Chapter 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Me?” He looked surprised. “Am I really?”

I nodded. “I think you are. It would have been an elaborate plot to get rid of Crispin, I imagine.”

Uncle Harold fidgeted on his chair, as if this line of discussion made him uncomfortable, but he didn’t say anything, so I went on, spinning mad webs of intrigue with no basis in reality. If Christopher wanted to know who the least likely suspect was, I’d oblige. It was something to talk about, and more entertaining than going over the actual facts of the case yet again.

“You would have waited until Cecily was ginned to the eyebrows,” I said, “I imagine, and then you would have convinced her that you were your cousin, at a time when she was too sozzled to know better. But now that she’s with child, you can’t have anyone find out what you did, so you had to kill her.”

“And how does this get rid of Crispin?”

“You frame him for her murder,” I said, “obviously. You contacted Rivers, again pretending to be St George, and invited him here. Then, when he arrived, you went to him as yourself, told him that Crispin had sent you to fetch the stuff and pay for it, since Laetitia wouldn’t appreciate Crispin doing it—I don’t think Rivers would quibble over that, do you? He knows who you are and that you and St George are close—and then you poured the pennyroyal into one of Cecily’s drinks last night and waited for her to die. Perhaps you’d get lucky and it would happen while Crispin was in her room. Wouldn’t that be lovely?”

Christopher furrowed his brows. “I think we should all be grateful that you’re not with Scotland Yard, Pippa. That’s frightfully convincing.”

I shook my head. “Don’t be silly, Christopher. Tom knows better than to think you’d do any such thing. Besides, what would be the purpose of it? You won’t actually gain anything by getting your cousin arrested. In a novel, I could ascribe you some sort of motive—you were pathologically jealous, or you knew some sort of secret that would enable you to inherit if Crispin were out of the way?—”

All three of them winced, and I added, “but in real life, you’re not next in the succession. You’d have to deal with your father and your brother first, and I know you wouldn’t harm either of them. Nor would you harm St George. You love him, mad as that is.”

Christopher nodded.

“So who do you think the least likely suspect is?” I asked. Everyone looked a bit uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation, and I thought I might change the subject away from the idea that Christopher would do anything to Crispin for the inheritance. Mentioning it, even as a joke, seemed to have bothered all three of them.

“Not you,” Christopher said. “You’re much too bloodthirsty.”

“Oh, yes. I’m probably close to the top of the list, actually. Or I would be, were this a novel and you could ascribe me motives I don’t actually have.”

“Anyone who claims to abhor my cousin as often as you do, is certainly worthy of a second look,” Christopher nodded, smirking. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Uncle Herbert smothered a chuckle. Uncle Harold gave me a gimlet stare. I rolled my eyes. “Shakespeare, Christopher? Really?”

“I was going to say Wolfgang,” Christopher continued without responding to my complaint. “Excepting you, me, and Crispin, he has never met any of these people before. In a novel, he would turn out to be the guilty party for certain.”

“Make your case, then,” I invited, and Christopher drew a breath.

“He’s young, handsome, and titled. He lives in London, or at least he spends a lot of his time there.”

I nodded. We had no idea where Wolfgang lived, not really. I thought he had lodgings at the Savoy, since we had seen him there on multiple occasions, not always by design, but I had never actually asked.

“He might have known Cecily and Violet. He might have gotten Cecily with child. He might have known Rivers. They’re all based in London. And Rivers gets—or got—his dope from somewhere. Perhaps Wolfgang is engaged in the dope trade. He must be doing something with his time, and I don’t know what it is. Do you?”

I didn’t. Not specifically. Although— “I don’t see why he must be doing something, Christopher. You and I don’t. Nor does Crispin or Francis, nor, I’m certain, the Honorable Reggie Fish. Nor Cecily or Violet, if it comes to that.” Or Laetitia or Geoffrey or Constance or any number of other young people of our station. We’re all lazy layabouts who live off family money. Or in my case, off Christopher’s family’s money.

“He’s in England,” Christopher said stubbornly. “He must have a purpose for being here.”

“I’m sure he does,” I agreed. “Although I don’t think it’s peddling dope. But for purposes of the imaginary plot, I’ll allow it. So Wolfgang is a dope dealer who killed Cecily because of the baby and then he killed Rivers because Rivers knew that Wolfgang would have had access to the dope?”

Christopher shrugged. “Something like that.”

“Of course. Well, it’s not a bad plot. Although neither of us accounted for the gunshot. Is it your contention that it was Wolfgang, then? Shooting at me because he thought I was Cecily?”

“Or at Francis,” Christopher said, “because Francis knew that Wolfgang was in the dope trade.”

“Of course.” I nodded approvingly. “Francis has been doing business with Wolfgang in the past, and their animosity is really just a cover for the fact that they know one another.”

“It’s been done before,” Christopher said, a bit defensively.

I nodded. “You’re right, it has. In The Mysterious Affair at Styles , Alfred Inglethorp and his cousin Evelyn pretend to be enemies in order to kill Alfred’s wife and inherit the money.”

A moment passed, and then I shook my head. “What am I saying? Of course it wasn’t Francis. And I’m certain it wasn’t Wolfgang, either. It’s a good plot?—”

“Not as good as the one you made up.”

“—but we’re just doing this for the amusement of it. I really don’t think Wolfgang knew any of these people before he came here. Certainly not Francis. I’m sure their animosity—or Francis’s animosity, at least—is entirely unfeigned.”

Christopher nodded. “Instead of coming up with mad scenarios, is there anyone you think might have actually done it? Agatha Christie novels is one thing, but in life, the solution is usually much simpler. Take the Margaret Hughes thing, for instance?—”

“The what, now?” Uncle Harold interrupted, and we both—all three—looked at him.

Margaret Hughes, of course, was Lady Charlotte’s maid at Sutherland Hall. Lydia Morrison’s counterpart. After Aunt Charlotte’s death in April, Hughes had lingered at Sutherland for a few months, and then she had made her way to Beckwith Place, and from there to Bristol, where she had met her demise in a dark alley sometime last month. She had had one of Tom’s business cards in her reticule when she was found, so the Bristol police had called him in for a consultation. Otherwise, I’m sure we would have heard nothing about it.

To Christopher’s point: There were a lot of peculiar circumstances surrounding Hughes’ last few months of life, circumstances that might point to all sorts of interesting possibilities. There was Aunt Charlotte’s death—which of course wasn’t a mystery—and Duke Henry’s and Grimsby’s murders, which weren’t either. Then there was the disappearance of Lydia Morrison from the Dower House, and the murder of Abigail Dole at Beckwith Place in July, for which Hughes had been present along with the rest of us. And then there was the thousand pounds Hughes had extorted from Uncle Herbert before leaving Wiltshire, although according to Tom, that money had been safely tucked away in a bank account, so that, at least, was not the reason for the bludgeoning.

“You remember Hughes,” Christopher asked, “don’t you, Uncle Harold?”

He didn’t wait for his uncle to confirm or deny, because of course His Grace remembered Hughes. She had been at Sutherland Hall since Crispin was a newborn, dressing and undressing Aunt Charlotte. Uncle Harold was notoriously uninterested in his wife—it was a miracle that Crispin existed at all, frankly—but he wasn’t as oblivious as that. “She was found dead in an alley in Bristol last month,” Christopher added. “A mugging gone wrong, Tom said.”

Which made Christopher’s point rather nicely, since, with all the questions swirling around Hughes and her decamping to Bristol, the official finding was manslaughter by person or persons unknown, presumably for the twenty pounds or so she had had in her purse. Nothing to do with the Astley family or any murder or blackmail at all.

“Dear me,” Uncle Harold said faintly. “I had no idea.” He glanced at his brother. “Did you, Herbert?”

Uncle Herbert nodded. “Tom stopped by Beckwith Place on his way back from Bristol. Kind of him to let us know.”

There was nothing in his voice to indicate that he realized that Tom had made the stop at least in part to check up on Uncle Herbert’s and Aunt Roz’s alibis. When you allow yourself to be blackmailed, and then your blackmailer dies violently a month or two later, it seems you climb to the top of the suspect list.

Of course, I assumed that Tom’s stop at Beckwith was more to make sure that Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert had alibis, since I didn’t think he seriously suspected either of them of running off to Bristol to bash Hughes over the head. They could afford the thousand pounds, and neither of them are homicidal by nature.

“Dear me,” Uncle Harold said again. “How terrible.”

We sat in polite silence for a moment. For me, it was in the past and even back when I first heard about it, it had been hard to muster up much sympathy. I didn’t like Hughes, and although it’s not right for anyone to be bashed over the head in an alley, she was a blackmailer who had extorted money from my uncle. Although of course Uncle Harold was right: it was terrible that someone had killed Hughes, and worse that it was for such a negligible amount of money.

But right now, I was more concerned about the fact that Cecily Fletcher was dead, murdered because she had allowed herself to become pregnant; and Dominic Rivers was dead, murdered because he had let himself get tangled up in it; and Violet was… well, hopefully Violet was not dead, and would come around eventually, but she was as good as dead, and all because?—

“Why would anyone want to kill Violet?”

There was a moment of silence while they all, even Uncle Harold, looked at me, and then Christopher said, “I suppose because she knew something about who killed Cecily and Dominic Rivers?”

That was the logical explanation, of course. Aunt Roslyn had believed that Violet was being untruthful about something, and that something might be the reason why. If Cecily was killed because of the baby, and Dominic Rivers was killed because of the dope, then Violet was surely killed—or poisoned, at any rate—because she knew something about whoever had done it.

“She spent the evening with Geoffrey Marsden yesterday,” I said.

Christopher nodded, even as Uncle Harold bristled at the implication. I ignored him.

“She came here already knowing that Cecily was with child. She knew Dominic Rivers. If we proceed on the assumption that the pregnancy was the reason for Cecily’s murder…”

“By all means,” Christopher said.

“Thank you. Why don’t we say, for argument’s sake, that Geoffrey was responsible for Cecily’s predicament.”

Christopher nodded. “Let’s say that. I can imagine that being true.”

I could too, only too easily. “Geoffrey’s a philanderer, but he definitely isn’t the marrying kind. Having a wife and child at home likely wouldn’t stop him from spreading his favors around—I don’t know if anything would, to be honest—but it might cut down on his chances, since some girls unaccountably won’t get involved with a married man, unreasonable as that is.”

Uncle Herbert winced. It was probably the subject matter, and what amounted to his presumably innocent niece discussing it so freely (and sarcastically). I smiled at him. “Sorry, Uncle Herbert. But there’s no point in prevaricating, is there? Not if we want to figure this out.”

“Of course not, Pippa.” He waved a hand. “Carry on.”

I nodded. “So if the baby was Geoffrey’s, and Violet knew it, and she wanted Geoffrey for herself… would she have allowed him to poison Cecily? Or done it herself? They were friends.”

“That doesn’t always stop someone from committing murder,” Christopher said, which of course was true. “Did Violet poison herself, then, after killing Cecily and Dominic Rivers? Tom arrived, and she realized she wouldn’t get away with it, so she took the coward’s way out? Or did Geoffrey poison Violet in retaliation for Cecily? Or were they in it together?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “Between Dom Rivers being here, and the plants down the road, I suspect there were two doses of pennyroyal. One very potent one from Rivers, and one less potent in a cup of tea, that might have been enough in conjunction with the first dose to commit murder.”

“So your hypothesis is that Geoffrey brought Rivers to Marsden Manor,” Christopher said, “with enough pennyroyal to get rid of Cecily’s baby, but Violet figured out what he was doing, and because she wanted Geoffrey for herself, she picked some pennyroyal leaves and gave Cecily another dose in a cup of tea…”

I nodded. “No one would have thought anything of it if Violet had asked Cook or the kitchen maid to brew it up, I think. Both she and Cecily had been here before. And they were close friends. If Violet brought Cecily a cup of tea to help her feel better, I think Cecily might have been grateful, and not suspicious at all.”

“But then Cecily dies,” Christopher continued, “and suddenly, Geoffrey is a murderer. That makes Rivers a liability, so he bashes him over the head and leaves him for dead. And then he poisons Violet, because…”

He trailed off, and I got the impression that he was waiting for me to complete the sentence.

“She knew,” I suggested, “and tried to use it to blackmail him into marrying her? He went from the frying pan to the fire, so to speak? From a pregnant girl he had to marry to a girl who knew he was guilty of murder and who wasn’t above blackmailing him?”

“If it isn’t one thing, it’s another,” Christopher said dryly. “Or perhaps you’re right and Violet realized she was on the hook for murder, and so she killed herself rather than risk being arrested.”

“It’s possible. Although so are any number of other scenarios, I think.”

Christopher looked doubtful, but he didn’t protest. There was no time for it, at any rate, because the door to the hallway opened and Tom came in.

“Thank God,” I said. “Is it finally our turn?”

“I’m afraid not, Pippa.” Tom turned to his right. “Come along, Nellie.”

Nellie?

I looked over my shoulder, and there was the maid, daintily perched on a chair in the far corner of the room.

“How long have you been there?” fell out of my mouth, rather rudely. Uncle Harold looked appalled, and it was difficult to blame him.

“I’ve been here since tea began, Miss Darling.” Nellie skirted tables and chairs on her way towards Tom as she spoke. “Excuse me.”

She followed him out the door, which shut behind them.

“Goodness,” I said as I turned to Christopher, “did you know that she was there?”

He shook his head. “I had no idea. I thought we were alone.”

So had I, or I wouldn’t have spoken so freely.

Uncle Harold cleared his throat. “That’s the mark of a good servant. To be seen but not heard, and preferably not that, either.”

Yes, of course. But still, I’m not usually one to ignore the staff.

“I can’t believe she has lasted as long as she has here,” I told Christopher. “She said she’s been here more than a month, and Geoffrey hasn’t bothered her at all yet.”

Christopher glanced at the closed door. “That’s hard to believe. A pretty, little thing like that. You would think Geoffrey would be all over her.”

I nodded. “My thoughts exactly. Although perhaps Cecily’s predicament has put a damper on his ardor for the time being.”

If it had been his baby, of course. But if it had been, it was quite understandable that he wouldn’t want to risk making another one right away.

“It would have dampened mine,” Christopher agreed. “At least we didn’t talk about her while she was sitting there.”

“No, why on earth would we? She’s the maid. She had no reason to want Cecily out of the way. Not if she told the truth and Geoffrey hasn’t approached her.”

Christopher nodded. “A pity, really. It would have been easy for her to poison Violet’s tea.”

“Easy for her to turn pennyroyal leaves into tea for Cecily, too,” I said. “Or easier than for some of us, at any rate.”

No one would have batted an eye if Nellie had walked into the kitchen to ask for leaves to be steeped into tea, any more than they might have batted an eye if it were Laetitia or her mother.

“I hope Tom asks her whether she knows anything about any tea leaves,” I said. “If she comes and goes below stairs, she might.”

Christopher smiled indulgently. “I’m certain he will do, Pippa. He’ll talk to all of the servants about it, I’m sure. He’s actually quite good at his job, you know.”

“Of course he is, Christopher.” I patted his hand. After a second, I added, “At least she isn’t in here to hear me make a case against the lady of the manor.”

Uncle Herbert looked intrigued. “The Countess Marsden, do you mean? You have a case against her, too? Or do you mean her daughter?”

“I can make a case against either,” I said expansively. “Of course, it’s mostly the same case. The same motive and means. They may even be in on it together.”

Uncle Harold looked deeply offended by the idea, but when Uncle Herbert said, “Let’s hear it,” and his brother gave him a judgmental look, probably for encouraging me to disparage my betters further, Uncle Herbert merely added, “Don’t be a stick in the mud, Harold. We’ve got to do something while we’re sitting here, and I’m entertained by the outlandishness of the theories.”

“Well, this one isn’t really very outlandish,” I said, while I assiduously avoided looking at the grumbling Duke of Sutherland, because he wasn’t going to like any of this. “Nor is it complicated at all. In this scenario, Crispin is the father of the baby.”

Uncle Harold opened his mouth, outraged, and I added, “Or Laetitia and her mother think he is, at any rate. I know he isn’t. He assured me of it. Repeatedly.”

That, for some reason, did not make Uncle Harold any happier. I ignored him and his scowling, and carried on. “Laetitia and Lady Euphemia don’t want to give up the Sutherland title and money to Cecily—or to give Laetitia her due, perhaps she simply doesn’t want to give up St George—so separately, they decide to take matters into their own hands. Laetitia invites Dominic Rivers to her engagement party, and pays him to bring a quantity of pennyroyal, enough to induce a miscarriage in Cecily. Lady Euphemia, meanwhile, wanders down the road and picks enough pennyroyal to accomplish the same thing. Neither of them knows what the other is doing.”

“I like it so far,” Christopher said.

I did, too, as a matter of fact. “It explains what Rivers was doing here. Crispin wouldn’t have invited him, and it would be very rude of anyone else to do so. Anyone who wasn’t a member of the household, I mean.”

“So they each dose the young lady,” Uncle Herbert said, “but independently of one another.”

I nodded. “One dose in one of her drinks after dinner last night, and one in the cup of tea she had in her room later, supposedly to settle her stomach from the first dose. It would have been easy for either of them to bring her a cup of tea to make her feel better, or to ask one of the maids to do it.”

“Then she dies,” Christopher said, “and Laetitia kills Rivers to keep it quiet about her share of the pennyroyal?—”

Uncle Harold winced, but he didn’t complain. I nodded. “And in this scenario, I suppose she then goes on to kill Violet, as well.”

“Why would she do that?” Uncle Herbert wanted to know. Unlike his brother, he didn’t seem bothered by the conjecture, merely interested in where the story might go.

I exchanged a glance with Christopher. “I suppose because Violet, too, at one time dallied with St George. If she’s willing to do away with one rival, she might as well get rid of the other.”

“Or a third,” Christopher said. When I turned to him—which third?—he added, “this would explain what happened on the lawn, you realize? Laetitia was out in the woods with the hunting party. There was nothing to keep her from taking a shot at you when she saw you standing there.”

“Why would she—? Oh.” I flushed. “I assure you, Christopher, I’m no impediment to her happiness with St George. We’ve talked about this before. I wouldn’t have him giftwrapped with a bow around his neck, and the feeling is mutual.”

Uncle Herbert muttered something. Uncle Harold merely looked stony. He didn’t like me, I knew that for a fact, but perhaps my cavalier dismissal of his son and heir rankled, even so.

“The same scenario would go for Bilge and Serena,” I added. “If the baby was Bilge’s, he and his wife could have done away with Cecily in the same way. Violet might have lied about not knowing who the baby’s father was, so they killed her, too.”

“Or Reggie Fish,” Christopher nodded. “He actually brought Rivers here. Physically brought him, I mean. And you said Olivia Barnsley is sweet on him, didn’t you?”

I nodded. “In that scenario, I suppose she was the one who walked down the road and picked the second dose of pennyroyal? Much harder for her or Serena to get that steeped into tea and into Cecily’s hands, I’d say, than for Laetitia or Lady Marsden. They couldn’t exactly walk into the kitchen and do it themselves.”

Although anyone could take the pennyroyal leaves to the kitchen and ask for them to be steeped, I imagined, and then brought up to them, and from there, it would be a fairly easy task to pass the cup on to Cecily with caring concern. Any of her girlfriends could have done that without raising her suspicions.

Christopher groaned. “My head is spinning. I cannot wait until Tom is done in the study and we get to leave this room.”

I nodded. I felt the same way. We had spent entirely too much time here. “Hopefully it won’t be long now. It’s just the four of us left, and I can’t imagine either of the uncles know anything about this mess.”

“Not aside from what you’ve just told us,” Uncle Herbert said cheerfully. “We arrived much too late to have anything to do with what happened last night or this morning, so I imagine we’re off the hook for this one.”

“Must be nice,” Christopher said.

I chuckled, but before I could say anything, Uncle Herbert told him, “I imagine you’re off the hook too, Kit. I doubt Tom is likely to think you—either of you…” he glanced at me, “guilty of this.”

“He’s not stupid,” I agreed, “so I don’t imagine he does. If anything, I assume he’s keeping us for last so he can check everything everyone else has told him against what we know. We have no reason to lie.”

“Give the lady a prize,” Tom’s voice said from behind me, and I looked over my shoulder in time to see him close the hallway door behind him. “Got it in one, Pippa; well done.”

He started across the floor towards us, skirting the other tables and chairs. “We’ll just stay in here for this one. I sent Collins back upstairs to continue the search. I’ll take my own notes.”

He dropped into the chair between me and Uncle Harold with a little noise. It sounded like pleasure. Perhaps the chairs were more comfortable in here than where he’d been, or perhaps he was simply tired. He had driven here from London and then gone straight into a long line of interviews, so small wonder if he were.

He pulled his notebook and pencil out of his pocket and put them in front of him, and then he addressed the uncles. “Your Grace. Lord Herbert.”

“Tom,” Uncle Herbert said pleasantly, while Uncle Harold inclined his head in a barely polite nod.

“I don’t suppose either of you know anything about this?”

“Nothing you haven’t already heard from other people,” Uncle Herbert said. “We arrived too late for any of the excitement last night or this morning. Roz has spoken with a few people since we arrived, but I’ve really only spent time with my own family.”

“We saw that unfortunate young lady collapse,” Uncle Harold added, distantly, “but I didn’t notice anything untoward before that.”

“You didn’t see anyone put anything in her tea?”

Herbert shook his head. When Tom glanced over at him, the Duke did the same. “No, Detective Sergeant.”

“And you didn’t hear anyone say anything that might be germane to the situation?”

They both shook their heads again. I wouldn’t have put any money on Uncle Harold telling the truth—he had been sitting with the Marsden family and with Crispin, and he had every incentive to support the status quo as far as his son and heir was concerned, so if anyone at that table had said anything incriminating, Uncle Harold would keep it to himself—but unless I was right in my outlandish suggestion that Laetitia and her mother were to blame, Uncle Harold wasn’t likely to have heard anything interesting anyway. Certainly nothing worthy of lying about. They had probably been making wedding plans. And of course Uncle Herbert had been sitting with Aunt Roz, Francis, and Constance, and neither of them was likely to know anything, either. Nothing they wouldn’t have told Tom already, at any rate. I’m sure Aunt Roz had shared every word Olivia and Violet had said upstairs.

Tom seemed to come to the same conclusion, because he nodded. “Very well. You can go.”

Uncle Herbert didn’t need to be told twice. “Come on, Harold.” He jumped up from his chair and waited for his brother to rise, with a bit more dignity, before he added, “I’m going to go find my wife. It was good to see you, Tom, even under the circumstances. Go easy on my children.”

“Have fun, Uncle Herbert,” I told him, even as I felt a warm sort of glow inside at being included among the children in question. Christopher, meanwhile, rolled his eyes at the idea that Tom would be anything but perfectly pleasant.

The two of them headed for the door, and Tom waited for it to shut behind them with a decisive click before he turned to us. “So.”