Murder Most Austen (30 page)

I knew I was babbling, but I couldn’t seem to stop. Byron kept coming toward me; I kept moving back toward the wall where the sabers were hanging. Surely some of those had to be real; after all, Byron’s certainly looked real. “Once in the hall, you got out of your costume and stuffed it into the vent,” I said. “You took the knife that you killed Richard with and put it in the wig where it would be found by the police. Then you and Alex reappeared and pretended to look for Richard.”

“What do you want? Applause?” Byron sneered. “I get it. You figured it all out. I killed Richard, hid his body under a pile of table linens, and then took his place. I even smeared a bit of food on my shoe to make it look like Alex had really thrown up.”

“Weren’t you taking a huge risk that you might get caught?” I asked as I retreated farther. “I mean, what if someone tried to talk to you when you were dressed as Richard?”

Byron shrugged. “It was a risk, but then Richard could be a rude son of a bitch at times. No one would be too surprised if he waved away a conversation.”

I remembered how Cora had said that she’d tried to talk to Richard at the ball but he only laughed at her. Byron was right; when we’d heard that, no one assumed anything other than Richard was being an ass.

Byron continued. “Unfortunately, your prize for figuring this all out is that you have to die, too. Alex and I didn’t go through all this trouble so we could get Richard’s money and be together just so we’d have to stop now. Sorry and all that. You seem nice enough. But those are the breaks, I guess.”

I edged closer to the wall. The swords were only inches away. “Is that what you said to Valerie when you killed her?” I asked. “What happened? Did she try to blackmail you when she realized that Alex couldn’t have been in the bathroom like you claimed?”

“Of course she tried to blackmail us. She was a greedy, horrible woman. Valerie called Alex demanding money. Alex agreed to meet her, but first I ran around claiming that Richard’s paper had been stolen. Then I met with Valerie. Briefly.” The corners of his eyes crinkled in ghoulish amusement. My stomach lurched. “With everyone milling about in Regency garb,” he continued, “it was easy to don an outfit myself and go unnoticed. I really doubt anyone is going to miss her—or Richard, for that matter. However, you probably will be missed, which is a pity.”

He was now about a foot in front of me, and the display swords were right behind me. With a sudden movement, Byron raised his sword and lunged. I saw the silver blade slice the air inches from my chest. Blindly grabbing a sword from the wall, I dropped my purse and frantically leaped out of his range just in time to feel the blade ripple the air again—this time by my neck. With a horrible but heartfelt primal scream, I raised the sword up in front of me and commenced what I would later refer to as my foray into “batshit-crazy fencing.”

I began to wildly parry and thrust, imitating every move I ever saw in any movie that featured a sword fight. Since I had come to the hall in the first place based on advice gleaned from
The Princess Bride,
I wondered if I could imitate Inigo Montoya’s fencing moves.

That’s about the time I realized that I was probably having some kind of panic-induced mental breakdown.

However, my frenzied moves appeared to take Byron off guard, and he jumped a few steps away from me. Still screaming and slashing away, I advanced, hoping that I could back him up far enough that I could make a break for the front door. For a minute or two, it actually seemed to work, but just when I thought that an escape was feasible, Byron steadied himself and resumed his attack.

“You can’t do this!” I hysterically screamed at him as I managed to block one of his hits. “You won’t get away with it!”

“Oh, I think I will,” he said as the metal clang of our swords smacking against each other rang out. “I think it will be quite easy to pin this all on John.”

My stomach sank at the realization that he was probably right. John could easily be made to take the fall for all of this—especially if my call to Aunt Winnie didn’t go through. With a renewed energy born of hysterical fear, I charged at him. I would not lose this fight, I told myself, as Byron brought up his sword to block my hits. Neither of us spoke as our swords flashed and hit time and time again. I managed to slash his arm at one point but saw with sick disappointment that it didn’t do more than rip his sleeve. My hit didn’t even produce a lousy flesh wound.

With renewed energy, I charged again. I had just managed to back him toward the doorway, which was better than his backing me into the room, when I heard a familiar voice call out, “Elizabeth? Are you in here?”

“Peter?” I screamed in disbelief. “Peter! In here! Help!”

Within seconds, Peter came charging into the room. Surprised, Byron turned his attention away from me. It was all the time I needed. I lunged at him, both horrified and relieved as the tip of my sword sank deep into his upper right shoulder. Byron screamed in pain, just as Peter knocked him to the ground with a hard right cross to his face. Peter and I both jumped onto him and pinned Byron to the ground.

Looking at me, his face a mask of shock and worry, Peter said, “Jesus Christ! What the hell is going on? Are you all right?”

I smiled at him. “I am now.”

CHAPTER 31

If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.

—EMMA

“I
STILL CAN’T BELIEVE
you flew over here and didn’t tell me!” I said to Peter much later. We were back in our hotel room, curled up together on my bed, each with a much needed glass of wine in hand. John had been treated for a concussion at the local hospital and released. Inspector Middlefield had taken both Byron and Alex into custody. While Inspector Middlefield thanked me for my help, she also asked me when I would be leaving Bath. Somehow I got the impression that “sooner rather than later” was what she was hoping to hear.

“Well, what did you expect?” Peter replied. “You found not one, but
two
dead bodies! As soon as I heard your last message, I got on the first plane I could. I tried to call you to tell you, but I couldn’t get through.”

“Thank God he got ahold of me when he got here,” said Aunt Winnie. She sat on her bed, a large glass of wine in her hand as well. “Your call to me went to my voice mail. I was just listening to it when Peter got to the hotel. I hate to think of what might have happened to you if I hadn’t told Peter where to find you,” she said with a shudder.

“Hey!” I said, mildly offended. “I did stab the guy. I was holding him off.”

“Elizabeth! He was trying to kill you!” Aunt Winnie countered with visible frustration.

I closed my eyes. “I know. I know. I’m trying to forget that part.”

Aunt Winnie reached out and grabbed my hand, giving it a tight squeeze. “I still can’t believe that it was Byron! He had me fooled. I really thought that he and Alex didn’t like each other.”

I nodded. “He had us all fooled. I didn’t start to put it together until I remembered that he brought Alex a cup of coffee at the memorial. He’d already added sugar and cream to it. It dawned on me later, when I was talking to you about your coffee, that it was a fairly personal thing to do. It made me wonder what their relationship really was. Then I remembered that Valerie seemed to make most of her … uh … calls, from a bathroom. I wondered if the reason she’d been killed was that she’d tried to blackmail Alex because
she knew
Alex hadn’t been in the bathroom getting sick that night. It would be entirely in Valerie’s greedy nature to get money out of Alex—money that she didn’t have to share with Gail and the magazine—rather than hand her over to the police.”

Aunt Winnie nodded. “I certainly can see her doing that.”

“Anyway,” I continued, “I thought that if Alex hadn’t been in the bathroom, then where had she been? When the masked Elizabeth came into the ballroom that night, I initially thought it
was
Alex. Granted, later we were told that the masked figure couldn’t have been her, but I wondered, what if it actually
was
Alex? Well, for one thing, it meant that Byron had to be in on it, as he’d vouched for her being in the bathroom.”

“None of this makes sense to me,” Peter groused.

“Of course it doesn’t,” I said, patting his leg. “You haven’t been here. But trust me, it makes sense to us. Once I realized that Alex had been in the costume, I wondered where Byron had been. It struck me that we were assuming who people were based on their costumes, and that who we thought was Richard might not have been Richard.”

“No, seriously. I’m getting a headache,” said Peter.

“I’m almost done,” I said. “I looked at the pictures I took that night, and sure enough, the Richard at the ball wasn’t wearing his pinkie ring. But when we found Richard’s body, the ring was there. So…”

“So Richard had been killed in the hallway earlier, and Byron had taken his place,” finished Aunt Winnie. “And then Byron and Alex kept talking about Richard’s paper as if that was the reason behind his murder.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“Well, thank God it’s over,” said Aunt Winnie. “I called Cora and told her the good news. She wanted to take us all out for dinner, but I told her that you two were busy. I’ll give you some time alone.”

I smiled at her. “Thanks, Aunt Winnie. I don’t think I could take her or Izzy right now.”

“That’s what I thought.” Aunt Winnie stood and checked her reflection in the mirror. After fluffing up her red curls, and adding an ample amount of red lipstick to her already stained lips, she turned to us. “You two go have some fun. See the sights of Bath. Or stay in,” she said with a wink. “I’ll be back later.” Giving us each a light kiss, she headed out the door.

Once the door had closed, I turned to Peter to wipe the smear of red lipstick off his cheek. He did the same for me. As I looked at his face, and stared into his amber-colored eyes, I realized that this life that I was trying to figure out and perfect was sitting right here in front of me. My life was with Peter. It didn’t matter to me anymore that I was between jobs and forced to live with my sister because my apartment had a mold problem. What mattered was being with Peter. “I love you, Peter,” I said as I snuggled in close to him.

“I love you too, Elizabeth,” he said, wrapping his arms tightly around me. I closed my eyes and breathed in his familiar scent—Tide and a hint of Burberry cologne. We lay curled together in comfortable silence, lulled by the faint hum of the air vent and the muffled voices of people talking out in the hall. I don’t know when I’d felt happier or more at home.

“Do you remember that question you asked me before I left on this trip?” I asked.

“Do you mean when I asked you to move in with me?” he said.

“That’s the one. I was wondering, do you still want a roommate? Because I’d like to change my previous answer, if I may. I’ve discovered that my feelings on the matter are quite the opposite.”

Peter didn’t respond. Surprised, I looked up at him. His face was very serious as he stared down at me. “Well, funny you should mention that, because I was thinking about that, too, and I want to change the question.”

My heart began to pound. “You do?”

Peter nodded and slid off the bed. Getting down onto one knee, he pulled a small velvet box out of his pocket. “I’ve been carrying this around for weeks,” he said. Flipping open the box to reveal a sparkling diamond ring, he looked up at me and said, “Elizabeth, will you marry me?”

I started crying, of course. “Oh, my God, yes!” I said as I leaned over to kiss him.

Peter took the ring out of the box and slid it onto my finger. Then he pulled me close and said, “Dearest, loveliest Elizabeth.”

I laughed. “Did you really just quote
Pride and Prejudice
to me?”

“I did.”

“That’s kind of awesome, you know.”

He grinned. “I like to think so.”

I kissed him again. In the past week, I had discovered two bodies and engaged in a sword fight with a killer. I didn’t have a job, and I didn’t have a place to call my own, but I had Peter.

Life was good.

ALSO BY TRACY KIELY

Murder Most Persuasive

Murder on the Bride’s Side

Murder at Longbourn

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tracy Kiely has been a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award. A self-proclaimed Anglophile who grew up reading Jane Austen and Agatha Christie, she lives with her husband and three children in Maryland.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.

An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

MURDER MOST AUSTEN.
Copyright © 2012 by Tracy Kiely. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

www.minotaurbooks.com

Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein