Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Down!” Francis barked. He put a hand on the back of my neck and shoved me onto the grass, and followed me down, half on top of me. Christopher, meanwhile, had the sense to drop on his own.

“What—?”

“Bullet,” Francis said grimly.

“You don’t say?”

We were all expecting more bullets to follow, but none did. Nonetheless, Francis kept us close to the ground as he gave us instructions for what to do next.

“Get to cover. Inside the door, Kit. Stay low. Go!”

Christopher crawled as fast as he could across the grass towards the door I had just come out through. I winced at the thought of what the knees of his flannel bags would look like when he stood up.

“Now you,” Francis said and gave me a shove. “Hurry.”

I followed, scurrying on my hands and knees across the grass. In this position, any additional shots that came would catch me in the derriere, as I kept my head down as I went. By this point, though, no one else had tried to shoot at us, and all the shots we could hear were from farther away. I thought I could—perhaps—hear the sound of hooves moving away through the trees, but it might have been the blood beating in my ears, or alternatively, just the horses’ hooves from the rest of the shoot.

Christopher reached up and opened the door, and vanished inside, still in a crouch. I put on a burst of speed and followed him into the manor. A few seconds later, Francis had come in behind me and slammed the door.

For a second or two, we all three just sat there on the floor, wide-eyed, breathing heavily and staring at one another in shock. Then?—

“Someone shot at us,” I said blankly.

“Someone shot at you ,” Christopher corrected.

“Me?”

“Well,” he hesitated, looking from me to Francis and back, “one of you. The bullet went too wide to be intended for me.”

“Unless someone’s just a bad shot,” Francis said and pushed to his feet. He took a moment to brush down the fronts of his flannels before extending a hand to me. “Come on, Pipsqueak. Up you go.”

I took his hand and let him haul me to my feet, while Christopher got up on his own and brushed himself off, with a grimace at the state of his knees. Mine were bare but dirty, and currently hidden under my skirt, so I could get away with going into the lavatory and washing them later.

“We need you upstairs,” I told Francis. “Constance?—”

“What’s wrong with Constance?”

“I already told you. Nothing is wrong with Constance. I left her with Cecily Fletcher, and something is wrong with her.”

Francis headed towards the main staircase, and I scurried after, with Christopher on my heels. “What’s going on with her?” Francis threw back over his shoulder.

“The same thing that went on with Christopher in May. Or something like it.” I hustled to keep up with his longer strides. “She won’t wake up. She’s breathing, but it’s very shallow.”

“Did you check her pupils?”

I shook my head, and then answered verbally, when it occurred to me that he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head. “No. Her eyes were closed, and I didn’t try to open them. I wouldn’t know what to look for.”

Francis nodded, and started up the main staircase two steps at a time. I hurried after, double-time, since I had to step on every step instead of every other. Behind me, Christopher started up, as well.

“She’s on the top floor,” I said, a bit breathlessly, as we gained the first floor hallway. “The staircase is at the end of the hall.”

We headed that way, and half a minute later, found ourselves in the upstairs hallway. There was still no one else around, although the door to the Fortescues’ room on the first floor had stood ajar and I thought I had heard Nellie’s humming from behind it.

“Down there,” I pointed. “The door in the middle.”

Francis headed that way, and gave a peremptory knock but without stopping to wait for permission. Christopher and I crowded in behind him as he pushed the door open and stalked inside.

Nothing much had changed in the minutes—and had it truly only been a few minutes?—since I had left. In my absence, Constance had sat down, perched on the embroidered chair beside the bed. Her eyes were fastened on Cecily and her hands were gripping each other tightly in her lap, so hard that her knuckles were white. When she looked up and saw us, the worry in her eyes flickered for a moment, as if she were happy not to be alone with the sick girl, but then clouded over again when she noticed our dishevelment.

“What happened?”

“Stray shot,” Francis said blandly, as if the bullet hadn’t come within a few inches of his head. “Someone has bad aim.”

Constance’s eyes widened. But before she could say anything?—

“We’re fine,” I reassured her. “Someone’s gun must have misfired in our direction. It didn’t hit either of us. We just dropped to the grass in case there were more shots.”

Constance bit her lip, but when neither of us made the incident out to be any more than that, she seemed to accept that it wasn’t a big thing that had happened. I fully intended to get to the bottom of it at some point, but right now, we had more important matters to concern ourselves with. “How is she?”

“The same as earlier,” Constance said with a glance at the still figure in the bed. “She hasn’t moved.”

I nodded, as Francis bent over the bed for a closer look. We watched as he peeled one of Cecily’s eyelids back to peer at her pupil, before putting his hand against the pulse in her throat. That done, he straightened, and took hold of the blankets to pull them down.

I made a forward movement, and then checked it. It wasn’t as if Cecily was unclothed under the blankets—I had put her to bed myself and knew she was wearing pyjamas—and after the first moment it didn’t matter anyway. Constance gasped and Christopher winced. Francis cursed.

I stared in appalled silence for a moment before I blurted, “We need a doctor. Or perhaps a midwife would be better.”

“I doubt there’s much a doctor could do,” Francis said, eyeing the considerable amount of blood under Cecily’s pelvis. It had soaked into the bedding and mattress—the latter must be utterly ruined—and the celery satin of the pyjamas looked obscene. “And it’s certainly much too late for a midwife.”

“Dear Lord,” Constance said faintly, hand over her mouth. She was almost as pale as Cecily, and looked as if she were midway between fainting and vomiting.

“Was she—” Christopher cleared his throat. He looked as bad as Constance, and faintly green. “She wasn’t like this when you saw her last night, Pippa, was she?”

“Of course not,” I said automatically. And gave it a moment’s thought before I added, “No, I’m certain she wasn’t. The light was on in the lavatory, so I would have spotted copious amounts of fresh blood. She was fine then.”

Or perhaps not fine—violently ill to her stomach, pale and trembling—but not bleeding. I would never have left her alone if she had been.

“Tell me again what was wrong with her last night?” Francis asked.

I shot a glance at Cecily. “Shouldn’t we ring for a doctor instead of standing here and discussing it?”

“I’ll go,” Constance said and ducked around me and out of the room with the air of someone escaping a torturous situation. That might have been why none of us tried to stop her: she looked so obviously relieved to have a reason to get away. The look Christopher sent her indicated that he would have liked the opportunity to escape, too.

Francis watched until Constance was out of the room and we could hear her brogues hurry towards the end of the hall and the staircase before he turned back to me. “A doctor won’t be able to do anything for her, Pippa. Although I suppose it can’t hurt to have one come by to take a look. The certificate of death will probably require an autopsy before it can be signed, anyway. The doctor will have to order that.”

“You mean?—”

I stopped myself before I could say anything further, and started over once I had reconsidered what I wanted to ask, or more specifically the way I wanted to ask it. More carefully, for one thing. First of all was the implication that he expected her to die, and he said it as if there was no question whatsoever about it coming true and like there was nothing we could do to prevent it. But in addition to that, there was the suggestion that an autopsy would have to be performed. And for that to be de rigueur … “Are you suggesting that someone tried to kill her?”

Francis looked surprised. “I wasn’t. Do you have reason to think someone did?”

I didn’t, of course. Only… “What did you mean, then? Why would there be an autopsy if there wasn’t a question about the cause of death?”

“There can be questions about cause of death without it being murder,” Francis said. “This doesn’t look like a natural death to me. Especially not with what you told me was going on last night. She was sick, you said?”

“Violently. And clammy and pale and unsteady on her feet. She wasn’t bleeding, though. I would have noticed that. But she was sick to her stomach and in pain.”

Although that wasn’t necessarily anything out of the ordinary for someone enceinte , was it?

“No,” Francis agreed, “although this is more than that, isn’t it?”

He waited a second for the thought to sink in, before he added, “Perhaps she took something she thought would eliminate her problem. Or the problem she did have, I suppose. It won’t be a problem any longer. Nor will anything else.”

“You mean?—”

“Yes,” Francis said. “She fed herself an abortifacient, and in the process, it killed her.”

I looked away from the blood, up to Cecily’s face and to her chest, which was moving almost imperceptibly. “She isn’t dead yet.”

“She will be,” Francis said. “I’ve seen enough death to recognize it.”

“But surely there’s something we can do? We can’t just stand here and watch her die.”

Christopher made a small sound of agreement. “I’m with Pippa.”

“So am I,” Francis said. “Believe me, the last thing I want, is to watch someone else die. But I don’t know what to do to help. She rid herself of whatever was left in her stomach last night, so inducing vomiting at this point would do no good. Whatever it is, is already in her bloodstream and affecting her.”

He glanced at me. “The tea smelled like spearmint, you said?”

I nodded. “Pennyroyal, I suppose. I wish I would have realized it then, although I suppose it was already too late at that point.”

“If it had already made her ill,” Francis nodded, “then yes. Most likely it was already too late. There’s no antidote for pennyroyal that I know of.”

“So we just stand here and watch?” Christopher’s voice was higher than usual. “Shouldn’t we let someone know, at least? One of her friends? Or the Earl and Countess of Marsden, if no one else?”

“Or the housekeeper,” I said, since Mrs. Frobisher might be more help with this than Lady Euphemia would be.

Francis lifted a shoulder. “We can do. Perhaps we ought to. Perhaps her friends who are here would like to say goodbye while she’s still alive. She won’t know they’re here, but it might make them feel better.”

Ugh . “I’m sure Constance will tell her aunt and uncle, at least,” I said.

Francis nodded. “Other than that, there’s nothing anyone can do at this point. I don’t know how long it’ll be, but she won’t last until the doctor gets here. She’s already fading. Look at her lips.”

I did. They were turning blue. “Why?—?”

“Not enough oxygen,” Francis said.

“Perhaps if we helped her breathe…?”

“We’d only prolong the inevitable. There isn’t anything anyone can do to keep her alive beyond a certain point. Her inner organs will shut down—liver and kidneys and heart—and then she’ll be gone.”

“How do you know so much about this?” Christopher wanted to know. He sounded ill, and looked it, too, with both arms crossed tightly over his stomach.

Francis glanced at him, but continued without answering the question. “If this was pennyroyal, and it sounds as if it was, then chances are that she was attempting to do something about the pregnancy, not about herself. If she had wanted to escape the embarrassment, arsenic or foxglove or a bullet to the head are simpler and easier ways out.”

And there was the answer I hadn’t wanted to hear: that Francis had at one point looked into ways to kill himself. The fact that he hadn’t taken any of them helped a little, but I still didn’t like to contemplate it.

“Pennyroyal has been used as an abortifacient for centuries,” I said distantly. “She might not have realized that too much of it could kill her.”

I hadn’t realized that myself, until now. I knew about the plant and its uses, of course. What I hadn’t known, was that I would have to worry about an overdose if I ever tried to use it. It had never been anything I had had to worry about personally.

Christopher gave me a sideways look. “Do I want to know how you know that?”

“It came up,” I said. “Girl-talk at Oxford, or perhaps at Godolphin.”

“That’s what you girls sit around and talk about when there aren’t men present?”

“Among other things,” I said. “Just as I’m sure you men discuss how not to find yourselves in a position where you have to marry some damsel because you had too much fun one night.”

He made a face. “I won’t deny that that conversation has taken place.”

“You’d better not, or I’d call you a liar.” I waited a second before I added, “I don’t suppose you’d know the answer to this—either of you—but is pennyroyal the sort of thing someone could ask Dominic Rivers for?”

There was a moment’s pause, and then— “The dope dealer?” Francis said. He sounded intrigued.

I nodded. “He’s here this weekend. Didn’t you see him last night?”

“We’re not acquainted,” Francis said.

“Well, he’s here. The darkhaired chap who arrived after you had your scene with Wolfgang and retreated to the wall in the drawing room.”

His face darkened at the reminder, but he didn’t say anything, so I continued, “Someone invited him, and it must have been to some purpose. It’s hard to imagine that either Laetitia or Crispin would require stimulants at this happiest of occasions.”

Christopher snorted. “I wouldn’t put it past Crispin, honestly, but I heard his reaction when he saw Rivers. I don’t think it was him. Do you suppose it was Cecily who asked him to meet her here, then?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “She might have done. Mightn’t she?

“Or she might have picked the pennyroyal herself. It grows wild, doesn’t it?”

“Of course it does.” It was a weed of sorts, wasn’t it? Or a wildflower or something like that. I added, “Although I don’t know whether it grows around here. I’m sure it doesn’t in London. What’s more likely is that she contacted Rivers and he gave it to her as an oil or something like that, and she mixed it with the tea to make it easier to drink.”

“Or used the tea as a chaser,” Francis said, “after she downed the oil.”

“And you think she would have done this here?” Christopher asked. “Now?”

And that was a point, wasn’t it? Cecily had a home, or so I had to assume. She might have a flat in London, the way Christopher and I do, or she might be living with her family somewhere, the way Crispin, and Francis and Constance, still did. Either way, she had somewhere to go, where there was more or less privacy. Why would she come to someone else’s house—and someone else’s engagement party—to take something to rid herself of an unwanted pregnancy? Surely something like that would be better achieved behind closed doors at home?

I meant to say something about it, but before I could, there was a gurgle from the bed. For a moment, caught up in the discussion, I had almost forgotten that Cecily was lying there, and now I turned back to her in chagrin. How could I have been so callous as to discuss this with her lying just a few feet away? What if she had heard us, and been distressed by it?

But when I faced the bed, it was to see Cecily’s body seize, and arch up from the mattress like something out of a horror story. A rattling gasp came from her throat, and her eyes were wide-open and staring at the ceiling.

For a second she held there, body bowed, before the tension broke and she flopped back down onto the bed in a heap, quite as if someone had cut the strings of a puppet. I waited for her chest to rise in another shallow inhalation?—

And waited?—

And waited?—

“She’s gone,” Francis said. His voice sounded peculiar, although it could have been my ears and not him. There was a buzzing I recognized as a precursor to feeling faint. Next to me, Christopher stared, eyes wide and horrified.

I turned to him and wrapped my arms around his waist, as much for support for myself as to support him. After a second, he returned the favor: wrapped both arms around me and buried his face against my shoulder. He’s a couple of inches taller, but not so much that my shoulder is inconvenient.

“Excuse me,” Francis said distantly. I raised my head to watch him walk out, but he didn’t turn to look at me.

“We should go after him,” I said into Christopher’s tweed-covered shoulder. “I don’t think he should be alone.”

“I don’t think I want to be alone, either.”

I nodded, cheek rubbing against the tweed. “I know you don’t. Nor do I. But I’m sure this must bring back bad memories for Francis. How many men do you suppose he saw die in the trenches?”

A shudder passed through Christopher, from shoulders to feet. “A lot.”

I unwrapped my arms. “Go after him. I’ll stay here and wait for Constance to come back. And then the doctor. You go and make sure your brother is all right.”

He stepped back and nodded. “What about you, Pippa?”

“I’ll be fine,” I said steadily. Beginning with Christopher’s late grandfather, Duke Henry, in April, and ending with poor Flossie Schlomsky a month ago, I had seen more than my fair share of dead bodies in the past few months. Nothing like Francis and the War, of course, but for peacetime, more than enough of them. And this couldn’t in any way compare to that nightmarish trip through London in June, in the back of Crispin’s Hispano-Suiza, with Freddie Montrose’s dead head in my lap, his blood soaking through the towel and into my clothes. “At least I only have to sit beside the bed and wait this time.”

Christopher nodded. “If it becomes too much, shut the door behind you and wait in the hall. Or in your own room.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said and gave him a nudge towards the door. “Go. Be with Francis.”

“I’m sure he would rather have Constance.”

“And he can have her, just as soon as she comes back here and tells me what’s going on. I’ll send her down to you. But in the meantime, you go and sit with him. He’ll probably want a drink.” And someone to drink with.

“I wouldn’t mind one myself,” Christopher said, with a final glance at the bed. He headed for the door. “We still have to talk about what happened earlier.”

“Outside, do you mean?”

He nodded.

Yes, we most certainly did.

“Come and find us when you’re finished up here.”

I promised I would do, and then I settled onto the needle-pointed chair and waited for Constance to come back, with or without her Aunt Effie, and with or without the butler or housekeeper, to tell me whether or not the doctor was on his way.

The hunters returned in the early afternoon, red-cheeked and hungry from their ordeal. By then, the doctor and local police had made their way from Marsden-on-Crane up to the manor, and the van from the local mortuary was parked at the bottom of the steps, back doors gaping open.

We saw the others come back through the window in the library, where we had settled with our drinks while we waited for luncheon to be served. The local police was upstairs processing Cecily’s room for evidence—evidence of what, I didn’t know—and the doctor was instructing the two bowler-hatted blokes from the morgue on what to do with the body.

I recognized the doctor—a small man with a bald head and a luxurious mustache—from the murder at the Dower House in May. I also recognized several of the local constables, including one named Collins, who had helped Tom Gardiner back then. Blokes in black suits and bowler hats look the same everywhere, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if they, too, were the same pair who had attended to the late Johanna de Vos.

Crispin took one look at them all, including the covered stretcher coming through the door and down the stairs and into the back of the mortuary van, and turned deathly pale.

So, in justice to her, did Lady Laetitia. Geoffrey had been out with the hunting party, of course, so she knew that he was intact, but I could see fear on her face as she ran up the steps calling for her mother and father.

Lord Maurice was in the study next door to the library, as it happened, conferring with the constable in charge, and we could hear him respond to his daughter’s call through the wall.

Crispin had more hostages to fortune here than anyone, between Christopher and Francis, Constance and myself, and all the many girls he had at one point dallied with and—I assumed—still had fond feelings for. Olivia Barnsley and Lady Violet Cummings were making their way towards the house, arm in arm, as we watched, but there were still the four of us, and of course there was Cecily. Uncle Harold, Uncle Herbert, and Aunt Roz were also expected today, and for all Crispin knew, might have arrived already.

He took the steps into the house two at a time, and raised his voice as soon as he entered the outer hall. “Kit! Where are you?”

Christopher looked at me, God knows why.

“Go on, then,” I told him. “Put him out of his misery.”

“Don’t think I don’t realize how that sounds, Pippa.” But he pushed his chair back and strode towards the door. “In here, Crispin!”

There were rapid steps outside in the hallway, and then Christopher stepped back to let Crispin into the room. The Viscount St George stopped just across the threshold and looked around, frantically. His eyes lingered for a second on each of our faces—not just making sure we were upright and breathing, but assessing all of us for state of mind as well as general health.

When he looked up and met my eyes, I began, “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” and watched the color drain out of his cheeks before I could get any further.

Francis nudged me. “Enough, Pipsqueak. You’ll make the boy faint.”

Crispin shot him a look of dislike. “It’s hardly as bad as all that. I even shot at a bird or two this morning. My father would be proud.”

When none of us responded to that—the idea that Uncle Harold had made his only son feel bad for not being bloodthirsty enough, didn’t endear His Grace to me further—Crispin added, “There was a mortuary van outside.”

“Not for any of us,” I said.

“Clearly.” He glanced around the room. “Who, then?”

“As I said, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news?—”

“Cecily Fletcher,” Christopher interrupted, and took Crispin’s elbow when the latter swayed. “Come and sit down.”

He shoved Crispin into his own chair and put his own glass of sherry in his hand. Crispin gave it a look of disgust before he tossed it back. After a moment, a little color leaked back into his cheeks. “Bloody hell.”

“I’m sorry,” Christopher said with a look at me. “But Pippa leading up to it only made it sound worse than it was. Better to rip the plaster off all at once.”

“Says you.”

Crispin glanced around the table, at Francis’s brandy—the latter gave him an arched brow and a distinct if tacit warning against trying to take it away—and Constance’s tea before landing on my sherry. I handed it over with a grimace. “Laetitia won’t like it if you get bladdered before luncheon even kicks off.”

“I won’t get bladdered from two glasses of sherry, Darling.” But he didn’t toss it back the way he had done the first one, just took a healthy swig and handed it back to me. And then he took a breath and let it out. “Cecily, you said?”

I nodded. “After you left my room last night?—”

The others eyed each other after I said this, so perhaps I hadn’t been specific enough about it earlier, although now certainly wasn’t the right time to clarify anything, “—I ran into Cecily in the loo. She was sick to her stomach, the poor thing.”

Crispin nodded. “That’s fairly normal for someone enceinte , of course.”

I nodded. “That’s why I didn’t think anything of it. But when she didn’t come down to breakfast this morning, Constance and I went up to her room to check on her.”

“And she was dead?”

“Not yet,” I said, and he winced. “She was unconscious, however?—”

“Comatose,” Francis shot in, with a swallow of brandy.

“Constance ran downstairs to ring the doctor and let her aunt know what was going on. Your future mother-in-law.”

Crispin winced again. Under different circumstances I would have tweaked him about it, but at the moment it seemed better to let it go.

“Miss Fletcher died while Christopher, Pippa, and I were with her,” Francis said. “She never woke up.”

“She didn’t say anything?”

I shook my head. “She was in no condition to do that.”

After a second I added, “Out of curiosity, what did you think she might say?”

She had already assured him he wasn’t the father of her baby, so it couldn’t be that.

He eyed me. “The thing dead people in books always say. The name of the murderer.”