan wasn’t the brightest of ladies and Countess Bloodworth suffered no fools. The Countess was beautiful, with dark hair and eyes and the palest of skins. She was also clever and had a sharp wit, which stung at times.
“I’m ruined!” Baroness White remarked brokenly, throwing her arm across her face.
“There, there dear,” the Baron said, patting his wife‘s head. “It’s not so bad. No one really cared for the Marquis, especially his wife. And we can always replace the staff.”
The butler, who had been standing stoically throughout the ordeal, suddenly collapsed into a chair.
Faye barely noted the drama as she had bent over and pulled back the cravat on the Marquis neck. Her lips tightened and she got the expression her brothers used to dread when they had put a frog in her bead, hoping she would kiss it and turn it into a prince. “You won’t have to fire your staff, Baron White. No servant did this. At least, no human one.”
Her blue eyes were bright with that Grimm determination. “The head wound came later, after the Baron was dead.”
“Preposterous,” Colonel Pepper snapped.
“No, the head wound didn’t kill him; that was a decoy to make us think it was the death blow,” Faye responded, ignoring the pompous Colonel’s last remark. Kneeling beside the body, she pointed at the two fang marks quite visible on the victim‘s neck. “This was the work of a…Vampire!”
The word filled the room with a sick dread. All eyes were on the marks, most especially Sir Redding. His gray eyes seemed to darken as he threw his back a bit and stilled. Then he glanced over at Faye as she stared back. He was a handsome man, perhaps the most handsome man she had ever seen, with an air of danger that seemed to hover in the air around him.
Countess Bloodworth moved closer to the body, and then smiled superiorly. “Really, Miss Grimm, such drama, such flare. Have you though of being on the stage? How can you say that is a vampire bite? Have you ever seen one?
