Chapter Eighteen #2
She stared at him, speechless, and his smile widened. “Come, Georgie!” he said, offering her his arm once again. “Sandwiches await, and then you will have to help me pick my most alluring jumper for the evening’s entertainment.”
“None of your jumpers are alluring,” she said, recovering sufficiently to lie through her teeth.
He smiled at her indulgently. “You know, you’re a dreadful liar. Rather reassuring, really! At least I know that you aren’t a murderer!” And with a jaunty whistle, he set off down the road once more, Georgie on his arm and wondering when, precisely, her life had become so unexpected.
Several hours later—hours that Georgie had spent digging happily in the garden; hours that Sebastian had spent eating a half dozen sandwiches, a sizable portion of the bread-and-butter pudding that Abigail had made the day before, and at least three or four shortbread biscuits that remained in a tin and “looked lonely”—Georgie was curled up in the drawing room, thumbing through an old issue of Country Life, when she heard footsteps on the stairs.
Glancing up, she was just in time to see Sebastian prance through the doorway wearing a fresh pair of trousers and a pale blue jumper that perfectly matched his eyes.
The sleeves were rolled up, exposing his forearms. His blond hair was ever so slightly rumpled, in an attractive way that Georgie suspected was intentional. His face shone with a healthy glow.
Georgie leaned closer to him. “Why is your skin… glistening? Don’t tell me you’ve somehow found someone to play tennis with you in the past hour?
” She was nearly certain he hadn’t; not an hour earlier, she’d seen him in this very room, on his back, staring at the ceiling, biscuit tin balanced carefully on his abdomen.
“No,” he said, sounding pleased. “I held my face above the teakettle when it was letting off steam. Just enough to give me that delicate flush of exercise.” He batted his eyelashes at her. “Although I can think of a vastly more pleasant way I might have worked up a healthful glow—”
“That’s enough, thank you.” It would be easier to stop him flirting with her, she reflected, if she could cure herself of the habit of kissing him impulsively. It would help if he could stop being so… (She mentally gestured at his entire physical being.)
“I am bait, Georgie,” he explained patiently.
“I have to look the part. I need to send their delicate female minds into a tizzy of unfulfilled lust. Now, are you ready to set off?” he asked, smiling charmingly at her.
“Only, remember, you’re to hide yourself away where the ladies won’t notice you.
Might put a damper on the mood if they see me with my would-be lady love. ”
“Your—” Georgie began, but he turned and pranced from the room again, leaving her gaping like a fish, with little option but to follow him.
Within a quarter of an hour, they’d arrived at the Fleecy Lamb, which prided itself on a (relatively) more upscale atmosphere than the Shorn Sheep. Arthur met them at the door, his mouth twitching at the sight of Sebastian, and he and Georgie proceeded to hide themselves away in the darkest corner.
“How do you propose to lure them in to have a drink with you?” Georgie asked, curious in spite of herself.
Sebastian winked at her. “That won’t be difficult. Like herding sheep.”
“I’d like to see you try herding Ernest, and then you might revise that turn of phrase,” Georgie advised him.
Not five minutes later, however, he was back, escorting Miss de Vere and Miss Singh into the pub and proclaiming in loud, carrying tones, “… can’t believe my good fortune in running into you ladies!
And while I am unaccompanied, for once!” Georgie didn’t dare crane around to look at him, but she would have bet a tidy sum that he’d dropped a wink at the end of that sentence.
“And where is Miss Radcliffe this evening?” came Miss de Vere’s voice as he led them to a table close enough for Georgie and Arthur to easily eavesdrop.
“At home, scrutinizing clues without me, no doubt,” Sebastian said, a touch mournfully.
He and Georgie had spent some time discussing what angle he ought to attempt when approaching the ladies, and had landed on “man with wounded professional pride” as the one the ladies would find most plausible.
Men were terribly easy to offend, after all.
“No doubt,” Miss Singh agreed, sounding impressed; Georgie was tempted to laugh.
“Ladies, what can I fetch you?” Sebastian asked, and Miss Singh asked for a cider, while Miss de Vere requested a specific whisky. Next to Georgie, Arthur whistled quietly in appreciation. Sebastian left to head to the bar, and Georgie and Arthur leaned forward in their seats, listening hard.
Unfortunately for them, no confessions of misdeeds were forthcoming from the ladies; instead, they spent a few minutes debating—Georgie could not believe her ears—whether Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane should get married in Dorothy Sayers’s novels.
Sebastian returned at last, and there were murmured thanks from both women, followed by a moment of silence, during which all three were presumably sipping their drinks.
“You’re looking very… healthy, this evening,” Miss de Vere said after several seconds. There was a thunk as she evidently set her glass down on the table.
“I spent my afternoon practicing a spot of tennis,” Sebastian said easily.
“Where?” This was Miss Singh’s voice. “I haven’t seen courts anywhere.”
“Er.” Sebastian was clearly thinking fast. “I practiced against the side of Radcliffe Hall. No one to play with, but want to keep the reflexes sharp.” His voice dropped an octave. “For other pursuits, of course.” Next to Georgie, Arthur buried his face in his drink.
“Of course,” Miss Singh said, sounding a bit taken aback by this turn in tone.
She quickly rallied, however. “What do you and Miss Radcliffe plan to investigate next?” She dropped her voice.
“Stella and I would be more than happy to lend you our services to be a distraction once again!” She sounded as though she were about to burst with pride.
“I’m not entirely certain,” Sebastian said, sounding a bit glum.
“We didn’t uncover anything today but a bunch of paperwork.
No doubt Miss Radcliffe has plenty of ideas for what to do next, though.
Not that she’s shared them with me.” He gave a dramatic sigh.
“But we certainly won’t hesitate to ask you for help again, if it’s needed.
” A pause, and then, “I only wish I could rely on you when I return to London to work.”
“What do you do for work, then, Fletcher-Ford?” Miss de Vere asked, sounding intrigued.
“Oh, it wouldn’t interest you,” Sebastian dismissed. “I would hate to bore two such beautiful women, when I finally have you to myself.”
“But…” Miss Singh sounded a bit hesitant. “What about Miss Radcliffe?”
“What about her?” Georgie could practically see Sebastian’s shrug.
“Well,” Miss Singh said, sounding reproving, “you’re meant to be her romantic subplot!”
“Her… what?”
“Romantic subplot,” Miss de Vere said. “All the best detective novels have them, you know.”
“Miss Radcliffe must have missed that memo,” Sebastian said. “But I hardly need Miss Radcliffe, when I have two such beautiful specimens of womanhood before me.”
Georgie pressed her lips together, tempted to laugh, despite worrying that this was not going precisely according to plan. When plotting this conversation, they had failed to account for the extent to which the Detective Devotees were wedded to the traditional beats of the genre.
“Mr. Fletcher-Ford,” Miss de Vere said, her voice growing steely, “I really think we should focus on the case at hand. You said you and Miss Radcliffe found some paperwork?”
“There’s an awful lot of paperwork in these mysteries,” Miss Singh said, thoughtful now. Georgie exchanged a glance with Arthur, whose brow was furrowed in thought.
“Letters, I mean,” Miss Singh clarified a moment later.
Georgie frowned, a half-formed idea taking shape at the back of her mind.
She considered the facts of the murder cases in Buncombe-upon-Woolly, and realized Miss Singh was right—letters did seem to connect them all.
There were the blackmail letters that Mrs. Hoxton—a local housewife who’d been having an affair with a farmer—had received from the vicar, prompting her murder of him.
And the anonymous letter that the bakers’ son had received, informing him of his parents having changed their will to exclude him.
And the letter—allegedly from an orphanage employee—alerting Lady Tunbridge’s eventual murderer to her ladyship’s identity as her birth mother. And the Marbles…
She wracked her brain.
There had been a draft letter uncovered by the police in Mrs. Marble’s desk, supposedly to a friend, discussing her dissatisfaction with her marriage.
Georgie bit her lip, turning over these facts—and at the back of her mind a small voice reminded her of Sebastian’s theory, which she had so quickly brushed aside, that the murders in the village might somehow be connected.
Sebastian, meanwhile, was silent, as Miss Singh and Miss de Vere matter-of-factly made a list of the cases, making note of the role the letter had played in each mystery.
Georgie expected him, once they’d concluded, to attempt to steer the conversation back on track, toward more flirtatious territory, but there was a lengthy silence once the women had ceased speaking, and Georgie chanced another glance at Sebastian.
He was staring down into his drink, deep in thought. Whatever was wrong with him?
He glanced up, and unerringly caught her eye.
Georgie prepared to duck back into her hiding spot, but before she could do so, he mystifyingly raised a hand at her.
“Miss Radcliffe!” he called. “Georgie!” Both Murder Tourists’ heads whipped round, and their brows furrowed at the sight of Georgie, who waved weakly back by way of greeting.
“Georgie,” Sebastian said, more firmly now. “Come join us. Because I’ve just had a thought and—” He broke off, shaking his head. “Well, old bean, I think you may be in possession of an absolutely corking piece of evidence.”