With a Little Bit of Blood Read online

  WITH A LITTLE BIT OF BLOOD

  Contents

  Praise For…

  Title Page

  Also By

  Quote

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Author’s Note

  Praise For…

  The Eliza Doolittle & Henry Higgins

  Mystery Series

  * * *

  Oh so loverly to meet up again with Henry and Eliza in this ingenious mystery. All the beloved characters are here, neck deep in murder and mayhem, and the London setting is a delight.

  —Catriona McPherson, Agatha, Lefty and Macavity Award winner, the Dandy Gilver Mysteries

  * * *

  I could have read all night! A delicious homage to these beloved characters--putting this classic duo in the midst of a murder is terrifically clever and authentically charming. Loverly.

  —Hank Phillippi Ryan, Agatha and Anthony Award winner, The Wrong Girl and The Other Woman

  * * *

  We've only been waiting a century for another glimpse of this wonderful duo, and there is no better format than a juicy Edwardian murder. Higgins is his irascible, aristocratic self, while Eliza grows and evolves quickly in a world of society intrigue and danger. They make a wonderful pair of sleuths. Having now read Ireland's work I can safely say, ‘By George, I think she's got it!’

  —Will Thomas, Barker & Llewellyn Mysteries

  * * *

  "D.E. Ireland takes Four Weddings and a Funeral and does it one better by adding murder!"

  —Victoria Thompson, the Gaslight Mysteries and the Counterfeit Lady Mysteries

  * * *

  "Pull out the stopper! D.E. Ireland once again uncorks a charming and high-spirited mystery, with the enchanting Eliza Doolittle and delightfully grumpy Henry Higgins on the case. An enjoyable and amusing read!"

  —Susanna Calkins, Macavity Award winner for The Masque of a Murderer

  * * *

  "…If you are familiar with the George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion or the movie My Fair Lady, you know these characters and can jump into this series anywhere. Of course, I believe you should start at the beginning... This writing team captures these characters wonderfully. The dialogue is spectacular, especially between Higgins and Eliza, but all the others too. "

  —Lori Caswell, Escape With Dollycas Book Reviews

  * * *

  " If you haven't read this series yet, I really can't recommend it highly enough…. you'll find yourself swept to another time and place and loving every page of it."

  —Mark Baker, Carstairs Considers Books and More Reviews

  WITH A LITTLE BIT OF BLOOD

  Copyright 2018 by D.E. Ireland

  First Edition

  ISBN 978-0-9981809-3-9

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Design & Interior Format by The Killion Group, Inc.

  Also By

  Wouldn't It Be Deadly

  Move Your Blooming Corpse

  Get Me To The Grave On Time

  With A Little Bit Of Blood

  “What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motorcar?”

  * * *

  —George Bernard Shaw

  1

  September 1913

  At the sound of a deafening crash, Eliza Doolittle jumped to her feet. Shouts rang out, followed by the raised voice of the housekeeper.

  “Is something wrong, Mrs. Pearce?” Eliza asked. But she heard only the tinkling of broken glass in response. Had a gang of hooligans pushed their way through the front door of 27-A Wimpole Street? She scanned the drawing room for a weapon. Two decades in London’s East End slums had taught her to be prepared.

  “What’s happening, Miss Doolittle?” her elocution student asked.

  “I’m not certain,” Eliza told Miss Nash as she grabbed a brass poker from the fireplace. Thankfully, Professor Higgins did not have pupils scheduled this morning. Otherwise, he would be teaching in the drawing room, while she gave instruction in a parlor down the hall. And her usual “classroom” contained neither a fireplace nor a heavy metal poker to protect herself with.

  “Can we lock ourselves in?” Nineteen-year-old Loretta Nash looked nervous.

  “Unfortunately, no.” Eliza frowned at the oak pocket doors which lacked a keyhole. “But if anyone bursts in, Miss Nash, get behind me.”

  Eliza had no sooner spoken when those pocket doors banged open. With a dismayed cry, Miss Nash scurried behind her. Ready to wield the poker like a cricket bat, Eliza raised the weapon, then stopped. “What are you doing here?” she asked the intruder.

  Her stepmother, Rose Cleary Doolittle, stood in the open doorway. She put her hands on her hips. “Looking for that rude professor you’re living with. Don’t think for a minute I come to see you. I don’t enjoy having to put up with your snobbish ways.”

  “Any more than I enjoy spending time in your company.” Eliza felt a twinge of regret that she wouldn’t be able to brain Rose with the poker.

  “Shut yer mouth, girl. I’m your mother and deserve respect.”

  Eliza tapped the hearthrug with the tip of the poker. “My mum died when I was two. You’re merely the latest woman playing house with my father.”

  “I’m his wife, proper and legal. And don’t you forget it.”

  “I only wish I could,” she muttered.

  Alfred Doolittle had lived with a number of common-law wives since the death of Eliza’s mother, all of them ill tempered and foul mouthed. One of his former “wives” was currently serving time in Holloway Prison for theft and larceny. Eliza viewed it as bad luck that Rose happened to be living with Alfred when he experienced a financial windfall. Not surprisingly, Alfred felt his new status demanded a move to a proper middle class neighborhood. He also decided to make his personal life more respectable by marrying the woman who had illicitly shared his bed for three years. Eliza blamed Professor Higgins. He was the one who had convinced an American millionaire to hire her garrulous father to lecture for the Moral Reform League. Alfred was so successful as a lecturer that he toured six times a year, for which he received an annuity of three thousand pounds. In fact, his rise out of poverty this past year had been as rapid as her own.

  “What’s the reason for this visit?” Eliza returned the poker to the fireplace rack. “And where is Mrs. Pearce? I heard her voice, along with all that banging and glass breaking. If you’ve upset her, I’ll kick your blooming arse all the way back to Pimlico.”

  “I ain’t done a thing to the housekeeper. She’s busy with your dad. He’s a handful, let me tell you.” Rose threw herself onto a nearby chair, her silk taffeta skirt ballooning around her.

  At forty, Rose was too old to wear a pink ruffled dress, especially one covered in enormous cabbage roses. Even worse, the color clashed with her brassy red hair and heavily rouged cheeks, as did the purple ostrich feather bobbing from her hat.


  “That man will be the death of me,” Rose complained. “Soon as he makes his way in here, I’m telling that bossy housekeeper to get me something to drink.”

  “And why is Mrs. Pearce busy with my father? Is he drunk?”

  Pulling out a handkerchief from her drawstring bag, Rose mopped her damp forehead. “Listen to you. Talkin’ about your own flesh and blood as if he was some street beggar you buy oranges from. Oh, wait. That’s what’s you did, hawking fruit and flowers to the toffs, like one of them barefoot children on Dorset Street.”

  “It was honest work. And I never begged, no thanks to you. I’ve made my own way in the world since you told Dad to throw me out of the house three years ago.”

  “Count yerself lucky. If you’d been my daughter, I would have kicked you out the moment you turned fourteen.”

  Miss Nash cleared her throat. “Should I leave, Miss Doolittle?”

  Eliza had forgotten about her pupil. Then again, Rose Doolittle always proved an unwelcome distraction. “We only have five minutes left in today’s lesson, so we’ll end it now. But you’re doing well. Another two or three lessons, and my instruction will be complete.”

  With a proud smile, Miss Nash gathered up her pocketbook and gloves. “I practice my vocal exercises every night. The other ladies in the boardinghouse often help me, too.”

  “Whatcha want to talk different for?” Rose asked. “You got a fine way of speaking.”

  Miss Nash turned to Rose with an earnest expression. “I’ve been working at a laundry house since I came to London. But now I have a chance to be hired as a perfume counter sales girl at Selfridges. Only I’m from Birmingham and need to lose my Brummie accent first.”

  “You don’t owe my stepmother an explanation,” Eliza said. “Besides, she is incapable of understanding why a woman might want to improve herself.”

  Rose shook her finger at Miss Nash. “You might want to take lessons from someone else. Eliza comes from the East End, not Mayfair. She barged in here a year ago last summer to ask for lessons from Professor Higgins. Before you know it, she’s acting like Queen Victoria. Even fooled people into thinking she was a duchess. Maybe that’s because she spends all her money on clothes. Like some chorus girl trying to impress the stage door Johnnies.”

  A glass bowl filled with chocolates sat on the piano. Eliza considered throwing the bowl and its contents at Rose. “A chorus girl couldn’t afford my wardrobe. However, I can.”

  She glanced down at her silk taupe dress from the House of Paquin, which appeared last month on the cover of Vogue. But it wasn’t only her voice lessons that paid the hefty dress bill. Along with her father, Eliza was co-owner of an Irish racehorse called the Donegal Dancer; her share of a recent winning purse had been most impressive.

  “Miss Doolittle should be proud she worked her way out of the East End to a place such as this.” Miss Nash gestured at the elegant book-lined room that served as Higgins’s laboratory. “Besides, everyone in London knows she was once a flower seller. And that after learning how to speak and dress properly, she fooled the upper crust at an Embassy Ball. That’s why so many of us want to take lessons from her. She’s famous.” Her round cheeks flushed pink. “And not just for becoming a lady. Miss Doolittle and Professor Higgins are also famous for catching criminals. If I were her stepmother, I’d be proud of her.”

  Rose looked as if she’d swallowed a bad oyster. “You’re as cracked as she is.”

  “Where are ya, Rose?” a voice bellowed. “You left me out here to fend for meself!”

  Eliza rushed out into the hall and gasped at the sight of her bruised and bandaged father. With an arm draped over Mrs. Pearce’s shoulders, he brandished a cane in one hand.

  “Crikey! What happened?”

  “About time you come to greet me, Lizzie. Thought the Colonel taught you manners.”

  Eliza helped Mrs. Pearce walk him into the drawing room. “Did you try to ride the Donegal Dancer again? The jockeys told you to stop doing that.”

  “Weren’t no horse I fell from, girl. Horses love me, specially my Dancer.”

  “I can tell you what doesn’t love him,” Rose said as they entered. “That bloody car he bought this summer. Your father drives like the Mr. Toad character in a book I been reading to my nephew. Soon as Alfie gets behind the wheel, he turns balmy on the crumpet.”

  Eliza eased her dad onto a leather covered chair. She was more shocked by the thought of Rose reading a book than the sight of her father’s bruised face and limp. “Was there an accident with the motorcar?”

  “The fool nearly got himself killed.” Rose banged her hand on the chair’s arm. “Can we get something to drink? Your housekeeper’s here now, and it’s only polite to offer your guests something. Gin, maybe.”

  “A pot of tea, please,” Eliza told Mrs. Pearce. “And thank you for assisting my father.”

  “I had all the housemaids helping me, especially after he knocked over two side tables and a floor lamp with his cane. The girls are busy cleaning up the mess. But I’ll put a kettle on for everyone.” Mrs. Pearce took a deep breath. “The staff, too.”

  The housekeeper nearly ran out of the parlor. Miss Nash followed close behind.

  Now that she was alone with Alfred and Rose, Eliza examined her father’s injuries: nose swollen to twice its normal size, two black eyes, a bruised forehead, and his right foot swaddled in a mountain of bandages. He winced when she gently probed his shoulder.

  Eliza sat back on her heels. “It was a mistake to buy that roadster. For one thing, it cost too much. I’m sure the people at the auction cheated you.”

  “They did not. It was only seven hundred pounds. And worth every penny.”

  “It’s not worth your life. You drive as if you’re the only motorist on the road.”

  Alfred grunted. “A pity I’m not.”

  “Last week he knocked the grocer clean off his feet,” Rose announced. “Plowed right into him and his turnip crates.”

  “Blimey, is the grocer all right?”

  “He will be when his hip heals. We had to give him fifty quid not to report it to the police.” Rose sighed loudly. “The greedy sod was lucky Alfie didn’t finish him off. But he did run over the grocer’s cat.”

  “You killed a cat?” Eliza cried.

  “Not on purpose.”

  “It ain’t the first animal he’s run over,” Rose added. “Not by a long shot.”

  “How terrible! Dad, you’re a danger to everyone when you’re behind the wheel.”

  “Blame the people who don’t get out of my way,” Alfred protested. “The animals, too.”

  Rose snorted. “That ain’t the end of it. Two days after Alfie killed the grocer’s cat, he crashes into a milk wagon. Milk and broken glass everywhere. The milkman got his kneecap broke. This time your father got hurt, too. Serves him right, I say.”

  “You are never driving again.” Eliza used her sternest voice. “Take the bus or the underground. Hire a cab. But your driving days are over, do you hear?”

  His lower lip stuck out in a stubborn pout when Rose said, “Exactly what I told him.”

  Eliza got to her feet. “At least the car is gone. After crashing into a milk wagon, it has to be useless. Good riddance.”

  Alfred chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” Eliza asked.

  Rose shook her head. “The car looks good as new. No more than a few scratches on it. The blasted thing was speeding along like the Donegal Dancer on the way over here.”

  “You drove the car to Wimpole Street?” Eliza asked her stepmother in chagrin.

  “Don’t be daft. Your dad drove.”

  “How? He could barely walk from the front door to the parlor.”

  “I still got the use of my arms,” Alfred said. “And I used my left foot to drive. Rose put her own foot on the pedal whenever I got a sudden pain in my leg.”

  Eliza’s outraged response was halted by a familiar voice from the hallway. “What the devil is going on
here? Who broke my lamp?”

  “Thank heaven the Professor is home.” Eliza stomped over to the piano bench, eager to let someone else deal with her father and Rose.

  “Good. That’s why we came.” Rose gave Alfred a knowing glance.

  Higgins seemed more energetic than usual when he strode into the room. And he didn’t look surprised to see Rose and Alfred. Although his expression soon turned to concern.

  “I had no idea your injuries were this severe.” Higgins scrutinized Alfred as intently as a flower fancier examining a hothouse orchid. “You resemble boxer Matt Wells after his last championship match.”

  “I told you on the telephone that I’d gotten banged up,” Alfred said.

  Eliza’s temper flared. “You knew my dad was in an accident and didn’t tell me?”

  He nodded. “Rose called three days ago, right after it happened. They didn’t want me to inform you of anything. At least not for awhile.”

  “Knew you’d make a proper fuss,” Alfred told her. “And I had to rest. Didn’t need you coming over to try and force oatmeal down my throat instead of gin.”

  “Hold on,” Eliza said. “You were injured in a motorcar accident only the Professor knew about. Now you show up here, still not recovered. Why?”

  “Alfie wanted to drive the car one last time,” Rose said. “For old time’s sake.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Alfred and Rose turned their attention to Higgins, who appeared sheepish. “I bought your father’s roadster,” he said.

  Her mouth fell open.

  “I can see from your inability to speak that I’ve taken you by surprise,” he went on. “But when we visited Banfield Manor for Clara’s wedding, I had a marvelous time larking about in Lord Ashmore’s Stutz Bearcat. Well, now I can go anywhere I like without having to bother with trains or the underground. I feel as free to wander as Odysseus.” He gave her a pleased smile. “And you father sold it to me for a most reasonable price.”