Chapter 8 #2
I kept a close eye on him when I said it, but all I could see was genuine shock.
“It happened a few months ago,” Christopher added, “in Bristol. She went there in July. Aunt Charlotte was dead, you know, and my mother has no need for a lady’s maid, so my father gave her a bit of money and a friend of ours gave her a lift to Bristol.
And a month or so later, we heard that she had been killed in a robbery. ”
“You don’t say?” Doctor Meadows seemed politely interested, but nothing more. “That’s terrible. But no, I hadn’t heard anything about that.”
“Isn’t it just awful? Both of them dead—all three of them, if you count Aunt Charlotte, or all four, if you count Lady Peckham—and all within six months of each other. It’s hard to imagine that there isn’t a connection.”
Doctor Meadows looked at me for a moment. “Your aunt left a note, I thought?”
He very delicately didn’t call it a suicide note, although that was what it had been. “And Lady Peckham’s son took responsibility for her death, didn’t he?”
Yes, of course he had done. Gilbert couldn’t have killed either Hughes or Morrison, any more than Aunt Charlotte could have done.
So no matter how circumstantial and coincidental the whole thing seemed to be—perhaps I ought simply to call it suspicious—Aunt Charlotte’s and Lady Peckham’s deaths were explained.
Someone else had killed Hughes and Morrison.
And it wasn’t likely to be Doctor Meadows.
There wasn’t a single whiff of guilt about him.
“Thank you for your time,” I told him, with a squeeze of Christopher’s hand. “We won’t keep you any longer.”
He beetled at me under lowered brows. “There’s nothing wrong?”
“Nothing beyond what we’ve already mentioned,” I said brightly as I turned towards the door. “If that changes, you’ll be the first to know.”
Doctor Meadows nodded. He kept his eye on us as we crossed the infirmary floor, but he didn’t say anything, just watched as we let ourselves out and shut the door behind ourselves.
“So that’s that,” Christopher said when we were standing on the cobblestones under the gray skies of the November morning.
I nodded. “I had hoped that he might have had something to contribute, but I’m not really surprised that he didn’t.”
Morrison hadn’t lived in Little Sutherland for a long time, and the address book might simply have been twenty years old.
“If she were his paramour back then,” Christopher opined, “he gave no sign of it.”
I shook my head. “That doesn’t mean she wasn’t. But there’s also no reason to think she might have been. We don’t even know if she was enceinte when she left. She might have been—and probably was—a perfectly buttoned-up spinster with a mother named Edith in Somerset.”
Somewhere nearby there was a slam, as of a door shutting, and Christopher looked around. There was nothing to see, and after a moment he turned back to me. “Shall we head back?”
I tucked my hand through his arm. “We may as well. If Doctor Meadows doesn’t know anything, I doubt anyone else here would. Perhaps we can talk Constance into trying to ring up Edith Morrison on the telephone, and see what she has to say.”
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t give it a try,” Christopher agreed, and pointed us in the direction of the road out of the village and back up to Sutherland Hall.
As it turned out, Constance was more than happy to ring up the exchange and ask for Edith Morrison. However, the lady was not on the exchange, and there was nothing we or the operator could do about it.
“Let me try,” Francis said, and took the earpiece out of Constance’s hand. “Operator? Can you connect me with the constabulary in Stow-on-the-Wold?”
That, the exchange operator could do, and a few moments later, Francis was speaking to Officer Woodin. Three minutes after that, we had the answers we had been looking for.
“Edith Morrison is Lydia’s mother. According to Woodin, who had it from the constabulary where the mother lives, they’ve barely seen one another in the past twenty-five years.
Our Morrison will be buried in Upper Slaughter, Woodin said.
Her mother might travel there, but then again, she might not.
She’s elderly and hasn’t seen her daughter in a quarter of a century, so I got the impression—and so did Woodin—that she doesn’t much care that her daughter’s dead. ”
“I’m not sure that I do, either,” I said. “I was mainly interested in what their relationship was, or more specifically, whether Edith might be Lydia’s daughter. If she isn’t, and if they haven’t had much contact, it’s unlikely that Edith would know anything that pertains to Lydia’s murder.”
Francis nodded. “Shall we head back to Beckwith, then? You’ve spoken to Doctor Meadows. Mum and Dad already left. There’s nothing more to do here, is there?”
There wasn’t.
“I’ll go upstairs and pack,” I said, and turned towards the staircase with Christopher right behind.
When we came downstairs again, each of us clutching our weekender bag, it was Uncle Harold, of all people, who talked us into staying for luncheon.
He was in the foyer, and caught sight of us coming down the stairs.
And instead of letting us leave quietly, he insisted that as luncheon was only a few minutes away, we ought to stay and partake before making the drive back to Beckwith Place and from there, to Salisbury and the train station.
There’s only an hour’s drive between Little Sutherland and Beckwith, and less than that between Beckwith and Salisbury, so there was no chance that we’d starve before we got there.
But he appeared sincerely concerned about it—or at least he seemed sincerely concerned for Christopher; I’m sure he couldn’t care less about me—and there was no reason to upset him by saying no, so we acquiesced with good grace.
Francis and Constance came back inside from the Crossley, the Marsdens and Geoffrey appeared from whence they had occupied themselves, and Crispin and Laetitia drifted in from wherever they had been.
For once, he didn’t appear to have been recently kissed, so perhaps they hadn’t been together.
“I hear you’re headed home,” the latter said to Christopher.
Christopher nodded. “We would have left already, but Uncle Harold invited us to stay for luncheon.”
Crispin flicked a glance at his father. “Without saying goodbye?”
“We didn’t want to interrupt,” I said. “Just in case you were doing something important.”
He glanced at me, but didn’t say anything. “All the way back to London?” he asked Christopher instead.
The latter nodded. “Tomorrow, I imagine. By the time we get to Beckwith Place, it’ll be time for tea. By the time we could make it to Salisbury and the train, it would almost be time for supper. By the time we got to London—”
Crispin nodded. “Might as well wait until the morning.”
Yes, indeed. Francis could take us to Salisbury after breakfast, and we’d be in London by afternoon.
“It’s been lovely,” I told Duke Harold politely. “Thank you for inviting us.”
Christopher nodded. “Yes, thank you, Uncle Harold.”
His Grace inclined his head. “It’s always a pleasure, Christopher.”
The statement rather pointedly excluded me, and I’m sure we could all hear it.
I was under no illusions, and I’m sure no one else was, either.
But there was no point in commenting on it.
Aside from the fact that I was in Uncle Harold’s home, and that I shouldn’t be rude to our host, any complaint would simply serve to make me look like a brat.
So I kept my mouth closed, and ignored Lady Laetitia’s smirk, and the Countess of Marsden’s ditto, not to mention the color in Crispin’s cheeks. Instead, I devoted myself to my plate.
“This is delicious. Cook has outdone herself.”
“Marvellous tripe,” Francis agreed blandly.
Uncle Harold cleared his throat, and Francis told him, “Sorry, Uncle Harold,” but without bothering to sound like he meant it.
“Never mind, Francis,” Uncle Harold said.
Francis nodded, and looked down at his plate. The corners of his lips were twitching. I could see Constance slanting a look at him along the table.
And it was around that point that the sound of a motorcar entered the courtyard and came to a stop.
“Are we expecting someone else?” Crispin wanted to know, looking around the table. We were all present, except for Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert, of course. Perhaps something had happened to the Bentley, and they had had to return to Sutherland Hall instead of going on to Beckwith Place?
His Grace didn’t answer. From the foyer, we could hear Tidwell’s measured steps as he crossed the marble in the direction of the door.
The hinges squeaked, and then Tidwell’s voice said, “Good afternoon, Constable.”
I arched my brows, and Christopher arched his right back.
There was the murmur of voices in the foyer, too faint to make out, and the sounds of… not quite a scuffle, but the shuffling of feet.
“One moment—” Tidwell’s voice protested, breathlessly, but whoever he was talking to quite obviously did not heed the warning, since, a moment later, his figure appeared in the door to the dining room.
One of the village bobbies, in full uniform. I recognized his face, in the vague sort of way that one recognizes someone one has seen about but doesn’t really know. I had no idea what his name was, but I knew that I had seen him before.
He stopped in the doorway to look around the table. Lady Laetitia, the Countess of Marsden, Constance. Me.
“Your Grace,” Tidwell intoned, elbowing the constable out of his way as he stepped across the threshold, “may I present Constable Daniels—”
Daniels didn’t wait for the response. “Miss Darling,” he said instead. “I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.”