Chapter 5
Chapter Five
“So Laetitia is missing,” I said.
Tom hesitated. “Laetitia is… not where she’s supposed to be.”
“Missing.”
“I suppose we can call her missing, but we don’t know that anything untoward has happened. She might, as you said, have stopped off to visit a friend. She might have eloped. She might have been in an accident, although there’s no sign of that so far.”
“If she eloped,” I said, “it wasn’t with Crispin.
And I’m sure she had the sense to travel along the main roads, unlike a certain novelist we’re all familiar with.
If she had an accident, someone would have noticed.
If she left yesterday morning, it was broad daylight.
It only takes a few hours to motor from Dorset to London.
I suppose the fog might have been an issue, although we made it to Surrey with no problem whatsoever… ”
“You’re missing the point, Pippa,” Christopher interrupted my monologue. “Tom thinks Crispin did away with her and that she was in the boot when we went off this morning.”
“That’s silly,” I told him. “Crispin would never have murdered her when he could have simply told her he didn’t want to marry her. And where would her car be? It’s not as if that would fit in the boot with the body.”
“Wherever she parked it when she arrived in London?” Tom suggested.
“In a car park somewhere, then, if she didn’t show up at Marsden House or Sutherland House?”
I waited, but when no one said anything, I continued. “If she parked publicly, it would have been for a public meeting—a luncheon, or perhaps a wedding appointment of some kind; a fitting, or maybe the stationery appointment was yesterday, not tomorrow…”
“I’m not sure you’re helping, Pippa,” Christopher told me.
I glanced at him. “Of course I’m helping, Christopher.
If it was a public meeting, it would have been a public murder.
Which makes no sense. Crispin—or whoever—would have needed privacy to kill her.
It was foggy yesterday, but not foggy enough that someone could have committed murder in the middle of the day without being seen by someone.
There are more than four million people in London.
One of them would have noticed. Especially if he had to fold her body into the boot of the H6 afterwards. ”
“He might have picked her up gently and settled her in the passenger seat,” Tom said. His expression indicated that he was enjoying this. He might have been a bit appalled by it too, but overall, I’d say he enjoyed it. “And if anyone noticed, he could have said she was under the weather.”
“Drunk, do you mean? In the middle of the day?”
“Or ill,” Tom said.
“I suppose he might have done. Although he would have still needed time to move her from the passenger seat to the trunk at some point before six o’clock last night.
Because she certainly wasn’t sitting there when he arrived here yesterday.
The motorcar was parked outside when Christopher and I came home.
And Evans would have noticed if Crispin had hauled her out and into the lift. ”
“You didn’t think to check the boot, of course?”
No, of course not. Why would we?
“Do you really think,” I asked, “that Crispin would park his motorcar—his very recognizable motorcar, the one every copper in London knows by sight—outside the Essex House Mansions all night long with his fiancée’s dead body in the boot?
I’ll admit I’ve often cast aspersions on his personality and intellect, but I assure you, he’s smarter than that. ”
Tom hummed something. Just a sound, not words. Just a low hum to indicate… something. Disagreement? Doubt? “You said Evans let him into the flat. How was he, when you got up here?”
“He was fine,” I said firmly. Christopher shifted, but he said nothing. “He had made himself at home. Stocking feet on the table, glass of brandy in hand. Quite like the lord of the manor.”
Tom tilted his head. “Sounds as if that might have rubbed you the wrong way?”
“Well, of course,” I said. “He always rubs me the wrong way.” In a manner of speaking. “But since he isn’t the one dead—if anyone’s dead—it doesn’t matter how it made me feel. I assure you I didn’t harm him.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I went to my room to change. I let him and Christopher have a moment.”
Tom’s eyes sharpened. “Was something wrong?”
“He’s getting married in just over a week,” Christopher said. “His father died two weeks ago. He’s the new Duke of Sutherland, with a lot of new responsibilities. Take your pick.”
“Nothing beyond that?”
“He’s in love with Pippa,” Christopher said with a glance at me, “but he’s marrying Laetitia Marsden. Add that to everything else, and it’s rather a lot.”
“Did you happen to mention murder? Either of you?”
“Of course not,” Christopher said with a snort. “What do you take me for? If I were going to murder Laetitia, I wouldn’t involve Crispin. And if he were going to murder Laetitia—or had already done—he wouldn’t involve me. Or at least he wouldn’t involve Pippa.”
They both turned to look at me. Tom’s expression was speculative. I sniffed. “I’d be a better murderess than either of you, I dare say. I’ve read more murder mystery novels than the both of you put together. You’d do well to involve me if you wanted to get away with it.”
“This isn’t a joke,” Tom said sternly. There was a slightly guilty pause, then—
“Of course not, Tom,” Christopher said, while I added, “With all due respect, Detective-Sergeant, you don’t even know that she’s missing, let alone that she’s dead. For all you know, she could be sitting pretty with Lady Violet Cummings or the Fortescues right now.”
Lady Violet along with Bilge and Serena Fortescue were close enough friends to Laetitia that they had been present during the engagement party at Marsden Manor in September. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that she might have gone to visit either of them.
“She told her mother—” Tom began, and I cut him off.
“That doesn’t matter. Anyone can say anything, and it doesn’t make it true. What matters is what she did. Do you even know that she set out for London? She could have been headed for Southampton. She could be halfway to America by now!”
“Why would she be going to America?” Tom wanted to know, reasonably enough.
“Eloping?” I exchanged a glance with Christopher, who smirked.
“Eloping?” Tom repeated blankly, since he wasn’t in on the joke. “Whom with? His Grace, the Duke of Sutherland, is here in London. Unless you’re lying to me?”
“Why would we lie to you?” And especially about that? “We spent all day with him. Of course he’s in London. In fact—” I glanced at the clock, “—he has probably made it to Sutherland House by now, if you wanted to talk to him yourself.”
Tom eyed the clock, too. “If Laetitia was in the boot of his motorcar last night, she won’t be there anymore.”
“You think he dropped her off somewhere between Mayfair and here yesterday afternoon, then? Because I can assure you, he didn’t do it earlier today, nor last night, either.”
Tom pushed to his feet. “I guess we’ll find out.”
Christopher did the same. “I’m going with you.”
“This is an official investigation—” Tom began.
“Is it really? Has her family reported her missing?”
Christopher waved me, as well as the objection, aside. “Doesn’t matter. If you won’t let me ride along with you, Tom, I’ll find my own way there. But I’m not letting you interrogate Crispin on your own.”
“Count me in,” I said, and stood, too. I didn’t really want to leave the comfort of the flat again—what I wanted was a nice hot bath and a change of clothes and three uninterrupted hours on the Chesterfield with a good book—but if Tom thought he was going to talk Crispin into admitting anything, he had another think coming.
He sighed. “Very well. You can come along. And yes, it is an official inquiry. Her family has reported her missing.”
I sniffed, and he added, “Under normal circumstances, we wouldn’t think much of it. A grown woman doesn’t turn up where she’s supposed to, it is usually no one’s concern but her own. It’s not as if she were a child, or as if there are any signs of foul play.”
Not according to what he had said, no.
“But the disappearance added to the anonymous letter reporting a conversation about murder means I’m obligated to look into it.”
I stopped halfway to the door to look at him. “You suspect us? Christopher and me?”
It was difficult to keep the delight out of my voice. In none of the murder investigations we had been involved, had I ever been considered a suspect. It was a new and exciting experience.
“You had motive,” Tom told me steadily, “if you wanted to be Duchess of Sutherland yourself and Laetitia was in your way—”
I made a face. “I don’t.”
“—and you were overheard discussing it. To any sane person, you’d be a suspect.”
I glanced at Christopher. “He can vouch for me. We’ve been together all day. Yesterday, too.”
“Kit’s not a reliable alibi,” Tom said. “He’d lie for you.”
“Crispin, then.”
“He’d lie for you, too.”
Would he? In some circumstances, probably. If I had murdered his fiancée? Perhaps not.
“Do you seriously believe that the three of us motored to Surrey with Laetitia’s body in the boot,” Christopher asked, “and left her there? Is that really what you think?”
Tom turned to him. “It wouldn’t be the first time the three of you motored around with a dead body that you were planning to get rid of, would it?”
“Low blow,” I told him. “Besides, you helped us then. Why would you think we’re guilty now?”
Tom’s voice was firm. “Because you had no reason to want Frederick Montrose dead, and every reason to want Laetitia Marsden out of all of your lives. Besides, I saw you that night. All three of you were in shock.”