Chapter 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Gah!”

Constable Collins flicked me a look over his shoulder. “I did tell you not to look.”

Yes, of course he had done. But I had been too curious to listen, and now I was paying for it.

“Is he dead?” I asked, and while I did a passable job of keeping my voice steady, I could hear the emotion threading through it. Shock, mostly, with a bit of horror.

Collins nodded. “I imagine he would have to be. I can’t think that anyone would have survived a blow to the head like that one.”

No, I couldn’t either. I turned on my heel and buried my face in Christopher’s shoulder. He peered into the room over my head and made a gagging noise.

We had both seen broken skulls before. There had been Freddie Montrose in London in June and then Abigail Dole at Beckwith Place in July. (And when I put it like that, I realize that I make it sound like we deal with an awful lot of dead bodies. I suppose we do, or at least we have done in the past few months. I’m not sure how that happened, exactly.)

At any rate, Dominic Rivers’s skull was clearly broken. There was an indentation on the back of his head, and quite a lot of blood, and then there were the shards of what had been a lovely art deco vase with an image of birds and flowers, that were scattered across his back and the carpet surrounding him.

I swallowed hard. “The vase came from the alcove over there.” I waved vaguely in the direction of the staircase, but without lifting my head from Christopher’s shoulder. “I noticed it yesterday.” It had been full of peacock feathers, of all ostentatious things.

“Someone from downstairs, then.” Christopher eyed the alcove from where we were standing. It was between Rivers’s room—and my room, and Wolfgang’s room, and for that matter Cecily’s room—and the staircase.

I nodded. “It would have to be. When he—” my eyes flickered to the corpse on the floor and away again, “came upstairs, everyone else was in the dining room. Except for you two and St George, you were outside. There’s only one staircase up to this level. Anyone who came this way, would have walked past the alcove and the vase.”

“Weapon of opportunity?” Christopher suggested.

“Most likely. There are better things to hand—I have a lovely chamber pot and slop jar in my room, in heavy earthenware; there’s even a handle to make swinging it easier—but someone would have to know that it was there in order to use it.”

“Safer to use something from the common rooms,” Christopher said. “That way it doesn’t point the finger at anyone in particular.”

I nodded. “Looks less premeditated, too. Here, they just grabbed the vase on their way past. If they had made a stop in one of the rooms to fetch the weapon, or brought it from downstairs, it would have been planned.”

“It’s still planned if the vase only came from here,” Collins said without looking up. He was squatting next to the body with a hand on Rivers’s wrist. “If it had been directly beside the door, maybe not. But someone picked it up and carried it to the door with them. That’s premeditation. If only a few seconds’ worth.”

Yes, of course it was. “He’s dead, I assume?”

“As a doornail,” Collins said, and pushed to his feet, “I’m afraid.”

“He turned his back to the door.”

The dead man’s feet were just inside the room, and he had fallen forward, towards the window.

Collins nodded. “Someone must have knocked, and he opened the door to them. Whoever it was, didn’t seem to be a threat, so he turned away.”

“He must have missed the vase,” Christopher said. I don’t think it was sarcasm, although sometimes he surprises me.

“It’s a rather large thing to miss,” I said, “isn’t it? I think I would have noticed if someone showed up outside my door holding a vase. Or at least I would have done if they were holding an empty one; if there were flowers in it, that might be a different matter.”

“No flowers in this one,” Collins said. “No water, either.”

I shook my head. “No, it was full of peacock feathers this morning. I noticed it when we came up to see whether Cecily wanted to play croquet.”

There was a moment of silence.

“That’s two murders in one day,” Collins put word to it, finally. “Or at least this makes it less likely that Miss Fletcher’s death was anything but a murder.”

I nodded. “He must have known something he didn’t know he knew. Or perhaps he knew it and just refused to tell me.”

“He said that he hadn’t provided Miss Fletcher with pennyroyal,” Collins said as he got to his feet and brushed his hands off. There was nothing on them, nothing I could see, but I imagined that the feeling of Dominic Rivers’s cold skin must be present.

“He did,” I agreed. “He also said that he wouldn’t tell me what he might have brought here for anyone else. Client confidentiality, he called it.”

But it was pretty obvious after this that Cecily hadn’t been the recipient of whatever substance Dom Rivers had brought to Dorset. She hadn’t been in any condition to kill him. Someone else must have done that.

“A pity,” Collins said succinctly. After a moment, he sighed. “I hadn’t even started to interview the guests properly. Not aside from you two and Lord St George. Now I suppose I’ll have to talk to them about this, as well.”

“You know we’re off the hook,” I told him. “We were down the road picking pennyroyal. You saw us walk away.”

He nodded. “The gathering in the dining room was breaking up when I came back into the house with Lord St George. He excused himself to find his fiancée, and I came upstairs to start searching the bedrooms. I decided to start with Miss Fletcher’s chamber.”

“So you were right across the hall when Mr. Rivers was killed,” I said.

I don’t know what I was thinking. The words simply fell out of my mouth. Christopher made a horrified little noise, although Constable Collins shook his head.

“I’m afraid not. It would have been easier had I been. But the door to Miss Fletcher’s room stayed open while I was in there. I would have heard anyone coming up and knocking on Mr. Rivers’s door. I would certainly have heard the impact of someone breaking a vase over his head.”

“Someone must have done it while we were still outside on the lawn, then,” Christopher said. “After Pippa had her conversation with Rivers in the foyer, but before you and Crispin came back inside.”

Collins nodded. “It’ll be a case of interviewing everyone present, and then afterwards comparing the statements to see whether we can determine where everyone was during that time. A whole lot of conversations and a whole lot of information.”

He sighed.

“It sounds boring,” I said sympathetically. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Miss Darling. Except…” He glanced from me to Christopher and back, “perhaps the two of you wouldn’t mind standing here in front of Mr. Rivers’s door until I come back? I’ll have to ring up the village again. I’m going to need help with this. I suppose I’ll have to interrupt the post mortem, too, to let doctor know we have another victim.”

“Of course we’ll stay here until you come back. Not to worry.”

Christopher nodded. Collins nodded back, and took himself off down the hallway towards the staircase. I could see him glance into the alcove on his way past. I hadn’t noticed on our own way up—too focused on Cecily’s open door—but I supposed the peacock feathers were now lying across the plinth where the vase had stood.

“How tall would you say someone would have to be,” I asked Christopher as Constable Collins disappeared through the baize door and down the stairs, “to get enough power behind this vase to kill someone with it?”

He looked from me to the remnants of the vase, still scattered in shards across the floor and Rivers’s back, and made a face. “I’m going to shut the door again.”

“I don’t mind if you do,” I told him, since I would prefer not to see the corpse out of the corner of my eye for the entire time we were standing here, too. “Just be certain not to destroy any of Collins’s fingerprints. The fingerprints on the doorknob that Constable Collins will want, I mean. Not his own. They oughtn’t to be there.”

“I know what you meant, Pippa.” He took his own handkerchief out, draped it over the knob, and pulled the door shut by tugging on the ends of the cloth. “And if the killer was holding the vase—in both hands, one has to assume—and knocked on the door, and Rivers opened it, there wouldn’t be the murderer’s fingerprints on the doorknob anyway. There’d only be Rivers’s, on the inside.”

He pulled the knob until the door slotted neatly into the frame.

“Oh, well done,” I told him. “You didn’t even have to touch it.”

“I have my uses.” He shook the handkerchief out after the door latch had clicked, and stuffed it back into his pocket. “Now, to answer your question. Rivers was about my height, wouldn’t you say? Not overly tall, but not short, either?”

“Shorter than Francis or Wolfgang,” I said, “and for that matter shorter than Geoffrey and the Honorable Reggie.”

Christopher nodded. “Shorter than Bilge Fortescue, too. Taller than all of the girls.”

“Not much shorter than Laetitia, or for that matter Lady Serena. Or the countess, I suppose. Not that I think Lady Euphemia was the one who whacked him.”

“Not even if he killed another guest in her home?” He didn’t wait for me to answer, since the question was fairly ridiculous to begin with. If Lady Euphemia Marsden was going to kill someone, I thought it was more likely to be either myself or Wolfgang. Constance’s Aunt Effie had made her disdain of Germans known in July at Beckwith Place. I was honestly surprised that she had allowed her daughter to invite us both.

“If we’re counting the Marsdens,” Christopher added, “Lord Maurice is too short.”

I nodded. “So is Constance. I could have done it, most likely, depending on how heavy the vase was, although I was with you when it happened.”

He didn’t respond, and I added. “Lady Serena is also tallish. And she’s suffered a miscarriage lately. Did I tell you? It came up over luncheon, while you were outside with Constable Collins.”

“That’s interesting,” Christopher said, “isn’t it?”

“Is it?”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with Cecily. But if she blames Dominic Rivers for it? If she took something—something she got from him—and it had an adverse effect? Do you suppose she might blame him enough to kill him?”

That was certainly a possibility, and one I hadn’t considered. “She’d be tall enough,” I said, “although perhaps not strong enough.”

“She rode out yesterday. She wouldn’t have done that if she weren’t recovered.”

Likely not. “Her husband would definitely be both tall enough and strong enough. And they were in their room when we walked past, so at least halfway here.”

Christopher nodded. “They definitely stay on the list, then. Who else is there?”

“Violet is about my height,” I said. “Olivia Barnsley is a bit shorter, if not quite as short as Constance. I don’t know whether she’d have been able to raise the vase high enough and bring it down with enough force to kill a man with it.”

“I’m quite certain Constance didn’t do,” Christopher said. “Not only does she not have it in her, but I’m sure she was with Francis.”

“And that gives him an alibi, too, hopefully. Not that he had a motive, either, but an alibi is an alibi.” And always a better thing to have than no motive. Means and opportunity trumps motive each time.

“Not to mention,” Christopher said, with the cynicism of someone who knows how it works, “that it is always possible to come up with a motive if you’re looking for one. Francis is—or was—a dope addict, and Rivers is—or was—a dope dealer. That’s motive enough.”

“For some people. But I’m sure you’re right, and Constance and Francis were together. Just as you and I were together, and Crispin and Laetitia were together.”

“Bilge Fortescue was probably with his wife. I haven’t seen them apart yet.”

I hadn’t either, although— “That doesn’t mean that one of them couldn’t have run up here and killed Rivers while the other stayed in their room downstairs, to make it sound as if they were both there.”

“They’d be in it together, then?”

“They’re married,” I said. “It was both of their baby that they lost.”

“Or so you assume.”

Well, yes. I had done. “I can make a case for Serena giving Bilge an alibi while he kills Rivers, or vice versa. I can’t make a case for one of them doing it with the other unaware. Not if they were both in their room when we came in thirty minutes later. There’s a finite window of opportunity when this could have happened. After Rivers went upstairs, while I was out on the lawn with the three of you, and before Collins went upstairs.”

“Not a long period of time at all,” Christopher said.

I shook my head. “And neither of us knows who was left in the dining room at that point. All we can do is speculate.”

“Collins will figure it out,” Christopher said and put an arm around me. I leaned my head against his shoulder. “A good thing we have an alibi.”

He nodded, chin rubbing against my hair. “A good thing Francis and Constance and Crispin do, too.”

I waited a moment, but when he didn’t say anything else, I said, “I notice you don’t mention Laetitia.”

“I don’t care about Laetitia,” Christopher said. “I might go so far as to say that it wouldn’t bother me if she had killed them both. She would go to prison and Crispin could break the engagement with impunity.”

That was a good point, and I told him so. “If we get lucky, perhaps she won’t have an alibi. She was in the dining room when I left, but that doesn’t mean she stayed there.”

She might have excused herself a minute or two after I had asked Dominic Rivers to accompany me into the hallway. She might have heard Rivers and me talk, and then part company in the foyer, and she might have followed him upstairs. As for why …

“If Cecily informed Laetitia that she was pregnant,” I said, “or better yet, if someone else informed her, so that it looked like Cecily was keeping it from her?—”

Christopher nodded. “She might well have concluded that it was Crispin’s baby, and that Cecily was here to throw a spanner into the engagement works. And if she did do…”

“She might have decided that Cecily needed to lose the baby.”

He flicked me a look. “You don’t think she would have tried to kill her?”

“I don’t see why she would have done,” I said, thinking it through, “when the miscarriage might be written off as an accident, and would accomplish the goal more safely than murder. If Cecily remained pregnant, Crispin might be forced to marry her, but if there was no baby, there would be no need for anything to change. Cecily didn’t have to die for that to happen.”

Christopher nodded. “And as you say, why do something drastic when something less drastic is just as likely to work?”

“Precisely. After all, if she got caught and went to prison, she would lose him that way, too.”

Christopher shook his head with a sigh. “I don’t understand it, Pippa. We look enough alike to be twins, or so you’ve told me more than once.”

“Crispin and you, do you mean?” I nodded. “I don’t think you’d find anyone who would disagree with that. When you first started at Eton, you told me that people got you mixed up all the time.”

Two young boys with the same surname and complimentary given names; was it any wonder that everyone thought they were brothers instead of cousins?

“I suppose as far as personality goes, we’re a bit different,” Christopher ventured.

“You’re much nicer than St George,” I agreed. “He’s a spoiled brat. You’re mostly all right. Although you have your moments, too.”

“I’m not denying it. I just wonder why it is that women fall all over themselves to get Crispin’s attention, but nobody seems to want me.”

I slanted him a look. “I don’t think it is that no one wants you, Christopher. I can remember quite a few times when I have had to take you away from some young lady or other hellbent on wooing an Astley. I’m sure both Lady Violet and Olivia Barnsley would be happy to have you.”

He made a face, and I added, “Yes, see? It’s not as if you want them, is it?”

He sighed. “I suppose not. Although if there was any fairness in the world, shouldn’t I have the same effect on men that Crispin has on women?”

“You seemed popular enough when we went to Rectors in June,” I said.

Christopher arched his brows. “What do you mean, when we went to Rectors? I was at Rectors for a ball. You and Crispin crashed. There was no we .”

I brushed the consideration aside. “You know what I mean. There were plenty of men there vying to dance with you.”

“That’s Kitty,” Christopher said.

“You are Kitty, Christopher.” Kitty Dupree, Christopher’s alter ego when he goes to drag balls, is a raven-haired beauty not unlike Laetitia Marsden in appearance, whose wig, makeup, and wardrobe lives in my bedroom in London. In the event we have visitors, it wouldn’t do to have anyone find any of those items in Christopher’s room.

“That’s different,” Christopher said.

It didn’t seem different to me, but I shrugged. “This seems a silly conversation to have with a murderer breathing down our necks. To get back to what we were talking about before this discussion about Crispin’s appeal derailed us?—”

He smirked. “Crispin’s appeal, was it?”

I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean. I’m not saying that I find him appealing; you’re the one who said that everyone else does.”

“And yet you’ll admit that you think I am attractive,” Christopher said.

“Of course you’re attractive, Christopher. You both are. But never mind that now. We were talking about Laetitia, and whether or not she might have induced Cecily’s miscarriage.”

“She’d certainly know where to find the pennyroyal,” Christopher said, “considering that it grows just a few minutes from her front door. And this is her house, so of everyone here, she would have had the easiest time getting the leaves brewed into tea.”

“It would have been easy,” I agreed. “Tell them that Cecily had asked for her help, and then, when Cecily died, they’d all keep mum because they thought it was an accident and they wouldn’t want the daughter of the house to be implicated.”

“That would be clever,” Christopher agreed. “Is she clever enough for that?”

“She was clever enough to get her hands on the Sutherland engagement ring.” Or clever enough to get the Sutherland engagement ring on her finger, rather.

“There was nothing clever about that, Pippa. It was your fault. Yours and Crispin’s.”

I shrugged, even as I stuck my bottom lip out. “It’s an ugly ring. She can keep it.”

“You don’t mean that,” Christopher said.

“Of course I do. It is ugly.”

“If she keeps the ring, she keeps Crispin. Unless you think she ought to do that, too?”

“Unless she killed Cecily,” I said, “she keeps him anyway.”

“We’d best get busy trying to prove she killed Cecily, then.”

I sighed. “When Constable Collins comes back upstairs and relieves us of duty, I suppose it couldn’t hurt for us to go and talk to some people.”

“Nellie, for instance?”

“We might as well start with Nellie,” I agreed. If Laetitia had used the Marsden Manor kitchen to brew pennyroyal tea, Nellie might know something about it.