Chapter 7 #2
It didn’t last long. Christopher’s stiffness melted away after a second or two, and so did Uncle Herbert’s look of worry.
I thought about bringing it up, to face the issue head on, but then I decided that any interrogation would be better kept for a more private moment, when everyone in the family—and beyond—wasn’t present to hear our conversation.
“I think I may inquire of Doctor Meadows tomorrow,” I added, and Uncle Herbert’s face took on another look of concern.
“Why would Doctor Meadows have anything to do with Miss Morrison’s death, Pippa?”
“Oh,” I said, “I don’t think he had anything to do with her death.”
Although now that he had brought it up, perhaps I ought to consider that possibility. If she had been with child twenty-three years ago, and he had been the father—or he knew that someone else had been, like Uncle Harold—might he have motored up to the Cotswolds to kill her?
It was difficult to imagine a reason why, or even how, he might have done it.
Take the issue of transportation, first of all.
Did Doctor Meadows own a motorcar? I rather thought not.
Francis had motored to the village and brought him back to Sutherland Hall in April, when Duke Henry first expired, before we had any inkling that the late duke’s death had been a murder.
Without a motorcar, the doctor couldn’t have made it from Wiltshire to the Cotswolds and back overnight, and the owner of any car he hired might have thought the whole thing a bit strange and worthy of notice, which isn’t what you want when you set out to commit a murder.
I certainly would have done, had someone hired my car for a seven-hour drive, only to stay inside the destination for just a few minutes.
Then again, Doctor Meadows was a physician, and of everyone, it would make the most sense for a physician to make house calls in the night. So in that sense, someone might actually believe it. Even if Little Sutherland to Upper Slaughter was rather a long distance to go for a house call.
And then there was the question of how Lionel Meadows would have discovered that Lydia Morrison had relocated to Upper Slaughter, because as far as I knew, the maid Shreve wouldn’t have had any reason to search him out to tell him, and without Shreve, none of us would have known.
And besides, as I had already pointed out to Constance just a few minutes ago, anyone who had wanted to get rid of Morrison had had the past twenty-three years to do it.
This—what happened two nights ago—couldn’t have been because of something that had happened back then, or at least not because of something that was known back then.
If it was cause for murder now, surely it would have been cause for murder then, too?
So why wait almost a quarter century, when Morrison had been readily available at the Dower House all this time?
Anyone with the ability to motor to the Cotswolds three nights ago, would have had the ability to motor to Dorset any time these past twenty-three years.
Indeed, Marsden-on-Crane was only about half the distance from Sutherland Hall to Upper Slaughter, so for convenience’s sake, it would have been much easier to go to Dorset to do the deed.
“Then what do you think Doctor Meadows can tell you, Pippa?” Aunt Roz wanted to know, and yanked me back to reality.
I blinked, and reordered my thoughts quickly. “I simply thought, since she had his name in her address book—”
That was as far as I got before Francis turned to me. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Pipsqueak. You were supposed to wait outside the cottage while Woodin and I motored to Stow-on-the-Wold for reinforcements. Not sneak inside and dig through the crime scene.”
Aunt Roz’s eyes widened, and so did Uncle Herbert’s. Pippa!” Aunt Roz exclaimed, while Uncle Harold at least managed a slightly more questioning, “Pippa?”
“We didn’t dig,” I said, guiltily.
“We?” Aunt Roz looked from Christopher to me and back. I guess no one thought Constance would have had anything to do with it.
She flushed. “It was me, Roslyn. We wanted to make certain that the dead person was, indeed, Morrison, and I’m the only one who has seen her.”
“All I did was sit outside and keep watch,” Christopher added, self-righteously.
His mother rolled her eyes. “So you let your cousin and future sister-in-law go inside by themselves?”
Christopher threw his hands up. “Damned if I do and damned if I don’t, is that it?”
“Clearly,” I told him. “Don’t worry about it, Christopher. It was a nice, clean crime scene. Nothing much to see at all. We were careful not to touch much. Her address book was in her handbag and her passbook in her unmentionables drawer, under a lot of boring cotton and wool.”
“Dear me, Darling,” drawled Crispin’s voice from behind me.
I had no idea where he had come from, all of a sudden.
He hadn’t been here—nor Laetitia—when Constance and I entered the room.
Outside for a cigarette or a romantic stroll through the gardens, perhaps.
He had a whiff of the outdoors about him, a chill, crisp, autumnal sort of scent, mixed with the clean odor of rain.
“How terribly ill-mannered of you, pawing through other people’s unmentionables. ”
“You would know all about pawing, St George,” I retorted with a look up at him. “Where have you been, pray tell? The center of the garden maze?”
Constance, who had once walked in on Crispin and another young lady sharing the wrought iron bench in the middle of the maze, made a choking sound and buried her face in her hands. Her cheeks were bright red.
Crispin looked at her, and must have been reminded of the occasion, too, because he flushed. He returned his attention to me. “One of these days, Darling—”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, St George. As I was saying—”
I turned back to Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert, who had been watching the exchange with something halfway between horror and amusement, “I did paw through her unmentionables. Not while she was wearing them, obviously. I’m not some people.
They were decently stored in a drawer in her wardrobe.
But that’s not what we were discussing. She had Doctor Meadows’s name in her address book, and I thought I might pay him a visit tomorrow, before we leave Sutherland Hall. ”
“Didn’t you speak to Doctor Meadows in April?” Aunt Roz wanted to know. “Wasn’t that where you were headed when…”
“When Aunt Charlotte decided to practice her target shooting from Christopher’s bedroom window, yes.
” I nodded, as I tried to ignore the reaction from behind me.
Or the lack of reaction, perhaps. And not from Crispin; the sense of stillness, of interrupted breathing, came from the card table.
Uncle Harold, most likely. It was no surprise that he didn’t like to be reminded of his late wife’s attempted murder of me, especially in front of the Marsdens.
“That was not a question about Morrison,” I added. “That was about Grimsby and whatever secret he had dug up that got him and Duke Henry killed.”
The silence from the card table became more charged.
“But that’s neither here nor there at the moment,” I concluded. “This would just be a question about Morrison. And it’s not as if any of us has to worry about being accused of her murder. We were all here in Wiltshire when she died. Hours away from the Cotswolds.”
There was a breath during which no one said anything, and then—
“Of course we were, Darling,” Crispin said. “Speaking for myself, I was in Kit’s room until after midnight. I wouldn’t have had the time to motor to the Cotswolds and back before breakfast the next morning.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” I told him, “considering the speed with which you usually move. Although for the record, I wasn’t accusing you.”
He rolled his eyes. “There’s a first time for everything, I suppose. Thanks ever so, Darling.”
Laetitia cleared her throat, and he added, with a grimace, “Philippa.”
Uncle Harold cleared his throat. “Of course you didn’t do, St George. Nor did anyone else here. It’s as Miss Darling said: none of us had the opportunity to motor up to the Cotswolds and murder that poor woman. Not without being missed. Ergo, none of us did it.”
“Precisely,” I said. I don’t like to agree with Uncle Harold—I don’t like Uncle Harold, period—but needs must. “I’m simply curious as to who did do, so I think I’ll take a walk to the village after breakfast tomorrow, and have a conversation with Doctor Meadows.
Just because he didn’t have any answers about what went on last time, doesn’t mean he might not know something about what’s happened now. ”
“I’ll come with you,” Christopher said.
“Thank you, Christopher.” I included the rest of the family in the next statement. “And nobody better shoot at us from the house when we come out from behind the trees this time.”
Laetitia sniffed. “As if anyone here would do such a thing.”
“It’s happened to me twice,” I pointed out. “The second time was at Marsden Manor in September.”
“My stars!” Countess Euphemia slapped a hand to her bosom, while her husband looked startled.
“It was the morning of the shoot,” Francis said.
He had been in just as much danger of being hit by the wayward bullet as I had been.
It had passed within a foot of us both. “We were outside on the lawn, the three of us.” He indicated me and Christopher.
“The bullet came from the woods, passed between us, and embedded itself in the wall.”
“Constable Collins dug it out,” I added, “later that afternoon.”
“And you think someone shot at you deliberately?” Lord Maury sported a concerned wrinkle between his brows.
“At the time,” I said, “we assumed that someone mistook me for Cecily Fletcher from a distance, and was aiming for her.”
Everyone’s face darkened at that, since no one wanted to be reminded of Geoffrey’s crimes. Geoffrey himself looked particularly wooden, but he assured me, “I would never, Miss Darling.”
“At this point,” Christopher added, “we suspect it was the Graf von und zu Natterdorff who fired the shot, and he was aiming for Pippa deliberately.”
“The German gentleman? Why would he do that?”
“Didn’t he propose at the end of the weekend?”
“As it turns out,” I said blithely, since Crispin apparently hadn’t shared this information with his future parents-in-law, nor perhaps even his future wife, “I’m the Gr?fin von und zu Natterdorff, and Wolfgang didn’t want to share his inheritance with me.”
There was utter silence following this announcement.
My family—Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert, Francis, Christopher, and Constance—had already heard all about it, of course.
Christopher and I hadn’t wasted any time in letting everyone else know.
But Crispin, who had also been there for the denouement, apparently hadn’t seen fit to let his father in on the secret, because Uncle Harold gaped at me in a way that indicated strong surprise.
I pretended that I couldn’t see it, because gloating would be impolite.
“He tried to marry me to get his hands on my share of the money, but he also tried to kidnap me as well as murder me several times—along with Christopher, once or twice—so we think it quite likely that he saw an opportunity at Marsden Manor that weekend and took it. I didn’t have the chance to ask, so of course we may be wrong, but it makes sense. ”
There was another pause, then—
“You—” Uncle Harold cleared his throat. “You’re a German countess, Miss Darling?”
The way that he, very carefully, avoided looking at his son and heir indicated that this information might have made a difference earlier.
Before Crispin proposed to Laetitia and got himself tied to wedding her, at the threat of a breach of promise suit.
At a point when he could have made a different choice and pursued someone else.
And while I knew that there were other reasons for why he hadn’t pursued me—we hated each other, and I would have laughed myself sick had he gone down on one knee and pledged devotion, and he knew it—I also understood what his father’s reaction would do to Crispin, and presumably to Laetitia, who would undoubtedly give him grief about it.
So I went against my own first instinct, which was to rub the duke’s nose in it, after all the years he had believed me to be beneath him and his family.
Instead, I said calmly, “Only on paper. The Weimar Republic did away with the German nobility in 1919. And that’s fine. I’m happy to be Pippa Darling.”
“But the estates,” the Countess of Marsden said, with a glance at her daughter. “The money and land…”
“The German government is welcome to it. I’m certainly not going back to Germany to claim my inheritance.”
What if they wouldn’t let me leave again? No, better to simply let them absorb it all. Germany could use all the help it could get, what with the post-War reparations and the poverty and the madness of Herr Hitler and all the rest of it.
“Yes,” Christopher said and put an arm around my waist. “Stay with us, Pippa.”
“Thank you, Christopher,” I told him, as I put my own arm around his shoulders and held on.