Chapter 2
Chapter Two
“Where are we going?” Constance wanted to know as we reached the hallway, and I tugged her in the direction of the staff quarters.
I flicked her a glance. “I’d like a word with Shreve before we leave Sutherland Hall tomorrow. Just in the event that she knows something she didn’t mention to you earlier.”
Such as a better idea of exactly where Morrison might be found.
“I can’t imagine what that would be,” Constance said, but she allowed me to drag her down the hall towards the door to the ‘downstairs.’ “We won’t be interrupting their supper, will we?”
Most likely we would do, but I’ve never let that stop me before. “Tidwell won’t mind. He likes me.”
Tidwell is the butler, and he does like me. So does Mrs. Mason, the housekeeper, I believe. And Cook, as well as both footmen. I’m not so sure about the chamber- and parlor-maids.
They were all gathered at table when we walked into the staff kitchen, and there was a moment of absolute silence before Tidwell surged to his feet. “Miss Darling. Miss Peckham. Mr. Astley.” He looked from one to the other of us. “Is there a problem in the parlor?”
Christopher shook his head. “At ease, Tidwell. Miss Darling wanted a word with Shreve.”
The visiting maid, a small dumpling of a woman—as different from the tall and elegant Lady Euphemia as it’s possible for one woman to be from another—looked startled under heavy brows. Her eyes fastened on Constance. “Miss Connie?”
“Just another question or two about Morrison,” Constance explained. “We plan to motor up to the Cotswolds tomorrow to see if we can find her. We wondered whether there was anything else you might know, that would help us in the search.”
Shreve looked nonplussed, as if she couldn’t quite imagine why finding Morrison was so important. And she might well be right. I wasn’t exactly sure why I wanted to take eight or ten hours out of my day to motor to the Cotswolds to look for a woman we now knew was alive and well.
But her departure from the Dower House had been both precipitous and downright suspicious, and I am, as Christopher had pointed out, curious by nature, and as tenacious as a dog with a bone.
And not one of those cute, yappy, little breeds, either.
Crispin called me a bulldog once, and unflattering though the comparison might be, I won’t say that he was wrong.
“I can’t imagine what that might be, Miss Connie,” Shreve said. “I saw her in Lower Slaughter, but she said it wasn’t where she lived.”
“Did she seem familiar with Lower Slaughter?” I interjected. “Did she greet anyone while you were there? Did anyone greet her?”
“The rummage sale was at the church,” Shreve said with a wrinkle of her nose. “She was speaking with the vicar’s wife when I saw her.”
“Did they seem friendly?” Or had it merely been a haggling session over an old chamber pot?
“Friendly enough,” Shreve said. “Or as friendly as Morrison ever is. She never was a friendly sort, if you ask me.”
There was a stir around the table, so perhaps some of the servants still remembered Morrison from when she had worked for Lady Charlotte. I met Tidwell’s eyes across the table, but he didn’t say anything. I didn’t, either.
“Did you get the impression that Morrison was one of the vicar’s parishioners?” I asked Shreve instead. “Did they seem to have that kind of relationship?”
But Shreve shook her head. “Morrison was a Primitive Methodist. She wouldn’t attend the Church of England.”
Her tone of voice made it sound as if Morrison had turned her nose up at the Anglican church in a way that had offended Shreve, and perhaps others among the staff. Unless Shreve was the strident believer, of course, and had a problem with anyone else having different views from her own.
I couldn’t imagine that it mattered either way, honestly, but it was a piece of factual information we might be able to use, especially if there was a Primitive Methodist church anywhere in the Cotswolds.
I flicked a glance at Constance, who said, “Thank you, Shreve,” in a polite voice. “We’ll let you get on with supper.”
“We’re sorry to have disturbed you,” I added, to the assembly in general. “We three and Francis will be leaving early tomorrow to drive to the Cotswolds. If anyone has a message for Morrison that you would like us to pass on, please get it to one of us by then.”
No one said anything to that, and I added, “We won’t be here for luncheon or for tea tomorrow. But would it be possible to get a picnic basket for the trip?”
I turned hopeful eyes on Cook, who informed me that she would be happy to provide us with sustenance for the road, and on that note we withdrew to let the staff get on with it.
“Not much help there,” Christopher commented as he and I headed up the central staircase towards the first floor together, while Constance went back to the drawing room and to Francis.
I shook my head. “We’ll figure it out. There can’t be that many people who live around Lower Slaughter. And what a name, hm?
Christopher didn’t answer beyond a commiserating grimace, and I added, “Can you believe that your mother sent us to bed like misbehaving children?”
“I can, actually.” He slanted me a look. “You cannot flirt openly with Crispin in front of his fiancée and—more importantly—in front of his future mother-in-law, Pippa.”
The unfairness of this quite took my breath away. “That wasn’t flirtation, Christopher. He implied that I was enceinte, didn’t you hear?”
“He wishes you were enceinte,” Christopher muttered darkly, and raised his voice. “Yes, Pippa, I heard. And he oughtn’t to have said that. But you can’t allow yourself to get riled up that way. Not in front of the Countess of Marsden. Not to mention my mother.”
I supposed not. It was just very difficult to resist the bait. “You don’t think it was a comment on my figure, do you? Does this frock make me look fat?”
I had bought it recently, to replace a salmon-colored evening frock that I had purchased back in August, in which I had now discovered two separate, foully murdered bodies on two different occasions, not to mention been kidnapped myself.
The salmon frock was gone, wrapped in paper and tossed in the rubbish bin, and I had replaced it with a two-tone dark green velvet frock with gold and bronze embroidery along the hem and decolletage.
The heavier fabric was suitable for autumn and winter, and with Christmas coming up, the green was a good seasonal choice.
And in addition to that, it matched my eyes.
The velvet was stiffer than the usual silk chiffon or crepe of most of my evening gowns, however, and it didn’t drape as easily. Hence my concern that I looked less svelte than usual.
Christopher looked at me with scorn. “No, Pippa. The frock does not make you look fat, nor would Crispin be so foolish as to comment on it if it did. Not only would Laetitia slap him for noticing anyone’s figure but hers—”
I snorted. She’d have to blind him in both eyes to avoid that.
“—but you wouldn’t let him get away with disparaging yours, either.”
“I’m getting better at recognizing the misdirection,” I said. “For instance, there was a time when I would have taken—” I cleared my throat and affected Crispin’s languid drawl, “—my, my, Darling, don’t you look tart and crisp and good enough to eat? as an insult—”
Christopher smothered a laugh, not entirely successfully. “That’s what he told you at the Dower House in May, wasn’t it? About the apple green frock?”
I nodded. “And last month, he told me to wear it because it brings out my eyes. He really is quite adept at saying exactly what he means while making it sound like he means the opposite.”
“I think that’s just you, Pippa,” Christopher said apologetically. “The rest of us knew exactly what he meant.”
Perhaps that was true. Everyone else had known about his feelings for me long before I did, at any rate.
“Be that as it may,” I said as we reached the top of the staircase and turned left, so Christopher could walk me to my room.
I was back at the far end of the west wing, while he—and Francis and Crispin—were at the far end of the east ditto.
Aunt Charlotte had instituted that rule while she was alive.
I had always assumed it was meant to keep Christopher and myself apart, as if we weren’t cohabiting quite happily together in London, but Christopher had set me straight on that issue, as on so many others, last month, when he’d told me that the real purpose had been to keep me away from Crispin, and vice versa.
It was the room I always occupied when I visited Sutherland Hall, though, and staying elsewhere would have been strange.
So I had Constance in the room next to me, and Lady Laetitia across the hall—it must have been Mrs. Mason, or perhaps Crispin himself, who had made the decision to put her as far away from his rooms as she could get—while the Earl and Countess of Marsden had moved into Uncle Harold’s and Aunt Charlotte’s old chambers.
The duke was in the Duke’s Chamber, of course, while the Duchess’s chamber stood empty, just as it had done when Duke Henry was alive.
It seemed to be the fate of the dukes of Sutherland to outlive their wives.
Perhaps, if Crispin was lucky, Laetitia would predecease him by decades, too.
“That’s a horrible thing to wish for,” Christopher said as we turned the corner by Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert’s room and headed down into the west wing.
I peered at him. “Did I say that aloud? I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “It’s difficult to blame you, really. It’s a pity you don’t feel the same way he does, or you could throw yourself at him and convince him to toss her aside so the two of you could run off and live happily ever after.”
I shook my head. “He wouldn’t do it. Even if I did manage to convince him that I’d be happy in a garret on the Continent, he wouldn’t leave Uncle Harold in the lurch.”