Snifter of Death Read online

  Snifter of Death

  Bloodstone Series

  Book 2

  Chris Karlsen

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Excerpt from Snifter of Death

  Copyright

  Look for Other Books by Chris Karlsen

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  SILK

  CHAPTER ONE SILK | Chapter One

  About the Author

  Books to Go Now

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  About the Publisher

  Excerpt from Snifter of Death

  “What address do you show for the Cross family?” the Vicar asked. Her mind went completely blank. Finally, she blurted the only one that came to her, which was no doubt wrong. “Park Lane.”

  The Vicar smirked. Not smiled. Smirked. That meant it had to be wrong.

  “I suggest you start there. In the meantime, I will have my housekeeper escort you out. I don’t know what you’re playing at but I don’t care for mischief. You’ll do your soul a good turn to drop a coin in the poor box on your way to the street.” He rang a small bell on his desk and the housekeeper came. “See this lady out.”

  Graciela stood on the top stair of the chapel cursing her luck when a man’s disturbingly familiar laugh interrupted her thoughts. She took a quick step to the left and flattened herself against one of the portico pillars. The horrible laugh rippled over from close by. It sounded like Detective Bloodstone’s from the morning she’d bailed out Addy. He’d said something that sent the shine boy scampering away and had all the detectives snickering, including Bloodstone.

  Taking a deep breath, she peered around the edge of the pillar expecting to see the detective. His presence would’ve been the perfect end to this entire St. Jude’s Chapel mission-turned-catastrophe. To her great relief, it came from a carriage driver. She hadn’t noticed a group of them gathered at the corner waiting to be hired. Graciela, you had no reason to be frightened. You’d done nothing wrong. Stop being such a ninny.

  She left the church and headed home. Zachary would be getting up from her nap soon. The whole way home she questioned her luck. A dozen people are murdered every day in London.

  How hard can it be to kill someone?

  Copyright

  Snifter of Death

  Books to Go Now Publication

  Copyright © Chris Karlsen 2017

  Books to Go Now

  Cover Design by Romance Novel Covers Now

  http://www.romancenovelcoversnow.com/

  For information on the cover illustration and design, contact [email protected]

  First eBook Edition April 2017

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.

  If you are interested in purchasing more works of this nature, please stop by

  www.bookstogonow.com

  Look for Other Books by Chris Karlsen

  The Bloodstone Series

  Silk

  Knights in Time Series

  Heroes Live Forever

  Journey in Time

  Knight Blindness

  Dangerous Waters Series

  Golden Chariot

  Byzantine Gold

  Chapter One

  London, 1889

  Metropolitan Police-Holborn Station

  Graciela had just opened the door to the station when she was slammed against the doorframe. A struggling mass of constable and resisting arrestee crushed the breath out of her. Another constable rushed to the aid of the first. The officers bumped and jostled her more as they stumbled into the lobby finally bringing the reluctant arrestee under control.

  Graciela caught her breath, straightened her clothes, and not for the first time wondered whether she really wanted to go through with her plan. Uncertain if she’d find the courage to proceed down the road if she hesitated now, she took a deep breath and pushed her way into the station.

  She tugged the wide brim of her hat down as much as possible and stepped up to the lobby’s desk. “Sergeant, I’m here to bail out a prisoner. His name is Newt Addy.” She handed over the five pounds bail money, almost all her savings for the past six months. “Will he be released immediately?”

  The sergeant nodded, put the money in an envelope made a notation on it, and then placed it in a drawer. “He will.” The sergeant looked her up and down with a curious expression. “Is he your husband? You don’t seem the type to associate with his sort, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  “My relationship with Mr. Addy is none of your affair, sergeant. Can we dispense with the chit-chat? I’d like to get on with the business at hand.” The longer she stood in the station lobby, the better the chances of some Peeler remembering her face. The odds of the police connecting her to what she planned were few, but Graciela wasn’t taking any unnecessary risks.

  The sergeant huffed and glared at her before he signed the bail form. He handed it to a chinless officer who looked barely past school age. “Bring Addy out.”

  Graciela watched an endless flow of police officers hauling men in various stages of resistance toward the lockup. She pulled a perfumed handkerchief from her reticule and held it to her nose as the combination of sour alcohol, sweat, and unwashed bodies hung in the air like London’s famous fog.

  In an adjacent room, the detective bureau according to the sign, a tall, attractive, and compared to the other plainclothes detectives there, better-dressed man waggled a warning finger at a shoeshine boy. Whatever he said sent the lad scampering off and had the men at the nearby desks laughing.

  “I don’t know if you’ll ever make an honest creature of that little bugger, Bloodstone,” said one.

  Bloodstone. Graciela recognized the name. Rudyard Bloodstone was the detective who solved the British Museum murders last year. She remembered because it was all everyone talked about for weeks. She wondered if he was the detective handling the Addy case. Not that it mattered; her contact with Addy would be limited.

  “Who bailed me?”

  She turned toward the clipped east end accent.

  “She did.” The sergeant nodded her direction.

  “What? Why?” Addy looked from the sergeant to Graciela and back to the policeman. “I’ve never seen that bit of muslin in
my life.”

  The sergeant shrugged.

  Graciela came over. “You don’t know me, but I’ve business I’d like to discuss with you. I prefer to talk to you outside.”

  Addy didn’t move.

  “Either come outside or I will take my bail money back and you can sit in jail. Your choice, Mr. Addy. I haven’t all day.”

  “Let’s go. It’s your finny.”

  Graciela led the way and didn’t stop until they were a block from the stationhouse. “What do you mean, ‘it’s my finny?’” She feared it was a vulgar sexual reference that would make her regret going anywhere with him.

  “A finny is five pounds, what it cost to bail me.”

  “Oh. I can’t talk on the street. I can’t take the likes of you into a decent tearoom where I’d normally go. Is there a pub you know of that is not too foul?”

  “Follow me.”

  She’d have paid for a trolley ride if he’d told her his choice of pub was off an Oxford Circus mews. It was a strange pub with no sign outside, dimly lit, the darkness hid what Graciela suspected was filth. But no one paid them any attention when they entered and Addy led them to a small table in the back, ordering two pints on the way.

  “What’s this about then?” he asked, pulling a chair out, not bothering to pull out hers.

  A man who’d had his nose buried in his tankard lifted his head and looked her up and down. Graciela sat but kept one hand tight on her reticule nestled in her lap. “How long have you been a burglar?”

  “Hey, I’m not admitting to nothin’.”

  “Please, let’s not mince words. I’m not the prosecutor. I need to know how experienced you are as a burglar.”

  The beers came and Addy waited until the barman left before he answered. “Been at it since I was nine, been caught three times, twice before I was twelve and then this last time. I wouldn’t have been caught this time if it wasn’t for bad luck. I know the routes and times all the Peelers pass by on the patch I’m working. Here I was coming out of the window with my goods in a sack when a Peeler comes out the backdoor of the neighbors and sees me. Apparently, their cook was sweet on him and had the copper in for tea.” He took a deep swallow of beer. “Bloody bad luck I tell you.”

  He took another deep swallow, stared hard at Graciela over the rim of the tankard, then put it down. “You haven’t answered my question. What’s this about?”

  “I assume from your experience you can pick locks.”

  “There isn’t a lock made I can’t pick.”

  “I want you to teach me how to pick locks.”

  Addy sat back, eyeing her like a rabbit eyes a cobra. He shook his head. “No. I know what you’re doing. This is something to do with you and them Peelers. You’re ginning up some kind of case where I take the fall. Oh no.”

  He stood and started to leave, but she grabbed his arm. “Please don’t go. I swear this isn’t what you think. I truly want to learn. I can’t tell you why. It’s personal, very personal. It has nothing to do with the police. Nothing could be farther from the truth.”

  “I don’t need competition.”

  “I won’t be competing. I’m not, how you say, working your neck of the woods, so to speak, your domain. My goal has strict limitations.”

  He nodded. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “What’s your favorite name for a lady?”

  Addy grinned, revealing a short row of bottom teeth. “Molly. My mum’s name was Molly.”

  “Call me Molly.”

  For the first time since entering the police station, Graciela relaxed a bit. Addy would come around to helping her, she could tell. She took her first swallow of beer. Beer wasn’t her favorite choice of alcoholic drink. She liked cognac better and kept a small bottle secreted in her room. The maids never came into her room to clean. Since she was a paid companion, not family, she was expected to tidy up after herself, which Graciela preferred. She didn’t need the maids snooping into what few personal items she had, including her wee bottle of cognac. If Mrs. Zachary found out about the alcohol, she’d get sacked. The old bat was a strict teetotaler who blamed all society’s ills on demon rum. Even if she wasn’t death on drink, she kept a tight fist on her money. Zachary would cut her meager salary. Cognac was expensive. Graciela bought the least expensive and restricted herself to a snifter a week and only on Saturdays.

  “If I agree, would you be willing to pay me for teaching you, Molly?”

  “No. I haven’t that kind of money. I just spent five pounds on your bail. As for teaching, you’ll have to make yourself available on Mondays. I only have that time free.”

  “I can, but it will take a long time for you to be an expert at a number of different locks if that’s your intention. Can’t you find more time?”

  If she was really careful, she could get past the staff and out for an hour after Mrs. Zachary went to bed. The maids and cook would be playing cards and talking in the kitchen. It’d be good practice in case she had to slip past the staff of Bartholomew Cross.

  “How can I get in touch with you?” she asked.

  “Ask at the bar for Kip. He’s the landlord here and knows where to find me. Leave a message with him.” Addy took another swallow of beer, eyeing her over the edge of his tankard. “I don’t know what your game is, Molly, and I don’t want to know,” he said, setting the tankard down. “Crime is not your bailiwick that’s for certain. Your kind tend to get caught or killed. For your own sake, do some exploration before we meet again. Check out the property. You need to know how many doors and lower floor windows the building has. Are you looking to enter a business or residence? Are windows left open? See if you can tell how many people come and go during the day and what times. Whatever your game my dear, you can’t steal nothin’ if you can’t escape the building.”

  “I’ll try to find out as much as I can.” Graciela left enough to pay for their beers and said goodbye.

  She walked down Oxford Street thinking about what she needed to do for her reconnaissance.

  My game, Mr. Addy, is murder.

  Chapter Two

  Rudyard pulled the letter from his pocket and set it down then removed his coat and hung it over the back of his chair. He poured himself a cup of tea from a kettle the detectives kept on a sideboard and took turns keeping hot. He returned to his desk and thought about the lady who’d sent the letter. The rosy scent of her perfume on the stationery drifted up, which surprised him. He’d have thought after spending several days crossing the Atlantic in the cargo hold of a ship and more days in a mail coach from Southampton, the floral reminder would’ve faded completely. He used his thumb to pop the envelope open and began to read what his former lady friend had to say.

  “What are you reading?” Archie, his partner asked, taking his coat off and hanging it over his chair back.

  “A letter from Evangeline.”

  “Is she coming home?”

  “Not from the sound of it. She’s inviting me to come visit her in New York. Apparently, she’s doing quite well at a place called Lord and Taylor.”

  “Sounds religious.”

  Ruddy shook his head and continued to read. “They’re a fancy emporium on something called the Ladies’ Mile. She wants to show me the sights in New York,” he said, looking up.

  “You should go.”

  New York, America. Ruddy grunted at the thought. He’d seen Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in ’87 when it came to London. He suspected beneath their city clothes most New Yorkers were still a bunch of Buffalo Bills, all bluster and brass. “I see no reason to go all the way to America.”

  “Why not? Although, I doubt there are many sights to see. It’s America for heaven’s sake, barely out of colonial nappies. But you’d be going to see Evangeline.”

  “That’s the only reason I’d go and the reason I won’t.” Archie cocked his head and gave him a quizzical look. “I am fond of Evangeline but I don’t love her. I don’t want her to think there’s more to what I feel than ther
e is. If she’d stayed, maybe my feelings would’ve grown into love. I don’t know. But I don’t want to hurt her by misleading her.”

  “I take your point.”

  The rest of the letter was filled with general family information about her sister and nephew and her sister’s new husband. Ruddy skimmed it and put the letter back into the envelope and tucked both into his jacket pocket.

  “Detective Bloodstone, Detective Holbrook.” Constable Northam approached with an arm around a young woman supporting her as he walked toward the detectives’ desks.

  An attractive woman, she looked to be in her twenties. Her bonnet was askew and she held a handkerchief with lavender flowers embroidered on it over her mouth like she was trying to stop herself from bursting into tears.

  Ruddy and Archie both jumped to their feet. Archie, more fatherly than Northam and Ruddy, slid his arm around the lady’s waist, relieving Northam of that duty. Ruddy brought a chair over and Archie eased her into it. Ruddy had turned the chair so she faced Ruddy’s desk and not the lobby. They didn’t need to speculate. Both had been in law enforcement long enough to recognize how victims responded to certain types of crimes. From the looks of the woman, they figured a sex crime was involved.

  Archie knelt on one knee. He gently brought her hand from her face down to her lap and keeping his much larger hand wrapped around hers said, “I’m Detective Holbrook. What’s your name?”

  “She told me—” Northam started to say. Ruddy put a quick finger to his lips and gave a tiny shake of his head.

  “You were about to tell me your name,” Archie said.

  “Ivy. Ivy Janes.”

  “Well, Miss Janes, you’re safe now. Whatever’s happened, you’re going to be fine. I think a cup of tea would be good. Would you like that?”

  She nodded.

  “Milk or lemon?”

  “Milk, please.”

  “Clive, you heard the lady,” Archie said without taking his eyes off Janes. After Northam left, he told her, “We’ll just be quiet a moment while you catch your breath. I can feel your heart fluttering like a bird’s through your gloves.”