Chapter 1 #2
She was out of luck on that score. Christopher is queer.
I don’t know if it was becoming best friends with a girl at a pivotal age that did it—me, when I was incorporated into the Astley family at the beginning of the Great War—or whether it’s something he was born with, but Christopher is not interested in women.
Crispin, on the other hand, is a born womanizer.
Women adore him, and he adores them right back.
I don’t fool myself into thinking that I know about all of his conquests, but I knew that the list I had provided Christopher with earlier was incomplete.
In addition to Laetitia Marsden, Violet Cummings, and Millicent Tremayne, and perhaps Olivia Barnsley—I wasn’t certain about her, although it wouldn’t surprise me—there had been Cecily Fletcher (now dead), and Gladys Long (ditto), and a waitress at an inn between London and Wiltshire (presumably still alive), and those were just the ones I knew about.
There was the fake Flossie Schlomsky, of course, although I didn’t know how far that had gone.
It should also be mentioned that His Grace, the new Duke of Sutherland, is a mere twenty-three years old. It’s not as if he’s had a long time to build that list.
But that is neither here nor there. The point is that women throw themselves at Crispin, while I can barely tolerate him on a good day.
Also, I let him know it. I wouldn’t be surprised if part of my appeal is that I’m hard to get, and once he got me—if I were to go along with Christopher’s suggested course of action; not the murder one, the marriage—he’d discover that he really wasn’t all that interested in me after all.
“That’s nonsense,” Christopher said.
“I’m not so certain it is, you know. It’s human nature to want what you can’t have. Once you get it, you often discover that you didn’t want it as much as you thought you did. Most of the appeal was in it being unattainable.”
Christopher hummed something. It sounded disagreeable. “So you won’t do it?”
“Won’t do what? Throw myself at Crispin so he can have the pleasure of rejecting me to my face and then marry her anyway?” I snorted. “Not bloody likely, Christopher, is it?”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Christopher said, and I suppressed an eyeroll.
“He absolutely would do, and you know it.” We’ve had a contentious relationship for all of the dozen years we have known each other, and there was no chance that he’d let the opportunity go by to mock me for having developed feelings for him.
Not, of course, that I had any feelings to speak of. This was all hypothetical.
“It would get rid of Laetitia,” Christopher said. “Without resorting to murder.”
“I’m not certain it would, you know. I don’t trust Crispin to do what’s best for him. And as for the idea of committing murder, what would Tom say?”
Tom—Detective-Sergeant Thomas Gardiner with Scotland Yard—was my cousin Robert’s best friend when they were boys at Eton.
In the time since Christopher and I moved from Wiltshire to London, Tom has taken a special interest in Christopher, or at least an interest in keeping him out of trouble.
Christopher has a little crush, and gets starry-eyed if I mention Tom’s name. Like now.
“I don’t imagine he would say much,” Christopher said. “We just wouldn’t tell him until after the deed was done. And then we’d hope that he’d help us cover it up.”
“I hardly think he would do, do you?” Too straight-laced by far.
“He helped us dispose of Freddie Montrose’s body,” Christopher pointed out.
“But we didn’t murder Frederick Montrose.” We had simply been motoring around London with his body in Crispin’s motorcar, looking for somewhere to leave it. It was not the same thing at all.
“Tom didn’t know that,” Christopher said.
“We told him we hadn’t, and he believed us.
That’s different from doing for Laetitia and then asking him to help us cover it up.
He might go to the mat for you—he’s shown a distinct inclination to bend the rules in order to keep you out of trouble—but I don’t trust that he would do the same for me. ”
“We could make it look like an accident.”
“Certainly,” I said. “Because everyone is likely to believe that. Not only is it common knowledge that we abhor her, but it isn’t as if we haven’t already been embroiled in a dozen murders this year.”
The chap at the next table slanted me a look. I gave him an apologetic grimace and turned back to Christopher. “We should go. People are starting to stare.”
“We might as well,” Christopher agreed, and looked around for the Nippy with the bill. “Much better to leave the planning for the privacy of home.”
“Indeed.” I let him deal with the Nippy and then help me into my Macintosh and out into Coventry Street.
It was December, with some two weeks to go until Christmas, but the weather in London was mild and foggy.
It wasn’t raining—in fact, December 1926 would go on record as one of the driest months of the year—but the mizzle was miserable, and so was not being able to see more than a few feet ahead of oneself.
I hooked my hand through Christopher’s elbow and hung on as we headed down the pavement toward Bloomsbury and the Essex House Mansions, where we share a flat, courtesy of Christopher’s father, my uncle Herbert.
I’m Christopher’s cousin on the distaff side: his mother Roslyn and my mother Annabelle were sisters. Crispin is Christopher’s cousin on their fathers’ side: Uncle Herbert was our late Uncle Harold’s younger brother.
Or more accurately, as Crispin had known since April and Christopher had discovered in July, but which I had only learned of a couple of weeks ago, Crispin wasn’t Uncle Harold’s son at all. He was in fact Christopher’s half-brother, born two-and-a-half months or so later.
It’s a very long story, and one I don’t plan to go into at this juncture, but that secret was to blame for the demise of Christopher’s grandfather, the late Duke Henry, in April, as well as his valet, Grimsby, and Uncle Harold’s wife, Lady Charlotte, that same weekend.
Margaret Hughes, Lady Charlotte’s maid for the past twenty-three years, had had her head bashed in in August, while Lydia Morrison, Lady Charlotte’s maid when Crispin was born, had been smothered with a pillow just last month.
And then there was Uncle Harold himself, dead in his bed at Sutherland Hall with a vial of sleeping draught on the bedside table, just a few weeks ago.
Needless to say, it had been quite the costly secret.
And I’m sure I also don’t need to mention that we had all worked very hard to keep those details out of the press.
As far as the world was concerned, Crispin was the legitimate Duke of Sutherland, and Uncle Harold’s son.
The only people who knew differently were Christopher and myself, Aunt Roslyn and Uncle Herbert, and of course Crispin.
And Tom, who had figured it out, but who had decided to let that particular sleeping dog lie.
With both Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Harold dead, there was no one left to prosecute.
“I think he ought to just tell her the truth,” Christopher said as we picked our way along the pavement in the peasouper.
We could hardly see three feet in front of us—someone would come along in the opposite direction, looming out of the fog like a specter, and we’d all have to sidestep with mumbled apologies a second before we collided—and all the noises distorted in the fog, including Christopher’s voice.
“I know you do,” I said. Laetitia, obviously, was not someone who knew the truth. “But what good would it do? She’d just tell him that she’d keep his secret and to keep on keeping on, don’t you think? It would be in her best interest to keep things quiet.”
“He’d have to be willing to sacrifice the title,” Christopher said.
Exactly. And yet— “He’s never been willing to sacrifice the title before. If he had been, he could have talked me into eloping, and that would have been that. Uncle Harold would have disinherited him.”
“I don’t think he thought he could talk you into it,” Christopher said, with a sideways look at me. “Are you saying that he could have done?”
“We won’t know now, will we? He was never willing to try.”
“He might have been willing to try,” Christopher said, “if you had given him any kind of encouragement. If he thought you’d do anything but laugh yourself sick if he declared himself.”
I made a face. “Sorry, Christopher. I simply can’t wrap my head around it.”
“You dislike him less than you used to.”
That was true. However— “That’s not saying much. And it’s hardly good enough for marriage, Christopher.”
I cleared my throat before lowering my voice into the tenor range. “‘Will you marry me, Darling?’”
And then I added some simper to my usual tone when I answered, “‘Why, I’d be delighted, St George. After all, I dislike you less than I used to.’”
Christopher snorted. “I would hope you wouldn’t put it like that.”
“Of course I wouldn’t. But I don’t want to marry him, either.”
“Not even to save him from Laetitia?”
I hesitated. “I suppose I’d consider it. If he came to me and begged. But I still say that he wants to marry her, Christopher. He proposed. He didn’t have to. And he could break the engagement at any time as long as he’s willing to risk the breach of promise suit.”
The one Laetitia would surely bring if he were to throw her over.
“The scandal would be explosive,” Christopher said as we turned the corner of Essex Street. “Hold up a moment. Let me just—”
He slowed his pace as we approached the public call box situated just on the other side of the corner.
“Absolutely not.” I tugged him past by his elbow. “You are not to ring up Sutherland Hall and tell St George that I might be willing to marry him. I’m not having that on my conscience.”
“You’d save us all from a lifetime of Laetitia,” Christopher said, although he let himself be guided past the box, albeit not without a longing glance. “I can always come back later, I suppose.”
Not if I had anything to say about it.
“Don’t you dare. You can’t make this decision for him, Christopher. If he wants out of the engagement, he’s going to have to extricate himself. I did enough damage when I told him to propose. I’m not taking any more responsibility in the matter.”
“But since it was your fault, don’t you think—?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t. And it was not my fault. All I told him was that they deserve one another. He didn’t have to jump from that to proposing marriage.”
“I just think that if he knew you’d be willing to marry him—”
“I’m not,” I said, “so put it out of your mind. Now, please.”
Christopher didn’t answer, just turned into the portico outside the Essex House Mansions. And said, when he saw the motorcar parked there, “Speak of the devil.”
Indeed. The blue Hispano-Suiza racing car, with its stork emblem winging above the boot, could only belong to one person.
I looked at him. “Did you know he was going to be here?”
He looked back. “I did not. I wonder what’s wrong?”
“Beyond the obvious, do you mean?”
He didn’t respond, just pushed the door into the lobby open and greeted the doorman. “Afternoon, Evans. Is that my cousin’s motorcar?”
The doorman nodded. “His Grace is waiting for you in your flat, Mr. Astley.”
“Thank you, Evans,” Christopher said.
“I suppose you had to let him in?” I added.
“It didn’t seem polite to make the Duke of Sutherland wait in his motorcar,” Evans said primly.
No, of course it didn’t. “I thought we’d had this conversation already. Hadn’t we, Evans?”
“Yes, Miss Darling,” Evans said.
Christopher rolled his eyes and reached for my arm. “Come along, Pippa, and stop giving Evans a hard time. You wouldn’t have wanted Crispin to sit in his car in the fog, either.”
Oh, wouldn’t I?
But— “Coming,” I told Christopher. “Thank you, Evans.”
Evans nodded politely as we disappeared into the lift and Christopher pulled the grille across the opening while I waited with my finger hovering over the button.