Chapter 7 #3
“Then allow me to judge the men,” I said. Christopher cleared his throat, and I added, “Allow us.”
Crispin glanced at him. “We heard Darling’s opinion. What about you? Would you take up with Bilge, Kit?”
“Looks aren’t everything,” Christopher said primly, “but no, I wouldn’t say that Bilge is my flavor, either. I don’t tend to go for married men, nor do they tend to go for me, as a rule.”
“It’s good that Serena feels differently,” I said, since Bilge had, after all, managed to find himself a pretty wife who, by all appearances, seemed to enjoy his company.
And there was nothing to contradict that assumption when we’d made our way to the Fortescues’ domicile. The happy couple were at home together, enjoying a cup of tea in the bright morning room, and they invited us to join them.
“This won’t take long,” Crispin told them, with a look at the tea set I could only describe as suspicious.
Although, considering that the last time we had seen the Fortescues was at Marsden Manor during a weekend when several people imbibed lethal doses of pennyroyal tea, perhaps I couldn’t entirely blame him.
“We just wanted to know whether you’d seen or heard from Laetitia. ”
Bilge and Serena exchanged glances. If there was any suspicion on Serena’s part that her husband was dallying with Laetitia, it wasn’t evident from their reaction. Bilge smirked and Serena giggled. “Have you misplaced your fiancée, Crispin?”
“I seem to have done,” Crispin said calmly, taking responsibility for a situation that was absolutely not his doing.
“We were supposed to sup together last night, but she never rang up. And we have an appointment at the stationers today—new monogram, you know—and she hasn’t turned up for that, either.
Apparently she left Dorset two days ago, and that’s the last anyone’s seen of her. ”
Bilge’s smirk had disappeared during Crispin’s recitation, and so had Serena’s buoyant mood. Now she looked downcast as she tugged the pale-blue negligee tighter around her midsection.
“We thought perhaps she had communicated with you,” I added.
Both of them looked at me for a moment before they shook their respective heads.
“I haven’t seen Laetitia in weeks,” Bilge said, and sounded like he was telling the truth. His wife didn’t look at him with surprise, so most likely he was.
“I haven’t, either,” she confirmed. “I’ve been…”
She hesitated, “—indisposed for the past few weeks.” The hand she lowered to her stomach was most likely habit, but she couldn’t have made the situation clearer had she spelled it out.
And then Bilge spelled it out anyway. “Serena is in a delicate condition,” he explained, with a proud look at his wife and future heir. Unless the baby was a girl, of course, which is always possible.
“Congratulations,” Christopher said brightly. “That’s wonderful, isn’t it, Pippa?”
“Wonderful,” I echoed.
Back in September, during the aftermath of Cecily Fletcher’s overdose of pennyroyal, the Fortescues had let slip that Serena had had a miscarriage.
It had been my fault—not the miscarriage, obviously; the fact that we’d been talking about it—so it was good to hear that they had moved beyond it and were trying again.
But it was also understandable that Serena would be extra careful, since what had happened once could easily happen again.
Crispin shook Bilge’s hand and leaned down to kiss Serena’s cheek.
“You would have no idea where Laetitia has gotten herself to, then?” he asked as he straightened.
“I’m afraid not, old chap.” Bilge slapped him on the shoulder. Crispin staggered. “But I’m sure she’ll turn up soon. Wouldn’t want to miss the happiest day of her life, would she?”
He chuckled. Bilge isn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier, although I suppose it was sort of nice that he considered the day he married Serena to be the happiest day of his life. Or perhaps it was more that he assumed it must have been the happiest day of hers.
“Out of curiosity,” I asked, “when was the last time you saw Lady Laetitia?”
They looked at one another.
“It was after the engagement party,” Serena said, and Bilge nodded.
“After you started feeling poorly in the mornings, too, wasn’t it?”
Serena nodded. She flushed a little, as if the intestinal upset of growing a small human was something to be embarrassed of.
“Perhaps a month or so ago, then?” I suggested.
“Must have been,” Bilge said. “Perhaps even a bit more. Six weeks, maybe? Sometime in October?”
Was it possible that Laetitia had visited all her old friends on the same day in October, and that was the last any of them had seen her?
“Was she accompanied by Olivia Barnsley, by any chance?”
They both looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.
“No, why would she be?” Serena wanted to know, while Bilge added, “Has hardly taken her eyes off Reggie in the past several months, has she? No, I haven’t seen Livvy in longer than I haven’t seen Laetitia.”
“What about Lady Violet Cummings?”
“I visited Cummings House just after Vi woke up,” Serena said. “She looked awful, I have to say. Just skin and bones.”
She shuddered. I nodded. I had seen Lady Violet back then too, and yes, skin and bones wasn’t an exaggeration.
“She looks much better now,” Crispin said. “We just came from there.”
The Fortescues both turned their attention to him. “She hasn’t heard from Letty, either?”
Crispin shook his head. “We spoke to Violet as well as to Olivia. The last time they saw her was when she and Livvy visited Vi together. They thought it was almost two months ago.”
Bilge and his wife exchanged another glance. “Seems suspect,” Bilge uttered, “but you said you’ve seen her since then.”
Crispin blinked. “Yes, of course I’ve seen her since then. I saw her last week, at my father’s funeral.”
There was a momentary pause. “I was sorry to hear about that, old bean,” Bilge said, and Serena nodded. “Still,” he added, more brightly, “not so bad it isn’t good for something, is it? You’re Duke of Sutherland now.”
Crispin nodded, jaw tight. “Thank you, yes.”
“We’re sorry about your father, of course,” Serena added softly. I got the impression that the sentence ought to have ended something like, “Bilge just lacks the usual social graces,” but of course she didn’t actually say that.
“Thank you,” Crispin repeated. “But you haven’t seen or heard from Laetitia in the past week or two?”
They both shook their heads.
“What was she doing the last time you saw her?” I asked, grasping at whatever straws might exist. When they both stared at me, I added, “Was she here—in London, I mean—to see you? Or to see someone else? Was she meeting Lord St George?”
They looked over at him, heads turning in synchronicity.
“I don’t think she mentioned Crispin,” Serena said, “did she, darling?”
Bilge shook his head. “I can’t recall that she did, my sweet.”
“Lady Violet? Olivia? Anyone else?” Dom Rivers was already dead, so she wouldn’t have been in Town to see him, but she might have found another dope merchant with whom to do business.
That was if she still indulged, of course.
Neither she nor Crispin partied quite as hardy as they used to since the engagement.
“She was meeting someone for lunch, wasn’t she, Bilge?” Serena asked.
Her husband nodded. “I think she was.”
He turned to the rest of us. “She stopped by in the morning. I had to entertain her by myself as Serena isn’t feeling quite the thing in the mornings these days. When she made it down, we lingered over tea. At the end of it, Laetitia said she had to go before she was late.”
“Did she say whom she was meeting? Or where she was going?”
“The Savoy,” Serena said, “wasn’t it?”
I made a face, and she added, “Or perhaps it was the Ritz. One of the big hotels. Can you recall specifically, Bilgie?”
But Bilgie couldn’t, or if he could, he decided not to share his information with us. “It was two months ago,” he declared with a flip-flap of his ham-sized hand. “Who can remember?”
I exchanged a glance with Christopher, and knew that the two of us could remember the Savoy perfectly well, thank you, even if it had been two months ago.
That had been during the time when Wolfgang had been trying to convince me that he was still registered there as a guest, when he had, in fact, moved to cheaper lodgings fairly soon after making our acquaintance.
But he had taken a stack of Savoy Hotel stationery with him when he departed, and he had continued to send me little missives on it, inviting me to tea and supper, quite as if he were still staying there.
It took me an unreasonable amount of time to catch onto the fact that he wasn’t, in fact, a guest of the Savoy, and then the whole thing unraveled in fairly short order after that, beginning with the disappearance of Christopher, and ending with the abduction of myself onto the freighter bound for Germany.
It’s a long story, and not pertinent to the question of where Laetitia might be.
If she had been lunching at the Savoy at any point in October, it hadn’t been during one of the times that I’d been there.
I would have remembered seeing her, although after all this time, I rather doubted that anyone else would, or could, tell us with whom she’d been meeting.
So we thanked Bilge and Serena for the information—paltry though it was—and congratulated them again on the happy circumstances. And then we left, back into the Hispano-Suiza.
“Where to now?” I asked from the back seat as Crispin turned over the motor. “We’re running out of people to talk to.”
So many of the Bright Young Set were either in prison or dead. Or missing.
“Marsden House,” Crispin said grimly. “I don’t know where else to go.”
I didn’t, either, unless it was back to Sutherland House, or back to the flat, where all we had to do, was twiddle our thumbs and wait for word. No, much better to keep going, even if we were grasping at straws at this point.
“Does she have any family in London? Or anywhere else, for that matter. Anyone she might have gone to see?”
“Her grandmother’s alive somewhere,” Crispin said. “She’s elderly and unwell and didn’t make it to the engagement party. I can’t think of a reason why Laetitia would go there.”
“But her mother must have thought of that too,” Christopher added, “wouldn’t you think?”
“I think I ought to speak to my future mother-in-law,” Crispin said. “So far, all I know is what Gardiner has told us. It might be as well to get the information firsthand.”
It might, at that. Not that I thought Tom would be lying to us, but Lady Euphemia might have been lying to him, or at least she might be more forthcoming with her future son-in-law than with Scotland Yard.
She might know things she hadn’t shared with Tom.
Or her husband might, or perhaps more likely, her son.
“Marsden House first, then,” I said. “We can ring up Dorset from there.”
Crispin nodded and swung the Hispano-Suiza into traffic.