Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Nothing of any note happened on our way down to the village the next morning.
Part of me was braced for it, especially when we came out from behind the small copse of trees that had shaded us from the Hall, and we could see where the shot had come from back in April, but nothing actually happened.
We made it down the hill and into the village without ending up in the ditch with dirt on our knees and blood on the palms of our hands this time.
Little Sutherland is a nice little hamlet, made up of a few narrow, cobblestoned streets lined by brick and stone cottages.
It’s not quite as picturesque as Upper or Lower Slaughter, but not far removed, either.
The stone is grayish rather than honey-colored, and the layout is a bit flatter and less rambling. But it’s a lovely place for all that.
The infirmary is located just off the town square, and we made our way there.
Déjà vu hit again as we pushed the door open and walked in. And not only because we had done the same thing seven months ago, with blood running down my arm from where the bullet had nicked me on its way past, but also because part of me was afraid that we would walk in on another dead body.
We had discussed driving to the Cotswolds to see Morrison, and Morrison had been dead when we arrived.
We had discussed walking to the village to talk to Doctor Meadows. What were the chances that Doctor Meadows would be alive when we got here?
The chances were good, as it happened. We walked in, and a few seconds later, the door to the surgery opened and Doctor Meadows stepped through. “Oh,” he said when he saw us. “It’s you two. Is everything all right?”
His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and he had a towel between his hands that he was using to dry them. Perhaps he truly had been in surgery, and we had interrupted him with his hands in someone’s intestines.
My stomach did a slow roll and I tore my eyes away from the towel and focused on the doctor’s face instead.
“Everything is fine,” Christopher assured him. “Everyone is alive and well.”
The doctor gave me an up-and-down look. “No bullet wounds this time?”
“None at all,” I said. “No bullet wounds, no scraped knees, nothing like that. No one tried to take us out on our way to the village this time around.”
He nodded. “What can I do for you?”
“We just had a question,” Christopher said, with a glance at me. I indicated that he should continue, so he did. “You’ve been the doctor here for a long time, haven’t you?”
“Since before you and your cousin were born,” Doctor Meadows nodded. “My father was the doctor before me.”
“When Aunt Charlotte was young, she had a maid by the name of Lydia Morrison. Would you happen to remember her?”
“Of course,” Doctor Meadows said readily. “She came here from Somerset with your aunt, and went back there, or perhaps it was somewhere else, a few years later.”
He didn’t look as if the question had opened up any kind of wound, old or new. Nor did his voice sound like it.
“It was London,” I confirmed. “And then from there to Dorset with Lady Peckham. Constance’s mother, you know.”
“Young Francis’s girl.” He nodded. “I’ve seen her come and go a few times, but we haven’t met.”
“Constance is lovely,” I said. “You’ll like her. Although we were talking about Morrison. Who was Constance’s mother’s maid almost as long as Constance has been alive. Until April, when she left the household suddenly.”
“After Lady Peckham died?”
I blinked, and then I realized that of course, Doctor Meadows would have attended Lady P upon her death.
She had been here at Sutherland Hall when it happened, for Lady Charlotte’s funeral, and when the younger set—all the Astleys, Constance and Gilbert Peckham, Johanna de Vos and myself—decamped for the Dower House, Lady Peckham had stayed behind to provide Uncle Harold with moral support.
She had ended up dead a day later, but I hadn’t given it much thought at the time, since it had happened in Wiltshire while we’d been in Dorset, and since Johanna de Vos’s murder had taken precedence at that point.
But now I realized that yes, of course, the staff at the Hall would have called in Doctor Meadows when Lady P died, and for him, that death would loom larger than Johanna’s.
“Before,” I said. “Otherwise she would have been here with Lady P that week, I assume. She left Lady Peckham’s employ right around the time Lady Charlotte died. And Duke Henry and Grimsby.”
“Her departure was rather abrupt,” Christopher added. “She didn’t even wait for her pay, and she didn’t leave a forwarding address. Constance has been worried.”
“Naturally,” Doctor Meadows agreed. He dropped the used towel on top of a nearby table and began to fasten his cuffs. If he had someone in surgery in the other room, he wasn’t in any hurry to get back to them. Perhaps he had simply been washing up after breakfast.
“We didn’t know what to do about it,” Christopher continued, “but this weekend, the Marsdens are visiting. You know that Crispin is engaged to marry Lady Laetitia Marsden?”
Doctor Meadows nodded and glanced at me. I rolled my eyes. It really must be true what Christopher had said, that absolutely everyone knew how Crispin felt about me.
“Well,” Christopher continued, “Lady Marsden’s maid mentioned that she had seen Morrison on holiday last month, so we motored up to the Cotswolds a few days ago.”
“Word has spread,” Doctor Meadows nodded.
“Has it, really? Well—” I folded my arms across my chest, “your name was in her address book, so we thought perhaps you could shed some light on what happened.”
He stared at me. “Shed some light upon her death, do you mean? Dear me, no. I haven’t seen the woman in more than twenty years. I wouldn’t know anything about it.”
“Why would she have your contact information in her book after all these years?”
“Perhaps the book is twenty years old,” Doctor Meadows said, and of course there was a possibility of that.
“But you did know her when she worked for Lady Charlotte?”
“I know all the locals,” Doctor Meadows said. “Gentry and otherwise. Everyone gets ill, Miss Darling.”
Yes, of course. “Can you remember Morrison needing your services for anything in particular? Illness or injury? Anything else?”
Pregnancy, just as a for-instance.
“She wasn’t here very long,” Doctor Meadows said, “and nothing in particular comes to mind.”
He did appear to be thinking about it, to do him justice. Unless he only appeared to be thinking about it, to throw off suspicion.
“You must have seen her for something,” I insisted. “You knew who she was.”
Doctor Meadows nodded. “But not necessarily because she sought out my services for her own self. She was there with Lady Charlotte for most of her ladyship’s appointments while she was expecting young Crispin.”
Of course. Uncle Harold wouldn’t have been bothered about supporting his wife for those, nor is it something fathers in general do, I suppose.
“But Morrison was never, for instance, pregnant herself?”
He stared at me as if I had lost my mind. “No, of course not. Or not during the time she was here in Little Sutherland. I have no idea what may have happened later.”
“And you haven’t thought of anything else of interest having to do with Crispin’s birth?”
That’s what we had come down here to inquire about in April: the initials L.M. that Grimsby the valet had scribbled on Crispin’s blackmail dossier. I still didn’t know whether they referred to Lionel Meadows, Lady Laetitia Marsden, Lydia Morrison, or someone else.
Next to me, Christopher moved uncomfortably, and I reached out and took his hand without looking at him. “Just another minute, Christopher.”
“No,” Doctor Meadows said. “I already told you that there was nothing out of the ordinary about young Crispin’s birth. He was a few weeks early—”
I nodded. That’s normally a cause for stigma—your standard ‘premature baby’ (note the quotes) is born seven or eight months after his parents’ marriage—but of course that wasn’t the case here. Uncle Harold and Aunt Charlotte had already been married several years by the time Crispin came along.
“—but he was healthy and well-formed, simply a bit on the small side, and he outgrew that by the time you were three or four.”
Christopher nodded. “We’re much of a height now. And have been for a while. We went off to Eton looking like twins.”
“Sounded like them, too,” I agreed.
What would any reasonable person think, after all, but that Christopher and Crispin Astley, in the same year at Eton, were brothers?
The only difference between them is coloring.
Crispin inherited his mother’s platinum hair and gray eyes, while Christopher has the sunny blond hair and blue eyes of the rest of the Sutherlands.
But that difference isn’t enough to take away from the fact that in every other respect, they’re practically identical.
Christopher’s nose is perhaps a shade longer, and they’ve both picked up some scrapes and scars along the way that are different, but for all intents and purposes, they look enough alike to be twins.
All of which was neither here nor there. I turned back to Doctor Meadows.
“So there’s nothing you can think of to tell us? You don’t know why Morrison would have left Aunt Charlotte’s employ as soon as Crispin was born? You can’t think of anyone who might have wanted her dead?”
Doctor Meadows looked startled. “My dear girl, of course not. It’s been almost a quarter of a century since I last saw her. And surely, if something had happened back then that someone would have wanted to kill her for, they would have done it by now?”
You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Except—
“I don’t suppose you know anything about what happened to Hughes?” I wanted to know.
“Margaret Hughes? Lady Charlotte’s maid, do you mean?”
“The one that replaced Morrison, yes.”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” Doctor Meadows said. “What happened to her?”
“Well, she’s dead, too.”