Chapter 19

Inside,I pointed out the library to Tom, and then the entrance to the kitchen. Hughes was inside, helping Aunt Roz prepare some sort of food. She's not a cook nor scullery maid, of course, and I could see from her expression—sour—that she did the kitchen work only reluctantly. But then Aunt Roz was right there next to her, with her title and her money, and I guess Hughes felt like she couldn't in good conscience refuse when Lady Herbert was doing the work right alongside her.

"Thomas!" Aunt Roz seemed delighted to see Tom. So much so that she dropped what she was doing and came to embrace him. "You darling boy! How lovely to see you!"

"Lady Roslyn." Tom embraced her back, a bit gingerly.

"Is Christopher not with you?" She peered past him to me, and past me to where there was no one.

"He went to the village in the Bentley," I said. "I told Uncle Herbert and he said it was all right."

"Of course, Pippa, dear. Why would he do that?"

Christopher and not Uncle Herbert, I assumed. "He took Doctor White home. Or to wherever the post mortem is taking place."

"Ah." She looked partly enlightened and partly nauseated. "That poor girl."

I nodded. "Speaking of poor girls, Tom would like a look at the baby."

"Constance has her," Aunt Roz said. "She's quite good with her, as a matter of fact. Much better than I would have expected for someone with no experience with babies."

"I don't think we'll get to keep her," I said, since it was obvious that my aunt was already getting attached to little Bess.

She brushed me off. "Of course not, Pippa. I'm just ready for grandchildren, and none of you have seen fit to give me any. But hopefully Francis and Constance will get on that shortly."

Better them than me. "I'll take Tom in," I said. "Do you need me to come back and help you with anything?"

"No, no, dear." She shook her head. "Hughes and I are managing. She's been invaluable, really."

She beamed at Hughes, who responded with a colorless, "Thank you, my lady."

"We'll be off, then," I said. "Let me know if you change your mind."

Aunt Roz nodded. "I will, dear. But with Christopher gone, you had better stick with Thomas. Don't let Sammy bully him."

"Of course not." It was far more likely—and would be much more satisfying—to watch Tom bully Sammy.

"You can let Euphemia know that it won't be long now. She was quite put out by the lack of a tray in her room this morning."

"Spoiled," I said. "Like her daughter."

Aunt Roz rolled her eyes. "I do hope poor Crispin comes to his senses before she manages to tie him down. Harold should be ashamed of himself for encouraging it."

Yes. He should. "We'll just have to hope that His Grace sees the light and lets Crispin have what he wants without disinheriting him," I said. "He's quite as spoiled as Lady Euphemia, you know. He wouldn't last a week without his creature comforts. Truly, he probably does have the right idea about not subjecting his lady-love to himself in penury. No matter how much she might love him—if she does—I wouldn't wish that fate on anyone."

I turned to Tom. "Ready to go?"

He nodded.

"Let me know if you change your mind about the help, Aunt Roz."

She flapped a hand in my direction. "We're almost done, dear. You two go on. And if you find a way to disrupt your uncle's plans along the way, do go ahead and take it."

I promised her I would, and then Tom and I left the kitchen and headed for the front of the house. The study was empty this time, and so was the boot room. The stairwell to the cellars was lit up, however, with scrabbling sounds coming from below, and once we were in the foyer we could hear voices from the sitting room, as well.

"—can't believe your cheek!" Euphemia Marsden's voice said.

I expected her to be talking to Crispin, or perhaps to Francis, who had been known to be cheeky on occasion, too. I didn't expect for it to be Constance who answered back.

"I'm sorry, Aunt Effie—" She didn't sound sorry at all, "—but the constable is just doing his job. If you didn't have the opportunity to hurt Miss Dole, you can simply say so."

"Well, I'm saying so," Euphemia said with a sniff. "I was in bed with my husband all night, and I do not appreciate the impertinence of being asked to verify that! I had no reason to want that unfortunate girl dead?—"

She went on in this vein for another half minute, while Tom smirked.

"Hazard of the job," he told me, when I quirked an inquiring brow his way. "We often have to ask impertinent questions of people who think they're too good to answer. I suppose Constable Entwistle hasn't had much opportunity to deal with the upper classes."

Probably not. Murders in high society aren't plentiful here in Beckwith. Aside from the war and the occasional partridge party, we're a peaceful group overall.

"Just go introduce yourself," I told him. "You'll have her eating out of your hand in no time. Sammy might even be grateful for the rescue."

Tom gave me a jaundiced sort of look—yes, I didn't really believe what I was saying, either—but he stepped forward into the doorway.

The sitting room went quiet as people noticed him standing there. Even Lady Euphemia wound down. Then?—

"Tommy," Francis said, and the relief was evident in his voice.

"Thomas," Uncle Herbert added, genially. "You made it."

"Detective Sergeant." This was Laetitia, and she was fluttering her eyelashes. She did it when presented with any good-looking young man, which Tom definitely was, and it had, no doubt, the added benefit of possibly making Crispin jealous.

I rolled my eyes and stepped into the doorway behind him, as he made his way into the room.

"Gardiner," Crispin said, while Constance simply smiled demurely. If Crispin was jealous of Laetitia's fluttering, it was not evident in his voice.

Tom greeted them all before turning to Sammy, who was seated awkwardly on one of Aunt Roz's spindliest chairs with his notebook open against his thigh. I wondered whose idea it had been, whether someone had done it deliberately—Crispin, perhaps; it was the sort of petty maliciousness he delighted in—or whether Sammy had simply chosen poorly when he found a seat. "Constable. I'm Detective Sergeant Thomas Gardiner with Scotland Yard."

"Didn't call in Scotland Yard," Sammy grunted.

Tom nodded pleasantly. "I'm here off duty, as a friend of the family."

Sammy eyed him. "You look familiar."

"I'm not surprised." Tom's voice was nicely even, even as he added, pleasantly, "I remember you, too. I gave you a black eye once, when you tried to jump Robbie and me in the village one Christmas when we were visiting from Eton."

"Swotty nancyboys," Sammy muttered, and Tom's eyes—usually a warm hazel—frosted over.

"Be that as it may—" And it hadn't been, at least as far as I knew; Robbie hadn't been inclined that way, and he and Tom had been friends, nothing more, "—I wanted to offer my assistance, should you need it. Murder investigations can be tricky when you're not used to them."

"Don't need help," Sammy said, offense clear in his tone, and Tom inclined his head courteously.

"In that case I'll just sit back and watch." As you do it all wrong, was implied.

Sammy flushed a beet red. "Listen here?—"

"You can't refuse to let him be here," I told him. "He was invited. He would have been here for the engagement party tonight in any case."

Sammy muttered something, but there wasn't much he could say to that, so he didn't try. Instead, he kept his eyes on me as Tom wandered over to shake Francis's hand and bend over Constance's and wish them both well on their engagement. While that was going on, sotto voce, in the background, Sammy addressed me. "I have a few questions for you, Miss Darling."

"Of course," I said politely.

"You were supposed to share a room with Mister Christopher Astley."

I nodded.

"The two of you occupy a flat together in London."

"That's correct."

"But last night, he ended up sharing with his cousin instead." He flicked a glance at Crispin, who looked amused.

"His other cousin," I confirmed. "Yes."

"Pardon me?"

"I'm also Christopher's cousin. On the distaff side."

Sammy chewed this over for a moment before he decided that it didn't matter and moved on. "You spent the night alone."

"I did."

"Did it upset you that your cousin chose to share with his other cousin instead of you?"

"Of course not," I said. "It's not like we share a room under normal circumstances. Christopher has his own bedchamber and I have mine, just as we did during the twelve years we lived here at Beckwith Place. We were only sharing in the first place because the house is full and some of us had to double up. If Lady Laetitia hadn't been here—" I gave her a look, "I assume I would have been in Constance's room. As it was, it made more sense to put me with Christopher than with Francis or Crispin, although I don't suppose either of them would have minded sharing, either."

Someone emitted a choking noise in response to this. I expected it to be St George, but when I glanced over, it was Francis who was choking, not on horror but on mirth, as Crispin eyed him irritably.

"No, Pipsqueak," he told me, voice uneven with the laughter he was desperately trying to suppress, "neither of us would have minded sharing."

I sniffed and ignored him. "Obviously, when Francis ended up downstairs in the library with Constance, Crispin and Christopher shared the second floor room and I took the empty one. We don't go out of our way to be shocking."

It was the Countess's turn to sniff. She and Laetitia exchanged a look before they both ostentatiously refused to look at me.

"So you spent the night alone," Sammy said.

I nodded. "I did."

"And no one can vouch for your whereabouts."

"Aside from the fact that I went to bed on the second floor, and woke up on the second floor, and nobody saw me in-between, I suppose not. No."

Sammy nodded.

"Out of curiosity," I added, "why do you think I might have wanted Abigail Dole dead? That's what you're leading up to, isn't it? That I somehow figured out that she had left the infirmary and made her way here from the village, and instead of letting her in and showing her that her baby was well taken care of, I whacked her over the head with the ubiquitous blunt instrument and left her on the croquet lawn?"

Sammy opened his mouth and then closed it again. I guess he didn't want to out-and-out say it, but yes, that's what he thought.

"I had no reason to want her dead," I pointed out. "I certainly didn't get her with child. Nobody would expect me to do anything about it. And she didn't stand in the way of me marrying anyone."

I had meant it to refer to Laetitia, of course, who had slept in a room of her own and who had every incentive not to want St George to step up and marry Abigail. But instead, Sammy gave Constance a narrow-eyed look. She had little Bess on her lap, and with Francis next to her they looked quite like the happy little family.

I sighed. "Not Constance. She was in the library with Francis."

"But he was in no condition to hear her leave," Sammy said triumphantly. "That's what everyone says, isn't it? He was too drunk to go anywhere. Too drunk to do anything but sleep it off on the sofa in the library."

He waited, but none of us could really, in all honestly, disagree with that.

"Well," Sammy said triumphantly, "if he was too drunk to do any of that, he was too drunk to notice his fiancée leaving, too!"

Well… yes. He probably would have been.

That hadn't been what I'd been trying to draw Sammy's attention to, though. I'd done everything except point directly at Laetitia, and apparently I should have done so, because he hadn't caught on to what—or who—I meant.

"Constance would never—" Francis growled, and Tom put a hand on his arm.

"Have you found the murder weapon?" he asked.

"The croquet mallet—" Crispin began, and then stopped when Tom flicked a glance his way.

Sammy looked sour. "The croquet mallet went to the village with the body."

"But the croquet mallet wasn't the murder weapon. You've spoken with the doctor since he did his on-site examination of the body, haven't you?"

"We're looking," Sammy said shortly.

Crispin lifted a hand, like a dutiful pupil in class. "Wait a second. If the mallet wasn't the murder weapon, what was?"

Sammy fixed him with a fulminating stare that would have been more effective had St George been easier to cow. "We don't know. When we find it, you'll be the first to know."

"Oh, will I?"

I cut in, before Crispin could dig himself a deeper hole. "You didn't find anything in the carriage house?" That must have been what whoever was in there had been rooting around for, after all. The actual murder weapon.

Sammy eyed me sourly. "No. At the moment we're checking the residence."

That explained why the light had been on in the cellar stairwell when Tom and I passed by. It also explained the rather heavy footsteps I had noticed passing back and forth above my head.

Lady Euphemia clutched her not-prepossessing bosom. Like her daughter, she was built tall and willowy. "What do you mean, you're checking the residence? You're going through our rooms?"

"Routine," Sammy grunted, while Tom nodded apologetically.

"I'm afraid that's true, Lady Euphemia. The premises are always searched for the murder weapon and anything else that might pertain to the crime."

"Well, I have nothing to hide," I said. "Anyone's welcome to search my room."

It was hard to say who was most put out by that statement, Laetitia and her mother, or Sammy.

I smiled brightly at the Countess. "By the way, my aunt instructed me to tell you that breakfast is almost ready. She said you were starving. It shouldn't be long now."

That's not what Aunt Roz had said, of course, not in those words, but Lady Euphemia gave me the kind of fishy stare that ought to have dropped me into a heap on the carpet.

When it didn't, she turned away with a sniff. I grinned, and caught an answering twitch of Crispin's mouth across the room. "Where's Kit?" he asked. "Not back from the village yet?"

Sammy brightened. "Done a bunk, has he?"

I rolled my eyes. "He drove Doctor White to the mortuary, since you and your colleagues are getting around on bicycles. I'm sure he'll be back shortly."

"Was Wilkins not available?" Uncle Harold wanted to know, in a sort of distant voice, as if an Astley should not have had to drive the doctor anywhere when there was a chauffeur around to do it.

Or perhaps it was distant because it was me, and he doesn't like to address me. When he has to, he often pretends that I'm not here, like he's talking to the air instead.

"I haven't seen him lately," I said. "He was here this morning. Constable Entwistle spoke to him—" I glanced at Sammy, who nodded confirmation, "but the motorcar was gone by the time Tom arrived."

"Probably assumed his services wouldn't be needed today and retired to the village pub," the Earl of Marsden grunted.

"No doubt," I answered, as pleasantly as I could manage. "He's not wrong, after all. None of us are going anywhere anytime soon. Are we?"

Tom and Sammy both shook their heads, and then Sammy shot Tom a disgruntled sort of look and Tom hid a smile. Before he cleared his throat and told us all, "No. No one will be allowed to leave until the police are satisfied that they have all the information necessary to solve the crime."

Uncle Harold heaved a sigh. Lady Euphemia sniffed.

I was still leaning in the doorway between the foyer and the sitting room, one shoulder against the jamb, and now I became aware of noises behind me. First there was the sound of the front door opening, and Christopher's voice. "Hullo, Pippa. What's going on?"

At the same time, there was the clatter of crockery from behind the door at the landing to the cellar steps. Christopher crossed the foyer to open that door instead. Meanwhile, a set of ponderous footsteps began to descend from above, the regulation boots of a uniformed constable.

"Hello, Mother," Christopher said from behind me. "Let me take that."

His steps approached, and then his voice said, "Excuse me, Pippa."

I stepped out of the way. Christopher breezed past with a large tray full of cups and saucers and a steaming teapot. Hughes followed, carrying an assortment of teatime delicacies. Small, crustless sandwiches and biscuits and the like. Without Cook, I guess we wouldn't be getting a hot breakfast today. Elevenses it was, a little early.

"Hello, Christopher," Aunt Roz beamed as she brought up the rear.

Meanwhile, the constable—the same one who had been squatting on the grass outside—reached the bottom of the staircase and stopped in front of me. "Miss."

I glanced down at the object in his hand. "What have you got there?"

There was a wooden handle, as far as I could see, and on one end, something wrapped around it, or screwed onto the top of it. A bolt or something like that.

"Trench club," the young policeman said, in a vaguely apologetic way.

"I'm sorry, but I'm not familiar with the concept. Come again?"

He opened his mouth to tell me, but by then, Tom had reached us, with Sammy right on his heels. "Trench club, you said?"

The young man nodded, brandishing it. He'd had the foresight to keep his gloves on, I was happy to see. After all, this trench club, whatever that was, must be important if he had carried it down to show it off.

"I'm sorry," I said again, looking from one to the other of them, "what is it?"

By now Francis had also reached us, and was looking at the club with revulsion. "That," he told me, with a nod to it, "is the handle of an entrenching tool. Standard issue during the war. They came in two parts: this handle," he flicked his finger at it, "and then a metal part that was a spade on one side and a pick axe on the other, with a hole in the middle. We'd use it to dig trenches and latrines and graves, and sometimes to break heads."

So a weapon. "I don't see a spade."

Francis shook his head. "That's gone. What you're looking at is just the handle. Someone's fitted it with hobnails to use as a melee weapon."

I eyed the rounded head of the stick with its small metal protrusions (and dried blood) and tried to imagine it making contact with Abigail's head. "That's barbaric."

"I've seen worse," Francis said grimly.

Tom nodded. "We all have."

"A man in my outfit at Ypres had one with spikes running through it," the constable holding it said. "Not something you'd want to meet on a dark night."

Definitely not. Not at Ypres or in the garden of Beckwith Place, either. "So that's the murder weapon?"

"So it seems," Tom qualified. "Where did you find it?"

The constable glanced at Sammy, who told him, grumpily, "This is a DS from Scotland Yard, name of Gardiner."

The constable arched his brows, but told Tom, willingly enough, "It was under the mattress in one of the bedrooms on the second floor."

"My brother's and cousin's room?" Francis shook his head. "Neither of them were old enough to have been in France."

Sammy eyed him. "You sure this isn't a souvenir of yours from the war, Astley?"

Francis's jaw clenched. "I'm positive, Entwistle. I still have the Webley. It's in the gun cabinet in the study. But that's all I brought home. If I never see one of these again, it won't be too soon."

Sammy smirked. "Gone soft?"

"I killed my share of men in the war," Francis said. "I've no desire to do it in peacetime."

His voice turned rough. "For God's sake, she was a tiny little thing. Just a slip of a girl, with a new baby to care for. What kind of man picks up a trench club and bashes in the head of someone like that?"

"Someone with nothing to lose and everything to gain," Sammy said.