Chapter 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I should have known what—or rather who—was coming. Of course I should have. I’m chagrined to say that the idea hadn’t even crossed my mind. When Tom appeared in the door to the drawing room, in a natty tweed suit and with his Homburg in hand, my mouth dropped open. Christopher’s eyes lit up, and I knew it was only the necessity for proper behavior that kept him in his seat instead of hurtling across the floor.

“Let me guess,” I said when I had got my voice back. “This is your doing?”

He removed his eyes from Tom to spare me a glance. “I rang him up, yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? We even discussed how we both wished Tom was here.” He didn’t answer, and I added, “Was it before or after Cecily died?”

“After,” Christopher said. “Although that wasn’t why. I simply thought he might want to know that someone had shot at us.”

Well, yes, of course he would want to know that. He has spent months ensuring that nothing bad happens to Christopher, including yanking him bodily out of questionable nightclubs before police raids begin. Police raids Tom only knows about because he’s a police officer. I’m certain there’s some sort of misconduct associated with that.

Not that I’m about to complain when it keeps Christopher safe, of course.

But yes, when I thought about it, it was not surprising at all that Tom seemed to have dropped whatever he was doing in London on a Saturday morning, to jump in the Crossley and motor to Dorset at breakneck speed. Of course he would do that if it was possible.

His first look once he stepped through the doorway had been for Christopher, of course. Tom’s hazel eyes had lingered for long enough to assure himself that nothing was wrong. I got the next look, and so did Wolfgang, surely only because he was sitting on the other side of Christopher.

With that done, Tom shifted his attention to the rest of the room. It was just in time for Perkins, who had been trailing behind, to appear in the doorway and announce, a little breathlessly, “Detective Sergeant Thomas Gardiner, my lord and lady.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then Aunt Roz flowed to her feet. “Thomas! How lovely to see you!”

It wasn’t her job to welcome guests to Marsden Manor, of course, but the entire Marsden family was glued to their seats, in various poses of shock and incredulity—or in justice to them, perhaps simple surprise. Geoffrey, who was sitting with Violet and Olivia and the Honorable Reggie, looked rather more worried than anything else, while Laetitia was staring daggers at Crispin, as if any of this was his fault.

“Come,” Aunt Roz added, tucking her hand through Tom’s arm. “Let me introduce you to our hosts, and then you can sit and have tea with Kit and Pippa.”

She tugged him across the floor towards the head table. I watched from the other side of the room as Lady Euphemia and her daughter dredged up whatever pleasantries they could—Lord Maurice is always pleasant, while Uncle Harold rarely is—and then Tom exchanged a few words with Crispin (I assume they were congratulations on the engagement, because Crispin looked panicked for a moment before good manners took over) and Aunt Roz brought Tom back around to us.

“I presume this is your doing, Christopher?” she asked sternly as she handed him over.

Christopher nodded. “I’m afraid so, Mum. Hullo, Tom.” He smiled politely, but the absolute delight in his eyes gave him away. I’m not sure how many of the others in the room could see it—when I flicked a glance at Wolfgang, he wasn’t even looking at Christopher—but I had no illusions about what his mother noticed. Aunt Roz isn’t stupid, and she knows her children.

“Behave yourself, Kit,” she told him. “We’re in public.”

He flicked her a glance. “Of course, Mother. When do I not?”

Aunt Roz muttered something, but didn’t actually respond. It was probably for the best. I don’t think she knows exactly what Christopher gets up to in London, but I also think she has a good idea that he gets up to something.

She took herself off to the table she shared with Uncle Herbert, Francis, and Constance, and I took over the hostess duties. “Good afternoon, Tom. It’s good to see you. Won’t you have a seat?”

“Don’t mind if I do, Pippa.” He gave me a broad smile and a wink as he put his hand on the back of the chair next to me, opposite from Christopher. “It’s good to see you, too. You as well, Natterdorff.”

He nodded politely to Wolfgang as he pulled out the chair and seated himself. Tom was one former soldier who didn’t seem to have a problem with Wolfgang’s nationality, anyway.

“Detective Sergeant Gardiner,” Wolfgang retorted politely. I thought I heard his heels click together under the table, but it could have been my imagination. “A pleasure to see you again. I trust everything is proceeding well with the criminals from last month?”

Tom nodded. “Oh, yes. All taken care of. They’re all three of them tucked away in Holloway and Hammersmith. They’re not getting out anytime soon.”

That was good to know, anyway. Of the murderers we had encountered over the past half a year or so—several of whom were now dead—Myrtle Cavanaugh was the one I would least like to encounter again. She had hated me when she went to prison, and would no doubt hate me whenever she was released. And she was definitely the type to hold a grudge. Hopefully she would be in there for long enough that I wouldn’t have to worry about retribution for a few decades, at least.

“I see the chaps from the mortuary finally got here,” Tom commented, just as a teacup and saucer, along with a pastry plate, dropped onto the tablecloth in front of him. “Thank you.”

He smiled up at Nellie.

“Goodness,” I said, “you get around, Nellie, don’t you? I didn’t think this was your job.”

It’s not normally the chambermaid’s duty to serve tea, and I didn’t think Lady Euphemia was the type to dispense with the usual customs.

Nellie dropped a quick curtsey. “Jenny wasn’t feeling well, Miss.”

I wrinkled my brow. “She’s all right, isn’t she?” Surely we wouldn’t have yet one more death on our hands?

Nellie seemed to sense what I was really asking, because she assured me, “She’s fine, Miss. Just tired. I offered to serve tea so she could put her feet up for a few minutes while the family is busy.”

Ah. Yes, Lady Euphemia probably wasn’t the type to look kindly upon any dilly-dallying of that nature from the staff, either.

“I won’t tell them anything,” I said, and Nellie beamed.

“Thank you, Miss.” She curtsied and withdrew. Wolfgang’s eyes lingered on her neat little figure for a moment, and so did Christopher’s, albeit with a far less appreciative look. So, for that matter, did Geoffrey’s, from across the room. Violet, who was sitting next to him, made a face as she lifted her teacup and took a sip.

I nudged Christopher’s ankle with the pointy toe of my shoe under the table, and he flushed and came back to himself. “Right you are.” He cleared his throat. “The mortuary van was actually here hours ago. This is the second time today.”

Tom’s brows arched. “You’d better tell me what’s going on, Kit. I seem to have missed some of the details.”

He sipped his tea calmly while we told him everything that had happened since last night. Cecily’s secret and her appearance in the bathroom, followed by her condition this morning when I went to wake her, and then the gunshot—which Tom already knew about.

After that there was Cecily’s death and my conversation with Dominic Rivers, the pennyroyal, poison and plant, and finally Rivers’s murder.

Tom’s face twisted in something that was half pity and half chagrin. “There goes our case.”

Scotland Yard’s case against the dope dealer, I assumed. I knew they had been working on one for the past few months, ever since Dominic Rivers landed on their watch list after his involvement in the Frederick Montrose murder case.

“It would be difficult to arrest someone who’s dead,” I agreed as I lifted my teacup daintily and took a sip.

Tom slanted me a look. “Difficult to get information out of him, too.”

Yes, of course. “We assume that his presence here was prompted by someone who wanted a substance that would either kill Cecily outright, or if not that, at least get rid of her problem for her.”

Tom nodded. “That makes sense. Abortion is illegal, but not so illegal that someone with the right connections can’t get his hands on something to deal with it.”

“Not so illegal that someone couldn’t walk down the road and pick a handful of pennyroyal, either.”

He shook his head. “No, of course not. There are always going to be ways and means.” He put his cup in the saucer with a decisive click. “I don’t suppose you have any idea who that person, or persons, might be?”

So he had already come to the conclusion, as had I, that there might be more than one of them.

“We have ideas,” I said, “of course. Lots of them. But no proof. Nor any real indication of who is actually guilty.”

“Tell me what you think,” Tom said, and included Christopher in the look he gave me. “You’re both smart young people, and you’ve been through this a few times now. I’d be interested to know what you think.”

“Are you going to work with the local constabulary?” I asked. “I thought you were here because Christopher rang you up.”

“I am here because Kit rang me up,” Tom said. “But as I’m here, I ought to offer my services in an unofficial way, don’t you think?”

“I think Constable Collins would be delighted to have you,” I told him, “even unofficially. We were just talking about you earlier. You remember Collins, don’t you? From the case at the Dower House?”

He nodded. “Of course I do. He was very helpful back in May.”

“Well, he’s upstairs,” I said. “Last time I saw him, he was in Dominic Rivers’s room, but now that the doctor and the mortuary van are here to take away the body, I imagine he’ll be back to searching the upstairs rooms shortly.”

“Searching the rooms?”

It was Wolfgang who asked, and I turned to him. “Yes. They always do, when someone’s dead. He went through mine earlier.”

Wolfgang looked concerned, and I added, reassuringly, “You have nothing to worry about. We all know that you didn’t even know any of these people before you came here yesterday. Did you?”

He shook his head, and I added, “See? Whoever killed them both—and it had to be the same person, don’t you think, Tom? Or the same people, at any rate?”

Tom shook his head. “I’m not going to speculate, Pippa.”

I nodded. “Well, if someone invited Rivers here so he could bring something with him that would deal with Cecily’s pregnancy, that someone had to have known about the pregnancy before yesterday. And had to have known Rivers and what his business was before yesterday, as well. So Wolfgang is out, wouldn’t you say?”

Tom eyed Wolfgang in silence for a moment. Not for long enough that the latter began to squirm, but I could tell it was a near thing.

“I would say so,” Tom said eventually, after what must have felt to Wolfgang like a small eternity, but which was probably no more than a few seconds. “What happened to Miss Fletcher must have been planned, at least far enough in advance that the substance, whether it came from Mr. Rivers or the ditch down the road, was obtained and, in the case of the leaves, steeped. That might have been done in an hour or two, if whoever went picking had the freedom to come and go as they pleased, but if it was Rivers who procured the substance, that part had to be planned at least a few days in advance.”

“Or both,” I said. Tom arched his brows at me, and I added, “We have a theory?—”

“Hers,” Christopher shot in, and Tom’s lips twitched. I gave them both a crushing look before I continued.

“—that it might not have been a murder, but an accidental overdose. If Cecily herself took a dose, or someone gave her one, and then someone else came along and gave her another?—”

Tom nodded. “It might not have been premeditated murder, you mean. Simply manslaughter.”

“Something like that.”

“Still an arrestable offense,” Tom said and pushed his chair away from the table. “If young Mr. Rivers hadn’t already been dead, I would have had to arrest him under the Offences Against the Person Act , Section 59, whether Miss Fletcher was alive or not.”

I made a face, since I knew exactly what he was talking about. Dominic Rivers had told me about it earlier, before he headed up the stairs to the second floor and his doom.

Tom stood. “As nice as it was to see you both—” His eyes lingered on Christopher for a long second, before his attention flicked over to Wolfgang and he changed it to, “—all three of you, I ought to make myself useful. Collins is upstairs, you said?”

“On the second floor last I saw him,” I said. “That’s where most of us were sleeping. Christopher was on the first floor with the family—Constance and Francis, too; cousins to the bride and groom respectively, you know—but the rest of us plebeians were on the top floor.”

“Miss Fletcher? Rivers?”

I nodded. “Both of them, along with Violet and Olivia, Wolfgang and I, and the Honorable Reginald Fish, who shared with Rivers. He’s the chap sitting with Geoffrey Marsden and the two girls.”

Tom eyed the Honorable Reggie for a moment before he asked, “Is that Bilge Fortescue over there?”

“Oh.” I had forgotten about the Fortescues again. “Yes. They’re on the first floor, for some reason. I don’t think either of them is related to either Laetitia or Crispin, but the bigger rooms are there, and I suppose they rated one. We’re all stuffed into the smaller rooms up above.”

“I remember Bilge,” Tom said, and of course he did. He had been at Eton two years behind Francis and three above Christopher and Crispin. He would have dealt with William Fortescue for at least a couple of those years.

“I haven’t gotten to know him,” I answered, “although his wife used her wiles on Christopher earlier.”

Tom arched his brows. “Is that so?”

He glanced at Christopher, who shook his head. “Don’t be silly, Pippa. She wanted an arm to cling to on her way down the stairs, that’s all.”

“And to ask you questions about what was going on upstairs,” I answered.

Christopher nodded. “That as well, I suppose.”

He didn’t look at me. He and Tom were sharing some form of silent communication that made Christopher’s cheeks turn pink and Tom’s lips twitch. When they noticed me notice, they stopped, and Tom cleared his throat. “I’ll just be going, then.”

“Take care, Tom,” Christopher said, and I added, “Let us know if you discover anything exciting, would you? It’s boring, sitting here waiting for something to happen.”

Tom hid another smile—this one at my expense, I assumed—and a flicker of a look at Wolfgang. I grimaced. I hadn’t intended to make it sound like he was boring, but the truth was, I would much rather be upstairs trying to figure out who had killed Cecily Fletcher and Dominic Rivers, than be sitting here at the tea table, behaving like a perfect lady while entertaining a potential suitor.

Tom made his way towards the door, and I turned to Wolfgang, determined to make up for my faux pas . “You must think we’re all ghouls, with our interest in dead bodies.”

“Last month was exciting,” Wolfgang said blandly. “I’m happy the perpetrators are behind bars, however. I would hate for anything bad to happen.”

Yes, so would I. “I’m mostly worried about Myrtle,” I confessed. “Sid isn’t a bad bloke, just weak, and I think the same is true for Ruth. She just fell in with the wrong crowd, or more accurately, with Myrtle.”

After a second, I added, “Not that they don’t deserve to rot in prison for a long time for what they did, of course. But it was Myrtle who came up with the plan and talked Ruth into executing it with her. And she’d execute me too, if she could. Although I don’t imagine that she’ll get the chance, do you?”

I had been chatting with Wolfgang, but it was Christopher who shook his head. “Not likely, Pippa. There’s too much evidence and far too much cold-bloodedness there to let her off. And after she has served her term at Holloway, she’ll be deported back to America, I’d think. They deported Billy Chang after he had served his sentence.”

I nodded. “That’s what I think, too, but I’m happy to have it confirmed. Having her escorted to the docks and put on a boat instead of being set free to roam after her sentence would be a load off my mind.”

“Who is this Chang?” Wolfgang wanted to know, and I turned back to him.

“I suppose you haven’t been in England long enough to hear about him, have you? Billy Chang was a dope dealer in Limehouse in the early 1920s. They arrested him in 1924, and kept him in prison until 1925, and then he was deported. Back to China, supposedly, but?—”

“—rumor has it that he’s running a nightclub on the French Riviera now,” Christopher said gleefully. And added, “That’s from the American gutter press, however, so I don’t know how reliable it is.”

Not very, I imagined. “He’s not in England anymore, at any rate. Let’s hope that the same thing happens to Myrtle Cavanaugh.”

“Hear, hear.” Christopher raised his teacup. I clinked mine against it. A little belatedly, Wolfgang lifted his cup, too, and I gave that the same treatment. We all took a sip. The tea was getting cold, and I put it down with a grimace. Across the room, Crispin was scowling our way, and I scowled back, until Christopher nudged me. “Keep your attention over here, Pippa. Laetitia doesn’t like you any better than Myrtle does, and you don’t want to give her any excuse to take a potshot at you.”

“Like someone did this morning, do you mean?” I eyed him. “You don’t think it was Laetitia, do you?”

“She was out there in the woods,” Christopher said, “with a gun, and she would dearly love to get rid of you. But I imagine that Crispin was attached to her side, and he wouldn’t have put up with that, so chances are he would have said something to you had that been the case.”

“Unless she threatened him into silence,” I said.

“And how would she have managed that, do you suppose?”

“I’m sure I have no idea,” I said. I wouldn’t have had the first inkling how to go about it, but then I wasn’t engaged to Crispin, nor had I ever been intimate with him. “Perhaps she invoked Uncle Harold?”

Christopher snorted. “His Grace might want this marriage to work, certainly above and beyond anyone Crispin wants to marry, but I can’t imagine him condoning attempted murder. Can you?”

“I suspected Uncle Harold of Abigail’s murder two months ago,” I said, “so I suppose I can. Besides, it’s me, isn’t it? We both know that he doesn’t like me. Aunt Charlotte didn’t, either.”

Christopher murmured something indistinguishable that nonetheless wasn’t a denial, and I added, “Although as far as Abigail is concerned, she was obviously much more of a threat to Uncle Harold’s plans for Crispin than I am.”

Christopher gave me a look, one that lasted a second or two too long, before he told me, “She was no threat to Uncle Harold’s plans for Crispin at all. Elizabeth wasn’t Crispin’s child.”

“Of course. But we didn’t know that at the time. And for as long as we didn’t, Uncle Harold had reason to want her dead. You must admit that little Bess looked enough like both of you to be yours.”

Christopher shrugged, but before he could say anything to confirm or deny my assertion—and there was no way he could have denied it: the baby had been a perfect Astley, from her fair hair to her blue eyes and that little cupid’s bow mouth—a choked cry came from the other side of the room and stopped all our conversations dead. I looked up in time to see Lady Violet Cummings stumble to her feet, with enough force to knock her chair over backwards.