Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
And so it was that we found ourselves knocking on the door of the Cummings family’s Town house the next morning after breakfast.
Christopher and I had been here once before.
(So had Crispin, clearly, since he’d known where to go, but I decided not to inquire into the details.
It was enough to know that the two of them had had a dalliance at one point.
Violet was part of that string of girls that Crispin had bedded since he came down from Cambridge and before he got himself affianced to Laetitia.
One of the gleaming jewels of the Bright Young Set, and I say that with only a modicum of sarcasm.)
When Christopher and I had been here, it had been shortly after the events at Marsden Manor, during which Violet had gotten herself poisoned by the same person who had killed Cecily Fletcher.
Cecily had perished during the engagement weekend.
Violet had been unconscious for quite a long time, and had been expected to succumb, too, but remarkably, she had rallied.
When we’d seen her two months ago, she’d been pale and sickly-looking, rail-thin in a manner unsupported even by current beauty-standards.
Boyishly slender and leggy was in; skeletal was not.
She looked much better now, polished up and dressed in the latest fashion, a healthy weight once again, and with the dark roots of her hair banished.
“Crispin!” She beamed when she saw him. She was a bit less enthusiastic about the rest of us, admittedly, but she was polite enough.
“Mr. Astley. Miss Darling. Please, come in. Have a seat. Can I get you something to drink?”
We’d been shown into one of the parlors, and it was before eleven in the morning, so a bit early to start in on the alcohol. I declined politely and seated myself next to Christopher.
Violet ignored us in favor of Crispin. “I was so sorry to hear about your father. How are you holding up?”
She sidled closer until she could put both hands on his face and peer up at him. It was overly intimate—especially in mixed company and with someone else’s fiancé—and it put her so close to him that he could probably feel it every time she took in a breath.
Crispin managed a smile, although it was a bit dimmer than his usual efforts.
Hard to say whether it was the reminder of last month’s events or the inappropriate touching that did it.
“I’m fine, Vi, thanks for asking.” He moved back just far enough that she had to drop her hands.
“And yes, it was horrible, but it’s over now. ”
Violet’s pretty face turned soft with sympathy. “I’m so sorry it had to end that way. But perhaps it was better than the alternative.”
She grasped his hand next, and squeezed it comfortingly.
The rest of England was aware that Uncle Harold was dead, of course, and it was rumored that he had done himself in, but society knew nothing about the murders he had committed, nor about the reason for them, so the general consensus was that it had been grief after losing Aunt Charlotte.
Harold, Duke of Sutherland, hadn’t been well since the weekend his father and his wife died, everyone knew that.
He had withdrawn from society, and had been more visibly strained when he was out in public.
Then, six months later, he had decided to take his own life.
The belief that it had been because of losing Aunt Charlotte was frankly more palatable to all of us than the truth, so we had gone along with it, and encouraged it where we could.
Violet was right that it was better than the alternative.
I cleared my throat in a prompting sort of manner, and Christopher’s lips twitched. Crispin looked at me as if he’d forgotten I was there while Violet’s perfectly plucked brows drew together.
Nothing happened for a moment, and then Crispin extricated himself gently. “I was wondering if you’d seen Laetitia, Vi.”
Violet blinked, and I added, drolly, “St George seems to have misplaced his fiancée, Lady Violet. She left Dorset two mornings ago to motor up to London, and no one has seen her since.”
Violet peered up at Crispin with those limpid eyes. “Truly?”
He nodded. “I’m afraid so, Vi. We were supposed to have had supper together last night, but she didn’t turn up.”
Violet sank her teeth into her bottom lip. “I’m afraid I haven’t seen Laetitia in quite a while. I’ve been recovering, as you know, and she’s been… busy, I assume.”
The pause before ‘busy’ was deliberate, of course.
It sounded as if Violet hadn’t seen Laetitia since the engagement party—although that was hard to believe.
Surely Laetitia must have visited her friend in the aftermath, if nothing else to apologize for what had happened in her home.
Violet could have died, and the Marsdens’ maid was responsible; good breeding alone ought to have brought Laetitia to Violet’s side to beg forgiveness.
But yes, of course Laetitia had been busy. She had a massive society wedding to arrange, and three months in which to do it. It was a shockingly short time for something like that, and I’m sure the entirety of society was eyeing her waistline to see what the reason might be.
I had noticed no change in it myself, so I didn’t think that was the reason for the quick turnaround.
It wasn’t the reason Crispin had proposed, although it wasn’t impossible that something like that might have happened later.
They’d already taken the honeymoon—and for that matter the entire engagement—in advance, by sharing a bed last January, so it wasn’t out of the question that they had done it again.
Laetitia might be enceinte. Personally, though, I thought she was just attempting to nail him down before he could change his mind and slither out of the arrangement.
But none of this was any of Violet’s business.
“That’s a shame,” I said. “We know how close you are. We were hoping you might know something.”
Violet shook her head. “I’m afraid not. I haven’t seen Laetitia since October. She stopped by shortly after I woke up, to give me an update on Geoffrey and that unfortunate girl—”
Nellie the maid, murderess of Cecily Fletcher and poisoner of Violet herself.
“—but I haven’t seen her since. In fact—” She sounded a bit miffed about it, “—she only stayed a few minutes when she was here. She was meeting someone for luncheon, she said, and she was running late.”
“St George,” I said, “I presume?”
She glanced at me, and then at Crispin, before she shook her head. “I don’t believe so. I told her to give Crispin my regards, and she made it sound as if the person she was meeting was someone else.”
“And this was in October?”
Violet nodded. “Not too long before the two of you turned up to talk about jewels. I must have mentioned it to you, surely?”
She might have done, at that. There was a vague impression in the back of my head, now that she mentioned it, that Laetitia had been by a week or so before us.
But it’s not as if I remember every mention of Lady Laetitia Marsden’s name, is it?
Most of the time I try to pretend that she doesn’t exist, or at least that she has no part of my life.
“I don’t suppose she mentioned where she was going?” I asked wistfully, knowing full well what the answer was going to be.
Violet shook her head. “I’m afraid not. Or if she did, I don’t recall.”
“It likely wouldn’t matter anyway, Darling,” Crispin told me. “Nobody there would remember her after all this time.”
No, of course not. I flapped a hand. “Carry on.”
I hadn’t meant it literally, but Violet turned back to Crispin and fluttered her eyelashes. “It’s so good to see you. I don’t get out much these days—still haven’t recovered entirely, you know—and I haven’t wanted to intrude, with everything that’s been going on…”
She swayed a bit closer, like a snake hypnotized by a flute.
I rolled my eyes in Christopher’s direction. He smirked. “Just let him work his magic, Pippa. Maybe she has some other little tidbit of information.”
But she didn’t. We had to sit there for another quarter of an hour, watching Lady Violet practically drape herself all over Crispin, and all we got for it was the little bit of info that on some day in early October, Laetitia had shared a meal with someone other than her fiancé.
Violet didn’t even know if it had been with a man or woman—she thought it might be a man, because if it had been a friend they shared, there was no reason why Laetitia wouldn’t simply have said, “I’m having lunch with Olivia,” or even, “I’m having lunch with the Honorable Reggie Fish,” but that was nothing we could build anything on.
Crispin extricated himself with promises not to be a stranger—I guess Violet saw an opportunity to get in on the ground floor, so to speak, if Laetitia didn’t come back—and then we left the Cummingses and made our way back into the Hispano-Suiza in the direction of Olivia Barnsley’s mews flat in Belgravia.
Here, the same scenario transpired, the only difference being that the Honorable Olivia Barnsley was a bit less touchy—with Crispin; not emotionally—but more outwardly, or avidly, curious about Laetitia’s whereabouts than Violet had been.
And not in a way that made me think she had eyes for Crispin herself.
They could have dallied in the past—I’d never asked—but on this particular day, she didn’t seem too interested.
When she bade us farewell, she informed us that she was having lunch with the Honorable Reggie Fish, so that was probably the reason why.
I had received the distinct impression, back in September, that she’d been head over heels for him.
I suppose it was nice for them both that it had worked out, or seemed to.
“But you’d have no idea where we might start to look for Laetitia?” I asked.