Lies in Little Sutherland (Pippa Darling Mysteries #8)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

I have often thought it fitting that my courtesy-uncle, Harold, Duke of Sutherland, was born in the gloomy late autumn.

Not in the sometimes spectacularly colorful yellow and gold of October, nor in the jolly red and green (and white) lead-up to Christmas, but in the gray chill of mid-November, the time of year that gets in your bones and makes you feel cold all the way down to the marrow.

It seems suitable for such a rigid, humorless, sour man.

Of course, I was born approximately a week past the midpoint of November myself, so it doesn’t necessarily follow. I am, if I do say so myself, a delight. Christopher would agree.

At any rate, it was the middle of November, and we were gathered at Sutherland Hall to celebrate the duke’s birthday. (Not mine. We would be commemorating that joyous occasion the following weekend, in the much jollier surroundings of Beckwith Place, and without the presence of His Grace.)

In addition to myself and His Grace, the guests at Sutherland Hall this weekend included the rest of the Astley family: the duke’s younger brother, Lord Herbert, Herbert’s wife Lady Roslyn, and their children Francis and Christopher, as well as Francis’s fiancée, Miss Constance Peckham.

There was also His Grace’s son and heir, Crispin, Viscount St George.

There was Crispin’s wife-to-be, Lady Laetitia Marsden, and her parents, the Earl and Countess of Marsden. And then there was Lord Geoffrey, Laetitia’s brother, just out of jail and not guilty of murder by decree of the southern circuit of the Assizes.

In a just world, arranging to administer an abortifacient to your pregnant paramour and thus facilitating her death should have resulted in more than a slap on the wrist, if you asked me, especially as the Marsdens could well afford the hefty fine.

However, it seemed that the jury had decided to save most of their ire for the woman who had actually, with malice aforethought, fed Cecily Fletcher the overdose of pennyroyal with the idea of killing her.

Nellie would go to the gallows, of course, unless she pleaded her belly, and given Geoffrey’s habits, I wouldn’t be surprised if she were enceinte. Meanwhile, Geoffrey was here, back with his family in the lap of luxury, as if nothing had happened and Cecily wasn’t dead.

I’m not a fan of Lord Geoffrey’s, if you cannot tell.

Nor of anyone else in the Marsden family, if I’m honest. Lord Maury isn’t so bad, or at any rate better than his wife and children, but Geoffrey is a cad, and Euphemia is a shrew, and Laetitia…

well, Laetitia’s only crime is that she’s marrying Crispin even though she knows that he’s in love with someone else, and it’s somewhat difficult to blame her for that when he proposed to her of his own free will and has made it clear that he won’t declare himself to the girl he loves.

He’s convinced—not without reason—that she’ll trample his tender feelings underfoot like a baby grand doing the Charleston, and he also believes—again, not without reason—that his father would disinherit him were he to propose.

And he’s most likely right: Uncle Harold doesn’t like me any better than I like him.

So that’s Laetitia. At the moment, she was simpering at Crispin as they did a slow two-step at the far end of the gloomy Georgian drawing room.

The fireplace was roaring in an effort to take the chill out of the stone walls, rain was pattering against the windowpanes, and we were tossing back cocktails to keep the cold at bay.

And that was when Constance turned to me and said, “Did I tell you, Pippa? Shreve saw Morrison in the Cotswolds.”

It took me a moment—you can blame the gin, if you’d like—to make sense of this sentence.

At first it was simply a string of words put together in a way that seemed entirely random, and upon a second turnover in my brain, it didn’t make a whole lot more sense.

Someone had seen someone else in something?

In what? A place? A play? And who exactly had seen whom?

But then my brain nudged a name to the forefront, and I reconsidered. “Who is Shreve?”

“Aunt Effie’s maid,” Constance said.

Aunt Effie is Lady Euphemia, Countess of Marsden.

Constance is her niece, so the Marsden and Astley families will be intertwined whether I like it or not.

Even if something were to derail Crispin’s and Laetitia’s ill-fated nuptials, and I’m not holding my breath for that, Constance will marry Francis next summer, and we’ll be attached to the Marsdens whether we want to be or not.

But that’s next summer, and meanwhile, Crispin and Laetitia will be tying the knot in mid-December. (Indecent haste, if you ask me. They’ve only been engaged for two months. I think she’s afraid that he’ll somehow manage to dislodge her if she doesn’t get him to the altar fast enough.)

“Your aunt’s maid saw Lydia Morrison? Where?”

“The Cotswolds,” Constance repeated. “Near Stow-on-the-Wold.”

“And what was she doing there?”

By now, a few of the others had started to pay attention to the conversation, as well.

Christopher was curled up next to me on the settee, cocktail in hand, while Francis was sitting, a bit more decorously, next to Constance on the loveseat.

But Uncle Herbert, Uncle Harold, Lord Maurice, and Geoffrey were playing a manly game of cards at a table nearby, and they had stopped what they were doing to listen, as well.

So had Aunt Roz and Lady Euphemia, although the latter seemed more interested in watching her daughter do her best to seduce St George via two-step than to pay the rest of us much mind.

“Shreve was on holiday,” Constance said. “The Cotswolds are very pretty, you know. She said that she had always wanted to go.”

The Cotswolds are indeed very pretty. And only a few hours away from Wiltshire by motorcar. Now, if only Constance would get to the point.

“Not Shreve,” I said patiently. “Morrison. Was she also on holiday?”

Constance shook her head. “She seemed to live there. Or nearby, at any rate. They met at a rummage sale, Shreve said.”

Indeed?

“She said—Shreve did—that Morrison looked well, but seemed jumpy. And not as if she was happy to see her. Shreve, I mean. As if Morrison was unhappy to see Shreve. She told her—Shreve told Morrison—that I had been asking about her. That’s why Shreve even bothered to mention it to me.”

“We should go,” I said.

“Go?”

“To the Cotswolds. To see if we can find her.”

Over at the card table, play started up again as Uncle Harold chose a card and put it down. Lady Euphemia took her eyes off her daughter and future son-in-law for just long enough to give me a stare down the length of her nose, and Aunt Roz smiled at me. “Why do you care, Pippa, dear?”

“Because she vanished,” I said. “Just up and left one morning in April with no word to anyone.”

The same morning we discovered that Aunt Charlotte had killed herself, in fact.

I had always suspected that there was a connection.

Lydia Morrison had been Aunt Charlotte’s maid many years ago, and she had received a telephone call on the evening before her departure.

We didn’t know whether that call had originated here at Sutherland Hall, of course, but it was possible, and perhaps even likely.

And also, there was the matter of Margaret Hughes.

Twenty-three years ago, when Morrison went to work for Lady Peckham, a different maid had come to Sutherland Hall in her place.

And Hughes was now dead, clobbered in an alley in Bristol three months ago.

There were good reasons why I wanted to assure myself of Morrison’s continued health and wellbeing.

“And you’re incurably nosy,” Christopher said from next to me. He was curled up like a kitten, with his feet on the cushions and his head on my shoulder.

His mother gave him an indulgent look—he’s her youngest, and she lost Robbie much too soon—but she did, nonetheless, tell him, “Sit up, Kit. Your uncle won’t appreciate you putting your feet on the furniture.”

Christopher pouted, but he did swing his feet off the cushions and back onto the floor. He still slumped against me like an empty evening cloak, however. “Is that better?”

“Marginally,” his mother allowed. “What’s the matter? You can’t have overindulged already.”

“The floor is cold. The fire’s hot. I’m sleepy.”

I was, too, now that he mentioned it. The muted light and patter of raindrops and murmur of voices were all soporific. I could barely keep my mind on the conversation.

“I prefer the word curious,” I told Christopher. “Or inquisitive, if you will. But not nosy.”

“Of course you do, Darling,” a voice behind me drawled. After a second, it added a strangled, “Philippa,” and I assumed that Lady Laetitia must have elbowed her intended in the ribs as a reminder that he’s not allowed to call me Darling anymore.

I grew up as Philippa Marie Schatz in Heidelberg, and then my last name was anglicized to Darling when I landed in Southampton at the beginning of the Great War. 1914 wasn’t an opportune time to wander about England with a German-sounding surname.

(I’ve only recently come to learn that Schatz wasn’t actually my father’s surname, either, but that’s irrelevant to the current issue.)

My arrival in England was more than a decade ago now.

Crispin has called me Darling for years, ever since he came down from Eton at eighteen, or certainly since he came down from Cambridge at twenty-one.

It has been difficult for both of us to get used to the new rule, not least because I resent it.

That was why I tilted my head back and smirked up at him. “I do, Crispin.”

Next to me, Christopher made a choking sound, while next to Crispin, Laetitia’s face congealed.