Chapter 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

When Constable Collins came to relieve us of duty, it wasn’t with immediate effect, however. Before he allowed us to go, he insisted on having me there while he gave a quick look through my room, since he hadn’t had a chance to do it so far.

“It’s not because I suspect you of anything, Miss Darling,” he assured me as he dug through my unmentionables; I think his complexion turned pink, but he had his back to me, so all I had to go by were the tips of his ears and what little skin I could see between his collar and the dark hair. “We all three know that the two of you were with me when it’s likely that Mr. Rivers was killed. But in thoroughness, I ought to look.”

“Of course you ought,” I said, making myself comfortable on the edge of the bed while I waited. Christopher, meanwhile, leaned against the wall just inside the door. “I don’t mind at all. There’s nothing here that I’m worried about anyone seeing.”

“Tell me, Collins,” Christopher said as Collins withdrew his hands from my drawer and pushed it shut with a relieved breath, “what is happening downstairs?”

“Nothing much, Mr. Astley,” Collins answered, and pulled open the doors to the wardrobe. I had brought two evening frocks this weekend—the ivory from last night, plus an apple green that I adored, in spite of the fact that Crispin had informed me that it made me look like a Bramley. There was also a peachy-pink afternoon frock with a pleated skirt (it had been intended for today, but due to the excitement of this morning I was still wearing the skirt and blouse I had put on for breakfast), a pair of blue satin pyjamas, a matching dressing gown, and another blouse to exchange for the one I was currently wearing. They were all hanging where I had placed them, neatly side by side in the wardrobe. Below stood my two pairs of evening shoes and one pair of slippers—the footwear I had brought in addition to the brogues on my feet.

Collins made short process of sifting through it all before he shut the doors and turned back around to finish answering Christopher’s question. “The drinking has started, although given what this day has brought so far—two deaths and a murder investigation—I’m not certain I can blame anyone for that. I can’t imagine it’s what Miss Laetitia had planned for her engagement party.”

Probably not, and for a moment I felt almost sorry for her. But then I remembered whose ring was weighing down her finger, and how she might have killed Cecily to keep it, and I sniffed instead. “No more than she deserves, if you ask me.”

Besides, there had been plenty of alcohol last night, so it wasn’t at all certain that the drinking had anything at all to do with the tragedies.

“Now, now, Pippa,” Christopher admonished, but his voice was uneven with suppressed laughter.

Collins glanced at me but didn’t comment. “Your German friend appeared to be involved in an exchange with your cousin—” His eyes flickered to Christopher.

“Oh, dear,” I said. “Francis, I suppose, not Crispin?”

“The elder cousin,” Collins said. “Not Miss Laetitia’s fiancé. And I think your parents may have arrived.”

Christopher’s brows rose. “My parents?”

“I don’t know,” Collins said. “I’ve never met them. But there was a middle-aged man with fair hair and a lady with a brown bob.”

That definitely sounded like Uncle Herbert and Aunt Roz. “It’s a shame they arrived in the middle of all this mess,” I commented, and Christopher nodded.

“I imagine Uncle Harold isn’t far behind, then, and he’ll be the cherry on the cake.”

I winced. He probably would be, at that.

“Your parents didn’t behave badly,” Collins said. “In fact, your mother took the German gentleman off somewhere to look for a plaster.”

A plaster? “What did Francis do to him?”

“Nothing of note,” Collins said. “A bit of fisticuffs. Scraped knuckles. It sounded more like an excuse than anything else.”

Of course. Aunt Roz would want to know what was going on between Wolfgang and Francis, and since someone had undoubtedly brought me up—Crispin, at a guess—she would want to plumb those depths, too, and learn what the connection was.

“We should go downstairs and greet them,” I told Christopher, who nodded.

“Are we done up here, Constable?”

“Go on, then,” Collins told him. “I have to stay with the crime scene, but you two may feel free to move around. We’ll get a signed statement from you at some point.”

“We’ll be here.” I tugged Christopher after me into the hallway. “Come along, Christopher. Don’t dawdle.”

“Afraid of what your boyfriend is telling Mum?” Christopher wanted to know, but he tripped along behind me.

I flicked him a look over my shoulder. “He’s not my boyfriend, Christopher. But yes, I admit that I am, a little bit.”

I was also worried about Aunt Roz’s and Uncle Herbert’s reactions to the situation in general. They’re less used to hobnobbing with dead bodies and murderers than Christopher and I.

“They had to deal with the trouble at Beckwith Place in July,” Christopher reminded me as we started down the staircase to the first floor, “as well as at Sutherland Hall in late April.”

“All the more reason for them not to have to worry this time.”

“I don’t see how we can keep them from worrying,” Christopher said, “but if you have a plan, I’m all ears.”

I didn’t, more’s the pity. “We should have headed them off while we had the chance.”

“When did we have the chance?” Christopher wanted to know. “It didn’t cross my mind to ring them up until well after Cecily had died, and by then, I assumed it was already too late to catch them at home.”

I made a face. “You’re probably right about that.”

“Of course I’m right. Besides, I’m happy they’re here. Constance can use someone’s help with Francis. Someone who isn’t you or me. We’re both busy, and besides, neither of us is in Francis’s good graces at the moment.”

We clattered onto the first floor landing and rounded the corner of the staircase only to find ourselves stumbling into the Fortescues coming out of their room.

Or on a second look, it was only Lady Serena, not Bilge. If he had been there, he had either stayed behind, or headed down first. She shut the door behind her with a rather decisive click, so perhaps he was still inside and she wanted to make certain we wouldn’t bother him. As if it had even crossed my mind to do such a thing.

“Pardon me.” I skidded to a stop just before I literally ran into her.

Serena gave me a sneer worthy of Crispin, and a, “Watch where you’re going,” before she looked beyond me and graced Christopher with a warm smile. “Good afternoon, Mr. Astley.”

“Lady Serena.” Christopher managed a half-bow as he pulled himself up and did his best to look grown up and responsible.

“Are you going downstairs, by chance? Perhaps you wouldn’t mind escorting me?”

I snorted, albeit softly. But really, did she need help navigating the single flight of stairs? She was only a few years older than we were, and not expecting, so it wasn’t as if her center of gravity was upset.

Christopher, of course, said that he would be delighted. It’s all you can do in that sort of situation. Saying no would have been unforgivably rude.

I took a step towards the staircase. “I’ll leave you two to it, and run ahead.”

Christopher nodded and presented his elbow for Lady Serena to latch onto. “Tell Mum and Dad I’m on my way.”

“Of course.” I scurried down the hall towards the main staircase, and towards the voices I could hear from downstairs. Behind me, I heard Lady Serena thank Christopher for the courtesy as she latched onto his arm and they followed me, at a much more sedate pace. Just as I reached the top of the staircase, I heard her voice again, inquiring about what had been going on upstairs to prompt Constable Collins’s many comings and goings.

It sounded like a fishing expedition, a quest for information, and for a moment I considered whether I ought to stop Christopher from telling her anything. But then I reasoned that if she (or her husband) had killed Dominic Rivers, she already knew that he was dead. Telling her wouldn’t give her information she didn’t have already. And if she hadn’t known, she’d find out as soon as the mortuary van came back and the other constables started swarming. There was no point in not letting her know the bare facts, so I left Christopher with the task of explaining.

I put on a burst of speed and exited the staircase on the ground floor just as the two of them entered it on the floor above. And then I was gone, down the hallway towards the drawing room and Aunt Roslyn’s voice.

“Auntie!”

“Pippa, my dear.” She caught me in an embrace that went on longer than it would have normally done, because once she was holding me, I found myself disinclined to pulling away. I had held myself together reasonably well so far today, I believed, through finding Cecily bleeding, to being shot at, and Cecily breathing her last, and sparring with Dominic Rivers, and walking with Christopher, and then finding Rivers’s dead body… and now someone had taken some of my weight and I didn’t want to let go and have to stand on my own.

Of course I had to eventually. There were stares and murmurs all around the room, and then Christopher entered, gallantly bowing to Lady Serena as she relinquished his arm, and as he came towards us, Aunt Roz softened the arms that had held me tightly, and allowed me to ease away as she turned toward her youngest son. “Christopher.”

She gave him a quick up-and-down look, perhaps to see whether he was in the same state I was in.

“Hullo, Mother.” He leaned in and gave her a peck on the cheek before turning his eyes to the rest of the room. “Where is Father? And I see you brought Uncle Harold.”

I saw that, too, now that I took the time to look around. The Duke of Sutherland was standing on the opposite side of the room, next to his son and heir, and I got the impression that he was reading him the riot act, because Crispin’s bottom lip was protruding and he was scowling at the floor.

“What did he do now?” I wanted to know.

Aunt Roz shook her head. “Who knows? It seems to be a perpetual state with the two of them.”

“And Uncle Herbert?” I asked, since Christopher was practically twitching to have his earlier question answered.

Aunt Roz waved a negligent hand. “Off somewhere with Francis. What on earth has been going on here to get him into such a state, Pippa?”

The real reason for the state, as far as I knew, was standing a few feet away. Wolfgang had been speaking to Aunt Roz when I came running through the door—or perhaps it had been vice versa—but he had removed himself to a polite distance when I had stumbled into my aunt’s arms and stayed there. Now he cleared his throat, but didn’t actually say anything.

I didn’t, either. Not about that. “We’ve had two murders today,” I told Aunt Roz instead, “and someone shot at us this morning.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Again?”

Wolfgang arched his brows in surprise, and now that I thought about it, I realized that I hadn’t mentioned that previous incident to him. It had been the least exciting part of that particular weekend, and to be honest, I had mostly forgotten about it. The scar on my arm was still there, but fading, and I really only thought about it when I was putting on a sleeveless gown and happened to glance in the mirror and notice it.

“I have no idea who they were trying to take out,” I told Aunt Roz, “and that’s if it wasn’t just an accidental shot from someone going for a partridge in the woods. I’m sure they were warned not to shoot in the direction of the house?—”

Wolfgang nodded.

“—but it’s easy to lose a sense of direction in the woods. The bullet didn’t hit any of us. But Constable Collins collected it and put it with the rest of the evidence. Just in case it turns out to be relevant.”

Aunt Roz tilted her head. “Why would it have anything to do with the other matter?”

“Pippa looks a bit like Cecily Fletcher did,” Christopher explained, and Aunt Roz’s eyebrows rose. For some reason, she glanced over at Uncle Harold and Crispin. Uncle Harold had stopped haranguing his son, and was standing over him looking stern. Crispin still looked sulky, more like the thwarted eleven-year-old I remembered than a man ready to get married.

“We thought that someone might have believed the poison had failed,” Christopher said, “and that person decided to take a more active approach in getting rid of her.”

“But it wasn’t her at all.”

Christopher and I both shook our heads. “She was lying upstairs with Constance,” I said, “and I was the one on the lawn. But I suppose, if someone was in the trees and not able to see very well, it might have been an easy mistake to make.”

Aunt Roz nodded. “You’re all right, at any rate—all four of you—and I’m certain the police will get to the bottom of it.”

I hoped so. I didn’t really think that anyone was out to get me—not this time—but the bullet had still come uncomfortably close. And you’re just as dead either way, aren’t you? Whether it’s a case of mistaken identity or not, doesn’t matter to the final outcome.

Wolfgang cleared his throat. “Are you all right, Philippa?”

“I’m fine,” I told him. “Just another dead body.”

He nodded. “The young Polizist came down and told us. It was the drug dealer, nein ?”

“ Ja ,” I said. “I mean, yes. It was. Dominic Rivers. Someone conked him over the head with a vase.”

Wolfgang’s face twitched. “Barbaric.”

What had happened to Cecily was a lot more barbaric, but it wasn’t a quarrel I wanted to have. They were both dead, and most likely by the same hand, so whoever had done it, was certainly a horrible person either way.

“You stayed in the dining room after I left,” I said, and Wolfgang nodded.

“For a short time. The gathering broke up quickly.”

Of course. First Christopher had gone to confer with Constable Collins, then Crispin had swept out in a fury, and then I had left and taken Dom Rivers with me. Any and all of those things would have been cause for curiosity, and I could well imagine how some people would have wanted to put their heads together to gossip, while others would have wanted to go off on their own to lick their wounds.

Case in point— “What happened to Laetitia?”

“Our hostess? She left shortly after you did.”

Looking for Crispin, no doubt. I hadn’t seen her while I’d been standing in the foyer with Rivers, so perhaps she had taken the servants’ staircase up to the first floor—up to Crispin’s bedchamber—and instead, he had been on the lawn with Christopher and Constable Collins.

Or perhaps she had waited out of sight until Rivers and I had parted ways, and then she had followed him up to his room and whacked him over the head because?—

Well, no. That didn’t make any sense. If Laetitia had poisoned Cecily with pennyroyal, she would have picked the pennyroyal herself. Christopher and I had proven that she could have done so. So she would have had no reason to murder Rivers.

Unless she had gotten the pennyroyal from Rivers, and someone else had picked the plant and made the tea.

And I probably ought to get over my propensity to see Laetitia in the role of any murderer in our vicinity. She hadn’t been guilty either of the other times I had suspected her, so she probably wasn’t guilty this time, either.

“Who else?” I asked.

Wolfgang made a show of thinking about it. “The married couple left next. Up to their room for some time alone, I suspect. They’ve been attached at the hip ever since they got here.”

“Did you see them in the woods this morning? Bilge mentioned how good a shot his wife is.”

“I saw them,” Wolfgang said, “occasionally. But there were trees, and we were, none of us, in sight of the others at all times.”

No, of course not. And if he had seen either of them shoot in the direction of the house, surely he would have mentioned it after hearing about what had happened earlier.

“The two young ladies left the dining room together,” Wolfgang continued. “They looked very shaken. Lord Geoffrey suggested that those of us who were left have a brandy in the drawing room, but your cousin and his fiancée withdrew. So did the unattached young man. I suspect he ran after the two young ladies. He spent most of last night with one of them.”

The Honorable Reggie, of course. He had spent the evening with Olivia Barnsley, I thought.

“And you and Geoffrey came in here,” I said.

Wolfgang nodded. “We had a pleasant conversation about estate management. Although his father seems to be in good health, so he doesn’t have to worry about taking the reins anytime soon.”

He sounded wistful.

“And you do?” I asked.

He looked at me for a moment. “My father is gone. I’m my grandfather’s heir, and he’s an old man. The time will come, most likely sooner than I’d like, when I will have to stop living the bachelor life and do my duty.”

“Of course.” By duty, he no doubt meant what Uncle Harold had been pushing Crispin towards all this time: stop playing the field and find a wife. Beget an heir (and a spare) and settle down to married life. Titled landowners were the same in every country, it seemed.

Aunt Roz cleared her throat. “I would like to see Constance, Pippa. Would you help me find her?”

“Of course.” I gave Wolfgang an apologetic smile. “Excuse me, please.”

He clicked his heels together and bowed, to Aunt Roz first, and then me. “Will I see you later?”

“I imagine I’ll be back down again before too long,” I told him, and flicked another glance across the room. “Go say hello to your uncle, Christopher. St George looks like he could use an intervention.”

Christopher nodded. “Be careful wandering around, you two. There’s a murderer about.”

“Nobody is interested in murdering me ,” Aunt Roz said stoutly and tucked her hand through my arm. “Come along, Pippa. Good afternoon, Graf von Natterdorff.”

She gave Wolfgang a nicely calculated inclination of her head before drawing me away. I directed a last apologetic smile across my shoulder at him before allowing myself to be drawn.

I assumed I was in for a talking to, of course, and I wasn’t surprised at the direction it took. Aunt Roz waited until we were outside the drawing room, and in the relative privacy of the hallway, but then she said blandly, “Your German friend is charming, Pippa.”

“Thank you,” was the automatic rejoinder, but I didn’t feel quite comfortable using it—it wasn’t as if I could take any of the credit for it, after all—so I merely muttered something noncommittal.

“It might have been nice if you had mentioned his existence before now, however,” my aunt continued pointedly. “Let alone the fact that he would be here this weekend.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, as humbly as I could manage. “Part of me thought you knew. Crispin certainly did, and I thought he might have mentioned something. Or Christopher, of course.”

“No,” Aunt Roz said ominously, and I felt rather bad for having thrown them both under the bus this way. They were in for a talking to of their own, I reckoned.

“I actually didn’t plan to go,” I said apologetically. “The last thing I want, is to watch Laetitia Marsden swanning about with the Sutherland diamond ring on her finger.”

Aunt Roz nodded, with a bit more sympathy than was strictly necessary. It wasn’t as if I was that put out.

“But then Wolfgang said he had been invited, and I didn’t want him to have to be here on his own, and Christopher was going, and wanted me to go, and so I changed my mind and came along after all.”

“And that’s all understandable,” Aunt Roz said, as we reached the bottom of the main staircase and started up, “but what I want to know, Pippa, is why we’re the last to know of his existence?”

“We didn’t want to mention it in front of Francis,” I said. “We didn’t think he would take it well.”

Aunt Roz eyed me. “And you didn’t think a prior warning might have been better than having him show up here and come face to face with the enemy?”

“He’s not the enemy,” I said irritably. “I’m sorry that Francis is upset. Truly. And I understand why he would be. But the War has been over for almost eight years now. And I’m a bit German myself. Francis doesn’t seem to have a problem with that.”

“You weren’t in the trenches shooting at him,” Aunt Roz said.

“Neither was Wolfgang. He’s too young.”

Aunt Roz gave me a beady look, and I repeated it, defensively. “He wasn’t! I believe he’s around twenty-six or so. Too young for conscription.”

“That’s not what I meant, Pippa,” Aunt Roz said, “and you know it. You being half German, and your male friend being all the way German are two very different things. Besides, you know as well as I do that Francis loves you.”

Of course I knew that, and very well, too. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Perhaps we should have said something, and then Francis could have stayed home and not had to deal with Wolfgang. Although I don’t know how that might have worked, honestly, since Constance is Laetitia’s cousin and was expected to be here in her own right, not just as Francis’s fiancée. I don’t think St George would have minded if Francis hadn’t shown up—he doesn’t like Wolfgang, either; St George, I mean?—”

“You don’t say?” Aunt Roz said dryly, and I gave her a look, but decided to continue with my sentence instead of derailing myself to inquire what she had meant.

“—but I’m sure Laetitia would have been horribly offended had Constance not been here, and I can’t imagine that Francis would have let Constance make the trip on her own, Germans or no Germans?—”

“No, I can’t imagine so,” Aunt Roz agreed. “So Crispin doesn’t like your friend, does he? I can’t imagine why. He’s quite well-mannered, and seems to go out of his way to be pleasant.”

That had always been my impression, too. Of course, we were talking about Crispin here, who has no concept of going out of his way to be anything but horrible.

“They took against one another pretty thoroughly from the moment they met,” I said. “One might have expected them to get along like a house on fire—two handsome, wealthy, titled, arrogant, young gentlemen; Crispin has plenty of friends just like that, and he doesn’t seem to mind them at all—but they took one look at one another and started bristling like two tomcats in an alley…”

“Imagine that.” Aunt Roz glanced around the first floor landing. I think she may have been attempting to hide a smile, although she couldn’t quite manage. “Where is Constance’s room?”

“Down there.” I pointed. “Primrose.”

“Lovely. We’re in Columbine, down at the end.” She started walking towards Primrose.

“I’m in Wisteria upstairs,” I said. “Christopher and Francis share Bluebell.” I indicated the door.

Aunt Roz glanced at it in passing. “Quaint.”

“We just have Pippa’s room and Christopher’s room in the flat.”

Aunt Roz nodded. “At home, as well. But of course you know that.”

Of course I did. I had spent eleven years in a room at Beckwith Place. One with no name beyond Pippa’s room.

Aunt Roz stopped outside the door to Primrose and applied her knuckles to the wood. “Constance? It’s Roslyn, dear. Are you in there?”